Son of Timatollah

Halfway Done

2011-09-30T08:04:00.006-04:00

I just finished the first volume of Allan Nevin’s Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (Easton Press, 1932). That marks the halfway point (for now) of my reading of biographies of the presidents of the United States in order of their service.

I'm not exactly sure when I started the project, sometime in 2004 or so, I think. I had read bios of Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin in the early 2000s, then David McCullough's John Adams: A Life, and Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, before I dove in and found a Washington bio. It's been fairly steady since then.

Cleveland, elected in 1884, defeated for reelection in 1888, but elected again in 1892, is considered both the 22nd and 24th president. One of my trivial gripes with President Obama is his sometimes referring to the forty-three previous presidents, when there have been only forty-two previous presidents, but forty-three previous presidencies.

I couldn’t find what I felt would be a truly comprehensive recent bio of Cleveland. I pick these by reviewing sources on the Wikipedia page for the president whose bio I’m going to read, and then skimming Amazon reviews of the candidate bios. At Amazon, one learns that there are quite a few people out there who are engaged in or have completed this same project. So I ended up with this two-volume work, perfectly split with volume one finishing with Cleveland’s defeat by Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison. William Henry Harrison's presidency is remembered almost solely for its short duration—Old Tippecanoe became ill almost immediately after his inauguration and only served 32 days—and its giving us the first instance of a vice-president ascending to president after the president’s death. (Tyler was a total mess.)

While matters of situation lead Democrats to want to compare President Obama to Franklin Roosevelt and matters of temperament lead one to compare him with Lincoln, it would be wise for a greater number of contemporary Democrats to study the presidency of Cleveland. Cleveland was elected president after having served previously for one-term as mayor of Buffalo and only one-half of his term as governor of New York. His success in Buffalo rooting out corruption and his success in Albany in spite of opposition from Tammany Hall within his own party had made him the choice of good-government types in both parties.

The GOP of the time had held the presidency since 1860 (excepting the weirdness that was the Andrew Johnson administration), and it had controlled both the House and the Senate for most of the same time. While its opposition to slavery was clearly its core strength during the Civil War and during Reconstruction, its recognition of an active role of the general government in developing the national economy was also clear at the time of its founding. That active role grew in the post-Civil War era into a cozy relationship between business and the GOP that continues to this day. And not unlike this day, there had also evolved in the Democratic Party and goodly number of politicians who had ties to both national and local industry. The big businesses of the day were railroads, who had received numerous grants, concessions, franchises, and subsidies from the federal and state governments to build rail lines locally and across the continent; iron and steel, with plants in the “New South”, e.g. Birmingham, joining existing mills in Pennsylvania and New York; and textiles (still located then along the fall line from New England into the Piedmont). Labor had just begun to come onto the scene.

Both finance and taxation were issues during the times, with Civil War import tariffs still on the books, even having been increased in the time since the war. The Federal government enjoyed revenue in surplus of its expenses, largely due to those tariffs, as well as taxes on liquor and tobacco, and most everyone recognized that the surplus would eventually lead to an end to federal indebtedness, something the economists of the time, as likely would those today, recognized as just as great an evil as continually increasing debt. Federal bonds were part and parcel of the monetary system then, just as they are now. The money of the time was gold coin, silver coin, and greenbacks, and the use of fiat money (greenbacks) was unpopular with creditors and financial interests of the east, but very popular with the debtors and the farmers and developers of the west.

We can look forward to a 2012 campaign in which health care, taxes, deficit/debt, and money are issues, with the last not really being able to be debated much because the Federal Reserve remains, for now at least, mostly off limits to debate. Excepting Ron Paul, few candidates on the right openly discuss the crazy idea of returning to basing the money supply on the ability to mine a selected metal (as much as many of them might like to). The campaigns of 1888, 1892, 1896, and 1900 would see each of the issues above come into consideration and dispute.

In 1888, the tariff was the dominant campaign issue, with Cleveland’s vigorous call for tariff reform—both reducing the surplus and leading toward freer trade—coming too late in his first term to prevent his proposal being defeated and giving the Republicans and their business supporters an issue they used successfully to prevent his reelection, but leading to the excesses of the McKinley tariff of 1890. At the time, though, big employers had far greater leverage over the votes of their employees, since unionization was rare, and employers could either escort their employees to the ballot box and ensure how they voted, or still, in some cases, collect the ballots of their employees and have them taken to the ballot box themselves. There was a time, we forget, before the Australian ballot.

Not to draw the parallelism too closely, but the contemporary debate over taxes is similar. The current tax structure, brought to you by a GOP bought lock, stock, and barrel, by big business and big finance, in cahoots with a substantial wing of the Democratic Party, similarly in the pocket of big finance (more) and big business (some), gave us the Bush era tax cuts, which, as sensible people know, has continued a shift in wealth from the middle-class to the rich without delivering one bit the promised increase in jobs or prosperity. The Gilded Age tariffs, similarly, put big money into the pockets of industrialists and financiers, by protecting their businesses from foreign competition while increasing the cost of necessities and other products to those who farmed and those who worked.

Cleveland began his term recognized as a conservative Democrat with some connection to those with financial interests, particularly in his being a hard (gold) money guy. But he clearly came out for a more sensible structure for tariffs that would reduce the costs of raw materials and manufactured products, to the advantage of ordinary citizens. The debt situation of his time is topsy-turvy to ours now, but the necessity of reforming the way the Federal government raises revenue is just as important in this election as it was then. We have to ensure that all pay their fair share, understanding that it is completely and totally fair to expect those who can pay more to actually pay more through real, progressive income tax rates.

So, I encourage my fellow Democrats to learn more about President Cleveland and not to look only to the Great Depression and FDR for parallels in economies and politics.

Medium Review: Book. Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson.

2011-04-06T07:33:00.000-04:00

[This is a reprint of a brief review I posted on Visual Bookshelf.]

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From, Riverhead, 2010.

What an informative and entertaining read. Johnson explores how innovation happens, from discovery in the natural world via the sciences to invention in technology via engineering. What emerges is contrary to the lone actor idea that's popular both in popular culture as well as in commerce-directed politics.

It turns out that ideas and innovations that have impact are more likely to emerge where there are networks to build foundations, explore precursors, and create environments where the new concepts and inventions can flourish. Johnson doesn't just claim this without justification, he performs a reasonable analysis of numerous inventions, classifying them by owned/public and by sole/networked, demonstrating that a preponderance come from the public-networked combination.

His identification of aspects of good innovations are the chapter titles—"the adjacent possible," "liquid networks," "the slow hunch," "serendipity," "error," "expatiation," and "platforms"—each with multiple examples of supporting ideas and technologies. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ideas and the kinds of environments that make good ones come forth.

p.s. The appendix to the book with its list of discoveries and innovations is worth the price.

Medium Review: Book

2011-02-09T20:11:00.004-05:00

How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman. Jossey-Bass, 2010.

How Learning Works takes results collected from the educational research community and puts them into terms that an educational practitioner can understand and use. The seven principles—students' prior knowledge can help or hinder learning; how students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know; students' motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn; to develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned; goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students' learning; students' current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning; and to become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning—seem common sense at first glance, but the details behind each and how to use those in students' educational experiences are valuable and applicable anywhere from K-12 to higher education. It's the how to apply these principles part that's most valuable. A good read for anyone in the educational world.

Two Items from the Sargent Shriver Wake

2011-01-22T10:00:00.004-05:00

Heard what was likely a repeat of the wake/memorial for Sargent Shriver on the drive home yesterday. Heard two things I hope are worth sharing. First was a funny by George McGovern on Methodism for my old MYF friends: "It won't keep you from sinning, but it will take all the fun out of it." (Maybe that's why I reverted to heathenism.)

The second was shared by the immediately prior speaker, who I didn't get an ID on. And I came in during this recitation of a poem that Shriver loved, which after a little bit of searching apparently Mother Theresa had on display (and which was wrongly attributed to her for a while). The poem, The Paradoxical Commandments, is by Dr. Kent M. Keith, who wrote it as a Harvard sophomore in the late 1960s. Go check it out, please. Cheesy, yes, but sweet and likely a fulfilling approach to life on this rock.

No Special Rights

2010-12-19T08:55:00.006-05:00

For years, opponents of legal recognition for the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and transgendered people have used the phrase "no special rights" as part of their arguments. In their framing, LGBTT people serving without fear in the military—or, recalling Anita Bryant, the classroom—is a special right. LGBTT people marrying the person they love (who, duh, very frequently happens to be of the same gender as they are), is a special right. LGBTT people not being able to be fired from their job is a special right. Etc.

It's never made sense, but with yesterday's approval by the Senate of the House bill that repeals Don't Ask, Don't Tell, empowering the executive and military to phase DADT out within the next few months, what becones clear is that "no special rights," like much of their anti-progressive agenda, is upside down.

The right is right that there should be no special rights. So much so, that maybe we ought to enshrine the no-special-rights idea into a near-fundamental principle: No Special Rights. The rules we operate under ought to be structured so that what's good for one ought to be good for all. If you, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. Straight Person, can join the military, then so can any LGBTT person with similar qualifications. If you can't be fired from your job for being male, female; red, yellow, brown, black, white; 20, 30, 40, 50 years old; born rich, born poor; born in the USA, permanent resident, naturalized citizen; etc., then neither can any LGBTT person with similar attributes.

Of course, there are times when the government, as the legitimate repository of the community's interests, should abridge a citizen's rights. We have multiple ages of empowerment in consent to sex, signing up for military service, buying booze, and voting. We recognize that certain professions and careers like firefighter, EMT, and cop require levels of physical mobility and strength at the upper end of the scale; once the performance criterion is established, though, we ostensibly don't distinguish on the basis of attributes like gender/sex or color/race any more than we would on the basis of eye color or hair color.

There are legal terms for the government's exclusion of certain classes of citizens—or empowering of other individuals and collectives to exclude others or include only certain folk— ranging from rational basis to strict scrutiny. I won't claim to understand the distinctions among those as well as I could or ought to. The arguments used to put DADT in place initially and then against its repeal claimed that the presence of openly gay and lesbian individuals in military service would destroy unit cohesion and decrease the effectiveness of the military, hence the government had a legitimate interest in prohibiting LGBTT individuals from serving in the military. The recently conducted study by the DoD of attitudes towards gay men and lesbians serving suggests that even if it were once true, it no longer is so. And, this has never been an "all other things being equal" situation. The military has a unique ability with its command structure to achieve unit cohesion through training, practice, and, most of all, orders.

With DADT repeal passed and waiting to be signed, and with the current administration expected to put policies in place within the service branches leading to its going away, let's move to apply the No Special Rights principle to the matters of employment, marriage recognition, marriage, and immigration of spouses/partners. That is, an employer has No Special Right to pay less, not give benefits to, not hire, or fire an LGBTT employee. Health care providers have No Special Right to exclude family of choice from a patient's visitors. The general government and the governments of the states have No Special Right not to recognize the marriages of LGBTT folk in states where same-sex marriages are performed, including the implications of that for taxes and survivorship. The governments of the states that don't perform same-sex marriages have No Special Right not to. And the general government has No Special Right to prevent the non-citizen spouses of LGBTT US citizens from entering the United States the same as would the spouse of any other US citizen.

With the repeal of DADT passed, the onus shifts from proponents of legal recognition of LGBTT rights to explain why change is necessary onto the opponents to explain why change is not necessary. Against equal rights for LGBTT individuals: It's up to you to demonstrate conclusively, if you can, why you should be exempt from the No Special Rights principle. What gives you the right to treat others like second-class citizens?

And, just in case you've forgotten, in a country where religious freedom is rightfully enshrined, your personal religious beliefs, which must and will be respected, do not empower you to discriminate against others in the civic arena.

Who Said It?

2010-11-01T16:14:00.001-04:00

For all our troubles, midterm finds this Administration and this country entering a season of hope. We inherited a mess, we didn't run away from it and now we're turning it around ... My biggest regret is that because the accumulated damages piled up so high for so long, putting America's house in order has been a tough and painful task ... We've got to prove that what we said about it is true - it'll work.

Answer here.

Just for Reference: 1 September 2003

2010-09-12T07:36:00.006-04:00

Just for reference, what I posted on 1 September 2003. Not that it is necessarily inconsistent with what I posted yesterday: Being aware of radical Islam as a threat to what we hold dear isn't the same thing as saying it's anything goes in the 9/11-memorialization department, which is not to say there were aspect of how to commemorate, in a positive sense, that I failed to address yesterday.

Contemporary comment in square brackets; e.g., [added on 12 September 2010].

I think 9/11 is still very very important to be aware of. I think that to the degree we try to pretend like enough time has elapsed that its impact isn't relevant at this time is not, in many senses, wise. I believe, unfortunately, that radical Islam would not stop even if it controlled Mecca and Medina and Jerusalem -- power corrupts, etc. -- and that many of those who believe that way will continue to threaten free peoples -- or North Americans and Europeans and substantial numbers of Asians and most Latin Americans these days and increasing numbers of Africans, and the Israelis, if you think we're just all controlled by the big corporations and that representative democracy is a sham. [I have no idea why "Israelis" isn't the end of that sentence. I couldn't tell you why the corporations/democracy line is there.]

Threaten with death. Threaten with destruction. Threaten with subjugation.

While our individual, national, and global pasts may have brought us to this point, with plenty of wrong, hateful, and stupid moves on everyone's parts since time immemorial, nothing in that past justifies the actions of radical Islam. Those who believe that way base what they are doing on their traditions and their book, just as radical Christians in the USA continue to attempt to justify wrongful attitudes towards some on the bases of their traditions and their book. Luckily we live in a part of the world where those radical Christians are restricted to some degree by other traditions and other texts, like, say, the US Constitution. But there's only a short step from vouchers to madrassas, so it could happen here if we're negligent.

Would/will those radical Christians try the same murderous tactics that the radical Islamicists do? Hopefully we never get to find out. But the radical Islamacists continue. Today, tomorrow, next week.

I don't think they should not be allowed to achieve their aims. I think that free individuals should be allowed to worship as they choose, but that aggresive religions -- like collectivist or totalitarian or facist political movements -- must be restricted, preferrably by custom but, if necessary, by law.

I regret that stopping them requires, at times, the use of physical violence. Or killing. I respect those who thoughtfully disagree with using so much or any force, but I prefer not to live in the first phases of several hundred years of a very dark age. Or that such an age come to be while we are alive to stop it.

N.B.: "Radical Islam" does not equal "Arab." [Or "Muslim."] Saying "the Arabs [Muslims] this, the Arabs [Muslims] that" is just as stupid as "the Jews this, the Jews that." It doesn't fit. At least take the effort to pin things down to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Egyptian government, [the Taliban -- we thought they were defunct -- the Pakistani intelligence agency,] etc. There is groupthink, but as long as there are individuals, attributing groupthink to attribute groups is, in fact, not accurate. Formal organizations with formal processes is one thing, but "the Jews," "the Arabs," "the Gays," etc. just doesn't cut it for me.

Exceptions matter.

Individuals matter. Individuals are all that matter, in the long run. Groups are just accidents of attributes that belong to individuals. Sorry if that is disrespectful to your individual traditions.

So don't forget 9/11. Don't forget that there really is a "they" out there that wants to kill "you." Just for being born where you were. Just for being who you are, whether that's American, gay, Jewish, or a female human who enjoys having sex. Much less all of the above.

Letting Go of 9/11

2010-09-11T06:22:00.012-04:00

Knock knock.
Who's there?
9/11.
9/11 who?
9/11 you said you'd never forget!

We're going today to a memorial service for my recently-departed friend Jim Swift. Jim called me on Memorial Day weekend to tell me they'd found two tumors in his liver, but that the doctor thought they would be able to excise them cleanly, and then his liver would grow back. A few weeks later, at the time of meeting with the doctor who'd do the surgery (if I'm recalling this correctly), Jim found out that there was a tumor at the back of his skull, too, so got a different doctor, and started a different set of treatments for that, first, since it had been pressing on nerves and causing headaches, speech issues, etc.

I thought the treatments were progressing, because he was able to play his guitar again, the thing beyond the people he loved that he cared about most, and he was planning on having a big party with all his friends. I was out of town in mid July when I got the word that he had passed away, and I still don't know details. I just know he's gone.

I'm glad to go to this memorial service today.

I have no intention of going to another one nine years from now.

I thought the world of Jim, and I know I'll remember him fondly now and then, but I wouldn't advise, even for his family and closer friends, keeping his memory alive beyond a quiet awareness of his having been with us, of what that meant to us.

