Stimulate This.

Let’s get pessimistic for a while.
What a time to have a kid. Either the world was always this dire, and I was blissfully self absorbed and didn’t see it…or its gone completely in the crapper the moment Noah was born and I started paying attention. Either way I’m scared.

I know the election of Barack Obama made (and still makes) people optimistic about our future. But America is extremely superficial, and elected him for extremely superficial reasons (he’s black, eloquent, voted against Iraq, he’ll save us all, etc.)

That doesn’t mean that Barack isn’t able to handle the task, in fact I think he might be more than capable, but he’s got a whopper of a mess.

What bothers me about this recession (now we can call it that) is that no matter what stimulus package we pass, we’ll have to innovate to truly get out of it. That’s the way America works. The last 30 years have seen the computer in the 80’s, internet in the 90’s, cell phone in the late 90’s. Now web 2.0.

Back in college I used to get into drunken arguments with a Danish economics major. He kept saying that the America’s days of innovation were over; other more hungry countries would take it away from us. This was back in 2001. He wasn’t completely right (smartphones and web 2.0), but our most recent ‘innovation’ has been moving magic money from house mortgages to investors. That's worked out well for us.

I really hope America can think of the ‘next big thing’ again. The possibilities are endless. Thomas Friedman would like that to be green energy. I would like that to be GMO'd pets. Let’s do it America! Beat those Dutch.

BSG + Commercials = Very Unsettling

Noahbama

Noah, with a little help from mom, celebrated with the rest of the world at the inauguration of Barack Obama. As you can see, he is very excited...he never thought he'd live to see the day a black man was elected president.

Though Noah admits he, like the rest of us, was caught up in the raw emotion of the event. He's still a little skeptical about whether Obama can translate his souring rhetoric into real, tangible policy changes.

Deja vu

Let's sketch an outline:

Country A, a rich nation, keeps on getting hassled by Country B, a poorer, smaller nation. Some wouldn't call B a nation. B has had a long history of aggression against A, and vice-versa. After a while, in the name of 'security' for its citizens, Country A invades B, causing many casualties we can watch on the news and You-Tube. After a while the violence stops, aid comes in, and people forget about the whole incident.

That's the basic outline of both the Russian-Georgian, and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were a few notable differences, one (R-G) involved the invasion of a semi-autonomous state (Ossetia) by two countries, one to take it back and the other to supposedly stop 'ethnic-cleansing', as many of its citizens were pro-Russian. The other was to cease rocket fire into their country.

Despite how similar these conflicts might be, our nation decides to side differently in each case. The lowly small country Georgia, and the rich invading country Israel. Why? This makes no sense to me.

How do we, as a nation, so easily come to the conclusion who is justified and right in their actions? I can't. I honestly don't know what to believe anymore. We're supposedly in the 'information age', but most of the crap on the internet is light years away from true, honest, information. Pictures are photo-shopped, wikipedia gets edited, casualties are made up. I dare you to try any objective research...what you get is plenty of stories...a Palestinian Dr. who lost his three girls, kids getting shot in the head, schools getting bombed.

But the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

I'm not so jaded and cynical that I distrust all media. A good website that sources their data is www.ifamericansknew.org. It hasn't been updated in a while.

Update:

This video was #1 on digg yesterday:


I can't believe this. Mr. Waggle-arms and bloviate didn't have any clue about the history of this conflict, then gets all hyped up over something HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN at the outset. This is what passes for the freaking news?

Israel raided Hamas fighters in November (link), and more importantly never got rid of the blockade (link)...but Hamas never stopped firing rockets into Israel (link). All of those were part of the cease-fire agreement. As cliched as it sounds, neither side is without sin. What's frustrating is that both the MSM, and the internet counter-culture (digg, youtube) both paint their side as justified, and the other as evil and misinforming.

What's undeniable is that Hamas are a bunch of thugs, and millions of Palestinians are suffering, and have been for over a year.

