I love politics. I love the argument, I love the convictions, and I love the deep critical global meaning of it all. I had some serious issues in deciding my candidate, as I assume many people have this year from how close these contests have been.
Sure, I was disappointed with Bill Clinton’s behavior and Hillary’s manipulation of vocabulary. This certainly did not bring me any closer to voting for her, but ultimately it was not the reason that I voted for Barack Obama. I voted for Barack Obama for one simple reason. One deeply intellectual and experienced person in the Whitehouse can only do so much. One truly inspirational leader in the Whitehouse can drive the cause to a much larger group, and can motivate an army of intellectual and experienced people for the greater good.
I love the line “We are the ones that we have been waiting for.”
The Democratic ticket will not be decided tomorrow, but due to differences in the nominating procedures between the Democrats and Republicans, there is a real chance that John McCain will walk away about 24 hours from now with the Republican Nomination.
I just realized what this means. No matter who wins the Presidency, Republican or Democrat, the theory of evolution will return to acceptance in the White House.
I am consistently amazed at how bad customer service can be, but I am especially amazed at how bad it can be around the most basic functions.
Beth’s wallet was stolen a few weeks ago, and the credit card we had associated with the Comcast auto-deduct was replaced with a new card. For some reason, Comcast cannot set up automatic payments over the phone, so they supplied us with our username and password to login to the site to update the card information. Seems easy enough.
We log in to comcast.net, go to My Account, and then View/Pay our Bill. And here’s where everything falls apart.
Clicking that link tells me that I need a Comcast account. Which, of course, we already logged in with, but it asks us to recreate our account. Attempting to recreate the account, tells me there is already an account with our associated information, so it cannot recreate it.
So we call support. Comcast Customer Support literally cannot tell you how to login to your account. I am not kidding, we have been working on this for 45 minutes with a customer support agent, and she cannot figure out what account we login to, how to reset the password, or even which domain (comcast.com or comcast.net, which use different credentials, both of which are required apparently) to log into.
30 minutes into the call, we’re finally transferred to another support person. That person transfers us to another person, who then says we need to supply her with a PIN to continue. Our response… what PIN? And why the hell would we have to give you a PIN 45 minutes into this god damn support call? Finally, this representative tells us that everything that every other rep has told us so far was incorrect, and then gave us the proper credentials to log in. To simply setup automatic payments with Comcast, prepare for a 45 minute conversation with 3 customer service idiots.
I’m currently looking for viable broadband options, if anyone has a good suggestion in the Chicago area. The sad thing is that I know, no matter who we end up with, this is going to remain a problem. It is easier to ditch your service provider and pick up a new one every time there is a problem rather than try to talk to support.
I recently caught the videos of the Richard Dawkins Foundation’s “The Four Horsemen” on YouTube. At some point, I may embed all of them, but I thought that this exchange between Dawkins and Hitchens was amazingly insightful.
Hitchens – A question I wanted to ask is this, we should ask ourselves what our real objective is. Do we, in fact, wish to see a world without faith. I think I would have to say that I don’t. I don’t either expect to, or wish to see that.
I don’t think it is possible, it replicates so fast, faith, as often as it is cut down or superseded, or discredited. It replicates, extraordinarily fast, I think for Freudian reasons. Principally due to the fear of extinction.
The other thing is, would I want this argument to come to an end? With all having conceded that Hitchens really won that round, and now nobody in the world believes in god. Now apart from being unable to picture this, I am not completely certain that it is what I want. I think it is, rather, to be considered the foundation of all arguments about epistemology, philosophy, its the thing that you have to always be arguing against.
Dawkins – I understand that you’re saying that it will never work, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t wish it.
Hitchens – I think a bit like the argument between Huxley and Wilberforce, or Darrow and William Jennings Bryant. I want it to go on.
Dawkins – Because it is interesting?
Hitchens – I want our side to get more refined and theirs to be more exposed, but I can’t see it with one hand clapping.
I have to say, my appreciation of Hitchens is growing with every encounter. Buy the DVD here, and watch the exchange here:
I normally either bike or run in the mornings for my workout… but this morning I woke up to a foot of snow trapping me indoors. After being inspired by the local news telling me that I can burn 500 calories an hour shoveling snow, I decided to do just that.
I highly recommend it, it was a blast. I ended up shoveling snow for our house, and all of our neighbors. It took me 2 hours, but at least a dozen grateful people and 1000 calories later, I was done. Now I just wish I could get my car out of our garage.
I love politics. I love the argument, I love the convictions, and I love the deep critical global meaning of it all. I had some serious issues in deciding my candidate, as I assume many people have this year from how close these contests have been.