Hypothesis: left-wing blog commenters make fewer spelling mistakes than right-wing blog commenters.  Discuss.

From Vice Prisoner candidate Sarah Palin’s convention speech:

The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes and raise payroll taxes and raise investment income taxes — (boos) — and raise the death tax — (boos) — and raise business taxes — (boos) — and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. (Boos.)

I just had a waking nightmare. I dreamt it was January 2009 and an Obama administration is just sworn in. After I buy my double-tall nonfat latte, the barista yells “Coffee Tax!” and takes a big gulp of my coffee before handing it to me. On the way to work, driving along Elliott Avenue, a police officer waves me over to the side of road and yells “Car Tax!” through my open window and forces me to drive him to the Federal Building before continuing on. Later, at work, a co-worker grabs my iPhone, yells “Phone Tax!” and dials his baby momma for a few minutes. During code reviews, a developer walks in and yells “Syntax Tax!” and deletes all the right brackets from 34% of my C# code. At lunch, the customer behind me in line yells “Sandwich Tax!” and takes a bite of my ham-and-swiss. Later, in the toilet, my boss sticks his head under the stall, yells “Poop Tax!” and …. well, you get the idea. These dirty Democrats, if elected, will inculcate a culture of such extreme taxation that nothing, not even the very poop in my bowels, will be immune from their grasping tax schemes.

(inspiration for this post came from The 3-Legged Man)

The Man wants to infringe upon your freedoms (yet again):

If only Jimmy and Betty Sue wouldn’t take little Johnny down to the Hops ‘n Hoedown on Friday nights for a little Michelob and line dancing, the government wouldn’t feel obligated to step in. But on the other hand…THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!

My friend Adam, otherwise a really smart guy, has it all wrong. Read his post for an example of what not to do, then continue reading below to see how you really get productive.

Sleep? None of this setting your alarm crap. Sleep when you’re tired, then wake up, wipe the drool off your “V” and “C” keys, and start typing. I take my inspiration from the animal kingdom. You think bears set an alarm? Hell no. They stop hibernating when they’re hungry and some hiker walks into their cave. Sharks? They sleep until their nose bumps into some fat mackerel or boat, then they start chomping.

Sobriety? I’ll go out on a limb here and say that no significant advance in the history of computing was done without some sort of chemical-aided inspiration. The whole concept of recursion was developed by Alan Turing after eating a handful of sweet English mushrooms. Python was obviously developed by some dude high on quaaludes. Who hasn’t had their most creative thoughts after four or five gumdrop martinis?

Exercise? Sure, it sends oxygen-rich blood to your brain, but so does shotgunning a couple Red Bulls, and in a lot less time. Exercise makes you look good for the ladies, but so does photoshopping your MySpace profile pic. Plus, as Craig Newmark has found, text-only listings were designed specifically to make nerds look good. My own personal programmer-productivity workout circuit consists of four stations: Computer -> Refrigerator -> Toilet -> Bed. There are 4! permutations, more than enough for variety.

Eat All Day. I can’t really argue with this one, except for his choice of what to eat. A Bavarian Cream doughnut sounds good right about now.

Meditation? If you want to think about things and not do any actual work, you’re cut out to be an Architecture Astronaut, or perhaps a “thought leader”. Real programmers type. Nothing beats working out your ideas in code. Plus, if you’re a consultant, you can’t bill for “meditation” – how do you SVN COMMIT that? You can’t. If you really need to think, re-read that Lisp code you wrote last night at 3 AM.

So, in summary, avoid well-meaning but misguided attempts to put you on the straight and narrow path to personal productivity via unproven “theories” such as rest, exercise, abstinence, and temperance.

Center Networks hosted Rick Turoczy Wednesday and asked him to dish about his man-crush on the Silicon Forest.    Portland’s one-day moment in the sun was spectacularly dashed on Thursday, when the Gray Lady brought truthiness back into vogue with the article Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley.  Tech hasn’t seen this kind of MSM smackdown since Walt Mossberg’s early-onset senility in 2005 when he suggested that Apple wasn’t the True Faith Incarnate. Of course our ongoing dominance over our little sister to the south has nothing to do with Microsoft, Amazon, Real Networks, Adobe, or the approximately $1B per year in startup financing; no, according to Oren Etzioni of the UW:

“People aren’t distracted by too much sunshine,” he said. “They sit in their offices or garages and get creative.”

What? If that were the criterion then we’d all run operating systems written in Inuit++. I feel the reasons have to do with our massive native intellect, coupled with a dashing entrepreneurial spirit, leavened by two scoops of common sense and healthy sprinkling of manly Northwest vigor. All of which we have in spades over Portland.  Portland is like the Birmingham Barons before Michael Jordan arrived.  With the right amount of fawning press coverage, they can still be spectacularly mediocre.  Ha ha ha ha ha.

Sorry Allen!

I’m shocked – SHOCKED – that the bully Roy Keane would yell obscenities at an opposing coach – in that coach’s own locker room!

[...] within 10 seconds of going in there, all hell seemed to break loose.

The poor coddled thing, now that he can’t put his cleats into someone’s leg every time he gets his knickers fluffed. The injustice of it all!

10 dollars says that Keano is justifiably cut loose from Sunderland when they drop to the Championship at the end of the year. And another twenty says that Keane blames everyone but himself.

Were apparently between February 7th and February 15th, 2007.  He must have stopped sucking after that.

However, traffic is down slightly since then:  the Web 2.0 bubble must be about to burst!

I wonder how many depression-era children were led into a glamorous occult lifestyle by The Wizard of Oz, what with all the talk of wizards and witches and such. After all, the author of the book was a known Theosophist!!!!

Probably too many to mention.