Congrats Sol.

My friend finished his Preliminary Exams yesterday... I suppose I'm up next...

Blue Tractor in Ann Arbor

The Blue Tractor opened up in Ann Arbor on Monday. The An Arbor Chronicle wrote up a piece about it, and yesterday, I decided to "lunch" there, and so - after my Spanish class - cycled down Washington (to where Jewel Heart used to be) to pop in there. The decor is very blue-collar, Midwest-farmer kitch (if that is even something you might call "kitch"), with weathered wood on the walls (hope they sand them down a little to ensure that kids don't get splinters) and radiator grates of old tractors lining the walls like pictures. The lighting is provided by large glass "headlights" that hang from the ceiling chandelier-style. Looking up into the ceiling-space, you notice large exposed ductwork hiding against a blacked-out background; the "exposed infrastructure" look mashing together with tractor-and-weathered wood.

One small note - the layout is a little odd, probably due to the fact that it is spread out over two store areas. The side with the restaurant entrance does have a nice anteroom/foyer that doesn't have two doors in-line with each other (a really great thing when it's winter in Ann Arbor, and opening a door - or two in-line doors - forces bitterly cold air into the restaurant). However, once you enter the restaurant - if you want to go to the bar - you have to walk through the dining area. Although this is a similar situation to what you find at Grizzly Peak, in that multi-storefront restaurant/micro-brew you walk through the waiting area to get to the main bar (the "Den" has its own entrance, along with the shared entrance with the Peak). Here, there will be always be the chance that there will be a few diners that will be seated next to the high-traffic path to the bar (unless they decide to provide a dedicated bar entrance). It is also quite dark in the dining area, and while this might not be a hardship for dinner during the winter, it was a little off-putting to be seated in a dim room with rough, dark wood walls during an otherwise relatively bright late-fall day. The bar area, however, has large floor-to-ceiling windows that let in a lot of light.

Since I knew that Blue Tractor was associated with the same company that owns Grizzly Peak - located two blocks west - and Cafe Habana - located almost directly east - (at least it seems that way on the website), I decided to try the beer sampler, and at $5.95, I thought it was a good deal. Perhaps continuing on with the Midwest-farmer theme (there only needed to be large pictures of "amber waves of grain" to complete the image), the beer sampler arrived in a six-muffin tin, with one glass given over to a helping of honey-roasted peanuts. IMHO, a nice idea for a serving tray, especially with the provision of the peanuts. One problem is that if the beer selection increases beyond six beers, the tray would become obsolete... This makes me wonder if Blue Tractor will increase their selection in the future (or not)... VERDICT: 3/5. The beers were decently good, but most were much lighter than I prefer (the seasonal autumn ale I really liked, though).

Looking over the menu, I decided to go for the five sliders with shoestring fries. At $9.95, this, too, was (IMHO) a good deal - so long as the sliders were good. I was not disappointed. They came out in a basket - the sliders stacked on top of the fries. The mayo-based sauce used in the sliders was quite good, and each patty was cooked to perfection. It was also a lot of food. VERDICT: 5/5.

Now, would I go to Blue Tractor again? Sure, if not for the beers, then to see if the rest of the menu items compare favorably with the sliders.

UPDATE: Apparently, other people also found it to their liking...

Unfortunate?

I saw this on the discount-books racks at Borders (store #1) and thought that it was an unfortunate encapsulation of our society. (Mind you, I'm not saying philosophy ain't important. I'm just saying that more people should be interested in mathematics and physics.) Hopefully the reason why biology ideas or ecology ideas weren't on the shelf was due to their massive popularity... (but I somehow doubt it.)

Construction progress

The North Quad has been slowly rising. Now that the structure has taken its (apparent) final shape, I expect "filling in the gaps" (with exterior walls, interior walls, windows, etc.) will be pretty quick.

Lofts 411's central crane is being taken off in this photo. The exterior facade seems to be almost completed - just some "fillin in" along the central line of the building. Of course, now that the crane is off, all heavy lifting is being done from the street by a massive truck-crane, blocking another lane of traffic going down Washington... (Oh, well, such is the price of progress.)

View out my door

Funky planters

Inhabitat has a nice story about an upside-down planter that supposedly saves lots of water, not to mention space and generally looks cool. The planter is from Boskke and costs a whopping $75 - $195. Inhabitat claims that this will pay for itself since the system saves lots of water while also being an easy path to green-thumbness (saving cost in water bills and plant costs), I am a little dubious on this claim.