So many of those lost on 11 September 2001 had no connection to the reasons we were attacked. Some—the firefighters and police in New York, military rescue personnel at the Pentagon, and those who bravely brought down United flight 93—died in valor, saving others' lives by rescue and by fighting back. Remembering them all is not without value.

But jacking that remembrance up, putting it on a pedestal, shining lights on it, standing back and looking at it, and bringing back the feelings of those times is not wise. It is not a sensible remembrance. It is pandering to our basest hair-pulling, garment-rending, flesh-tearing sensibilities.

Once, perhaps, yes; but not on an annual basis in perpetuity.

We don't need to treat 9/11 like the families who put "In loving memory..." stickers on their car, keeping the pain and the loss in attention rather than honoring the departed by using this short time on Earth productively. But we've lost a broad cultural sense of how to mourn, how to give families space to mourn for a year, how to welcome them back from that mourning in a gradual way. We're struggling in an age lacking consistent rituals in a multicultural society to honor birth and death and lifelong commitments.

It is time to move our thoughts about 9/11 to a better place every September. We will note the date, but there will come a day when we don't, and shouldn't, fly the flag at half staff. When we don't let demagogues speechify and dominate the airwaves with loony ideas. When we don't act the wounded victim time and time again.

It would be easier to let go had Bin Laden et al. been captured. That bungling can't be undone: only new operations challenging and attacking Al Queda can accomplish now what was not finished then.

How many times did your mother tell you, "Don't pick it until it bleeds"? We seem to have become a nation, like the drivers of the cars with the "In memory of..." stickers, picking constantly at the memory. Until it bleeds.

Do we really honor the departed by making a fetish of our loss?

Let's make next year, the tenth anniversary, the last year for five years that we make such a to-do about that horrible day in 2001. Let's honor the dead of that day, and of all days, by living our lives fully, not by a recurring focus on our loss.

Grievances

2010-08-31T20:48:00.004-04:00

I saw a bumper sticker today (while down at the Kennedy Space Center): "Take my work ethic, not my wealth." That got me to thinking, as poorly and messily as that happens.

I was trying to figure out what the person thinks, and my best guess is that they think that someone is trying to take something of value away from them, their monetarily measured wealth, and give it to someone who's lazy, doesn't work, wants a handout, etc. Reminds me of the sign my dad's secretary had on her desk: "We fight poverty. We work."

I can't argue with the value of encouraging all to have a good work ethic. It seems almost obvious that while working hard doesn't guarantee success, not working hard is almost certain to guarantee failure. And I won't deny that there are shiftless people in this world who would rather scam you or just take it easy rather than work hard.

While Mack and I lived in Daytona Beach Shores, the Shores put in sanitary sewers. That meant (1) the building we lived in had to be hooked up to the new sewers, and (2) the old septic system had to be decommissioned. If I remember right, one of those jobs was done by what one would likely identify as a "Mexican" guy, even though he could've been Guatemalan or Texan for all anyone would really know. The other was done by what one would likely think a couple of "white" guys, although who knows their pedigree, etc. To make a long story shore, the Mexican guy worked his butt off, did his job, got in there and got out; the white guys spent most of their time loafing, standing around, talking about baseball, and griping about immigrants! Seriously. (They were right outside the open windows.)

So, sure, there are shiftless people, and they're not all black guys drinking 40s in paper sacks. Those exist, too, but they're not like some kind of supermajority. Given the fraction of black guys in jail for one thing or another—often some kind of non-violent drug offense—it's not like there's that many to have around in the first place.

So, then I wondered if the bumper-sticker person was thinking about the idle rich, like I would be more inclined to do. I mean, there are plenty of rich people who never did anything beyond being born to get the money they have. Oh, they may have pulled a few strings to make sure they get to get other peoples' money through tax breaks and the like, but that's not exactly what one thinks of as the Protestant work ethic.

So, you have people with this grievance, imagined in some part, about people not working and taking their money. And you have other people with this grievance, also likely imagined in some part, about people not working and taking their money. And I'm sure there are others with some grievance I'm not imagining but that similarly fits the "I work, I earn what I got, and those lousy bastards are trying to steal it from me."

They all can't be true, but that doesn't mean they're all false. I'm sure from some economic point of view there are numbers that can be come up with that tell whatever story one wants.

Surely we all know in our personal lives that holding onto grievances and coddling them is a surefire way to destroy the relationship into which the grievance arises, no matter how much one or the other party is at fault.

To nurture the relationship, one has to at least consider the possibilities of listening, of forgiveness, of openness, and of desiring to move forward.

How can we create a situation where people can air their grievances about situations and policies at the national level without nursing them?

Whatever happened that led up to the economic collapse of 2008, what matters now is figuring out equitable policies that help the nation, as an ensemble, grow and move forward.

Whatever happened that led to immigrants wanting to come here to work for less-than-minimum-wage cash, we have to find a way to bring those people into the above-ground economy and keep them here as citizens. We need more immigrants who want to become new Americans, not less.

Whatever happened that led one group of people to think they could own another group of people -- or that leads people now to think that kind of thinking was justified—we need to now realize that that wasn't us. We are neither the slave owners nor the slaves, unless we want to imagine ourselves as such. The impact of something that awful still affects us, as do so many past events, good or bad, but then is not now. Even a moment ago is not now. The grievance, real for some, imagined by others, just isn't worth nurturing any further.

However this society ended up deprecating the lives of that small fraction of us who love someone of the same gender, what matters not is to not continue embracing that deprecation, but to build a world that values families of all stripes.

Justice has its demands, but sometimes there's just no way to achieve any more of those demands than stating them as facts. You can't undo the past, but you can determine how the future will be.

I know this is stupid Pollyanna silliness, but I just can't imagine how to move forward without forgiveness and openness and letting go of the picking at it until it bleeds over and over and over again attitude. Let it alone. Give it a break. Put a bandage over it, hope it stops bleeding, let it scar, and let the scar blend in with the rest.

Nurturing the grudge, convincing oneself that one is being ripped off or threatened or hurt isn't worth it. I know that if you're in the frame that those slights are real, tangible, and dangerous that this will sway you little. But if you aren't totally hard-hearted about it, maybe just let the love in your heart create a place where you can forgive others the slights, real or imagined, against you and move forward together. Yes real slights need to be addressed and justice should be sought, but even in that framework there has to be a way to move forward without nurturing the grudge.

I'm not holding my breath, but I think we've got to try something different, since the way we—we all collectively: not just you, not just me—have been doing it doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere.

Build Baby Build; Burn Baby Burn

2010-08-25T21:16:00.004-04:00

I would hope that those who think, like I do, that it's okay for the developers to build the Park 51 project ("mosque at ground zero") also believe, like I do, that it's okay for folks who want to burn a pile of Korans to do so. The objections to either use ones being offended as sufficient reason to tell someone else what to do with their property. Others shouldn't get to determine what's sacred for any one else, whether that's a book, a flag, or a chunk of nearby property.

Adult Alternative

2010-08-12T16:37:00.017-04:00

I am having strange feelings for a fifty-three year old. I have found much joy in listening to music created and performed by a band that started just when I was getting out of the music world, think mid 1980s, but of which I had been largely oblivious to for the following interval. Their music is challenging, pretty, energetic, serious, discordant, childish, psychedelic, enchanting, self-indulgent, condensed, lush, aspirational, down to Earth.

Oh, yeah. And weird. (I forgot weird the first time around.)

I like weird.

Yes, friends and neighbors, I have discovered the Flaming Lips.

Oh, it's not that I didn't know there was a band named the "Flaming Lips." It turns out I even owned one of their CDs, _Clouds Taste Metallic_. I think Newbury Comics included it as a freebie in an online order shipment one time. But I wasn't familiar with the CD's contents, except for the one tune, "Bad Days," that was on the _Batman Forever_ soundtrack. I couldn't have told you a thing about the band's style, the names of their records, what they were known for, at all.

I was clueless.

Discovering them was quite serendipitous: On the night early in June before we were to head to my mom's family's reunion on Sand Mountain in northwest Georgia, I wasn't sleeping well, so I got up in the middle of the night, got a drink of water, and checked in on what was going on on Facebook. Within moments, three different Facebook friends updated their status to say that they were waiting on the live webcast of the Flaming Lips performing _The Dark Side of the Moon_ at Bonnaroo. I think I had seen that on the schedule, but it's not like I was going to stay up until all hours of the morning to listen to live webcasts from Bonnaroo for anyone. Old fogey, and all that.

And even as I was curious that night about these Flaming Lips, I wasn't going to start listening to something at 1:00 in the morning when we had about 600 miles to drive the next day. I did do a search on Flaming Lips, and ran across their performance of "Do You Realize" on the Letterman show, though.

I was blown away.

This band was singing about life, death, appreciation for the now, appreciation for the other, all in a little ditty that while not under the classical three-minutes in duration for a good pop song, clocked in in less than four. I knew that I would have to hear more. So, before leaving the next morning, I downloaded the Lips' _Dark Side of the Moon_ and _Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots_ (where "Do You Realize" is found).

We cranked up _DSotM_ as our first listen on the ride that morning. It's no masterpiece, but it's fun. Good craftsmanship in making new arrangements of something that everyone knows. Hot performances. Lively recordings, with lots of punch. That was the first inclination I got as to the playfulness and love of music-making that seems to be an attribute of much of the Lips' records. But _DSotM_ has a little too much "novelty" about it for me to get a clear indication of what this band could do.

Later in the day, we listed to _Yoshimi_. It was very nice, but I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Would a second listening yield new responses, or was it something nice enough but nothing to get excited about?

I listened to _Yoshimi_ again on the flights to Fairbanks in June. Through headphones. What was this? Some kind of trick? A fusion of punk with prog? Of stringent production values with tunes and words that are accessible if somewhat sideways. A recording with immediacy but with sounds, lots of sounds, including squeaks and squawks and synthesizer chirps and synthesizer farts and fake audience noises, with ambiance out of the wazoo, with a mix that used both channels. With content addressing topics like when one should fight, whether programmed entities have real sensations and feelings, the nature of feelings, of love, of hate, for any entity, biological or cybernetic. And instrumentals. What is this? Another trick? Instrumentals? No one plays instrumentals any more.

I was enamored. I read up. I learned that they were from Oklahoma. Oklahoma? A perfect complement, for this one at least, to Leon Russell and Toby Keith and Merle Haggard.[*] All was well and good with a Universe in which a band as experimental and curious and out there as the Flaming Lips could come from Oklahoma, with "Do You Realize?" even being named the State Rock Song of Oklahoma.

I bought more. _The Soft Bulletin_ turned out to share many of the attributes of _Yoshimi_, if musically more lilting and lyrically more directed towards mortality, the wounds and disappointments of life (from spiderbites to AIDS and cancer to wounds in the head and gashes in the leg of unknown origin), sanity and insanity, and each of our individual demises. And bugs in your teeth.

By then I considered myself a fan. I bought tickets for their upcoming show in Saint Augustine. (From what I've read and seen, the shows look like a real trip. I am excited about seeing them, and not in the way you get excited about seeing some band that meant a lot to you as a kid. It's more like being a kid and being excited about seeing a band that means something to you.) And I bought their latest, _Embryonic_, a rambling double CD featuring a rougher sound, with lots of overmodulation, extreme dynamic range, and topics addressing a world that will not cooperate.

Speaking of rambling, that's what I'm doing now, since I have no intention of going through a song-by-song review of any of the albums. Go. Get the albums. Listen to them. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

What I really wanted to get across was my own joy at finding something at this point in my life that speaks to me in ways I just never anticipated being spoken to again musically. Yes, Wilco moves me as a serious rock band, and I hear they put on a awesome show. But for their edginess, Wilco only gestures towards the truly weird. The Flaming Lips embrace the truly weird. Embrace it and put it on a pedestal and say, "Hey, listen to this. Isn't this cool? Isn't this freaking awesome?"

One can argue that their approach to serious issues is on the level of the dorm-room bull session, but I don't think that goes as far as those making it would like. There's enough ambiguity in their approach to those issues; there's the lack of smarminess that these are the only points of view one should have. Instead, there's pervasive mystery and questioning and lack of certainty.

And fun. Even while addressing the monetary, labor, and power imbalances that are attributes of all societies, something like the "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is silly. Why it's a music video that wouldn't have been that out of place on MTV in 1980-something.

To Debbie Atterholt, Lars Hall, and Bill Steber, thanks for posting that you were fixing to listen to the Lips perform _DSotM_ at Bonnaroo. I owe you for the joy I've had the last few months listening to this band and learning about them.

So if you've wondered what the hell was going on with me and the Flaming Lips recently, that's it. I found new musical love at this point in my life for a band that's been around for almost the last thirty years. I think they were hiding from me.

[*] Everyone reading this knows that my lover/partner/unindicted-co-conspiritor of the last going-on sixteen years, Mr. Mack McKinley, is from Hooker, Oklahoma, in the Oklahoma panhandle, right?

Where Do Rights Come From?

2010-07-03T08:29:00.011-04:00

Quite a few, left and other, seem to be partaking generously of a Church Lady moment of smug superiority over Senator Grassley's question to Solicitor General Kagan in the hearings regarding her confirmation to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Here's the framing by Megan Carpentier at Talking Points Memo:

During his questioning of Kagan, Grassley asked her not just about her opinion of Heller, McDonald or stare decisis, but about whether the right to bear arms predates the constitution Kagan is seeking to interpret on the court. He wasn't talking about the Magna Carta, or the Hammurabic Code, however: he wanted to know whether the right to carry man-made weapons actually came from a higher power. Kagan, for her part, didn't want to get into litigating whether a higher power gave us rights before we enshrined them in the document she'll be asked to interpret.

I think Kagan missed an opportunity.

One doesn't have to agree that rights come "from God" as interpreted by Senator Grassley and by many of our fellow citizens to state that they come with being born; that is, there is a set of human rights that come with human existence, that aren't granted by human institutions like governments, that happen just because one is alive and breathing. To frame those rights as "from God" might be seen as the same kind of shorthand we use when we say the sun comes up and the sun goes down.

Granted, our using the sunrise-sunset description is not tied up with the impacts on our lives that religion frequently presents: As a gay man, I don't have to look far to know and show that religious organizations, in the small at the congregational level and in the large from the top of their various hierarchies (some less formal than others), are quite capable of disregarding the rights that are mine, from being secure in my own person (individually and collectively, clergy have misused their authority and protected one another in that since time immemorial) to not recognizing my right to marry the love of my life.

But seeing our rights as coming with life itself, regardless of one's sense of where that life originates, is, I deeply believe, more important to the establishment of communities where those rights are respected and protected than is thinking that rights are something established by people, even as certainly it is our human institutions that help us secure those rights.

By failing to distinguish between the origin of our rights and the role of governments in securing those rights, General Kagan missed an opportunity to instruct us all in the nuance that "not from man" doesn't necessarily mean "from God," (as convenient a shorthand as that might be), and that the role of governments is to secure those rights, not to invent them.

In the particulars of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, my friends on the left should understand that the right to bear arms stated there is an encapsulation in our Federal foundation of the concepts expressed in the Declaration of Independence that when governments attempt to "reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." While I think my Tea Party friends are totally wack to believe that the U.S. government as it has evolved post-US Civil War, post-WWI, post-Great Depression, post-WWII, post-9/11 is oppressive in that way, let us agree that the people of this, or any other, nation are ultimately responsible for it; that we have the right to change that government should it become truly oppressive (which it most certainly is not). The 2nd Amendment states, as we ought to believe, that each of us has the right to use tools—and tool making is a most human trait—of our own possession to defend our personal and collective liberty. Which is something wonderful, not something to be denigrated.

We didn't make these rights, whether to marry or whether to protect ourselves and those we love and that which we possess. Those rights were here when we got here, when we started breathing. They came from no government, from no other person. Disrespect those who say they came "from God" and entertain the fantasy that they come from man, from institutions of our making, at the risk of your liberty and the liberty of those you love.

Full-Spectrum Craziness, Explained

2010-06-10T06:21:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, on that Facebook thing, I posted a link to a Matt Yglesias blog post, wherein Mr. Yglesias said:

I’m less clear on the all the GOP results. If anything, what we’ve learned over the past 3-4 years is that whether or not the crazier candidate prevails in these contested races, whoever prevails ends up needing to adopt full-spectrum craziness.

I take that to mean that regardless of the candidates' actual positions, they're going to have to mouth the words the the Tea Party National Anthem to keep the cash flowing.

