Fables of the reconstruction

Speaking of Dystopias

Yikes:

Authorities say one person is dead and several others are ill on board a train that has been placed under quarantine in northern Ontario after the outbreak of a mystery illness.

Ambulances rushed to the hamlet of Foleyet, Ontario, where medical workers are treating people for flu-like symptoms and trying to determine the cause of the outbreak.

Authorities say there are 260 passengers and 30 crew members on the train which was quarantined on Friday.

Via Rail spokeswoman Catherine Kaloutsky confirmed that one person died. Police say as many as 10 people are ill with flu-like symptoms.

Police say no one is being allowed onto the train without full protective gear.

The past few months, people around Philadelphia have been laid low by a variety of viruses that have lingered for weeks on end. I'm still wheezing from the flu I caught April 6th. Other people have reported coughs that don't end after a month. I was joking with someone the other day that the government is not telling us everything it knows about these bugs, and she said in all seriousness that she thinks the government is creating and spreading them. I was about to call her crazy, then hesitated, and said it was unproved.

Present Future

Duncan asks, "What happened to the future?":

It's occurred to me recently that all the whiz-bang gadgets predicted either already exist in some form, or are unlikely to exist anytime soon. If one were to write a technology-centric non-dystopian novel about, say, the year 2040, what neato things would we imagine?

I can't come up with much.

All the recent (post-1975) technological innovations were outgrowths of trends and cultural desires that existed long before then. Using that as a framework, I think we can come up with a few ideas about where things might go. I don't know if my predictions are "non-dystopian", but here they are:

1. Medical innovation: Americans are health-obsessed and desire both more control over and information about their health. At the same time, there are some really exciting technical developments that could provide real benefits while responding to the public's demands. For example, gene therapy, stem cell treatments and nanotech drug delivery hold out the possibility of dramatic improvements in the care of certain ailments.  The layman has the impression that the key to making these seemingly-magical treatments work is early detection, so the demand for constant or frequent, inexpensive, consumer-administered monitoring will be high. Both home-based and wearable hardware for monitoring will be developed, as well as new over-the-counter tests. Also, consumers want drugs which will improve their lives, not just cure disease. Viagra is just the start. More and more effective drugs which make us healthier and enhance specific desirable characteristics will be developed in response to that demand. All of this requires more and better information about the possible choices, a need that will be filled both online by blogs and consumer forums, and by medical entrepreneurs like independent health coaches.
2. Entertainment and communication: Take the cell phone, the ipod, handheld gaming devices and broadband internet and make them more powerful, faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous, and what do you get? Overload. Managing the data stream will be the story. That means more creative and intelligent ways of screening out unwanted contact and information, and automating the process of finding relevant data and contacts. Spam filters are the Model T. What the hell does that mean? I don't know. All I know is that people have been talking about how your toaster will have an IP address in the future, and I just don't see it happening. Geeks like to talk about capacities as if they were predestined realities, and that's not the case. What grew and shaped the internet, for example, was porn. Why? Because people wanted to look at it without buying it through the mail or at a shop. It's pretty simple: What do people want? They want to select the amount of information and electronic contact they are exposed to. Give them that ability.
3. Personal energy generation: Every list needs three items, so here's the third. High energy costs and energy-related environmental concerns are here to stay. People are working on new technologies like fuel cells, super-long-life batteries, home solar power, etc. Some of these are going to have real breakthroughs while others languish, we don't know which, but something radical will emerge. Maybe you'll be able to generate sufficient electricity to run your house by exploiting the heat gradient between your roof in summer and the dirt ten feet under your basement.  Maybe office buildings (currently the number one source of greenhouse gases) will be able to have their own fuel-cell power plants on the roof, every window will also be a solar panel and the building shell will have the ability to "breathe" or become super-insulating depending on the weather.

Perhaps all this is wrong, and the future is dystopian: personal body armor and anti-pollution full-body suits. Wait and see.

Apropos of nothing: It just occurred to me that wikipedia links are not true permalinks, because the content is by definition constantly changing. Should you have the ability to link to a specific snapshot of a page (hosted by wikipedia, of course) that existed at any given time? That would create a huge multiplier for the number of pages hosted there, which may be impossible. Also, it requires the creation of a tool that compares two snapshots and highlights the differences automatically, which is a relatively trivial task.

Letter from a Sex Worker

Here:

I think at this juncture, I should defend the men that came to see me. There was nothing wrong with them, and they were not perverts. Most of my clients were single, unhappily married or married to a person that couldn't understand their needs. One even had a wife with cancer. I know you're probably thinking that he's the worst of all, but sex is important. He needed the comfort and solace of flesh against flesh, and in today's society, the only way to get the flesh against flesh comfort is sex.