I do think that having upside-down planters are pretty cool, don't get me wrong. However, I don't think that paying $75 - $195 for a smallish planter, hung on the ceiling, is really going to pay for itself, save for in spaces with lots of ambient light. (Plus, I don't think I can pay for the extravigance, based on my graduate student salary.)

I also have to wonder how the plants will grow over time. The site shows basically three types of plants, a Wandering Jew plant, a type of palm, and an orchid. Now, the Wandering Jew plant is a plant that does well in situations where it hangs, since it is a ground-cover type of plant. However, I don't know how palms and orchids would adapt to living upside-down. These are - I believe - plants that grow (generally) "upward", and so my initial thought is that they will eventually try and grow "upward". This is - if my botany memory serves - a growth-movement that is based on gravity. Since the plant is hung upside-down, it will, therefore (if I'm correct), be "forced" by its own growth plan, to grow upward. This will eventually make very interesting shapes of growth, with an orchid who's stem curvs "upward" from the initial "down" position, and palms that splay outward in an attempt to grow eventually "up".

This may mean a growth in the diversity of plant forms that we find "pleasing" (or not). After all, if upside-down fake Christmas trees are "desireable" then upside-down orchids may well likely be, too.

Roosevelt and my dad

FDR said:

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

My father said:

Do something, even if it's wrong.

Wikipedia calls Adaptive Management:

a structured, iterative process of optimal decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring. In this way, decision making simultaneously maximizes one or more resource objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. AM is often characterized as "learning by doing."

More on Palin's deficiences becoming exposed

This time from a clip on the "Oh, Really?" Factor. Full transcript below (names might not be spelled properly):

O:        Joining us now from Phoenix with the inside story on the governor’s odyssey, FOXNews Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron who has covered the entire McCain campaign. Alright, let’s take it from the beginning, in the, um, convention in, uh, *sniff* Minneapolis-St.Paul everybody was happy big bump, this-and-that. When did the first signs of tension develop?

C:         Well, it was actually before the convention. There were some people in the McCain campaign who thought that the selection of Sarah Palin was risky because the didn’t believe that she had enough knowledgeability to carry it off, and there were some objections. The McCain campaign needed a game-changer, they said as much. Some might even describe the selection of Palin as something like a Hail Mary. But early on, they began to discover that there were these gaps in her knowledge. I just want to rattle off a couple of the things that insiders say she simply didn’t know. There were real problems with basic civics: government structures, municipal, state and federal government responsibilities. She didn’t know the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement we’re told. Those, of course, being the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA: a major campaign issue that woulda been something of a deficit. We’re told that she didn’t, she wasn’t actually able to name all the countries in North America as part of that debate, and she didn’t understand – McCain aides told me today – that Africa was a continent and not a country, and actually asked them, they argue, they say if South Ameri- South Africa wasn’t just part of the country as opposed to a country in the continent. They go on to say that she didn’t understand the idea of American Exceptionalism – a classic principle of Wilsonian doctrine that says that the United States is exceptional in the world and therefore has a very special role in leading the globe.

O:        Yeah, okay. So her frame-of-reference in history and geography and current events was weak, according to your sources. And so that – but she can be tutored. I mean, the woman’s not a stupid woman. Ah…

C:         That’s right.

O:        You, you can tutor people, and you can get people up to speed on the basics of, “here’s the government, here’s the excpetionalism that we’re talking about, here’s the world map, here’s our interactions. So it’s gotta be more than that. Go.

C:         Well, one of the things that happened was that she took a little bit of interview preparation before the Charlie Gibson ABC interview, and by most accounts that went fairly well, although she was left a little bit irritated by some of the questions and the general reporting of that interview. But then, the Katie Couric interview came and for that the refused any interview preparation. It didn’t go well, and she blamed, ostensibly, Nicole Wallis, a senior adviser who, in fact, worked for CBS with Katie Couric and had organized some of that interview, and then the rift really began to sort of unfold. That refusal of debate prep caused some problems.

O:        Alright, so she didn’t wanna be, uh, bogged down with a lesson before Ms Couric talked to her, and then she goes in to talk to Couric, and it “doesn’t go well”? What does that mean?

C:         No.

O:        I mean, what was the deficit of the interview?

