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Friday, November 28th, 2008
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10:25 pm - Addendum.
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I relented and bought a one-month subscription. I don't expect anything good to happen. Don't get me wrong; I'm open to the possibility that something good will happen, and I'm sure these false hopes of mine will be easier to raise than ever. But I figure $50 is a modest price to pay for some entertainment, considering that business has been pretty good.
One of the two people who were interested in me seems pretty cool, though she is a few years older than I am. The other one is 30 years old and describes herself as "dopealicious," which I just have a problem with.
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| Friday, November 14th, 2008
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3:39 pm - Note to whoever made GIMP.
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If your image editor does not allow a user to select a rectangular portion of an image and move it to another location, then it is not really an image editor.
And if your image editor does allow this operation but does not explain it in such a way that an average person with a graduate degree can understand, then your editor is not very well-documented.
I hate working on these damn Linux machines. Of course, MSPaint gave me something that's too grainy to use, so pretty much everybody is in my doghouse right now.
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| Thursday, October 30th, 2008
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6:57 pm - Proposition 2.
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This won't make much sense if you don't live in or around Austin, but...
I voted today. Most of the decisions were pretty easy to make. I voted more-or-less straight-ticket Democratic, but cast a vote for Congressman Lamar Smith, a Republican, to express my appreciation for his work on intellectual property rights. (He's been one of the guys in Washington leading the charge against illegal file sharing.) I disagree with him more than I agree with him, but he has a stranglehold on our congressional district, he was opposed only by a Libertarian (who would have been far worse), and I do think he's on the right side of the file sharing debate, even if the methods they want to use are a bit ham-fisted. So I voted for him rather than voting for the Libertarian, or for nobody at all.
The one decision that I agonized over for a while was Proposition 2. I'm not going to write an entire dissertation about why I ultimately voted against it, but suffice it to say that I voted No. I think tax subsidies for big corporations are bad news, and they're irresponsible fiscal policy. The notion that these rich guys are going to come in and give back to the community more than they took out in tax subsidies is absurd. The taxpayers of Austin got fleeced. The developers who cut this deal may have fulfilled the letter of their obligations, but by all accounts they have fallen far shy of the spirit of the agreement. And terrific local businesses like BookPeople, Amy's, and countless others will end up paying higher taxes to make up for the big boost Neiman Marcus and Cole Haan will be getting.
That being said, I know what it's like to make a promise in good faith, and then have other people cut my legs out from under me when I try to fulfill my end of the bargain. It's embarrassing, and it makes it hard for anybody to put any faith in the value of a person's word. True, this tax subsidy was passed without my direct consent, but it was passed with Austinites' indirect consent, by way of our elected officials. As a town, we have a responsibility to keep our word and do the right thing. As ridiculous as it seems to me for us to use public funds to help build homes and stores for rich people, it seems far worse to tell developers that we'll give them money to build here, let them start the project, and then say "just kidding, we're not going to give you the money."
My solution is simple. Keep Austin's word - vote No on Proposition 2 - and then put everything I've got into putting Mayor Will Wynn, and all the other city officials who raided public funds to serve private interests, in the unemployment line.
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| Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
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10:13 pm - Nano.
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If you look up the word "cloying" in the dictionary, you will see a snapshot of that iPod Nano commercial where they play Chairlift's "Bruises."
It's getting annoying, you guys. Cut it out.
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| Monday, September 15th, 2008
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6:36 pm - Good ad, bad ad.
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I was browsing the political blogs today, as I usually do, and I was pleased to find that Obama is recovering from the Republican National Convention bump. The polls seem to show Obama and McCain in a virtual tie once again. I still find it pretty wild that we can be in a virtual tie given the stark failure of Republican policy over the last few years (the results of which have become painfully obvious this year in particular), but given that McCain had about a five-point lead over Obama a week ago, I'll take a tie.
As I was catching up on the blogs - the CNN Political Ticker ("neutral," more or less) and Talking Points Memo (unapologetically liberal) in particular - I caught wind of a couple of ads that have been released by 527 groups. For the uninitiated, these are political groups not officially affiliated with any particular campaign, and they're not regulated by the Federal Election Commission. However, it goes without saying that in popular culture, these groups usually get tied to whatever campaign they support, "official" affiliation or no. Many people believe that the Swift Vets for Truth worked for Bush - that is, with the Bush campaign's blessing - and while there is some debate over whether that may actually be the case, I think that perception is largely based on a misconception about what 527 groups are and how they work. A campaign can come out and agree with what a 527 group says, condemn it, or just be coy about it (which I think is basically what the Bush campaign did with the Swift Vets) - but like it or not, if a 527 group says terrible things about someone else for your benefit, it's going to end up looking like you're the one who came up with the whole thing.
But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. We'll come back to that later.
As I was saying, I came across two new pro-Obama ads that are airing in swing states. The first one really produced a strong reaction in me - and not a positive one. I'll come back to that. I want to start with the second one I saw, because I thought it was quite well done. Here's a link to a YouTube video of the ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRpIfTDHG2U
It's pretty plain, and it really pushes the point about McCain agreeing with Bush P% of the time, and to be honest, I'm not crazy about that whole argument. Those percentages are rather silly; as Ben Stein pointed out in a Republican response to the argument, a lot of votes in the House and Senate are non-controversial, vanilla, procedural votes. A lot of them are on ceremonial junk that is completely non-partisan - you know, commending someone who saved a kitten from a tree, recognizing a particular day as National Watermelon Day. If you've ever watched live coverage of the House of Representatives on C-SPAN, you know that for every vote on something substantive, something that people actually have meaningful disagreement on, there are five votes on things that don't really count. You could tell me that a Democratic senator voted with Bush 80% of the time, and I wouldn't flinch. There are just that many meaningless votes in the House and Senate.
So I'm not that crazy about making a big deal out of the percentages - it's bad math, and bad math always makes me cringe - but the ad does use them effectively. Juxtaposing the line graphs of McCain's legislative agreement with Bush versus the public's approval rating, while an obvious apples-oranges comparison, does a nice job of showing the divergence between where McCain stands and where the majority of American people stand. In my opinion, the only thing that could have made the ad better would have been to say something ironic about McCain being a "maverick," not with respect to his fellow legislators, but with respect to American voters. But then again, maybe the point would have been lost. I don't know.
It's a decent ad, and a fair one. We can argue about how fair it is to tie McCain to Bush when McCain seems a lot more worthy, personally and professionally, of the nation's highest office. But you can't argue with the fact that McCain stands in the same place Bush stands on the most controversial issues facing Americans. I love the fact that McCain worked together with Russ Feingold for campaign finance reform, but all the internal reform in the world won't keep American jobs within our borders, won't keep oil companies and insurance companies honest, and won't confer equal rights upon women, minorities, and gays and lesbians. That's the stuff we should be talking about.
Which brings me to the stuff that, in my opinion, we shouldn't be talking about. Not because of strategic concerns (though there is a lot to be concerned about), but because we have no right to talk about it.
Here's the first ad I saw this afternoon. This one comes from Brave New PAC:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/new_ad_stars_fellow_mccain_pow.php
This, in my opinion, is terrible. The ad doesn't come right out and say it, but the clear implication is that McCain's experience as a prisoner of war has rendered him unfit to be president. The idea is that McCain's five years in a Vietnamese prison camp have made him bitter, volatile, and angry.
Now, I'm sure that we can all agree that military service entails certain sacrifices. Yes, military service can leave a man or woman unfit to be president. If a soldier suffered a severe brain injury in the line of duty that left him without full use of his mental faculties, I think we'd all be hesitant to elect him president, even if he lost those mental faculties while fighting for the greatest cause an American can fight for. But I think we should give our men and women in uniform the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these things. McCain isn't any less in control of his mental faculties for having served in Vietnam. I think that much is obvious. Is he a loose cannon? Sure, but that's consistent with what we know about his personality in his pre-Vietnam days (say, at the Naval Academy). He's ornery, unpredictable, and yes, maybe a bit angry. But he's still a great senator, and one of the few Republicans I find really tolerable these days (though I would find him less tolerable as the nation's chief executive). He's a great American. He suffered great personal harm because he refused to renounce his allegiance to the United States to please his Vietnamese captors. This is not the act of someone who has no moral compass, or someone who would not act in what he believed to be the best interests of our country. This is an act of heroism. And while a hero may stand for the complete opposite of what I stand for when he's not on hero duty, his heroism still deserves my respect. And that's the problem I have with this ad - it's disrespectful, in the very same way the Swift Boat ads in 2004 were disrespectful. It tries to make McCain's service into an Achilles' heel, just like the Swift Boat ads used Kerry's service to set him up to be called a traitor.
