• Great discussion chez Hugo on PETA's dubious tactics and building uneasy coalitions. In particular, Pip weighs in:
  

  What I'm suggesting is that in this case and many others, the absence of "common [ideological] ground" isn't a barrier to co-operation, it's the *basis* of it. Both sides are entirely clear-sighted about the nature and limits of the partnership. There's no dreamy talk of "we all want the same thing really" -- the point is, in a specific scenario, we all want *this* thing.

  On the other hand, if you're not entirely sure where you yourself are coming from ideologically -- if you just somehow feel sure the war in Iraq is a BAD THING -- then stepping out on a peace march in the company of Islamist fascists may not be such a great idea.

  Now I can put my finger on why I feel uneasy at ANSWER events! They're always ostensibly about a fairly specific thing, but judging by the people and the signs and the chants, they're really about the communist revolution and veganism and all sorts of other things. It's not that I don't know where I'm coming from - I'm just always too lazy to bring my own sign, so I feel that my presence is being co-opted by movements which I either blandly fail to support (animal rights) or actively oppose (violent revolutionaries of various stripes). And I feel a little bit taken advantage of, too, when this tacit agreement to focus on a specific cause is violated.

  I think I owe Hugo a fuller response on the PETA thing, too. Or maybe I just owe it to myself, I don't know. Anyway I'd like to write one, but I've found myself unable to articulate it yet.

• Distinguishing schools of feminist thought at Alas.
• A discussion on the correct application of science-fu has erupted over at Pharyngula. In particular, I delight in these (woefully out-of-context, but the context is so dull!) remarks from Razib:
  

  kevin drum, who has a degree in math from cal tech, seems at least as able to comment on network dynamics as PZ, a biologist.
  [...]
  non-trivial correction, drum went to cal tech for two years and majored in math, but transferred to cal state long beach and graduated with journalism.

  Finally, someone recognizes that a Caltech undergraduate education does indeed give significant additional gravitas to one's random spoutings-off on all things vaguely sciencey - HAH! Take that, everyone who didn't like my plate tectonics post!

  More relevantly, the virtues of science-fu are at issue in the upcoming Pasadena school board election. Scott Phelps - a geophysicist turned high school science teacher - writes in the voter guide that "I believe in using my Caltech-science sense to detect unscientific arguments and to not be 'snowed' by the administration." Unfortunately for him, he's running against incumbent Susan Kane, who lists her occupation as "research scientist" - she's the associate director of research at the City of Hope medical center. I know Scott; he was one of the model teachers in my high school science teaching course. He's a good guy; I don't trust his political instincts (he caused a bit of a flap a while back...) but I do trust his take on the gritty details of curricula and testing. Since I haven't been following local school politics, it's hard for me to say which of these things is most important.

• I'd like to round this out with a link to something funny, but I haven't seen anything notably funny today. Say something hilarious in the comments, won't you?

Another 2D political quiz. I'm in the moderately upper left:

• Ideologies: Social Democratism
• US Parties: No match.

Ain't that the truth. Sigh.

Okay, the Martinelli's is still in the fridge. Unopened, it'll last for three years, but I don't want to keep politicized apple cider through a move. So in the next six months, I'll need to celebrate something.

I've read more stirring post-election posts than I can count, but I'll lead with Ampersand's:

The big mistake the Democrats, and most of the left, made was to believe that by winning elections we will change the country. Just the opposite is true. It is only by changing the country that we will win elections.

(more...)

We've got two pieces of electoral reform brouhaha on our ballots today in California - I voted "no" on both. There's lots of ways in which to reform party primariesm, many are ill-conceived, and manyI haven't heard of. Like Fusion ticketing. I would love to have voted as "Green for Kerry"...but alas, I don't live in New York.

Rana and Harrison
are both feeling somehow obliged to pay attention to the Republican National Convention, or barf trying. Nonsense, I say! There are only three good reasons to watch the RNC:

1. The Republicans (or protesters) might possibly do or say something that will change your vote.
2. The Republicans (or protesters) might possibly do or say something that will inspire you to pull out your checkbook and/or get off your ass for the Democrats - or your favored third-party alternative.
3. You relish the thought of blogging, snarking, playing a drinking game, and/or throwing things at the TV.

