Via Yglesias
Good job House denying these guys immunity. The fight is still on of course, but for once we’re not running scared just because Pres. Bush’s fearmongering.
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Via Yglesias
Good job House denying these guys immunity. The fight is still on of course, but for once we’re not running scared just because Pres. Bush’s fearmongering.
Posted at 09:43 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Went to a meeting of the South Oaks Evanswood Citizens Association tonight and am now pretty exhausted. We were debating the Purple line, there were three proposals, one offering conditional support for any option, one supporting a tunnel only, and one generally opposed. Vote tallying is still going on but after about two hours of meeting I was ready to go home.
Based on applause, I’m not sure if the vote is going for us, but us pro-Purple Line folks matched the other side speaker for speaker at least. Said my piece in under my minute even, I take some pride in not filibustering. The event was moderated pretty well, the President kept things moving and was reasonably strict with time limits.
I think Community Associations on average are leery of any change that comes with trade-offs. It’s easy to just assume that all of your concerns are unique and should take top priority with the county’s limited funds. That said they are an important part of the process. Without local organization, then low cost high return concessions would be overlooked.
Anyhow, turnout was great and it’s nice to see democracy in action.
Posted at 09:49 PM in Living, Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Fortunately, the overall threat from terrorism is still fairly small and in no way comparable to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. James Fallows notes a good David Ignatius and points to an old cover story covering the same material in the Atlantic. The article is on a new book called Leaderless Jihad by Marc Sageman which is based on data about 500 Islamic terrorist.
The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a "clash of civilizations."
It’s the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman’s account, it’s a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls "terrorist wannabes." Unlike the first two waves, whose members were well educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for thrills.
"It’s more about hero worship than about religion," Sageman said in a presentation of his research last week at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank here. Many of this third wave don’t speak Arabic or read the Koran. Very few (13 percent of Sageman’s sample) have attended radical madrassas. Nearly all join the movement because they know or are related to someone who’s already in it. Those detained on terrorism charges are getting younger: In Sageman’s 2003 sample, the average age was 26; among those arrested after 2006, it was down to about 20. They are disaffected, homicidal kids -- closer to urban gang members than to motivated Muslim fanatics.
Sageman’s solution to the third wave is fairly straightforward. First, as we’re already doing, disrupt these groups when they gather to train. Second, stop glamorizing them and playing up the War on Terrorism. Third, get out of Iraq to cut off sources of radicalization.
That said, this doesn’t mean we’re immune. As Fallows article notes:
Yes, there could be another attack tomorrow, and most authorities assume that some attempts to blow up trains, bridges, buildings, or airplanes in America will eventually succeed. No modern nation is immune to politically inspired violence, and even the best-executed antiterrorism strategy will not be airtight.
Posted at 11:57 AM in Conflict, International Relations | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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From an article on military robots (via Sullivan) Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December. James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots. The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey. Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. "I don’t know why that has not happened already," he said. Why haven’t terrorists already started using robots? Hm... difficult question. Could it be, I don’t know, that most terrorist groups are labor and not capital intensive and thus are using suicide bombing and IEDs as a low-cost form of stealth technology. Unless the U.S. military has found a cheap way to deploy Transformers technology robotics doesn’t fill that niche. Admittedly robots are easier to capture than say missiles, but taken over remote control of one hardly gives you the ability to mass produce them. There was a cool sequence in Once Upon a Time in Mexico where an insurgent used a remote control car to deliver to deliver an explosive, but somehow I think the terrorists already have access to that level of tech. Robots capable of killing without a human in someway pulling the trigger are definitely worrisome. However, terrorists or insurgents deploying robot armies is not why they’re worrisome. If you want to read a real article about robots in the battlefield, try here.
Posted at 06:15 PM in International Relations, Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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So at my friend’s birthday party we watched some of the Oscars as well as some clips from Filmmaking Frenzy. The later a contest to do five minute remakes of movies to promote the new film Be Kind Rewind. I’ve heard mixed things about but will see if given an easy opportunity.
The contest winner, Beastmaster, for Filmmaking frenzy wasn’t that great in our view. The party was bored about half-way through. Die Hard was better but it was hard to hear the dialog. Another finalist, the Princess Bride, was excellent. Better than I would have expected, the sheer amount of fandom for that movie would make it too easy to just reference crowd pleasers and nothing else.
On the Oscars. I thought Jon Stewart did pretty well and was glad he brought the female singer for Once back on stage after she was cut off. That and the binocular/periscope montage was hilarious. That said, the writers strike is over, why were there so many other montages. Okay, it’s the 80th anniversary, I don’t care, stop showing us strings of 15 people giving out or getting old awards. I think I’ll resume my habit of not watching the Oscars, but it can be fun at a party.
