I heart Sarah Palin

Ok, not really. I have to admit that the whole election was really set for me when Palin was named as the vice-presidential candidate. It's unconscionable that this dummy would be the #2 elected official in the nation. If that idea doesn't worry you, then you should seriously consider not voting this year. You may not, in fact, be qualified to be a citizen of the US.

Now this isn't anything groundbreaking. There's been plenty of press on how poorly qualified she is. Not to mention that ridiculous Katie Couric interview. PS - when you're running for VP, it would probably help to #1. know some reputable national newspapers, #2. know a little something about your running mate, and #3. maybe have a more than cursory knowledge of the branches federal government, like the Supreme Court for example. I don't think that interview could have had more softball questions, and Palin whiffed most of them.

"Hold on Joel," some of you might say, "everyone knows that these journalist aren't entirely objective in their covering of the news. There's all kinds of spin that they can place on her answers to make her appear less than qualifies." I will concede your point. After all, O'Reilly does his own share of news interpretation in his "No Spin Zone". So how do we measure the qualifications of Palin? Well, I think that standardized testing gives us a good starting point. A document was published that contains many publicly available documents all about Palin.

Here's Palin's SAT scores from 1982:

To sum it up, she scored a 841 (425V/416M). That places her in the 38-39% nationwide for high school students. Wow. That means that about 6 out of 10 kids scored better than she did. For a reference, I scored a 1420. I consider myself a pretty bright guy, but I don't think I'm presidential material. But apparently Palin does.

Hey, maybe the SAT was a little difficult for her. Maybe she was out flying her airplane hunting wolves the night before? What about her IQ? How does she stand up with the rest of the country?



An 83. Sweet Jesus. Let me be absolutely clear: I'm not saying that someone with an 83 IQ can't be a fully productive and happy member of society. Absolutely not. I do firmly believe that "all men are created equal" and everyone should be afforded the same rights and privileges under the Constitution. That being said, I think that the person holding the 2nd highest office in the land should be held to a little bit higher standard. If you look at the bell curve, the two segments of the graph on either side of the 100 mark represent one "standard deviation" from the national mean. This is where the bulk of the population will score. You can see that Palin's score falls outside that section. From the test info, it shows that her "National WIQ percentile (1982)" is 12.8357%. This means that roughly 87% of people scored higher than she did. Think about that. If you're reading this, odds are your IQ is higher than Palin's. Do you want to have her handling complex national issues and dealing with foriegn head's of state? BTW, she's rarely been outside the US except briefly to Canada and Mexico, and a trip to Iraq, Kuwait, Germany, and Ireland as part of a 2007 visit to the Alaskan National Guard troops over there. And the Ireland visit wasn't so much a visit as it was a refuel stop.

"But Joel," you may still ask, "she's just going to be the vice president. McCain brings plenty of experience to the ticket." While I'm not going to discuss the merits of McCain's experience in this post, I would like to point out that McCain's health is less than stellar. He's currently 72, and would be 76 at the end of his presidency if elected. FYI, the average life expectancy in the US is 77.8. That's the average. Now consider that McCain did undergo years of torture and has already had malignant melanoma removed. Would that have an effect on his life expectancy? What about the stress associated with the office of President? Would that contribute to lessening his life expectancy? Here's a study that connect stress to premature aging, and is there a more stressful job than president? McCain's doctor maybe?

So here's Palin, a documented dullard with no foreign policy experience who doesn't know "what exactly it is that the VP does everyday." If elected, this dummy is one 72 year old's heartbeat away from being the president of the US.

Are you worried now?

Black Forest trip

Last month, we went to the Black Forest. We went again with Justin and Kimber a couple of weeks ago, and we'll probably post those pictures as well, so I thought I'd get these up so they would be somewhat chronological.

This is a big church/marketplace in Freiberg, "Gateway to the Black Forest." It is on the southern end of the forest area.
Veggies and stuff at the market:
We took a tram and then hiked up a little to get these views of the city. You can really see that the city sits right in the middle of the forest:Afterward, we drove to another town where they had an open-air museum, with lots of little traditional huts in the Black Forest tradition. They were all big, wooden, and dark, and had an oppressive atmosphere that gave me some impression of the difficulty of just surviving 100 years ago. On a lighter note, here we are having dinner at the museum:

We went to Luxembourg!