I guess my role as a sex worker was to reclaim the human contact that has been lost with our island centric way of living. When was the last time you truly just held a person that wasn't your lover with no thoughts of the sensuality of the situation? Touch used to be a very important thing for people. We want to be touched. We need to be touched. Truth be told, I did more pillow talk snuggling with my clients than anything else. Even the submissive clients, after their fill of their fetish, wanted to be cherished. The older men and the lonely men, which seemed to go hand in hand, raced through coitus and settled down for the rest of their time with my head on their chest to talk about their days. This is not the behaviour of deviants and perverts. This is the behaviour of a person reaching out for affection.

I think this explains why women hug so much, are so physically connected to each other. It's support. Men's culture denies them that. (They support each other in other ways, but not that way.) It's not a choice, it's imposed from outside then internalized.

(Via Susannah Breslin.)

Declarations of Victory

Consider the source, but Politico says:

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.

It’s a train wreck waiting to happen ... .

Clinton bloggers are outraged, naturally. One of the most unhinged says, "Why doesn't he declare himself the King of Spain while he's at it?"  James Joyner, of all people, talks sense:

[O]ne could argue that not declaring victory after passing the 2,025 threshold would be a tacit admission that Clinton is right.

Yes, one could. Going back to my post about how elections are games:

Like all games, an election has contestants who win or lose by competition, there are rules which set forth the means of measuring who wins and rules which govern the competitive conduct of the contestants, and someone must set the rules in advance and someone must enforce those rules during the game. ... There will [always] be disagreements about rule interpretation and application ... .

If Obama does not claim to have won once he has a majority of the total pledged delegates, he would be abandoning his interpretation of the rules. And if Clinton accepted his victory at that point, she would be too. In this sense, far from being a "trainwreck", it's the normal course of how this particular game is conducted.

Taking the insane Clinton blogger's analogy literally, let's say someone was widely acknowledged to be next in the line of succession to the spanish throne, but there was someone else who claimed to be the rightful heir under a different interpretation of the rules of succession. When the old King dies, both of them would make their claim, believing themselves to be in the right. To do otherwise would be bizarre and self-defeating.

One peculiarity of this game is that the referee might not blow the whistle to end it and announce the winner for a long time after the condition for victory has been met, at the convention in August. But this game also has more than one ref, and more than one way of blowing the whistle - the superdelegates and party leaders, and the losing candidate accepting defeat, respectively.  Given that the last primaries are only two weeks after Obama will (presumably) claim victory, I think those alternate refs will wait until then and declare him the winner shortly thereafter.

Time to Get Involved: Voter Registration Drive Starts Saturday

Go here and sign up for this:

On May 10th, Barack Obama is launching Vote for Change, an unprecedented 50-state voter registration and mobilization drive. More than 100 events will be held across the country that day. Obama volunteers will register new voters as the start of a six-month voter registration drive.

 

The Turkey Round

During the internet boom, my law work consisted mainly of company-side venture capital deals, raising money for web and high-tech startups in the Valley Forge area. Startup venture capital is raised by issuing preferred stock at different stages of the company's development, called the "A round", "B round", "C round", etc. Since the situation all startups face during each round is similar, the letters began to take on a meaning other than just identifying the order of the financing: An A-round company meant one that was newly-hatched, a B-round company was one that had experienced initial success and required more capital to continue growing, etc.  The usual paths to success for a company was to either make itself into an acquisition target so that both the preferred stockholders got their cut and the original owners could cash out, or the company became self-financing for future capital needs. Obviously, as you got further down the alphabet, the prospects of the startup becoming a successs began to dwindle. At some point, the idea of yet another financing was referred to as the "T round" - T as in turkey - because it was a lost cause.

Consider:

Experts disagree on whether or not Clinton will actually stick in the fight until the Democratic National Convention in August. But the date looms large for another reason—at least, if she hopes to recoup any of the millions she has sunk into the campaign. Thanks to a little-known provision in 2002's McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, a campaign must repay the loan to a candidate before Election Day. In this case, that's the nominating convention. After the election has passed, a bankrupt campaign is limited to gathering just $250,000 from contributors, which means that modest sum is all it can give back to a candidate. In short, Clinton stands to lose $11,150,000. "If she wants to be repaid, she'd have to move on that between now and the national convention," says former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner. "Otherwise, it just becomes another contribution." The campaign, meanwhile, has other debts to consider as well. According to her latest FEC filing, the Hillary Clinton for President campaign committee owes millions to vendors, including more than $4.5 million to Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, the consulting firm of her former chief strategist Mark Penn.

