Quote of the Day

I was listening to this song this morning, and it struck me more than usual, so I'm posting the lyrics.

From R.E.M., "Half a World Away":

This could be the saddest dusk
I've ever seen
Turn to a miracle
high alive
My mind is racing
As it always will
My hand is tired my heart aches
I'm half a world away here
my head sworn
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
Go it alone
Hold it along and hold, hold.

This lonely deep sit hollow
I'm half a world
Half the world away
My shoes are gone
My life spent
I had too much to drink
I didn't think
and I I didn't think of you
I guess that's all I needed
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
Blackbirds backwards forwards and fall and hold hold.

Oh this lonely world is wasted
Pathetic eyes high alive
blind to the tide that turns the sea
This storm it came up strong
it shook the trees
And blew away our fear
I couldn't even hear

To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
To go it alone
And hold it along
Haul it along
And hold it
Blackbirds backwards forwards and fall and hold hold.

This could be the saddest dusk
I've ever seen
Turn to a miracle
high alive
My mind is racing
As it always will
My hands tired my heart aches
I'm half a world away and go.

Waiting for the End of the World

Did you hear that the world might be coming to an end before September 1?

No, this is not a follow up on my post about the Antichrist. It's probably slightly less nonsensical when scientists try to predict the end of the world, but I still think it's largely irrelevant, unless something could be done to stop it.

In this case, it seems, it could be stopped, by not flipping a switch, if you can believe it. There have even been lawsuits and, more importantly, stories in the New York Times. This story even provides for that most enjoyable of American pastimes, rolling one's eyes at lawyers:

On June 27, Overbye reported, again inside the Times A section, that the United States was seeking to dismiss a lawsuit by two worried citizens aimed at preventing anyone from throwing the big switch at the Large Hadron Collider. The government's principal response, I'm sorry to report, wasn't that there's no chance that switching on the Large Hadron Collider will bring about the end of the world, but rather that a six-year statute of limitations has already passed.

As someone with a legal background, this makes perfect sense to me. You go with the argument that is likely to win you the case, and I think you'd be better off arguing the mundane but entirely familiar statute of limitations point than trying to prove that the world isn't going to come to an end if you flip a switch somewhere. It may seem intuitively true, but this is the law we're talking about. Intuition, not to mention truth, has very little to do with it.

But I digress.

The science is anything but simple, but it seems to boil down to the possibility that when this particle accelerator is switched on, it will create a black hole that will swallow the earth whole. (Although, this is apparently not the only doomsday scenario created by the Large Hadron Collider.) More accurately, it is apparently agreed that it will likely create a series of very small black holes, but that these black holes could start devouring things on earth and get bigger and bigger as a result, eventually destroying all of Earth.

(Right now I feel a little like Rob Lowe in that episode of The West Wing with Hector Elizondo and the supercolliding superconductor.)

Rest assured, though, that Brian Cox (no, not him) says it's all going to be okay. I would try and explain what he said so that you, too, could be reassured, but honestly, it made no sense to me. I couldn't even finish reading it, that's how little I understood it. If you want to read it for yourself, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

I feel fairly confident the world is not coming to an end, despite not even remotely understanding the science behind it, for a number of reasons. Then again, if it does, oh well. Life goes on. Or, you know, not.

The Worm Turns

A British scientist infected himself with parasitic worms in order to see if they can suppress allergic responses.

No, seriously:

In 2004, David Pritchard applied a dressing to his arm that was crawling with pin-size hookworm larvae, like maggots on the surface of meat. He left the wrap on for several days to make sure that the squirming freeloaders would infiltrate his system.

“The itch when they cross through your skin is indescribable,” he said. “My wife was a bit nervous about the whole thing.”

Dr. Pritchard, an immunologist-biologist at the University of Nottingham, is no masochist. His self-infection was in the interest of science.

While carrying out field work in Papua New Guinea in the late 1980s, he noticed that Papuans infected with the Necator americanus hookworm, a parasite that lives in the human gut, did not suffer much from an assortment of autoimmune-related illnesses, including hay fever and asthma. Over the years, Dr. Pritchard has developed a theory to explain the phenomenon.

