Archive for April, 2007
First Democratic Presidential Debate
Tonight I watched the first Democratic presidential debate in its entirety. Going into it, I wasn’t particularly excited about any of the candidates, and I feel pretty much the same coming out of it as well. (I really want Al Gore to throw his name into the hat, but that’s another story.)
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seemed to get most of the attention, followed closely by John Edwards and Joe Biden. Then came Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and Dennis Kucinich. Mike Gravel, whom I had never heard of, was pretty much a complete kook, though I did find myself agreeing with something he said toward the end of the debate.
Terrorism has been with civilization from the beginning, and it will be there till the end. We’re going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we are fighting drugs with the war. It doesn’t work. What you have to do is to begin to change the whole foreign policy.
What bothers me the most about these presidential debates is the inability of the candidates to actually answer the questions posed to them, and Barak seemed to be the biggest offender. Three separate candidates were asked what they would change militarily in the Middle East if the US was attacked twice simultaneously by Al Qaeda, and none of them had an answer. It seems a candidate just hears the topic and immediately jumps to his or her talking points, regardless of whether or not any of the points actually answer anything.
I was impressed with both Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, though. Both of them seemed to address the actual questions posed to them. Richardson had very concrete plans developed, and Chris Dodd was very good at articulating himself.
I was both impressed and disappointed with Dodd’s comments regarding civil unions and gay marriage. First, he said he believes that everyone should approach this issue as if they had a son or daughter who is gay, and think about the rights they would want their son or daughter to have. And of course he would want his child to have the right to enter into a relationship that is legally recognized. He is very proud of his state of Connecticut for enacting civil unions. But he also said that he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage. Now, I’m hoping this is just one of those “let’s give them all the same rights of marriage but call it something else” things. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close, if you ask me — if all the same legal benefits are there, I’m not too concerned about what it’s called. But it’s not totally clear to me whether or not that’s what he believes.
I also give props to Biden for his uncharacteristically curt answer of “Yes” when asked if he could control his tendency to be verbose. Though I’m not sure he’d make a good president, there is something very likable about Biden. He’s very much a real person. Sometimes he unintentionally says dumb or offensive things, but he owns up to it, and he’s not afraid to poke fun at himself.
John Edwards had the best line of the night:
We ought to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.
Wii!
I’ve been a big fan of Nintendo ever since the original Nintendo Entertainment System. After the NES, I had a Super Nintendo, and after missing out on a generation, I got back into gaming when I bought myself a GameCube. I never understood why the GameCube didn’t sell very well, when I thought it had a lot of great games. I’ve never played a better, more enjoyable racing game than Mario Kart: Double Dash. And compared to the XBox and PlayStation 2, I felt that the GameCube controllers were the most comfortable and easiest to use. But apparently most gamers felt differently about the GameCube, and about Nintendo as a whole. Nintendo was in need of a change, which started out small, but ended with a big Wiiiiiiiiiiiii!
The first sign of the reinvention of Nintendo, I think, was the release of the Game Boy Advance SP. I had the original GBA, which was pretty awful in comparison, so I was very anxious to get my hands on an SP. It was at this time when I remarked that I thought Nintendo was (or was becoming) the Apple of video games. Then came the DS, which was very weird and different at the time of its release, and took a long time to catch on. When Nintendo upgraded to the DS Lite, it was even more clear that they were emulating Apple’s stylish designs. And the DS was the perfect test drive for what was to come.
When early details about the Wii, at the time code-named Revolution, started coming out, it was met with the same skepticism that DS had experienced. I myself was rather skeptical, but as a die-hard Nintendo fan, and one who managed to get himself a Wii shortly after its launch, I have to say that I think it’s fantastic. Nintendo’s decision to focus on innovative gaming instead of the latest and greatest specs was not only brilliant, but also necessary. With Microsoft’s entrance into the video game consoles a generation earlier, the field became a little crowded, and Nintendo had to differentiate itself from the competition in order to survive. It couldn’t win if it played the same game as Microsoft and Sony, so it went in an entirely different direction. The result? The Wii has been an enormous success:
Home for the Holidays
Though it may seem a bit out-of-season, this video is funny year-round.
Camel sits on, kills woman
You can’t tell me that this isn’t at least somewhat amusing.