That adds another wrinkle to her decision to stay in the race. Time is running out to pay off friends, allies, and vendors. Plus, by all accounts, Clinton's most ardent supporters are tapped out, either unwilling or unable by law to donate any more.

The article speculates that Hillary and Obama could work out a deal which would involve him fundraising on her behalf.  I doubt it, but the idea is out there.

Babies for Obama

This is just cute. The Obama onesie:

Available here.

(Sorry for the crappy cameraphone pic.)

The Logical Conclusion of Race-Baiting Tactics

At least, I hope it's the conclusion:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"Hard-working Americans, white Americans". You don't get any clearer than that: Hillary Clinton says black Americans are lazy. Also, any whites who vote for Obama must be those elitists who do whatever the "creative class" does, meaning not real work. I hope this ends any uncertainty over whether the Clinton campaign is using the tactics of playing on white working-class racial and class resentment, and that it's self-evident that doing so disqualifies her, and has disqualified her since the South Carolina primary, from being the Democratic nominee.

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said. ...

Yes, Senator, there certainly is.

Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."

The Democrats have not won a majority of whites since Johnson. I wish we could appeal to a majority of all people this time around. But it's not going to happen Hillary's way. The way it could happen is by encouraging people to identify with those who don't look like themselves or work the same kind of jobs as themselves, and realize that we are all must work together, that we're all in the same boat. It could happen Obama's way.

The only good thing that will come out of this is that, as with Rev. Wright, Hillary is using a watered-down version of the same attacks McCain's surrogates will use in the general election campaign. This tends to innoculate Obama somewhat from the far more virulent version which will come down the road.

(Via Duncan.)

The Convincing Win

No one threatened to kill me today. Instead, I had the best political volunteering experience of my life.

In the precinct I was assigned to, North Carolina's Cumberland County Lr-63, at Engine 11 Fire Station in Fayetteville, it was record turnout: Obama 637, Clinton 83. That wasn't the good part, though. I got to actually get people to vote who were turned away by clerical errors or other glitches. I managed to stop one woman who was about to leave, got Obama headquarters to contact the county general counsel, who contacted the board of elections general counsel, who placed a phone to the precinct 20 minutes after I called it in, saying that she should be given a new ballot.

It rocked.

The numbers I heard statewide are Obama 65%, Clinton 35%. I also heard that they initially called Indiana for Hillary but now it's too close to call.

Time to party.

Raleigh Today

A drunk, one-armed man just threatened to shoot me.

I'm in Raleigh to do poll watching tomorrow, but got in early and joined in the canvassing. Went down a dusty gravel road and knocked on a few doors. Most were not home, as usual, but one house had Johnny Cash on the stereo. The inhabitant was as drunk as anyone I have ever seen who was still standing. He took so long to answer questions, staring blankly, that I thought he had passed out on his feet. Finally determining the voter I was looking for had moved, I said goodbye and he said he would shoot me if I came back. I said thanks. Probably a Hillary supporter.

Looking forward to barbecue and standing outside a fire station for 13 hours tomorrow.

Maybe somebody can loan me a chair.

You're Not Going to Knock it Off, Are You?

Hillary's new Indiana mailer.

Nice, right wing frame you got there, Senator. You should have crosshairs over his face, though. That would complete the picture.

Update: Via John Cole, this:

“The gun in the photo does not exist,” said Val Forgett III, president of Navy Arms in Martinsburg, W.Va. Forgett's company was Mauser’s agent in the United States when the gun was released, and it sold Mauser guns here again in the 1990s. “The bolt is facing to the left side of the receiver, making it a left-handed bolt action rifle, indicating whoever constructed and approved the mailer did not recognize the image has been reversed.”

Forgett said the error would be obvious to sportsmen.

“I find it laughable on its face,” he said. “It’s like a picture of Babe Ruth hitting right-handed.” ...

The Mauser 66, released in 1966 and no longer manufactured, is a high-end hunting rifle that found military use as a sniper rifle. In Clinton’s mailing, it’s pictured with a double-set trigger, a customization that’s popular in Europe but “almost unheard of in the United States,” Forgett said.

“It’s a $2,200 German import — it’s hardly typical of what the average workingman in Indiana uses,” he said.

Oops. It's like sending out a mailer saying "Barack Obama doesn't care how much you have to pay to put gas in your car" with a picture of a Cayenne turbo. Pretty gun, though.

Just Stop It

Oliver is right, she sounds just like Bush:

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," the New York senator said when asked to name a credible economist who supported her proposal.