A lot of Democrats are arguing that the Republicans did it to us, so it's only fair that we do it to them. That's a lousy statement for a party and a political philosophy that has long rejected the "eye for an eye" mentality. When a man commits murder, we're the ones who say that that doesn't make it right to murder him as punishment for his bad acts. We don't say these things because we believe that a murderer deserves mercy. We say these things because (among other reasons) every act of violence, regardless of justification, takes us one step farther away from being a civilized society. And by the same token, every act of character assassination, whether provoked or not, takes us one step farther away from the civilized politics that Americans deserve.
And if you think that we should engage in swift-boat politics because swift-boat politics win elections, I believe you've got another thing coming. It may have worked for the Republicans. I don't know whether that's what won it for them, but let's say it did. Well, it won't work equally well for the Democrats. If the Democrats do it, it will be seen as hypocrisy and ingratitude - a bunch of spoiled members of the intellectual elite tearing a decent man down for doing the hard work that makes this country safe for people like the intellectual elite. (And while that's a pretty extreme way of putting it, can you really say it's unfair?) And worst of all, it will look like the whole thing came from Obama himself. People don't get how 527 groups work. A nasty attack by a 527 will look like a nasty attack by Obama, even though he never said the magic words "I approved this message."
Just to be clear, I respect former POW Phillip Butler's opinion. He's certainly entitled to it, and it is his right to express that opinion to other people. I'm not upset at him for expressing it. I'm pissed off at Brave New PAC for making a classless statement about McCain, and hiding behind Butler to make it look more acceptable. That's not brave. That's sheer cowardice. And I won't stand for it.
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| Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
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9:34 pm - Fighting words.
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I've been watching the Republican National Convention on CNN for the last couple of evenings, to the extent that I've been able to. Don't get me wrong; it's not that I can't stomach these guys. It's just that after eight years of conservative leadership in Washington and in Austin, with food, gas, and health care costs rising, and with my two primary career prospects - public school teaching and college teaching - looking bleak due to a lack of public support, I know that I need to cram in all the tutoring hours I can if I want to be able to survive in the coming years. I'm sure that the Republican Party will forgive me for missing parts of their convention, since their policies are creating a world in which I will have to work non-stop, from the hour I wake to the hour I sleep, just to survive.
But I have been able to watch parts of the convention - the speeches by Bush, Thompson, and Lieberman last night, and the speeches by Huckabee, Giuliani, and Palin tonight. Here are some assorted thoughts I had on those:
* On the recurring argument that Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden combined: Is it not true that she also has more executive experience than McCain has? Is "executive experience" per se really the most meaningful metric here? Do the American voters even care about "executive experience"? If so, why did they reject Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee in favor of John McCain?
* On Giuliani's angry screed about the Obama campaign questioning Palin's ability to be both a mother and a vice president: when did Obama, or any representative of his campaign, ever suggest this? It is true that this is a sexist question to ask, and it is true that there are Obama supporters asking this question, but is it not true that there are also Republicans and independents asking this question as well? Every voting bloc has its bad apples; why are you blaming the Obama campaign for a controversy that voters have sparked and that the media has fueled?
* On virtually every speech given at the convention: We appreciate the opportunity to learn more about McCain's time as a POW in Vietnam. We appreciate his service, and I think there are very few people in America who can truly fathom the sacrifice he has made. But did we need to hear about McCain's time as a POW from virtually every speaker at the convention? Did we need to know the gory details that Fred Thompson shared during his speech? If someone has been through unspeakable suffering, does that make him/her presidential material? I believe that anybody who has been through what McCain has been through should be lavished with praise and allowed to live in luxury for the rest of his life, and I would gladly sacrifice part of what I have (in the form of tax money - or in the form of personal donations if Washington continues to break its unspoken contract with our men and women in uniform) to make it happen. However, I do not believe that such a person should be elevated to the highest office in the nation solely on the basis of what he has been forced to endure. The presidency is not an endurance test; or if it is, it is not nearly the endurance test that five years in a Vietnamese prison is.
* On Tuesday's theme of "Service" (clearly taken to mean "military service"): is military service the only way a person can make sacrifices for the sake of country or community? What about public school teachers, many of whom have the skills and drive to take on much better-paying jobs, but spend their lives working long hours to better their communities, and in return for their sacrifice, have their professionalism and competence questioned by students, parents, and rank-and-file Republican politicians? I don't mean to suggest any sort of equivalence between military service and public school teaching. I think anyone with any sense of self-preservation who had to choose one or the other would choose to teach. But Democrats are unwaveringly respectful of our nation's soldiers. Why are Republicans so disrespectful of our teachers, and why do we let them get away with it?
* On the amount of time that has been devoted to national security at this convention: Is national security really the number one issue facing Americans? Will it ever be possible to make America as safe as we want it to be? And even if we can, is it worth sacrificing our freedom, our soldiers' lives, our alliances, and trillions of dollars to do so? What good is a secure America if the American dream is dead, or reserved only for the fortunate few?
* On virtually every speech: You have derided Obama for being a "celebrity" and a "community organizer." Does that mean that we are allowed to make fun of Palin for being a beauty queen and a sportscaster (two things that are quite respectable on their own, but not exactly what we look for in a potential chief executive)? Or to blast McCain for finishing fifth from the bottom in his class at the Naval Academy? Do you really want this election to be decided based on each candidate's most embarrassing or questionable past achievement?
* On Huckabee's claim that the people want "less government": Really? The Republicans have had control of the White House for eight years, and they have had unfettered control of Washington for four years, maintaining control of the House, Senate, and White House from 2003 to 2006. And yet you still claim that the government is too big. Is that because the Republicans haven't been as interested in reducing the size of our government as you claim they are? Or is it because the people, already having seen what government can do when it cuts essential programs, refuses to regulate businesses that abuse their power and create monopolies, and refuses to enforce environmental protections, now want to see what we can do with no government at all? Do you believe that the American people are that masochistic?
* On the repeated attacks on Obama's character and experience: Do you have any idea why so many people support his candidacy for the presidency? Do you think us foolish for doing so? We support Obama because we believe he stands for the right ideas about what America should be, and the role government should play. We believe in a government that sticks up for every American, not one that protects only the wealthy while abandoning the poor, disenfranchising minorities, denying fundamental rights to gays and lesbians, and undercutting America's competitiveness in science and education. We are acutely aware that our candidate has only a few years of legislative experience, and none of that exalted "executive experience." Many of us, myself included, wish it could have been different. Personally, I wish I could have seen a viable presidential candidate who stands for what I believe in, who advocates for it the way I would, and who has enough experience to silence the critics. I wish Barack Obama had a couple more Senate terms under his belt. But he doesn't, and for my money, he's still the best candidate for this race. I know that he will be a great leader because he is humble (much more so than his critics give him credit for), because he is generous even to his opponents, and because he stands for the right principles.
I am willing to engage any Republican on the issues that face America. I do not claim to be very well-educated about some of these issues, and I admit that I am not the best student of American political history. I'm not a very effective debater, and I don't claim to be a very good spokesman for the Democratic Party. But I'm happy to engage in a serious discussion. What I will not abide is this ongoing deluge of personal attacks against Obama, and by extension, against those who would vote for him. I appreciate and embrace principled disagreement; but I will neither appreciate nor embrace classlessness of the sort that I saw in Giuliani's and Palin's speeches, and to a lesser extent in Bush's, Thompson's, and Huckabee's speeches (interestingly, Lieberman's seemed to me the classiest of them all, a far cry from Zell Miller in 2004). I will not accommodate people who (for example) denigrate the concept of community organizing, which does more to bridge inequalities between the powerful and the powerless than some of these small-government types ever will. I refuse to deal with people who insult my intelligence or engage in personal attacks. That went for Hillary supporters this spring, and it damn well goes for McCain supporters this fall.
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| Monday, August 25th, 2008
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11:08 am - Catharsis.
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A couple of months ago, I promised that I would write a blog entry addressing the Hillary Clinton supporters who are threatening to stay home, write in Clinton, or vote McCain. With the Democratic National Convention approaching, we've been hearing more and more from these angry Clinton voters. So I suppose this is about as good a time for this entry as any.
I don't harbor any false hopes of changing anybody's mind on this issue. I don't know whether anyone who reads this blog is/was a Clinton supporter. But even if there are Clinton supporters reading this blog, I don't think I'm more likely than anybody else to be in possession of that magic argument, that key talking point, that will persuade an angry Clinton voter to change his/her mind. So while I'm writing this as a persuasive essay, I don't really expect this to be that persuasive. But at least this will give me an opportunity to get some things off my chest. Which, for many of us (on both sides of the Clinton/Obama fence), is what this whole week is about.
