Olbrich Botanical Gardens

Construction woke me up at 7, so I took advantage of the nice weather and went to Madison's Botanical Gardens.

An Ogg and a half

Ogg v.1







Ogg v.2

The gender card

Hillary Clinton's campaign is almost over. A year ago she was considered a shoo-in, but an incompetent campaign and enthusiastic grassroots support for Obama has done her in. Helping her downfall was an aggressively hostile press. When she was winning news stories focused on possible chinks in her armour, when losing the press crows that she was supposed to be the favourite and wonders aloud and in print if this setback marks the beginning of the end. In contrast, stories about Obama's setbacks focus on the glimmers of hope, the silver linings - or the cheapest ploy in the modern liberal's playbook: racism as a explanation for Obama's stumbles.

Many years ago liberals sold out womankind by omitting women's suffrage from the 15th amendment. Now liberals have once again chosen black maleness over a pair of x chromosomes. Liberals in the media played no small part in this betrayal.

I recall Garrison Keiler, lamenting the loss of John Kerry (or was it Al Gore?), saying that liberals had had a good run, and had much to be proud of including the fact that it was no longer acceptable to use racist language in polite conversation. Women's oppression was never as violent as that of blacks, but the victory over that oppression has not been as complete. No national network, or major cable news outfit would tolerate the use of racist language: an N-bomb would almost certainly guarantee that a guest would never be invited back. But sexist language is acceptable. From Chris Matthews, do David Schuster (MSNBC has been especially egregious in it's anti-Hillary stance) making disgustingly offensive remarks, to subtler forms of disrespect such as debates over Clinton's wrinkles, cleavage, and pantsuits. Equivalent, racist comments on Obama would be condemned sans debate. But the media portrays sexism as a two-sided matter of opinion that's open to debate. The very fact that Wolf Blitzer thinks this is debatable betrays the inherent sexism of his (and many others') coverage.

Ok, I kind of got off track there... the reason I was making this post in the first place was actually to criticize Clinton supporters for taking their sexism complaints too far. A recent New York Times story features a myriad of complaints about perceived sexism. This one in particular stood out:

Nancy Wait, 55, a social worker in Columbia City, Ind., said Mr. Obama was far less qualified than Mrs. Clinton and described as condescending his recent assurances that Mrs. Clinton should stay in the race as long as she liked. Ms. Wait said she would “absolutely, positively not” vote for him come fall.

I get the feeling that this same woman would have been equally offended had Obama acted in the opposite way ("who is he to tell her to drop out! blah blah blah...").

There's much to be angry about, but it won't help women's rights to cry wolf when there are so many real threats.

I was going to write a bunch more stuff and was planning on tying this into some recent math department drama, but I'll do that later.

Graduation day.

Today, was graduation for most undergrads at UW-Madison. Five of my neighbours graduated (maybe more... I only know 7 of the 11 people in my building), and a whole bunch of my former students also finished. All day long I saw families all over the city; at the farmer's market, on campus, and in the various neighbourhoods where students reside. Since I'm finishing soon, this will be my last time seeing this until my own kids graduate from college - and to be honest, it felt strangely bittersweet. I'm of course really happy for these kids, but at the same time, I kind of envy them. Graduating from college was one of the greatest moments in my life, and I'm a bit jealous that these younger kids get to experience that today. It makes me realize that I'm not as young as I used to be.

It was especially nice to see one of my favourite students at the farmer's market today; this loud (almost obnoxiously loud) kid was probably the best student I ever had - he wasn't the smartest (although he was certainly quite bright), and he wasn't the hardest working... but he was always willing to ask questions and never took anything too seriously, which made teaching that class so much easier.

-diego.

Farmer's market + car show


Here's some photos from the yesterday.



State street was packed partly because it's the last farmer's market of the semester, and partly (mostly?) because there was a car show with lots of cool vehicles:

Here's a Delorean;



Here's 2 photos of a 1934 Brewster Town Car;




And here's a bunch of other cool cars;














This last photo shows two adjacent tables at the King Street corner of the farmer's market. This juxtaposition is classic Madison; on the left you have the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association, on the right you have a conspiracy theory pushing 9/11 Truth supporter. This is the most succinct description of Madison's non-student population that I can think of;

The Joke's On You

'Free Tibet' flags made in China

Police Competence

On a more positive police/911 note: it only took 4 minutes for a cop to show up when we called 9-11 an hour ago. Some drunks tossed a construction marker thing into the construction hole, and somehow a pipe has been spewing water out ever since... Presumably someone will eventually show up to turn that off.

Police Incompetence

The killer of a college student is still at large one month after the murder. Madison's police have already made a number of publicly known mistakes... given their penchant for secrecy, there's probably more bungling taking place.

First, they waited eight days before deciding that it was in the public interest to warn people that the student's home showed signs of forced entry. This should have been made public right away. There's no excuse for sitting on that for so long, especially when the murder took place in the middle of the day in a highly populated student neighbourhood. If people aren't safe in their own homes, they need to know that right away.

Now someone has leaked more damning information about police handling of the case. It turns out that the victim called 9-11, but the 9-11 dispatcher hung up on her, and neither returned the call (as required by their own policies), nor sent police to investigate.