On the spur of the moment! I guess being in the Army does have some perks, but don't be too jealous. Poor Joel was in a combat zone almost a year to make this happen.

Shopping area, with lots of Luxembourg flags:

Joel with the "old town" behind him: Big bridge connecting the two halves of the city:Market day:Aidan loves any city that has ice cream:

No Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.

A couple of posts back I wrote about the grappa tasting that we went to in Bassano. It was at the Nardini grappa factory. In that post, I wrote about how the building itself deserved it's own post. And here it is.

The building was designed by a "high-art" Italian architect named Massimiliano Fuksas to commemorate the company's 200th anniversary of being in the same family. The story goes that it the design was drafted on a dinner plate while the architect and the boss were discussing the plan over dinner. I don't know how true that is, but it's a kooky story.

There's not much that I can saw about the building that is going to better than the actual pictures, so here they are:

External shot

Another external shot, closer to the building. The whole building rests above a reflecting pool. The small glass domes that you see in the water are windows to a concrete and wood basement.



View from inside the upper-most dome.



External shot, reverse angle.



As we were touring this building, I couldn't help thinking how this looked like a Bond villain's hideout. Maybe from Dr. No? At the very least, it looked like it could belong on Buddy's island from "The Incredibles".

The two glass bubbles are made of glass and steel. Apparently, it took months for the builder to find someone that is could make the special curved glass to fit the complex shapes around the corners and edges. The glass rests on a cushion of special rubber spacers on the steel frame and the whole building expands and contracts with the heat. For heating and cooling, there is an underground artisan spring that they use to cool the building in the summer and the sun heats the domes like a greenhouse in the winter. Clever.

By the way, all these pictures were taken by me with my awesome N95. Take that, iPhone! pwned!!!11!

The Cold German

Last weekend, we went to Berlin for a few days. Our goals: Check out the Christmas markets and the remnants of the wall. Long story short, check and check. Read on for the long story.

We stayed at a hotel that was decorated in the style of the DDR (Socialist East Germany). It was pretty cool, but Aidan was MAD because the last few hotels we've stayed at, in Pisa and London, have had bunk beds for him to sleep in. Apparently these hotel owners were still waiting in line for their bunks.

We went to three markets. Each had its own personality, but there were lots of constants: large gingerbread hearts made into necklaces, wooden ornaments, hot spiced wine and 1/2 meter "wursts," wooden huts full of things to buy, and kids' rides. Aidan gets so excited about the rides, but as soon as they start, this happens:

The kids did OK, but it was very cold. For one of the first times in my life, I experienced weather that required coats, hats, gloves, and scarves; everyone but Joel was wearing tights under their pants. Still, cheerful faces were all around:One of the markets, at Potsdamer platz, had a large hill constructed and you could ride down on inner tubes. Aidan got scared and backed out, but here is a terrible picture of Joel going down:On the last day, we went to the wall. It didn't seem so intimidating, but the absence of guards and guns these days might have some effect on my impression.We also went to the DDR Museum, which was really fun and one of the few things Aidan liked on the trip, and the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which I thought was overrated but did have some interesting things to look at, I guess. I thought the actual checkpoint was more interesting:

Hope you enjoyed these pictures. We have lots more and should be posting some more with more in-depth information, if you care. Which we hope you do!

Back in Sophia

It's been months since my last post. Thankfully, Jessica has been stepping up and making some posts so everyone doesn't think that this blog has been abandoned. We're still here; unfortunately, I've been away on my business trips to the Balkans for most of the summer. On the plus side, if anyone is interested in doing anything in the Balkans (specifically Romania or Bulgaria), I'll be happy to lend my services as an area expert.

I'm going to try and increase my blog output this month, at least the first two weeks when I'll have some free time without adult supervision. For starters, here's a slideshow of our recent trip to Innsbruck, Austria.

We drove there on Thursday and came back Saturday evening. It was a short trip but we all had a great time and saw some cool stuff there.

It's late here, so I'm signing off. Tomorrow I'll have an update on whether my luggage arrived from Italy or not. As of now, I'm 2 for 3 at having my luggage lost at the Sophia Airport. Moral of the story: If you're flying into Sophia, try to have your stuff in a carry on. That's a little tip from the pros. It's a freebe. Enjoy.