“The allergic response evolved to help expel parasites, and we think the worms have found a way of switching off the immune system in order to survive,” he said. “That’s why infected people have fewer allergic symptoms.”

It's funny to read this now, because I'm taking Microbiology this summer, so I actually understood what they were talking about.

What immediately jumped out at me when I first started reading was that suppressing the immune system's response to prevent allergies could potentially leave the patient vulnerable to a host of other diseases. The article addresses that fact:

Some scientists say Dr. Pritchard is walking a fine ethical line by infecting patients with a parasite known to risk hosts’ health. Peter Hotez, a microbiologist at George Washington University who is developing a hookworm vaccine, said the parasite was among the primary causes of stunted growth and malnutrition in developing countries.

“If a kid is infected with 25 hookworms, he’s being robbed of his daily iron requirement, and because the worms suppress the immune system, they can increase the host’s susceptibility to diseases like AIDS and malaria,” Dr. Hotez said. “So in its current form, I think this therapy is too risky.”

Still, he supports Dr. Pritchard’s work from the perspective of proof of concept, saying, “The real question is could you isolate the molecules the worms are using to suppress the immune system and use them for therapeutic purposes?”

I don't have bad allergies, so maybe I can't relate, but I don't think I'd want to be infected with worms in order to get rid of them if I did. Still, it's pretty interesting. If I had another chance at life, I think I'd have been a scientist.

Link via 3 Quarks Daily.

One Year Later

There was a hit on my blog today.

Yes, you read that right. One hit. I'm not very popular.

Now, though, it's the phrasing that strikes me. There was a hit on my blog today. Like someone tried to assassinate or execute my blog. It's funny, but it's not, since this is pretty much exactly what happened to my old blog.

It won't happen to this one.

Back to the hit. I clicked on the inbound link, and when I saw the date, it dawned on me that I started this particular blog just about a year ago. A year and two days ago, to be exact. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. It's funny because time went so slowly for so long, and now it goes fast again.

I went back and read my first post, thinking I could use a bit of reminding:

Perhaps it'll all be for naught. Perhaps the corrosive influence will find me, even here. Assuming it wants to, it probably could. But I think taking this move, making this stand, will help me retain control even in the unlikely event that this does happen.

Happy blogiversary to me.

I Wish Tomorrow Was November 4th

I just read an article about what's on Barack Obama's iPod.

I can't believe we still have over four months of this crap until the election.

As for the article, I like Obama. Really, I do. I probably won't vote for him, but I think he seems like an interesting and basically decent person, and I also admit to being somewhat intrigued by him.

But then he says stuff like this:

"Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is 'Maggie's Farm,' " Obama said of one of Dylan's tracks. "It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric."

"It speaks to me." Seriously? There's nothing inherently wrong with the quote, but it's also quite reminicent of a lot of that elitist claptrap that John Kerry used to spew four years ago.

Of course, the real fault lies with the reporters who write this nonsense, actually believing it to be newsworthy.

Or does the fault lie with me, because I clicked on the article and read it?

The Nonsense of Predicting Armageddon

Jeffrey Goldberg wonders if he might be the Antichrist.

No, not seriously. At least he doesn't seriously ponder whether he might be the Antichrist - that would just be silly. He does take very seriously this question of trying to identify the Antichrist on the part of evangelical Christians, particularly Jerry Falwell. Luckily for him, even Falwell doesn't think Goldberg is actually the Antichrist:

I asked Falwell if he knew the actual identity of the Antichrist. No, he said. "People might say, it's a certain person, it's Henry Kissinger, like that, but the Lord does not let us know that."

So there's a chance, then, that I'm the Antichrist?

Falwell chuckled a condescending chuckle. "It's almost amusing, that question. Of course not. I know that you're not."

Why?

"The Antichrist will be a world leader, he'll have supernatural powers," he said.

He got me there--I have no supernatural powers. I can't even drive a stick shift.

On a related note, I had occasion to watch the remake of The Omen this weekend. You should know, if you're planning on seeing it, that there's not a single genuinely frightening scene in the whole movie, and that's not at all an exaggeration. It was a beautifully set and shot film, but not scary at all. There were other disturbing things about it, some intentional and others not, but as this is not a film review, I will refrain from stating them and getting off on a major tangent. We'll keep it to a minor one, this time.