Just as infuriating as the incompetence is the sense that the police had been hoping to sweep this under the carpet. For a liberal town, the MPD is awfully secretive and unresponsive to community concerns.

The best ever episode of Thundercats

From season 4; episode "Malcar".

Plot summary: Mumm-Ra summons Malcar, an ancient alchemist, to return from the dead. The alchemist returns old and weak, as he was when he died. Mumm-Ra takes him to the canyons of youth to restore his youth and power. Malcar regains his powers, and uses them against the Thundercats. He transforms all the Thunderillium on the planet into Thundrainium.

Photo dump

Here's what I woke up to this morning (at 7:10 AM):





Also, this weekend I bought a CD (Chuck Berry, greatest hits) - and it turns out that I happened to have done my shopping on "Record Store Day". I got a bunch of sampler CDs, live EPs, and singles... So far, the best new-to-me band from these CD's is the Panthers,



These last photos, I just took, 5 minutes ago. It's finally sunny and warm, and people are out working or relaxing at Memorial Union.

Everyday heroes, misadventures

Usually when the local news runs a feel-good story it's the kind of fluff that makes people turn off the tv and get the news from the internet instead.

This however is a genuinely meaningful do-gooder story.

Also interesting, this video from the New Yorker, shows the security camera footage of a guy trapped in an elevator over a weekend.

Farmer's Market + Protestacular

Madison's farmer's market is one of its greatest attractions. Wisconsin is a farming state with tons of farmland within biking distance of Madison. I think there's even a farm within city limits.

During the winter the market moves indoors, but one of the benefits of this is that they offer a fantastic breakfast during those winter months. During the summer the market is much larger, and is held outdoors - and there's no breakfast. Last week was the last indoor market of the season and this week the first outdoor market. Here's photos.

This first one is from last week's indoor market. I tried to get the menu in the shot, but it's kind of hard to see the farmer's stands. You can sort of make out a refrigerator that a cattle farmer had, and a stand which I believe holds pesto and other sauces.

Here's one from today

Not every booth at the market is for farmers. There's also bakers, cheese makers, florists... and of course there's political booths and - not infrequently - protesters. This week there were two competing pro-Tibetan independence, and pro-Chinese government rallies.

On the way home I noticed a hilarious poster for a movie that, as it turns out, is about some Tibetans. It's called Blindsight and is about blind kids who climb some mountain - but the tagline; "They lost their sight, not their vision," is ridiculous. Someone in the marketing department just couldn't resist those awful eyesight puns. It doesn't even sound like a real movie... it sounds like something from a fake-news story in The Onion, or a movie that might come from Tantamount Pictures.

I shall duck behind the couch.



Slate has a (probably NSFW) hilarious court transcript in which the court reporter himself is quoted cussing out a defendant who had attacked the prosecutor, and who was then tackled by the court reporter. This guy's dedication to his work is such that, some time later, he transcribed his own vulgar outburst for the official record. This guy reminds me of Wayne Jarvis, the lawyer who's a total pro, from Arrested Development - whose professionalism leads to ridiculous behaviour.

Rude Awakenings

This morning construction started at 7:30 with some jackhammering right outside of my window.

On the other hand, the construction has cut down on the number of drunk, loud frat-boys that go through this alley at bar-closing time.

Here's the view from the front door to my building this morning:


And here's the view from state street. Those 4 windows on the 2nd floor are my apartment's;

UW student murdered

Yesterday a UW student was found murdered in her home. It's the second unsolved murder by stabbing of the year. Police have hinted that the murderer(s) might have chosen their victim at random. There's also another downtown murder from last year that remains unsolved. Police haven't released many details about that case.

It's kind of scary. I used to live exactly 1 block away from where yesterday's murder occurred. That part of town is largely student housing (though some new condo's have gone up recently) - i.e. the homes are old, and poorly kept. Security features are almost non-existent.

For the time being, the police have increased their presence in the downtown-campus area. That's nice, but I'll feel a whole lot safer when they catch this guy.

This does not bode well

This is what the street in front of my apartment building looks like right now:



I'm not sure what they're doing, but it sure seems like it's going to be an inconvenience to me.

Also, google maps now has street view for Madison, but for some reason, my block of State Street is not included.

This is the closest you can get to a view of my apartment, on google maps;


View Larger Map

It's like rain on your wedding day

My last spring break ever comes to an end today. I spent most of it with some good old fashioned bronchitis.

Primary Fatigue

A month ago Wisconsin had it's primary, and in the run up to that vote I had the chance to see both Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton speak. Unfortunately John McCain didn't come to Madison.

I was going to write about those two Dem rallies, but frankly I've gotten pretty tired of the whole primaries thing. After hearing the two candidates speak, I had to take a break from political news. In any case, it should all be over soon. Today Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico, 4th most popular presidential candidate, hispanic, and former (Bill) Clinton cabinet member, endorsed Obama. This should send a pretty strong signal to the Clinton camp that it's time to call it quits.