First of all, I know what it's like to be upset over losing an election. I suspect this is a feeling that many Clinton supporters were familiar with well before the 2008 Democratic primary; after all, I imagine that most of us voted for Gore in 2000 and then for Kerry in 2004. It's a terrible feeling. You feel completely powerless; you realize that for the next four years, the voice and face of your country is going to be someone whose beliefs are at odds with your own, and that there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. That's how I felt about Bush's re-election in 2004 (I actually supported Bush in 2000, which I hope my readers will forgive me for). I don't know how accurately that describes the feelings of Clinton supporters now; I still think that Obama's beliefs are not that much different from Clinton's. But I think in a lot of ways, it comes down to the same fundamental things - the feeling of powerlessness, the dread of having a long-lasting and far-reaching decision imposed upon you against your will. I also think that feeling is something that women are exposed to much more often than men; it's a big part of what feminism tries to combat, and since Clinton was our country's first really viable female candidate for the presidency, that only makes this issue more volatile.
But I'm not here to try to talk anybody out of feeling that way. It would be a waste of time for me to do so; hearing from someone who supported Obama from day one isn't going to allay that sort of frustration. I just want people to know that I'm sympathetic to that. I think anyone who seriously wanted Kerry to win (or just wanted Bush to lose) in 2004 is sympathetic to that. It's not quite the same as feeling betrayed by your own party, but keep in mind that even before we considered ourselves part of the Democratic Party, we were all members of a party called the United States of America, and watching our fellow members of that party choose four more years of a disastrous and embarrassing Bush presidency feels a heck of a lot like betrayal too.
But here's the catch, and here's what Clinton supporters need to understand: it's not betrayal. It wasn't betrayal in 2004 when a plurality of American voters chose four more years of George W. Bush. It may have been an unfortunate decision, it may have been the wrong decision, but it wasn't betrayal. Nobody owed it to anybody to vote for John Kerry. Voting is a matter of personal conscience; you can't betray someone by voting a certain way. And the same is true of the 2008 primary. Clinton supporters can say all they want about being betrayed, but the bottom line is that in primaries and caucuses conducted by the state Democratic parties, a plurality of Democratic voters went to the polls and chose Obama over all other Democratic candidates. They made this choice of their own free will; they weren't coerced into doing so, and they weren't given inducements to do so by mysterious men in smoke-filled rooms. It is true that some Obama voters conducted themselves in an obnoxious manner (this was certainly true at some of the caucus meetings I attended in Texas), but as far as I know, nobody stopped anybody from casting his/her vote according to his/her conscience. If I'm wrong about this, I'd be happy to hear about it. I should think, though, that anybody who seriously supports a black or female presidential candidate (or who believed that the voting situation in November 2004 in Cleveland was inexcusable) would be sensitive to the issue of voter intimidation and obstruction.
Then there's the argument that it was the DNC, not Democratic voters, who betrayed Clinton supporters. I keep hearing about how the DNC "chose" Obama and somehow manipulated the contest so that he would win, and I'd like to know - I'm genuinely curious - is there anything to this other than the fact that the DNC took away half of Michigan's and Florida's delegates, and the fact that certain Democratic figureheads voiced their personal support for Obama (as many other figureheads did for Clinton)? And if the Michigan/Florida fiasco is what this is about, then can we at least agree that the Democratic Party had a rule on the books setting the one-half penalty as the minimal penalty for a state that holds its primary early? When the DNC took away delegates, it was following its own rules. As someone who votes Democrat most of the time, I want "my" party to be a party that follows the rules (including the ones it sets for itself) and that believes in fair play. Awarding Clinton a state (Michigan) in which she defeated "Undecided" in a landslide is not fair play. Clinton, Obama, and the rest of the Democratic candidates agreed early in the race that they would not campaign in Michigan and Florida, and that they would respect the DNC's ruling on these two states. Clinton reneged on this agreement. While going back on agreements seems to be typical politician behavior these days, it doesn't make it right. I will gladly apologize to Clinton supporters on behalf of Obama supporters who attack her personally, or who attack her supporters personally. That's ugly behavior, and I don't tolerate ugliness. But I'll never apologize for what happened with Michigan and Florida, because the bottom line is that the DNC did what they had to do. Indeed, at least in the case of Michigan, they did the only thing that would be acceptable under any reasonable concept of fair play. My only regret is that Obama recently backed away from this and asked the DNC to seat all of Florida's and Michigan's delegates; I think it's a pretty transparent move on his part, and besides that it just reinforces the idea that the DNC's rules are "guidelines" that can be brushed aside when political expediency warrants it.
That's all the time I have right now. Next time, I'll shift my attention to Obama, and deconstruct the historically unfounded (if not racist and/or ageist) charge that he's an "empty suit" and unfit to be a leader.
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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4:32 am - Party loyalty.
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Eventually (when I have sufficient energy and outrage to give the topic the attention it deserves), I'm going to have some harsh words for all the Hillary Clinton backers who are spamming message boards with threats (real or empty) to vote for McCain in November. But for now, I want to address a bit of the crap that's coming from the other side of this fracas - the Obama supporters who are shouting back.
One comment I've seen quite a bit from the Obama supporters, in reply to these angry Clinton backers, is that people who would vote for McCain, or simply refuse to vote in November out of disappointment with the DNC's / media's / Obama's handling of the Democratic Primary, "aren't true Democrats."
And that's true, of course. But what's the big deal? Where's the virtue in being a "true Democrat," if being a "true Democrat" means you have to march in lockstep with the DNC on every decision they make and every candidate they nominate? That's a ridiculous standard, and one that I'm more than happy not to meet.
There is actually some tension there for me now, since I recently joined a local organization called "Democrats With Disabilities," whose purpose is to make sure that the interests of people with disabilities are represented in state and local party functions. (I don't have any recognized disability, but as a politically active person with an autism-spectrum disorder, I wanted to join and help out.) One of the articles in the organization's constitution and by-laws states that I can be expelled from the organization if I publicly support, endorse, or give money to any candidate for public office from a party other than the Democratic Party.
I don't like this rule, because it's not stated very precisely (what constitutes public support?), and on a loose interpretation it could be taken to mean that as a member of Democrats With Disabilities, I forfeit my right to vote for any Republican running for public office. Now, that's not a right that I've exercised in the last five years or so, but it is a right that I consider sacrosanct. As I get older and wiser, I realize that the Democrats have it right (at least all right with me) on some issues, and the Republicans have it right on others. And if there's a Democrat and a Republican running for the office of town dog-catcher, and the Republican is a dog expert while the Democrat is severely allergic to dogs, I'd be stupid to let considerations like "party loyalty" dog me into voting for the Democrat.
Political parties work for us - not the other way around. We give political parties our time, our money, and our votes; nobody has the right to demand that we take a loyalty oath on top of all that. The only people who owe political parties any loyalty at all are the politicians whose campaigns are bankrolled by those parties - and even then, there's room to waver from that if there's an issue where you are in principled disagreement with the bosses of your party. (Of course, there are ways to do this that simply make you look like an ass, as Zell Miller did in 2004, and there are ways to do this that are ultimately reasonable, even though they make party members grimace - Joe Lieberman recasting himself as an independent and winning re-election to the Senate after losing the party primary.)
As far as the rest of us everyday citizens are concerned, party loyalty is worth about as much as loyalty to a particular brand, or to a way of thinking - if it makes you feel good about sticking with something, great; but don't expect to impress anybody who isn't as entrenched as you are. If you're a "true Democrat," and that's why you're voting for Obama, great; but don't wave that in the face of a disappointed Clinton supporter and hope to get a favorable reaction. Go back to the drawing board, come up with some legitimate reasons to vote for the guy (hint: there are plenty of them), and then make your case. Don't try to browbeat people when it comes to politics; it doesn't work, and it makes you look like an asshole. (Case in point, Obama supporters: what do you think of all the Clinton fans who jump on message boards and call Obama an "empty suit," a thug, a sexist, a racist, etc., and insinuate that you are gullible and impressionable for wanting to vote for him?)
The bottom line is that you probably aren't voting for Obama because you're a loyal Democrat. You're voting for him because you believe in the same things he believes in, and because you believe that he's the best person for the job. Next time you hop on a message board, why not take that as your starting point?
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| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
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3:07 am - An unusual sort of media bias.
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Is it just me, or does it seem like Hillary Clinton looks absolutely manic in virtually every picture of her that is posted on CNN.com? I'm talking eyes wide open, mouth usually either wide open or in a weird, perhaps contrived grin.
I know Clinton is capable of looking "normal" and not completely manufactured - she does it most of the time. Why can't we get a picture of her smiling rather than looking like she just won the lottery?
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| Saturday, May 10th, 2008
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11:14 pm - Sunrise at night.
