Blue

It's 9:30, and the nets have called Ohio for Obama. That'll do, pig. It's too early to shut down the laptop, so... landslide watch!

Trick, or treat

From David Kurtz at TPM:

There should be a support group for all those beleaguered progressives who over the years anxiously awaited elections in the futile hope that the polls showing their candidate behind would turn out to be wrong -- but who this year are fretting just as much that the polls showing their candidate ahead are wrong.

I plan to dress as a beleaguered progressive tonight for trick and/or treating. Julian has elected to go as a giraffe. Gordon will pretend to be a dog who's deathly afraid of children in costumes; tonight is right down there with independence day fireworks in his book.

Some photos are here. No photos of G, since cameras fall right behind fireworks, thunder and costumes on the scary list.

Early Voting

I just sealed up my absentee ballot. I'm always impressed at the plethora of choices for president, although the Green, Socialist and Libertarian parties were the only minor candidates I recognized.

A bit of a mess has brewed in our executive branch, and only one candidate is fit to sort it out. My scantron-style oval to Senators Obama and Biden; godspeed!

Spam

In today's snail mail, an RNC/McSellOut fundraising letter.

I need individuals like you, [...] who have done so much to help our Party in the past...

Whoa. I've been paying pretty close attention since I came of voting age, and I'm pretty sure I've never lifted a finger to help that particular party. On the other hand, I can't imagine that the McCain campaign would outright lie, so maybe I'm mistaken.

We've all seen the Democrats' massive rallies, record-setting voter turnout and colossal fundraising efforts. It is obvious they are pulling out all the stops to win.

Fascinating. It must be bad when people get so excited about politics that they show up and vote. Instead, why don't we just stick a ballot box right at the entrance to church, then scare everyone else away with lies, lies and more lies about taxes, sex and, yes, the bridge. No comment yet on whether the 'other' Ohio is drinking the cool-aid, or just enjoying the post-drooling-mainstream-media-coverage-of-the convention bounce.

Friday fun

Whoops; I missed Friday. I've been a bit behind lately, as it is. I didn't hear until recently about the GOP (grandpa's oligarchy?) anointment for VP, and let me tell you, I'm thrilled. We now have a win-win election: either a palatable pair of intelligent experts [1] who might deviate just enough from business-as-usual to inject a bit of deference to the proletariate and respect for the bourgeoisie, or a spooky sell-out accompanied by a lumberjack.

What, not that Palin? Crap. Even so, once taken over by GOP 'handlers', M. Palin would probably end up more like his character in Brazil. Anyway, that's not the funny part; there's nothing funny about my baseline blood pressure being 20 points higher for the next two months as I'm reminded by poll after poll that an enormous number of Americans either don't see the world like I do or are too stupid to know the difference. *sigh*

Furthermore, why hasn't the phrase "hope-smoking hippie" come into the common lexicon? [2] I'm not sure what side it would help more, were it to; but, I hereby proactively reclaim it, just in case.

I may have posted a while ago about the XKCD geohashing comic. Brilliant. And now, posted to the associated blog a few days ago, this description of a bicycle-kayak trip to find the day's location. Again, brilliant. I wish the internet had been invented back in my school days, so I could have done cool things too.

Finally, kudos to the professor teaching a stochastic modeling class (read: math of random things) I'm taking, who's policy for late work reads

Homework that is n weeks late will be accepted, but its total score will be multiplied by p^n, where p is a random variable drawn from the uniform distribution on the interval [0,1].

[1] How have I heard eight thousand recent pop-media discussions about Obama's level of experience without a single mention of the fact that he has a J.D. and taught no small amount of law at a little school in Illinois? I drool at the prospect of hiring someone who understands law to enforce our laws.

[2] Props to Jason for the turn of phrase, which as far as I can tell was original when written in this post.

Battleground

First: better than morning coffee, it's a little afternoon Black Mountain (that does sound like a roast; hmmm...). I'm listening to their February concert recorded by NPR (and available here). The npr.org writeup describes an "epic storm of prog-rock riffs, '60s psychedelia and '70s metal." I hear a lot of Zeppelin and dudes singing in the high-tenor range, so I suppose they're right. It's a good way to struggle through a Friday afternoon with dramatically increased brainstorming creativity and typing speed. [*] Take that, Mavis Bacon. But not you, Mavis Staples. You're cool.