Posted at 11:53 AM in Film, International Relations, Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Two new differences opened up between
There was a bill to ban cluster bombs, Obama voted for it, Clinton against. Cluster bombs are fairly nasty because a percentage of them don’t explode when dropped and become a kind of second-hand landmines.
Same holds on Cuba, although Obama is not as strong as normalization as he has been in the past. In essence, I tend to think favor diplomatic relations in all but the most extreme situations. Diplomacy is a tool, not a reward. Doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes recall your ambassador for consultation, but that’s most effective as a temporary measure and not a policy.
At the same time, Obama is still wrong about mandates and Clinton’s attack on that point is fair.
So why privilege foreign policy over domestic policy? Well I’m a foreign policy wonk, it’s what I do. Also as Dan Drezner argues, the President has much more authority and agenda setting ability and foreign policy than in domestic policy.
Posted at 10:52 AM in International Relations, Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Just finished it, so here’s my follow-up to the early review. The game probably takes somewhere between 15 and 20 hours depending on how completionist you are. Overall it was a fair amount of fun
Your party members are good fun. They aren’t original by any means but they’re well written and voice acted. That said, unoriginal doesn’t mean standard party member, you get a mad scientist as a supporting character! How cool is that? The writing in general is great fun and quite funny. I managed to predict the main plotline rather effectively, but the various side-quests are much more original and can be moving.
The item system was incredibly simple. There’s just a bunch of buff gems, many involve trade offs and some have interesting non-stat effects but on the whole they’re pretty bland. That said, I’ll take too little inventory over too much any day.
Combat’s cool but described in detail elsewhere.
The range of techniques is much more interesting. They can all be upgraded when leveling, although the upgrading results in them being faster, cheaper, stronger, but not fundamentally different.
I think the support techniques were the most interesting new element. ’Focus’ results in bullet time which is new to this genre, but pretty well established elsewhere. But having support techniques that actually work consistently including powerful ones like paralyzing palm is just awesome. As with Kingdom Hearts, they balance it by having more powerful characters simply effected for a shorter period of time. Enemies also have immunities based on their type, thankfully the game makes it quite clear what these immunities are. This works alright and forces diversity, but I’d have preferred half effectiveness to immunity.
Also, I’d have liked a few more hard numbers on techniques, as it’s often fairly hard to pick between switching and upgrading your existing ones. The irreversible investment of upgrades makes experimentation unappealing. Finally, having only four easily accessible at a time was a problem, but apparently an avoidable one when playing with a keyboard.
Ranged combat was kinda weak, but I think that’s intentional. Mass combat was rather strong because you have the option to do area attacks centered on yourself. They aren’t strong, but they’ll buy you space. Strong mass and weak ranged is quite appropriate for a martial arts game, so good job people.
Finally, the morality system didn’t really interest me. It moved a bit beyond good and evil, but not far enough. Mainly it was just a matter of picking when your character is a jerk. My favorite jerk moment involved telling a slave to kill her slaver rather so she’d learn to fight for herself. But as usual generally speaking just going for evil options doesn’t appeal to me. Having a law/chaos alignment instead of good/evil might help, but may be just as restricting. I’m interested in trying Mass Effect which lets you burn Paragon or Renegade points to get conversational benefits. That sounds cool.
Posted at 12:34 PM in Games | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Via Paul Vitello at American Scene the NY Times has an article on the decline of golf.
“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer.
“There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from
their family anymore."...The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each
year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million,
according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods
Manufacturers Association.
I think Tiger Woods is a cool guy, but otherwise there’s not much about golf I like. Mini-golf is fun but adapting Mark Twain, golf courses strike me as a good park ruined. I’m sure I could throw together a good political justification if I actually wanted to. But from a simple self-interest approach, I’m hoping I can do political networking without learning to play. But mainly it’s personal.
Posted at 01:20 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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My friend Moti asked me the other day about Naomi Wolf’s article/book on "Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps"
Interesting article, but not a rigorous one. The article lists a bunch of bad authoritarian behavior but doesn’t list thresh-holds. Calling someone a traitor isn’t the same as arresting them. Denial of travel rights isn’t the same as full detention. There’s a fair amount of bad stuff going on, but speaking as an analyst, going by those metrics the authoritarian risk isn’t yet critical.
Going off her list, I’ll give her points 1 and 4 unqualified. 2 and 3 have major warning signs. 5 and 8 have some rather bad cases. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I think she’s seriously pushing it. So I think the article mostly works on the "another reason all this stuff is bad" but despite a lot of anecdotes doesn’t get to the level of putting this all in a historical or theoretical context.
After the break, more details on the her 10 steps.
