Thursday, December 04, 2008

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS
computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS
declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with
the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into
conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and
Russia; however considering their entire body of work--including an
incredibly tough Strength of Schedule--our computers deemed them worthy
of the #1 ranking."

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS
commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories--Japan and
Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by
head-to-head contests--they consider each contest to be only a single,
equally-weighted event."

German Chancellor Adolph Hitler said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we
defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr Hitler has been
criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to
enhance Germany's rankings. Hitler protested "Our contest with Poland
was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were
incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional
forces."

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented "
France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1
ranking they only fell to #2."
Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the
Philippines.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Obama has won. He wasn't my first choice, but neither was McCain. I'm happy to see the will of the people fulfilled. The country is unified and I'm hopeful that Obama will be able to accomplish 4 things that could only be done by an enormously popular president:


1) Line Item Veto. This will end earmarks. It weakens the power of the legislature, but it is CRUCIAL to restoring fiscal sanity. The Republican congress gave Clinton the line item veto in 1996, and the economy took off and government spending was SIGNIFICANTLY cut. However Rudy Guiliani, then Mayor of New York sued, claiming that the constitution does not allow the president to alter legislation proposed, only sign or veto. The case went to the Supreme Court where SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in favor of Guiliani -- thus ending the line item veto. in 2006 Bush asked for a new version of the Line Item Veto, where the president could ask congress to veto lines of a bill independantly, thus getting around the seperation of branches issue. Though the 2006 line-item veto proposal was much weaker than the 1996 version, it nevertheless failed to find strong support in Congress. Senator and former klansman Robert Byrd called it "an offensive slap at Congress," asserting that the legislation would enable the president to intimidate individual members of Congress by targeting the projects of his political opponents.

Bah! The line item veto needs to come to pass. I hope that Obama will reintroduce the 2006 Line Item Veto act and with his new majority, pass it through. Earmarks, pork, whatever you want to call it -- all are killing government and corrupting spending.

2) Energy Independence. It's time to make the push. Renewable electricity. End ALL subsidies of oil, so that alternative energies can compete on a level playing field.

3) Defense of Civil Unions. People have been going about the Gay marriage issue the wrong way entirely. Instead of allowing gays to marry, how about allowing straights to have civil unions. Why is it that we say at a wedding "what got has brought together, let no man tear asunder" but when people get divorced they just go to a judge. Let's push a nation wide civil union proposal, that is open to all orientations, and is legally binding. Churches can perform all the marriages they want, but they will have NO legal significance -- only spiritual. As someone who was married by a Justice of the Peace in a restaurant, I feel like I have a civil union. I have no need for a church to consecrate or judge my relationship.

4) Election Reform: Voter registration, identification and verification is a joke. All citizens should be registered to vote at the federal level by default -- when Income Taxes are filed, each citizen will have his/her information recorded. People then can show up to vote with their tax payer ID number and identification, and vote. No more registration, no more voter drives. Everyone who shows up on a tax return is registered to vote.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I wrote to my congressman, John F. Tierney to ask him to vote against the bailout. Not only did he do so, but he wrote me back and has earned my respect. I thought I would share his reply to me and my response to him. Here is his considered response to my request on him website to vote against the bailout:


----- Original Message ----
From: Congressman John F. Tierney
To: fishdan@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 7:17:34 PM
Subject: A Message From Congressman Tierney



September 29, 2008

Mr. Daniel Fishman

Beverly, MA 01915

Dear Mr. Fishman:

Without getting into the fine details, I thought I would let you know that I voted against the so-called Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (H.R. 3997) when it was brought to the House floor earlier today. There were compromises made in this version of the bill, ostensibly to gain bipartisan support. Unfortunately, such compromises were made at the expense of key priorities -- investment in helping homeowners, protections to ensure that the taxpayer will not have to absorb the full cost, and incentives to get the economy back on track.

This bill can be improved, and a different approach can be taken so that foregoing issues can be appropriately addressed.

As of this writing, it is expected that Congress will revisit this matter before the end of the week. I will keep you updated.

Thank you for weighing in.


Sincerely,

John F. Tierney
Member of Congress

Please feel free to visit my website at
http://tierney.house.gov/ to learn more about my legislative initiatives.

And here is my open response to him:


Dear Sir:

Thank you for your email, and I would like to take this opportunity to applaud you as a man of principle.

I am one of those who has recently grown weary with partisan bickering I have recently felt that a class of professional politicians has usurped the rights of the people to govern themselves. Yet you have restored my feelings that the people ARE being represented. When the Speaker, the President, Congressman Frank and others ally themselves to push something through and congressmen such as yourself vote their conscience, fulfilling the wishes of the people, it restores my faith in representative democracy.