C:         Well, in fact, McCain aides will argue that there were no unfair questions from Katie Couric, though the reporting of the interview might have been snarky and an example of the mainstream media beating up on a Republican conservative and a woman. They argue that the questions from Couric, on the merits, weren’t unfair. Well, afterwards, Palin began to attack staff and suggest that she was mishandled, and communicated that to a handful of people both in the McCain/Palin campaign and outside.

O:        What was her beef that she was mishandled?

C:         Well, that she hadn’t been warned. That she hadn’t been steered to opportunities where there might have been a more friendly audience, and mostly she said that she wanted to get out on the campaign trail and speak and defend herself. That was something that the campaign was definitely afraid that she wasn’t prepared to do, so there was resistance. Now, there are other anecdotes, Bill.

O:        That’s what happened with me. I talked to her on the phone, she wanted to do the interview, and then the McCain people wouldn’t put her out there alone. The senator had a sit-down next to her and logistically we just couldn’t pull it off. Okay. So all of this now makes perfect sense up to… say a week ago. Then there were reports that Sarah Palin herself, under the pressure – and she was under enormous pressure – started to crack. Is that true?

C:         Yeah. There are stories that say she would look at her press clippings in the morning and throw what has been described to me as tantrums. The way I understand it, there were time when she would be so nasty and angry, uh, at staff that they would virtually be reduced to tears, there was the throwing of paperwork and things of this nature. And a whole series of descriptions, anecdotes all, from the McCain campaign and other insider side of it that suggest a certain level of performance that they were caught off-guard by. One of the more infamous stories that’s now come out is that there was a time when McCain staffers went to collect her at her hotel room and she had just stepped out of the shower and essentially met them wrapped in a bathrobe. They were taken aback by that, found it rather uncommon. They have suggested that she is a bit of a shopaholic, and that on more than one occasion she would go out and buy clothes that to many seemed unnecessary because the campaign had already provided her with a very large wardrobe. Ah, a wardrobe that famously rang up a bill of about $150,000, mostly because they bought extra sizes to make sure everything fit. But the aides say she took a lot of extra clothes.

O:        That sounds like nit-picking now, you know?

C:         Oh, listen. There’s a lot of back-biting that’s going on here, not just between the McCain staff and Palin, but also within the McCain staff, and last week Randy Schuneman, the former foreign policy adviser for the McCain campaign was fired for allegedly leaking some of the back-biting about Palin. He is reported to have been a real Palin fan and didn’t like the fact that they were nailing her and talking behind her back. He put it in the newspapers, and for that he was fired! Well, at the last minute, the McCain campaign – Senator McCain himself – said that, “let’s not make that public, let’s keep it quiet.” That’s not the kind of message that they want. He had been under fire for a chaotic campaign that was often sort of contradicting itself and wrapped up in this type of pettiness. It was almost omnipresent in the staff in the final week, not withstanding Senator McCain’s campaigning barnstorming at a frenzied pace around the country. This is something that the campaign staff says was unprecedented.

Palin's deficiences becoming exposed

I think that there will be more finger-pointing down the road. This first one, though, is not too surprising in the big-picture; the implications, though, are staggering:

I had thought - and I said as much - that Palin had laughable foreign policy experience (let alone foreign experience). Seems like the former McCain staffers are saying that she didn't know Africa was not a single country and which countries are in NAFTA. These are two things I had to learn in 7th grade (when NAFTA was still on-the-table)! These are not new. These are not "gotcha" issues.

If she didn't know about the implications of French, British, and Belgian colonialism in Sub-Saharan African politics that would be one thing. If she didn't know about the problems of apartheid in South Africa, that would be another thing (less forgivable in my book). If she didn't know about the causes of the Ethiopian civil war that led to massive famine in the mid-1940s, that is another thing still (even less forgivable in my book than the lack of knowledge of S. African apartheid). But that she apparently DIDN'T KNOW that Africa is NOT A COUNTRY? Boggles the mind.



The reporter said it right: it was a Hail-Mary pass. Unfortunately, governance has more long-term implications for those Hail-Mary passes than in football. (Hell, a single Hail-Mary pass is unlikely to give you four more years of good football; and football has an off-season for recovery. In contrast, politics is continuous and has NO off-season.)

Bah.

Why am I not really surprised?

A story from the Huffington Post: Right-wing bloggers not really the best-of-sports (and that's putting it really nice).