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I occasionally have these unusual dreams in which day and night are mixed up - in which, for example, it's fairly bright outside at 2 AM. I've never lived anywhere farther north than Tennessee or farther south than Texas, so I don't have any experiential basis for these dreams.
However, Mother Nature threw me an interesting curveball tonight. It was about 8 PM this evening when I headed out to get some dinner. On a normal day, the sun would have been setting at about this time; but this evening there were some thunderstorms rolling in. The eastern sky was cloudy, and the sunlight was illuminating those clouds so that it seemed brighter in the east than in the west. As I was driving east on 183, I seriously had to convince myself that it was 8 PM and not 8 AM, because the coloration of the sky looked exactly like something I might have seen on one of those Saturday mornings when I had to head over to UT to host a Math Circle meeting.
Maybe it's a strange obsession on my part, but I think it would be interesting to visit a place where it's light outside at midnight. I don't think I'd want to live in such a place though - it'd mess with my head an awful lot.
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| Thursday, April 17th, 2008
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11:25 am - Clinton and Obama in Pennsylvania.
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My thoughts on last night's Democratic debate in Pennsylvania (copied from an e-mail to my mother):
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Hi mom. Well, I went ahead and watched the second half of the debate - which turned out to be a brilliantly good move on my part, since I managed to tune in right around when they stopped talking "gotcha" politics and started talking about government. I'm not thrilled with the Clinton campaign's efforts to find dirt on Obama, but I'll be the first to admit it's just politics as usual - and it's what you do if the dirt is there and you want to win (especially against someone like Obama, who once seemed to be made of teflon). She hasn't done anything that another politician wouldn't do. I did get the sense that Obama was a bit more hesitant to go on the attack, but then again, he has that luxury - he's ahead. What really upsets me is how the media is handling this whole thing. I can deal with it when The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central make a big deal out of things like Obama not wearing a flag lapel pin, because hell, it's Comedy Central - it's not a serious news outlet (though people are increasingly turning to these shows as semi-serious news shows, probably because the major networks are dropping the ball). When CNN devotes hours of programming and commentary to hashing out Obama's "bitter" remarks, or Clinton's "sniper fire" anecdote, they're really lowering the level of the discourse in America. They're taking what should be a process to determine which candidate has the best ideas for America and can best carry them out, and transforming it into a process to determine which candidate can make the fewest rhetorical and cosmetic mistakes, or which candidate has the least controversial history. This sort of process is what led to an eight-year Bush presidency - say what you want about Bush's ability to govern, but prior to taking office, he had a very clean (if unremarkable) history. Reasonable people can disagree on whether Bush has been a competent president, but I hope that all reasonable people would agree that choosing the presidential candidate with the least incriminating "worst moment" is not the best way to choose a competent president. But I don't blame American voters for doing this, because we live in a media-saturated culture - whether we're willing to admit it or not, the media exert incredible control over what we think and how we think of it. I wasn't happy when the media seemed to be joining together in prematurely crowning Obama the Democratic nominee, because it was unfair to Clinton; and I'm sure as hell not happy now that they're joining together in obsessing over Obama's dirty laundry. And then there's Charlie Gibson. I don't watch network news very often, but I've seen enough to know that Charlie Gibson is a subpar journalist. I still remember a few years ago when one of the principals in the Oklahoma City bombing reached the sentencing phase of his trial and stated that he wanted the death penalty. A lot of the victims' families wanted to deny him this and make him serve life in prison instead. And Gibson interviewed one of these family members and wouldn't quit dogging him, trying to get him to admit that he wanted the guy to get the death penalty, even though the guy quite clearly wanted to give him life instead. I certainly think it's within the scope of a journalist's responsibilities to press an issue if an interviewee isn't being straightforward, but in this case, it was quite clear that the interviewee either didn't believe in the death penalty, or simply didn't want to let the perpetrator of such a heinous crime cop out of a lifetime of guilt by taking the needle. And I thought that Gibson really overstepped his bounds (especially on an issue as deeply personal for the victim of a crime as the death penalty) when he did that interview. And now I look at the recap of the debate and find that Gibson and Stephanopoulos spent an entire hour asking about Reverend Wright and "bitter" Pennsylvanians and "sniper fire" and lapel pins. I suspect that it was the network that directed the moderators to spend this time playing "gotcha" politics, but Gibson and Stephanopoulos have both been at ABC long enough to wield some influence - they should have at least tried to pull this the other way. And then there was the atrocious programming decision at the end of the debate to talk to a political analyst just after Clinton and Obama had finished, and share this commentary not only with the national viewing audience, but with the people assembled at Constitution Hall. The audience loudly booed the moderators for this, and rightly so - that sort of thing should be left for the spin room, or at the very least reserved until after the two hours reserved for the debate are over. Packaging the commentary as part of the debate was a lousy journalistic decision. Overall, it was a pretty disappointing experience. I can only imagine how I would have felt if I had watched the whole thing.
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| Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
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3:33 am - Dreams and reality.
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I had an experience today that was a bit scary from a mental-functioning point of view, and I'd like to know whether this happens to other people as well.
Today, as I was heading into the office to take care of some SMMG-related work, I remembered that I needed to talk to one of the administrative assistants in my department, because she had told me that from now on, all food expenses for SMMG would be covered by the math department (previously, they had been covered by a particular professor in our department). She had said that this would involve some minor changes in the paperwork and processing, and I needed to meet with her to go over the new procedure.
This was all well and good, except for one minor problem: I couldn't remember whether this had actually happened.
I've had a couple experiences in the past in which I vividly remembered something that never actually happened, and the only way for me to recalibrate my perception of reality was to go back, go over the facts, and carefully determine whether the event could have happened. In this case, what that meant was that I didn't actually meet with the assistant in question today. Instead, I waited until I got home and checked my e-mail files. Sure enough, I never received such an e-mail (and in this vivid memory of mine, I remembered getting an e-mail to this effect - not a phone call, or an in-person conversation). Now I'm pretty sure I just dreamed the whole thing.
As I mentioned above, this isn't the first time something like this has happened to me. A few years ago at summer math camp, I was gossiping with another camp instructor about how two former counselors who had gone to the camp and had been seeing each other for a long time had recently had a nasty breakup. This was all well and good, except for one minor problem: it never actually happened. In a way, I would have been happier with myself if I had just been deliberately spreading false rumors about people. That's not what happened here - what happened was that I recalled a very specific "fact" from a dream I had, related it to someone as real-world fact, and had to deal with the embarrassment when it turned out that "fact" was completely false. (In this case, this was revealed in somewhat dramatic fashion when the two ex-counselors in question visited camp together and were still quite chummy with each other!)
Of course, I guess the lesson I should have learned from this earlier incident is that people who engage in idle gossip tend to attract bad karma. But I was too disturbed by the way my mind and memory had betrayed me to think about that.
I should point out that I generally have a very good memory. I tend to remember all sorts of trivial facts and figures, names and images; I can remember the names of students from my calculus classes four years ago who haven't had any sort of contact with me since then. This isn't really a matter of not being able to remember something that happened; it's a matter of remembering specific things that didn't happen. And they don't just pop out of the ether - they're usually things that happen in dreams, things that really aren't that remarkable in their own right. In some sense, they can't be remarkable - if they were, I'd remember them upon waking, and I'd be forced to lie here in bed until I separate fantasy from reality (as I so often do). These things - a breakup that had nothing to do with me, an item of business that I didn't personally care about that much - are significant enough to cause minor perturbations in my real life, but insignificant enough to stay buried in my subconscious until it is time for them to surface.
I can only imagine how it would have gone if I had gone on and tried to have that discussion with the assistant in my department - insisting that she had e-mailed me about a change in our funding when she had in fact done no such thing. I'm glad I avoided that; I think she sees me as scatterbrained already.
Does anyone else have occasional encounters with such "false memories"?
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| Saturday, April 12th, 2008
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5:43 pm - Bitter: Obama's macaca moment?
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Today, I was treated to an internet firestorm over remarks Barack Obama made about small-town Pennsylvanians about a week ago. According to huffingtonpost.com, the comments were made at a fundraising activity in San Francisco last weekend. The following is the most complete account of Obama's comments that I could find (and it wasn't easy to find - one can't accuse the political blogosphere of having high regard for things like context and nuance):
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not," he said. "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," he also said. (source: CNN.com political ticker)
In the rather forgettable David Spade - Chris Farley vehicle Black Sheep, Chris Farley is the brother of a candidate for the governor's office in Washington state. At one point in the movie, Farley's character finds himself at a rock concert where his brother is scheduled to speak. Due to a forgettable (but, I'm sure, hilarious) sequence of events, Farley's character gets stoned backstage and then ends up on stage just before his brother is supposed to speak. At first, it looks like his appearance is not going to be an unmitigated disaster; he just bellows a bunch of young-people catchphrases like "power to the people" (you know, just picture him doing that in his Chris Farley out-of-control-fat-guy voice) and actually gets the crowd pretty pumped up. For a while, it looks like he's actually going to end up helping his brother. Then he makes a rather critical misstep, shouting "KILL WHITEY!"
at the crowd. The crowd, mostly composed of young, liberal, but white grungeheads, does not approve.