As for the two rallies I witnessed; I'll start with the Obama rally. Obama is a rock star, the crowds were huge, at the end of the day I think 20, 000 people showed up for the rally, though the arena only had room for 17, 000 of us. I was there a few hours early and got pretty decent seats. The crowd was young - many of the campaign volunteers looked like freshmen. There were quite a few families. Appropriately enough, Obama came out to U2's "City Of Blinding Lights". The crowd loved every minute of his speech - people in my section of the arena were on their feet the entire time. Even so, I found the speech to be mostly empty phrases, and vacuously true statements (much like U2's last few albums - zing!). Some unnamed "they" apparently are trying to "tell us" that some poorly defined thing cannot be done and you better believe that we're going to show them that we are smart enough and good enough, and enough doggone people think like us that we're all, collectively going to win the White House and change the world. For my tastes it was too much good feelings, and rainbows and My-Little-Ponies, and not enough actual policy ideas. I never really paid too much attention to Canadian leadership fights, but I certainly hope that we have demanded more detailed plans from our leaders before sending them into an election. At any rate, my bah-humbug was in the minority.

In the month since then Obama has gotten (finally) some criticism in the media for what McCain calls his "empty platitudes." But this doesn't look like it will be enough to lose him the nomination, and once that is secured he can put together a platform calibrated to the general election.

I should also mention that campaign coverage in the media has been both pro-Obama and anti-Hillary to an almost overwhelming degree. The closest Canadian comparison I can think of is the shameful smearing of Stockwell Day over his private, religious beliefs concerning evolution. Slate magazine has an ongoing series called "The Obama Messiah Watch" which keeps track of some of the most egregious cases of the media's pro-Obama fawning.

I don't mean to suggest that Obama has bad ideas, only that the people voting for him by and large don't know and don't care about his policy positions. Which, in my estimation, is bad for democracy - regardless of how great he might be.

Interestingly most of the leading state and city's male, Democratic politicians endorsed Obama including our mayor, and our governor. Most of the leading female politicians support Clinton including our congresswoman, and our lieutenant governor.

OK, on to Hillary: Her rally was delayed due to a rough day of weather that alternated between freezing rain, and snow. Even though the rally was held right downtown, and I live right downtown, and the most direct route from my apartment to the rally was along Madison's main street, it was still a very slippery walk. Apparently there's some sort of illness going around that prevents the city from clearing the sidewalks of snow and ice. The rally itself was much smaller than Obama, with a crowd of about 3000. The crowd was older and whiter, and more feminine. But it wasn't a Lilith Fair type of crowd, it was decidedly older - there were more young women at the Obama rally. (I don't actually know what a Lilith Fair crowd looks like, but I'm going to guess that it's mostly 20-30 year olds.)

Some of Clinton's rhetoric had been getting on my nerves such as her promise to get American troops out of Iraq "within 60 days of my becoming president of the United States of America." It always struck me that this was a promise that came across as being an overly-calculated attempt to cut into Obama's anti-war support. It also seems like she's probably promising more than she will be able to deliver; I very much doubt that any of the candidates would actually pull out of Iraq so suddenly, regardless of what their campaign might have promised. During the rally she modified her promise to say that it might not be doable, but that 60 days is what she will direct her military planners to aim for. During the rest of the rally she outlined a slew of policy ideas, some of which were pretty good (I think some would even be able to get bipartisan support), some of which I booed (in my mind). She attacked Bush much harder than I had previously seen from any (serious) candidate, calling him "probably the worst president" in American history. By contrast Obama's biggest attacks were reserved for John McCain (or second biggest if you include his attacks on the unnamed "they" that are trying to keep us down).

Anyway. I'm getting bored with the constant coverage... and this is only the primaries. There's still 8 months of campaigning left before the actual election.

As boring as the coverage is it's worth remembering that each of these candidates would bring about major changes in the American political landscape. A female or black president would be historic and would change the way people think about politics and gender/race. Even though women won suffrage much later than black men (at least, constitutionally... in practice the opposite was true in many parts of the country), I think the American people feel much more guilty about their historical mistreatment of blacks, than their mistreatment of women. An Obama win would, I think, have the effect of assuaging a lot of built-up white guilt and minority disenchantment. For a country obsessed with race, healing those wounds might well do more good, in the long run, than any policies that the next President might implement.

A McCain win could the political landscape in a different way; if he can get elected despite having low support amongst the social conservative wing of the Republican Party, we might see a major shift of power within a party that is struggling to update its image.

Winter Storm

Madison is getting a pretty good snowfall right now. Right now they're saying 14-18 inches. All local elementary and high schools were closed today, and earlier this afternoon the university also called off the rest of the day's classes. Even the Madison bus service is calling it quits about 4-5 hours early (usually there's some buses running until about midnight, but today they stop at 7PM). On my way back from the gym traffic on Johnson St. was moving so slow that about 8 cars were able to cross the intersection during the green light. Two cars on side streets were getting a push from passers-by.

Madison doesn't even have the worst of it. According to the newspapers:

Conditions have gotten so dicey in Green County that even snow plows are pulling off the road.

Here's some photos from the State Street area.

This is the parking lot behind my apartment.


Just a few weeks ago these abandoned bikes were snow-free.


State Street Brats' outdoor seating.


More bikes... but these ones aren't abandoned. Their owners probably brought them out last week when it was warm enough that most of the snow melted.


