Hunting The Muse

Holidays

I'm usually one to hate certain holidays because the manufactured moods actually get in the way, to me, of what the holiday is actually supposed to be about. It's a big battle sometimes to attach to what is actually supposed to be genuine when there is all this pressure to feel that exact thing.

But, I got back from my friends' house with a full tummy, checked my voice mail with a cheery message from my mom, and another message from another friend, and I just felt a swoosh of happiness, and I actually feel thankful for everyone that is in my life right now.

And I feel that way even though it's Thanksgiving.

That feels good.

Permanent Fasting

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Fasting fakir flummoxes physicians

I guess this Indian guy doesn't eat or drink. Weird.

The Rule Of Threes

Continuing with my quest to act on all Rules Of Three, no matter how mundane...

While at a birthday party of Tamara's, a friend of hers glowed about how much she loved Tracy Morgan. The only good actor on SNL, she said. I said I heard he had a sitcom coming up. She got really excited.

Then Peter elbowed me at a commercial and said, "This kid looks really funny." And the promo for the Tracy Morgan was on tv, and he was talking about his son. And he's right, he's funny.

Then I just read an article on salon with the following excerpt:

Look. I've got TiVo. I don't even watch commercials. But at some point I checked out one of these promos and now I'm addicted and can't wait for this ridiculous show to hit the air. Tracy Morgan plays a family man, blah blah blah, who cares? But he's got this incredible kid playing his son. Usually I can't stand smart-ass child actors, but honestly, this kid defies description. Remember how Gary Coleman had exactly one expression, the pouty lips thing he did when he said, "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" Well, this kid on "The Tracy Morgan Show" is like a cross between Webster and Jim Carey. He's the hammiest little freak I've ever seen, and I can't wait to check out his stupid show.

So, there you go. Consider yourself enlightened.

What's With Wu?

Our Portland representative, David Wu, waited until the Medicare bill was sure to pass (after three hours), and then voted "Yea" as the last voter. Here are the details.

Dean's Influences

One of the reason I like the Dean campaign:

Many of the campaign's principles have been developed in books like David Weinberger's "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," which explores the role of individuals connected by the Internet, and "The Cluetrain Manifesto," by Weinberger, Doc Searls, and Christopher Locke, which describes how to think of the way markets work in the online world, as well as "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold. ("Moral Politics" by George Lakoff is cited as another key text for the campaign.)

From this great article.

Republicans back H.R. 2239

Wired News: Republicans Back E-Vote Bill

This is great news. Hopefully this will spur some real bipartisan momentum.

I Endorse Dean

Blog for America : Governor Dean on Fire in Windy Houston | November 19, 2003

Screw it. I've been on the fence long enough. I like Clark fine, but he just doesn't capture my imagination like Dean does.

My concerns over time have been that Dean's campaign is bigger than he is, or that Dean is being unwise by advocating things like cancelling even the tax cut portion that went to the middle class.

But, two days ago I replayed the recording I have of Dean being interviewed by Charlie Rose.

Charlie: "What do you think this race will come down to?"

Dean: (pause) "Well." (big smile.) "Honestly, I hope it comes down to nerve."

And that always made an impression on me, and I wasn't sure why.

Then I saw the campaign have the humor (and the irreverence) to post Dean's horoscope on his birthday. There was something about that I found kind of ballsy, and the open sense of humor behind it stands as a contrast to the other campaigns.

Then there was the very sad news today about the military potentially discovering the remains of Dean's brother, who was killed in Laos in 1974. And what struck me about that was the tone of his remarks. He could have gotten away with being a lot less open than he was. To me it demonstrated a real commitment towards openness, honesty, appreciation, and respect.

And finally, there's his recent words on new business controls, which you just never hear first-tier politicians talking about.

I guess it's all clicking for me. This guy knows that he's taking risks. He knows he has to win against the toughest enemy imaginable, and the guy is taking risks anyway. He's going large, as my college buddies would say. And by doing so, he's enabling people to dream again. This is what he means by hoping it comes down to nerve. The guy isn't scoping out political space and attempting to fill it - he's actually creating new space of his own.

The speech in the first quoted entry is inspiring, and it's inspiring not because it's angry - it's because the anger behind it is there for the sole purpose of opening up space for something new and optimistic. That's how the people that harp on his anger underestimate him. They don't look to see how his supporters are responding to it, shaking themselves out of the "learned helplessness" that they've experienced under Bush, dreaming again about a better future, and learning that their work towards it actually has a real effect.

