Maps: Pub Trans Edition

DC has a really great Metro system. Measured in terms of density and usefulness, I would place it on the second tier of subway systems I've experienced, behind the London Tube or the NYC subway, but better than BART, CTA and everyone else. In terms of architecture and cleanliness, it really has no equal. It's easy to gripe about, but really, the Metro is quality.

But it could always be improved! Every time I look at the system map I mentally play connect-the-dots and create new and useful subway routes. Greater Greater Washington likes this game too and resurrects a map of proposed Metro additions from the early '90s. Click the image for the full-size version; the current system map is here.

This fantasy version has some nifty features (the Dulles connection and the outbound routes to Baltimore and Annapolis would be great, and the ring line would do miracles for Beltway traffic, I'm sure) but I have to take exception to the Georgetown-Chevy Chase-Wheaton route.

Granted, a Georgetown station would be super-popular and would help the kids who want to go drinking on the weekend not have to pile into taxis to get home. But there are so, so many places in DC more in need of a Metro stop than these. Not for nothing does ggwash dub this the "rich white people's line."

Instead, we really should head north from Georgetown up to Cathedral (drop off some tourists) and then turn east back to Woodley, cross the Rock Creek into Adams-Morgan (another hit with the bar and restaurant crowd) and connect to the Green Line at Columbia Heights. From there the line could turn north up 14th or 16th streets towards Takoma and north DC.

Or, alternately, the route could continue into Northeast towards the Washington Hospital Center (currently not served by Metro!), the Rhode Island Ave station, turn south through Trinidad and Capitol Hill and connect to the Orange/Blue Lines at Potomac Ave. It could even (gasp) jump the river and add some options for the folks in Anacostia.

Anyway, those are my fantasy picks. Granted, a tradeoff does exist between expanding service for suburban commuters (which would take a lot of cars of the road) and creating a truly usable public transportation service for city and inner-suburb people that need it most (i.e. those hardest hit by rising gas prices).

Realistically, the politics of expanding Metro revolve around getting either Maryland or Virginia to pony up some cash (hence the planned Silver Line to Dulles or the Purple Line proposal) whereas increasing transit density and usefulness for DC residents falls mainly on our already overstretched tax base. Still, these types of investments are bound to payoff in the long run.

(via transit pornographer Matt Yglesias. More Metro extension proposals found here.)

Crawling!

In which Quinn crawls around, acts cute, shouts, pulls herself up on stuff...

Quinn's actually been crawling for about a month now, but this video shows off her mad skills pretty well I think. (For best results, turn down the volume - the guy talking in the background has an annoying squeaky voice, apparently.) YouTube link here.

Katrina aftermath reading list

This coming weekend we'll be flying down to New Orleans as part of a mission trip with our church to rebuild homes (mostly in Biloxi, MS) destroyed by Katrina. Yes, it will likely be hotter than hell down there. Woo hoo.

Anyway, I've been doing a bit of reading about what's been going on in the 3 years since Katrina. Here are a few interesting articles:

• Black and Brown Together, by David Bacon :::
  
• Violent Protests Over Housing Erupt In New Orleans (CNN) :::
  
• Purging the Poor, by Naomi Klein :::
  
• New Orleans Is Us, by Billy Sothern :::
  
• Common Ground Relief :::
  

Windowsill with potato sprouts

Oil Lobbyists Say The Darnedest Things

Quote of the day, from an unidentified Chevron lobbyist to a Newsweek reporter:

"The ultimate issue here is Ecuador has mistreated a U.S. company. We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world."

I mean, wow, god forbid a U.S. corporation could be held accountable by a sovereign nation for screwing over Ecuadorians and poisoning their environment. What has the world come to? Thank god we have lobbyists around to pressure the Bush administration to revoke their trade status in retaliation.

(For more info see chevrontoxico.com, and Chevron's rebuttal here.)

Quinn Around the World

We just got back from several weeks of travel (Las Vegas, Fresno, San Francisco, and then New York City) so I thought I would post some pics. It's been a big several weeks for Quinn - she's gone mobile in more ways than one. Apart from seeing the world, Quinn has started crawling with a vengeance, and loves pulling herself up on anything within reach to see what trouble she can get herself into. Also, she's sprouted teeth. Very exciting on the parenting front!

Quote/Music

Quote of the Day:

"The Germans must have a word for the heartbreak you experience when you see that some of your favorite music is on sale at Starbucks." --Spencer Ackerman

(Jackie, is it true?) Thankfully I haven't seen Fugazi on sale there yet.

Annals of Dumb, Vol. 6,772

The ACLU credibly estimates that the terrorist watch list (i.e. the "no-fly list") now has over one million names and is growing at an estimated 20,000 names per month.

Apart from the huge problem of the complete lack of due process in getting on or off this list, does anyone really think such an enormous list has any serious purpose? A bad database is worse than no database at all if you're actually trying to catch real terrorists. You just can't convince me that each of these names are backed up by solid information. More likely, it's a handful of useful info smothered in a big steaming pile of hunches, aliases, handles, common names and other stale spreadsheet bilge.

This list is just the names -- you'd have to multiply by the number of likely false positives to get the total number of people affected by this. And remember, these are the same geniuses who are reading data-mining your emails and phone conversations.

(h/t Kevin Drum.)

Earth From Above

The shoreline of Lake Mead. (While on our trip to Vegas, we took a brief plane ride over the Grand Canyon -- amazing! -- and snapped this photo.) The region is currently in a drought and the lake is way way down and so this stretch of shoreline is usually underwater. Which is partly why it looks so bleached, although, honestly, the area around the lake is pretty stark to begin with.

(fyi Earth From Above is also the name of a fairly amazing series of photos by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.)

Vegas (with) Baby!

We're off to Las Vegas and points beyond tomorrow night for weddings and vacation, so no bloggy for a while. But for now I'll leave you with John Stewart and yet more shenanigans at the EPA.

Harper's Ferry

My mom and dad (and, later, my sister Jessica) came to visit us over Memorial Day weekend for Quinn's dedication ceremony. To celebrate we decided to skip town. We rented a house with a terrific view of Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and spent a day or so wandering around and sitting on the porch swing.