For a while, it looked like Obama was not going to completely tank the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. He was on the ground in that state, doing little things to help himself, chipping away at Clinton's lead. Really, he didn't need to do anything amazing in Pennsylvania; he just needed to make sure that Clinton didn't win the state 80-20 or something to that effect. But as politicians tend to do when they slip out of character and stop speaking that smooth, unobjectionable doublespeak of the politician, Obama got careless and gave his opponents something to bludgeon him with.
I want to defend Obama. I consider him my candidate, and I love that he seems so bulletproof most of the time that his detractors can't find anything that damning to say about him (which is why they talk smack about us supporters instead). I love how his campaign got me involved in the Democratic caucus in Texas, which I didn't even know existed until this year. I have spent hours of my spare time campaigning for him and suffered scorn on his behalf. When people refer to his supporters as "Obamatons," I feel like they are talking about me, and it hurts. But I stick with him because I believe in him and I see the substance behind his usually polished image, even though Republicans and Clinton supporters alike deny that it's there.
I'm invested in Obama, and that's why his latest mistake - and let there be no question about it, he made a mistake - angers me so much.
First of all, it's important to understand that he's absolutely, 100% right. The dynamic that Obama is talking about is something we've seen in American politics for, well, as long as American politics has been around. People are frustrated and feel like their lives are being taken away from them. People are losing their homes, their jobs, their financial stability. They know that when something like this happens on such a grand scale, it's somebody's fault; but whose is it? In this situation, one has a choice. On one hand, one can blame those who are more powerful than he is - investors, speculators, traders, CEOs, and those who empower them. But this seems like a rather unrewarding course to follow. Challenging the rich and powerful never seems to turn out very well; in the current political climate, they always seem to win. And since economic matters in America are so complicated, it's never clear exactly whom you're supposed to blame, or what you're supposed to do about it. On the other hand, one can take out his frustrations on those who are less powerful - minorities, illegal residents, gays and lesbians, the poor, the obese, the handicapped, the oppressed. In other words, one can attack those who don't have the power or the numbers to defend themselves. Now in this case, "attacking" doesn't really amount to much more than being hateful and making people feel terrible about themselves, and that doesn't put food on anybody's plate or a roof over anyone's head. But it does release all that pent-up frustration, and it's not nearly as dangerous or radical as taking down the people at the top. So people choose door #2, because they're too tired or too downtrodden or too ill-informed to go through door #1.
And I'm not saying this is right or wrong, that people do this - it's an amoral matter of human psychology. As I rediscovered Wednesday, virtually every human being who has anger, no matter how big or small, seems to need to have someone to bully. While this is a rather disappointing part of being human, it does nevertheless seem to be an essential part of being human. But I do want to be clear in my assertion that people do this, and that Obama didn't point out anything about people (rural Pennsylvanian or otherwise) that isn't actually there.
So the substance behind Obama's comments was actually quite right. The comments themselves, however, were poorly phrased, and seemed to convey something quite different from the truth that is actually there - namely, a disdain for the working-class people with (relatively) conservative values who make up the backbone of America. And that perception can spell doom for a Democrat.
What we see before us this year is, in some sense, the perfect storm for the Democrats - the economy is facing such an enormous catastrophe that people who typically vote Republican because of their stances on "wedge issues" like gun control, gay rights, religious freedom, and abortion are actually considering voting Democrat because, quite frankly, Republican leaders would much rather pander to the backbone of America (with these religious and gun issues) than actually marshal our great nation's resources to try to fortify it. Let me be clear - I'm not happy that we are in a recession. I'm not happy that people are losing their jobs and their homes. But from a purely political point of view, the Democrats stand to benefit from this. But this doesn't mean they can afford to be stupid. And they can't afford to have the face of their party suggesting that rural, blue-collar Americans are stupid for voting on the three G's - God, guns, and gays. When you're a politician, sometimes it's better to be right as quietly as possible.
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| Sunday, March 30th, 2008
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1:30 pm - The battle for Texas: the county convention.
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Yesterday, I attended the Travis County Democratic Party Convention. Here's an e-mail that I wrote to my mother about what happened:
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Hi Mom. I'll try to give you a sense of what went on at the convention, but first, my thoughts on the Rev. Wright scandal: I think Obama's approach to this (basically throwing Wright under the bus and saying he would have left the church had he not retired, when there are pictures of the two posing together on the internet) was all wrong, and not at all characteristic of Obama. He really needed to come out and take ownership of this. As far as I can tell, all that Wright was saying is that America has a pretty sad history when it comes to race relations. America was built on the land of Native Americans and on the backs of African slaves. America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, killing thousands of innocent Japanese people, and then we put hundreds (or maybe thousands) more in internment camps during the war. I could go on, but I don't think Obama needed to list all of these things or obsess over them. The point is that these things are part of our nation's history, and we can't hope to get away from them just by covering our ears and going "LALALALALALA". That doesn't mean that we deserved the horror of 9/11 - Obama could respectfully disagree with Wright on that point (as I would and as most reasonable people would) while agreeing with his assertion that we (or more precisely, our predecessors) have sort of been assholes to people of other ethnicities and nationalities at certain points in our nation's history (while putting that last part more diplomatically). And really, what is so controversial about agreeing with parts of what your pastor says and respectfully disagreeing with other parts? When Gran goes to church, does she agree with everything the pastor says, item by item? I mean, I would expect people who go to church to agree with their pastor on matters of theology (after all, that's sort of the point of being part of an organized religion, or so it seems to me), but if your pastor is a good minister and wants to engage a congregation, at some point he's going to try to connect the Biblical lesson to something in real life, and inevitably that's going to be tied in with the political... and really, how many people agree 100% with every word their pastor says when he's talking about secular matters? I just think Obama could have put a better (and far less disingenuous) face on this by saying that he and Wright are friends, he is/was happy to be part of Wright's congregation, but he respectfully disagrees with some of the things that Wright says. No need to act like he didn't really like Wright all that much - I mean, he obviously liked the guy pretty well. Why try to cover it up? His hand has already been seen in the cookie jar. Okay, on to the convention. In a lot of ways, it was hell. I left my apartment at 7 AM, stopped at the gas station for caffeine and donut holes, and reached the long line of cars fighting to get into the expo center at about 7:15. I ended up parking at about 7:35 or 7:40; in this regard I was much, much luckier than some of the people who showed up later - there ended up being about two miles of backup on Highway 183. From 7:40 to 10:00 (yes, more than two hours), I was in line to receive my alternate credentials. Every delegate and alternate at the convention had to sign in and receive credentials in order to participate in the convention; sign-in for one person took about a minute if that person was in the correct line and had their driver's license and voter registration card ready to go. (The person at the window had to check IDs against the delegate/alternate roll sheets and find the person's credential tag, and the delegate/alternate had to sign a sheet of paper and declare his/her presidential preference.) There were, in total, about 20 windows devoted to getting people signed in, but most of the lines were for delegates, not alternates. In any case, if you take 13,000 people and divide by 20 lines, you realize that at an average line had to process more than 600 people. At one person per minute, this should have taken more than ten hours. Miraculously, it only took six hours in total (as opposed to the three hours that the local Democratic Party actually devoted to registration) - registration got extended until about 1 PM (the original cutoff was 10 AM). It probably would have taken a couple more hours still if not for the large number of alternates (and some delegates) who didn't show up. Once I got credentialed, I was able to get out of the cold (it was pretty cool and windy that morning, though it warmed up in the afternoon and thankfully didn't rain) and into the arena, where I ended up sitting on bleachers with the rest of my precinct's delegation until about 4 or 5 PM. (I actually ended up leaving a little early - I was at #5 on the alternate list for our precinct and remained an alternate, though there were three delegates who didn't show and had to be replaced with alternates. The delegates, and alternates who ended up being promoted to delegate status, had to stay a bit longer - probably a half hour to an hour, not to mention the fact that all those people ended up trying to leave the expo center at the same time, which probably added another half hour to an hour at least.) So I spent about two hours in line in the cold, and about six hours sitting on hard bleachers right under an AC vent. Somehow, miraculously, I didn't really end up in a foul mood over this. The convention proper was actually rather boring (a lot of sitting around and doing nothing, as I feared), though it was punctuated by some pretty decent speeches (which ended up chewing up about 1/3 of the time I