Beware of the Lesbians

The new Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, has criticized PBS for including two lesbian couples in a children's show that received some funding from the federal government.

The show, Buster features an animated rabbit that visits different places. In the show Spellings criticized, Buster visits Vermont where he meets two lesbian couples.

The show is not about the fact that the women are lesbians. It is about farm life and Vermont's famous maple sugar.

What irritates me about this is that PBS caved, and will not distribute the show. (The creators of the show, WGBH in Boston, will distribute it to stations that want it, so I have little doubt that KQED, my local PBS station, will get it.)

What angers me the most, though, is the notion that this is done to "protect children":

“Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.”

This kind of subject matter??? What is wrong with showing two people in love? Would the people protesting this have protested if PBS showed an inter-racial straight couple? There are sadly a lot of Americans who wouldn't want their kids exposed to that "kind of subject matter" either. How many bigoted parents does it take for the Secretary of Education to get involved in making programming choices at PBS?

For those who say "why should my money go towards something I don't agree with," I'd respond "since when do taxpayers get a veto over the spending of federal money?" If I could stop all of the federal spending on projects I didn't agree with--even just projects that go against my moral beliefs--then we'd have significantly less budget troubles than we do now.

It is obvious that this is part of the Republican strategy to keep the "religious" reactionaries in their party happy. Since they can't actually pass the Federal Anti-Gay Amendment (and since they want to keep that issue alive into the 2006 election and beyond), they have to throw out these little scraps every now and then.

The funny thing is, these scraps are going to motivate the left far more than they'll motivate the right. Those people who applaud this hateful maneuver will not be satisfied, and will think it does not go far enough. But for people on the left, this reminds us of why we fight--because we do not want a country filled with hate and fear.

I had sadly found myself becoming less motivated about politics since the end of the election. It's hard to be in "campaign mode" all the time. But things like this are exactly the kind of motivation I need to make sure that progressives win in 2006.

[Update, 10:55pm] The New York Times has a more in-depth article about this:

Buster appears briefly onscreen, but mainly narrates these live-action segments, which show real children and how they live. One episode featured a family with five children, living in a trailer in Virginia, all sharing one room. In another, Buster visits a Mormon family in Utah. He has dropped in on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims as well as American Indians and Hmong. He has shown the lives of children who have only one parent, and those who live with grandparents.

Who would want their kids exposed to "this kind of subject matter"???

As for the suggestion that PBS mis-used the federal money, it turns out that this type of show does meet the stated purpose.

The question is, does the episode violate the grant under which WGBH received federal funds? Mr. Godwin said, "The presence of a couple headed by two mothers would not be appropriate curricular purpose that PBS should provide."

The grant specifies the programs "should be designed to appeal to all of America's children by providing them with content and characters with which they can identify." In addition, the grant says, "Diversity will be incorporated into the fabric of the series to help children understand and respect differences and learn to live in a multicultural society."

[Update, 1 February 2005, 2:40pm]

The Chronicle has an article that includes details on the "controversial" scenes:

A screening copy of the 30-minute program shows that less than 30 seconds is spent discussing the gender makeup of the two same-sex families included on the show. The longest exchange is a conversation between Buster and an 11-year- old girl named Emma, who lives with her mother, Karen, and partner, Gillian.

"So Gillian's your mom, too?" Buster asks the girl, who answers, "She's my stepmom."

"Boy, that's a lot of moms," Buster quips.

Later, Buster asks the girl about why she likes some framed photographs.

"Because they have my mom and Gillian, who I love a lot, and they mean a lot to me," Emma responds.

As I expected, KQED is going to air it tomorrow (Wednesday, 2 February 2005)

GLBT PBS politics progressive

Share in my Photographic Frustration!

After reading my Photographic Frustration entry, you're probably thinking to yourself "How can I share in Joey's frustration?"

Fortunately, there is a way. I've signed up for flickr, which allows you to share photos. It has a bunch of interesting features, such as the ability to collectively label and comment on photos. Right now, I've set up most of my photos as "public," meaning that anyone in the world can see them. (Flickr also allows you to have photos that only friends and/or family can see.)