Harper's Ferry sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, which eventually flow down from the Appalachians to D.C. and out to the Chesapeake Bay. It was the site of John Brown's failed slave uprising (although he was executed there, his body lies a'mouldering elsewhere) and a series of battles in the Civil War. The town is now a historic park (flooded with school kids most days) and it shows its history. For example, right beneath our house stands a ruined church and the headstones in the cemetery behind the house date to the mid-1700s. The Appalachian Trail ran just yards from the house to take you to either Georgia or Maine, depending.

Anyway, it was a fun and relaxing weekend - here's a slideshow of some pics (picasa link):

Doppelganger Redux

It seems my evil twin is back in the news -- read all about it.

Quote of the Day

Hoo boy.

"If there's one thing poll after poll indicates, it's that the science is not settled on this issue."
-- an anonymous Republican Senator

"This issue" is, of course, climate change. (via Yglesias and the National Journal.)

Baby's First Baseball Game!

My family was in town a few weeks ago (more on that soon) and we took Quinn to see the Washington Nationals play the Milwaukee Brewers. It was a beautiful day at the ballpark - even if the cellar-dwelling Nats lost 2-5.

Here's Quinn with her rally cap, getting some baseball tips from her two grandpas.

Here's Grandma and Auntie Jessica having a good time...


Shiny new Nationals Field (which is actually pretty cool - the food is darn good, as advertised)

Hyde Park Hit

This week the cover article for the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard is about Chicago's Hyde Park -- home to the University of Chicago and, of course, Barack Obama. The article is a mix of insight, glaring oversight and a handful of cheap shots. The author, Andrew Ferguson, more or less concludes that Hyde Park, for all its racial integration, is really an exclusive country club in disguise. To paraphrase one interviewee, Hyde Park doesn't have any class conflict because there is only one class -- upper. And thus, Obama's neighborhood betrays all his supposed faults, especially his lack of authenticity, wealth and elitism.

This would hardly be blog-worthy if it were just the same old line used on every democratic nominee since McGovern. But, damn it, I lived in Hyde Park for six years, and if you're going to slam the hood (and all the good people who live there) at least get your story straight. My main impression of the article was that Ferguson had spent a couple of days there, walked around a bit, talked to a bunch of rich acquaintances and then wrote it up. He mentions all the pieces that don't fit this cozy thesis (like the lack of expensive restaurants), and breezes right over them.

To be sure Hyde Park has some wealthy inhabitants and the university loves to burnish its image as the ivory-est of ivory towers. And crucially, as Ferguson relates, there is an ugly history to its isolationism that the university is still trying to live down (although considerably less ugly than other parts of Chicago).

Yet when I lived there, I had friends who were waiters and construction workers and, you know, starving humanities grad students living out of their cars. Our church had a handful of professors but a larger number of regular neighborhood folks. Next door was an immigrant family who were running a church out of an un-rented apartment in our building. In the summer, everyone goes to the beach and plays softball in the park and enjoys the long evenings. Among the students, there was a fair bit of griping about the place - but almost none of it had to do with HP being too upscale.

In fact, the rep was usually just the opposite. One prof of mine used to complain about how hard it was to find a decent latte. Non-south-siders often worried for your safety when you told them where you lived. Obnoxious freshmen made jokes about bullet-proof vests. But that's not fair either. HP isn't the ghetto - it's a middle class black neighborhood with a world class university grafted onto it. This combination makes it unusual, but not in the trite ways Ferguson implies. In short, a college town, warts and all.

Hyde Park is by no means perfect, but I loved living there, and it deserves a fuller telling of its charms and flaws and history than this cheap political pop psychology.

5K of Muggy

Yesterday morn we ran the Race for the Cure down on the national mall, and even though it started at 8am, the day was hot and humid and shrouded in fog. (The fog burned off after it got up past 99 degrees later that afternoon). Absolutely terrible weather for a run, but still fun--so long as you hydrate properly.

I ran the course, while Laura Jean and Jesse pushed Quinn and Grace in strollers (running the last mile once it spread out enough). (Laura hurt her knee in a kickball-related injury and had to watch from the sidelines.) I started at the back of the runners pack and there were so many people in front of me that I really couldn't run for the first full mile and I was dodging in and out of the crowded pack all the way to the finish line. You can get some idea of the sheer number of people from this picture at the finish:

The most fun about these mass events is the people watching and tracking the swirl of subcultures. It is amazing to see such a broad swath of America represented at this race--all colors, ethnicities, ages, genders, regions, orientations--a sure sign that breast cancer intrudes on far too many lives. T-shirts representing teams from all types of jobs, families galore, homemade testaments to loved ones, pink shirts heralding cancer survivors. (Two of the more amusing are the ever-present "Save the Ta-Tas" shirts, and clever, homemade versions proclaiming "Save Second Base".)


It was also great to see family. Above Grace is giving Quinn some big-cousin-ly support. And here's Team Torgerson attempting to cool off in the shade after the race.

Race For The Cure

Laura Jean, Quinn, myself and several other Torger-folk will be run/walk/stroller-ing in the Race for the Cure this Saturday. Here's our team page; donations go to support basic breast cancer research and community outreach. It's also (allegedly?) the largest 5K race in the world.

Pictures will be forthcoming.

Finish Line

Obama wins! What a crazy primary - can't say I'm sorry its over (fingers crossed). More to say later, no doubt, but for now I think its a great night for the nation and potentially a first step for a potentially great president.

Back Before Babylon, Sh*t Was Coooool

Everyone knows that hippie jam bands are, like, totally the opposite of punk, or at the very least, are not easily reconciled to the harsher genre. And yet, this track by Les Savy Fav is like a rambling 30-minute Grateful Dead jam compressed and intensified by high-pressures at the center of earth.

A maddening guitar riff kicks off the song like your 6 a.m. alarm clock, goes around in circles and then abruptly disappears halfway through the track, never to return. Just as I'm feeling its absence, a deeper riff rises up and kicks the song into outer space. Like some of the best New Pornographers songs, this one seems bursting at the seams with 5 or 6 good ideas crammed in on top of each other.

The Simpsons and the EPA

For obvious reasons, over the past year I have become a complete and utter nerd about anything to do with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I've had my pop-culture feelers uniquely attuned to EPA-related tidbits, and I have to say, for all the non-stop talk about the environment, the EPA is almost never the focus. Environmental stories are often about global warming (which isn't really the EPA's beat...yet), or more interested in the polluters (think Erin Brockovich) than the cleaner-uppers. The agency simply doesn't have the cultural cachet of NASA or the FBI. Not too surprising, I guess.

With one recent exception: the Simpsons Movie.

