Regarding christmas gifts and imminent travel

In IM: “If they’d [my family] all get on my massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, I could get each of them the perfect gift for their race, class, and level.”

Also, I’ll soon be in the bay area for the weekend. fyi. I will be busy with conference and other prearranged people hanging, but I expect to be sucked into board gaming on saturday evening.

Clinton talk

This was the first time I’ve seen Clinton talk in person. My dad was briefly personally recruited by him to be a doc in Arkansas, while he was governor, but declined. Let’s just call it a bullet dodged and move on.

I think we hit a pretty good balance of getting there early enough to have decent seats, but not waiting too long for them. His speech centered around 5 points.

1. We need good security from terrorism. But he was quite explicit in pointing out that good security in the case of terrorism is the stuff you never hear about, I believe he actually said “never gets seen in the paper”. He didn’t mention Valerie Wilson, though that would have been an excellent opportunity to do so, if he were trying to make a partisan slam speech.
2. We need to make more friends and fewer enemies, turning enemies into friends, is in fact, job number one. He pointed out the opinion polls turning for America and against Bin Laden in countries receiving US aid after national disasters.
3. He cited a need for international cooperations as opposed to going it alone. At this point, he got into a compare and contrast with the current administration. I don’t remember him making a strong case for this point, but the audience, myself included, was highly receptive, and I wasn’t taking notes. He did make the case that the US is currently in a position of power, and that that power will likely decline, and that we may wish to set the world up so that it’s the way we want it when “we aren’t the biggest dog on the block.”
4. He talked about the importance of caring for our population, and maintaining our environment. He made the point that we are rare in our failure to provide the health of our citizens, that it’s not economically efficient, and several other points besides. He compared our national healthcare expenditures as a percent of gdp. He compared our administrative overhead in the private healthcare system and noted that it was way higher than everyone else’s.
5. His final point was about balancing our budget, both at the federal level and on the individual level. And the danger of mortgaging our future for current consumption. (I look guiltily at my own credit card debt here).

And he tied all of it in to the morality and/or ethics of how we want to live and how we think we ought to live. It was a good speech. As I expected, I very much enjoyed it. The two hours of crowd to get in was a bit much, but so it goes. It was good, and I’m glad I went. Matt provided conversation such that I didn’t mind the wait so much. And thoughtful commentary afterwards.

My weekend in brief (with a focus on clinton)

Friday evening, I hung out at the qscc, then went home, changed and went to JetSet for the QGPA happy hour, and followed it up with some club time at the Saloon. Saturday afternoon, Matt and I went to see Mr Clinton speak. More on that later. Then the pics which you’ve been treated to, and at least one of which I’ll make into an icon at some point, so that I have a pic that’s remotely current. And then, Saturday night, Matt and I went to Bethany’s birthday party, again at the saloon. I had had enough crowded, noisy environs for one day, and called it early. Today has been mercifully low on the social interaction. ffxi (now thf41, with the marauder’s knife), and started playing firefly episodes, so I was compelled to come in and watch. I like it. I wish the series hadn’t been canceled. *shrug*

I wonder if a direct to dvd release for a tv series would be economically viable.

And reading on embryonic stem cells and human cloning for tomorrow. Yay! =)