Again, I personally lay this at the feet of McCain/Palin. It was their fear/hate mongering that lead to the condoning of this sort of angry rhetoric. Of course, this only also goes to show how much out-of-touch the GOP is with Real Americans (as opposed to Sarah Palin's "real" Americans). I mean what the frick:

POWERLINE: "Sure Obama won, but why couldn't he win by EVEN MORE? Huh? HUHHHHHH?? HUHHHHHHHH!?!? [Head Explodes]"

Obama won around 52 percent of the popular vote, defeating John McCain by between five and six points. That's nothing like the true landslides of the past: Reagan by ten points in 1980 and 18 in 1984; Nixon by 23 in 1972; or even Bush by eight in 1988. And yet, with hindsight, it is remarkable how much Obama had going for him. After breaking his pledge to take public financing he raised more money, by far, than any Presidential candidate in history, outspending McCain nearly two to one. Millions of new voters, many of them minority voters, were registered, and they went heavily for Obama. Obama enjoyed the monolithic support of the entertainment industry and was something of a fad among the young. He benefited greatly from being an African-American; the idea that his victory would be a good thing for America, on that ground, was widespread even among his opponents. He ran largely against a retiring President who, for three years, has rarely seen his name appear in a sentence that did not include the word "unpopular." He had the active support of essentially 100 percent of the nation's news media. And, perhaps most important, he benefited from a financial crisis that struck at the most opportune moment (for him) and was unfairly blamed on the Republicans by most voters.
Despite all of this, Obama mustered only a five-point win.

Wha...? This peeves me (even though ideologically I can't stand them), because it will waste a whole bunch of time and effort in keeping a large number of people (who - for greater or lesser reasons - have decided to tune in to these bloggers for their opinion of the world) in the dark by consciously trying to deny the new reality in which we reside. What happened to all those people who said that God would decide what would be best for America? (If that were true, then wouldn't that mean that God decided that Obama should be President, and that you should accept it?) What happened to all those people who were so sure that they would win? (Oh, yeah. They conflated their desire with reality - something that has been happening to them more and more often.)

I do, of course, want to see how much "Presidential deference" Fox News ends up showing to Obama come January and beyond...

Obama in Obama

As part of my semi-regular writing topic, I am including this nice story coming out of my other nation - Japan. There is a small town in Japanese called Obama (小浜). Throughout much of this past US presidential campaign, this town has gone Barack Obama-crazy. They sent the candidate a pair of lucky chopsticks (what they were known for prior to having a US president with the same name... and likely becoming more than a casual speck on the map of Japan) back in February (or January) and received a nice letter from Obama, which included the Japanese sign off: あなたの友達 [Barack Obama].

I expect that they are hoping for a personal visit by the 44th President once he is able to travel to Japan. We'll see if that happens. (I sure hope it does.)

In English


Kind of in English


In Japanese


In Japanese


In Japanese

"IMPEACH?!?!" Barack Obama? For what?

Via PhysOrg:


Apparently, there are some people who can't really get themselves to accept that their candidate lost the presidential election. Some people on Facebook have decided that they are going to try and get support to impeach Barack Hussein Obama. For what? Apparently PhysOrg doesn't know:

Barack Obama has not even been sworn in yet as the 44th president of the United States but groups are springing up online calling for his impeachment.

On Facebook, an "Impeach Barack Obama" group has attracted more than 700 members and a lively debate about the Democrat's election victory on Tuesday over Republican John McCain.

Another Facebook group of the same name has 160 members and urges others to join because "we might as well get a head start on the impeachment of Obama."

"There are a lot of Americans out there that do not fully understand the concept of Socialism or Communism which is why they've elected Obama as president," it says.

Yet another Facebook group, "Impeach Barack Hussein Obama," has 160 members.

It decries that Obama "has voiced support for various unconstitutional programs such as the assault weapons ban, universal healthcare, and various schemes for wealth distribution."

"What are we going to do about it? IMPEACH HIM!" it says.Obama still has some way to go, however, to equal the number of "Impeach George Bush" groups on Facebook, which lists at least 95 such groups with varying membership.

  I can't really figure it out, either... From the first one on the list (with over 900 members at 6:50PM on Nov. 5, 2008):

Get on board if you want to be ready to impeach Barack Obama.

Each president recites the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

This group has been created under the assumption that it takes approximately 7 seconds for a modern day President to violate this oath. So we should be ready.