Good guy Chris Vuille commented: "Full-spectrum craziness"—heck, it can't hurt at this point, and might do some good. What part of the spectrum was playing the last thirty years?"

Now, in general, being a fan of the late Dr. Thompson, I see his point. I have nothing against full-spectrum craziness. I hear Blackwater is having a sale, and those assault rifles look mighty nice. But let's get real here: The Tea Party, rump right, loony GOP full-spectrum craziness is just more of the same. In my own response to Chris, I wrote:

Don't be fooled. This is as big of a lot of phonies masquerading as "patriots" as has come down the pike since the Know Nothings. What "full-spectrum craziness" on the right really means is lower taxes for rich people, less regulation and lower taxes for big businesses, an imposition of Christian religious dogma that restricts the personal freedoms of women and gay people and people who aren't Christians, less support for functioning public education, and a nativist surface approach to immigration while hiring illegals under the table all the while. It's the same GOP policies as have been in place since Reagan in a new wrapper.

This, of course, just reiterates an argument made by none other than Yglesias and cited here previously:

This isn’t to say that talk about freedom is a mask for racism, but rather than talk about “freedom” is just talk about conservatism [his emphasis]. Conservatives side with business over unions and environmentalists, with police and prosecutors over criminal defendants, with nationalists against cosmopolitans, with majoritarian ethnic and religious groups against annoying weirdos, and with the military against peaceniks. Ideas about freedom and small government are totally irrelevant to the actual political agenda and the Tea Party is no different from any other conservative movement in this regard

Don't be fooled: If you want full-spectrum craziness, go gonzo or don't go at all!

Responsibility, Agency, Locality, and Compactness

2010-06-08T08:09:00.003-04:00

I read this in Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft a few weeks ago, and it's been stuck in my mental craw since:

[A]s the subsequent history of banking illustrates, any job that can be scaled up, depersonalized, and made to answer to forces remote from the scene of work is vulnerable to degradation, even to the point of requiring that the person who does the job actively suppress his better judgment.

He's referring to banking as in derivatives and the real-estate bubble, but what he's talking about might also fit the Deepwater Horizon gusher or our use of unmanned systems.

If we are to have a shared concept of responsability—response ability—then doesn't that require a somewhat compact agent at a location; i.e., a person on site? Are there necessary breakdowns in the concept of responsibility once the agent is distributed or distant from the scene of the action?

I'm not coming to terms with this well. Input welcome.

June 2010: Multiple 20-Year Anniversaries

2010-05-30T15:57:00.006-04:00

Well, here we are on the edge of June 2010.

I take the coming of June to represent the anniversaries of several almost contemporaneous events for me. In this case, the time in question is 1990.

Sometime in the second half of May 1990, I had had enough, and I finally came out as a gay man. Until then, I had proclaimed to a small—very small: onezies and twozies—subset of my friends that I was bisexual. I knew underneath it all that I was gay, but I felt obliged—for me, for them—to proclaim that I was bi, so that my infatuations with my fellow males of the species could be explained as a lark, a fling, an occasional digression, but that when push came to shove, I was one of the boys, looking for a nice girl.

But that was all bunk: I was never looking for nice girl. I understood that etiquette and protocol demanded that I was looking for a nice girl, but I was never, in my heart of hearts, looking for a nice girl. To the several nice girls whose time I wasted: I'm sorry.

I was in grad school at the time, and I was in our offices when a pouty young undergraduate who was working for my academic, not thesis, advisor at the time, went off on some shpiel about Congressman Barney Frank, and how "we" didn't endorse "his kind."

"What kind is that? Because I'm that kind." I went off on this kid about how I was a gay man, and how there was nothing wrong with being a gay man, and how he ought to keep his not-so-subtle insinuations to himself.

It was, as those of you who have been through any kind of "coming out" experience know, cathartic. Some enormous weight that I wouldn't even admit to myself that I had been carrying around was now gone.

Within the day, I had told my academic advisor. Within the week, everyone in our lab/office. Within a month, everyone that I thought was of importance in my life, including my family, via a trip to see my mom in Florida and one of my brothers and his family, who were living near Atlanta at the time.

I can still remember coming out to my mom. The reason I wanted to come out wasn't just so she knew who I was, but so that I could someday be involved with someone, to have a relationship, to connect. I really regret that those of you who object to people being gay can't understand that we have these relationships with others—same, as opposed to different, gender—that are exactly like your intimate relationships. It starts and includes a large sexual component, but it evolves into a knowledge of someone else who is there, who knows you and all your wrongheadedness (and even your better aspects) like no other, and who puts up with you for all your foolishness and your imbecility because maybe, just maybe, you bring something to them that they value. Because maybe, just maybe, someone besides your mamma loves you for just being you. In spite of you. And if you're lucky, your mamma will understand how much you love that one and how much he loves you. (I was lucky.)

In that same late May framework, I also finally went out to a gay bar. The Ramrod in Boston, to be exact. I had been in gay bars previously, but always in a fleeting, I'm not really here, manner. When I finally went to the Ramrod one Thursday night late in May 1990, I meant to be there. And I felt comfortable there. It's cheesy, but I felt quite at home there.

Did I mention I was thirty-three freakin' years old by that time? I know there are those who come out later, but by contemporary standards, that's a very late bloomer.

I also quit smoking cigarettes in the same time frame. I had the notion when I first went out to the gay bars, that if I was ever going to quit smoking, it had to be then or it would be never. I had seriously started smoking—buying packs as opposed to bumming cigarettes—when I was 13, so this year marks the anniversary of as long of a time of not smoking as the duration of time I smoked! Twenty years smoking; twenty years since not smoking.

When I got back. after the big trip to see my mom and my brother. to Cambridgeport, where I was living at the time, I finally started hitting the gym.

Somewhere in there, I also went to my first big Pride event on the Boston Common. I remember running into other grad students there who I had never came out to and who had never come out to me.

There are too many anniversaries to keep track of in all that, so I just adopted 1 June 1990 as when I came out at work and to family, when I started going out to gay bars, when I went to my first Pride event, when I quit smoking, and when I started lifting weights. Just easier, even if it is less precise.

Now it's 20 years later.

If coming out has meant anything detrimental to me, I am not aware of it. Above all else, coming out is an act of integrity, and we, as a culture, as a society, ought to value integrity, maybe above all else. Coming out was made easier by the fact that I had many life experiences behind me by that time, but more difficult that many of those experiences were based on lies or on hiding who I really was from others.

Those who frame the gay issue in a framework that suggests that gay people—non-straight people, to be as inclusive as possible—are as we are to insult that which created us all (that gay people are gay to insult God) are just wrong. I can say that unequivocally. I'm sure those of you who believe something foolish like we hate God or we're evil intrinsic can find some isolated text to justify your position, even as you ignore similar directives regarding mixed fibers and shellfish and the stoning of unfaithful wives and the like. That such is life is frustrating, but not sufficient of a reason for me to give up.

So, happy 20th coming out, quit smoking, started going out, started working out, anniversary to me!

How Did State Legislatures Spend Their Time Prior to Passage of the 17th Amendment?

2010-05-21T16:02:00.004-04:00

It only takes a modicum of interest in the history of these United State to know that prior to passage of the 17th Amendment, state legislatures spent an undue amount of time trying to figure out who would be the U.S. Senator from that state, sometimes to the detriment of those legislatures fulfilling other roles assigned to them by their state constitutions.

Repeal of the 17th Amendment would accomplish at least two things: (1) It would tie up legislatures in electing U.S. Senators, as was s.o.p. prior to its passage; and (2) It would make the cost of electing Senators equal to the cost of influencing a very small number of people, 50%-plus-one of the several legislatures. Contrast that now with the situation where buying influence for election of a Senate seat is cheap in low-density, cheap-media states like Wyoming and the Dakotas but extremely expensive in states like New York, California, etc.

This whole "repeal the 17th Amendment" issue just reeks of big business looking for a cheaper way to buy influence in the Federal government while sealing the deal with legislators in the states, which is where a vast array of regulation actually takes place (in contrast to what some would have you believe about the over-regulation at the Federal level). It is very difficult for me to believe this is some grass-roots issue swelling up from frustrated citizens.

My TP friends: I believe you're being snookered.

James E. Lewis Outstanding Service Award

2010-05-10T21:37:00.002-04:00

This morning, through little I have done or said, I was recognized at the ERAU Daytona Beach Commencement ceremony with the James E. Lewis Outstanding Service Award.

All I have ever done, to the best of my ability, is to do what I should do; nonetheless, I am extremely proud and gratified to have been recognized for outstanding service to the University.

Here's the blurb I wrote up when they told me they needed something for the Commencement program:

Dr. Tim Wilson received Bachelor's (1985), Master's (1987), and Doctoral (1994) degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Embry-Riddle faculty in fall 2000, initially to teach the core sequence of electrical engineering classes in the Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering program. Since then he has taught courses in all his department's programs, undergraduate and graduate, with course offerings from Organization of Programming Languages to Certification of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). His current research focuses on UAS, and on what it takes to get them into the National Airspace System. He and his collaborator, Dr. Richard Stansbury, recently completed a series of technology surveys and regulatory gap analyses on UAS for the FAA's Flight Safety group at the William J. Hughes Technical Center.

He previously served as Vice Speaker of the Faculty in the 2006-2007 academic year, and as Speaker of the Faculty from 2007-2009. In spring 2010, he was appointed Chair of the new Department of Electrical, Computer, Software, and Systems Engineering. He serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, and he is that organization's representative to the National Engineers Week Foundation's Diversity Council. He led the organizing group for Embry-Riddle's recent 2010 celebration of Engineers Week. In his free time, Dr. Wilson enjoys photography, gardening, playing the keyboards, and reading non-fiction. He is currently reading biographies of the presidents of the United States in order of service. Described by one student as a "font of useless knowledge," in spring of 2008 Wilson achieved a lifetime dream by appearing as a contestant on Jeopardy! Unfortunately, his useless knowledge wasn't sufficiently adequate, as he only came in second. He and his partner of fifteen years, Mack McKinley, live in Debary.

Yeah, I'm tootin' my own. Toot, toot!

Dear Nadine

2010-05-10T21:34:00.001-04:00

Dear Nadine [Smith, lead, Equality Florida],

Although I appreciate ever single action you have made on behalf of LGBT folk in Florida, I fear your path is WAY too conservative. McCollum's head should roll, and by calling for an "apology" you reinforce in those who would deny us our rights the concept that we are weak, something to be denigrated. In the future, please adopt a stance that speaks "gumption," not appeasement.

I remain, for now and the foreseeable future, your obedient servant,

Tim Wilson

Who Should Be Concerned with Pissing Off Whom?

2010-05-04T18:21:00.002-04:00

Heard a "bomb expert" on POTUS—that's Sirius/XM's politics channel—complain that describing the Times Square bomb as "amateurish" would only "piss off the bomb makers."

Wish I knew the identity of the so-described "bomb expert," since this one's opinion is that the bomb makers should be worried about pissing off me, my friends, the USA, the free world.

I know this is of a piece with standard police instructions not to resist being assaulted, robbed, etc. I think those instructions are misguided, to say the least. I say, better to die with a single finger extended than to submit to the indignities of being robbed or assaulted.

Or terrorized.

Or of being told of your uselessness by "officials."

A Bunch of Content I Wish I Had Time to Comment On

2010-04-29T07:04:00.004-04:00

I generally hate digest posts, but I'm forgiving myself this one time. You forgive me, too, okay?

Yglesias, "Freedom’s Just Another Word for I’m An Orthodox Conservative With Orthodox Conservative Views". "Freedom" neither as "free beer" nor as "free speech."

This isn’t to say that talk about freedom is a mask for racism, but rather tha[t] talk about “freedom” is just talk about conservatism. Conservatives side with business over unions and environmentalists, with police and prosecutors over criminal defendants, with nationalists against cosmopolitans, with majoritarian ethnic and religious groups against annoying weirdos, and with the military against peaceniks. Ideas about freedom and small government are totally irrelevant to the actual political agenda and the Tea Party is no different from any other conservative movement in this regard.

Mixmaster at Balloon Juice: "Dead to Her".

Mom’s a proud Goldwater Republican. She was happy with Reagan, voted for Bush II in 2000 (but not in ‘04), and has long been active in the local Republican party. But I can say with absolute certainty that she will not vote for a Republican, for any office, ever again. She’s the proudest person I know—proud of her family, her achievements in life, and her Mexican heritage. And, whatever else this new law is, it is profoundly disrespectful. I don’t know if this law will kill the Republican party in Arizona, but I can assure you that they’re already dead to her.

Noah Millman at The American Scene: "Notes Toward a New Political Taxonomy".

The core of the difference between a liberal and a conservative outlook relates to one’s basic assumptions about human capacities. A liberal is someone who is generally impressed with the capacities of an individual, and who therefore wants individuals to be free to develop those capacities. [...] A conservative by temperament takes the opposite side in this dispute.
[...]
A left-wing perspective is animated by failure and the consequences thereof. [...] A right-wing perspective is opposite to this.
[...]
The progressive-reactionary axis revolves around attitudes toward time and history.
[...]
The progressive is future-oriented. [...] The reactionary, by contrast, is past-oriented.

There's something both appealing and yet wrong wrong wrong about this taxonomy. For example, where is the Justice axis? And I think the "left-wing is animated by failure" is just ugly right-wing marketing. I don't know anyone who thinks a sustainable culture can be built on failure. But then, by Millman's scheme, I'm a liberal, right-wing, progressive.

South Park Mohammed

2010-04-24T20:36:00.002-04:00

Booga booga!

On Funny Books

2010-04-22T06:04:00.004-04:00

When I left home to go off to prep school for the 8th grade, I had an old trunk full of comics, some from the times I had DC subscriptions, others bought at the one store in town—Tilley's—that sold comic books. I'd beg my mom to take me out there about once a week just to by comic books. I didn't put them in little plastic bags or anything, just bought them and stacked them up in the trunk.

When I got back home for the first time—Christmas 1969—they were all gone. My mom claimed to have given them away to "poor kids," but I figure that's probably on the same level as folks who take that dog they don't want to live with a rural aunt and uncle on the farm.

The first time I ever learned how much a copy of Silver Surfer #1 was worth, I just about crapped. My mom was great at finding value in other peoples' discarded junk—wash stands, pie boxes, etc.—but didn't imagine that someday those childish comic books would be worth something to someone. I know I'm not alone in having this experience. I'm just surprised at how much it still bugs me.

Parents: Don't throw your kids' stuff away without asking.

Crazy Thought

2010-03-30T06:24:00.002-04:00

You don't think BHO would be using Karzai as a back channel to Mr. Crazy Iranian leader, do you? Or maybe Mr. Crazy Iranian leader had a message for BHO.

Coincidence?

2010-03-28T22:41:00.002-04:00

BHO gives a great speech at Bagrahm AFB in Afghanistan, extolling diversity and tolerance as exemplars of Americanism, while the armed wing of the Tea Party movement, loony Christianist militia types, are arrested in the upper Midwest.

Coincidence?

I hope not.

Mass Reax: Quit Freaking Out!

2010-01-21T05:42:00.005-05:00

Are people still shouting?

Is there writhing? Rending of garments and gnashing of teeth?

Have the Biblical proportions of Tuesday's DEM loss of one of the Massachusetts seats in the US Senate been sufficiently articulated?

Who am I kidding? I think the drama is completely out of proportion. It's a loss to "our" side, no doubt, but it's not the end of the world, of health-care reform, of climate-change legislation, etc. It means that we need new paths towards the goals we cherish, but it doesn't change the goals. If they were desirable and reachable previously, they are still desirable and reachable today. It just requires more effort. It may impact how quickly they are achieved. I know it's difficult to see things from perspectives of longer than five-minutes ago, but we didn't get into this mess overnight, and we won't get out overnight, either, so get used to the idea that we're not getting to the Promised Land tomorrow night. Or the night after that, either.

Those of use who share the ideals of better access to health care, reduced health care aggregate costs, reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, broader concepts of human rights more inclusive of lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender people (without diminishing any individual's right to worship as they choose, by the way), a fairer tax system in which the middle class don't subsidize the rich and in which the poor are given a better chance to share in the bounty of modern life, etc., have to quit freaking out over the loss of one Senate seat in a special election.

We need to quit referring to it as Ted Kennedy's seat: It was never his seat. It was one of two seats that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is allotted under the Connecticut compromise that secured support for the 1787 Constitution of the US. At that time, it was a seat that belonged, in many ways, to the government of the Commonwealth, but with the passage of the 17th Amendment, it now belongs to the people of Massachusetts.