I'm sold on Dean. He's got my unquestioning endorsement now. I'm not sure what to do next, but I'll think of something.

White House Release

President Defends Sanctity of Marriage

There he goes again. Twists it to say that marriage is somehow under "attack". As if there's all these married couples that somehow feel less married now. I think I'll call my parents and ask them if they feel like their sanctity is violated.

Highly Paid Women

Alpha Women, Beta Men - When wives are the family breadwinners

This is a very disturbing article. Note how they throw around the term "freeloader" towards men. Or the women obsessing about relative power in the relationship. I kept on thinking about how it would be if the roles were reversed and the breadwinning men were whining like these women are. I certainly wouldn't want to be in a marriage like that if the woman earning more money ended up with her turning into a bitch like the women in this article.

Oregon Bus Project Conference

The Oregon Blog

Damn. If I had heard about this in time, I might have gone. The perfect combination of anonymity-when-I-want-it and opportunity-to-get-involved for me.

Horses

Why do little girls like horses so much?

I've heard smart-ass theories about sexuality, but I can't really take those seriously. We're talking about little girls here.

Wu Endorses Dean

For those of you who live in my district, our congressman David Wu just endorsed Howard Dean. I don't have an article link at this time but you can probably find it on AP.

Electoral College

Daily Kos || Keep The Electoral College

I posted an article over at dailykos.com about the electoral college... it's generating some good discussion. Most of it spurred by me expressing disbelief that other people don't agree with me. :-)

Dean's Horoscope

Blog for America : Dean's Horoscope | November 17, 2003

Today's birthday horoscope seems weirdly prescient for Dean. :-)

Gerrymandering

Here's a great stat that shows Republicans' false advantage in the house of representatives:

Gore bested Bush in the 2000 popular vote. There are 435 congressional districts in the United States. Given that Gore beat Bush by over 500,000 votes, wouldn't you expect the congressional district split to at least be somewhat close?

In actuality, Gore carried only 196 congressional districts. Bush took 239.

Why would this be? Is it because there just happened to be many Gore voters that immediately after voting for Gore, decided to vote for a Republican to represent them in the House?

Not by that margin. The answer is because of gerrymandering, where a Republican state legislature "packs" a democratic district with a landslide of popular support, so as to give other districts a better of shot of going Republican in a closer vote. This is especially prevalent in the South, where they will pack a congressional district with enough African-Americans - often with very strange geographic boundary lines - so that their representive will commonly receive greater than 70% of the vote (meaning 20% of the district is packed in), while four other districts might go Republican by 52-48. In this hypothetical state, the state is actually 52% Democratic in population, but the congressional seats are held 4-1 by Republicans. It's happening all over the place, with the most recent riggings being in Colorado and Texas.

Lessons For Children

Salon.com Life | Madonna the conformist

Mr. Peabody is a schoolteacher and baseball coach. One day, a boy named Tommy Tittlebottom sees Peabody apparently steal an apple from the local grocer. He tells his friends. Soon the whole town believes their beloved teacher is a thief. As soon as he hears about it, Peabody proves his innocence. The grocer confirms that Peabody pays in advance each week for an apple a day. Tommy apologizes to Mr. Peabody and asks how he can make amends. But instead of telling Tommy it's OK and forgiving him, Peabody has him slice open a pillow and let the feathers blow across a field. He then tells Tommy to pick them up, which is impossible. "It would be just as impossible to undo the damage that you have done by spreading the rumor that I am a thief," Peabody says. "Each feather represents a person in Happville."

You know what that is? That's the plot to Madonna's latest book. Gawd, way to traumatize children, Madonna! Messed.... up!

Update: Well, I've gotten a couple of responses from people who didn't see my point. So, here's my point. :-)

It's a children's book, and that's the end of the book. It would be traumatic to conscientious kids because of the whole scenario of if you make a mistake and assume the wrong thing, then you could ruin someone's life. The lessons in kids books are larger than life to kids. Peabody's lecture may be real-life truthful, but it's not appropriate for a book for young kids when the kids don't have the perspective to balance possible mistakes with possible successes. Conscientious kids are petrified of making mistakes, and they need to be encouraged that it's ok to make mistakes if you learn from them, not be told that they have done permanent damage and were simply wrong to do it in the first place.