"In some governments it is held that 'the king can do no wrong;' here we know no king but the law, no monarch but the constitution; we hold that every man may do wrong; the higher he is in office, the more reason there is that he be obliged to answer for his conduct; and a great officer, if treacherous, is a great criminal, so that he ought to be made to suffer a great and exemplary punishment."

--Elementary Catechism on the Constitution of the United States, Arthur J. Stansbury, 1828

WTF? I just don't know... This does, though, seem to relate to what I was saying in my other post about how McCain/Palin are leaving behind a fractured, fractious, and wounded country of their own creation.

The shift in voting.

Razib has (as usual) an interesting piece that only makes me think more about race and voting. Linking to the NYTimes (but not to anyplace in particular), he shows a graphic of how people voted in 2008's presidential race in relation to the 2004 race, by county.

Two things are clear to me (and to him). The first thing that is apparent to me is that - holy fuck - Indiana shifted overwhelmingly toward Democrats! This state hasn't voted Democratic for decades, the rate to which they didn't vote Democratic is indicated by the fact that although Obama was able to shift their vote by upwards of 20%+ in much of the state, he just barely won the state (1,367,264 for Obama vs. 1,341,101 for McCain and 29,186 for "Other" -- just over 26,000 votes between the two -- meaning that if Indianans voted McCain instead of "Other", then Obama would have not won Indiana, even though he shifted the state 20%+ toward the Democrats!!)

The second is that large parts of the traditional "South" and parts of Appalachia went more Republican than much of the rest of the country. (I'm not including Arizona and Alaska here, since these two states are where John McCain and Sarah Palin, respectively, are from.) Remember, if a county is shifted toward a grey-like color, then it didn't change it's voting standard by much this year around (0-4.9% change since 2004). That means that large parts of the country voted 5-19.9% Democratic than in 2004, and almost all of Indiana voted 20%+ more Democratic than 2004! Other places that changed more than 20% toward the Dems include much of the Texas-Mexico border counties, western Montana, eastern North Dakota, New Hampshire, and parts of New Mexico. However, it seems like much of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and (especially) Arkansas and West Virgina voted for the Republican in even greater numbers than they did when the country re-elected Bush in 2004. The deep-red of Arkansas and West Virginia (20%+ shift Republican) indicates that many more people had to have voted Democrat that voted Republican in this election. The question is, "WHY?"

Well, Razib thinks it might have to do with race:

If you filtered out blacks I'm pretty sure that the swath of red would be far more discernible in the South.* The blue patches match up very well with the Black Belt. It looks like the East South Central Census division, the core of Old Dixie is for now the Other America, along with parts of Appalachia.


I spot checked 2004 exits and compared them to this year. Whites in the deep South seem to have shifted Republican against the national trend. We're back to old school sectionalism, but now blacks can vote. People have said that the white vote barely budged; I don't think that's true, Southern and non-Southern whites shifted in different directions and balanced out. That's not a trivial detail.

I think that while it might have to do with race, it may also have to do with the GOP campaign whipping up such a partisan campaign in the last few weeks as to make the atmosphere in Palin's "real America" a poisonous one, and - might I add - one smacking of more than just a splash of racism. That McCain would be openly boo-ed during his concession speech when he first mentioned Obama gave me serious pause after all the shouted commentary from the campaign trail about, "Kill him!" and "Terrorist" and "He scares me" etc., alongside the (luckily) foiled neo-Nazi serial murder plot, the (still apparently baseless) GOP attacks on ACORN's voter-registration drives, accounts of voter intimidation, and attempts of disenfranchising Democratic voters from their right to vote. All of these took place during the last few weeks of the campaign, tacitly condoned by McCain, egged on by Palin and Joe-the-Plumber. (I'll admit that I watched Obama's acceptance speech with the fear that someone would use the setting as a perfect one for a televised attempt on his life.) I personally feel that large parts of the American population have been "broken" by the GOP election campaign, and - like many small shop owners - I say, "You broke it, you own it. Pay up." I feel that the GOP election campaign should the time and effort to campaign in those states where they so heavily campaigned for their vision of a "true America" to help heal the wounds that their divisive campaign had caused. However, that's not going to happen. Sarah Palin - in a post-election interview - said this:

I can’t wait to get back to work full-time, which we’ve been continuing to do as governor of Alaska, but there in Alaska. ... Don’t know what the heck’s gonna happen in 2012, again just very anxious to, um, get back to work there in Anchorange and in Juneau, making sure that the people of Alaska are well-served. ... [It's] time to move forward, move on. I certainly am not one to ever waste time looking backwards, pointing fingers and playing the blame game – I’m not going to participate in that at all.There are good things in store for this nation, and we’re only going to get there in reaching America’s destiny if we all unite, work together, and, um, certainly put aside the pettiness and obsessive partisanship that just gets in the way of doing what’s right for the people of America. So I won’t participate in any of the negativity.