Yeah, some people feel compelled to give 'em "equal time". I don't know about all y'alls, but I've been giving these assholes better than equal time for four years and I still think they're assholes. At some point, enough becomes more than enough.

To properly honor our civic obligations, then, I propose that the following activities also be given "equal time":

1. Learning about the state congressfolk, judges, and county assessors who'll be taking up all that space on the bottom of the Presidential ballot in November;
2. Volunteering with the local chapter of your favorite political party or lobby group (if you have to force yourself to watch the RNC so you'll be riled up enough to do this... why not just force yourself to volunteer and save the pain?);
3. Chatting with a crazy guy on the street corner (he'll probably appreciate your willingness to listen more than W. will, and his policy towards stem cell research will make just as much sense as W.'s, if not more!);
4. Stopping to smell the roses;
5. Attending a meeting of the city council, school board, or miscellaneous local government commission;
6. Informing your fellow civic persons about what you learned in items 1-5 with a letter to the editor, or in any case something other than a blog entry.

If our civic obligation to absorb the agenda of the governing party overrides our civic obligation to do any of these things, then civil society sucks and I'm moving to a hermitage in the South Atlantic.

When someone calls you up and asks if you'd like to volunteer again this year, please don't tell them about your disappointment with the Democratic Party. The person on the other end doesn't necessarily like the Democratic Party any more than you do, though her feelings may or may not be accurately characterized as "disappointment". The person on the other end is not even an enthusiastic volunteer ready to change the world and/or party one local chapter at a time. She's a phone banker. She hates people.

By all means ask if your special talents can be put to use, but don't start in on how you're too smart to be working the phones. Your phone banker is smart too, and pretty fucking full of herself, and she forgot to eat dinner. Her talents are also wasted on the phones, and on her job, and really on anything that isn't the geology of a remote tropical paradise, writing the Next Great American Weblog, or eating a bowl of Crispix. But even the sootiest depths of her bitter, traffic-jam befouled soul aren't dark enough to wish four more years of George W. Bush on the world - not even if it does happen to be a world full of idiots who deserve what they get.

1. The water was shut off at the office this morning, due to a broken something something. It's amazing how slowly something as simple as "there's no water" can move through one's consciousness - I kept turning the faucet ("tap") and being surprised when nothing came out.
2. I promised Harrison a response to
   his discussion of the Electoral College; said response is in the extended entry.
3. What do you call a pundit on the radio? They're not precisely talking heads, because there's no camera to cut them off at the neck... talking voices? Talking talkies?

(more...)

I went down to the local Democratic headquarters last night, to purchase swag and scope out volunteer opportunities with the youth-oriented partisan institution. Actually joining the Young Dems would be an unseemly affront to my cultivated lefty-swing-voter image, but one must occasionally sacrifice ideology to build an effective grassroots apparatus, sigh.

The rest of this post will be about swag.
(more...)

Wanting to slash defense spending (and legalize pot, and have free love) makes me a very soft-core libertarian! You learn something new every day. I hope all my newfound libertarian brethren don't mind when I use the money saved on defense for massive entitlement programs...

(link via Alas, A Blog)

I was taking my last midterm this afternoon when a car drove by, with a speaker mounted on top, telling me to Vote Democrat in the same voice you'd use to tell people to Please Disperse Immediately after you'd found a great sale on pepper spray. It was quite a disappointment to peek out the window and see a brown sedan - a plain white van with painted windows would have made great theater. Or perhaps an armored SUV of some kind. The awkward postered blob car was just silly. So then I was glad I hadn't voted for many Democrats.

The thing about going third party is that I always have these twinges of regret once the polls are closed, even though I still think Gray Davis is a doody-head and we'd be better off with a slightly flaky fuzzy man from the fuzzy flaky party. Sixty percent of Angelenos think Davis is a doody-head, apparently, even the ones who voted for him, so for once I'm not alone. Maybe we all just like to use the word "doody-head" in political discourse.

It's the sort of thing I should crab at - faced with a slate of doody-heads, most people just stayed home. It's probably a sign that something is broken, and we need a charismatic politician to fix it for us. A "none of the above" option would be nice. But I'm too exhausted to care, because school has eaten up all my stress and angst and bitterness for the month. Yay physics!