Gingedas.net

So, you may have read it this morning. The bailout plan has passed the Senate during the second attempt. While I don't feel I have the knowledge to condemn or justify this move, I am a bit surprised as to why exactly the bill passed now. Again, Senator Ron Paul gives some personal insight into this:

BTW, if anyone finds a good video of a Senate member opposing Paul's view, feel free to post it here.

My short answer would be: It doesn't seem so at all. I guess McCain picked her, because she was young, feminine, fresh and a Washington outsider. If you watch the following interviews, you might think McCain's decision was just dead wrong. Not only does she seem inexperienced: She seems even uninformed and dumb.

As my buddy, Meck, wrote before, it seems McCain is getting nervous about the economic crisis, even going as far as putting his campaign on hold. Watch below for a not-so-thrilled David Letterman on McCain canceling his appearance on the show at the very last minute:

The question might have a negative connotation which is not intended. I asked this myself this morning during watching McCain's attempt to suspend the debate on Friday in order to go to Washington. I think him being slightly on top in the polls is a result of the better situation in Iraq and his better commander and chief image. But this is likely to change within the next days. The fact, that McCain tries to avoid confrontation with Obama right now is a good indicator, that this man fears a discussion on the economy.

You've probably been reading about it just about anywhere: The U.S. government's plan to invest 700 billion dollars to save the dying banks. The plan is highly controversial, and heavily criticized among politicians, and especially U.S. tax-payers. But is it even legal? Here is an interesting interview (although a few days old) with a man who knew it all along: Ron Paul. (Make sure to also click on the second part).

As I am currently interviewing for jobs, I felt it best to review some basic algorithm development. One of the problems I worked on turned out to be quite ideal for analyzing the pros and cons of various techniques and so I thought I'd share them with you here. (I hope this also inspires me to publish more of my theoretical and practical work, that I often write down tediously, but never manage to post anywhere). I assume you know how to program in Python and have a basic understanding of algorithm development and complexity analysis. If you find any of my hidden errors in the following, please let me know.

Today I am going to show you how to make a cool little web-service to impress all (and none other than) your geeky friends. Now I hear you saying "Web-App? Oh I know how to do that! Start Apache (or Web Sharing) and pop a python CGI into that shared directory. Big deal." But, that would be the old (read: boring) way of doing things, and we here are going to do things the Python way. Now I should mention that the tutorial here is going to be Mac only, but that the idea can be transferred to a platform of your choice. The reason I chose to use Mac-specific technology is so that our web-service actually has a use, namely: Use Mac speech on a non-Mac computer.

When I heard that Obama would be appearing on the O'Reilly factor, I classified that as political suicide. I knew Obama was an eloquent speaker, but given the extremely unfair interview methods of O'Reilly (see this particularly disturbing clip, if you are unfamiliar with him), I didn't see a chance for Obama to come through in one piece.

Well, it seems I was wrong. I still can't quite believe how well Obama juggled this interview. And in fact, I am not the only one surprised: It seems, even Bill O'Reilly has gained respect for this man. I never thought I would write that line. Anyway, take a look for yourselves below (links to the parts 2-4 will appear at the end of the segment).

(You will have to excuse me, but for this article I will switch to German, as it is about a German TV broadcast).
Was war das nicht für eine Eröffnungsfeier für die Olympia 2008 in Beijing! Ich weiss, da bin ich ein bisschen spät dran, aber da ich zur Zeit entweder A, an meiner Diplomarbeit sitze oder B, Olympia schaue, fand ich bisher keine Zeit. Dennoch muss ich noch unbedingt eine Sache loswerden.

Während die Bilder und überhaupt das ganze Spektakel einfach atemberaubend waren, wurde meine Freude an dem Ganzen durch einen Faktor leider sehr gemildert. Und der hieß: Sandra Maischberger. Also damit das klar ist: Ich verlange ja keine literarischen Meisterwerke bei so einem Event, noch ein allwissendes Kommentator Team, doch mal ehrlich, was diese Frau während der gesamten Feier aus ihrem Mund ließ hätte sie getrost für sich behalten können. Muss man denn Allen die Party vermiesen, wenn sie einem selbst nicht gefällt? Statt Informationen bekommt der Zuschauer Kommentare die klingen als müsste Frau Maischberger gerade gegen ihren Reisschnapps Kater ankämpfen. Ihre andauernde Kritik an das Gastgeberland, war alles Andere als fundiert, und wirkte absolut arrogant. Ich habe hier mal ein paar Highlights zusammengetragen (aus dem Gedächtnis):

Or shall I say Houston Rockets (Yao Ming) and Milwaukee Bucks (Yi Jianlian) vs. LA Lakers (Kobe Bryant)and Cleveland Cavaliers (LeBron James)&co.? Basketball became through the chinese superstar Yao the most popular sport in China. People have a very high expectation for the game starts at 4.15pm today. This game is definately one of the first climax in this year's Olympics. Have a look at it!