She's not going going to "waste time" looking backwards? She's not going to "participate in any of the negativity"? She's just "can't wait" to get the frick outta Dodge, leaving  her own steaming pile of hate and soreness behind? 'Coz that's the right thing to do...

I'm going to let the social scientists analyze the crap out of this election, what happened leading up to it, why people are sore afterwards, and let them decide whether McCain/Palin are ultimately responsible for creating an image of a divided America of "us 'real' folk" vs "those 'liberal, elitist, uppity, socialist, communist, fascist, god-hating, take-your-guns, baby-killing, effete, soft-on-terror, Iran-loving, Al-Qaeda-colluding, San Francisco-value' non-Americans". (I think they are. It's irresponsible to do that to form of fear-mongering and hate-sowing to a single person. It's even more irresponsible to do that to a group of people you supposedly want to help.)

I watch history

History happened today at 11PM... The second the polls closed on the West coast, the news organizations called the election for Obama. WooT!

While watching the McCain concession speech, I was disgusted by the amount of boo-ing that was going on. It was embarrassing. It was unhonorable. It was - imho - exactly to be expected from the type of crowd McCain's campaign seems to have attracted over the past month.

Does a single vote count?

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake posits the following:

I always get in arguments with mathematically-inclined people about whether to vote or not. The mathematically-inclined point out very reasonably that the chances of your vote being decisive are perishingly slim.

(These mathematics are explained clearly in this PBS video by economist Gordon Tullock explaining why he does not vote. Hat-tip: Marginal Revolution)

I've always felt that the mathematical argument is the wrong one to take. The election is not a lottery, where there is a single winner (or a set of winners). In that case, there is a definite chance of being "the one" who is chosen. An election, in contrast, is not at all like a lottery. The "deciding" vote could be any and all of the votes that push the election toward the winning candidate. No one person is a "winner" in an election. Rather, the winning party is the "winner". Since it was a group effort, then all the ballots cast toward the winner are "winning votes."

Of course, we like to say, "so-and-so cast the winning vote", like this is something in a movie. However, unless a person has knowledge that his/her vote would be the vote to decide the election, then that vote is as consequential as any other one cast. After all, if the first person who voted didn't cast a vote for candidate A, then the total number of votes cast for candidate A would be one less, regardless of what the last person does. If the last voter KNOWS what his or her vote will do, then that person is - imho - a "winner", but - then again - that vote would be rigged.

So maybe, then, the winning candidate is the one who casts the winning vote, since that person would be the only one who directly benefits from the outcome of the vote, while also (presumably) having voted for him/her-self. Therefore, in all possible iterations of voters-casting-a-winning-ballot, the only constant would be the candidate (except in the case of a 100% win). I've not done the calculations on this, but (to go back to my original point), I've always thought this was a bit of a nonsensical question (at least from the mathematical POV).

Finally, this whole thing seems to me analogous to making a mathematical argument about the non-existence of North Korea. I mean, mathematically speaking, its estimated population is only 0.36% of the total world population (23 million/6.5 billion), but you cannot say they don't exist. In fact, the North Koreans - even though they have such an insignificant impact on world population that they statistically won't exist in a random sample - have been a significant player in East Asian politics. The impact of something, therefore, cannot be based solely on numbers.

VOTE! ... or shut up.

For everyone (who happens to be reading my blog who can vote in the US): Go out and VOTE today, or shut the fuck up!

For everyone else: Hope that enough clear-headed people go out and VOTE today.

Interesting Get-out-the-vote images

Cycling in to campus today I saw some interesting get-out-the-vote images. Some tagging images of Obama, others tagging McCain. There were two messages about Obama that student groups used on a series of Obama pictures: anti-abortion and communist imagry. In the first, you can see a pro-life (aka "anti-abortion") sticker placed over Obama's eyes, blinding him. This is an interesting image, since you could argue that it is trying to say that Obama is blind to the immorality of abortion or you could argue that the position that abortion is immoral is a blind one. Not absolutely clear, but that's the problem with imagry-warfare.