Here's another point. Who does Madonna really personally relate to in this story? Tommy, or Peabody? The unwise person that misrepresents someone to the public, or the person that is wronged by the public misrepresenting them? I think Madonna is messed up and is foisting upon children her demons of how wronged she feels by tabloid journalism. Good childrens books are written by authors that relate to the children. Instead, these poor kids are going to be getting a nicely illustrated lecture from the perspective of one who views the child - the character the reader will identify with - as an antagonist.

Finally, I mean, COME ON. A million fluffy feathers floating across the field, and every single one of them is something wrong you did??? Excuse me if that pisses me off!

Gore Vidal

LA Weekly: Features: Uncensored Gore

Pete mentioned hearing an interview with Gore Vidal the other day. Here's another one.

I think the worst failing of our political system is that it's pretty much impossible to change it.

Hate Crimes

Yeah, after thinking about it for a while, I think I'm pretty much opposed to hate crimes legislation. It's the action that is illegal, not the thought. The rationale behind hate crimes legislation is often attractive, but the problem is there isn't a clear place to shore up the slippery slope that leads to legislating thought. Deriving intent is hard to prove, and it's not long before you get witch hunts.

Personality Snapshot

Here's a good snapshot of my personality:

I just got home. I have a coatrack with little sticks that hook out of it, to hook your coathook to. I took my coat off, found the coathook, and prepared to put it on the stick. I misjudged by putting it on the very very tip, and it slipped off and the coat fell to the floor.

I muttered, "Well, I tried." Left it on the floor and went about my business.

Planted Debate Questions

Boston.com / News / Nation / CNN planted question at debate, student says

You know, if they did it for one question, how many others questions did they plant? I'm thinking of one confederate flag question in particular...

Tom DeLay

Politician or telemarketer?

I got one of these phone calls! Tom DeLay on my telephone. It was freaky. I tried to join for free just to share my own brand of ideas for policies Bush should support, and they wouldn't have any of it. :-)

match.com and eharmony.com

I recently deactivated my match.com profile due to extreme boredom, but I'm also a sucker for personality tests, and I had it recommended to me that eharmony.com has a really exhaustive one. I took it and it gave me some pretty detailed responses... some of which I disagreed with, but oh well. Then of course you have a free profile and have to pay $50 to gain access to contact people, which is not really a good deal for guys given the low response rate. No , thank you. Although, I suppose that if someone were really smart they could read my description, do some googling on certain key words, and stumble across me here.

Soup

Today Tamara and I were over at Peter and Kira's for Family Dinner, and Kira served lentil soup. I took a sip, said, "Mmmm... I haven't had this since I was a boy."

And the entire table burst out laughing.

I'm 33. They are 31, 30, and 29. This was hilarious to them, and I didn't give it a second thought. Did I age that much in that time?

Margin Of Error

I follow political polls once in a while, and I finally learned what Margin Of Error (MOE) means.

When someone says that Bush has an approval rating of 50% with an MOE of 3.5%, then that always said to me that his approval rating is actually between 46.5% and 53.5%.

But it's not that simple. I didn't know until just now that MOE has to do with a 5% chance. Basically, when there's a margin of error of 3.5%, it means that there is a one in twenty chance that one of the numbers is off by more than 3.5%.

The actual formula is the square root of one over the sample size. So, if I asked 1,000 random people a poll, then the MOE is sqrt(1/1000), or 3.5% .

What I don't know is if the area inside that MOE is a curve. Like, if Bush's approval rating is 50% with an MOE of 3.5%, then is it really most likely 50%? Or is it really just anywhere between 46.5 and 53.5, equally likely among all possibilities?

Electronic Voting Coverage

A trio of good electronic voting articles today. MSNBC has a front-page link to one columnist's thoughts. The NY Times has extensive coverage of the recent Diebold copyright battles. And, there are allegations of electronic voting problems yesterday in Washington, DC.

Sneak Attack On Syria?

Daily Kos || News US attack about to happen?

Just on the off chance it's true, it would be nice to know that we sniffed it out.

Translate to Republicans

Dinner with a bunch of republicans:

They sounded like fire-breathing liberals, and they constantly tore Bush down as a cowardly sissy controlled by a bunch of fanatics.

The real battle is going to be how to convince Republicans to turn away from Bush.

Collaborative Documents

I've had an idea for a while that has to do with collaboratively editing documents, sort of like a wiki (or storysprawl) except that you vote on changes. My own idea is a bit more complicated than that, but it looks like the simple version of it is already a reality over at 3D17.org.