For the record, I thought TSM was hilarious and awesome, even apart from the EPA-related plotline. The movie gets a lot of comic mileage out of portraying the EPA as a ruthlessly efficient SWAT team for the environment (heh, if only) whose slick administrator, Russ Cargill, has President Schwarzenegger's ear:

Another quote:

Cargill: You know, sir, when you made me head of the EPA, you were applauded for appointing one of the most successful men in the America to the least successful agency in government. And why did I take the job? Cause I'm a rich man, and wanted to give something back. Not the money, but something. So here's our chance to kick some ass for Mother Earth!

To me, the message here is a little muddled, but no matter. The show's libertarian and skeptical (nay, anarchist!) tendencies are apparent in the plot, which involves an environmental catastrophe and the EPA's modestly proposed "solution." The disaster is visited on Springfield not by Mr. Burns (who, sadly, only merits a short scene), but by Homer's stupidity. It's an actual environmental threat, but the EPA's over-reaction might have been scripted by the Heritage Foundation. The bottom line for the Simpsons: the people in charge don't care about you! And that goes equally for politicians as for sinister nuclear plutocrats. If anyone is going to save us, it will probably be Lisa Simpson.

To peel back another layer, the DVD has an alternate deleted scene of the meeting between Cargill and the President. In this scene the EPA head is an entirely different character. This model of Cargill is a dowdy, earnest, Mr. Rogers-looking bureaucrat (perhaps a scientist?) who goes through a complicated, Al Gore-like pantomime to try to communicate the pollution problem facing Springfield:


The Simpsons Movie: Deleted Scenes
So it seems we can't quite decide if we think the EPA is meek and competent, or forceful and misguided. Maybe it's funny both ways? Sadly, in the real world, the current EPA administrator seems to combine the worst of both worlds. For example, NRDC's John Walke provides the insider details of EPA's attempt to set ozone air pollution standards and getting totally pwned by the White House.

0.5

Quinn is six months old today! Happy Half-Birthday Quinn! We love you and are amazed at how big you've grown. Six months sure does fly by. Love, Mama and Daddy

Here. Have some R.E.M.

R.E.M.'s new album sounds pretty damn cool, I have to say. In addition to this one ("Hollow Man"), their first single ("Supernatural, Superserious") rocks pretty hard too.

Happy Mothers Days

Happy First Mother's Day, Laura Jean! We love you! love, Quinn and Tim



And Happy Mother's Day to my mom also!


and to all the other wonderful mothers in our lives!

Interference at the EPA

A few weeks ago we released the big report I've been working on for much of the past year, entitled Interference at the EPA: Science and Politics at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Based on a survey of more than 1,500 scientists who work at the EPA and a series of interviews, the report documents our investigation of political interference in the work of those who keep the American public safe from air pollution, toxic chemicals and other environmental threats. Anyway, you can download the PDF and other goodies at the link.

We got a fair bit of press, including stories by the Associated Press (which quoted me!), the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. There were also some very thoughtful blog posts including Chris Mooney writing on Science Progress, the Wonk Room and the Pump Handle.

going dowm

Quote of the Day

I'm not a huge fan of the Post's Sebastian Mallaby, but this was spot on:

Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader?

Good question. Also: what Bill Moyers said.

Life Finds A Way

One of the coolest things about our neighborhood are the beautiful trees lining our street. (These pics were taken in the fall, but now that its spring we're getting outside and getting to know our hood a little bit more, and the trees have suddenly burst into green. I'll try to post newer pictures too.)


These trees all have enormous root structures that have pushed their way up through the brick and concrete. I'm guessing they have such a weird low-lying shape because they expanded laterally under the concrete for decades until they could be contained no longer and finally burst forth. They always remind me of risen loaves of bread...


From this angle, the root seems to drip over the edge of the curb, like a pot of wood that has boiled over and then hardened. Or a lava flow.


This tree has long since captured a street signpost and twisted it like a plastic straw. Life finds a way.

Hillary for Veep?

Kevin Drum provides a little solace for those of us worried that this interminable Democratic primary is harming the party's chances in the fall (see also: Chait Cohn and Douthat). Apparently the Clinton - Obama bickering isn't really helping McCain at all in the polls.

Elections are non-reproducible experiments, and all the myriad commentators are simply generals re-fighting the last war, so really ... who knows what the fall will bring. Still, I keep wondering if a "party unity" Obama-Clinton ticket will emerge out of the fray? As a strong Obama supporter, I know this isn't a likely or popular position to take. I still think the winds are blowing in a Democratic direction this year and either Obama or Clinton can realistically beat McCain, but it seems to me a unity ticket might still be the best option for doing so.

Barring any shenanigans it looks like Obama has the nomination within his grasp and it's possible that the party elders will pressure him to offer the veep job to Hillary to stave off a total convention meltdown. And actually she might be a good fit. A good VP brings balance to the ticket and serves as an attack dog, allowing the candidate to stay above the fray. Hillary could easily fill both roles. She might also quiet criticism about Obama's lack of experience -- playing Johnson to his Kennedy, Bush to his Reagan.

Plus, in a weird way, taking the VP job might be Hillary's best path to the Oval Office. But, like I said, who really knows?

Organize!

This video is freakin awesome/amazing... (it starts slow, but watch to the end...)

(h/t happening-here).

The Pope Totally Drove Past Our House Today

On his way from the White House to the Basilica. Not that we saw him go by, but I did encounter the residual police presence on my ride home. And hey, how often does that happen?

What gives this mess some grace unless it's fiction?

We saw Okkervil River and The New Pornographers play the 9:30 Club last night.

First up was Okkervil, a band that Jackie helped get me into and who has quickly become a fave. They gave a really engaging performance, shifting from sweet to anguished to angry and back. Some highlights included the raucous "Unless Its Kicks", the murderous "Westfall" and a gorgeous performance of "A Stone":
Sadly, they didn't play "John Allyn Smith Sails" -- a modest little folk tune about John Berryman's suicidal jump into the Mississippi that segues into a midnite-pub-rock version of Sloop John B. Somehow, whenever I hear this song I imagine the coffin setting sail into the darkness a la Jack Sparrow. Anyway, it rocks.

(Apropos of nothing, what's up with all the John Berryman references these days? There's another terrific song by the Hold Steady: "the devil and John Berryman, they took a walk together, they ended up on Washington Street talking to the river..." Makes me want to drag out my old Norton anthology of poetry.)

