From my childhood, I have heard all about the horribleness of the Clintons; their lust for power, their egos, their desire to win at all costs and no matter what the expense, their lack of principles and standards.

My mother is a Republican and this side of the crazies (though by how much, I wonder sometimes) and since childhood, since Bill Clinton's presidency, I have heard many times how awful and evil and terrible they both are. As a child, I accepted it as fact, as one tends to automatically do when their parents espouse something.

Bill Foster's win on Saturday got me thinking again about the idea of scientists playing a larger role in actually creating and deciding policy. Anybody familiar with the work of Kim Stanley Robinson should be familiar with a recurring theme in his work - the idea that scientists, or at least those with a scientific or engineering background, logically should be the ones calling the shots.

It's an idea that I think has a lot of merit and one which deserves a lot more exploration. Science is inextricably woven into the very fabric of our lives in every conceivable way. Our modern world is almost entirely a creation of a multitude of scientists and engineers. Why shouldn't the architects of that world have a greater say in deciding its direction?

In McCain's victory speech last night, there was a line that speaks precisely to the difference between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and which clearly betrays the lack of understanding that Republicans and conservatives have for this country which they claim to love so dearly.

If you haven't been following it lately, the Internet has declared war on Scientology. More specifically, a group of Internet hackers and other assorteds declaring themselves "Anonymous" have pledged to "destroy Scientology."

Over the past few months, there have been DOS (Denial of Service) attacks against major Scientology websites and hacking into those same websites to disseminate Scientology information so quickly and so widespread that the Church of Scientology would be unable to order cease and desists before the information was completely beyond their control.

And today saw multiple protests, orchestrated across the entire globe in major cities from Australia to California in front of major Scientology centers.

Living in Los Angeles, my friends and I decided to check it out...

So this is a couple days old at this point, but I went to the Obama rally at East L.A. Community College where Ted Kennedy spoke. I've only been in LA for a week and a half at this point, so I managed to get pretty lost on my way to pick up my friend before proceeding on to the rally. As a result, we were a good forty-five minutes late or so, but still managed to show up in time to catch the tail end of it. I grabbed some photos, which you can take a look at below the fold:

A couple years ago now, friends and I attempted to take our filmmaking hobby to the next level, increasing our organization and making a real production company out of it. The problem we faced was the fact that several of our members were soon to be or already departed for other parts of the country, forcing us to use technological tools and rely less on simple in person presences and meetings.

I love technology, I always have. And I have great optimism when it comes to the power of communication technologies today, especially the internet in all its forms. But our venture came apart pretty quick. It did so for many reasons, only some attributable to the difficulty of being physically separated, but it nevertheless provided a sobering lesson about the limitations of and made clear the importance of a very simple thing.

There is an argument against space exploration that goes something like, "We shouldn't spend time and money on space exploration when there are so many problems on Earth still to be solved." It's a popular argument, seemingly logical on the surface (if only on the thinnest film of a surface). Think of all the millions of dollars wasted! Think of the hundreds of thousands of people flitting away days, years, lives! And all while cancer remains an uncured scourge! Except that those millions of dollars stay firmly planted on Earth. And those hundred thousand people are mainly aerospace engineers and the like, and entered that field over the medical sciences for a reason.

But even those aside, there remains a unrefutable refutation of the "Time on space exploration is wasted time" below.

Hah!

The DCCC just called asking for money and I got to tell them that I wouldn't give any money to the DCCC while Congressional Democrats refused to lead.

That was satisfying and an unexpected treat.

Of course, I don't really have any money to give, but that didn't need to be mentioned in the phone call.

Several weeks ago I called my senators' and congressman's offices to let them know I supported a Bush/Cheney impeachment. Of course, my two senators and congressman are Bill Nelson, Mel Martinez, and Tom Feeney so at least two thirds of my activism were destined to fall on deaf ears. But it made me feel better, at least.

Then today, rather unexpectedly I find a letter from Feeney's office telling me why he doesn't support impeachment proceedings. The letter is reproduced in full below, including a couple of very interesting paragraphs...