If you’ve ever wondered how magicians fly, this video will shed some light:

Ha! I just read this article about the worst airline ever:

Pick through the slag heap of the nation’s big network carriers and it’s easy to find the worst of the worst: United Airlines.

United’s day-to-day operations have also deteriorated markedly.

And in April, United’s overall on-time performance slumped to 72.7 percent, five points below the industry average and 18th among the 19 carriers tracked by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

As a result, United’s future as a going concern is an open question. One thing that isn’t in doubt, however, is the financial wherewithal of the airline’s upper management.

Scott Adams recently opened up one of his posts so that people could make comments for/against Obama/McCain and then he let all of his readers vote the comments up or down. This way the best comments would be voted to the top. Here are the top 5 comments:

Tigerfan:

If it was any other Republican than John McCain I would probably vote for Obama.

McCain:
-Supports real immigration reform (not just a bunch of useless fences)
-Can manage the withdrawal from Iraq without it turning into defeat (even if it takes longer than Obama)
-Has fought against earmarks his whole career
-Has sought to reform the political system multiple times (though I disagree with his campaign finance method-I applaud the effort)
-Is not a “moralistic” republican but more of a libertarian republican

Obama would mean a lot for racial progress in this country, but I don’t see him challenging his own backers like McCain has done with conservatives. I think of McCain as much more independent.

slothman:

As long as the Iraqi parliament thinks they can get us to provide stability for them, they’re going to depend on us to do so. The only way we can put enough pressure on them to make the compromises they need to make to achieve stability is to provide a credible threat of withdrawal. The only candidate offering to do that is Barack Obama.

Barack Obama’s chief advisor is a smart guy named Austan Goolsbee, who even managed to earn the grudging respect of the highly conservative George Will; John McCain’s is Phil Gramm, who pushed for a lot of the deregulation that got us into our current economic mess. McCain once called the Bush tax cuts a shock to the conscience, but he seems to have gotten over that; I see no reason to believe he would be an exception to our thirty year pattern of Republican presidents who inflate the national debt.

Obama doesn’t think he’s above the law, nor is he going to allow telecom companies to get away with breaking it; McCain has asserted that he will continue warrantless surveillance and will give those companies amnesty, even though that does nothing to improve our national security.

The only position McCain hasn’t flip-flopped on in the past ten years is his staunch opposition to abortion. Do you really want him appointing more Supreme Court justices? I’m voting for Obama.

NadavT:

People who still think of McCain as a maverick and a moderate need to start paying closer attention to his voting record and his recent policy positions. It’s true that he’s less anti-environment than nearly all of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, but that’s still only good enough to get a lifetime score of 26 (out of 100) from the League of Conservation Voters. Barack Obama’s score? 96.

McCain has also recently said (through surrogates, for the most part) that during times of war the president can ignore laws protecting American citizens from having their government spy on them, and that telecom companies who assisted the government in its lawbreaking have nothing to apologize for. The idea that the president can simply ignore the constitution whenever he sees fit doesn’t strike me as moderate at all.

And on Iraq, what evidence do people have that he would be more effective in managing the war than would Obama? This is the same McCain who strolled through a Baghdad marketplace wearing a bulletproof vest and surrounded by troops and helicopters and then declared that his visit proved that one could “walk freely” through parts of Baghdad. Does that sound like he has a realistic grasp of what’s actually happening on the ground?

No, McCain will not be a Bush clone, but if you agree that environmental policy, overreaching executive authority, and management of the Iraq war are areas where we need drastic changes, not just minor adjustments, then McCain is anything but moderate.

ges:

I’m voting for Obama:

1) He’s smarter than McCain
2) Supreme Court Nominations, we need some balance.
3) Young and Energetic. Wants to make America stronger and not just status Quo.
4) Serious about getting us out of Iraq.
5) Understands we need to rebuild our reputation around the world.
6) More serious about creating a solid energy policy with alternative energy source, not just more drilling.

Only downside, taxes will be going up. Hopefully, he won’t go crazy about spending.

JustSteve:

*** John McCain for President … A FREE TRADE Proponent ***

Unlike the Democrats, John McCain is a FIERCE free-trader. He genuinely believes that restricting trade and not embracing new agreements will harm the future of our economy.

Protectionism was a bad idea of the past and sadly the Democrats still hang onto this bad idea. Remember, even Bill Clinton understood the benefits of free trade (i.e., NAFTA).