The film got me thinking about the whole Antichrist thing, though, in a way I never really have before. I guess you could say I'm one of those Christians who thinks it's a whole waste of time to really think or talk about this issue too much, if at all. To me, if you believe in it, then it is inevitable, and since there's nothing that can be done to stop it, trying to identify who the Antichrist is or when that person might appear seems pointless. To allow another brief, but related, tangent, this is one of the problem with films like The Omen. It can't even be suspenseful because the end is wholly necessary once you accept the premise; in fact, the end is really just the beginning, and it's completely predictable to boot.

Despite this rather obvious fact, much of evangelical life and thought is caught up in discussions of the end times, as they call it. Most believe we are living in it now, and that the rise of the Antichrist is imminent, which is perhaps why there is so much chatter about it. Even Falwell admits that we will not be able to know who that person is until he arrives, though that is where our agreement ends, because it only makes me wonder why he bothers positing that the person will be a Jewish male. That kind of thing only incites suspicion and fear if you aren't willing to go further and actually name names, to narrow the field. But, of course, even if he were willing or able to do that, it would also be pointless, because you can't do anything to stop it. The events as their written in the Bible are a prophecy, which means if you believe it is the word of God, then it is going to happen. This doesn't mean that the words aren't open to interpretation and that there isn't some room for speculation, but the basic fact of the inevitability of it all makes identification of specifics largely irrelevant.

(At least some evangelicals also believe that the Christians will not even be here for the reign of the Antichrist, because they interpret the book of Revelation to mean that Jesus will have come back and taken all of the believers with him, which makes all this Christian interest in this subject all the more odd, given that they might not even be here to witness any of it.)

This is one of my biggest, of many, beefs with the Christian community as a whole, this whole focus on reading the signs and trying to figure out when the end will come. It bothers me mainly because this is not the point of Christianity. Instead, Christians should be focused on being followers of Christ. Christ himself said that only the Father knows when he will return, so all this speculation isn't just pointless, it's also unBiblical. Christ didn't preach about the end of days; he preached about love and forgiveness and spreading this message to others. The struggle to walk for God is daily, even for the "best" of Christians, so it really makes me question the spiritual lives of those for whom this is the bulk or even a large part of their time spent on their faith.

I'm not supposed to judge others, and I do try hard not to - though it isn't always easy. I don't necessarily sit here and judge those who choose to put their focus in a place where I believe they shouldn't, but I do think it's fair to point out places where Christians have failed to live up to the standards they should be striving for. Failure is one thing; it, too, is inevitable. But willful blindness is another.

I Hope They Have Dry Erase Boards in Heaven

I want to say something about the death of Tim Russert.

The thing is, I don't quite know what to say.

The news hit me pretty hard, which is odd, because I can't say that I ever thought of Tim Russert as someone I liked or admired. Not that I disliked him. Looking back, I think I did rather enjoy seeing him on the television when I'd turn on the news, as opposed to so many other faces, who induce feelings of nausea or disdain when I see them. I would usually stay and watch Tim, whereas with most other people, I'd change the channel.

Still, Meet the Press wasn't exactly a mainstay of my existence. I'd watch it if I happened to flip past it, almost always in repeat, but I didn't set my watch by it.

Perhaps it was the sudden-ness of it all that made it strike me so hard. The man was the same age as my father, and one day he just up and drops dead, without warning, at work. Not just that, but despite the fact that he may not have meant all that much to me, he was definitely a staple of the network I watch when I am going to watch the news. It's odd that he died this week, because earlier in the week, I had been reminiscing with a friend of mine about Russert and the 2000 election and his famous dry erase board. This election will not quite be the same without that.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize that Russert was more important to me than I realized. I guess I sort of took his presence for granted. Of course, when watching coverage of election returns on MSNBC, Tim would be there lending his voice to the day's events. His interest and fervor for politics is something I really relate to, though he parlayed it into a very successful career whereas I dabble in it as a hobby from time to time. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I'm really going to miss having him on the air. Perhaps this is why it struck me so surprisingly, because I'd never honestly thought about it before.

