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Yet another race for Hillary Clinton to lose.
Now that the presidential nomination has been all but sewn up by Barack Obama (he only needs 48 more delegates to win, which he should have by next Tuesday), it's time to turn our attention toward the vice presidential race. Like the Republican spot, the names most commonly heard for the Democratic spot are those of former presidential candidates, and like the Republican spot, you can bet that most of them aren't realistic. Let's consider.
Hillary Clinton. We've heard a lot about the "dream ticket" for months now, but the possibility wasn't ever much more than remote. Clinton stands for everything Obama wants to change about Washington politics. Adding her to the ticket would help to placate the Clinton voters, certainly, but it would alienate those whom he worked to hard to win over. Add all that to the fact that she just suggested that she's staying in the race in case Obama is shot and you can count her out.
Al Gore. Wishful thinking. He's already had the job once, so there's little chance he'd take it again. Plus, he's already said that he's not interested in the White House anymore. With an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, he could have had the presidency if he'd wanted it. Let's look elsewhere.
Jim Webb. Webb is the junior Senator from Virginia who narrowly won in 2006, giving Democrats control of the Senate. The fact that he comes from a traditionally Republican state makes him an attractive option for the VP spot. At age 62, he's still relatively young (well, younger than McCain, at least), and he has experience as the Secretary of the Navy (under Reagan), which could bolster Obama's anti-terrorism image. Webb would be a strong choice, and Intrade favors him above all other candidates by at least four points. (For more information on Intrade, see my article on the Republican VP spot.)
Bill Richardson. Since Richardson's withdrawal from the the presidential race, he's appeared to be angling for the VP spot with Obama. He's talked him up in public, given his superdelegate endorsement to him over Sen. Clinton (whom he has been a personal friend of for years), and has been loudly calling for Clinton to exit the race. And as if that's not good enough, here's the kicker - he's Hispanic. Not that race should be the main motivating factor, but a charismatic Hispanic governor from the West could be exactly what this ticket needs. He brings years of experience as well as a reason for Latino voters to go Democratic. Howard Dean has been saying that the key to the presidency lies in the West this year. Richardson could be the way in. He's way behind on the Intrade market, but I wouldn't be surprised if this the guy the Democrats go with, so long as they don't mind running two minority candidates on the same ticket. (If anti-Obama racism has been bad, imagine adding anti-immigrant sentiment to that.)
Wesley Clark. Clark is a retired four-star general from the Army who ran a failed campaign for the presidency in 2004. A general on the ticket would do wonders to doing away with Obama's image as inexperienced and naive, especially with regards to the military. A few months ago, Clark led the Intrade pack, but now he hovers around $5. That could be because he endorsed Clinton last year, but it's more likely due to his low name-recognition factor. Obama's star power could easily make up for that.
The other names being tossed around are either due to wishful thinking (think John Edwards) or would only make sense with Clinton at the top of the ticket (think Evan Bayh). If you're asking me, and you clearly are, or else you wouldn't be reading the article in the first place, my top three choices (in order) are Richardson, Clark, and Webb. You can congratulate me at the convention in August when I was right.
How many more times are we going to allow Nintendo to pull this kind of crap with just a couple of formulas.Nintendo was once the leader in electronic gaming. During the days of the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and even Nintendo 64, they were on top of their game, but what happened? Well right around the Nintendo 64, something happened to Nintendo, they became self sustained and all of their developers jumped ship. This rose to two other companies joining the fray, first Sony and it's hugely successful Playstation lineup, and then Microsoft with it's XBox. Both of these systems have more then one developer working hard on different games available for either platform. Both have more content then one could ever get around to playing all of. They have regulars, and new comers. Old games and new games, these systems show no signs of slowing down. And what of Nintendo? They put out the Gamecube and then the Wii, both successful in their own right, however they have little to speak of in content, just reused formulas which work. Now most have said of these formulas, if you have them, use them, well I agree, use the formulas, make them work, but my problem with Nintendo is they only use the formulas and their systems become platforms for the next generation of the same formulas and nothing else.
Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario DDR, Donkey Konga, etc... What games did everyone get excited about for the Wii? Well mostly it's been Zelda, Smash Brothers, Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart. Games in which we've seen for a while Zelda and Mario since day one, Mario Kart since the super, and Smash since 64. Can you think of any other game which doesn't star a character from Smash Brothers which has been anticipated for the Wii? I can't. But yet, what is Nintendo going to do? They're not going to have much content left, but they'll wait until the next system comes out, and redo all the games again and people will buy them. So then how long are we going to allow this? Wiis are expensive and hard to find, and people buy them for just a couple of games. The other two platforms are expensive but easy to find and the money is made up easily by the amount of content. I'm still buying games for my Playstation 2, I've had so much play out of that system and will continue to do so. I submit that unless Nintendo does something different soon, we'll find them staying only in handhelds and losing money until the other two eventually make them consolidate. They're living right now because people want to see upgrades of their favorite games, but once those die down, they're going to be out of the games, and out of the business.