A losing battle.


Update: Weather related accidents led to a major backup of interstate traffic, resulting in a traffic jam that extended into the next county. Thousands of cars were stuck on the highway overnight.

The Whittling Down

Since my last post Richardson (Dem), Thompson (GOP), and now Giuliani (GOP) and Edwards (Dem) have dropped out.

That leaves two very close races, each of which is unusual in its own way.

On the Democrat side you have a very tight race. There was the potential for additional the drama due to the way in which votes are counted, but then Edwards dropped out. In the American system each party nominates their candidates at a convention some months before the presidential election. Each state has some number of delegates (more or less proportional to population) plus there are a few at-large delegates. In the months leading up to the convention different states choose their delegates in various different ways (I'll just call this "the primaries", although, technically speaking, some of them are "caucuses"). What's interesting about the Democratic Party's primaries is that the delegates from each state are not awarded in a winer-takes-all manner (as is the case for the GOP). Instead all the candidates receiving more than a certain percentage of the vote will pick up some delegates. Edwards, despite having no chance whatsoever of winning the nomination outright, or even of winning in any state, was still getting more than the cutoff. As a result he might have been able to pick up enough delegates to prevent Obama and Clinton themselves from picking up more than 50% of the delegates.

If, somehow, nobody were to win more than 50% of the delegates then we would see something that should be familiar to many Canadians: wheeling and dealing to try to get delegates to switch sides and to get weaker candidates to throw their support behind stronger candidates. It's unlikely, but technically possible to for something to occur similar to when Stéphane Dion leapfrogged ahead of Ignatieff and Rae to become the Liberal Party's leader. What would have been more likely, is for Edwards to trade his delegates for a position in any future administration (and let's face it, it looks like the Democrats are going to win the White House this year regardless of who's running).

Edwards could still trade his support to try to get the VP-nomination (for the second time). But also, Edwards is a malpractice-lawsuit lawyer by profession, and his whole campaign is built around a populist America-first, anti-business/pro-workers message so he would probably be happy to have one of the Cabinet positions that is relevant to his agenda; perhaps Attorney-General, Secretary of Labor, or Secretary of Commerce (or a combined Secretary of Commerce and Labor position).

...

Enough about the Dems, the really interesting fight is taking place on the Republican side.

Early in the primaries, when Giuliani had a lead in the national polls, some important conservative voices openly toyed with the idea of backing a third party candidate. Rudy's out now, but many of those same voters are going to be unhappy with the remaining candidates. Some conservatives are still unhappy with McCain over his support for an immigration-reform bill (paradoxically this bill was also strongly supported by Bush - and his base of support is those same social conservatives). On the other hand Romney's recent conversion from relatively liberal positions to a party-line message is of dubious authenticity. The term "flip-flopper" was overused in 2004, but if Romney is the GOP candidate you will hear that phrase even more frequently. The recent, suspiciously convenient, changes in his views on abortion, and gay-rights, and illegal-immigration will be replayed time and time again on news programs and in attack ads.

The other remaining candidate, Mike Huckabee, has no chance of winning. However, while I previously dismissed him as a not-serious candidate, he has actually done fairly well in the debates and on the stump. His biggest weakness is in-and-of-itself a fatal one: he is clumsy when discussing foreign policy. While it might be true that candidate George Bush (in 2000) also had foreign policy that was low on nuance, this is more of a liability now with the country involved in 1, 2, or 3 wars (is the War on Terror it's own war? Are Iraq and Afghanistan just 2 fronts in the same war?). On other topics, such as the Economy, Huckabee has come up with some quite impressive rhetoric, check out this ad:


Furthermore, I've found out a little bit more about him, and he actually has some views that might appeal to moderate voters (as well as his Evangelical base) if he were to get the GOP nomination. For example there's this from Slate:

Fiscally, and in his attitude toward social funding and even criminal justice, Huckabee has a record any DLC Democrat would be proud of ...In his book From Hope to Higher Ground, Huckabee includes a whole chapter called "STOP the revenge-based criminal justice system." He writes about how racial inequities are built into the system, and he approvingly quotes one prison official who told him, "We lock up a lot of people that we are mad at rather than just the ones we are really afraid of," and another who "astutely observed we don't have a crime problem, we have a drug and alcohol problem."

Unfortunately for Huckabee, not even Walker Texas Ranger can keep him from losing the race.

Between McCain and Romney the race is still too close to call. Regardless of who wins, the current back and forth over which one of them is really a liberal in disguise is only going to hurt. There's already a rather low level of enthusiasm about the GOP candidates, and if this translates to low voter turn-out amongst social-conservatives it will further help Obama/Clinton.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the GOP primaries are winner-takes-all, and the Evangelical vote is strongest in the South. Huckabee could try to stay in the race in order to win some of those states, and then aim to play kingmaker at the GOP convention. Huckabee as VP would go a long way towards soothing those social conservatives that are despondent about their choices.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, their ideal candidate does not exist. If he did he would resemble some sort of Frankenstein candidate with McCain's foreign policy, and war experience, Romney's business experience, and with Huckabee's religious street-cred. More realistically, the ideal candidate might have looked like a younger and more energetic Fred Thompson.