"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.

We don't need no economists telling us how to run our economy, or scientists telling us what the facts are on global warming, or fancy-pants lawyers telling us about habeas corpus. What's a habeas anyway?

Ogged calls her "GW Clinton". Ow.

Since his assistant has not been approving my comments for publication, I'll just have to wait to see if Krugman defends this. It's a test, Paul.

How Did I Do?

I am setting this post up on May 4, 2006, to see how my predictions on this day are looking a year later. I said I thought that McCain would be the GOP nominee, and if Giuliani were the nominee, the Democrat would win in a walk. The Republican Convention is now 4 months away. How are my predictions holding up?

Voter Disenfranchisement by Photo ID: Scope of the Problem

The documented cases of in-person vote fraud are very, very sparse. On the other hand, for several reasons, about 13 million Americans do not have photo ID.  (Per the 2006 census, 225,746,457 Americans over the age of 18, multipled by a national average of US-born adults without documentation necessary for ID at 5.7%.)

Disproportionately, these people are rural, black, poor and old. In addition, approximately another 8 million don't otherwise use photo ID would incur the cost of lost wages for the time spent getting the ID, as well as the fees involved.

In comparison to the 21 million potential disenfranchised voters, recent Presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 8 million votes. So there you have the reason for these laws.

Back when Jim Crow was at its height, white racist government officials would levy a poll tax that poor, rural black voters could not afford and that would prevent them from voting. They'd waive the poll tax for some poor whites. Today's Republican Jim Crow consists of disenfranchising all poor voters, mainly black but white ones too.

Local Programming: Italian Market Festival, May 17 & 18

Spam Turns 30

This message was followed by someone emailing around a nude picture of a model:

It was 30 years ago this Saturday that users of Arpanet, a U.S. government-designed precursor to the Internet, logged onto their accounts to find what is considered the first piece of unsolicited commercial e-mail ever sent.

It was a pitch for a new computer. "We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSYSTEM-20 family at the two product presentations we will be giving in California this month," read the missive, sent by a salesman named Gary Thuerk on May 3, 1978.

Thuerk's e-mail prompted an aggravated discussion among the service's users, the relatively small number of high-level academics with access to computers that then cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"This is a clear and flagrant abuse of the directory!" one of the hundreds of users [ed: future Sen. Al Gore] on Thuerk's recipient list complained in a public reply.

Funny how spam and porn are now the biggest revenue generators on the web.

Hold Steady

A Little Good News: Unselfish People

Not everyone who wants to win is a prick:

With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count — an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky.

The umpire said there was no rule against it.

So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky’s legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg. ...

“We didn’t know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run,” Wallace said Wednesday. “That makes the story more touching than it was. We just wanted to help her.” ...

As the trio reached home plate, Tucholsky said, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears. ...

“In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much,” Holtman said. “It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in pain, and she deserved a home run.”

The injury ends Tucholsky's career, so the homer was her last at-bat.

(Via aimai.)

Top of the Pops

A website that tells you what the Billboard #1 song was on any date, all the way back to 1891.

(Via Gib.)

Obama Re-Launching on Letterman?

I don't plan to watch it, but Obama will be on Letterman tonight doing "Top Ten Surprising Facts About Barack Obama." The bit's a yawn, but that's not the point. Why Letterman now? Candidates launch their campaigns on late-night, they don't stop off in the middle. I can only guess his campaign sees this as a re-launching, sort of saying, "Okay, this primary silliness is almost over, now meet the candidate who will run against John McCain."

Unbelievable

Poor Bill, degrading himself this way:

Former President Bill Clinton was in West Virginia on his wife's behalf. In Clarksburg, he called her a scrapper and contrasted her appeal among working-class voters with the elitists he said support Obama.

"The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules," he said. "In West Virginia and Arkansas, we know that when we see it."

Bill, your wife started off this campaign using an inevitability strategy that then relied on spin that small states don't matter. If you want to see arrogant and elitist, look across the breakfast table.

What a sad end to a great politician and leader.

(Via.)

The Consequences of GOP Rule

(Inspired by.)

Gay Scientists Discover Gene for Christianity

Fair Warning: Here's What a Flyers Game is Like

Today's Inquirer:

My son and I drove from Montreal to catch Monday night's Flyers-Canadiens playoff game at the Wachovia Center. Your fans have many reasons to be proud of their city and team, but how they treat their guests at a sporting event is not one of them.

As the game progressed, the level of threats and abuse heaped on us grew at an alarming rate. At one point, an unfortunate Habs fan had a glass of beer poured on her head, and her boyfriend thought it best for them to leave the arena. By the end of the game, we and other Habs supporters needed the protection of arena security and police to exit the building.