Then maybe Mario will finally be able to sleep. He's been telling me he's been tired since Mario 64.
Why oil prices are rising, and why they're unlikely to drop anytime soon.
Oil prices have been soaring for the last few years, and they're making themselves felt in nearly every facet of American life. Consumers feel it most at the gas pump, but higher gas prices translate to higher shipping costs, which makes nearly everything else go up. Understandably, people are angry and want answers, solutions, or at least someone to blame. Why are gas prices spiking so suddenly?
The answer actually has a lot to do with everyone's favorite fundamental law of economics: supply and demand. As Earth's population continues to rise, and as more and more countries become industrialized, demand for crude oil will go up. There's 
really no way around that. If supply doesn't increase to meet demand, then prices go up. American demand for oil hasn't risen particularly - in fact, considering the recent trend away from SUVs and other gas-guzzlers in favor of hybrid cars, oil demand is probably slightly lower than in recent years - but demand from rapidly growing countries, especially China and India, has. Essentially, the United States are seeing new competition in the global oil market from these new Asian powers, and they have to pay more for it.
Much has been made of OPEC's refusal to increase global oil supply, but unfortunately, it's not such a simple matter as turning on a faucet. OPEC's production is limited by the amount of drilling stations they have. They can't produce more oil than they can extract from the ground, and drilling new sites is extremely costly and time-consuming. Even if more drilling is profitable at over $120/barrel (and it probably is, even in difficult to refine areas like Canada), it will take time before the added supply can be felt in the global market. So we can effectively rule out increases in supply in the near future, all but guaranteeing increases in oil prices in the face of growing demand.
However, the global oil supply isn't actually static. In reality, it's been decreasing steadily over the last few years. Iraq, one of the world's largest oil producers, has seen its exports plummet since 2003 as it deals with massive civil unrest. In some cases, Iraqi oil exports have fallen over two million barrels of oil per day. That's a pretty significant drop. Nigerian unrest led to similar drops in production. Simply put, rising demand and slumping supply lead to vastly increased prices.
So why have prices gone so high lately? Average U.S. gas prices have risen about 39 cents per gallon over the last month, a rate higher than the conditions above would have dictated. The missing factor? Speculation. Investors (particularly those managing hedge funds) are buying up oil futures because they think the price of oil will continue to increase. As more and more investors buy up oil, the price goes up (think rising demand and static supply again). This creates a price bubble, similar to the recent housing bubble and the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. That provides hope for consumers, who yearn for the day that the oil bubble bursts and prices drop again. However, the housing and dot-com bubbles both burst because of an overabundance of supply. Too many nonprofitable houses and mortgages led to a sudden drop in price. The same thing happened with dot-com businesses. However, there's no reason to think that the same will happen with oil. Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource. Sooner or later, supply will start to shrink as reserves run out. Some believe we've already hit that point; others think it will arrive within the next 20 years. Barring some unforeseen increase of supply or decrease in demand, high prices are here to stay, which is bad news for common people stuck paying four dollars a gallon at the pump.
We've all had enough of your yapping.
So, reading a non-personal blog that will remain nameless recently, I found that all the articles were, in fact, friggin huge. The world needs opinions, not epistles.
This is because there's so much content out here that we're finding that leisure time (unless you are very fortunate or lazy) is a prohibitive factor on consumption. That's never been a problem before--back before the internet was TV (you know, when TV was still TV), those in front of the Tube could not change the amount of content they got in an hour; it was an hour of TV in an hour of real time. Those in front of the Tubes, however, have a whole A/V multimedia freakshow smorgasbord in front of them: an hour of TV (real TV from Hulu or whatever) in 42 minutes, an hour of numbing user-created YouTube content in an hour + however much time you use to search it. Blogposts on your wpm reading, and webcomics in a flash. Flash comics: not in a flash, ironically, though still enjoyable.
Keep it simple, get to the point, and stop destroying the internet. Thanks.
Why Hillary is finished after last night's primaries.
For those unaware, Indiana and North Carolina each held primaries last night. Barack Obama had long been projected to win North 
Carolina, and Hillary Clinton was supposed to win Indiana. Then the recent Rev. Jeremiah Wright imbroglio started up again, and people thought Obama would do much worse than expected. Hooray for lowered expectations! Obama won North Carolina by 15 points (which is actually less than he was supposed to win it by a couple of weeks ago) and narrowly lost Indiana, effectively murdering any remaining spark of hope Clinton had of winning the race.