You can view my public photos, but if you want to be notified whenever I put a new photo up, you can use the Atom feed. (I access all of my feeds through Thunderbird.)

Flickr is a rather interesting service; I liked it so much I signed up for the "pro" plan for a year, even though it is still in beta. I particularly like that you can download the full-size original files (if the person is on the "pro" plan) and also that you can license your photos using Creative Commons (which tells other people whether and how they can use your photos; currently, all of my photos are licensed as Attribution/Share-Alike, which means that people can do whatever they want with my photos as long as they give me credit and allow anyone to do the same with the resulting product.

Who knows whether flickr will be around in a year or five or ten. (It's for this reason that I'm leery of posting images on my website/blog directly from flickr, even though that is one of its useful features.) Right now, though, it is something fun to play around with.

photography flickr creative+commons

Photographic Frustration

I've enjoyed photography at least since I was in the 6th grade, when I took my first photography class. The curious part of me was enthralled by learning how photographs were actually made, and the part of me that likes creating things enjoyed taking the pictures and then developing and creating the prints. I enjoyed it so much, I just knew that one day I would have a dark room of my very own. (The concept of digital photography would remain unknown to me until a few years later.)

A couple of prints survived that experience (unfortunately, they were quite dirty and already deteriorating when I digitized them last year.):

I never developed any real photographic skills beyond snapshots after that. When I first got to college, I was obsessed with documenting everything in photos. I took pictures of orientation, I took pictures of me receiving my fraternity bid (staged a few minutes after the fact, of course), and I even took pictures of the first day of class. My fraternity Brothers were impressed with this enough that they voted me (and my fellow freshman Jason Wong) as the Historians, theoretically in charge of keeping a recorded history of the chapter. (They likely regretted their choice as the term progressed because our Histories just weren't that funny, which is what they traditionally were supposed to be.)

I stopped taking pictures after that term because it was just too expensive to buy the film and get it developed. At the end of college, I still had some rolls from freshman year that had been sitting around waiting for me to have some extra cash on hand to develop them. It wasn't until I got a hand-me-down digital camera during my Senior year that I finally started taking pictures again.

I did take the Strobe Lab at MIT. In this class, we took pictures that seem to stop motion using techniques devised by Doc Edgerton. Edgerton took famous strobe pictures like the one of the milk-drop crown and the bullet cutting through a playing card. We actually took pictures like these and others, and I did learn some useful camera information. However, most of the information applied most readily to strobe photography--a very particular way of taking photographs that typically relies on a very dark room, a camera shutter left open, and some technique for triggering a flash of a given length. Also, one of the guys in my group was a professional photographer, so he tended to take control, especially when it came time to develop the prints.

(Unfortunately, I lost my lab notebook, so I have no copies of the photographs that we took during the class. You can only imagine how frustrating that is. This is perhaps why I have such a love for digital and its easy backups.)

I tried at one point to take photographs for the "auspicious" MIT newspaper, The Tech. I attended a meeting, got a camera and a roll of film, and took some pictures of people in the Student Center food court. I dropped off the film, and never heard anything else from them--and the pictures never showed up. At the time, I was too apathetic about most things to pursue it any farther.

Except for these two cases, I never really focused on developing my pictures into something more than just snapshots. (Pun intended? You be the judge.) Looking back at my pictures from the time, they are interesting for the memories, but that's about it. I'd heard of the Rule of Thirds, but with a point-and-shoot camera that had no manual controls, that was about as far as I could go.

Benson and I finally bought a new camera (the Sony DCS-F828). It's not quite an SLR but it has a lot of manual controls. Unfortunately, I'm completely overwhelmed by the controls, and usually find myself just reverting to the "auto-everything" mode. The pictures come out looking a lot better than any pictures I'd taken before, but that's partly because it is a nice camera. (For indoor shots especially, having the external flash that we can bounce off the ceiling helps tremendously.)