When I first read the news, it was on a message board, and I thought the person must have gotten it wrong. So I looked elsewhere to confirm it, and felt extreme shock and even a little sadness. I watched some of the coverage when I got home from work and listened to all the nice things everyone had to say about him. The way they described him, he seemed like an affable guy, but also a tough journalist. Then again, you rarely hear many bad things about people once they die. Unless it can't be avoided. Then again, Tim must have done something right in his time here on earth if his death would enable me to watch Keith Olbermann's show without wanting to vomit.

Of all the things I've read and heard, I think I appreciated Gwen Ifill's tribute the most. She doesn't shy away from being critical of him when she feels it's warranted, but the overall tone is one of affection and respect.

Rest in peace, Tim. You will be missed.

Bad Company

I checked Slate this morning, like I do virtually every morning, and I was greeted with a link suggesting that a night person could become a morning person. Since this is something I would like to do, I clicked on the link.

Then, I read the first paragraphs:

When I told my friends I had found a way to transform myself into a morning person, they responded in one of two ways. The night people leaned in as if I were about to reveal the location of a stash of pirate gold. The morning people simply regarded me with pity and wonder. "I just don't understand why it's so hard," said one friend, a Danish medical student. "I can get up anytime I want."

This sort of smugness is prevalent among morning people, who count among their ranks Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, nearly every American president, and even Jesus. (See Mark 1:35: "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.") Night people are stuck with psychopaths like Adolf Hitler and Juan Arreola, the guy in Pennsylvania who nearly killed his girlfriend's 2-year-old last year, explaining to a judge, "I'm not a morning person."

Um...okay. I can be a morning person and be like Jesus, or a night owl and be like Hitler. Nice. This makes me want to be a morning person more than ever.

Of course, I really doubt very much that it's ever going to happen. Still, the thought is nice.

This morning, I was going to try and get up to run. But by the time I got myself tucked into bed and managed to drift off to sleep, it was after midnight, and I knew that the 6 a.m. alarm was going to be silenced and changed to 7. And that's exactly what happened.

I will just have to run tomorrow when I can do it in the evening.

Where in the World is Dick Cheney?

This is just plain funny.

Quote of the Day

I don't recommend this approach, but Obama could do what men have always done when it turns out they're really not that interested: nothing. Hillary can have her friends tell him she'd love for him to call; she can try to let him know how great they'd be together. She can wait for the phone to ring ("You gave him my home and cell numbers, right, Lanny?"); and when it doesn't, she can rage that he's immature, or intimidated by strong women, or not ready for a relationship. But then one day she'll find out what everyone, all of a sudden, already knows: He can commit because he's actually chosen someone else.

~Emily Yoffe, advice columnist for Slate's "Dear Prudence," on how Obama can reject Hillary as his running mate

Finally, Someone Else Said It

Before all the Dem Veep talk was about Hillary, all anyone could talk about, it seems, was Jim Webb.

Finally, someone aside from me, thinks that would be a bad idea.

Of course, Tim Noah has lots of good reasons why he thinks Webb isn't a good choice for Obama to make as a running mate. I just plain don't like the guy.

Perhaps this reason espoused by Noah comes close to being an actual justification on my part, were I inclined to look for one:

Is Obama too cautious and detached? Webb is famous for speaking his mind. (Elizabeth Drew, the New York Review of Books, June 26, 2008 issue: "Like a boxer or a military man, Webb decides on his targets and charges straight at them.")

It's this last characteristic that's the problem. Webb, 62, is a bit of a blowhard.

Also, Noah points to this bit of pettiness...which shows Webb to be pretty immature for his age.

But I can't really point to that as a reason I don't like the guy, because I didn't know about it until just this second and my dislike for him is something that's been around for a while and resurfaces every time I hear his name. I just plain don't like him, and in an election year, and particularly an campaign like Obama's, that's all about change and being optimistic, Webb and his brand of bitter, blowhard politics may not be the best way to go. It's honestly hard for me to say I prefer him to Hillary, even, if that says anything about how profound my dislike for him is.

Do yourself a favor, Barack Obama, and just stay away from both of them. You can pick pretty much anyone else. But I just really don't want to see either one of them polluting the airwaves even more than they are already polluted. If you really want to be the change that we can all believe in, prove it in the most important decision you'll make as your party's nominee.