I can't imagine what would have happened to us if the Flyers had lost.

Phil Azimov
Montreal

Well, I can imagine.

NSFW Blogging: "He May Be Rich, But He Ain't Happy"

Good for a chuckle:

"My Dad says if you never give up, and work hard, all your dreams will come true."

"That's the gayest shit I ever heard."

It gets more offensive from there.  NSFW video after the jump.

(Via Tom Paine.)

Local Progamming: Temple U. Hate Crime Update

My predictions suck.

Back in February, I wrote about a hate crime up at Temple University where a couple of Jewish students got jumped by at least three guys who shouted "We hate Jews! We hate Jews!" (allegedly) and punched one of the hated Jews in the face, "leaving him with a broken orbital bone in his face and a broken nose."

Just based on the mugshots, I tried to guess who the ringleader was, choosing between Michael Walsh - who looks like the devil - and David Scott, who looks to me to be the largest of the three pictured. I picked Walsh, solely because of his cold stare. Wrong!

Prosecutor Christy Tuttle called David Scott the "ringleader," saying he threw a punch at [Jordan] Blady.

Blady, whose grandfather survived the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, told the Philadelphia Daily News that a group of young men had come up to him and his friend and yelled anti-Semitic slurs.

He was then punched in the face and suffered a broken nose and a fractured bone around his eye socket. Blady's friend, David Wise, was unharmed.

However, there is good news for the Jew-haters. The charge of aggravated assault was dropped, apparently based on a rule I was not aware of: A single punch never constitutes aggravated assault.

The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence for the aggravated-assault charges because there was no intent to cause serious bodily injury in the Feb. 15 attack on North Broad Street near Norris when a single punch was thrown.

I dunno, judge. How big is David Scott? How little is Jordan Blady? If the mismatch is big enough, I think that warrants a finding of "intent to cause serious bodily injury."

Update: Jordan Blady's dad, Bruce:

"This guy [David Scott], who's like a foot taller than [my son], stood to the right without looking at him and punched him so hard that he busted his eye socket and his nose," Bruce Blady said. "For what? Because he was Jewish. Just because he was Jewish."

Of course, the defendants deny all charges blah blah blah lying sacks of shit yadda yadda tragic case of mistaken identity rhubarb rhubarb Mongo just pawn in game of life.

The Best Philly Cheesesteak: John's Roast Pork

Just reacting to this from Duncan, let me plug my favorite sammich shop:

John's Roast Pork on Snyder Ave in South Philly. Hands down, the best cheesesteak I have ever had.

Seeded rolls, sharp provolone available, no velveeta allowed, fresh never-frozen beef, and inexpensive. If you get there after 2 p.m. you will be lucky if they are not sold out. It caters to the locals - it's out of the way, it's only open Monday to Friday, and closes at 3 p.m. It is in a whole other class from Pat's/Geno's/Jim's/Steve's.

If you don't like cow, the signature roast pork sammiches are also amazing.

On the walls, generations of wedding pictures. In particular, a large black & white photo of the late John Sr. and his bride at their wedding reception, serving themselves pork sandwiches. 'Mom' now works the register.

A Reminder, Or: A Nudge, Hint, Clue, Poke, Suggestion

But not saber-rattling. Or an escalation. Because those words are not so friendly. "Hellllllo, don't forget ... we can kill you! Just a friendly reminder!"

Because the Iranians are so darn absent-minded.

At the Moment

Politics is not the art of the possible. Politics is the art of making people think the impossible is not just possible, but likely. When it doesn't come true, you blame someone else.

Otherwise intelligent people are upset that Barack Obama has not promised to do things that it was always blindingly obvious that Barack Obama was not going to promise to do.  The kumbaya strategy precludes "strong progressive positions", all of which have to get through Congress anyway.

There is little correlation between what a politician promises to do while campaigning and what he or she does while in office.

There are two principal benefits to having a Democratic President:

1. Appointments, including the Supreme Court, probably will not be idiots or ideologues or idiotic ideologues.
2. Probably won't veto good legislation.

While few, these are good and sufficient reasons to vote for the Democrat, whoever it is.

The media narrative is like a balloon. They have to keep it filled to preventing it from collapsing and crashing to earth. They currently are filling it with Rev. Wright. It's not even Memorial Day; no one will care about Rev. Wright once the general election campaign is underway. Meanwhile, the only politicians they show on teevee are Democrats. This is good for Democrats.

The only people who really care what political bloggers think are other political bloggers. This is a good thing.