The second one has sticker of a Soviet Union flag above Obama's head, almost like he's looking up towards it (although if the person who stuck it there was as OCD as I can be, it would have been more obviously in Obama-image's line-of-sight). It is trying to link Obama with the idea of socialism (something the McCain-Palin ticket has been trying over the past several weeks, ever since their plant - Joe the pseudoplumber - asked Obama a question about the taxes a company he couldn't have purchased would have to pay under an Obama presidency). Unfortunately, the people don't seem to grasp a couple of points. First, communism and socialism are not equivalent (and university students who have taken a class in politics should know the difference). Communism is a form of governance where the mode of production is governed by the people, and governance is done at the commune (or local) level. Socialism is a form of governance where government decisions are made with the idea of benefitting a broad swath of society. The mode of production does not need to be governed by the people (but it is owned by them), nor do governance questions need to be taken at the local level. It is, at best, a middle point between out-and-out capitalism (which we never had) and communism, and it is practiced in many different ways throughout the world. (One could argue that the United States has a form of socialism: corporate socialism.)

Second, the thing that Republicans seem to constantly downplay is that the color of socialism (and communism, and anarchy, too) is red. The color assigned to the Republican party (which they have embraced) is red. Of course, when people call Obama a "red" they mean a communist red, not a Republican red. Still, it is - as an image - a funny one (to me) since Republicans share the color red with the communist movement.

Third, one of the constants in many successful communist movements throughout history is the attacks or dimunition of the intelligensia by communists. In Phol Pot's Cambodia, Western educated people were killed. In Mao's China, higher education was frowned upon (yay for the Great Leap Forward?). In Lenin's (and later Stalin's) Soviet Union, engineers and scientists were respected only to the extent that they could help maximize output from production.  Much of this sentiment seems (to me) to have arisen because the intelligensia were of the middle and upper classes - the bourgeoisie and (at one point-in-time) nobility - while the communists were trying to get the support of the working-class - otherwise known as the proletariat. Now, look at the Republican strategy in this campaign: a belittling of the intelligensia (Palin's mocking of community organisers sticks out as one early example), a major effort to get the support of the working-class (appeal to the proletariat) via people like Joe the [pseudo]plumber (and earlier with images of "Joe Sixpack" and "hockey moms"), and the painting of regions of the United States (which "just happen" to include large areas including the majority of universities) as liberal or non-American. These tactics seem to be a call for a rousing populism very similar to those used by Lenin, Mao and Phol Pot. ... and Republicans call Obama a socialist. (Not only that - they contradict themselves by calling him and his followers elitists, conflating "elitism" with "socialism"! Ironic much!)

Finally, why choose the flag of the Soviet Union? Why not choose China, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Mongolia, North Korea, or Cuba? Is it because the person happened to have a USSR flag at the time, having placed all the other current and former communist country flags on other posters throughout the university? Is it because the "red scare" is tied most strongly with the USSR? Is it because people recognize the symbol of the USSR? It is funny to me because the person chose to use a sticker of a country that no longer exists, and one that (arguably) never came close to meeting the standard of Marxist communism (devolving into a form of dictatorial pseudocommunism). Following this logic, one might argue that it was chosen because that great neo-conservative Republican president, Ronald Reagan, was the one to destroy Soviet communism, thus saving the world (regardless of evidence showing that it was likely to collapse anyway, and Reagan might have actually prolonged its life or could have transformed it into a thermonuclear-hot war through his constant provocations if it weren't for Gorbachev), and is therefore the appropriate symbol (somehow) for this occaision. (I would have used the Eretreian flag, since it would harken to both communism and Africa, but that would be elitist of me, right?)

These attacks of trying to paint Obama as an elitist socialist are laughable when you break it down, but that's just an uppity elitist hapa talking, not some everyday-American. (Of course, I personally feel that everyday-Americans should try and take higher education seriously, but that must be my elitism shinging through.)

On the other hand, I saw quite uninspired Obama sticker attacks on McCain. These only involved placing Obama stickers over McCain-Palin ones. Not really thought-provoking. Very effective, though.

Yo voté

...a siete de la mañana.