My guide to the US primaries for Canadians

I'm not stupid enough to blog about my political views, but I am fascinated by this election, and as a Canadian I feel like I can share some impartial observations.

On the Dem side it's a close, hard-fought race between Clinton and Obama. On the GOP side there is much greater volatility... it will probably be "close" in the sense that voters & donors will probably rally around 2 candidates, but which 2 is still up in the air.

Huckabee
A month ago I would have said that Huckabee is not a serious candidate. Now it looks like he's gaining supporters but I read that as a sign that Republicans are unhappy with their other choices, rather than any enthusiasm for his rather thin political agenda. He's an SNL skit waiting to happen (of course, SNL being what it is, it wouldn't be a funny skit). He's filling a policy gap in the GOP field (i.e. he's an actual conservative, and always has been). But in terms of being prepared for the presidency, he's too flaky, and will probably get crushed in the election by whoever the Dems run. Need proof? Take a look at his response to the Bhutto assassination.

Obama
He's got great presence. And he's got an electorate, especially on the Dem side, that's been very unhappy with the last 8 years (or, maybe 6 of the last 8), and are eager to lash out at anything and anyone that had anything to do with, or anything positive to say about the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, tax cuts, or any of a number of controversial (and in some cases, possibly illegal) events. On the other hand he ran for the Senate against a complete kook after the original GOP candidate dropped out due to a sex scandal. Clintonites are trying to use this as proof that he's untested/inexperienced.

It'll be interesting to see how the race thing plays out. On the one hand he rarely mentions his race, and that probably contributes to the image of him as a uniter (especially when you compare him with past Black candidates like, say, Sharpton). That's got to play well with traditional, white Dems in the states that are most highly contested. On the other hand, this same thing might not play well with Black voters. Bill Clinton had good relations with African Americans, and Hillary could win those votes unless Obama gives them a reason to vote for him beyond his feel-good "we need a change" speeches, which tend to play better with yuppies and college Democrats.

Also, his race is probably preventing the press from being harsher in their criticism of him. (It's like that Onion article about Will Smith being "the black man the whole office can agree on.") This would be ok for the Dems as long as the press agrees to continue in this way until after November. But if they turn up the criticism once he's gotten the nomination, he could face a tough fight against someone like McCain or Romney.

Overall his strengths are particularly well suited for the current political climate: he's flashy and optimistic at a time when many Americans are feeling that their country has gone off-course. His weaknesses are his inexperience; to some extent the importance of this factor is going to depend on how much fear-of-terrorism affects voters decisions. Given the war fatigue that's swept the country, this might not be such a big deal.

Clinton
I'm not sure that I have anything to say that everyone doesn't already know. One thing that stands out is that the press has been especially nasty in their coverage, and I can't help but feel that this is because she's a woman.

Also, for my Canadian buddies, sometimes conservatives will derisively refer to "Hillarycare" - a supposedly socialist health care proposal that she advanced in the 90's. In fact it falls far short of Canada's health care system in terms of comprehensiveness, and public financing.

McCain
Many Republican's distrust this "maverick", but if dissatisfied with the other options they might rally around him. He's been outspoken in his support for the Iraq war and the "troop surge," and since the surge has been getting some positive reviews, this might help him.

Romney
I have no idea what to make of this guy. Does his Mormonism turn off conservative voters? Living in Madison, WI - supposedly one of the most "liberal" cities in the States, it's pretty hard to get a good read on how religious voters will react to a Mormon - with a history of "liberal" policies as Governor of Massachusetts. Add in to the mix the fact that business interests have rallied around him and you might have the perfect situation for a working-class Evangelical candidate like Huckabee. Or maybe not, I have no idea what's going on with the whole Romney thing.

Now that he's lost the first 2 major contests, it might be that his backers will look for a new candidate to support - one who's might can actually seal the deal. Perhaps McCain?

Guiliani
Maybe one of the most well known candidates for Canadians. His campaign seems to have imploded. Liberals deride his "9-11 Tourette's" (which, I'm pretty sure, is not a very PC thing to say), but the strange thing is how little support he's getting from Republican voters despite having lined up a host of high profile endorsements. After having sunk a ton of money into Iowa and New Hampshire, Guiliani tried to save face by "pulling out" and focusing on later primaries. It's hard to see how this can be painted as anything less than hugely embarrassing.

I'm not sure if GOPers dislike his somewhat liberal social positions (he supports gay rights, and abortion rights), or if they just don't like his "personality". He's got a kind of weird presence, for example check out his Xmas ad:

I'm pretty sure that this didn't win him any votes.

Compare this with Huckabee's ad with a little wink-wink message for Evangelical voters:

Did you notice the floating cross? It's just a bookshelf (it's all about plausible deniability). Also: this is ripe for parody. This is ripe!

Thompson
The only other "true" conservative in the race. If he were younger and showed more energy in campaigning, I'm pretty sure he would have been a leading candidate. It's probably a waste of your time and mine to think about him. He no longer has a chance at winning, and will probably not be involved in politics after dropping out. A footnote.

Edwards
He's pretty much done now that he's lost both Iowa and New Hampshire. His support comes largely from the Lou Dobbs wing of the Democratic party (i.e. the xenophobes and anti-free-traders).