I won't be holding my breath.

Two Minor Observations

I'm posting two completely unrelated observations, just because both of these events were a little odd and caused me to think a bit.

The first happened at some point this weekend, when I was flipping channels and happened upon a repeat of Bill O'Reilly's show. Now, I have no idea when this show originally aired, nor do I really care all that much. I don't at all like Bill O'Reilly and haven't watched any of his show in ages. For some strange reason, though, this time I stopped for a minute when I saw him.

He announced an upcoming segment that I'm guessing is about making fun of celebrities. Now, I like to make fun of celebrities as much as the next guy. Anyway, the subject of his rant (Bill only has one mode, and that is charitably described as ranting) this evening was going to be Woody Harrelson. My curosity got the better of me - and there was really nothing else on - so I stayed through the commercial break.

When he returned, there was the photo of Woody Harrelson with the word "pinhead" under it. And Bill told a story about how Woody planned to go to some island and fast for 40 days. Or something like that. The details are fuzzy since I saw this a couple of days ago. Anyway, I was thinking, maybe this is a little odd but it hardly seems worthy of singling out as stupid celebrity behavior.

The kicker, though, was that Bill O'Reilly went on to make the obvious comparison. He noted that Jesus Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days. He wrapped up by saying, "But that was Jesus."

Um...okay.

I do not profess to know anything about Bill O'Reilly's relationship with God. I know he's got a Catholic background, and he seems just self-righteous enough about it that maybe he still practices his religion, but I don't honestly know. So I don't really mean to denigrate his faith with the following statement.

But...since when it is a bad thing to try and emulate Jesus. Especially if you're a Christian. O'Reilly seems to suggest that we shouldn't even try, even though the whole point of Christianity is to become more Christ-like. It's what the word "Christian" means, for crying out loud.

Now, I'm sure that this move on the part of Woody Harrelson is not religious in nature. And if Bill had pointed out that discrepancy, perhaps I would have had less problem with it. But he didn't say, "Woody ain't Jesus, or even a Christian." (I must disclose that I have no idea about Woody Harrelson's faith, either, if he has any at all. I'm just making an assumption here.) He basically implied that it was okay for Jesus to do crazy things, because he was the son of God, and it's just plain silly for the rest of us to try and do the things that he did because we're not him.

Logically, that may make sense. But it is against the very essence of the Christian faith. And I found it very odd.

The other event happened yesterday. This girl I know was talking about Murphy's Law and used the example of buttered bread always falling butter side down.

I must admit I had never heard this particular formulation of Murphy's Law, but a quick search turned it up as common. However, this doesn't strike me as being very much related to Murphy's Law, which isn't even a real "law" at all (in a scientific sense), so much as the Law of Gravity. I'm not a science whiz or anything, but wouldn't the buttered side fall down because it is more dense?

Anyway, I could have been snarky with her, but I wasn't. So I'm coming here to vent it instead.

Adieu, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Adieu.

Well, folks, it's finally over. Hillary has accepted that it is not her entitlement fate to be President this time around.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I didn't get that quite right. It's actually not over until Saturday. What should have been over on Tuesday, or, if you want to be techinical, long before Tuesday when everyone knew she had virtually no chance of winning the nomination, is now being dragged out until Saturday.

I think the official reason for dragging this out is that Hillary needs time to come to terms with her loss before stepping out of the race officially.

No, I'm not making that up.

I suppose it is understandable that a normal person might need to take some time after the whirlwind of a strenuous primary campaign before moving on to the next thing. I could argue that Hillary is far from a normal person - and you can take that however you wish because I really don't care anymore - but even setting that aside, I would definitely argue that she'll have plenty of time to go through all the stages of grief after withdrawing from the race. In fact, she'll have nothing but time, right?

I'm also made increasingly nervous by all the media speculation that Hillary might end up being Obama's VP. I still think it's highly unlikely, but the fact that it's all anyone can talk about is enough to give one pause. I really hope that's not the case, because I'd really just rather see as little of Hillary Clinton as possible from here on out.

So, I'll go ahead and say goodbye. Goodbye, Hillary. It's been swell. Now, please try to be graceful for once in your life and just go the hell away.

