spugbrap’s blog

For the most part, I’ve been ignoring the barrage of radio and TV commercials for Obama and McCain that have been coming with increasing frequency as we get closer to election day. They’re almost always 90% focused on bashing the opponent, and every time I listen to one of these ads it makes me dislike BOTH candidates more, because I hear bad things about one of them and I get annoyed at the other for mudslinging.

This morning, on the way to work, I heard an ad for each candidate in the course of about 5 minutes. I actually paid attention this time, because there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there was a discrepancy between ads I’d recently heard from both of them.

Sure enough:

- Obama’s ad said that McCain’s plan will cause 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.

- McCain’s ad said that Obama’s plan will cause 50 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.

Going by the “lesser of two evils” approach, it seems like I should vote for McCain, because 30 million fewer Americans will lose their health insurance coverage. That’s a significant number, representing roughly 10% of the U.S. population!

However, I’ll still feel guilty for being somewhat responsible for that unfortunate 20 million Americans that will lose their coverage under McCain’s plan (around 6.7% of the U.S. population).

I’ve created some 10×10 grids to graphically represent the number of Americans without health insurance as of 2007 (about 15%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), and the numbers if McCain and Obama are both giving realistic estimates (highly unlikely) in their ads attacking each other’s health care reform plans.

The shaded regions in the grids indicate the number of Americans without health insurance in each of these cases.

15% without health insurance in 2007	22% without health insurance under McCain’s plan	32% without health insurance under Obama’s plan

Aren’t infographics fun? Ideally, there would be no shaded regions, or a candidate would offer a health care reform plan that would result in fewer shaded regions (i.e. fewer uninsured Americans).

So, how many Americans are you going to help screw out of health insurance in this election? I’d love to hear what you think about these numbers, about my infographics, or anything else you might want to share with regard to the 2008 presidential election!

First of all, we were confused as to how it was a “Grand Finale”, when last week they had the top 4 men and 4 women listed as contenders to win the competition. Then, suddenly they’ve narrowed it down to 2 men and 2 women to compete in what was basically just a regular episode (no new events or anything, just more of the same) with lots of extra flash backs to earlier footage, and extra warm and fuzzy stuff like, “This is my family in my small home town. Look how everyone in the town is loving and supporting me! Look how cute my kids are! I want to win for my dead family member or the kids that look up to me as a role model!”. Fluffy.

Anyways, here are my notes from the American Gladiators 2008 Grand Finale episode from February 18. Like last time, this is not a very polished blog entry, just a bunch of notes.
I wish they would stop advertising Knight Rider *constantly*. Lacey and I were looking forward to watching that, but unfortunately didn’t record it. Luckily, they’re showing it again next week, so the Tivo’s set to record it then. We were both surprised to see that it’s a movie, though. When they first advertised it, during one of the early American Gladiators episodes, we thought it was going to be a series.