While you and I have differed on many votes, in the future I will know that you are first and foremost voting with the consideration that befits a representative of the people. When we differ, I will reconsider my position, and where our positions cannot be reconciled, I will be assuaged in knowing that men of good conscience do differ in opinions, and you have voted as you honestly saw fit.

Thank you for your service to the 6th District. I have included our brief correspondence on my blog http://www.fishdan.com

Daniel Fishman



Pretty cool eh? My only complaint is that even though he responded via email, I had to use the web-form to get back to him. Some of you may be shocked that I, a fervent supporter of Ron Paul, could be so happy with my democratic congressman. The truth of the matter is -- I don't have a problem with party at all, so long as elected officials are doing what they think is right, instead of blindly following the party line. Case in point, Joe Lieberman. The guy believes something. We should all be so lucky as to have persons of principle in office.

Well, I guess I am.

Saturday, August 09, 2008


Clark Rockefeller

The Clark Rockefeller story has been captivating people, especially with his unwillingness to reveal his actual background.   It is also coming out that Clark has had many identities in the past.  One more has recently been revealed, and with it, possibly the reason for his desperate attempts to shield his identity.  In examining the photo's below, it is clear that Clark Rockefeller (left) is also former Black Mesa employee, Dr. Gordon Freeman (below).  Dr. Freeman was responsible for the resonance cascade failure that destroyed Black Mesa in 2001.

Gordon Freeman


Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Here's a quick synopsis since FVS: I wrote the original version of this to reconnect with Ken Chow (who I just saw in SF in May), so don't think I'm crazy, and wrote it all "just for you" There are plenty of better reasons to think I'm crazy :)

  • 1985-86 St. Bees, UK -- exchange student
  • 86-89 UT Austin majored in PoliSci minored in Lacrosse, failed out in 3 years
  • 89-96 Special Ed. teacher, varying populations. I started off with emotionally disturbed and ended with severe Autsitic
  • 1994 left Austin (which I loved) and moved to Boston with/for live-in gf of 4 years. Thus we split a year later.

At that age I was just TERRIBLE at being alone, so jumped into another relationship immediately.

In 1996, I thought I might get married and start a family, and (I felt) I could not provide for a family in the way I thought I should on a Sp.Ed. teachers salary, so I went back to school. Of course the relationship that I thought was leading to marriage immediately fell apart. I had moved in with my boss, and then to avoid allegations of impropriety, she took another job. It turned out that without work we had nothing in common. I was shocked to find out there was that much karma left in the world (but that's another story). Still, I finished up a degree in computer science, and met my current wife while in school, so no regrets. I now write software for a living.

1996-99 UMass Boston BSCS
1999-2002 Anyday.com, acquired by Palm Inc
2002-now http://www.mghihp.edu.

I got married in October 2001, and we bought a house in Beverly. MA in 2003, and have been there ever since. My wife is also a computer type -- she's the head DBA for Helium.com (http://www.helium.com).

I'm deliberately working in a low stress job right now. Palm was awesome, but when it all fell apart (Palm laid off the entire Boston office in 2002) I started wondering if perhaps I could be more satisfied with less "killing." Academia is a good place for me right now. I've staffed my department with my best friends, and I've got a real sinecure. Recently however, I've been getting frustrated at the fact that I'm never challenged to be at my best. I'm thinking about throwing away the cushy position because sometimes it's nice to have someone ask me to be as smart as I possibly can be.

I celebrated my 40th birthday last October -- it was pretty awesome. The theme was 1967 and everyone came in costume, including the band (you can see some pictures in my photo album on facebook). I came as Elvis, and sang 2 numbers with band. I'm pretty pleased to be 40. As I said at the party -- I'm looking forward to the next 3rd of my life.

We just bought a new house, still in Beverly. It's designed to be our party house. It's got a pool and a bar and a fireplace and all sorts of other cool features. We're not planning on having any kids so we needed a house that we could do a lot of entertaining in. One of the things that has kept us in Boston is that we have a large group of friends close to our age who are single and also don't have kids -- but they all live in the City, so we need a way to lure them out.

My brother just moved to Denver from Dallas, so I'm letting him be the advanced scout for the large contingent that is there. I'm still in touch with Chad Harrison regularly and Lawrence occasionally. I just saw Ken Chow as I said, and I saw Darin Hart and Drew Thatcher at Jeremy's wedding).

So that's a good starting point I think. You don't have to write back nearly as much -- I tend to be enamored of my own words. I welcome emails from old friends. Send to f i s h d a n @ y a h o o . c o m

Dan

Monday, April 28, 2008

Where is fishdan.com? We recently moved, and I ran fishdan.com our of my house. For the moment, I'll point the DNS here to keep my fan updated. I'll do my best to write a thing or 2 about the new placem, the move, etc.