The Woes of Hillary Clinton

Just how bad are things for Hillary Clinton?

Let's check with Slate's Hillary Deathwatch:

And if that's not enough, let's check in with Jeff Ellis while we're at it:

Hence, there are two lessons that one can take away from today's Puerto Rico primary.

1) 33% of voters will still vote for Barack Obama even after he essentially blows them off.

2) Hillary Clinton is apparently the favored candidate of primary voters who don't have to pay federal taxes.

Poor Hillary. Of course, if she'd just bow out gracefully (though it's much too late for that now), all of this merciless mocking wouldn't still be going on because we wouldn't have her to kick around anymore.

Of course, at this point, when she finally does bow out (assuming the decision isn't ultimately made for her), then we can all just mock her for not doing it sooner. Then, hopefully, she'll disappear.

The Marriage Decision

As you may have heard, yesterday the California Supreme Court became the second state in the union to hold that gay marriage is a constitutional right.

In reality, neither one of these cases hold that at all, though that's the way it is presented. What the California Court actually said (and, bear in mind, I have not read their actual decision though I have read quite a few quotes of it in various news sources as well as descriptions and dissections of it from sources I trust) is that marriage is a fundamental right (which is true), and that as such, access to that right shouldn't be limited solely to straight persons.

I think that this is absolutely the right decision, on equal protection grounds. And the religious arguments just don't hold water to me, even though on some level I find my sympathetic with them. Ultimately, though, many things that are "sins" are legal (just look at divorce, for example), and since, from the Christian perspective, all sins are considered equal in God's eyes, I see no reason why one "sin" should be singled out by Christians as worse than others. It's time for Christians to step up and live up to their name by attempting to be more Christ-like, and this would be an awesome place to start.

I will not, however, be holding my breath.

The decision is right, legally, and just not that radical at all, if you think about it. Marriage is a well-settled fundamental right, and to deny anyone access to that right without a really compelling reason is completely unjustified under the Constitution.

(The U.S. Supreme Court really must be hoping that the talk of a public referendum to amend the California constitution to prevent same-sex marriage isn't successful, because then this will become an issue of federal law and will soon work it's way up to them. I know this is one the current court, for the most part, simply cannot want to touch.)

Speaking of which, it never ceases to amaze me how little people understand the law. It's one thing if you're aware of this fact, and don't try to speak as if you do. But I was listening to the radio yesterday, just after the decision came down, and a right-wing radio host of some regional renown was on discussing the case. He seemed to suggest that even if the constitution of California was amended to prevent gay marriage, that the same California Supreme Court could still reach the same decision, which is simply not true. The decision of the Court was based on the California constitution, so if that document was amended, then it would render the decision null and void. Then, the matter would become a federal issue, as I stated above. The question would become whether the amendment to the California Constitution violates the U.S. Constitution.

I'm curious, now that I think about it, whether such a case has ever been filed. (I suspect one has not or, if it has, it hasn't made it very far.) A number of states have gay marriage bans enshrined in their constitutions at the moment so there could easily be a test case out there for this somewhere. California could be a good place to test case this issue because, in federal court, it would eventually make it to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, known for its willingness to make "activist" decisions like this.

This same host, after making this erroneous statement, went on to say that he favors civil unions or domestic partnerships, and doesn't at all have a problem with gay people (obviously, I wasn't listening to Michael Savage), but that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. He didn't offer any support for this position. He merely asserted it as if it were a fact.

I guess I just don't understand why this decision is so controversial, at least from a legal perspective. (The only thing that is slightly controversial is the court's holding that sexual orientation is a suspect class that warrants strict scruitiny of laws discriminating against it, a distinction normally reserved for classes such as race and national origin and, to a lesser extent - at least when talking about the federal constitution - gender.) If marriage is a fundamental right, and it's hard to argue that it isn't, the the rest follows quite naturally, whether it fits with "tradition" or not.

What's Good for the Country Is What's Good for the Candidates...Both of Them

Andrew Sullivan, who I still like a lot despite the fact that he tends toward hyperbole - while meaning to be completely serious - which really kind of annoys me, has links to a couple of post debating the merits of the proposed McCain-Obama summer debate series. On the con side he proffers this piece by Noam Scheiber:

McCain has several big disadvantages vis-a-vis Obama. He faces a massive enthusiasm gap and will have trouble attracting large crowds. He's in all likelihood going to be massively outraised and outspent, making it hard to get his message out. And, possibly as a result of the previous problem, he'll be cast as a right-winger determined to continue George Bush's policies.