Richardson
This guy dropped out, but he was basically only in the race to keep his name in the news - in hopes of winning the VP nomination.


Well, those are all of the important candidates. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. It's very different from Canadian political circus.

Canada Rules

Steven Harper met the Dalai Lama at his official office, and certain countries are unhappy about it. But Harper turned that criticism away with this deft bit of analysis:

"I met the Dalai Lama in my office but I meet everyone in my office. I don't know why I would sneak off to a hotel room just to meet the Dalai Lama. You know, he's not a call girl," Harper told OMNI television.

He quickly added: "As I say, he's a respected international spiritual leader."

Some Good Advice

From the Globe and Mail:

Avoid sharing a crack pipe, university warns

Lou Dobbs Democrats

I'm not really into the idea of talking politics in a public forum, but this caught my eye:

“If you can build a school in South Africa, build one in South Carolina,” Linda Dogan, a member of the City Council in Spartanburg, said on the conference call, which was organized by the Edwards campaign.

which might remind you of this piece of work

And, my friends, the job will be done when we stop opening firehouses in Baghdad while closing them down here in the United States of America.

courtesy of Edward's former running mate John Kerry...
See also this, and Steven Landsburg's entry here.
Kucinich isn't any better.
Since when did the filthy scourge of racism take such a strong hold of the Democratic Party? Behind every argument to pull out of Iraq yesterday, lies the implicit belief that Iraqi lives are less valuable than the lives of American soldiers. It's a racist sentiment that I feel more than a little uncomfortable with.

An Assault on the Constitution.

This bastardization of the legislative process is finally on its way out in Wisconsin. As things stand currently, the governor of Wisconsin can (and does) sign into law a bill which is markedly different from the one passed by the legislature. How? By crossing out words, numbers and punctuation to create new sentences with completely different meanings from what was intended originally. Up until 1990 Wisconsin's governor would sometimes cross out individual letters. Even now s/he can cross out individual numbers.

Check out this example from a Milwaukee newspaper. (The pdf is hosted on a republican senator's webpage - though despite her protestations, Governors of both parties have been guilty of abusing the line-item veto. Currently a Democrat holds the Governorship.)

Here's another example.

Incidentally, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld this ridiculous veto usage.

Cryptic Fortune-Cookie Fortune

Sell your idea- they are totally acceptable

On an unrelated note, the new single from ex-Moloko singer Roisin Murphy is amazing:

I just watched an interesting shouting match on CTV's The Verdict. A racist, a Muslim-Women activist, and a eloquent and thoughtful Québécoise journalist. Mostly it was loud/boring but an interesting point was raised with regard to voter ID cards & the Muslim practice of wearing some sort of veil. Mr racist felt it was ridiculous that Muslim women could vote while wearing a veil - saying that it could lead voter fraud. Mlle reasonable journalist interjected that the reason Muslim women can vote while veiled is not due to some special accommodation, but only due to the absence of a law requiring ID cards to be presented at the polls. Apparently many other Canadians for one reason or another do not have ID cards (license, passport etc), and enacting such a law would require some sort of plan to deal with issuing photo IDs.

It reminds me a bit of Bruce Schneier's Movie-Plot Threat Contest that has fun at the expense of misplaced fears and useless security measures. What's the point in wasting millions of dollars to combat a theoretical problem? In practice very few women wear veils. Even if this problem does exist it's too statistically insignificant to affect the outcome of our elections, and thus probably a waste of resources.

A similar discussion over voter fraud by illegal immigrants is taking place in the US - though the percentage of illegal immigrants in America is, I imagine, larger than the percentage of hijab-wearers in Canada.

Neti Pots

My girlfriend likes to watch Oprah, and occasionally Oprah has a doctor on her show talking about different health stuff. Those are probably the best episodes (the debt diet ones are good too). Earlier this year they featured a Neti Pot, which is a device for rinsing your sinuses. Supposedly it's benefits include prevention of common colds, and alleviating cold symptoms like post nasal drainage, and coughs caused by post nasal drainage. I had a cold earlier this month that lasted about 2 weeks (so maybe this thing doesn't prevent colds), and I took that as an opportunity to try out the cold-improving features of neti pots.

Sometimes when I have a cold, it's hard to get to sleep because of all the coughing, so I decided to use the neti pot every night right before bed. It worked pretty well (although the stupid cold still lasted 2 weeks). Most importantly it was kind of cool in a little-boy kind of way: i.e. it's gross, but the grossness is half the fun.

I also figure this is probably a healthy thing for my family members in Mexico to do in order to combat the effects of that nasty air-pollution.

There are a whole bunch of video's on YouTube featuring instructions. This one right here is pretty good.

The Funniest Guy Ever

Norm riffs on Carrot Top.

More Craziness

It's good to see that the UW has taken seriously the lessons from the VT murders. An armed robbery occurred this morning near campus. For the second time this week a campus wide email went out, and buildings near the last known/suspected location of the suspect were on lockdown. He's now been captured.