Okkervil played a very satisfying set, but the same couldn't quite be said of the New Pornographers, if only because Neko Case didn't sing last night (neither did Dan Bejar, which is a shame too). Now, Neko was actually on the tour and scheduled to perform, but she was taken ill that evening! Tragedy! Kathryn Calder more than ably filled in her vocal parts (and really, in any other band, she would be the star), but Neko is Neko and her shoes are hard to fill. See? Here's she is singing the hell out of an old gospel tune, John Saw That Number, at one of her solo concerts:

So fighting down bitter disappointment, we soldiered on together. The NPs actually played a great set. They started off with some of their denser songs that badly needed Neko's vocal grace notes to cut through the double-synth, triple-guitar assault, but they closed with some of their stronger, airier stuff. For those who aren't familiar with them: at their best the NPs play perfect Beatles-pop, but louder and faster and more abstracted (and with lyrics that don't often make much sense).

Happily, they played "Sing Me Spanish Techno" - a song about listening to catchy songs, that is itself, insanely catchy. Kathryn absolutely tore up "Mass Romantic" and they got the crowd to sing along on the "ooh oohs" and the "hey la" chorus to "The Bleeding Heart Show". The best song off their latest album (All The Old Showstoppers) is actually a sly, intertextual poke at Neko's gospel and country fixation:
When John he saw the numbers he lied
Made up the whole thing, failed when he tried
To cash in on his cautious new fame
Always the numbers but never the name


By the end, the sugar rush had even erased the initial disappointment. Great show!

Big Week

We just got back from a week in Arizona. Laura Jean had a ministry retreat and I went along to make sure the baby was properly tickled and all that good stuff. We spent the weekend in Tucson, (re)visiting Kitt Peak and other former stomping grounds. (More pictures will be coming soon.) Most of the week, however, was spent at a very nice Catholic retreat center in Phoenix surrounded by cacti-covered hills, basking in the low-80s temperatures.

At any rate, it was a big week for Quinn! The girl is not yet 5 months old but has already traveled to six states. And as Laura Jean recently posted, Quinn succeeded at getting her foot into her mouth by herself, and we also started down the road toward "solid" food. Very exciting!!

While in AZ, we also took Quinn for her first swim in the hotel's swimming pool. After some initial hesitation, she quite enjoyed herself. This might even be more fun than bathtime...


More photos below the fold...

Reading Joyce

I've always been curious about James Joyce's Ulysses (a.k.a. the greatest novel in the English language) and Finnegan's Wake (a.k.a. the greatest novel in made-up dream language). A beloved math teacher from high school raved about Finnegan, saying he read two lines a night--with a ruler and a Gaelic-to-English dictionary--and loved every word.

Still, it would seem reading Ulysses is not the sort of thing you just jump into -- rather you need to ramp up, to somehow gain a head of steam. My plan was to start off with Dubliners (a collection of short stories and Joyce's first published work) and proceed to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, before tackling big U.

I just finished Dubliners and it felt like a prelude, so that was appropriate. An insightful and, at times, beautiful prelude, but somewhat sketchy in places. I found "The Dead", the final and fullest story, to be the most compelling. Like most of Dubliners, "The Dead" speaks through the voice of the disappointed, static and provincial lives of the Irish middle class and builds to a poetic moment of illumination in its last lines:

"His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. [...] His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Unlike some of the shorter stories in the collection, Joyce gives himself some room to flesh out his characters, from the awkward and priggish but generally likable Gabriel Conroy to Molly Ivors, an outspoken nationalist who embodies the fire and forward-thinking spirit missing from most of Joyce's characters. Mostly Joyce, unlike nearly all other Irish authors of his time, keeps his distance from the republican politics that burst into armed rebellion only two years after the publication of Dubliners; in these stories Joyce almost seems skeptical that the Irish have the will or the stature to throw off colonial rule.

Many of the other stories are also excellent, although not particularly cheerful. "Counterparts" is a queasy portrait of an actively self-destructing alcoholic clerk that seems to suck all the oxygen out of the room as you read it. "A Painful Case", "Eveline" and "A Little Cloud" all describe lives of isolation and unfulfilled dreams with an uncomfortable familiarity. Even in the shorter, sketchier moments Joyce is a clever writer with interesting things to point to: an idea, a bit of description, an acidic character description. Onward!

No End In Sight

This week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. Just Foreign Policy asks "what is a cautious, conservative, responsible thing to say about the Iraqi death toll?" That is, in addition to the 4304 U.S. and coalition deaths, the 29,314 U.S. wounded, the $500 billion spent so far, how many Iraqis have died since our invasion?

JFP weighs the options. The Iraq Body Count project only tallies the dead who have been reported by the media and official sources -- their answer (almost certainly an undercount): 82,000 to 90,000 non-combatant dead. Two controversial (yet peer-reviewed) epidemiological studies published in The Lancet (pdf here and here) that estimate 650,000 excess deaths (with 600,000 attributable to violence) as of July 2006. And finally, the Iraqi Health Ministry Study which found 400,000 excess deaths over a similar time period (but only 150,000 attributable to violence). JPF extrapolates these two estimates forward (by scaling to the IBC numbers, although regrettably without error bars. sigh.) to conclude:

"...between 300,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis have died, and the statement “hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died” has very strong support."

On the fifth anniversary (and the coming of Easter), I think it is worth taking a minute to mourn these lives and ask why? What for? For oil? For power? For lies about WMD? When violence was up, we couldn't leave. Now that violence is (somewhat) down, we still can't leave. How much longer? How many more? Again, for what? And don't ask John McCain - he thinks we should stay for a good long time.

Scientists Discover the Elusive "Traffic Jam"

Something to ponder the next time you're stuck in horrible horrible traffic.
Even more fun is this collection of Java applets that lets you simulate a wide variety of traffic situations. My favorite is #3, where one lane is closed, and you can see that the system is very sensitive to small changes in inflow and speed limit. Which, sadly, seems to imply that there is no 'magic highway design' that would eliminate traffic jams in most situations. Anyway, its a fascinating waste of a few hours.

(via Gristmill.)