And this is where the frustration comes in. I've spent some time lurking at DPChallenge, a web site that consists of "challenges," wherein people submit photos on a given topic and have others vote on and critique them. The quality of the pictures here run through a large range--some look highly polished and professional, and some look like snapshots. I looked through a recent contest, and it feels like my photos will fit on the lower end of this range.

Since I still do enjoy photography, I decided to go ahead and try submitting a photo for a challenge. I figured I could deal with a bruised ego, and could benefit from any tips the better photographers might offer. The topic of the challenge is "Old and New." In this challenge, we are supposed to simply take a picture that juxtaposes something old with something new.

I spent yesterday on a search for the perfect photo. I was going to drive up to San Francisco, thinking there may be some architecture shot I could get with an old church and modern building (though I'm sure there will be a lot of similar shots submitted for the challenge). On the way up, I kept looking around to see if I could find anything that would fit. I stopped by Stanford and wandered around a bit, and came across two "poles." One is a totem pole, the other is a free-standing metal column. This seemed like a nice fit for the topic, so I took a bunch of pictures from different angles.

The problem was initially that they day was too gray and I couldn't get the contrast correct (so the sky's gray would look too harsh). Later on, the sun came out--but then the totem poll was in shadows so the contrast between the two poles was too great. I also had trouble lining up the shots so that both poles were in the picture without one dominating more than the other.

The result was probably better than a snapshot that someone might have carelessly taken, but not that much better:

I keep thinking that if I knew the camera better, I could have taken a much better shot.

The problem isn't that I have no idea what is wrong with my pictures. In this picture, there are some obvious problems. The totem pole doesn't stand out enough from the tree in the background. The asphalt in the foreground is distracting, and is lined up with the totem pole face in a funny way. The colors aren't as vibrant as they could be, and the lighting could be better.

Figuring I would continue my search for a good picture, I went from Stanford out to Half Moon Bay. I only got a single photograph--a "W" in a weathervane for the Flickr One Letter group. On the way home, I stopped by an intersection that I had noticed on the way to Stanford--the intersection of St. Francis and Embarcadero in Palo Alto. This intersection had a very old street sign, but also had a more modern (easier to use but much less elegant) sign. This would fit perfectly with the "Old and New" topic of the contest.

Once again, I took several pictures. In my mind, this was so easy to set up. But I just couldn't get in the right position to make it work:

There are some things in life that I am content to "half-tushie"--things that I am not the best at but do not have the inclination to put in that much more effort to get better at them. Sure, it would be nice to be a Renaissance Man, but I think for most part it is easier to dabble in a lot of things and specialize in a few. Photography is one area that wished I excelled at--especially since it is the creative art that I have had the most opportunities to develop.

What does it say about me that I still can't take the pictures I want to take despite the two photography classes I have taken, my desire to take good pictures, and now a relatively nice camera. I'll choose to believe it means that photography is harder than it looks, and that it takes time that I just haven't invested up to this point. If that's true, then given a little more time and effort, I will finally be able to do more than just know what is wrong with a given photo, and will instead be able to actually take a picture that I'm not embarrassed to post on a site like DPChallenge.

photography frustration

The Inaugural Address

Part of me didn't want to listen to President Bush's inaugural address. The feelings from the last election are still a little raw, and it I didn't feel like having seething anger boiling inside of me again.

I have avoided watching or listening to the run-up to the inauguration. Eric Boehlert's "Giving Bush a pass -- again" in Salon today has enough examples of the fawning coverage that make my blood pressure glad I did, such as:

Newsweek's Inauguration Eve cover story this week was equally fawning, insisting that contrary to what readers may have read or suspected, Bush is "hands-on, [is] detail-oriented and hates 'yes' men." He's a commander in chief who "masters details and reads avidly, who chews over his mistakes" and who "digs deep into his briefing books." According to whom? Bush's closest "aides" and "friends," of course.