If the powers that be, largely the Democratic Party of Massachusetts, hadn't have been so freaked out with the fantasy that John Kerry might actually become President of the United States in 2004, and that Mitt Romney might appoint a Republican to the seat, they wouldn't have messed with the long-standing procedure in Massachusetts of having the governor appoint someone to serve in an open Senate seat for the remainder of the term. If the powers that be, again the Democratic Party of Massachusetts in conjunction with my national Democratic Party hadn't freaked out that they would be one short of the 60-vote supermajority now seemingly required for even the most mundane legislative passage hadn't gotten the law changed to allow a governor's appointment until a special election could be held (instead of leaving the seat open during that time), enough factors would be different that a different outcome than Tuesday night's election would've been likely.

I feel that for my party and the Massachusetts party to do this was so full of hubris and arrogance that it almost certainly set the stage for the kind of pissed-off results of Tuesday night. I lived in Massachusetts long enough to know the hubris and arrogance of the local Democratic leadership, and in this case they were aided and abetted by the leadership of the party in Washington, including the President. And I admit I see this with hindsight and shame.

So, as a matter of principle, rules shouldn't be changed in the middle of the game unless they're discovered to be obviously unfair to all participants.

And, as a principle of life on this rock, in this Universe, all actions come with unintended consequences, many of which that come back to bite you in the ass.

Now, the other side has issues with principles and practices, too. They need to stop lying, starting with the lie that the situation with the national debt is due to the current administration, when almost to a one those making those statements said nothing during the previous administration, an administration of year after year of deficit spending, due in some part to military engagement, but due in large part to a tax system that raised inadequate revenue since it taxed those with the highest earnings at historically low and insufficient rates. The first reason we have all this debt is because of the Bush tax cuts. The second reason is the 2009 stimulus bill and changes in monetary policies that were necessitated by the incredible credit crunch that led to the economic downturn in 2008. The financial regulatory posture leading to that has roots in both parties, but the worst consequences, including the real-estate bubble, happened under the previous administration. Stop lying like none of this ever happened.

You know, lying is just plain wrong. Stop lying.

I sometimes think that my conservative, tea-party-esque, friends are just plain and simply anarchists, hoping for a complete economic collapse followed by a lack of civil order that would allow those with the most guns to take over. I have a simple message for them: Get your head out of your asses, it ain't gonna happen. And a second message: You're not the only ones with guns.

I have no doubt that RNC/FNC-motivated anger played a role in the Massachusetts Senate election, but that's no excuse for losing the seat. For the future, each of us have to take the concerns of our fellow citizens seriously, especially if we want them to take our concerns seriously. People are concerned about spending, about jobs, about debt, about the changes in health care. The RNC/FNC message on those is bullshit, but that doesn't mean that an individual's voicing those concerns can be dismissed. Do so at the peril of all we care for.

So, friends on both sides: quit freaking out! Democrats: Don't change the rules, and don't be surprised when you do that you don't get what you expected. Republicans and tea-partiers: Quit lying. It's wrong, remember? Everybody: Listen more and talk less. We're all in this together, whether you like it or not.

As to how to move health-care reform and other issues forward? This one's take: The House should bite the bullet and pass the Senate bill, then make any future changes using reconciliation. Future major legislation is likely going to require reconciliation to pass the aspects that impact the budget. That opens up some possibilities of ignoring DINOs in the Senate who get more than their share of influence.

Shutting up now.

What's Love Got to Do With It?

2009-12-31T08:59:00.016-05:00

By cultivated nature, I am not one to put things in black and white terms. Perhaps by inclination initially, but also by years of pointed practice, I've developed the habit of looking for commonalities, for points to be shared, for the 99.99% overlap in all our lives rather than the 0.01% differences.

(I know my GOP and righter-wing friends may find that hard to believe, but I also believe in the political utility of demoralizing the opposition—a tactic some of you share—so I'm not beyond portraying your wrongheadedness in extreme terms every so often, even as I try very hard not to forget that we're all in this together, are the same in almost every sense, and ask, almost beg, you to come to your senses and get on the better side of things.)

But on this matter of same-sex relationships, I've about lost my patience with my less than understanding friends who persist in supporting having the state deny my love and me and those like us what are rights given to us by God—yes, by the Creator of this Universe—by the simple fact that we were born into this world, that we are breathing.

That is the right to be considered married by our communities, as represented legitimately and legally in our governments at all levels.

The November 2008 election results in Arizona, California, and Florida hit me like a ton of bricks. I have become so numb since that I could watch what happened in Maine this past November without getting depressed, which is, in its own way, sad.

To have my rights—and this is where I am as sure as I have ever been about anything: these are my rights—voted on by my fellow citizens is insulting and demeaning. It shows a degree of suspicion of gay people as citizens, as humans, that is simply not justified.

The concerns raised by those who oppose recognizing the full human rights of LGBT people are not real.

Recruiting: The idea that gay people are out there trying to convince children to be gay is a fantasy that opponents of recognizing gay rights whip out all the time, without one iota of evidence for its reality. Currently, there's no settled understanding about why some of us are gay. Clearly we're a small proportion of the populace.

My own thinking is that being gay is an expression of human nature with both genetic and developmental components that manifests itself once societies achieve a certain lack of survival stress (so that whatever genetic factors are involved become expressed). I figure it's likely that nothing anyone does except wiping out the modern world and sending us back to the caves will change some small number of LGBT people showing up in the world on a recurring basis. I'm skeptical that there's any one factor that can be identified to put the kibosh on that nature expressing itself, or that would lead someone who's not gay to become gay.

When it comes to conversion, the fraction of straight people who are actively trying to turn gay people straight is probably larger than the fraction of gay people who are actively trying to turn straight people gay. And it's those same ones who are active in trying to get gay people not to be gay who go around claiming that gay people are trying to recruit straight people.

The gay predator: Most child molesters are straight, with a family connection to the victim. The ones who are gay are almost always closet cases. Instead of worrying about out gay people preying on your children, you ought to be worried about the insecure ones who pretend to be straight: The preist. The Boy Scout leader. The Sunday School teacher. The Republican state representative, Governor, Congressman, Senator.

If the closet persists, that exploitative element will persist with it, because it's harder to grow emotionally into an adult relationship with another adult when the larger world treats same-sex adult relationships as something to be devalued relative to straight relationships.

Lack of monogamy: My own thinking is that this has more to do with whether one has an XY chromosome pair or an XX pair (part of that 0.01%), with plenty of statistical variation regardless. Look: Men, by and large, are horndogs, and straight marriage doesn't change that, only its expression. Those straight marriages are not uniform in how that expression is achieved: There are plenty of married men at titty bars whose wives could care less, and I'd be very suspect if you could show that that group is any less good husbands or good fathers in the long run than the group that never looks at another woman besides their wife. The supposed ideal family promoted by the opponents of recognizing gay rights may be achieved by a few, but it is neither as broadly nor deeply a part of the lives of married straight people as those opponents fantasize. It seems pretty obvious that if it were, there wouldn't be so many divorces.

And, yes, gay men, like straight men, are wired such that more and different seems better, and they might just be in a position to realize fantasies based on those ideas more often than straight men can find indulgent female partners to do so. That doesn't mean that the couple is any less committed to each other than it does for the straight couple, whether they are married or not.

Sleaziness: Again, the idea that all straight people, married or not, are only doing it in the missionary position is just a bunch of bunk. Merle sang that "we don't make a party out of loving," but just about any decent sized city (and lots of smaller ones, too) has commercial outlets to spice up the love life of straight couples, from Victoria's Secret at the mall to any number of coyly-named free-standing outlets like "Indulgences" or "Fantasies" or "The Love Shop."

But if gay people add a little kink to their sex lives, then it's supposedly sleazy. This is a face-value double standard that displays who's got the power in this world: it's okay for straight people, but sleazy when gay people do it.

It's not really love: This is the one that irritates me the most. To tell me that what I feel for the man I love is not really love is just disconnected from what is.

Do not tell me that it's not love when I lay in bed next to him at night, feel my foot touch his, and feel my entire body just unwind. Do not tell me it's not love when we fall asleep holding hands on the couch. Do not tell me that it's not love when we take care of each other when we are sick, when we do our best to take care of our own and each other's families. Do not tell me that it's not love when we do little things for each other that we never tell each other about. Do not tell me it's not love, when one of my few fears is something happening to take him out of my life.

Do not tell me it's not really love.

Do not tell me what I am feeling.

When I tell you that I love him, do not tell me that I don't feel that way. When your child tells you that she or he loves someone of the same sex, do not tell then that they don't, that it's a phase they'll grow out of, that no child of yours could ever feel that way. Believe this report as surely you believe the sun comes up in the morning, for it is just as real, just as natural, just as much a part of the way this Universe works as your or my breathing is. As your or my kissing the one we love is.

Do not tell me that this is not love.

To those of you who continue to want to prevent our governments from recognizing my rights: I understand that this involves some recalibration on your part. I understand this is not what you've always believed. I understand this way of thinking bumps up against what you believe your faiths require of you. I'd ask that you look at ways people thought about relationships between folks of different colors once, and how somehow their faiths survived the change of thinking about whether that was allowed or not. (Some may never have changed their attitude about mixed-race relationships, and to those I can only extend my deepest sadness.)

Please, give this some reflection and thought.

The love Mack and I have for each other is just as real as what you and the one you love have for each other. Just as real. Just as natural. Just as human. Just as blessed. Just as Divine.

Our expressing that love and having it recognized by our governments takes nothing away from you, does not threaten your children, has no impact on whether they are more or less likely to be gay (even as it changes the likelihood that should your child be gay, she or he may express that openly and be more likely to be happy).

As we move forward, please give our love not begrudged recognition as some kind of exception ("well, you two are okay since you're our friends, but the rest of those faggots better watch out"), but give us, all of us same-sex couples now and to come, your blessing with full and open hearts.

Open your heart and see what is real, not your imaginings, not your fears. See the love.

Love's got everything to do with it: Our love as individuals for each other, and our love for other people, regardless of who they love.

Please help us secure the recognition of our rights. If you can't do that, at least please stop helping those who oppose our securing what is rightfully ours. Those rights are ours: I am sure about that. Are you so sure that they're not?

Merry Christmas 2009

2009-12-24T15:01:00.003-05:00

Greetings one and all from the McKinley/Wilson household. We are observing an almost-completely non-traditional Christmas this year, as we are traveling tomorrow, Christmas Day, to Mack's folks' in Hooker, Oklahoma. We fly to Amarillo via Houston, then rent a vehicle to drive up to the OK panhandle. We fly back home this coming Tuesday.

Mack's mom has Alzheimer's, so this is not going to be one of those fun trips. But it will be a good trip to make, nonetheless. He saw his folks last summer, but I haven't seen 'em since August a year ago. No one is getting any younger in this world.

Since we're traveling on Christmas, we haven't done anything Christmas-motivated around here except send out cards. We don't have a tree; we didn't get decorations down from the attic to put up outside or around the house. I was afraid we'd be depressed about it, but it's gone pretty good so far. Tonight we're having a nice dinner (ham, sweet potatoes, salad, and rolls), opening our Christmas cards (have only opened a few so far), and exchanging stocking stuffers (no stockings). Maybe it's good to scale back every so often.

If you've been looking for updates here, you haven't been finding anything. I'll admit it: I've spent more time on Facebook than I have here: Little updates on my life, arguing with people about health care reform, following the updates of people ranging from my childhood to current students and colleagues. But it doesn't lend itself to longer-form writing (even with its "Notes" feature), so I don't want to let this go.

So, with luck there'll be more updates here: More pics (I'm behind on those), more commentary, and more overall updates.

Correspondence with the Congressman on ENDA

2009-10-10T20:30:00.004-04:00

First, my congressman's (John Mica, R, FL 7th CD) reply to my webmail (sorry, I didn't keep a copy of that) encouraging him not only to support the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but also to co-sponsor it:

[Letterhead image]

October 5, 2009

Mr. Timothy A. Wilson
Debary, FL 32713

Dear Mr. Wilson:

Thank you for contacting me to express your views on the Employer Non Discrimination Act.I appreciate your taking the time to convey your thoughts and I am pleased to respond.

I have never supported discrimination of any kind. For years our country has strived to eliminate discrimination in all areas of our society and I believe that all Americans are entitled to equal treatment. However, I chose to vote against this measure because, I do not support special treatment of any class of individuals and, since coming to Congress, I have worked to ensure that the federal government and the private sector administer their agencies and businesses in a manner that does not discriminate or provide special treatment for one person over another. Please know that I am committed to ensuring that all Americans receive equal treatment in the workplace whether it is in the Congress or the private sector and I will keep your views in mind as this legislation comes to the House Floor in the coming months.

Thank you again for informing me of your views, and I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

[Signature graphic]

Next, my reply to the congressman:

Subject: Re: Correspondence from Congressman Mica
From: timwilson@mackandtim.net
Date: 09 October 2009 4:42:14 PM EDT
To: <Congressman.Mica@housemail.house.gov>

Dear Congressman Mica,

While I greatly appreciate your recent e-mail reply regarding ENDA, I have to be honest: I find your position to be disingenuous.

I have friends who are registered professional engineers who have been fired from their jobs for no reason other than that they are gay. If that can happen to a professional, what hope is there for the day laborer who happens to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

I have no reason to think that you would treat employees similarly, but you know that a not too small fraction of your supporters and the supporters of other "family values" conservatives would, and they would enjoy doing so.

Please: Look to your heart and not to the next election on this. This would be a great opportunity for you to show that you can be a leader of a Republican party devoted to respect for individual rights, instead of one that pretends to respect the individual while kowtowing to a powerful lobby of self-appointed moralists.

Do the right thing. You'll sleep better.

With sincere best wishes for you, your family, and staff,

Tim Wilson

In fairness to Equality Florida, I have to admit that it was a web form of theirs that I used to send the original note.

My Last (Only) Klan Rally

2009-09-23T19:44:00.005-04:00

Date: Mid-summer, 1980 (I'd guess)
Dateline: Cave City, Kentucky
The Scene: Good buddy Tricky Nicky and I were staying at the Holiday Inn, Cave City, because we were doing the Lantern Tour of Mammoth Cave the next day.

We came across a Klan rally. A real, no-shit, Klan rally, with Klansmen in white sheets and totally cowardly masks: pointy dunce-cap masks, etc., as you've all seen depicted.

I wanted to rush the rally.

Tricky Nicky said, "Timmy, you're crazy. They'll kill you."

I let him talk me out of it.

I still regret it.

Goddamn Klan. How the hell almost 150 years after the US Civil War do you still have so much sway over the minds of the weak? You are not Christian, for all your protestations, and you know it. You are evil, weak, sinful, and cowardly: Something for all the human race to be ashamed of. Go to Hell, you piss-poor excuses for human beings.

And your Klan wannabe teabaggers, too.

"My God. It's Full of Stars"

2009-09-10T21:25:00.004-04:00

I had opportunity this past weekend to lay in the near dark, no moon, and look up at the sky, and see more stars than I had seen since Mack and I were in the Oklahoma panhandle in the winter several years ago. The ability to realize one's own personal insignificance in the larger Universe was welcome.

The stars, galaxies, Universe, were all there in the night sky. I was there, supine on a bench of plastiwood, but not falling through to the center of the Earth.

What kind of higher purpose would I need? The stars, galaxies, were there where they are; the Earth was beneath me. Gravity was doing its thing in both departments. The waves were crashing onto the Florida panhandle in a semi-regular pattern not unlike my own breathing, the taking air in and out of my lungs in a semi-regular pattern not unlike waves crashing on the Gulf coast.

I don't dismiss my responsibilities to my fellow humans—starting with Mack, the one closest to me, the one to whom I owe so much; to my family who gave me so much over the years; to those who regularly give me resources in exchange for my attempting to show younger ones how to become effective engineers; to my communities of birth and of choice: those matter more to me than I can express in ways I'd hope you'd understand. But let no other human be so presumptive as to tell me they know what God/the Universe demands of me; what my "purpose" is in life.

The stars are where they are; my body does not fall into the ground; food and drink remain available; this one rejoices in being part of this.

I will stand in open defiance of anyone who attempts to shut down those who feel the need to express their percepts of the divine. But that is not for me. The divine is there in the stars; is there in the fact that my body doesn't fall into the earth; that the waves come to the shore again, and again, and again; that my breath, for now, goes in and out and in and out. But those miracles do not mean someone else gets to tell me, in a way that ultimately serves their purposes, of some Purpose to my life.