How can that be, you ask? Isn't Obama's lead only 150 or so delegates? Aren't there still several more contests to go? Actually, the primary season is very nearly over. (FINALLY.) There are only six more primaries to go, with a total of 217 delegates left. Obama's lead is roughly 150 delegates. Hillary would have to win something like 86 percent of the remaining delegates to get a lead in pledged delegates, and even then she has to convince about 70 percent of the superdelegates. (I'm not just pulling these numbers out of the air. You can see for yourself by using Slate's delegate calculator.) This isn't even close to realistic. Hillary has only won one blowout state, and that was her home state of Arkansas. She doesn't have a prayer anymore. In the next few days and weeks, you can expect to see superdelegates flocking to Obama in droves.
The moral of the story? Clinton can't win unless it comes out that Obama was caught having gay sex with Adolf Hitler's corpse while defecating on a lapel pin. Or something like that.
The queen mother of all bad omens.
The Kentucky Derby was run this weekend, and predictably, was made into a political metaphor. The field was packed full - 20 horses were entered - but was devoid of a clear favorite. Making headlines was filly Eight Belles, the first female horse to be entered in the Derby in nine years. Starting to sound like the Democratic primary season yet? It certainly did to Hillary Clinton, who announced before the race that she was endorsing Eight Belles to win. Eight Belles ran valiantly, making a big push through the home stretch to come in second. Pretty good for a filly.
And then disaster struck. 
Galloping through the second turn, Eight Belles broke both of her front ankles in a freak accident, collapsing to the track. Veteranians were summoned to the scene immediately, but there was nothing that could be done, as the filly was euthanized on the track. Eight Belles was the first horse in the history of the Kentucky Derby to die on the track.
That alone would be an awful political omen for Hillary Clinton. Watching the horse you endorsed to win become the first to DIE ON THE RACETRACK has to be sobering. It gets better, though. The winning horse was a largely untested young phenom named Big Brown. Wow. I'm not given to superstition usually, but this is pretty alarming.
Pre-race favorite Colonel John finished fifth.
AP Photo/Brian Bohannon
A refresher course on the Democratic primaries.
Are you confused on the situation of the Democratic primary race? How did we get to this point, anyway? Slate has put together a seven-minute video explaining how the whole race went down. It's interesting, entertaining, and a great way to catch up on the last few months. Even if you don't want to watch the entire thing, it's worth taking a look.
Elitists come out of every form of music culture. If you like a band, and you get to know them, you become and expert and eventually you become an elitist. Elitists tend to think they are the cock of the walk, that there are no elitists that came before them. Unfortunately for them, they are wrong, so if you're one of those current Elitists, enjoy it now because soon you'll be in the past.We've all run into them, the person who thinks they are the expert on music. They've explored music and they know what's exciting. You ask them their music choices and they say a little bit of everything, so you decide to test them, and they've never heard of any of the bands you say. But then they tell you the bands they know, the ones within a particular genre of which they seem to be the expert on. That is when you've found an elitist. You can find elitists in almost every form of music, and some are more bearable then others. But the ones who are bearable are the ones who were once the newbies but now see they've grown up.
The New Kids on the Block, the newest Elitists forming, are those of the Indie generation. They think they know music, they're the big men on campus and they know all there is to know about music. But soon they'll be a thing of the past and go through what all past genres have done. Classical, Jazz, 50s Rock, Woodstock, Disco, The 80s, Grunge, Alternative, Pop/Punk. Each of these and many more have gone through being the elitist faction who comes into the music scene and thinks they are the only ones around. Now those who are still elitists of these groups look on the new kids and think, "If only you knew."
The funny thing is, and Indie person would look at this article and think, "ah, but those were all the popular genres, Indie isn't popular, Pop and Rap are. We're under the mainstream. We're the rebellious ones." But let's look at all these genres, all of them were created to be rebellious to what was currently popular. New Music is created when someone wants to go beyond what everyone else is listening to. Soon enough they are what everyone is listening to and the circle of life continues. Those in these other music cultures, the ones of the past, they don't even compare themselves to the current Pop and Rap scenes, they don't need to, they're in a different league. But Indie constantly has to remind us that they aren't the currently popular group while still maintaining they are better. Which soon enough will breed into popularity. Just you wait Indie fans, soon you'll have people becoming rebellious of you because you're too mainstream for them. It's already starting to happen, so live it up now, you don't have long left.