Newsweek also reported that Bush's natural self-confidence was boosted by his "clear election victory" in November. But as Salon previously noted, in the past 80 years, only three times have presidents been elected with fewer than 300 electoral votes. Bush accounts for two of the three anomalies; in 2000 he won 271 electoral votes, and in 2004 he captured 286. (Jimmy Carter is the third example, with 297.) By way of comparison, Bush's final margin of victory was almost identical to Carter's win over Gerald Ford in 1976, when there was very little discussion of a mandate for the Democrat. Yet to Newsweek's eyes, Bush enjoyed a "clear victory."

But this morning, I decided to listen anyway. I am, after all, an American. Bush won the election, and he is being sworn in as the President. I don't agree with many of his policies, don't like him personally, and don't like many of the people in his administration. But in four years, when a Democrat is being inaugurated, I don't want to be hypocritical towards those who ignore the inauguration because "the Republican should have won."

Listening to the inauguration, I agreed with almost everything the President said. He delivered it well, which I could even tell listening to him on the radio. There was maybe a sentence or two that I cringed at, but the speech did make me proud to be an American.

And I think that might be part of the problem. Will the reality match the rhetoric? I hope so.

Consider this snippet, which I particularly liked:

In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.

(I'll leave aside the subtle reference that will play well with those opposed to abortion rights and go unnoticed by most everyone else.)

When Bush says

Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love.

does he mean to challenge the Republican notion that each person is solely responsible for his or her own station in life and, as such, should not have access to a "safety net" when something bad happens?

When Bush says

[W]e cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.

does he intend to oppose the effort to put bigotry into the Constitution in the form of the anti-gay marriage amendment?

In both of these cases, conservatives will be able to say "No, you misunderstood him." With regard to the talk of neighbors, Bush would prefer to see private charities provide services instead of having protections guaranteed by the government. And since conservatives don't see opposition to gay marriage as a form of bigotry, the President clearly wasn't speaking of that issue.

And that is the problem with this speech. It is easy to agree with because you can hear what you want to hear, putting your own beliefs into the framework that he provides. There were few of the lines spelling out specific policies for which it is easy to feel opposition.

Of course, even with generalities, it is easy enough for the president to oppose them. Remember Bush's first inaugural address? Here's a quote from that one:

The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.

Even Bush supporters can agree that he has acted with arrogance in our foreign policy, exclaiming that nations are "either with us or against us" and plowing ahead with policies without regard for the input of other nations. (Many Bush supporters don't see this as a bad thing.)

I hope that Bush lives up to the lofty ideals that I read into his inaugural address this year. More likely, he will either live up to the lofty ideals that someone else read into his inaugural address--or just ignore his address altogether.

politics George+W.+Bush inauguration inaugural+address speech

Postlet: Bush Unites 49% of the Country

CNN released a poll indicating that 49% of Americans believe that "Bush is a uniter" while 49% believe that he is a divider. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice the irony of the country being evenly split about whether someone unites the country.

This poll also shows how useless polls can be. I'm guessing that most of the people who claim Bush will be a uniter are simply Bush supporters who would have responded yes to "can Bush levitate using nothing but mind power?" Most of the people who claim Bush will be a divider would have responded no to "can Bush read?" That is, many people aren't answering the question asked, they're answering some other question (in this case, "Do you support Bush?").

Bush said in his first post-election news conference:

With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results. I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals.

Bush wants to unite all of the people who share his goals--that is, people who agree with him. Apparently that's enough for the people who agree with him to see him as a uniter. Now if only he could meet the traditional definition of uniter and unite the whole country.

politics George+W.+Bush polls

He Ain't No Scharffenberger

I've been to the Jelly Belly factory and the Scharffen Berger factory, and on both tours there was a little part of me that hoped there would be Oompa Loompas running around. They wouldn't have even had to carry off annoying kids while singing catchy songs--I would would have been happy with just the catchy songs.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of those movies from childhood whose details I could only vaguely recall, but that I still remember loving. What I mostly remembered from it--besides all of the hysterically grotesque things done to the kids--was the uncomfortable feeling at the beginning of Charlie and his poverty-stricken (and mostly bed-ridden) family. Perhaps it was some pre-conscious fear of the possibility of plummeting to the depths of the socio-economic pyramid, but more likely it was just the 70's European feel to the thing. (Plus there were no oompa loompas at that point in the story.)