Compare and Contrast

Laura Jean has a pair of posts up comparing Quinn to both of our baby pictures, so you can judge whether Quinn looks like her mama or her daddy or both. I have to say I see a lot of Laura Jean in Quinn, and at times, my sister Jessica - which means she will certainly grow up to be a strong and beautiful woman.

the grippe

I was supposed to run the St. Pats 8K this weekend, but instead I spent it sick in bed. (Somehow that seems extra pathetic from an opportunity-cost perspective, no?) Grumble grumble. In fact, I'm pretty sure the very minute I clicked submit to pay the (non-refundable) entry fee for the race was the instant the offending germs invaded my system. Stupid germs.

Anecdotally, it seems to have been an especially brutal flu season. My co-workers were all out at various points. At any rate, I got it bad -- hacking cough, rivers of phlegm, intense exhaustion such that I have to take a nap every few hours. And of course, I was dumb and tried to 'work' through it. Now a week later, I'm finally starting to feel a little bit better. Hope everyone else avoided the worst of it. Here's to spring and daylight savings banishing all such infectious diseases!

The Physics of Sailing

Thanks to my Dad, I've been sailing almost yearly since I was a kid, but my understanding of how boats and sails work has always been somewhat, um ... operational. That is, I know how to keep the boat from tipping over in certain situations by doing certain things, and I know the general strategies for going in various directions (tacking upwind, etc.)


But, there is probably no sport where exploitation of the laws of physics is so central or so apparent, so I always wondered about the details of how it all works. The problem is just engineering-y enough that it doesn't really crop up in either physics undergrad or grad courses (at least the ones I took). I think this ignorance is somewhat general in the physics community since "How Boats Work" was the topic of at least one informal but heated "cookies" discussion in grad school (which is actually an excellent way to learn about stuff like this, I've found).

Anyway, Physics Today rides to the rescue with a fun and detailed review article by Byron Anderson entitled The Physics of Sailing. Part of this discussion, inevitably involves the physics of wings and lift generation and the various popular yet incorrect theories of lift. To wit:

"Like airplane wings, sails exploit Bernoulli's principle. An airplane wing is designed to cause the air moving over its top to move faster than the air moving along its undersurface. That results in lower pressure above the wing than below it. The pressure difference generates the lift provided by the wing. There is much discussion of whether the pressure difference arises entirely from the Bernoulli effect or partly from the wing's impact and redirection of the air. ... A NASA website has an excellent discussion of the various contributions to lift by an airplane wing. It disputes the conventional simple version of wing theory and emphasizes that lift is produced by the turning of the fluid flow."

But there is a lot more to sailing than sails, and the article goes into some depth on the physics of keel shape, turbulence, wave resistance, hull speed. Plus there are lots of fun little facts -- like the fact that maximum speed comes with the wind perpendicular to the direction of motion. Or that iceboats can reach speeds three times faster than the windspeed and hydrofoils can get up to twice windspeed. Awesome! Anyway, I thought it was a fun read.

One in One-hundred

From the front page of yesterday's Post:

More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

This number -- which represents a tripling of the number of incarcerated over the past 20 years -- is driven not primarily by population or a rising crime rate, but by stricter sentencing policies.

Now obviously, crime stats are complicated and likely to be interpreted through an ideological lens, so I won't even try to interpret what this "really" means. The report itself -- which is not too long and an interesting read (download here) -- limits itself to discussions of the expense and societal trade-offs of maintaining such a large prison population. But still, it is a sobering statistic and a reminder that we as a society could certainly be doing better on this front.

feet!

Baby toes sure are amazingly cute. Here's Quinn just chillin' with mama and daddy, enjoying life.

Web 2.0 reinvents the chain letter

I've been on Facebook for several months now and I have to say it is both addicting and annoying. Clearly, they have created a social networking site that works. This is what friendster always wanted to be. The web-design is very clean and appealing (as opposed to blinky, flashy and cluttered) and they cleverly got in on the ground floor with college frosh nationwide. Then they let the oldsters like me in the door. And as a way of finding and re-connecting with old friends, it's effective if only due to its vast size. So ... w00t for them.

As many have pointed out, Facebook is also evil (or potentially evil), with connections to the CIA's venture capital firm, the DOD and the founder of (shudder) the Stanford Review. That's not to say Facebook is necessarily doing anything vastly more evil than Google (i.e. corporate data-mining and targetted ads), but if anyone in government ever gets the bright idea of re-starting the Total Information Awareness system, I guess they know who to talk to.

But really, my main gripe with Facebook is all the requests. In the 90s we all got chain letters asking us to Save Sesame Street or forwards brimming with inspirational sayings -- now I'm being asked to turn my friends to zombies or forward FunWall posts or take quizes on how many kids I'll eventually have. The big improvement seems to be that the chain letter now installs itself on your profile page and automatically selects a list of friends to forward on to. Really? No thanks. Maybe I'm just being grumpy, but with Facebook there is an exhausting expectation that you're supposed to communicate through an endless volley of thrown sheep.

Don't get me wrong - some of the apps are pretty cool. The Wall is nice, and SuperPoke is cute. I love the maps and the webcomic feeds and its nice that they've resurrected Oregon Trail. The open source development of applications is clearly the way to go and I'm sure there are some very creative people writing some cool and useful programs out there. But I don't think it's quite the killer app that will help grow a true online community - there's too much noise right now.

Of course, I still want you to be my friend...

Lenten Blogging

Instead of giving something up for Lent, this year Laura Jean decided to start up a new blog as a daily spiritual discipline. She's been posting about busyness, Manga Jesus, visiting prisoners and finding "the moments of grace in my everyday living." (Of course she's still keeping her old blog as a steady source of baby photos.) She is, of course, a wonderful preacher, and that shines through in her posts too.

I've also been trying to blog daily for Lent, with notably less success (and less quality control). We're also trying to commit to reintroducing some activism and community service into our lives for Lent, although being new parents really cuts back on your free time, so we'll see how that goes.

e-waste

National Geographic had a really interesting article in their January edition on the ultimate fate of high-tech electronics sold in the U.S. and Europe: quite a lot of it gets shipped (or smuggled) to China, India or Africa where people burn the components and salvage the scrap metals. As usual with NG, the words are good but the pictures tell the real story.

Needless to say, burning and poking around through old electronics is an extremely hazardous occupation. Click on the pictures link above and then go to the 9th pic and you'll see one of the scariest photographs I've seen in a while. Here's the caption:

In a poor suburb of New Delhi, India, where informal e-waste processing is a common household business, a man pours molten lead smelted from circuit boards. His family uses the same pots for cooking—a potentially deadly practice.

Guh.