spent in the arena). We heard from Congressman Lloyd Doggett, Mark Strama (who I think is a state representative, though I'm not sure), actor and Clinton supporter Sean Astin (who was in Lord of the Rings), former DNC chairman and Clinton campaign manager Terry McAuliffe, former Dallas mayor and Obama backer Ron Kirk, TV judge and Democractic nominee for Congress Larry Joe Doherty (of the show Texas Justice), and assorted others. Most of these speeches were pretty good, though some of them were very difficult to hear (there was a lot of crowd noise in the arena and some of these guys didn't do a very good job using the mic). The common thread was that virtually all of the speakers made it a point to urge everyone to show up in November and vote Democratic, no matter who wins the nomination - this is becoming increasingly important this year since there are many self-proclaimed "Democrats" and moderates on the blogosphere saying that they're going to vote for either Clinton or nobody in November, or that they're going to vote for either Obama or nobody in November. Some go so far as to say they'd rather vote for McCain than for the other Democratic candidate. The advent of the internet and the democratization of news and political commentary (largely in the form of blogs) have made it much easier for pissed-off people like these to define and shape the political culture in our country, and if the Democrats let these people frame this election in this way - "it's my way or the highway" - McCain will win easily in November. Personally, I must confess that I was part of the "Obama or nobody" crowd until recently. I was already starting to see the light before yesterday, but it was what happened yesterday - not so much the speeches, but seeing Obama and Clinton supporters standing in the same lines and sitting on the same hard metal bleachers - that really made me feel like I can hold my nose long enough to vote for Clinton if she wins the nomination. I wouldn't do it for Hillary herself - I personally think McCain is a much better human being than she is, and despite Clinton supporters' claims to the contrary, I feel like she is a much more hateful and divisive person than McCain could ever be. And I don't like rewarding people for being hateful and divisive. But I think that her philosophy of governance is much closer to what America needs right now than the "laissez faire" approach that McCain seems to be embracing. And to show solidarity with the Clinton supporters who sat in bleachers full of Obama supporters (Obama won the convention for Senate District 14 by a margin of about 70%-30%) all day, I'd be first in line to vote for Clinton if she were the nominee. I could go over the mechanics of how the delegation for each candidate was worked out, but really the only essential part of that process was the presidential preference poll that was conducted at sign-in. Most of the day was spent waiting for the Credentials Committee and the Rules Committee to finish battling behind closed doors and certify that the results of the convention would be valid, and therefore that we could go ahead and elect our precinct delegates. The Obama delegation chair was elected to be our precinct's delegate to the state convention. This process (not the election itself, which took about five minutes, but the legal challenges and processes needed to validate the result) took about three hours, but ultimately, the county selects at-large delegates in addition to the precinct delegates so that the overall numbers reflect the results of the presidential preference poll (which came down about 70-30 for Obama in SD 14). So the election of delegates to the state convention was important for the delegates who got picked, and it was really the only action that our delegates saw all day, but mathematically it didn't matter all that much. However, one interesting thing did come out of the legal challenges in the Credentials Committee - there was a delegate in one precinct who, it was discovered, was a Republican Party precinct chair! That delegate seat ended up being vacated. (Scandal!) All in all, this was a fun opportunity to get to know some of my neighbors. It turns out there are several hundred voting precincts in Austin, so each precinct is reasonably small geographically. So these really are people who live close to me (in fact, I believe that one of them, who was elected an alternate for the state convention, lives in the apartment next to me!). And some good did come of my participation - one of the delegates in my precinct is an optometrist, and I'm going to set up an appointment with her so that I can get a prescription for new contacts and hopefully better glasses. =P That's probably more than you needed to know, but ... you asked.
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| Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
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7:59 pm - Haunted by my own inadequacy.
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Last night, I had another strange and memorable dream. I didn't have time to blog about it earlier today, so I won't be able to remember anything beyond the most important parts. But I think I need to write about this.
I had a dream that I was at some sort of gathering (I can't say whether it was a gathering of mathematicians, or something else entirely) that was meeting at some lake somewhere. I guess it was the sort of thing that most would call a "retreat," though I myself have never been on a retreat before.
At this retreat, I was staying next door to my ex-girlfriend (who now studies topology at Stanford). She was proudly showing me a paper that she had just had published. I looked it over and commented on how happy I was for her. I told her I thought it was a really good paper.
Then, all of a sudden, her husband was there, and for some reason she started berating me. She started telling me how glad she was that she ended up with him and not with me, because he has ambitions and the drive to achieve them, whereas I am basically a pathetic human being. I think that what she actually said was something about me not being a "quality" person. I specifically remember that word - "quality." I think the comments had something to do with the fact that I haven't published a "real" paper yet - I co-authored a paper a few years ago, but my contribution to that was nominal. I don't really have a theorem to my name (not even one of minimal significance). I think that was an essential part of her argument that I wasn't a respectable person, but I think the implication was more far-reaching than that - basically, she was taking aim at me for being lazy and underachieving.
I was devastated by this. I didn't have a decent response to it; in the dream I knew she was right. I don't really remember what happened after that; at any rate, I don't think it was as important as what I have described.
I don't think that my ex-girlfriend actually feels this way about me, even though the other half of the comparison is true to life - her husband really is (or at least seems like) a top-notch person. I don't think that my own self-image is as starkly negative as what I encountered in the dream, but I also know that dreams usually have a lot to do with what's going on in real life. And I do feel inadequate - not just in the mathematical sense, but in the "I am an inadequate human being" sense. And these dreams feed on these feelings, and at the same time reinforce them.
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| Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
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5:50 am - The REU: where my LiveJournal began.
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I wish I had more time to blog extensively about the dream I had last night, but I do not. I have to leave shortly to go do the grocery shopping for this morning's Saturday Morning Math Group meeting.
Still, it seems worth blogging that I had a dream about returning to the REU that I attended in the summer of 2001. This isn't the first time I've had a dream about spending a second summer there. It's not because I particularly enjoyed it - there were parts of it that I enjoyed quite a bit, but all you have to do is sample my early LiveJournal entries to see that, on balance, it was a pretty miserable experience for me. I didn't fit in well with the people I was working with, and I didn't end up publishing, mainly because I didn't think my partner and I had a result that was worthy of publication. (I'm still not 100% sure whether this is true, but at the time it seemed pretty clear that we didn't.)
In this particular dream, the REU had expanded considerably; there were scores of people there. Most of them were people I knew from various parts of my life - it was a pretty big (and recognizable) ensemble cast for a dream. I think I was supposed to be there as a "junior advisor" for the younger students or something like that. We were staying in this really big apartment - it was an awesome place for a bunch of people to live, far better than the Luntsford Apartments where I stayed when I actually went there in real life. At one point, there was this huge flap over some of the "recreational" activities people were getting into - some female student's mother came and was up in arms because the guys had had a distance peeing contest in front of everybody. (Nothing really shocking here; my dreams have always been strange territory...)
Eventually, I managed to resolve the matter somewhat magically by calling Anant (the head of the REU) in, standing next to him, and telling the entire group about how Anant was great and that he had given me a second chance to come back and make up for my failure in the summer of 2001. And I said that he was trying to help me salvage my career as a Ph.D. student in math by giving me an opportunity to focus on my research and work on some results that should be a little more tractable than what I was working on at Texas. I talked about how Anant had given me a gift that most people in my situation wouldn't have gotten - especially considering how I failed him back in 2001 by not publishing and not coming up with a theorem of any import. Somehow, everybody was moved, and people started getting along again.
Putting aside the leadership aspect of the dream (which I can't really explain), it's obvious that I'm still feeling a lot of guilt over what happened back then - and a lot of guilt over what's going on right now. I had a great opportunity in the summer of 2001, and I blew it, just like I'm blowing the opportunity I have now.
Anant, I'm sorry.
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| Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
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9:38 pm - News from the caucus.
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The following are some notes I wrote this evening, the night after the Texas Democratic primary/caucus. I realize they're a bit disorganized and seem to change direction without warning. That's because this is from an e-mail I wrote to my mother, which was actually a reply to an e-mail she sent me.