Browsing through iTunes the other day, I came across the trailer for an updated version, with the correct name, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp in the Willy Wonka role. I'm generally past the point where I see a movie trailer and say "I can't wait for this movie to come out!" So I was a little flummoxed when I found myself replaying the trailer again and again. And then the next day. And thinking about the trailer when I wasn't watching it. And being angry at the calendar for making July so far from January, and Warner Bros. for not putting the movie out right now, and Johnny Depp for not using his considerable pull in Hollywood to provide me with an early release, and George Bush because, well, I am just always angry at him.

I don't even know why the trailer excited me so much. It may have had something to do with Johnny Depp. I liked him in Pirates of the Caribbean (in which his portrayal is apparently gay friendly), and his playful and weird look in this movie does provide a strong hook for me.) It may have also had something to do with the fact that Tim Burton directed.

Most of all, though, I reckon I liked the ad simply because it was "catchy," and look forward to the movie because it seems like it could be a stylistically visual feast.

That I'm uncomfortable with this ad's effect on me is risible. (Okay--that means "laughable;" I'm trying to restore some intellectual dignity here). I've become so hypersensitive to media bombardment that when my something slips through my cynical defenses it makes me uneasy. But sometimes it is okay to just relax and have fun. And maybe over-analyze things a little bit.

movies Charlie+and+the+Chocolate+Factory media over-analysis

You Say Greedy Lawyers, I Say Corporate Cops

On January 6, there was a train crash in South Carolina that resulted in the leaking of chlorine gas and the death of nine people. One train had been parked on a side track, and the track switch was not moved back to the main line. The next train to come along was therefore diverted to the same side track, causing the crash.

I heard on NPR the other day that lawsuits were possible (and an article on Yahoo! today confirmed that two lawsuits have been filed).

My first reaction to this was "those damn, greedy lawyers" and, no less importantly "those damn, greedy people." Accidents happen, after all. Why does every accident seem to lead to lawsuits? It almost makes you want to support the Republican effort at "tort reform."

The idea of tort reform is to cap the amount of punitive damages that a person can sue for (that is, the amount intended to punish the offender beyond the actual damages). This will make lawsuits less attractive to lawyers (who will not be able to profit as much) and also less of a pain for businesses.

The problem here should be clear to anyone who has seen Fight Club. In this movie (which I coincidentally watched tonight for the fourth or fifth time), the character played by Ed Norton works for a car company. He explains his job thusly:

You take the number of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

With a cap on punitive damages, a business has an upper limit for "C" in Ed Norton's equation, making "X" easier to calculate with certainty. After these caps are put in place, "C" is also going to be much lower than it was before.

So businesses will find it easier to calculate how much they will have to pay out--and discover that they have to pay out much less than now--instead of fixing something that could cost lives or otherwise harm people.

In the case of the train wreck, there is technology to provide an electronic warning system to alert the train conductor about the switch position ahead on the track. Why weren't these put in place? I'm guessing that there was a cost associated with it that the Norfolk Southern (the railroad company) decided it was just not worth paying. Also, why weren't the tanks that held the chlorine reinforced so they wouldn't puncture so easily? These preventive measures cost money, and businesses want to spend as little money as possible (businesses after all are "in business" to make a profit). If businesses have less to fear from lawsuits when something they do causes death and destruction, then there will continue to be incidents like this in the future.

Apart from government regulation, the civil legal system is one of the few checks society puts on businesses. (Sure, in theory the "invisible hand" or "market forces" could force a business to act responsibly, lest they lose customers--but Norfolk Southern does most of their business with other businesses, who also care about profit margins. Consumer pressure on Norfolk Southern is too diluted to have any effect.)

Unfortunately, there are a few notorious cases that on their surface sound ridiculous. Everyone knows about the grandmother who sued McDonald's because she spilled hot coffee on herself, and probably thinks that this is the epitome of a frivolous lawsuit. Of course, as with so much of what people assume they know, this case wasn't entirely frivolous.