AAAS wrap-up

I just returned from five days in Boston for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - the world's largest general scientific society. It was a fun meeting - although these things are always kind of exhausting, aren't they? It was especially interesting to go to a general scientific meeting and listen to talks well outside my realm of expertise. Definitely makes you appreciate someone who can clearly explain his or her research well.

The reason for attending was because UCS released a report that I helped write. Entitled Federal Science and the Public Good the report outlines the systemic and harmful changes the Bush administration has made to the federal scientific enterprise ... and what needs to be done to reverse them. We also released a call-to-action endorsed by a group of senior scientists, organized a conference session on science policy in the next Presidential administration and my boss was a guest on NPR's Science Friday.

A busy weekend, to say the least. A few of the other highlights:

• Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, spoke about his ambitious plan to invest a large fraction of Rwanda's GDP in science and tech.

• The world's oceans are doing poorly and a their status and conservation was a big theme of the meeting with talks on dead zones and declining fisheries.
  

• There was one session on my thesis topic: gamma-ray bursts. It was great nerdy fun to dip back into the topic after a year and a half doing other stuff, although I have to admit I was a little disappointed to find the field hadn't really advanced much in that time-frame. I was sort of hoping to learn the exciting new developments...

• Not surprisingly, climate change has really blossomed into a Major Scientific Theme in the past few years, and there were a number of interesting talks at this meeting. My friend Holmes Hummel organized an interesting session on the next steps in organizing an international framework to reduce carbon emissions - and she closed with a surprising summary of the many bills currently under congressional consideration.

• There were also two good talks on the communication of science to the non-scientific world. Andy Revkin, the NY Times's cracker-jack energy and global warming reporter, gave an engaging talk to a packed room on how to report about complex scientific topics in a media-saturated world. Matthew Nisbet applied his 'framing science' theory of communication to global warming and the evolution/ID debate, and biologist Kenneth Miller called for evolutionary theorists to adopt (co-opt?) the idea of 'design' when talking about evolution.

• Finally, I dropped into a session on environmental toxicology and heard two terrific talks pitched to the general scientist: one on the discovery of a genetic pathway that predicts Alzheimer's disease, and the other on recent advances in understanding endocrine disrupters (specifically DES and BPA).
  

Grand Central

This popped through my inbox the other day and I thought it was pretty cute:

It put me in a mind of this scene from Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King:

I Voted

[ Update: Big night for Obama in the Potomac Primary. I voted this morning in DC using what has to be the simplest ballot efver--just one question--and I used a tiny golf pencil to fill it out. Talk about high-tech. I was reminded of the crazy CA governor recall ballot from several years ago (~150 candidates and a confusingly worded recall? yay). ]

Skill Sets

Quinn is figuring out new things everyday and every time I pick her up I swear she is bigger. It is really amazing to watch her grow and to think of all the things she couldn't do even a few weeks ago. Laura Jean recently blogged about how she can (occasionally) roll herself from her back to her side. As Holly put it: with a strong wind in the right direction, she could get over onto her tummy.

She is also able to reach and grab hold of things she wants. Or sort of. Its not a very reliable skill yet, but she's practicing! She has clearly mastered the art of getting both hands into her mouth at the same time (and keeping them there rather than having them fly away unexpectedly).


She has started in with the baby talk in a big way, and her smiles continue to be magic.

Saturday Night Deep Thoughts

Here's an interesting interview with John Haught, a Catholic theologian who testified against intelligent design in the Dover court case. It is a wide ranging discussion, touching on everything from why neuroscience probably won't be able to explain "subjective experience" to why he dislikes the "new atheism" of Dawkins and Hitchens:

Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have cringed at "the new atheism" because they would see it as dropping God like Santa Claus, and going on with the same old values. The new atheists don't want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity. Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Camus, all expressed it quite correctly. The implications should be nihilism. [...] I don't have any objection to the idea that atheists can be good and morally upright people. But we need a worldview that is capable of justifying the confidence that we place in our minds, in truth, in goodness, in beauty. I argue that an atheistic worldview is not capable of justifying that confidence.

Unfortunately, he ducks the follow-up question about Camus, who I always thought had the best response to this argument. He also talks about Einstein's discomfort with a "personal god":

Einstein was a man who thought the laws of physics have to be completely inviolable. [...] So the idea of a responsive God -- a God who answers prayers -- would have to violate the laws of physics, the laws of nature. This is why Einstein said the problem of science and religion is caused by the belief in a personal God. But it's not inevitable that a responsive God violates the laws of physics and chemistry. I don't think God does violate those laws.

I confess, I didn't think he elaborated convincingly on how that would work. Still, its a very interesting chat with someone who has thought a lot about how science and religion might play well together. Of course, if that is still to much religion for you, check out the top 50 atheist bumper stickers (#42 is my favorite). H/t to boppyjean for the article.

Cohen

I've been helping out with the weekly music at church and this week our pastor requested an all-Leonard Cohen Sunday. So we obliged and will be playing 4 Cohen tunes. Like many folks, I know Cohen mostly through "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah" -- especially the gorgeous rendition by Jeff Buckley (a version of which can be found here, although they wouldn't let me embed the video).

So, its been nice to get to know some of his lesser-known stuff. He's a lot like Dylan: can't sing worth a damn, but he sure can write some amazing songs. A lot of his songs mix and match Jewish, Buddhist and Christian themes, which makes him a natural for church services. In addition to "Hallelujah", we'll be performing "Anthem" (which is kind of a Buddhist call to arms, if you can imagine that), "The Story of Isaac" (which turns the biblical narrative into an anti-Vietnam War protest song) and this one: "the Sisters of Mercy."

OK, so I was wrong...

That prediction I made about Romney winning the republican nomination? Not so much. The republicans have their nominee before the democrats? And it's McCain? Go figure.

Top 7 in '007: Movies

I've done books and music, so here are my film faves from 2007.

7. Shortbus -- Hedwig creator John Cameron Mitchell sets out to free explicit sex from the pornography ghetto. This one is not for the prudish and definitely not the sort of movie you watch with your parents. But for all this ambition, Shortbus is really just a charming, unassuming, militantly-pro-sex indie-comedy. Sure, it's not perfect (e.g. the ending is joyous, but narratively unbelievable), but it's still quite a lot of fun. (Don't worry the trailer below is SFW.)