---Hi Mom. The caucus voting in our precinct did take quite a while - about an hour and a half or so, which took the whole process to about 8:45 PM. Then we had to choose delegates on each side (Obama and Clinton); Obama's side was much bigger in our case so it took us a while to settle up. In reality it shouldn't have been that difficult; they needed 13 delegates and 13 alternates in our case (Obama won 13 delegates to the county convention from our precinct), and there were exactly 26 volunteers willing to go to the convention on March 29. What did become difficult was that most people didn't want to be alternates; they wanted to be delegates. I volunteered to be an alternate because this was my first time attending a Travis County Democratic Party function; I figured it best to let the people who had paid their dues have their say first. It took a while to find 13 people willing to volunteer to be alternates so that we wouldn't have to go through the process of having all 30 or so of us place 13 votes for people most of us didn't know. Making the process more challenging was the fact that we had to do everything according to Robert's Rules (parliamentary procedure), and the fact that some people got a little snippy over having to be alternates. I just thought that part was stupid - we're all on the same team here, at least within the Obama caucus - and that's probably the biggest reason why I'm not going to continue to dick around with these guys after this primary is over. One thing that did impress me about the whole process was that my vote did count in a very literal way. Our precinct had 18 delegates to split between Clinton and Obama. Roughly, what is supposed to happen is that each candidate's representation is proportional to the number of people who voted for him/her. Simple and logical enough. But because of a mathematically unlikely scenario that occurred - Hillary had 24.69% of the vote in our precinct and Obama had 74.69%, or something like that - and the fact that a certain tiebreaker relies on the decimal part of the percentages (which were both 0.69%), we had to toss a coin to decide which candidate got the 18th delegate. Clinton won the toss, but I was pretty impressed that if I hadn't showed up, there wouldn't have been a coin toss in the first place; it would have been 13-5 without all that. Conversely, if one more Obama voter had shown up, it would have been 14-4, and I might have been a delegate instead of an alternate (though I can't say that in any seriousness since I was the first to volunteer). A symbolic shame-on-you, Mom! =P It was interesting to see how diverse the 78759 really is. Men and women, old and young, black and white and Hispanic, all showed up to the caucus. (I didn't see that many Asians - maybe they tend to go more Republican. I'm pretty sure they live in our neighborhood though.) I even saw someone who looked familiar and whose name sounded familiar, and I realized just now (about a day later) that she's my next door neighbor. We didn't identify each other there, even though I met her once when I gave her some mail that had been incorrectly delivered to me. And all of this happened in a Baptist church. That part was pretty funny to me. I am saddened, and somewhat surprised, by the fact that Clinton won Texas. The good news is, we're represented proportionally - it's not all-or-nothing. Clinton's edge in our state is minimal; things could have been much more disastrous. Whatever ground Obama lost in the Texas primary, he may still make up in the Texas caucuses. I think there is a lot of reason to believe that Republicans got into the Democratic primary and tried to sabotage it in favor of Clinton - when you look at the county-by-county results, you see that Clinton won virtually every county except for the ones around Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, and Houston, where there are significant Democratic constituencies. I looked at Parker County - there were 10,000 or so votes in the Democratic primary. Do you think that those are all actual Democrats? I don't. Now, there are a couple of reasons why a Republican might want to vote Clinton: (1) Clinton is more beatable in November, and (2) Clinton is the more bearable of the two nominees from a Republican's point of view, though I can't quite fathom why. Either way, a firm Republican who does that is gaming the system. Texas is an "open primary" state; you don't have to be registered as either party to vote in the party's primary. Still, you're not supposed to vote in the Democratic primary if you're firmly Republican; there's a statement on the ballot to this effect that you agree to by casting your ballot. I'm not in favor of closing the primaries and doing the whole process behind locked doors just to keep Republicans out, but I think this illustrates why having staggered primaries (with Texas voting eight or so weeks after Iowa, etc. etc.) is just a disastrous approach to democracy. This is the first time in ages that the Democratic primary in Texas has really mattered. That may not bother a lot of people, but it bothers me. I think the people who should be really pissed off this year are Huckabee supporters in Texas - I think that Huckabee could have and would have won this state if the media hadn't declared McCain the winner before we had our Republican primary. But hey, at least they got to cross over and screw with the Democratic primary, so I guess things aren't too bad for them. This isn't "one person, one vote"; it's "one person, one vote, if the circumstances dictate that way"; anyone who seriously believes in the core principles of democracy ought to be bothered by that. The whole "3 AM" ad just irritates me. This, to me, exemplifies the fact that Americans don't really get how our government works. Bush had his "3 AM" moment when the planes hit the towers. What did he do? He sat in a classroom and continued to read a children's book with the students until they were finished, then excused himself so that he could respond to the most deadly foreign attack on American soil in our nation's history - approximately ten minutes after it occurred. This isn't just Michael Moore propaganda; it's absolute fact, as admitted by the Bush administration themselves. And yet most people - at least on the Republican side - regard Bush as a decent "3 AM" guy. Why? Because he has implemented an aggressive national security program (let's set aside for now whether it works well), and has implemented an aggressive foreign policy program (ditto). These things generally work, or fail to work, because of the people who run them - these are the president's advisors, chiefs of staff, military personnel, etc. If a Democrat wins the election, a lot of these people are likely to come from the same set of national security and military experts, regardless of whether it's Obama or Clinton. The president's primary role (in my humble estimation) is to determine what the overall philosophy is going to be. I think that if we suffer another 9/11-esque attack, the overall philosophy is going to be roughly the same no matter who is president: Hunt down the people who masterminded it, kill the people at the top, and incapacitate the rest. Still, I have to admire Clinton's political savvy, because in one fell swoop, she (and her campaign staff) managed to do two fairly remarkable things: (1) Convince the American people that there is a significant correlation between national security / military expertise and political experience (the only meaningful arena in which Clinton has a real, measurable advantage over Obama), (2) Get away with what John Kerry couldn't get away with, which is the "I was for the war before I was against it" trick - and actually turn it into a positive! (I'm willing to declare war on anyone I vaguely suspect of planning an attack on American soil!) So yeah, if Clinton gets the nomination and subsequently wins the general election, we'll have a president who is very good at deflecting blame, attacking people who don't agree with her, and fostering partisan rancor in Washington. That's the same animal we've been feeding for the last eight years, just in a different color. I can't be sure that Obama wouldn't be the same way if he were elected, but he gives me reason to believe that he wouldn't be as bad in this regard. The thing that really upsets me about Clinton is that her message (whether she acknowledges it or not) is that if you're an optimist, it's because you're not paying attention or thinking about the details. That is a very patronizing attitude towards any young person who still believes in America and believes that some good can come out of the democratic process. And I do not like being patronized.
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| Friday, February 22nd, 2008
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12:52 pm - Thoughts on Thursday's Democratic debate.
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This will be brief, since I can't stay online much longer. But I wanted to post some thoughts about the Democratic debate and the ensuing voter response:
1. Did it seem to anyone else like the lion's share of the questions were posed to Clinton, with Obama having the chance to wait and rebut? Since there was no hard-and-fast time limit - that is, a rebuttal was allowed to take as much time or more time than the original answer - this situation seemed advantageous to Obama.
2. Clinton seemed a lot smoother than Obama overall in her responses. Clinton was steady and fluent; Obama had a lot of stops and stutters. It has been suggested that this is because Clinton is more scripted in what she says, but I'm not sure I buy this; I think that her answer to the last question showed a lot of cleverness and quick thinking on her part.
3. It seems idiotic to me to label Obama's use of a passage from Deval Patrick's speeches as "plagiarism"; this mislabeling is especially pernicious given that the debate took place on a college campus, where plagiarism and scholastic dishonesty are real issues. In academia, you are measured by your ability to generate original ideas. Your value is determined by your ability to create something that nobody else has created before. And when you are pursuing a degree, you are expected to demonstrate your ability to respond to challenges without other people propping you up. That's why the idea of using words or passages that "belong" to somebody else is frowned upon in an academic environment. But politics isn't, and shouldn't be, about who can come up with the most original ideas; it should be about who can best synthesize pieces and parts of other people's philosophies about governance into a cohesive, beneficial policy program. Politicians aren't expected to reinvent the wheel; why should they?
4. On a similar note, it has been said that Obama has lifted a lot of his policy proposals from Clinton, and that his success has been due to the fact that he sells Clinton's policy ideas better than Clinton does. If this is the case, I think this is legitimate cause for concern. I need to see that Obama is capable of generating policy on his own (or at least that he can find qualified people to assist with this); I believe that Clinton has shown that she can do this.
5. On the other hand, I think Obama did a nice job presenting himself as a consensus-seeker. Both candidates were vitriolic in their treatment of the Bush administration during the debate, but for me, Clinton has always come across as more bitterly partisan than Obama. I certainly can't fault anyone for having an overall negative view of the Bush administration, but a president who wants to be as effective as possible will make an effort to work across party lines. I see more of this from Obama than I do from Clinton.
6. I've noticed an interesting difference between Clinton supporters and Obama supporters, especially after the debate. Obama supporters seem to focus on expressing their admiration for Obama; when they go negative, they do so at the expense of Clinton herself - her record, her personality, her baggage. When Clinton supporters go negative, they seem to go after the process and the voters - they complain about how all the major media outlets are biased (a claim I wouldn't necessarily dismiss), and insinuate that people who support Obama do so because they are somehow "charmed" by him and think that electing a president is like voting for a winner on American Idol (the American Idol analogy has gotten an unbelievable amount of play on message boards and call-in shows). This may be simply a result of the dynamic we're seeing right now - Obama is perceived as "winning" the primary while Clinton is perceived as "losing" (even though the two are neck-and-neck until the March 4 primaries conclude), so Clinton supporters are looking for people to blame. It may also have to do with the fact that Obama's political career is just beginning; he hasn't had time to gather a lot of political baggage, so it's hard to formulate a potent attack against him. But it is upsetting that so many Clinton supporters seem to want to attack Obama supporters.