My purpose is what I make of it. Or fail to make of it.

It's my responsibility, not that of some California megaChurch preacher with numerous best sellers, not of some monk with a stick, not of those, of you, who feel so close to what I'm saying.

Breathe! It is a gift. Is it so hard to conceive of a gift with no giver? Or a giver who demands not fealty and obedience but joy and appreciation no different than that of a parent giving a child the best birthday present ever.

Massive love to one and all. It's really all we have to give each other. Enjoy it. Enjoy the stars. Enjoy the solid Earth under your feet. Enjoy every breath.

G.O.P.-care IV: Medical Payment Roulette II

2009-09-05T07:33:00.003-04:00

We've already discussed the kind of payment roulette that comes from visiting your doctor then finding out that the tests, procedures, and treatments your doctor proscribed aren't covered by your health insurance. The G.O.P. and the for-profit health-care industry want to keep things this way (are they proposing to do away with it?), 'cause it's part of what keeps them rich. But worse than that are the caps on annual and lifetime spending.

God-forbid you should find out you have cancer. Cancer requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars of visits to oncologists, of treatment, of hospitalization, of surgery. And then you realize that you've reached that annual cap on what your health insurance pays. Guess who pays now? That's right, buster: it's you.

The reforms being proposed by the President and the Democrats in Congress would simply end this practice. Yes, of course that means an increment in what would have to be payed out by insurance, and, yes, of course, that somehow we have to come up with the resources to cover the expense. That might come from savings, from reduced waste fraud and abuse, or from taxes, but it's worth it, and it's the right thing to do.

As always, ask yourself why the for-profit health care industry and their G.O.P. toadies are against this approach, practiced by almost all industrialized nations. Could it be that they would rather have your dollars than have you receive the treatment and care necessary? As always with the G.O.P., it comes back to the money.

See also:

G.O.P.-care: Political Interlude

2009-09-05T07:28:00.003-04:00

I know it's unfair for me to pretend that it's only the G.O.P. who is bound to the Health Insurance and For-Profit Medicine Industries. I know there are several Democrats who are complicit in blocking health-care reform, too. But I'm a partisan Democrat, and I am interested both in getting real health-care reform passed and in putting the current crop of G.O.P. loudmouths on the defensive to which they very much belong.

G.O.P.-care III: Transfer of Wealth

2009-09-02T06:03:00.006-04:00

What's the G.O.P. want for you regarding health care?

Since the G.O.P. is against proposed reforms and they refuse to provide any constructive suggestions for reform of their own, it's a safe conclusion that they're for the current system. That's likely because it puts money in their pockets and the pockets of those for whom they're pretty much the legislative arm. That would be those with lots and lots of money. Never forget: The G.O.P., regardless of the degree to which it uses well-meaning religious people as a base, exists in its current form to serve the interests of those with lots and lots of money. With them, it's always about the money.

They want to transfer wealth from those of you paying insurance premiums to those not paying premiums. And to those with lots and lots of money to start with. That's what the current health insurance system in the U.S.A. does: it transfers wealth from the insured to the uninsured and to those who own and run health-insurance operations. Excepting some small number of municipally- and county-owned hospitals where local taxpayers foot the bill, every time someone without health insurance goes to the emergency room for treatment, you and I who pay health insurance premiums—and/or our employers, depending on arrangments—pay for their care. That's a transfer of wealth from those who are insured to the uninsured, who are largely poor. And don't think the health insurers don't arrange things so that they still profit off of such events. Of course they do. You think they're giving health care away when they can take home beaucoup dollars from it? That's a transfer of wealth from those who are insured to the ownership and management of health-insurance organizations.

And with the cost of health care increasing constantly under the current system, more people lose their health insurance each month, meaning you and I, if we're lucky enough not to be them, spend more for our own insurance and have more of that go to support more of them.

Now I have nothing against poor people: I wish them the best in dealing with what life has dealt them. I begrudge nothing against the rich who have somehow accumulated a lot of wealth. Rich, poor, middle-class: we're all one American family. But I don't have to support a system that takes my hard-earned dollars and hands it off to either in a nearly unregulated manner where I don't know how much goes in either direction. The kinds of reforms being proposed by the President and the Democrats in Congress, by mandating care for the uninsured and subsidizing that care with taxpayer dollars will actually make that transfer transparent. And by using taxpayer dollars, the transfer will come not just from you and me, the working middle class, but from the rich also. And the proposed reforms will reduce the cost of health care through features—including the public option—that pressure insurers, hospitals, and doctors to adopt best practices that reduce costs.

It's not that the uninsured will become insured by magic: it's that the means by which that happens will be fairer, cheaper, and more transparent. In the longer run, those who become insured will have healthier lives, again reducing costs.

The G.O.P. is against this, because it will keep some fraction of your and my money in our own pockets instead of handing it to their patrons in the health-insurance business. Remember: With the G.O.P., it's always about the money.

See also:

G.O.P.-care II: Medical Payment Roulette

2009-09-01T12:09:00.006-04:00

What's the G.O.P. want for you regarding health care?

Well, since they want to prevent reform from taking place, that means they're for the current system of payment roulette. You go to the doctor, the doctor recommends a test or a procedure. You go ahead with it, and then you find out several months after the fact that your insurance company won't pay. Doctors' offices are calling you, sending you bills, threatening collection action, all because the insurance companies have it rigged where you don't know how much you're going to have to pay out of pocket, sometimes for something as simple as a doctor's visit.

One of the main aspects of the reforms proposed by the President and the Democrats in Congress is you would know how much a doctor's visit, tests, and procedures would cost you out of pocket beforehand, not months after the fact.

The insurance companies and their G.O.P. toadies like it the way it is, because they often can trick you into paying for things you shouldn't have to, or they can make their rules so impossible to decipher that you—and sometimes your doctor—just can't tell how much your insurance covers before hand.

If you're against medical payment roulette, you ought to support the kinds of reforms proposed by the President and the Democrats in Congress.

See also: Republican End-of-Life Care.

Republican End-of-Life Care

2009-08-31T06:47:00.005-04:00

An open letter to America's seniors and soon-to-be seniors:

I understand that you're upset because a bunch of G.O.P. yahoos have been running around the country and telling you that Obama's health plan includes "death panels," when, in fact, it doesn't. I understand that you're upset because you think that money's going to be shifted out of Medicare, when in fact, the mentioned reductions in Medicare spending come about through real cost savings, not shifting money around.

What I think you don't understand is what the G.O.P. has in store for you instead. What is it they really want?

Two words: Terri Schiavo. That's right. What the G.O.P. and their insurance company and long-term care friends want for you, instead of your right to leave this world through terms of your and your closest-ones' understanding and legal directive, is to put you into rooms hooked up to machines until one after another of your organ systems should fail, possibly years later. They're not interested in your human dignity, your decisions when you're of sound mind, or your God-given rights as an individual to control your own destiny. Instead, they just want to get you into situations where the cash flows from the government and those paying insurance premiums into their filthy pockets.

They'll exploit every trick in the book to do this, telling you you're going to Hell should you choose not to plug into the machines in their "care facilities," telling you that they know what God wants for you. They don't. They just want the money.

With them, it's always about the money. Have you forgotten so quickly?

So, every time they tell you that Obama and the Democrats want to do this or Obama and the Democrats want to do that with your Medicare, your private insurance, or your own very personal end-of-life decisions, watch your wallet, because twenty-to-one, one of their consortium of wealthy interests benefits from that opposition, at your expense.

See also: G.O.P.-care II: Medical Payment Roulette

Five Songs: Get Off My Lawn You Pucking Funks!

2009-08-16T13:16:00.002-04:00

Gorillaz, "Punk"
Punk - Gorillaz

The Ramones, "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker"
Sheena Is A Punk Rocker - The ...

The Tubes, "I Was a Punk Before You Were a Punk"

Weather Report, "Punk Jazz"
Punk Jazz - Weather Report

Minutemen, "History Lesson, Part 2"
History Lesson Part 2 - The Mi...

Five Songs: Parts Is Parts

2009-08-03T08:13:00.002-04:00

The T-Bones, "No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)"
No Matter What Shape (Your Sto...

The Guess Who, "These Eyes"
These Eyes - The Guess Who

Phish, "Weigh"
Weigh - Phish

Parliament, "Big Footin'"
Big Footin' - Parliament

Radiohead, "My Iron Lung"
My Iron Lung - Radiohead

Five Songs: From the 45s

2009-08-01T19:18:00.006-04:00

These are songs I ripped from 45s, which I think means I have license to share with my friends, this afternoon. I would link to appropriately licensed online versions of these, if they were available, but they're not. I'm not thrilled about that, since I could make each of you a CD or cassette tape of these songs if I wanted to, but I don't have $675k to spare if those bastards should be able to prove in court that I'm "a distributor."

I admit being deflicted about this: Artists clearly have a right to earn income from their creations. Whether the RIAA and its international co-conspirators represent or have ever really represented those artists is another question, but I'm not looking for a fight with them. Mongo only pawn in game of life.

Kraftwerk, "Dentaku"

My 45 is a chartreuse vinyl promo copy, not for sale (as retail), in a rice-paper sleve with English text on the "Pocket Calculator" side and Japanese on the "Dentaku" side.

Ian Lloyd, "Slip Away"

Written by Ric Ocasek. This song has such a thick sound. I was hoping it would be a big hit.

Robert Ellis Orrall with Carlene Carter, "I Couldn't Say No"

I'm glad this one was a hit.

Dexy's Midnight Runners, "Keep It, Part Two (Inferiority, Part One)"

The several years later follow up to the original. Who knows what Kevin was thinking. Best line is rushed, buried: "Just like Jon Voight in 1969." Yeah, the mp3 artifacts are annoying. Think I recorded it a little too hot. May try again on this one.

Billy Vaughn and His Orchestra, "A Swinging Safari"

For the Cloverbottom guys. And Mr. Gene Rayburn. Yes, the audio is poor, but, please, someone in my family has been carrying this around since 1962, so be gentle.

Five Songs: Five Course Meal, Redux

2009-08-01T11:44:00.002-04:00

Let's try this again. I have a feeling that Mr. Fripp and his minions had something to do with my previous post of the same name disappearing.

Radiohead, "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box"
Packt Like Sardines In A Crush...

Weather Report, "Cucumber Slumber"
Cucumber Slumber - Weather Rep...

Tony Joe White, "Polk Salad Annie"
Polk Salad Annie (Album Versio...

Phish, "The Mango Song"

King Crimson, "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part II". King Crimson being indisposed, the part of King Crimson will be played by Dream Theater
Larks Tongues In Aspic Pt. 2 -...

Five Songs: Meta

2009-07-19T20:28:00.001-04:00

Hrm. My little dinner menu of a week or so has gone bye-bye. Disappeared without a word. Hrm.

Five Songs: Jimi Under Cover

2009-07-19T20:13:00.006-04:00

For Jimmi:

Todd Rundgren, "If 6 Was 9"
If 6 Was 9 - Todd Rundgren

Devo, "Are You Experienced"

Phish, "Bold As Love"

Kronos Quartet, "Purple Haze"
Purple Haze - Kronos Quartet, ...

Derek & the Dominos, "Little Wing"
Little Wing - Derek & The Domi...

The "Little Wing" cover may be the single greatest cover in the history of recorded music. (Your mileage may vary.)

Addendum: This all started when I heard a Robert Randolph and the Family Band cover of "Purple Haze" on the radio this afternoon. It was going to be that, Todd, Phish, Clapton, and Jan Hammer's cover of "Manic Depression." Couldn't find the Robert Randolph anywhere, and the Jan Hammer CD with him playing guitar parts on the synthesizer isn't available in a file format, so this is what you get.

Fifth of July Encore

2009-07-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

Need an antidote to that fabulous/noisome Keith Emerson droning of yesterday? Try this: Charles Ives's "Variations on 'America'" performed by Tom Trenny at Trinity Church, NYC. This via Jeff Shaumeyer's current Beard of the Week.Jeff:

I like the flashy and silly, too, and this is one of my guilty pleasures: Ives' 'Variations on "America" ' for Organ; that's "America", the tune that starts "My country tis of thee…". Ives wrote these variations in 1891, when he was 17. The piece is frequently heard in an arrangement for orchestra made by William Schuman, but I much prefer the piquancy of it performed on organ.

I read an essay about the variations that called them "cheeky". That's probably true, but I don't think they go as far as "mocking". Ives treats the theme seriously enough and does up a clever set of treatments, including a very flashy and noisy toccata for a finale — watch for the pedal fireworks.

When I was in college, our college organist played this once on a recital. He hated the piece so he chose the most outlandish registrations he could think of, and it really bought the piece to life. For the finale he literally pulled out all the stops including the Zimbelstern (a little mechanical, tinkly bell device), which he happily left on and tinkling away when he left the organ bench at the end. Brilliant!

More information about Charles Ives can be found on the internet.

Happy Fifth of July!!

Five Songs: Special Fourth-of-July Edition

2009-07-04T14:01:00.004-04:00

Five Songs is not dead: It just smells funny.

Yes, "America" (apologies to Paul Simon)
America - Yes

X, "Fourth of July" ("whatever happened, I apologize")
4th Of July - X

The Nice (featuring Keith Emerson), "America" (off Keith Emerson & the Nice; studio version below) (apologies to Leonard Bernstein)
America - Original - The Nice

Toby Keith, "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" (no apologies)
Courtesy Of The Red, White And...

Wilco, "Ashes of American Flags" ("I know I would die if I could come back new")
Ashes of American Flags - Wilc...

Language and The Fourth of July

2009-07-04T09:34:00.014-04:00

I'm not one to put a lot of faith in the magical concept of the world. I think we're wired to do that, though, so it's only with the passage of time and the adoption of good habits—like, oh, scientific method and evidence-based reasoning—that one makes a partial break with the wiring one came into this world with. So, I'm very skeptical—skeptical, not formally dismissive—of frameworks where a human—or any other kind of entity in this universe, for that matter—says something and, poof, it happens.

In my framework, matter/energy happened for reasons I think likely never to be explained, forms of matter evolved, then forms of life, then what we think of as spirit, that ensemble of attributes of a living thing that smushes all one's attitudes, dynamism (or lack thereof), vitality, empathy, love of life, life's loves, personal history, etc., into a single dimension.

Some will object that using "spirit" in this sense is not appropriate to the issue of life on this planet (or in this plane, heh heh). That "spirit" as used in a religious sense means something that transcends the physical dimensions, that exists outside the material universe. In that framework, spirit happens first, followed by matter/energy, forms of matter, life, etc. The creation stories of Genesis and the Gospel According to John are explicit about such. The spiritual being wills the Universe into existence, in the case of John, via language.

I can't disprove such a framework. I'm skeptical that any experiment could be designed which could disprove such a framework. So, an alternative likely always remains that this world exists by force of will, and use of language, by a willful, creative, empathetic entity (or entities) that observe different physics than what you or I know.

Still, I'm extremely skeptical that humans are ever empowered to influence the physical world directly by language. No invocation of spells, no "hocus-pocus, alacazam" results in a sandwich appearing beside me at this desk without time and/or the intervention of myself or other creatures. Language, as available to humans, cannot rearrange matter, cannot direct energy, in a short term. And, as you might guess, I'm skeptical that it can direct that which might exist beyond the physics you and I know to influence what happens here, which makes those folks praying each night for their number to hit on the lottery really funny.

The closest set of circumstances on this world that we have where language invocation results in direct action is in these computers, where in the simplest senses I can type symbols and expressions and statements like "1 + 1" and have the machine return "2", but where one (not me!) can also hand the machine tens or hundreds or thousands of files of characters and configure silicon to direct rockets at the capital cities of any number of nations at once.

But... (And there are always "but"s in this kind of piece, no?)

But human language clearly matters in the longer term. Our language, as well as the non-verbal forms of communication we use, consciously or not, does influence others. It enable each of us to organize our own intentions in ways that incorporates objectives and considers alternatives in more formal, maybe better, ways than the alternatives of intuition and split-second judgments (Malcolm Gladwell be damned).

The U.S. Declaration of Independence remains a striking example of how language, shared language, by framing ideals, can influence human actions. Not just empowering the patriots of the American Revolution, the words of the Declaration, the words of the first two paragraphs, particularly when given an appropriate blind eye regarding the author's slave holding and a generous interpretation regarding gender, remain inspiring to freedom-loving people (freedom-loving sentient entities?).