6. (tie) Juno / Knocked Up -- Quick! When was the last time a comedy won Best Picture? (ans. 1977, Annie Hall) Comedies don't get no respect, but if you've ever tried ... it's a helluva lot harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them cry. Maybe it's because we just went through the whole pregnancy thing this year, but we both loved these two movies ... both funny and both true. And by-the-way, Ellen Page is amazing.

5. Once -- A lovely little DIY musical about making music and emotional connections. It doesn't try too hard and dances lightly away from all the cliches you think you see coming. Even if you're not a fan of angsty folk rock, I'd be willing to bet you'll love Glen Hansard's and Marketa Irglova's songs. Like this one:

4. Offside -- Jafar Panahi shot much of this film guerrilla-style during the 2005 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Bahrain. The film centers on a group of young female soccer fans caught and arrested while trying to sneak into the game. Panahi's genius is in taking an abstract political issue (women's equality in Iran) and finding a way to dramatize it, concretize it and even dress it up in a veneer of Iranian patriotism. Aside from its political impact, it's also a very engaging film that gives you many reasons to love the plucky heroines and even sympathize with their jailers.

3. Hot Fuzz -- Huh. Lots of funny movies this year. This was the most purely enjoyable movie I've watched in a while. Big 'ole grin upon leaving the theater.

2. Men With Guns -- John Sayles inverts Dante's Inferno to weave a parable of the past 30 years of Central American history. A wealthy doctor leaves his comfortable life to go in search of a band of medical students he turned loose in the jungle years before to serve the Mayan villages. He finds only an unreported dirty-war waged by his government against the people. As he journeys deeper into the jungle and into the stories of his missing students, he hears stories of a village high up in the mountains that has never known violence.

1. Children of Men -- High-quality, believable special effects are so common now that its easy to become jaded by movie spectacle. And yet, my jaw was literally hanging open for the last 45 minutes of this movie, courtesy of an extended, uncut sequence--set in the midst of a battle in a concentration camp--that truly has to be seen to be believed. The story and the acting are first rate as well -- Clive Owen is an appropriately low-key hero. News reports from the end of humanity never seemed so matter of fact. I don't know how well it will stand up on a second viewing, but for now, this is the best and most memorable movie I've seen in several years.

Old School: I've been periodically netflixing some oldies but goodies -- these were all great films, but it seems weird to put them on my list: Burn!, On the Waterfront, Chinatown.

Honorable Mention: Ratatouille, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Pan's Labyrinth, Brick, The Queen, The Science of Sleep, Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix, In The Mood For Love, Instrument, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, The Bourne Ultimatum, and ... Casino Royale

Cheap 'n' Green

We are feeling overwhelmed by our 'stuff.' The reasons for this are clear: we moved from a house to an apartment (less space) and we added a new member of the family (more stuff). So, with a constant reminder of the material economy surrounding us (and often underfoot) we decided to make a new year's resolution: buy nothing new for an entire year.*

[ There's a group in San Francisco called the Compact that evangelizes for this sort of thing (interesting stories about them here and here, plus a listserv). They seem idealistic, nicely pragmatic and not, you know, psychotically dogmatic about it. Also check out "Ask A Brokeass" -- Gristmill's fountain of "cheap green" advice. ]

So, why? Well, obviously I bet we can save a ton of money if we work at it. Plus there's something hard-wired in my brain that thinks landfills and disposable consumer products are pretty-much the dumbest ideas ever. I will walk several miles to find a recyling bin. I mean, what ever happened to using every part of the buffalo? What mega-genius came up with those cheap plastic happy-meal toys? The environmental costs of the American high-consumption lifestyle are bad and bound to get worse. For example, do you know where your old TV ends up once you're done with it? Why not take it to your friendly neighborhood TV repairman (hi Dad!) and get a few more years out of it?

And then there's the psychological aspect to it. Unplugging from commercial culture can be very liberating. There's something eye-opening in thinking hard about what we really need and how much is 'enough' and what a sustainable economy might actually look like. And anybody can do it - you don't have to be able to afford the organic section at Whole Foods to play.

And yet, and yet, disposable stuff is so convenient and useful ... and so easy to get rid of. There is certainly something undeniably exciting about saying: I don't need this anymore and I can just make it disappear! Sigh. Too much stuff is definitely an input and output problem, and this is our current plan to deal with the inputs. *Now, of course, there are caveats:

• Food. This is a clear exception to the rule. The idea of eating 'used' food is gross. (I suppose we could restrict ourselves to dumpster-diving -- and, hey, people do -- but, that doesn't quite seem like our style. Plus, my sister made me promise I wouldn't.)
• Experiences. Movies, concerns, cultural events, video rentals are all exceptions.
• Travel. Gas for the car, plane tickets -- not technically stuff, although it would probably be a good idea to reduce these too.
• Necessity. And of course, if there's a pressing need for something essential that we can't really find a replacement for (I'm thinking ... diapers), then yeah, we'll buy it.
  

But, in general, we seem to be doing pretty well for our first month, and I expect it really won't be all that hard. There are thriving second-hand markets for most of the stuff I spend money on (books and CDs). High-quality used baby stuff is easy to find (since babies outgrow clothes and toys so rapidly) -- not to mention Quinn has several doting, loving grandparents happy ensure she wants for nothing. Clothes shouldn't be too hard either: I haaate shopping for clothes and will happily avoid doing it for years. I'm pretty sure I've subsisted on free t-shirts for decades now anyway. (fyi-- there is a also well-established exception for used underwear.)

Anyway, between craigslist and freecycle, we seem to be doing pretty well. I got a great used bike a few months ago for a cool hundred bucks from this guy who runs a bike repair business out of his backyard. Now, I really need a new pair of dress shoes, so I expect I'll be checking out the shoe section of the Goodwill soon enough.

Top 7 in '007: Music

Have some music! Here are my favorite albums from the past year, replete with youTube-y goodness.

7. Radiohead, In Rainbows -- For a limited time this album was available for download from the band's website for whatever price you wanted. Lots of people grabbed it for free. Using advanced mathematics, I decided it was worth 3 quid 50 p ($7.05 USD), and yeah, it was. It's a great album. Here's a studio version of "Bodysnatchers."

6. The Decemberists, Picaresque -- Kinda-Wes-Anderson-rock, but I mean that in a good way.

5. The Coup, Pick A Bigger Weapon -- Song title of the year: BabyLetsHaveABabyBeforeBushDoSomethin'Crazy. This one's called "We Are The Ones."

4. Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy -- Jackie turned me on to this band, and they were in heavy rotation on my iPod for a big chunk of this year. I guess you could describe them as alt-country (for lack of a better designation) or storytelling folk-rock, but the lead singer often sings like he's auditioning for Fugazi. Here's a live version of "Black" which captures the boiling anger behind the song, but I miss the bouncy, poppy keyboards on the album version - such a beautiful contradiction.

3. The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible -- The first track from their first album (Neighborhood #1 Tunnels - youTube link) still gives me the chills when it launches into the chorus with gorgeous ascending chords, steel drum tremolos and anguished lyrics. Talk about a tough act to follow, but there's not much about the new album that says sophomore slump. They're supposed to be amazing live (all 43 of 'em)... here's they are doing a live version of (Antichrist Television Blues).
That's right, punks, two french horns and a church organ. As an added curiosity, check out this clip of AF's "My Body Is A Cage" set to the final showdown from Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West."

2. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain -- This band somehow manages to combine hardcore punk, soul music, Peter-Gabriel-style art rock and (um) doo-wop and makes it kick ass. This album is really good, but a tad tentative - it seems like they're one album away from blowing the doors off the place. Here's a live version of "Wolf Like Me."

1. Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree -- I've raved before, and, yep. My new favorite band.


Honorable Mention: M.I.A., Kala; The New Pornographers, Challengers; Manu Chao, La Radiolina; Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs; Cloud Cult, The Meaning of 8.

more cute

I've been quite remiss in not posting more baby pictures. Thankfully, Laura Jean recently posted quite possibly the cutest picture of Quinn yet -- click if you dare. Anyway, here is some more cute for yall...

She has grown so much in such a short amount of time it is just amazing. This is clearly a thriving baby (nice shirt too).


Quinn hanging out with her Great-Grandma Quinn.


Yes, the poofy outfit has ears. Ears!


Here's Quinn looking cute in one of her 67 christmas dresses...


and here she is looking a tad more rustic (note the feet not sticking out the bottom of the pants - a problem she probably won't have for long). One of the most wonderful developments is that she has started really recognizing us and usually gives us a big smile (if she's not cranky, that is). They say, three months is when the social development software inside baby's head clicks on and she's a fully aware person after that. It seems like that process is starting with Quinn and it is a beautiful thing to watch unfold.




The other amazing development is that Quinn is sleeping through the night! Hallelujah!


Although sometimes, I think she just doesn't know what to do with us.

My hobby

Balancing polyhedra on my sleeping daughter's head.

It's good to have hobbies.

Obama and Edwards (and Clinton)

Well, the Iowa caucuses are upon us, so I figured I would pile a little more atop the heap of internet commentary. In DC we don't vote until April 3 (and apparently we have a caucus, not a primary? Go figure.), so in all likelihood it will have shaken out by then. But still, here are some random thoughts, in no particular order. (Of course, if you'd rather read something actually funny, then try this or this.)

I'm probably voting for Obama, although there's a small chance of Edwards. They're pretty close for me, but for different reasons. Edwards has the policy positions that are probably closest to mine (although truthfully all the Democrats are pretty much on the same page this year). I love his populism and his focus on economic inequality, ending the war, limiting corporate power and establishing true universal health care. Amen, John.

But I love Obama even more and this isn't just Illinois pride talking. He's the real deal: sincere, honest, genuinely interested in the ways government can be an agent for social change. Obama also has the rare gift of being able to preach outside the choir, to independents and conservatives, not by being a triangulating centrist, but by communicating progressive ideals as hopeful common sense. Because the Republican coalition is fraying apart, I think the Democrats have an opportunity to stitch back together some of the pieces of the New Deal coalition that have strayed to the Republicans in recent years (e.g. independents, non-union white working-class voters, evangelicals tired of being played for dupes by the R's, etc.). And I think Obama, more so than Edwards or Clinton, is the person who can do that.

Of course, not everyone loves Obama's "kumbaya shtick" and maybe he's really just the second coming of Adlai Stevenson -- another intelligent, principled, honorable loser from Illinois. Maybe he would crumple in the general election from a relentless swift-boating and constant jeering references on FoxNews to "Barack Hussein Osama." Who knows. Like a lot of progressives this year, I'm placing a larger value on electability than in the past, especially since all the Democrat front-runners are all "good enough" in some sense and the Republicans are falling over themselves to see who can bag on immigrants and threaten other nations most convincingly. If you could prove to me that Hillary Clinton had the best chance of winning the White House, then I'd probably line up behind her with minimal grumbling. But of course, each of the three candidates has a claim on electability.

And truth-be-told, there's at least something to be said for Hillary. (1) She's a grown-up and will go a long way towards repairing the damage Bush has wrought, (2) she may be more centrist than Obama or Edwards, but she'll likely appoint good people to important positions, and (3) on the most important domestic policy issue (health care) she might very well be the best person for the job. I lean away from her because she's too hawkish and too triangulating for my tastes and, plus, its just embarrassing to have the White House be held by two families for 28 straight years. Ugh.

Still, I'll happily vote for Hillary over any of the Republicans candidates. After 8 years of Bush, its hard not to feel delicious delicious schadenfreude at the Republican prospects this year. I've been thinking for a while that the nominee will probably be Romney by default. Huckabee's got a shot, but the Wall Street wing really hates him and, man, does he seem out of his depth or what?

Giuliani's poll numbers are cratering, thank god (he might finish 6th behind Ron Paul in Iowa!); he may be allegedly socially liberal but he talks like he'd lead us into World Wars 3 and 4 within weeks of taking office. Yikes. As for the rest? I used to sorta like McCain, but he's really shifted rightward this year (for all the good it's done him) and Thompson just doesn't seem to have the fire in his belly. It's really hard to imagine any of these guys being able to unite and rally the disparate wings of the Republicans the way Bush did in '00 and '04.

I'm guessing the nominee will be Romney - the John Kerry of the Republican Party. And he'll really have a stiff electoral headwind against him to beat any of the 3 Dems. The last two elections have come down to whoever wins 2 of 3 of Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and if 2006 is any indication, both PA and OH are much more solidly Democratic than in 2004.

So that's that - fingers-crossed we'll see how it all goes down tomorrow.

Happy New Year

Quinn rings in her first new year as she often does - by sleeping soundly (although she did wake up a few hours later, right on schedule...). Happy New Year, everyone!