After learning that 700 people had complained to the company about the heat of its coffee, safety consultant Robert Knaff calculated that that equaled one problem for every 24 million cups sold. This was, he said, "basically trivially different from zero." One juror explained the decision to award millions in punitives: "It was our way of saying, 'Hey, open your eyes. People are getting burned.'"

(This may change the minds of those who think that companies don't actually do the type of calculations described in Fight Club.)

Regardless of the merits, cases like this sound bad when given as a news nugget or a late-night joke. There are also some really stupid cases that get a lot of attention. These make it easy for Republicans to make torts into one of the many "crises" from which they must protect Americans. (Of course the Republicans who support this would never have ulterior motives like, say, cutting off Democratic funding.) And it makes it easy for the average American to think that all tort cases are about greedy lawyers and fake grievances.

politics lawyers tort+reform Norfolk+Southern capitalism

Pragmatic And Secure In My Liberality

Something I touched on briefly earlier was a sense of pragmatism I had when it came to some proposals coming from (or supported by) Governor Schwarzenegger. In that entry, I put it this way:

So on these two issues, I'm on Schwarzenegger's side. Does that make me a Schwarzenegger Democrat? Of course not. I'd be worried about myself if I just parroted the Democratic party line on all issues. I like to think of myself as a "Democratic-leaning independent," though I'm sure none of my friends would describe me that way.

I had a chance today to think some more about this pragmatism while reading Rising Tide, an article in The New Republic by Daniel Sarewitz and Roger A. Pielke Jr. Sarewitz and Pielke speak with disdain for those environmentalists who would use the tsunamis as scare tactics when talking about global climate change:

A December 30 article in Salon portrays the effects of the recent tsunami as "visions of just the kind of tumultuous weather that scientists have long viewed as a symptom of global warming." A day later, Sir David King, Britain's chief science adviser, told the BBC, "What is happening in the Indian Ocean underlines the importance of the Earth's system to our ability to live safely. And what we are talking about in terms of climate change is something that is really driven by our own use of fossil fuels."

Global climate change is real, and developing alternative energy sources and reducing global carbon-dioxide emission is essential. But the claim that action to slow climate change is justified by the rising toll of natural disasters--and, by extension, that reducing emissions can help stanch these rising losses--is both scientifically and morally insupportable. To minimize damage from tsunamis and the like, we need to focus not on reducing emissions but on reducing our vulnerability to disasters.

I agree with Sarewitz and Pielke's point. The pragmatist in me demands that issues be discussed rationally and without scare tactics, even if I support a certain position. When I reached this conclusion while reading the article, I began to think about where this pragmatism comes from and what it means to be a pragmatic liberal.

Being an engineer is closely linked to being a pragmatist. As an engineer, you learn how to look at things from a certain orderly perspective, and to make conclusions from rules and facts. (This is not to say that being an engineer does not require creativity; in fact, being an engineer requires a great deal of creative thinking.) This use of rules and facts that is fundamental to engineering is inherently pragmatic--you do not let extraneous, exaggerated or flawed rules/facts affect the solution.

Most engineers would recognize the feeling of elation I achieve whenever I find an elegant solution to a problem that meets all of the parameters required by the problem. This feeling of elation makes it easy to try to do the same thing for solving the problems of the world. You try to find some base rules--"people should not suffer," "we have a responsibility to consider the impact of our decisions of future generations," etc.--and then try to extrapolate from these in an orderly process to reach conclusions about all sorts of different policies. These rules, once discovered, should be fundamental and not changeable at whim.

From this grows my hyper-sensitivity to hypocrisy. Hypocrisy comes whenever a person discards an old "rule" in their beliefs in favor of a new "rule" because the end result of applying the old rule was distasteful. Whenever a conservative argues that states' rights mean that the federal government cannot get rid of Jim Crow laws, he is establish a "states' rights" rule. But when he sees that this "states' rights" rule would lead to assisted suicide in Oregon or medicinal marijuana in California, he discards the old rule and asks the federal government to step in.