We're being inundated already, in our little mid-north-western battleground state, with TV ads for presidential wannabes. I was disappointed how early they've turned mostly negative. I note that the McCain camp is relying much more heavily on attack ads then the dems, but last night I caught some ominous-looking photos of J. Sidney next to Shrub and facts and figures about oil-company campaign contributions. There's certainly more truth to that than the opposing assertion that Mr. O features "fewer jobs" in his platform, but I'm disappointed nonetheless. Then again, these campaign organizers know what they're doing; if I think it sucks, I have nowhere to look but toward my fellow Americans. And I do. And it's sad.

[*] Another way? A 10-minute blogger break! Okay, back to work...

Friday funnies

How to win an election when your name isn't John, George, Dick or Bill: have your fans (remember when they were just "supporters"?) reclaim it?
Reprinted without permission from today's xkcd.

Political spectrum

As much as this isn't a blog about politics, politics seems to be something about which I should use the opportunity to write. While I've found that doing some actual on-paper freewriting has helped with my politically-motivated anger, the blog is convenient for its speed and link-ability.

The first time I voted was in 2000, soon after graduating from college. The only thing I guessed right on was some county-wide funding for health services, or the like. Those were the days when everyone was rich, I suppose, and could stomach pitching in a bit for their fellow man.

Less so in 02 and 04, when, yes, every single thing on the ballot for which I voted failed. Incredible. The 2004 election results were actually mentally distracting to me, almost to the point of physical illness. I'm not even particularly politically active; I read enough to understand how the system works and figure out who's mostly likely to set it in the right direction, then I show up and vote. Occasionally I share my views with others, if there's beer involved.

My misery in 2004 had two results. First, I almost entirely blocked out mainstream domestic media. The Economist covers much of what's important in the world, includes details and analysis to a non-insulting level, and makes clear their bias and sources. Occasionally I catch a few minutes of NPR or BBC news on the radio, but I switch off NPR when they're playing the "this is good reporting because we're letting two opposing idiots spew nonsense in opposite directions" game.

The second is that I tried to put some rules around my own political orientation. Certainly, a one-dimensional left versus right axis is bothersomely naive. A 2D version with social freedom on one access and economic freedom on the other is a moderate improvement:

Small Government
^
|
Soc. Liberal <---+---> Soc. Conservative
|
v
Big Government

In this case, one might think of the Democrats being in the lower left and Republicans being in the upper right, but there's no good reason why a given voter wouldn't combine socially conservative views with a desire for strong, centralized government, et cetera. In fact, as I read the "use of force" clause in the DMCA correctly, we very much have that leaning today.

The Nolan chart takes a similar approach, but clearly aims to promote Libertarianism in its nomenclature.

Even within the 2D spectrum, I have a few key views that put me at odds with easy characterization.

Fiscal conservatism making for a predictable system is good
Americans are not inherently better than anyone else
Local regulation and experimentation is better than centralized control
Capitalism is efficient because it solves many problems organically
Unchecked capitalism is both unfair and unstable
Rules based on religion are a scam
Life is better when we help each other
Life is better when we are free to live as we choose

Thus, I'm clearly at odds with government at late. Maybe it's not as clear that I would be an Obama supporter, but if you consider my demographic (young, non-hispanic, moderately affluent, well-educated) then I suppose I'm predictable.

Hmmm...

Obama's racy speech

I'm usually not a fan of non-policy speeches, but (as read) the oratory in Obama's speech today is impressive. Definitely above the eighth-grade writing level.

On a similar note, I heard some of the Ohio high-school debate championships on WCPN (they were hosted by the City Club) on Saturday. For the presidential debates this year, instead of having Tim Russert search of obscure quotes on Google (ooh, driving journalism!), how about a Lincoln-Douglass style spar between the candidates? Three topics for each debate, scored by a panel of high-school debaters, who, in contrast to TAV might retain the ability to objectively value an argument and will certainly deduct points for off-topic rants and focus-group pandering.

Scientists and politics

In news of note, Bill Foster will join reps Holt and Ehlers as the third card-carrying physicist in the legislature. What fun it is to have people who care about understanding the world, and maybe even do so, participating in running it.

Meanwhile, John McCain picks on some nifty biology research as a waste of money, as described in this Post article. I defer to my standard argument on this one: read a book! [*] Seeing first-hand the recent effect of increased bomb turnover on the state of bioscience funding, I have strong feelings about present and future governmental incompetence (or short-sightedness) in this area, and, therefore, that of the average amercun voter. Bah; meh; yargh.

[*] Quoth The Tick