Interestingly the University also used facebook to notify students about the threats. Already some students are checking their facebook more frequently than their email, hence the UW's unusual ad. (If only facebook had an email plugin/widget they could do both at the same time.) Facebook has lots of uses, but I think this is the first (and now second) use by a University for emergency announcements. It was pretty cheap too; apparently only costing the university a single C-note.

In fact when I set up my course blog a close 2nd choice was to set up a facebook page for the course. The advantage would have been that students could join the group and then always have that page linked to from their profile pages... For some reason students are less diligent about bookmarking pages. Ultimately I didn't want to coerce students into joining facebook, so I went with the blog.

Also, update on that last incident: it turns out the poor guy probably wasn't even in Madison. They just arrested him in California. His story is really sad; sexual abuse, a ridiculous number of foster homes, drug use, and now this. There's no easy answers there.

Sign 'O' the Times:

Madison is, apparently, the latest campus to be confronted with armed violence. UW students got an email this afternoon, reading in part:

UW Police and City of Madison Police are currently searching for a suicidal
man who claims to have a gun. The search is focused on the area of UW
Hospital at 600 Highland Drive. Police are asking people to stay away
from the area. The entrances to the Hospital are blocked. The emergency
room is open. The emergency room can be accessed from University Avenue
to University Bay Drive...

That's the other edge of campus and I'm not very familiar with it, but there are soccer fields and possibly a baseball field and a park over there. So I think it would be hard for this guy to move away from that area without being noticed. Hopefully that will make it easier to catch him.

"Man Injured by Sword-Yielding Intruder"

The AP's misadventures in language: If this poor guy had wielded a sword, he would have been able to protect himself from this particular brand of assailant.

A better way to migrate your mail into gmail


I had written about a google mail loader for IMAP mail servers. Well I found something easier. If you use pine, or can use pine, to access your mail then following these instructions is the easiest way to forward/bounce your mail to a gmail account.

Unas fotos, para que se acuerden de mi.

Anna Quindlen has an article in Newsweek that challenges anti-abortion activists to put a number on the amount of jail time that women should serve for getting abortions (in that hypothetical fantasy land where a law banning abortions is constitutional). I'm always surprised by the USA's appetite for revisiting this topic. Anyway, blah blah blah... I was offended, not by the abortion stuff, but for this little throwaway line:

Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations.

What? It's as though they've been asked to add 1 and 1? Come on! Few things in life are easier than solving quadratic equations. We teach it in high school, or junior high.

Is the state of mathematical knowledge in our society really in such a shambles? Is a smart commentator like Quindlen really using quadratic equations as a metaphor for the most challenging conundrums life has to offer?

Google Mail Loader

I started using Thunderbird recently, but while foolishly playing with the settings, I had it delete all mail on my account on the Math Dept's IMAP server that was older than 1 month. Fortunately they keep 2-week backups, and I was able to recover my mail.

Anyway, lesson learned, I have now set about creating a backup of that mail in a gmail account. Some guy by the name of Mark Lyon has a great little app, a Google GMail Loader that sends your IMAP emails to your gmail account. To use it, you first need to (or maybe just should?) download the mail to a local mailbox file using for example Thunderbird (the original source of my mail problems!), and then give yourself plenty of time, because the program sends the messages out one at a time, with a 2-second pause in between messages, so if you have 5 years worth of stuff, it might take a while. Anyway, if you are also in the math department, and leaving soon, this is one way to backup your emails while enjoying gmail's searchableness. (Also, since when is searchability is not a word?!)

Time Management Program

This Instant Boss is a great little program for managing your work time.

Blogging Experiment
This blog is, currently, mostly for me to experiment with the internets. But now I am starting my very first Job-related blog for my calculus class. I figure, what the hell, it's the future. My class blog is here. I decided to use Wordpress, just to experiment with a different blogging tool.

Ms South Carolina Teen
Why can't American's find the USA on a map? Ms South Carolina Teen thinks it might be because they don't have maps. So they're unprepared for the task, having never seen a map before.

But maybe the real reason is that American high schools give 3.5 gpa's and a pat on the back to intellectually stunted students. After all one way to meet NCLB's requirements is to lower standards so that everyone can be considered "at grade level".

2 Mike Lester cartoons:

Runts

I bought runts for the first time in years, and found 2 gross new flavours: pineapple and a gross approximation of mango... C'mon Wonka! Of the original flavours 4 of 5 were great... if they would just go back to the originals, and get rid of the limes, everyone would be better off, and fatter.

Adventures in Moving
A quick housing related story; I recently moved from the Tenney Park area, to State Street, into the building that my girlfriend lived in until she left for her TFA posting in Chicago.

Over the summer I had been subletting my apartment and staying at my girlfriend's, but I was still on the lease at my place and I still had some of my stuff there. So when moving time rolled around we drove over there to grab my bed/desks/etc. and help with the cleaning. We found things to be in rather poor shape. The bathroom wasn't clean, nor was the kitchen. There was broken glass frozen into the ice that lined the bottom of the freezer, and a bunch of muddy-looking stains on the carpet. We cleaned up a little bit mostly because we felt embarrassed to leave such a mess, but we didn't put in too much effort figuring that our 99$ deposit wasn't worth it (that's 33$/roommate).

