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.