Women contenders: Monica and Shanay
Shanay should have been disqualified for kneeling down the whole time in Joust. She did that last time as well. Not fair.
Evan vs Titan in Joust: 2 hits and Evan was in the water.
Alex vs Titan in Joust: holy crap, Hulk said there’s a huge size difference up there and he’s not kidding! Seeing them next to each other it’s like a toddler next to his father.
Titan kneeled down both times, and he had some serious pushing power behind his push.
Pyramid: announcer said “Both contenders were completely dominated […] Monica spent more time on her back than on her feet”
Toa: “My volcano, my volcano!”
Mayhem: “Now what, I’m king tut, yeah!”
The Wall:
Monica started out quick, and made it up for 10, despite some resistance from Siren near the top.
Shanay kept up pretty well, and ended up getting 5 points for hanging on up near the top when Venom was pulling on her foot
Evan: This guy is like a spider monkey. Ridiculously fast climber. 10 points, well deserved.
Militia tried to pull Alex down but couldn’t. pulled something off his shoe though.
Alex made it up for 5 points.
Ugh, there’s the Subway Replay. I kept wondering when that was coming. They kept using the words “Fueled up” throughout the episode, so I kept expecting the annoying “Fueled up and powered on by Subway” thing.
Evan has a 19 point lead over Alex going into the Eliminator. 9.5 second head start. Evan had the fastest time in Eliminator all season so far, so that 9.5 seconds might seal the deal for him.
announcer: “Both these contenders have performed beautifully throughout this competition” [hmm. you mean all TWO episodes??]
Evan breaks his previous Eliminator record time.. 1:19ish? Something like that.
Alex backflipped off the platform onto the mats at the end. We were kinda rooting for him because he’s a school teacher setting a good example for students, and trying to earn money for the wrestling team he coaches. Also because he’s kinda goofy, and that’s endearing. :)
Sounded like he said “I’d like to thank everyone for turning me on” but he said “cheering me on”.
After fast forwarding through the commercials, the first sentence I heard sounded like “penis was all hard” but really it said “Venus was all heart” or something.
Monica’s 3.5 second lead going into the Eliminator barely got her up the first wall.
Did Shanay belly flop into the flaming pool? definitely made a long splash and took longer than she should have to
30 foot cargo net climb - Shanay caught up.
Both fell off hand bike right away–good plan.
Monica barely made it to the top of the Travelator, but she did. We were glad–she was our pick for the women in this finale.
Her husband jumped down onto her when she was laying on the mats after the Eliminator. her daughters hopped on too.

So, Evan and Monica each won $100,000, a Toyota Sequoia, and they will join the ranks of the gladiators next season.
Have you seen how HUGE and muscular the existing team of gladiators is? These two had better start seriously hitting the HGH gym if they’re going to be gladiators next season!

Lacey pointed out that they should definitely have Evan do the rock wall, though. The contenders won’t stand a chance!

We recently had a new Harris Teeter grocery store open near us, and they sent us an invitation to a special promotional event. The promo was nothing to get excited about. It was something along the lines of, “Take 10-15% off of 6 bottles of wine, on June 26 between 12-6pm!”

This was a really lame promo for several reasons:

1. Most grocery stores around here already give you a 10% discount when you buy 6 bottles of wine in one visit.
2. The prices of wine are generally marked up so much at grocery stores, that a 10-15% discount only brings the price down to a normal sale price.
3. The time window to get the discount was extraordinarily small (6 hours!).
4. The quantity required to get the discount was too large (6 bottles).

The promo excludes what I assume to be the majority of households. Not everybody drinks. But, among those that do, not everybody drinks wine. But, among those who do, not everybody would want to hurry in to buy 6 bottles! I would think that a very small percentage of households would actually care about this type of promo.

The only good thing about this promo was the name: “Taste of Teeter”. You just can’t beat that!

We received an ad in the mail, recently, which immediately disturbed Lacey and I. It’s a service that lets you create real, usable postage stamps with a picture of your choice. Sounds kinda cool, right? But take a look at the ad, and see if you can find what’s wrong with this picture:

But the reality is that several people are going to handle each piece of mail, and you’re probably going to send some to billers/rebate warehouses/misc. companies as well, and multiple people will probably handle the mail within those companies. If any of those people happens to like little kids, in a NAMBLA sort of way, then you’ve just given them your cute kid’s home address via the return address on the other corner of the envelope.

In other words, you’re announcing, “Hey, pedophiles! Here’s a picture of my cute kid, and here’s where to come get him/her!”

I remember Lacey talking about some online moms’ group forums where there was some controversy, a while back, when people posted their addresses (for swaps/co-ops/etc) publicly and had cute pics of their kids in their signature blocks. These stamps aren’t quite as bad, I think, because at least their exposure is limited to a few people handling snail mail, whereas the online message boards are googleable.

But, still, stamps.com might want to consider this before enabling proud, naïve parents to advertise their children this way. Art would be fine. Maybe even the family pet. But not children.