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

(Thankfully, we have not only the selective interpretation of our language facility, but also our selective attention, so that we pay less attention to the list of indictments against George III and the government of Great Britain than we do to the aspirations and claims of those first two paragraphs.)

So language does matter: It does influence this physical world; it does invoke feelings in others. So each of us is responsible both in producing language and interpreting it: To choose our words carefully; to strive to understand what others mean. Perhaps a useful strategy would be to listen more, consider more, and speak less. Maybe just shutting up and listening to The Universe via one's own heart would be a better use of time than imploring God about that lottery ticket.

Constructing a social structure that maximizes freedom, incorporates majority rule, and protect minority rights is non trivial, but we've moved from a planet where brutal kleptocracy is the order of the day to one in which brutal regimes of whatever stripe are easily recognizable as outside some mainstream. Influencing change in the ones that remain is problematic, as events in Iran show. But clearly some goodly number of the people of Iran (and Myanmar and China and other locales) have aspirations of freedom and security that are more expansive, more humane, than those of their governments. (A tricky proposition: It also seems likely to me that we project our own view of what those aspirations ought to be rather than listening to what the people there see as their visions of freedom and security. Is there one vision of "humane"?)

Hopefully, with time, those dreams will be realized.

Maybe over the perspective of many years, a perspective likely unavailable to each of us, the impact of language is as instantaneous as the push of a button launching hundreds of missiles.

No Posts in June

2009-07-04T09:34:00.001-04:00

That wasn't intentional.

Five Songs: Candy

2009-05-31T21:43:00.003-04:00

Bow Wow Wow, "I Want Candy"
I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow

Con Funk Shun, "Candy"
Candy - Con Funk Shun

The Cars, "Candy O"
Candy-0 - The Cars

Bruce Springsteen, "Candy's Room"
Candy's Room - Bruce Springste...

Iggy Pop, "Candy"
Candy - Iggy Pop

Five Songs: Stories

2009-05-24T17:46:00.003-04:00

Five songs that tell a story (and aren't ballads, aren't by Springsteen, aren't by Cheryl Crow, etc.):

Boz Scaggs, "Lido Shuffle"
Lido Shuffle - Boz Scaggs

Electric Light Orchestra, "Rockaria"
Rockaria! - Electric Light Orc...

Genesis, "A Trick of the Tail"
A Trick Of The Tail - Genesis

Pretenders, "Tattooed Love Boys"
Tattooed Love Boys - The Prete...

The Who, "Odorono"
Odorono - The Who

Okay, the Genesis is from a time when they still told a lot of stories.

From Whence We Came

2009-05-20T08:04:00.004-04:00

Still reading Volume 1 of Abraham Lincoln: A Life by Michael Burlingame.

President Truman is reported to have said, "The only thing that's new is the history you don't know." And, of course, we only ever know a tiny fraction of what is or what's been, so there's always opportunity to learn more.

Something I've learned I didn't know much about is the history of the N-word. Growing up in the US South during desegregation, I heard plenty of it, from family and from friends. But by then public usage by public figures was frowned on, even as they might've been using it in private. Instead of "nigger," it was "colored" and "Negro."

It was not always so. I don't know when the public usage by public figures or usages in the press became unacceptable, but in reading Burlingame, I've learned that it certainly wasn't in the 1850s. What follows are examples, all from the source above.

The Democratic press also denounced Frémont supporters as "nigger-worshippers." An account in the Joliet Signal of a Republican rally there on October 8 sarcastically observed that it "was a wonderful day for the niggers and nigger-worshippers of this county. Our city is literally filled with enthusiastic Fremonters." [pp. 432–433]

...in the New York Herald, which referred to Lincoln as Douglas's "nigger worshipping competitor" espousing the "most repulsive disunion nigger equality principles and doctrines." [pp. 471–472]

The Little Giant [Douglas] then went into graphic and extensive detail about the indignities of "nigger equality" and race-mixing—hordes of blacks invading the state, holding office, becoming judges, and—horror of horrors, marrying with whites. "We must preserve the purity of the race not only in our politics but in our domestic relations," he thundered. (The word "nigger" appears in the account published by the Indianapolis Indiana Star Sentinel, which supported Douglas, but not in the Chicago Times. This difference lends credence to the claim that Douglas regularly used the word "nigger" instead of "negro," though the Congressional Globe and his organ, the Chicago Times sanitized his language.) [p. 474]

Douglas may have said "nigger" instead of "Negro." The Quincy Whig sarcastically noted that the Little Giant's "elegant terms" included an accusation that Lincoln espoused "the doctrine that 'niggers were equal to white men.' " The Whig asked: "Isn't this beautiful language to come from a United States Senator?" A journalist who interviewed Robert R. Hitt, the shorthand journalist who covered the debates for the Chicago Press and Tribune, wrote that during the second debate, held at Freeport, Owen Lovejoy became "thoroughly aroused by Douglas' reference to 'the nigger'—Douglas said 'nigger' not 'negro' as the Times reported on that occasion." Throughout the debate, "Douglas said 'nigger,'" though his "organ printed it 'negro.'" At Hillsboro, Douglas gave a speech in which "he uttered scarcely a sentence which had not the word 'nigger' in it," according to the Chicago Press and Tribute. In the later Alton debate, a reporter had difficulty hearing the Little Giant, but could make out some "emphatic words" like "nigger equality" and the Declaration of Independence was not made for "niggers."[p. 489]

And so it goes, as Patti Smith once sang, "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger."

This is where those of us now living in the USA have come, from 150 or so years ago. Slavery in the South and Negrophobia in the North. There are examples of just as ugly of usages from northern opponents of slavery, almost all of whom, like Lincoln, believed just as much in white superiority as did the slave-owning Southerners. White-ism is deeply entrenched in American culture: even if it retains a certain unholy vitality in the South to this day, it remains pervasive and unrepentant throughout the land.

Then comes the war, the Emancipation, the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth amendments, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, de jure and de facto segregation, desegregation of the military by Truman's presidential order, Brown v. Board of Education, Little Rock, Selma, Birmingham, Rosa Parks, Ole Miss, Dr. King, Watts, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the XXIVth amendment, forced busing, redrawn legislative and House districts, etc., and finally, today, a mixed-race black President.

And there are still those who every time "the blacks" comes out of their mouths, you can still hear "those niggers," as if they were Steven Douglas trying to get re-elected to the Senate in 1858.

Five Songs: Name Check

2009-05-18T16:34:00.004-04:00

Five songs that name check other musicians:

Weezer, "Buddy Holly"
Buddy Holly (Album Version) - ...

Sleater-Kinney, "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone"

Phish, "David Bowie"

LCD Soundsystem, "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House"
Daft Punk Is Playing At My Hou...

They Might Be Giants, "We're The Replacements"
We're The Replacements - They ...

Five Songs: Education

2009-05-10T16:09:00.003-04:00

Five songs about education:

Alice Cooper, "School's Out"
School's Out - Alice Cooper

Kaiser Chiefs, "Never Miss a Beat"
Never Miss A Beat - Kaiser Chi...

Phish, "Chalkdust Torture"

Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. II"
Another Brick In The Wall (Par...

Ramones, "Rock and Roll High School"

Five Songs: Homelessness

2009-05-03T10:44:00.005-04:00

Five songs about homelessness:

Derek and the Dominos, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"
Nobody Knows You When You're D...

The Chambers Brothers, "Time Has Come Today"
Time Has Come Today - The Cham...

Pet Shop Boys, "Theatre"
The Theatre - Pet Shop Boys

XTC, "The Smartest Monkeys"
The Smartest Monkeys - XTC

Crystal Waters, "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)"

Photo by Arty Smokes, used under a Creative Commons license.

Adoration of The Clash

2009-04-28T10:42:00.005-04:00

In a swuft move, Francesco Marciuliano manages to mix Twitter with The Clash in today's Sally Forth.

Sally Forth used without permission. Please don't sue me, King Features Syndicate.

Marciuliano is also responsible for the wicked and wickedly-funny Medium Large, available at an internet near you.

Maturity

2009-04-19T17:53:00.006-04:00

More, from Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Vol. 1, pg. 360":

In some men, the painful questioning that often occurs at midlife can lead to despair; in others, it produces stagnation. But it can also be a creative, if turbulent, period during which inner psychological growth takes place and leads to profound maturity. Out of the crucible of midlife introspection can emerge an awareness of one's own identity and uniqueness that breeds self-confidence and inspires confidence in others. A hallmark of such psychological progress is an ability to overcome egotism, to avoid taking things personally, to accept one's shortcomings and those of others with equanimity, to let go of things appropriate for youth and accept gladly the advantages and disadvantages of age. People able to meet theses challenges successfully radiate a kind of psychological wholeness and rootednesss that commands respect.

Any one of us who achieves such should consider her/himself lucky. May we all be so graced.

For an earlier post regarding Burlingame's book, see here.

Salaries of LGBT Organization Leaders

2009-03-28T06:37:00.003-04:00

The Washington Blade has published a compilation, here, of the 25 largest salaries for CEOs or Executive Directors of LGBT organizations. There are a few that seem out of line, but the bulk are consistent with median compensation for similar community-focused non-profit organizations.

But.... If those are the top 25 and a good chunk of those are consistent with the averages for the larger set, that means that those in the bottom N–25 are getting paid below average relative to comparative organizations. Not terribly surprising.

If I had a spreadsheet of the data, I'd divide the compensation by number of employees. By eye, it looks like the Log Cabin Republican lead takes home the largest bucks per staffer. Even less surprising.

Hat tip: Ron Buckmire.

Ada Lovelace Day

2009-03-24T07:00:00.005-04:00

"I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."—The Ada Lovelace Day manifesto.

Tamela Trauth is an alumna of the ERAU–Daytona Beach Computer Engineering program. She graduated in fall 2004, and then went to work for Soneticom down in Brevard County.

She's just something else: Loud, exciting, full of life, full of curiosity for how the world is, for how things work, for how things are to be made to do what we want them to. I have had few students who have given me as much joy as she has in her no-holds-barred approach to life, love, and learning. If I could take some small fraction of the devotion she gave toward succeeding in our program and gives towards accomplishment in her job and towards happiness in her life and instill those in any random group of students, I would have a cohort that could change the world almost overnight.

Jury Duty

2009-03-22T12:03:00.004-04:00

As some of my Facebook friends know, I had jury duty this past Friday. My first time. I had been called to jury duty twice previously, once while living in Boston and once while living in Daytona Beach, but had never ended up on a jury.

The trial involved failure of a sex offender to register where he lived. Florida law requires registered sex offenders to report a change of a permanent or temporary address within 48 hours of moving. It defines permanent address as somewhere on "abides, lodges, or resides" for five consecutive days, and temporary address as the same for five aggregate days in a calendar year.

The prosecution's case was originated with a state's attorney who had alerted authorities to the defendant's not having registered. In that witness's story, the defendant and his brother had done work for the witness in exchange for each of them having a place to stay at first one then another property that the witness owned. The prosecution called two Daytona Beach police officers and one deputy sheriff to support that claim.

The defense stated that the defendant had done the work so that his girlfriend (or, "old lady," as the defendant referred to her while testifying) could live at the state's attorney's property. The defense called the defendant's brother-in-law who owned a house the defendant had registered as his address, a roommate there (of unclear relationship to the brother-in-law), the girlfriend, and the defendant.

Bottom line: The girlfriend ended up testifying that the defendant was at the alternative address that had never been registered pretty much all the time; i.e., he was abiding there, so we found him guilty.

But.... It was messy. The prosecution's case, by itself, would not have been enough for conviction. The state's attorney who reported the guy had served as the defendant's attorney on a prior unrelated charge, so there was more to that witness's and the defendant's relationship than was introduced in direct testimony. (That came out from the documentary evidence of prior convictions which both sides had stipulated be introduced.)

And.... The deliberations were messier. We had one person who wanted to convict the defendant based almost solely on the fact that he was a convicted sex offender, without much regard for the facts of this case. We had one individual who'd just repeat, "this is hard," and "I don't know," over and over again. We had one individual who'd say to the "this is hard" person, "let's just agree he's guilty and get out of here." We had one individual who couldn't seem to come to any kind of focus regarding the evidence, flitting from one piece to another, from one reason witness X was lying to another reason that same witness had to be telling the truth. Our foreperson was a quiet individual who pretty much let these folks and myself have our runs, but shared pretty much my perspective that the facts, as established largely through the direct testimony of the girlfriend, as well as some of what she said during cross-examination, did support the prosecution's case beyond a reasonable doubt.

It left me in a bad position: I'm not a huge fan of the way the sex-offender registration is applied well beyond the class of people who are overwhelmingly likely to engage in repeat child rape or child molestation to include a broad swatch of unpopular sexual behaviors like prostitution clients and Larry-Craig bathroom cruisers. (The defendant had been convicted of a sexual offense involving a child, but there was no information as to whether that was a six year old or a seventeen year old, so who knows in this case. (Haven't looked it up.)) The prosecution was lousy: You'd've thought that the two prosecutors had watched the O.J. trial and thought that Marsha Clark had done a great job and ought to be emulated. Several times I noted to myself their inability to ask what would be a followup question that would actually clarify things. The defense wasn't much better, because it was the the girlfriend's response to the defense attorney's direct question that established that the defendant was pretty much at the address as stated in the charging information. Three of my five fellow jurors just seemed to have a less than serious understanding of their responsibilities as citizens, with one even saying, "Why can't they decide it? They've been to school for this."

Eventually (after several hours), flitting person decided that the girlfriend's testimony did establish the prosecution's charge beyond a reasonable doubt—and flitting person had wasted much time creating fantastic scenarios, largely based around motivations that one would never be able to determine whether true or not, that clearly did not meet the definition of reasonable doubt as provided in the judge's instructions—and the two other agreed, for whatever reasons, so we came to the unanimous guilty verdict.

The defendant: A poor shmoo. A guy who's been in prison previously, who may spend much of the rest of his life in prison, off and on. The kind of person who'll likely never be far from the reach of the justice system. And yet, someone who, although presumed innocent at the get go, had beyond any reasonable doubt, done what was alleged in the charging information. Ugh.

In the selection process, they asked us about whether juries could disobey the judge's instructions, could form their own opinion about what the law should be. I noted that some believed that juries could do just that, recalling after the fact that the far right fringe calls this "jury nullification." That gave me much to think about from the time we were selected on Monday until the trial on Friday.

I came to the personal conclusion that the system we have, where legislators make the law, where trial judges instruct juries as to what that law is, and where appellate courts determine whether the law is correct within its constitutional framework and whether it was applied correctly by the trial judge and jurors, is probably as good as it's going to get. I disagree with my many of my fellow citizens on their idea that judges have no role in determining whether laws as adopted by the legislature are constitutional or not; i.e., I believe that judicial review is entirely appropriate, and I reject the broad claim that judges determining that the civil rights of an individual or class of individuals have been infringed are "legislating from the bench." Bunk. They're respecting rights enumerated in the US Constitution, the constitutions of the states, and in statute and in case law.

After participating as a juror in this case I am even more firmly convinced that a jury, in and of itself, cannot decide what is and isn't law. It's tough enough to decide whether the facts of the case are as established by the prosecution or refuted by the defense. I'd hate to be having a failure of imagination, but I find the prospect of six or twelve or twenty-three randomly selected citizens having the wherewithal to decide what is and isn't appropriate law highly unlikely, especially after years of our educational system being intentionally neglected in the areas of civics and history. For crying out loud, our somewhat vetted through elections legislators don't have a particularly strong record of clearly adopting good laws, sometimes adopting awful ones.

So, in a nation that is ostensibly a nation of laws, I accept that the role of the jury in a criminal trial is to follow the judge's instructions and decide the evidence as to the facts of the case and as to whether those facts establish the case beyond a reasonable doubt, even when the law in question is less than perfect, or where the system is, in some sense, rigged in a way that a certain class of individuals once they fall into that system's orbit, will likely never escape.

So.... It wasn't a jump-up-and-down day. It was overall sobering, leaving me more knowledgeable about my own elitist attitudes (toward several of my less than serious and less than thoughtful fellow jurors) and my own alignment to a larger degree than I'd imagined with the existing regime of civil authority.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

2009-03-17T19:08:00.004-04:00

From all sides of my family tree:

Medium Review: Cinema: Watchmen

2009-03-17T15:43:00.006-04:00

I'm no literary scholar. I don't claim to understand postmodernism and what "deconstruction" really means. I have a few ideas about such, but they're likely half-baked. I do know that some refer the graphic novel Watchmen as a postmodern work that "deconstructs the comic book idiom." Not anyone's exact quotation that I know of, but not far off from several descriptions I've, you've, likely read.