The unmoderated debates would help him overcome all three problems. They'll draw big crowds and generate lots of buzz. They'll help him get his message out for free. And, just by virtue of appearing frequently at Obama's side and having a civil debate, they'll make him look much more moderate than the Obama campaign wants him to look.

I don't see the upside for Obama.

On the pro side, there is this argument from Hendrik Hertzberg:

Another reason, tactically speaking, for Obama to say yes to McCain’s proposal is the dampening effect a series of buddy-movie faceoffs could have on the campaign of character assassination that is sure to be conducted by Republican surrogates and 527s. McCain and Obama both speak of their desire to have a civil conversation. Both say they want to reach across ideological and party lines. Both say they don’t regard their opponents as enemies. A series of face-to-face discussions would make it a little harder for the partisans of either candidate (I’m talking about you, Republicans) to run a parallel campaign of lies and slanders, and would ratchet up the pressure on the intended beneficiary of such a campaign to put the kibosh on it.

Obama’s right. It’s a great idea.

All of that is well and good. And I guess each side has to look at it from the perspective of how it would benefit them.

But really, at the end of the day, I'd feel much more comfortable if the real concern were not whether it was good for Obama but whether it was good for the country. Surely, it's good for the voters to have this kind of open and honest exchange of ideas from the two major party candidates, one of whom will ultimately be the next President of the United States. And since both the candidates seem to want that kind of a dialogue, and most of politics is one big gamble anyway, why not just do it. It seems really cynical for all of these commentators, who in reality are the ones supposed to keep the politicians in check and keep them honest and be looking out for the interests of the public instead of the bottom line, to be so focused on what's good for Obama rather than what's good for the country.

It's almost as if they've decided that Obama is what's good for the country and since we, the public, are too stupid to come to that conclusion on our own through a series of civil and unmoderated debates, they've got to take matters into their own hands and declare that Obama should do it only if it "helps" him...and never mind whether it's the right thing to do.

Obama's instincts are right on this one, and his supporters should support that, rather than falling brazenly at the altar of political expediency.

Beatty Gets It

It's a sad state of affairs when the person who makes the most sense when it comes to John McCain is none other than Warren Beatty:

I’ve known John McCain for a long time. He always said he was a conservative. He was a conservative. He is a conservative. It seems that people should take John McCain for what he says he is."

I wonder why the so-called conservatives can't grasp this.

Link via Jeff Ellis.

So That's Why I'm Still Single*

Check it out, folks: The Marital Rating Scale.

For the record, I scored a 6, which makes me a "very poor" wife candidate indeed. When I did the demerits side, I feared my score might actually come out negative, so I was pretty pleased with my score. I do think that "Can carry on an interesting conversation" should count for more than 1 point.

These results are not wholly accurate, though, for they are really intended for those who are already married and, as you can see from my title, I am not. I had to answer those questions as honestly as I could, as I imagined how I would act were I, in fact, married.

This is the Wife's Chart, which really makes me wonder if there's a Husband's Chart and if there is, what it might look like. One isn't provided at the link, and I'm entirely too lazy to actually go looking for it, so I guess it'll have to remain one of life's many mysteries.

Link via The XX Factor.

*Yes, I do realize that this is not really the reason I am still single, so please don't email me.

UPDATE: Okay, so my curiousity got the better of me and I went looking for the Husband's Chart. So here is a link to the whole thing. The test is longer than that original link shows, so you'll be happy to know that my total score is not 6, but 33, making me a "poor" wife rather than a "very poor" one.

The Husband's Chart is equally as entertaining. It is somewhat quaint and dated, but even taking that into consideration, the whole thing is pretty odd. It's also apparently not meant to be some sort of objective questionnaire, but instead is a compilation from a survey of responses from spouses in the qualities that they find most attractive and least attractive in their mates.

Second link via Boing Boing.

The Assassin Vote

This is just plain wrong. Still, it's funny as hell.