Good stuff found in 2008

Bye-bye 2008. I'm kinda sad to see it go. Not only does it mean yet another year, but actually, I really enjoyed '08. Delpcon, Backbone/tornado trip, flood, Noah.

Some quick 'cultural' goodies I found interesting this past year:

In music, it seemed to me that there was a lot of high quality musicianship again after five years of lo-fi bands like Moldy Peaches, Kimya Dawson, Tapes n' Tapes etc. having a monopoly in my headphones. Peltgrande has an excellent post pointing out some really good ones. Here are a couple I liked that weren't listed in his blog:

This is a Fleet Foxes cover from a duo who appear to have time-traveled straight out of 1975.


This song started my new addiction to synth music and incomprehensible lyrics.

Crystal Castle Crimewave
Uploaded by Differentrecordings

Although I can't (or don't) read like I used to, I still find it fun. Two years ago I set a goal to read through the "Top 100" Science Fiction stories. I've completed almost 30% of them, and have a long way to go. This year I got Hyperion at the used book store.This book is great. Much like Dune, it drops you in the middle of a universe and doesn't hold your hand trying to describe every little detail of culture, technology, or politics right away (I'm still not 100% sure what the 'Hegemony' is). Because of that you can delve into a great story that much quicker. Plus, this author seems to have researched everything. Poetry plays a huge part, as does CSI and family.


Only 14 more days till BSG!

So...Vilsack?

So it looks like Obama's got most of his cabinet picked. And for the most part, I either like the choice or don't know enough about it to make an educated decision. There is one that makes me wonder though; Thomas Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture (pic related).
(BTW...he loves honey.)

First off, I don't have anything personally against the guy. And, according to national press, he's "even handed" and Iowa was "thrown a bone" with this pick because of our excellent Democratic caucus this year. But seriously, is Vilsack the best person in America for this job? Sure, I'm sure he's seen lots of corn in his day, as anyone working in Iowa would, but his experience and history is as a trial lawyer (they seem to know everything, don't they?). Not an agri-economist, scientist, or even farmer.

All that aside the major concern I have with Vilsack was a goal he set for Iowa back in 2003...which, at the time, made headlines:

"By 2010, Iowa will eliminate all impaired waterways."

Now that we're one year away from the established deadline. Let's see how we're doing:
I don't have the bar graph showing data for 2006 or 2008, but as you can see, impaired waterways in Iowa are well on the way to topping 400. Yikes. Its so bad we're now measuring poisonous algae blooms in our streams and lakes.

This trend is no surprise to anyone, even small schoolchildren. There are a multitude of reasons why. For one thing, it takes a long time (over decades) to actually clean up river systems when they've been polluted (even if the land has completely changed). Another issue is that EPA is always expanding the list of what makes a water 'impaired'. But the main reason is that the way we farm today simply pollutes water badly. The way we farm hasn't changed drastically in the last 50 years.

So why would Vilsack make a pledge six years ago that Iowa would have no impaired waterways? That about the same as me saying "By 2013, all coal power plants will be replaced by the power of imagination!" To make such a pledge, in my mind he must be either a) completely stupid or b) playing politics. Neither one of those is a great choice. I don't think that Vilsack is dumb, the only answer that makes sense to me is that he was doing what a lot of politicians do, make promises that sound great, without mentioning the cost, or even thinking they would happen. He also probably knew that by 2010 most people would have forgotten about his pledge and he'd be up on the next political level.

Well I haven't forgotten. I'd really like to hear him answer for that crazy/insane pledge he made as governor of Iowa a long time ago.

Cylons and Dice

So, finally, here’s some good news…there is a Battlestar Galactica Board Game for us who love, you guessed it, Cylons and dice.
Yes folks. And from what I’ve read online, its easy to understand, with quick rounds, and ~two hour play times. What fun. I’ve owned the BSG Roleplaying Game for over a year now, I don’t even want to begin to start a campaign on those crazy ‘cortex’ rules. Intelligence is 1d8…stamina is 1d10??...What??

...Only about a month before the final 'season' starts.