I read it many moons ago, in the late 1980s. I used to put my name and the place and date of purchase in books, and my copy says "Tim Wilson // Cambridge, Massachusetts // 28 NOV 87," so likely I gave it to myself as a birthday present that year. And I liked it immediately, for its surface-level plot with its pirate-comic story within a story; for its oh-so-complete story world—which just so happens to be our world, excepting one where Nixon is still President; where there have been costumed heros, currently outlawed; and where there is one super being resulting from a freak scientific accident— for its oh-so-complete sense of how that world looks; and for the added pseudoartifacts from that world that complete each chapter (individual funny book).

I thought the trailers for the flick looked awesome from the get go, and I awaited the movie's appearance. I'm 52: I hardly run and see movies the first day of release any more, but I do like to catch 'em in the theater. And through the miracle of spring break, I finally got to see Watchmen today, in a theater with four other people.

I thought it was wonderful, and I'm having a hard time understanding what all the grousing was about.

First, it looked fantastic. If Warren Beatty captured the look of the Sunday funnies down to the ink colors in Dick Tracy—and yes he did—then so did Zach Snyder in Watchmen. There's just little I could find to complain about visually. Yes, one could argue that it was a little too literal in using the comic as a storyboard for the movie, but there were so many arresting but integral images in the comic, one would shortchange the flick not to include them.

Second, it followed the surface-level plot pretty closely until the much discussed absence of the squid at the end (and I'm pretty sure that anyone who knows what "the squid" means already knows of its absence from the flick). The change of plot is quite crafty, even if it has been used in numerous Superman vs. Lex Luthor stories previously, albiet this time with a vastly different result. Yes, it lacks the Tales of the Dark Freighter comic within a comic, although the two Bernies do make an appearance, and sure that ensures it can't have some of the literary depth that the graphic novel does (although I am made to understand there is to be a DVD of Tales which will also include Behind the Mask by the original Night Owl; that is, both the sub-story and some artifacts. I also expect there will be an even longer "Director's Cut," which I can already imagine including the two Bernies, the shrink's wife, etc. If none of this matters to you, I'm telling you, it won't matter to your enjoyment of the movie, since it's just piling on details above and beyond the what's already there).

Third, it does for the super-hero movie much of what the original story in comic book / graphic novel form did for the comic book / graphic novel form. Snyder has been criticized for the gratuitous violence—and there was one instance I was happy to close my eyes and not see, but I don't much care for explicit depictions of violence or its results in movies or on TV (so someone please explain why I liked "CSI" so much)—and it is there, upfront, and accompanied by Foleys suggesting the breaking of bones and passage through skin of such. But, since none of the heroes in question excepting Dr. Manhattan, the super being created by the freak accident, really have super powers, then for them to engage in the action and adventure they do, they would have to be sufficiently strong to break bones, etc., in the course of conducting their masked-adventurer business. This, to me, is where Snyder gets it precisely right. To highlight the masked adventurers' superhuman strength and speed by changing the frame rate and by cranking up the sound effects is necessary, otherwise there's no distinction with what you see on Extreme Fighting.

The acting was just fine; complaints about Malin Akerman are overblown. Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson are fine, and Jackie Earle Haley really is damned good.

We live in a cultural world where some were wanting The Dark Night to be nominated for best movie. Where its comic book story featuring a man who dresses up like a bat, another who has the face of a clown, and a third whose face is distorted by acid into a perfect split image, was taken as a Serious Metaphor worthy of Serious Thought about Serious Times by some Serious People. No doubt, it was a fun flick, very exciting, with some good performances (one particularly thought provoking for its ethereal portrayal of real nihilism), but it was not a particularly deep reflection on government abuses, wiretapping, torture, or whether the Batman should break his code and kill the Joker. It was fairly true to its source, averaged over the years, and a good entertainment.

Watchmen is sufficiently over-the-top—in its violence, in its sole sex scene (and the Leonard Cohen is appropriately ridiculous, not to be taken seriously, which I think many have missed), in its truth to a story where mass-murder is intrinsic—to take the super-hero movie apart, show its pieces (not unlike those of a disassembled watch), and put them back together again. Like its source, it provokes the thought about what a near omnipotent being who had once been human might do in this world, about how madness and purposeful direction coexist within one being, about how megalomania might delay the end of the world, about how nearly ordinary folks muddle through the days making tough moral decisions, and about how in the end, nothing ever ends. It is a good piece of cinema, and it is a good entertainment.

Featured Photo

2009-03-16T19:45:00.003-04:00

The online version of Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine is featuring my photo below. Right now. Go look, here, to see the thumbnail on the front page, and here to see their photo with the blurb. It's STS-126, Shuttle Endeavour, as seen from the parking lot of the Lehman Building at ERAU where my office is.

After corresponding with one of their editors, I'm not sure it was post-SRB (was tired and on a plane when writing my reply). The main engines glow blue, if I recall correctly; the SRBs, orange. If I did misidentify the time into flight, I apologize for any misinformation.

Yes, some of you reading this have seen this already by e-mail or on Facebook. What, you think I should keep quiet about this? I'm tickled.

Woo. Scary.

2009-03-16T19:41:00.006-04:00

Yesterday's Whigs, Yesterday's Democrats; Today's Democrats, Today's Republicans

2009-03-14T11:04:00.005-04:00

From, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, by Michael Burlingame, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp. 71–72, discussing Lincoln's first run for elective office as candidate for the Illinois legislature in 1832.

He rejected the Jacksonian creed, which The Democratic Review summarized in 1938: "As little government as possible; that little emanating from, and controlled by, the people; and uniform in its application to all." Democrats in general believed that the only assertive action that the federal government should undertake was aggressive foreign expansionism. Whigs, on the other hand, favored positive government. A leading Whig spokesman, Horace Greely of the New York Tribune, explained in 1845, " 'THE COMMONWEALTH' is the term best expressing the Whig idea of a State or Nation, and our philosophy regards a Government with hope and confidence, as an agency of the community through which vast and beneficent ends may be accomplished," unlike the Democrats, who regard government "with distrust and aversion, as an agency mainly of corruption, oppression, and robbery." The "great fundamental principle" of Whiggery, Greely declared, was that "government is not merely a machine for making war and punishing felons, but is bound to do all that is fairly within its power to promote the welfare of the people—that its legitimate scope is not merely negative, repressive, defensive, but is also affirmative, creative, constructive, beneficent."

Lincoln shared the Whig vision. He argued that the "legitimate object of government, is 'to do for the people whatever needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.' There are many such things—some of them exist independently of the injustice in the world. Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men's property are all instances."

The Democracy of 1832 described here sounds not too much unlike today's Republicans. "[U]niform in its application to all" persists with GOP/libertarian nonsense like flat tax ideas. "[E]manating and controlled by the people," is the kind of slogan that the GOP—and one great distinction with the Jacksonian Democracy is the now long-standing GOP intimacy with great wealth—and its reactionary conservative allies use to block progressive policies truer both to the Constitution and to the Declaration of Independence. And the most recent history of the GOP is nothing but one of a cohort that seeks to control government ostensibly because government is not to be trusted, when, in fact, they just want to get their greedy little hands on the levers of power.

The Obama presidency so far, and much of the New Democratic movement, has goals consistent with Greely's and Lincoln's statements of 1832 Whiggery. The concepts of The Commonwealth and communitarianism, that we are all in this together (even the wealthy GOP and their reactionary supporters/victims), and of government to promote material and social well being are rightfully enjoying leadership from the top and through much of the Democratic party, as well as support from large numbers of people throughout the USA, even in these tough economic times.

FWIW, Lincoln lost that first election, but went on to be elected to the Illinois legislature as a Whig in a heavily Democratic county largely on the strength of his personal integrity and trust in his individual judgment, not unlike the confidence some subset of Republicans rightly, in my opinion, place in President Obama, even as they disagree with him on some fundamental issues.

Ultimate Celebrity Rant

2009-02-08T14:11:00.002-05:00

From Slate V. Warning: F-bomb rate about 20 per minute! Plus, many GDs.

A Good Offense Being the Best Defense....

2009-01-29T07:16:00.004-05:00

A couple of postulates:

(1) Our wiring is such that we are more likely to take offense when no offense is given than we are to not take offense when offense is given.

(2) The fraction of times that offense is taken is greater, maybe substantially greater, than the fraction of times that offense is given.

Does (1) lead to (2)? I've got some preliminary event trees drawn out, but won't share until I take time to work it through. In the meantime, can't each of us choose to reduce our own incidence of taking offense when none is given by adopting the presumption that by-and-large offense is neither intended nor even given? Isn't it our responsibility to do so?

Adios a la Passado, and Back to the Beginning

2009-01-21T09:45:00.005-05:00

When everyone was expecting Lincoln, Obama gave us Washington. at Valley Forge, quoting Thomas Payne.

My favorite segment from the speech:

But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

Good luck, Mr. President.

A Small Rant (Number 492,696)

2009-01-19T21:13:00.007-05:00

Yeah, I know, I've been quiet when I should be getting all excited about tomorrow's inauguration of President Obama.

I am excited, but my lingering disappointment in the LGBT movement—both in terms of moving forward after the November losses and in terms of not being able to move past focusing on distractions like Rick Warren—has just left me a little fried. I wish I could make more of a difference in moving LGBT rights forward, but I'm unclear how to do so. And I'm easily distracted by the day-to-day fulfilling of my family, personal, and professional obligations.

The only LGBT leaders who seem to me to have a clue are the actual politicians: the Barney Franks and Tammy Baldwins. The rest—activists, media/blogger types, and much of the community that I see online and in person—seem clueless. Anger seems to count for action, and the only action happening is anger.

We got our butts kicked here in Florida, and the local LGBT leadership goes on with their heads up their asses acting like nothing happened. Like November 4 doesn't deserve some kind of response beyond "we have really big plans for this year." The usual suspects—The Human Rights Campaign and Equality Florida, in particular—continue down their merry path in the delusion that they're going to be effective lobbying the reactionary Florida legislature (even more reactionary after November, since the local Democratic party gives the GOP a bye in just about ever district in which there's not already a Democratic legislator) for items like domestic partner benefits. The same people who led us to defeat in November are still running the show, but I see individual after individual on Facebook keep signing up as a supporter of the Human Rights Campaign. They may even think I'd want them to do so.

I certainly don't mean to declare "game over," but there is a time to actually take the safety, hunker down, and figure out what to do next. I don't see much of that happening. Instead, there's either Obama euphoria (Gene Robinson!), Obama disappointment (Rick Warren!), or floundering activity on an LGBT rights agenda that's going nowhere in the Florida legislature.

So, that's the report from Florida, 19 January 2009.

p.s. I am thrilled about President Obama, because I realize how far we've come as a nation in my lifetime regarding matters of race. But I remain dejected and irritated about my LGBT community, a community that seems not to have the slightest clue how to secure the rights that flow to its members as naturally as breathing air.

Bald Eagles

2009-01-10T17:12:00.002-05:00

These are from a local bike ride one day before Christmas. Excerpts are at the original resolution. Click on the image to see it in Flickr, then click All Sizes -> Original if you want to see the entire image at full resolution.

Happy 2009

2009-01-01T12:54:00.001-05:00

We're off to Marco Island in southwest Florida for a few days. I've got to be there for a meeting on Sunday.

Hope each and every one of you have a fantastic 2009.

Rick Warren and the Inauguration

2008-12-17T21:13:00.003-05:00

Lots of people are in high dudgeon about the Inaugural Committee's choice (with, one presumes, President-Elect Obama's consent) of Rick Warren to deliver the Invocation at the Inauguration.

Get. Over. It.

If you didn't understand what Obama was talking about when he discussed a politics of inclusion, you have no one to blame but yourself. You were told the us-against-them rules were going to change.

Treating people as persona-non-grata because you disagree with their opinion on a matter near and dear to your own heart is not an effective way to change their opinion. Impacting them in ways that leads them to change their point of view is desirable. There are ways to do that beyond holding them up to ridicule, scorn, invective, and dismissal. Engaging them as a human being that you care about, that you care to influence their opinion about, is an approach that yields substantive change both in the short and long terms.

It's better for Warren to be there on the platform and to hear Obama's inclusion of LGBT folk into the national fabric in his inaugural address than it is for him to hear it on a television somewhere. It draws him into the discussion. It makes him complicit in Obama's point of view.

We (LGBT folk) have to engage the church-going population, and not just the liberal church-going population. We have to hear their fears and concerns; we have to address them. Being right just isn't enough: we have to bring those who disagree with us along somehow if we are going to get to the point that they respect our rights from an understanding point of view.

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take Jay Leno at 10:00 p.m."

2008-12-08T21:10:00.002-05:00

From the New York Times, here:

Only Monday Mr. Zucker appeared at a UBS lunch in New York and suggested that in the future networks might have to cut back on the hours of prime time they program. The daily program with Mr. Leno would effectively cut back the number of hours NBC needed to fill each week from 22 to 17.

UBS?

UBS was the network in Network.

Proposition 8, The Musical

2008-12-03T18:01:00.002-05:00

From Funny or Die.

Thanksgiving (USA) 2008

2008-11-27T12:53:00.003-05:00

I'm cleaning for company—Mack's sister and her long-term companion (aka "husband", see this)—arrive late this afternoon. We visited them several years ago for the Oyster Ridge Music Festival in their town of Kemmerer, Wyoming.

Also cooking. Have already baked a pumpkin pie and cooked green beans to heat up right before serving. In addition to those, we're having turkey breast, those sauteed sweet potatoes that The Minimalist guy from the New York Times has been pushing and that have been featured several places around the web, and some Pillsbury crescent rolls.

So let's get to a quick, incomplete, list of things I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving in the United States in 2008.

The love of my life, Mack McKinley, who by being in my life has made everything better, more worthwhile, more intense, more important;
A job I enjoy, since "teh kids" and my co-workers keep me on my toes and create the opportunity for me to learn something every day;
A challenge for the rest of my life: Helping secure the rights that every human has by being born for those of us who are sexual misfits (misfits compared with some supposedly large chunk of the rest of humanity);
A roof over my head, good food on the table, and a degree of comfort that the vast majority of humanity, now or in the past, has never had the pleasure of;
Wonderful folks in both our families, at our workplaces, in our friendships (real and virtual).

Thanks to all for reading. May this Thanksgiving Day and the rest of the holidays—So the French get all of August off: Unless you are in the medical, emergency services, or retail fields, we basically get from the fourth Thursday in November until New Years Day with a substantially reduced or non-existent workload—bring you, those you care about, and all of us a chance to appreciate the gifts we were given just by existing, just by breathing.

Sunset, Boulder, Colorado, 18 Novebmer 2008

2008-11-22T12:13:00.001-05:00

Click here for the full-size, 6047x2398, image.

When Snoop Met Martha

2008-11-22T08:05:00.002-05:00

Segment 1:

Segment 2:

Consequences of Gay Marriage

2008-11-21T00:00:00.002-05:00

more music charts

JoinTheImpact: Orlando, Saturday, 15 November 2008

2008-11-16T07:49:00.004-05:00

We went to the JoinTheImpact demonstration in Orlando yesterday. The Orlando Sentinel said (here) that the crowd was over 1000 people. Some good speakers, particularly Patty Sheehan, out Orlando City Commissioner, and Michael Vance of the Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Community Center of Central Florida.

The full set of my pictures are on Flickr here, but below are a few of my favorites.

Please. Speak out against the hate. Engage your friends, regardless of where you are, of who you are. You don't have to be gay to speak out against hate, and you don't have to be out to speak up for equality.

Post-Election Blues

2008-11-10T07:11:00.003-05:00

Wow. Here we are with my candidate for POTUS having won the election. It think it's a great decision on the part of the electorate. The situation with its challenges makes it an opportune time to approach long-standing issues.

But beyond the moment last Tuesday when the networks called it for Obama, I haven't had much occasion to celebrate. There's more to life than the Presidential election, and some of my time and treasure recently were put into the No on 2 campaign. I wish I had done more.

We got thumped. I don't know any other way to put it. I'm sure there are good signs in the numbers relative to where we were several years ago, but with the amendment approved, we have to swing 20% of the electorate if we are to reverse this at the polls. I was hopeful that the 60% threshold we approved several years ago would serve as an adequate block to this kind of nonsense, but 62% voted for the amendment.