As a liberal, my opinions in the above cases is the reverse of the conservatives. I believe the federal government should be involved in outlawing Jim Crow, but should not be involved in state issues like assisted suicide and medicinal marijuana. These positions could be just as open to the "hypocrite" tag I easily applied to the conservative positions. The pragmatist in me, though, works to find a solution to this problem.

I found the solution by adding another rule on top of the base set of rules I have developed to look at the world. This added rule is that "the federal government defines a minimum set of rights that states cannot curtail, but the states can provide a more expansive view of these rights." This rule does not contradict any of the rules that I used in the past, and is something I can believe in fundamentally (not just because it leads to a certain conclusion in one particular case).

(I could also get into issues of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly allowing the federal government to interfere in the states when it comes to civil rights versus the preposterous claim that medicinal marijuana affects interstate commerce, but we'll leave that alone for now.)

There is a bit of chicken-and-egg problem: Am I an engineer because I'm a pragmatist, or am I a pragmatist because I'm an engineer? Not surprisingly, my answer is "both." I was attracted to engineering because of a pragmatic way of thinking, but studying and gaining experience as an engineer has reinforced my sense of pragmatism.

The other thing I realized after reading the Sarewitz and Pielke article was that I am secure in my liberality. I have no problem criticizing other liberals when they do something that I disagree with, and it does not make me any less of a liberal. As Sarewitz and Pielke say, it is "scientifically and morally insupportable" to claim that individual natural disasters can be attribute to global warming. (It is particularly tempting when natural disasters seem to happen in close succession, such as the huge mudslide in La Conchita. I understand that most scientists agree that climate change is real and is something we need to do something about. But trying to scare people into supporting regulations angers me as much as the Bush administration using fear of terrorism to justify unrelated policies.

Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant criticized liberals who think that all they need to do is educate people, and that the people will naturally support liberal positions. I admit that there is an allure to that way of thinking, but I agree with Lakoff's assessment. It is important to note that he was not advocating deception, though--and that is what people using the tsunami for political gain are doing. What he was advocating was framing. That is, instead of simply presenting the fact that climate change can have detrimental effects, it can and should be tied to something more emotional but still factual--such as leaving a better planet for later generations.

There was a time--even within the last few months--when I was not as secure in my liberality. I would have a tremendous internal struggle whenever I disagreed with other liberals. But as I've realized that being pragmatic isn't a bad thing and as I've become more comfortable with what I believe, I no longer mind letting a healthy dose of pragmatism get in the way of supporting every liberal goal, tactic or priority.

Us In Austin

I'm writing this entry while in Austin--my second vacation in Texas ever. Benson and I are here for a wedding for one of his friends.

I'd heard that Austin was the only liberal enclave in Texas--and hence, one of the only places worth visiting (and living). It may be liberal, but the Bay Area still has it beat--the liberalism here seems to have a bit of a mean streak to it, and Austin is still located in a conservative state.

Benson and I had lunch at a The Pita Pit near UT Austin. The signs pointed towards a liberal-type establishment, with "fresh thinking, healthy eating" advertised on the door, and we could easily have imagined this place being in San Francisco--until we heard the anti-gay jokes from the workers.

After spending a few hours at the Texas state house (getting a tour and just walking around), we headed up to Central Market, which we thought was something like an outdoor farmer's market. In fact, it was essentially an over-sized Whole Foods, with a lot of organic foods and bulk bins. But still--this wasn't something I figured you'd see in Texas. (Leaving aside the fact that Whole Foods was started in Austin.) Again, though, there was a bit of an experience to remind us we weren't in the Bay Area. At the end, when I was paying at the checkout, one of the payment options was the "Lone Star" card. I asked if that was like food stamps, the cashier said (in an irritated manner) "Yeah; I can't believe people with food stamps shop here since I'm paying for it." It seemed like a rather cold-hearted thing to say--how could you possibly be upset with someone wanting to provide their kids with fresh, pesticide-free food?