I was the first person in line at 5:45AM (I was the first person there - before even any poll workers), the second person to fill out their application-to-vote card, and the third person to hand in a ballot. I was all done at 7:13AM. Of course, this meant that I had to wake up at 5AM (and I forgot to turn my phone's enunciator to "on", so was lucky to be woken up by the buzzing of the vibrate-mode). No one was there when I got to Bach - no other voters and no volunteers. I (somewhat arbitrarily) decided to wait at the main entrance (since it is a "main" entrance) for the poll workers, and when they arrived - closer to 6AM - they all decided that, yes, the main entrance would be the one through which people would enter to cast their votes. By that time two other voters had joined the line, and we all sat in the pre-dawn coolness and near-foggy conditions to wait for 7AM.

After some time of sitting on cold concrete, I got up to look back at the line which had been inexorably lengthening up Jefferson St. toward 5th St. It had become long enough that from my position, I could not see the end of the line as it was past where my line-of-sight was cut off by the building. "Oh, wow," I thought, "even in liberal Ann Arbor, where voting Republican is apparently a wasted vote, people are energized to get in early to vote... Or they just want to make sure they get to work on time." Happily, the polls opened at 7AM on-the-nose, and I sprinted (well... walked quickly would have been closer to the mark) to the application table.

Like the last time I voted at Bach School, it seemed to turn into a bit of a cluster-fark in terms of logistics. Let me explain. The polling place is actually in the school's auditorium (which may also act as a cafeteria). There are double-doors at the end of a short corridor and anteroom to let people in to the auditorium. This anteroom area works on polling days to create nothing other than a milling area - a purgatory for those voting - for people waiting, waiting, waiting to vote. However... there is a problem: the application-to-vote table is place immediately inside the auditorium, thus forcing people to go to that table, sign a card, leave the table, go back into the waiting area (or further back into the narrow corridor) to find the back of the line to pick up a ballot. Then people can re-enter the auditorium with their application card and try and get into lines for last-names starting with A-K or L-Z. This is not clearly marked when people get in. Oh... and there is no door designated as an official exit from all of that craziness.

Knowing that all this cluster-farking logistical nightmare was likely to be par for the course this year (plus with all the news stories about voting lines), I decided last week to get up really early today to go and vote. (I even looked up the past-tense form of the Spanish votar so I would know how to write it out.) In the 12 minutes it took for me to sign my application card, wait for the poll volunteer to figure out how to issue me a ballot, fill out the form in a poorly-lit area of the auditorium (they really need lighting along the walls, too), and hand it in, the Purgatory-like waiting area had become clogged with people, the hallway leading outside was filled up, and the line extended around the corner (about 20 minutes later, when I returned to collect my thermos that I forgot outside Jefferson Market, the line had extended to the main entrance of Bach - perhaps it will get so long as to make it around the next corner, as well).

The importance of photos in sustainability

Like in many areas, photography is an important addition to telling the big stories of the world, especially if those stories are too far away or too big to capture in people's minds with words alone. Therefore, just like the importance of war photographers in all armed conflicts going back to the creation of a camera that can capture a candid picture, photography presents the reader with a gritty vision of today.

I have been (tangentially) following the Prix Pictet, and they have found a winner for their 2008 prize: Benoit Aquin. The following quote and picture are from the Prix Pictet website:

Making the formal presentation, Kofi Annan said: "It is my hope that the Prix Pictet, the world's first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability, will help to deepen understanding of the changes taking place in our world and raise public awareness about the urgency of taking preventative action. Each artist has addressed the environmental and social challenges we face in their own personal way. The result is a series of powerful images which seeks to confront us with the scale of the threat we face and to inspire governments, businesses, - and all of us as individuals - to step up to the challenge and support change for a sustainable world."

Benoit Aquin was chosen by an international panel of independent judges, chaired by Francis Hodgson (head of the photographs department at Sotheby's, London) who said:

"The jury were impressed by the overall standard in this the Prix Pictet's first year. The photographers have made it a really tight competition. In the end we are pleased to acknowledge the quite excellent series that Benoit Aquin has made on desertification in China, which in the opinion of the jury just pipped a group of other excellent candidates.
 
"We are proud to have set a standard to which future Prix Pictet nominees can aspire and we are delighted to compliment Benoit Aquin on a quite splendid achievement." 

Critical Mass?

I think I might try it out today... My first Critical Mass turn-out. Looking (briefly) around on the interwebs... I don't find much about Ann Arbor's, save for some photos by I'm a raindog too.