I'm really kind of stymied about this. Friends and family don't seem to appreciate the degree to which having people vote on whether you're a complete citizen or not is repugnant in the first place, and distressing when they vote that, no, you're not. I know friends in California and Arizona understand.

California's getting all the news. The results there were similarly ugly, since their process only required a 50%+1 approval, they got beat by a smaller margin but with the same result.

I'm unsure how to proceed. The thoughtful part of me says we have to engage the opposition at all levels, from right-wing talk-radio personalities to everyday churchgoers who'd call me "an abomination." I'm very skeptical that yelling at them or protesting their churches is useful, but I remain very curious about true civil disobedience in the form of obstructing the ability of people to secure marriage licenses. I have to learn some history of the Civil Rights movement. Maybe it's time to hunker down and plan strategy rather than discussing tactics.

One things folks don't seem to get is that while there are clearly deep and substantive distinctions between the insults imposed on black people and those on LGBT people, when it comes to marriage—mixed-race or same-sex—the language of those opposed is the same. I recall hearing my sweet old uncle, Richard Gaertner of Chicago, say on seeing a mixed-race couple one day in the early 1970s, "See, Timmy. Isn't that disgusting?"

Luckily I had already decided for reasons I may never understand that it wasn't. I can only hope that others have already decided that my love for Mack isn't disgusting. That it's something to be cherished and celebrated, the same as any other two people's love for each other is.

Proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution, Revised

2008-11-05T10:50:00.003-05:00

Proposed changes in italics:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

This is the steady-state endgame for which we have to strive.

Our Rights

2008-11-05T05:52:00.004-05:00

We start today to look for ways to ensure that our rights are never infringed again as they were by votes in Arizona, California, and Florida last night. It's going to take a combination of activism, education, fund raising, crafty friend-making with the powerful, including legislators and (always hated-by-wrongdoers) judges, and putting ourselves even further out there.

Our rights are not a human creation, and they aren't subject to vote. In Jefferson's language, our rights come from our Creator: Something/somewhere/someone greater and beyond ourselves and our fellow humans, something independent of the details of one's individual beliefs. The larger community and the government can recognize, support, and protect—or deny, discourage, and attack—our rights, but they cannot really take them away. They are inalienable: That's what makes them rights.

We must use appropriate force to ensure that our communities and our governments recognize our rights. That does not include physical violence. From Magna Carta to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, it has always been so. Sit ins come to mind as an example of appropriate force. Sit ins in courthouses where marriage licenses are granted. If we can't get married, maybe no one should be able to.

We have the right to live and love with our same-sex partners of however many years as much as those in different-sex relationships have to do so with theirs. And what we have the right to is "marriage," not some substitute word or arrangement. It may take one, two, five, or ten more generations to achieve recognition of that right by our neighbors and communities, by all the states and by the federal government, but we have to keep pointing in the right direction. As much as they holler "abomination" at us, the shame is on their side: The side of those who deny a basic human right to others, not those whose love is misunderstood, distorted, and slandered.

My Map

2008-11-04T18:46:00.002-05:00

Did this Saturday night at the LA Times site.

Yeah, I'm an optimist. Sue me.

I know; I know. I'm probably wrong about Georgia and South Carolina. We'll see.

Poll Working

2008-11-04T12:20:00.005-05:00

I worked Precinct 305 in Volusia County (my precinct in Debary—the local Methodist church) for No on 2 this morning. When I got there (late: about 7:30 a.m. when the polls had opened at 7:00) there was a line around the building, something I've never seen before here (but we only moved here in summer of 2005). The local candidates for mayor and council were at the street, with signs and banners, but no one else was working at the solicitation-limit line for anything, so I positioned myself there and proceeded to greet voters with a cheery "Good morning. Hope you'll vote 'No' on Amendment 2."

It went very well. Of course, the Amendment has its supporters, with recent polls showing it gathering more that 50% support, but not the required 60%, but most folks were pleasant enough back. There was one very tight-lipped woman who got out of an SUV with a "McCain-Palin" sticker on it who gave me a hard look, but I just smiled back at her. And there was an older woman who asked me incredulously how I could encourage anyone to vote "No" on Amendment 2, proceeded to tell me that I probably didn't believe in the Bible, and went off muttering "The Bible says it's an abomination." I really wanted to tell her that she was a good example of God having hardened someone's heart, but just asked her to "please reconsider."

There was quite a bit of good feedback, though, from the young straight couple with their toddler daughter who assured me they were against it, to the woman who told me after voting that she was so glad I was there explaining what the amendment really was to voters and asking them to vote "No."

I look at it like this: First, if I don't ask, why should voters vote the way I want them to. Second, if they're on my side and I ask them, it strengthens their desire to vote the way both of us already think they should. Third, if they're not on my side, it shows them that I'm standing up for my position, not theirs, and in a statistical sense, that's got to work to the advantage of my position. Fourth, my being there when there's not someone from the other side ought to demoralize and sow doubt among the measure's proponents; at least, I hope it did.

I couldn't stay all day: Had to get to work. But I'm glad I took the time. I hadn't done poll work like that in years (1978, I think, for the DEM ticket and the local congressional candidate in TN-7).

Let the GOP Ass Whooping Begin

2008-11-04T06:00:00.005-05:00

Let's get real: There's no way the American people will return to power the candidates of the party that has screwed things up so badly over the last eight years. That would be "fool me three times" territory, and "fool me twice" has hurt too badly.

But you have to vote to make that so.

So if you haven't voted already, get out there and vote, and TURN THE RASCALS OUT! And of course vote NO on Amendment 2 (Florida), Proposition 8 (California), or Proposition 102 (Arizona). Just say no to hatefulness.

As for my GOP friends, just think of it as the tough love your party needs to get itself back in line with the nation.

You've let a cadre of extreme right-wing religious folk take over the party. But instead of trending back to the center, you're giving what might as well now be expressed as the Palin wing (previously the GWB wing) way too much credibility and power within your own ranks. Cede total control to them, and your next ass whooping will be far worse than what you're going to experience today, and today's going to be pretty bad for you.

Since the kind of self-righteousness displayed by Palin's and GWB's fans doesn't exactly lead to reflection and self-correction, I expect the GOP may be in for a generation or more of repeated ass whoopings and electoral disappointments, especially with the increased lack of clout for the rich folks resulting from world-wide financial and economic distress. Couldn't happen to a sweeter crowd (either the self-righteous religious or the rich folk who handed them the keys to power) or be better timed to ensure that the party that actually works for the broader swatch of people (that's the big-D Democratic Party, folks) gets a real chance to run things for long enough to make things happen.

Olden Times

2008-11-03T21:42:00.003-05:00

1992: Andrew (my ex) and I waited an hour and a half in Boston's South End (just across the street from where we lived) to vote for Bill Clinton. It wasn't going to change the outcome in Massachusetts: it was just important.

1980: We were at Rick Champion's, and when Tom Holzemer told Rick that he'd voted for Reagan, I thought Rick was gonna die of disappointment. I understood the impulse, even as I'd argued for and worked for Carter. Many of today's McCain supporters are fixing to understand tomorrow how many of us Carter supporters felt that night.

1972: Sarah Palin, you might know in 2012 just how George McGovern felt. Was it worth having?

All You Need Is Love

2008-11-01T19:19:00.003-04:00

"Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time." -- Lennon & McCartney (John Lennon wrote it.)

Yesterday's Pumpkin, Today!

2008-11-01T18:10:00.002-04:00

The Republican Core

2008-11-01T13:55:00.008-04:00

I. The Republican core explained, here by James Carville and Stan Greenberg at Democracy Corp:

While a sizeable majority of voters say Republicans have lost in 2006 and 2008 because they have been “too conservative,” a sizeable plurality of Republicans say, it is because they have “not been conservative enough.”
Over three-quarters of Republicans say Palin was good choice, while a majority of the electorate says the opposite.
Two-thirds of Republicans say McCain has not been aggressive enough, but a majority of voters think they have [sic] been too aggressive.
Looking to the future, a large majority of Republicans say the party needs to “move more to the right and back to conservative principles,” while an even larger majority of all voters say, it should move to the “center to win over moderate and independent voters.”
Finally, almost 60 percent of Republicans say “if Barack Obama is elected, he will lead the country down the wrong path and Republicans should oppose his plans,” while 70 percent of all voters say they “should give him the benefit of the doubt and help him achieve his plans.”

II. The Republican core, explained here by Michael Schaffer at The New Republic's The Plank:

When I was in fifth grade, there was this kid named Matt who was the Kid With the Temper. Three or four times a year, he'd spaz out to comic, theatrical effect--throwing things, kicking desks, roaming the hallways, and, once, locking himself in a closet and emerging with a black eye. With the sort of cruelty unique to 10-year-olds, classmates used to goad the poor kid when it looked like an outburst was near, circling around him in the knowledge that we'd soon glimpse what we all knew was inside. The scene described in Seyward's post from Columbus [here, TAW], and depicted on any number of YouTube clips, seems remarkably similar. Camera-equipped Obama supporters outside McCain and Palin rallies wave signs and ask questions in the certainty that their very presence will unleash the ugliness that appears to be inside all too many of the GOP faithful. Of course, Matt was a little kid in school and these folks are adults out in the world, so I'm not saying I feel any particular sympathy for those who just can't seem to keep themselves from shouting racial or ethnic epithets or just dumb-ass Cold War jingoistic nonsense, at their tormentors. But what amazes me is how little provocation it apparently is to reduce a lot of solid middle American Republicans to a bunch of hysterical fifth-grader [sic].

The Big Dirt Nap, Part 382,592

2008-10-29T05:31:00.003-04:00

Used without permission.

Oui

2008-10-28T20:37:00.002-04:00

As a Jones, I have nothing but the upmost confidence in these kids. I see 'em at school/work, and they're great! They're our future: Let's give them all the support we can.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

2008-10-26T16:07:00.002-04:00

From anchorwoman Barbara West's profile at WFTV's site:

Prior to working in television news, I was an assistant professor at the University of Vermont and represented Vermont in the Miss America Pageant. I hold a Master's Degree from the University of Vermont.

Vote Like Us

2008-10-26T11:32:00.005-04:00

Submitted for your perusal, the sample ballot that Mack and I marked up and used in the voting booth yesterday during early voting. The simple rules:

"Hold your nose and vote the straight Democratic ticket." (Thanks to Joe Fineman's mom.)
Keep judges appointed by Lawton Chiles; dump judges appointed by Jeb! (As with "Jeopardy!", the bang ('!') is part of the name.)
Locally, it's probably best to get some fresh blood in. George Coleman's a fine man, but he's had his chance. Given the (lack of) response to the TS Fay flooding, I don't see why we would keep him. Similarly with the City Council Seat 3 election.

In the weeds, we voted against the local option tax for community colleges, because I think that localities shouldn't be able to differentially support post-secondary education unless they want to go all out and charter their own school. Community colleges in Florida are state-chartered schools, and if the state doesn't want to pony up the money to support them, then we'd better quit electing pro-stupidity keep-'em-dumb Republicans to the legislature.

Biden May Have Just as Well Said, "WTF?"

2008-10-25T20:39:00.003-04:00

Addendum: Joe.My.God. reports here that the anchorwhatzit is married to a GOP strategist. Good grief.

Wassup?

2008-10-24T20:21:00.000-04:00

That David Sedaris Quotation on "Undecided" Voters

2008-10-24T17:18:00.002-04:00

From the New Yorker, here:

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

He's Got Sole

2008-10-23T11:49:00.006-04:00

Image by Callie Shell at The Digital Journalist, used without permission.

From the caption

Senator Obama was doing press interviews by telephone in a holding room between events. Sometime later as he was getting ready to begin his event, he asked me if I was photographing his shoes. When I said yes, he told me that he had already had them resoled once since he entered the race a year earlier. Providence, R.I., 3/1/2008.

.

Temperment and just plain old good sense.

Shorter History

2008-10-23T05:55:00.002-04:00

The USA's pre-9/11 lack of response to radical Islam? Pretty much all Cap Weinberger's fault. So sez Bob McFarlane in this op-ed in today's New York Times.

Chucky T Video of Yesterday

2008-10-22T19:38:00.001-04:00

Chucky T Video of the Day

2008-10-22T19:36:00.002-04:00

Obama's Travel Plans

2008-10-21T05:45:00.002-04:00

If I were him, I'd come back from Hawaii via Alaska, where I'd hold a rally in Wasilla.

Attn: Nervous Nellies

2008-10-20T20:22:00.003-04:00

Buck up!

Your running around scared of the GOP machine is sooooo 2004. Instead of doing everything you can to demoralize the opposition, you're fretting.

Wake the eff up.

Your attitude has a lot to do with how this election turns out. It's not some kind of magical "whatever you believe will happen," but it is some kind of not-too-deeply mysterious "if you act correctly, you can determine the outcome."

These folks are the ones with whom we share this nation. They choose to be on the wrong side of a great election we have coming. We won't hold that against them.

But be clear in your own minds. Those few are choosing to be on the wrong side. Your job is to get them on the right side, not to hand-wring about their invincible machine.

Instead of fretting, you ought to be reminding them of how badly they're going to lose on 4 November.

Instead of talking about their secret reservior of power, you ought to be recalling your own reservoir: the millions who've just registered, just to see this come to the right conclusion.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again until some of you get it: There are only two true winning slogans in an election: "You never had it so good," and "Time for a change." 2004 and "Be afraid. Be very afraid" was a gross aberation.

Do you seriously think the American public wants to be in this situation in 2012 saying, "We thought we'd get change with McCain, but we really knew it was more of the same"?

NO!

They want change now, and the only candidate that can bring the change we need, the change you can believe, is Obama.

So cut the shit with the whining. Cut the shit with your secret fear of the Republican hate machine. Cut the shit with your fear and "respect" of those who stand for the monied and who wrongfully use the deeply religious to enhance their own power, not because they really share their views.

Buck up. Grow a pair. And tell everyone you know that the next President of the United States is Barack Obama.

Tell them that John McCain and Sarah Palin are frauds. Untrustworthy. Undeserving of leading this great nation in this time of need.

And that you pity them if they can't get with the program.

Today.

Now.

Obama 2008. The change we need.

Two + Two 'til No on 2

2008-10-19T08:03:00.007-04:00

Two weeks and two days to go until the election. Here's an update re: No on 2.

First, there's this great post by Marc Kevin Hall at Hidden City.

I don't mind the name calling, really. Some withered bitch on the phone calling me a "goddam faggot" rolls off my back; so do all the violent phone-slams and the "my wife will vote the way I god damn tell her to vote" statements. But those are more than compensated by the people who don't understand the wording of the amendment, and who appreciate me taking the time to explain it to them. Hearing people say "Hell no, I'm not going to vote for that!" also feels good, and the occasional person like 78 year old Elaine make it all worthwhile. Elaine didn't really understand the proposal at first, and then said "Wait, are we still fighting this battle? What the hell is wrong with those people in Tallahassee? Who gives a good God damn who wants to fuck who? Let everybody be happy for Christ's sake!"

The irony about those folks calling Marc a faggot is that he's not gay.

Second, new polling on the amendment is showing 53% yes, 42% no, 5% undecided, and since in a surprising (for Florida) smart move several years ago we boosted the level required for an amendment to pass from simple majority to 60%, that's looking good. But it's no reason to be complacent. So please, if you can, give or continue to give your time and your treasure to Say No 2.

Addendum: Let me encourage my Florida readers to argue politely with people who intend to vote yes. While the amendment won't be enacted unless it gets 60% of the vote, it would still be better to have a majority of folks vote against the amendment.

Last, Mack and I are mentioned in this article on Amendment 2 by Eileen Zafirro at the Daytona Beach News-Journal. I hope features like this help, but I gotta be honest: even when you're kind of excited about being in the paper, it's a little freaky to see your name mentioned in the excerpt of the top story on the front-page of their web site, and, I presume, on the front page of the print edition (gotta run and pick one up). (I will barely grumble, here and now is it, about the photographer that didn't show up yesterday.)

Last Sunday's Bike Ride

2008-10-18T08:51:00.003-04:00

Fall's here, and with it, the lessening of wonderful, but eventually oppressive, Florida heat. Last Sunday, we did our usual local loop on the bikes. Pics here at Flickr. Here are a few faves; you can click on them to go to the image on Flickr, then see it in larger sizes (All Sizes icon over the pic):

Mack on the boardwalk over the swamp:

Bald eagle on power standard:

Bald eagle excerpt (just the pixels, ma'am):

DeBary Hall, local home to rich 19th century New Yorker Frederick DeBary.