Brains, All Covered In Live Virus Edition...

[elfs]

McCain's ground game in Florida... what ground game?

Steve Benen tracks through several articles and comes to the conclusion that McCain's "must win" state of Florida, the one that decided it for Bush in 2000, is going to Obama. Sullivan noted last week that Governor Crist believes his own party is exaggerating claims of voter fraud in the state.

Sarah Palin: The Candidate From Wikipedia

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Adam Brickley, an early 20-something Republican blogger, on the Colbert Report, confessing to living in his mother's basement while he campaigned on Sarah Palin's behalf to get her nominated to be the VP candidate.

Brickley, a self-described "obsessive" political junkie who recently graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, told me that he began by "randomly searching Wikipedia and election sites for Republican women." Though he generally opposes affirmative action, gender drove his choice. "People were talking about Hillary at the time," he recalled. Brickley said that he "puzzled over every Republican female politician I knew." Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas, "waffled on social issues"; Senator Olympia Snowe, of Maine, was too moderate. He was running out of options, he recalled, when he said to himself, "What about that lady who just got elected in Alaska?" Online research revealed that she had a strong grassroots following; as Brickley put it, "I hate to use the words 'cult of personality,' but she reminded me of Obama."

What's interesting about this is how little Brickley actually knew of Sarah. This looks like a classic case of pure echo chamber politics: nobody knew much, but her "public record" seemed so appealing that the chorus just grew. McCain didn't vet her; he seems to have picked her by popular acclaim. Sarah got ahead the way Sarah always got ahead: by being a beauty queen, whether the skin-deep or the pretty words type.(via FiveThirtyEight)

18 Things Every Homeowner Should Do To Save Money

Not everything I read is politics. I'm burning out a little on it. I just want it to be over at this point. So this little article about home maintenance appealed to me.

Home Maintenance Checklist

Just plain good advice.

Typocalypse!

A short slide show of fonts and the subliminal messages they send you: Warnock Pro: "I am a Wizard!"

Fusion, Antimatter, and The Space Drive

One thing I very much enjoyed about Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children was his depiction of interplanetary travel. Charlie went with a saltwater fission rocket; in the Caprice Starr books I ended up using the antimatter canopy drive. I had to wonder, though, about just how much fissile matter there is within the solar system. Kelvin Long discusses what drives we'll need to get to the stars.

Jillian Tamaki on How to Generate Ideas...

Jillian Tamaki writes about how she generates illustration ideas for professional magazine jobs. Her goal is to capture something compelling about the article in a single image. Still, her advice about how living and experiencing contribute to the final product are invaluable to the creative person.

Orac takes apart Dr. Jay Gordon's latest book

Jay Gordon is the doctor overseeing the care of celebrity Jenny McCarthy's son, Evan. McCarthy has held Evan up a lot in the popular press lately, because Evan has autism and McCarthy believes it was caused by his vaccination schedule.

Gordon had avoided for a long time gonig full vaccines-are-evil like his client, but in his latest book he apparently goes "all in." Orac and James wade through the book's claims and point out how bad the science is.

Doing your resume in LaTeX

Good article, but recruiters always send back, "We'd like it in Word, please."

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

We'd like it in Word, please.

So you whip out OpenOffice and SaveAs->Office 97 and done!

Once things like AbiWord came on the scene I found LaTeX to be overkill.... for most things. There are still a few places where it's useful... musical notation when it needs to *really* go cross-platform, for one....

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's about half-true. I've found that LaTeX is absolutely essential if you're using it for what it was meant to do: typesetting. My Lulu books are all done in XeLaTex, which means that I get absolute control over the innards as much as possible.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Point. (Pun intentional.) After all, that's what Knuth invented TeX for...

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Fun fact: Word will happily open a plain text file with a .doc extension.

This round, I sent out plain text resumes and turned them into .docs in the manner above when requested. Worked like a charm. Recruiters don't care about your formatting; they're going to redo it themselves anyway, they just want your keyword dump.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*emacs stuff.txt*
My Documents -> stuff.txt -> Open with -> Microsoft Office Word

Well, whaddyaknow. Learn something every day.

Shows how damn much I know about Windows... not that I *care* for myself, but it's good to be able to interface with people who don't run a real operating system. Thanks!

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Wow! Non-political stuff!

Thanks for the home check-lists.

Ew, is that snot on the corner of my viewscreen? ;p

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Actually, no. 24-hour Sudafed is a freaking miracle. That and a bottle of "modern" Nyquil (Nyquil with no psuedoephedrine), and just plain not doing anything but lying in bed reading, have seriously helped today.

[tagryn]

Ditto, it's a nice change.