Just when I was thinking that Austin's reputation for liberalism was a little bit tainted, we met up with a few friends who were also in town for the wedding (Kisa, Kenneth, Nessa and Nessa's cousin April). We had dinner at Ruby's BBQ near UT Austin, which serves "all natural beef" and vegetarian foods, then headed to Ruta Maya, a decidedly liberal joint. There were no mean streaks to these places. In fact, Ruta Maya featured anti-Bush bumper stickers and quite friendly people. We got coffees and sat outside playing Scrabble for a while--and in doing so more than one person came up to us and just started talking to us about the game and about where we were from. They also provided some recommendations on what to do while we're here.

I was quite surprised about the lack of Bush "pride" here in Austin. After all, Austin is the capital of the state of which he was governor. Maybe we're just going to the "wrong" places (or perhaps the "correct" locations). The only references to Bush were the official Bush portrait in the capitol rotunda, an annoying presence of "W" on half the computer screens in the House of Representatives chamber, and surprisingly few W bumper stickers. In fact, we saw more anti-Bush bumper stickers here than pro-Bush stickers.

So with barely 24 hours in this place, I could imagine myself being comfortable enough to live here. But then I remember the little things--like, oh, the fact that my relationship was illegal until just over a year ago and that no Domestic Partnership (or equivalent) exists here--or is likely to anytime in the future. Austin has the misfortune of being located in a decidedly anti-gay state.

This is something that straight people find hard to understand. Liberals can move to many "liberal enclaves" throughout the country. But if gay people want to have basic rights, we can only live in a few select areas. (Thankfully, the areas tend to be places you'd want to live anyway.)

My Family Should Be Happy My Towels Aren't Clean

As I said last night after drinking some champagne, giving Benson a peck, and blowing a party horn--"Happy 2005 and good riddance to a crappy-ass 2004!" As is often the case with my pronouncements, there's a good deal of exaggeration in there. A lot of great things happened in 2004--several of my friends got married, I felt myself climbing out of an intellectual rut, and who can forget the new washer and dryer we bought??? But the bad things that happened were just so bad--the re-election of a man who has done so much harm to things I care about despite my efforts, a bad reaction to some anti-arthritis medicine I was taking (though fortunately it didn't cause my heart to explode), and, on a more global scale, the catastrophic tsunamis.

So I enter 2005 with hope that this year will be better than last. To help ensure that, I didn't do laundry today.

As an engineer, logic usually rules the day for me--so most superstitions just seem silly. There was one Friday the 13th when an E.T. poster that was hanging on the wall fell on its own. At the time, I was quite spooked out (then again, my Gremlin doll nearly led to a nervous breakdown once, too, so being spooked out wasn't that unusual for me). Looking back, it's clear that the poster falling on the day was simply a coincidence. If the poster fell the next day, I certainly wouldn't remember it nearly 20 years later.

But even though logic rules, there's a part of me that says "what if there is something to this?" I thought about washing some towels today, but then I stopped. I remember Mrs. Sampson in the 8th grade telling us about how you weren't supposed to do laundry on New Year's Day, or it would bring bad luck. She hadn't done it for years, and then one year she decided it was silly and did laundry. That year, her father died. (Doing a little google research, it turns out the superstition is that doing laundry will actually cause someone to die, not just bring bad luck.)

I didn't end up washing the towels today. I don't honestly believe that doing it would cause bad luck. But why take the chance? If something (God forbid) terrible were to happen, would I really want the burden of thinking I had somehow caused it? Isn't not doing the laundry a small price to pay for peace of mind? I reckon this is how most superstitions stay around even in an "enlightened" time.

I unfortunately did not get around to eating black-eyed peas today. That was another tradition I found out about from Mrs. Sampson; this seems to be more of a "positive" superstition, in that it will bring you good luck. I'd like to say that I purposely resisted eating black-eyed peas just to show how enlightened I truly am. In fact, I just didn't have any around. And now there's a bit of a nagging feeling that I'm going to miss out on something good this year because of it.

At least if 364 and 29 minutes from this moment I'm saying "Happy 2006 and good riddance to a crappy-ass 2005" we'll know why.