Well, yesterday I got my deposit check in the mail, and somehow we got it all back. I'm not sure what to think about that. It's actually a little bit scary: if this is what they consider 'clean', what kind of messes are they used to seeing? And what kind of neighbours did we have for the last year? Apparently we lived in a crappier part of town than we had realized.

Rubberband Man

So this guy, let's call him Omar, posted video on his blog the other day. That seemed pretty fun, so now I'm using this post as an excuse to try embedding a video on my blog.

Today's post is about T.I.'s song Rubberband Man. I used to love that song. So much so that I set it as my ringtone. But about a year and a half ago I made the mistake of setting it as the alarm soundclip on my cellphone. For months this is what I've woken up to. And now it has ruined the song for me. I can't listen to it without instantly feeling tense.



Just for fun here are videos for my other, non-dread-inducing ringtones.

My girlfriend gets Silent Shout by The Knife... for no particular reason... it just happened to be my favourite song a few months ago.



And everyone else gets Don't You Want Me by The Human League, but instead of posting the video, I'll put up the clip from the Mighty Boosh which originally turned me on to the Human League:

Addendum to last post:

Madison is dead at night, campus is empty and all the libraries are closed. I don't know of any place where people gather to study at 2, or 3 AM. If there was better lighting, and a 24 hour Starbucks, and if restaurants and libraries stayed open later maybe people would come out at night. At McGill I found it reassuring to know that I could go down to the engineering building at any time of night and study in the cafeteria... and I wouldn't be the only person doing so... It made me feel like the campus was alive and teeming with people eager to learn, no matter what time of day. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me that Madison doesn't have any good late-night-study spots.

A few months ago a guy got shot and killed on State Street near the university, and my apartment. And now a few weeks ago a girl was murdered after spending a night in the state street area at a bunch of bars that I sometimes go to. State Street Brats is a good place for sports games, and brats, obviously. Lava Lounge is a nice chill bar that I go to a lot, and I think they mentioned Amy's in one of the news stories - those last two bars are my default bars. It's scary to think that some poor girl got murdered by someone that drinks at the same places I drink at. What the hell? The weird thing is in a lot of ways Madison reminds me of nice safe cities like Ottawa and Kingston, but for some reason it seems like there has been a lot more violence here lately. It's like Busta Rhymes says: it ain't safe no more.

One thing that has always freaked me out about Madison is how dark it is at night. I remember at McGill the heart of campus was always well lit, and there was a recommended path for getting around late at night (basically just Prince Arthur). Not here. Libraries and even restaurants close up early. Even the McDonalds that we used to have next to campus would close at 11. And the area between the university bookstore and the student union hardly has any lighting at all. It just doesn't make sense, why would a campus teeming with students shut down so early? And there's none of those yellow emergency stations like at McGill, where you could just hit a big red button and a 911 call would go out.

Green Tea & Soda

Completely unrelated to that last post: I've stopped drinking soda. I have been soda-free ever since my girlfriend took off for Teach for America. The trick has been to drink Green Tea all the time. Like 1 gallon/day... Water's too boring, but with green tea somehow there's just enough flavour to keep me from looking for the nearest coke machine. Plus it's supposedly good for you.

Job Search - First Step

Went to a career counselor today. Step 1 of my job search! It was actually very reassuring: I had all these unanswered questions about what I'm qualified for, what my job search timeline should look like (am I starting a bit late, etc), and how to present some things on my resume. For example I taught a math for education course in the fall, and it went fairly well, but there were certainly many speedbumps... How do I put that on there? Well it turns out that the answer is to emphasize the aspects of the course that I took initiative on: like choosing the syllabus, choosing the teaching order, designing the handouts, and incorporating feedback mechanisms... The guy was right, it does sound way better when you write it like that. It beats the hell out of what I had written prior to meeting with him: "Designed and taught Math for Elementary Education III"...

The biggest worry I have is; what if I don't want a math job? I'm not sure of that yet, but I would like to know my options. If I want a math job, hey, no problem... I know where to look; AMS and SIAM have career booths at their conferences. But what else is there? The appointment was less successful in answering that rather important question, but at least I've started this process early enough that I've still got time to figure it out.

Time to start posting again.

As a grad student at U Wisconsin - Madison we have to TA various math classes. This fall I've volunteered myself for one of the education-majors classes. Up to this point I have intentionally tried to teach the highest level classes possible, since these classes tend to get the best students, and invovle the most interesting material, but i decided that if I am going to be involved in education, I should find out more about what goes on at lower levels of the education tree.

Apparently there are a lot of changes being made to the way that math is taught, and there is much controversy about these changes. From what I understand, reform-minded people are trying to encourage problem solving, and group activities over repetition, and individual exercises.

It turns out however that this class is just now undergoing a redesign. In the meantime I get to teach this year with minimal guidance from the math department. Which might be nice for an instructor with some experience who might have some ideas that he has always wanted to try.... but I am not that guy. I'm a guy that has never taught a course like this, and who is worried about not screwing things up. So I'm a little bit stressed right now. I think I'll just stick with tradition and try to teach the class the same way last semester's instructors taught it. I think it will be enough of a chalenge to try to adapt to the different style of teaching that these classes supposedly require (group activities, skipping, singing kumbaya, etc).