7. This morning, The Daily Texan announced that it is endorsing Hillary Clinton. Among the reasons the editorial board cited for their decision (which they chose to withhold until after the debate), two that stood out were (1) the fact that Obama didn't spend as much time campaigning in Austin as Clinton did, and (2) Obama's statement during the debate that "all the major newspapers in Texas" had endorsed him. The Daily Texan editorial staff petulantly declared that the Texan is a major newspaper (serving a readership of 50,000!), and they hadn't come out and endorsed Obama (of course, at the time of the debate, they hadn't endorsed Clinton either). Also, the writer of the column said that Clinton's staff was more helpful than Obama's staff in securing tickets to the debate for Daily Texan staffers. Personally, I think that The Daily Texan is a pretty good newspaper, as student newspapers go. But it's not a "major newspaper," and it really demonstrated this by taking the low road in its endorsement of Clinton. There are many good reasons to support Clinton, but personal favors and snubs aren't among them. This was irresponsible journalism at its worst.
Right now, I like Obama for character, electability, and his take on health care policy (something I could write a separate blog post about). I like Clinton's experience and conviction. If I had to choose the candidate who is least likely to back down from a fight, I would choose Clinton. However, I am tentatively in Obama's camp right now. Clinton has made some progress with me; if she wins the nomination, I am now much more likely to vote for her in the general election. But I probably won't vote for her in the primary. This is a choice between two very good candidates; for me, Obama is the greater of two goods.
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| Sunday, February 10th, 2008
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2:18 pm - Response to willbloom's comment on browsers.
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This is a response to willbloom's comment on my previous entry about browsers; please take a look back if you haven't read it.
First of all, prior to your response, I found a way around the issue I was having, which was to do a "System Restore" (which I found sort of funny - it's the only area of my life in which I am able to erase something ugly that happened in the recent past) to a more peaceful time when I was using Version 2.0.0.11 of "Browser B," and then configured my browser so that it won't automatically download updates. (In fact I told it not to even check for updates, which is probably sort of an extreme solution, but I'm happy with it, at least for now. I'm aware that Firefox 3 is in beta, and I suppose I'll download it eventually once I have some assurance that it's ready for prime time. The version I was having trouble with was 2.0.0.12.)
Upon reading your response and reflecting, I think the appropriate question is not "Which browser is better?", but rather "Which browser is better (less headache-inducing) for Windows users?" Now, I don't think it should be Mozilla's responsibility to try to be the better browser for the very users for whom IE is intended (though if they can, more power to them); nor do I think that it should be their responsibility to keep track of the most minute changes in an operating system produced by a corporation that is not very highly regarded for its transparency. In other words, I don't think that Mozilla is shirking some social responsibility by not keeping its browser constantly in line with the needs of Windows users.
Still, I'd like to see more Firefox advocates willing to concede that there is a real problem, and that they need more time to rework the software so that, when a Windows user downloads it, he/she will get a browser that is compatible with how Windows works (if indeed it is Firefox's aim to serve Windows users as well as Linux users and whoever else). I don't see that willingness right now. I see people suggesting that users check whether they have the "Work Offline" option checked and whether Windows Firewall is blocking the new version of Firefox (both perfectly reasonable and responsible suggestions - in fact I checked Windows Firewall and had to specifically permit it to give Firefox access, which was a first for me). If these rather simple fixes don't work, people will flail about and resort to the more irresponsible suggestions - you have a virus and need to upgrade your security software, you accidentally downloaded a malware version of Firefox (???), you need to reformat your hard drive (!!!). These are all actual suggestions I came across by searching for answers to why Firefox 2.0.0.12 couldn't connect to the internet. Of course, for this I blame the fact that I just ran a Google search and tried the first advice I got, which wasn't officially sanctioned by Mozilla - it's just the visually-impaired leading the blind. Then again, I suspect it's better than what I would have gotten had I asked Mozilla themselves, which I think would have been nothing.
Really, I would have been happy, and this journal entry would never have happened, if Mozilla had just said "For now, you [Windows users who are having this particular issue] need to go back to version 2.0.0.11 (which I'm sure isn't radically different anyway); here's a link where you can download it, and here's how to configure your browser so that it doesn't automatically download updates." Thankfully I managed to figure it out on my own, but having Mozilla say that would have meant something to me. I don't think they even have links to old versions of Firefox on their site (though I didn't dig very deep). I think that's unfortunate for a group that prides itself on access and letting users make their own decisions about what they want.
Of course, you and other Linux fans who read this journal entry and response need to keep in mind the following things:
1. I'm obviously writing all this with no technically sound concept of how computer software works and is designed; I'm merely taking aim at what I perceive to be the cultural / ethics side of the issue, and that's naturally going to be an incomplete point of view.
2. My point of view is further clouded by my (admittedly irrational) anger over the fact that I am forced to deal with Linux and the surrounding culture at work; there's really no way around it. My biggest issue with the Linux culture is that most Linux fans don't seem to understand what it's like to be (by their standards) computer-illiterate. Most human beings don't have any formal education in computer literacy that would help them understand why a system like Unix / Linux / whatever is superior to the more corporate alternatives available on the market. I realize that most Linux fans didn't take classes in school where you learned about operating systems and software design and, for that matter, what the relationship is between Unix and Linux (I still don't get that). But you picked it up because you people understand computers and you were able to pick it up by being exposed to it and tooling around with it. Most people are about as computer-literate as the average person is mathematically literate, which is to say not at all; and that's unfortunate because the need for computer literacy is now more pervasive in our culture than pure mathematical literacy is. But I think this is why these people prefer using Windows or using Macs over Linux - it's because Windows (for example) is made so that an idiot like me can use it. I'm not going to make any global claims about which is more "user-friendly," Windows or Linux, because I think the question is inextricably tied to the question of what kind of user we're talking about. For a user who doesn't want to need to know how everything works, I think Windows is more friendly; for a user who understands computers and wants transparency and the ability to configure things to his/her liking, Linux is by far the best. People on both sides of the debate really need to understand that this coin really does have two sides. I'm willing to concede that I need to make more of an effort to reach out and understand how Linux works, because I'm a math person - knowing how stuff works is supposed to be in my blood - and somewhat more importantly, I know I'm going to be interacting a lot with computer-literate people. But I find that most of the tech-savvy people I interact with (present company excluded, of course) are about as good at educating the common man as mathematicians are at educating mathematically-average citizens.
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12:13 am - A tale of two browsers.
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Suppose you have two browsers; let's call them Browser A and Browser B.
Browser A is aesthetically unpleasing, has a lot of unnecessary "junk" attached to it, is maligned by most people who know (or claim to know) computers, and is regarded by most as a symbol of corporate plutocracy. Aside from such symbolic considerations, nobody has produced for me a concrete, convincing reason why one should feel guilty or insecure about using Browser A.
Browser B is the apple of the intellectual elite's eye (partly because it is open-source, or so I understand), is raved about by virtually everyone who uses it; and 99% of the time, it is marginally superior to Browser A. The other 1% of the time (or perhaps I should say "for 1% of users"), it automatically downloads and installs a newer version of itself against the user's will; this newer version cannot load any webpages (despite the fact that the user's internet connection is working perfectly well, and Browser A works perfecty well). When users complain that the update does not work, proponents of the browser direct the blame towards corporate programs and operating systems that the users are running, and refuse to address the actual problem.
I've described both browsers in somewhat vivid detail. I'm sure you realize by now that Browser A is Internet Explorer, and Browser B is Mozilla Firefox.
Given a choice between functionality 100% of the time and greatness 99% of the time*, I'll take Browser A. We're not talking about sex or good wine; we're talking about browsers. A browser has to work.
* I am willing to concede that Browser A and Browser B alike have problems, and thus the figure "100%" is a bit disingenuous on my part. However, part of my point is that each browser is associated with its own culture, which affects the support that users receive when things inevitably go wrong. I sincerely believe that the Mozilla / Linux / open source movement wants to help people; unfortunately, their concept of "help" has evolved into something analogous to an evangelical Christian's concept of "helping" a nonbeliever or a newly minted convert: if you have problems, it is because of a deficiency in your faith, not because there is a legitimate theological/technological queston that the evangelical movement needs to answer.
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mathjoker's journal