I find it humorous that McCain is branded by others (and himself!) as not being strong in economics… Yet with this important and critical point of differentiation, he has proven himself to be a better economic thinker than Obama.

Read all of the comments here.

Before I go into today’s post, I just have to say UNITED AIRLINES SUCKS!!!!! I had such a horrible time flying with them. I’m used to flights getting delayed but the type of service we got was so ridiculous!! I have never been so happy to be back home in LA. I wonder when United is going to go bankrupt? The United wing was pretty dead compared to American and other airlines. Anyways….

I haven’t posted a useful post in awhile but when I saw this link, I knew I had to bookmark it! If you’re like me, you don’t keep track of your manuals when you buy electronics and other things. It’s just clutter! And 95% of the time I never use/touch the manual. Sometimes I keep them and then when it comes time to use it I can’t even find it!! Now I can use this:

SafeManuals.com

They have over 800,000 manuals in their archives and you can search by model or manufacturer. The manuals are in PDF and you can view them through the website or download them onto your computer. It might be smart to start a folder on your harddrive for the manuals that correspond to your electronics so you can reference them easily in the future.

No brain dump mondays until I’m back. Hopefully I’m not stuck at the airport all day like on friday when my flight was delayed and then CANCELED! I hate flying!!

6 Scary diseases you don’t want – wow, some really weird ones in there!
Read at work – classic novels made to look like powerpoint slides. ingenious!
One man’s quest to sport every beard type – so. awesome.
Customer Service Hall of Shame – worst was AOL, best was nordstrom’s
Top 10 most annoying office habits – Lucifer’s lunch: eating smelly food haha….I’m guilty of this
The best kitchen knives for any budget – this is so useful. every kitchen should have a good set of knives

Tip: If you don’t already have a Costco card, now is the time to get one….cheap gas!! well compared to everything else out there.

Just found this cool Itunes plugin that tracks your music and then lists upcoming concerts in your own personal calendar. I could have totally used this way back in the day when I went to concerts all of the time! Oh to be old… :(

iConcertCal

*edit: oops the pic is fixed!

Answers taken from this thread:

Palau

Milford Sound

Santorini

Iceland

New Zealand

Cathedral Cove

Time for another one of those link purges. My bookmarks are busting at the seams.

Top 10 snacks from vending machines

How to make your eyes feel like they are closed when it’s actually open

List of the most rabid fanbases

Printable pocket photo album

Couple never separates from each other for more than 15 ft

Real life creations from children’s art

The world’s most dangerous gangs

Creative homeless signs

America’s most visited tourist attractions

Photos from “It’s complicated: the american teenager”

Dolphin dies after collision during sea world trick

308 lb inmate says he’s being starved to death and sues jailers

Luxury dog houses

America’s best italian restaurants

50 greatest comedy sketches of all time

What every American should know about the Middle East

If you’ve been reading my comments, you’ll see mentioned a certain incident involving a raccoon attack that I witnessed this weekend. It was the highlight of my week. I have never in my life seen a raccoon try to jump through a window into a house before but that’s what happened! We were sitting in my friend Andy’s house playing yet another game of Puerto Rico when we hear a tap tap tapping noise near the window. We all turned around to see what it was. I figured it was one of Andy’s friends playing a practical joke on us but I keep hearing the rattling noise and suddenly I see some grey looking thing trying to jump through the window. Andy’s wife, Kim, screams and Andy jumps up to the window and UPPERCUTS THE RACCOON through the window. It was awesome.

Meanwhile boyrobot is like “It’s a bat!!!!” and I’m like “no…it’s a bird!!” and Andy was like “NOOO it was a raccoon”.

I’ll trust Andy on this one since he was the closest to it.

Anyways, it was really hilarious. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to react to it. I just remember thinking “wtf is that!!!” while all of this commotion was going on.

It was pretty freaky. What kind of raccoon tries to jump into a house through the window? It was pretty dumb because it kept trying to get in too.

I also realized that Andy HAS NO FEAR. Even though I didn’t scream, I was a little jumpy afterwards and you should have seen how freaked out Kim and boyrobot were! Andy was just WHATEVER and not in the least bit shaken up like the rest of us. He said “I don’t get scared” and man, I believe him. I have never seen a guy run up to the face of danger and punch it like that. From now on Andy will be known to me as the MAN WITH NO FEAR.