Posted at 03:36 PM in Democracy, Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Steve Gaynor bets no and thinks that while they’ll still be great games in 50 years their cultural impact will still be fairly marginal. N’Gai Croal’s response was good enough that I’ve added him to my Google Reader account as I should have a long time ago (part two of Croal’s response).
Anyhow, busy today, so I’m not going to throw up summaries. Instead I’ll just link to Todd’s response where he fairly effectively dismantles Gaynor’s points. Not doing Todd’s argument full justice, but basically Gaynor underestimates how much we invest in other medias and misses out on many classical and new ways that games are accessible.
That said, I disagree a bit with Todd on Gaynor’s point that "it’s still extremely common for games of high quality to be too difficult for a non-gamer to play effectively." Here’s the part of the retort I disagree with:
What he’s missing is that gamers do this even in games with set conditions of failure and success. Failure to meet a proscribed in game goal does not mean failure to meet a personal goal, and I would argue that personal goals of engagement are considerably more powerful in terms of what we get from the play experience than just "oh snap, I failed to save the princess." This isn’t to say they don’t intersect; they do, a lot. But how many of us who’ve played games -- especially inexperienced players -- have laughed when we hurtled off a cliff, blew ourselves up with a mortar, or rolled two gutter balls in a row in Wii Sports? How many of us get up on a DDR machine and think that if we don’t get a triple A on every song then we have wasted $0.75 and the experience was a complete failure? This is complete nonsense, and it somewhat saddens me that a game designer is thinking that way. I admit my biases are showing here; I’m a dyed-in-the-wool cultural studies guy, and I’m a hardcore personal agency-in-consumption person that gives the audience more power than, say, political economy. Still... I think the argument here against the idea of hardcode failure = experiential failure is pretty solid.
Sure it’s fun, for something like five minutes to an hour. But in games with set conditions of failure and success once you’ve done a neophyte’s exploration you’re likely to either fail less or start getting frustrated. Most everyone has some types of games they’re bad at for whatever reason (except maybe our mutual friend and treasured commenter Moti. I’m not sure if getting disoriented by FPSes counts as being bad at the game).
More after the break (sorry LJ readers, LJ-cuts don’t seem to work properly)
Continue reading "Will games end up having more cultural impact than comics?" »
Posted at 01:58 PM in Comics, Games | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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I see from Kevin Drum that inflation is now at 4.3%.
Seems like we’ll want to get that down a bit, but I think there’s a brief to be made for the idea that keeping inflation rather low for the past couple decades may have been a bit of a mistake.
Keeping the dollar strong was a big factor in keeping our trade deficits high. The recently weakening dollar has caused exports to surge back which is the main factor battling against the present/potential recession. At the same time, it’s made imports more expensive so in addition to other causes has encouraged inflation.
I think the stagnant median wages over the past couple decades suggest that we’re paying a price for those cheap imports. Getting back some jobs including higher skilled jobs in aerospace and the like could be a start to countering some of the negative affects of globalization. In addition, America has a terrible savings rate so the average person benefits some from inflation so long as wages at least hold steady.
Anyways, it’s also worth noting that the IT revolution in the 90s probably resulted in a one-time surge in the global labor pool. With cell phones, the net, and such it became possible to exploit a lot of existing under-employed labor and infrastructure world-wide in addition to a lot of capacity building. Developing world countries can still grow of course, but now they’re running up against limiting factors other than distance.
Posted at 11:44 AM in Film | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Saw the news in TNR which also noted that unsurprisingly the Islamist parties did poorly too. The big question before hand was would the elections take place and would they be allowed to return accurate results. For the moment, it appears that Musharraf’s party is ’allowing’ itself to be defeated as it were. The true magnitude of the loss versus reported outcomes will be hard to tell, but considering how badly the fair in early returns, it looks fairly credible.
This round isn’t over yet, but having some semblance of an accurate count was more than I was counting on. My compliments to everyone involved, for the moment including Musharraf for being less of a despot than I feared.
Posted at 01:56 AM in Film | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Just bought the special edition used [off] my [fiancee’s] brother. Definite good deal there. I won’t go into too much detail since it’s an old game so not that many people are going to care.
I like it. Plot’s been fairly predictable so far and I think I’ve got an idea what the long-game twist is going to be like (the game drops some heavy clues). I’m presently a bit put off by the auto-save system. I died a stupid death from not watching my health and lost about a half hour’s worth of progress. I’m guessing that was a glitch.
On the whole though, I’m happy with the game. Combat is a fairly straight forward rock-paper-scissors affair with attacks, heavy attack, and blocks. There’s a variety of stances that let’s you throw neat status effects like slow or you different melee-fighting styles. I’m particularly pleased that there’s a technique that lets you steal chi energy rather than making you completely dependent on drops and recharge shrines.
This is just about right for me. I’m not really interesting in the amazing combos one can pull off in God of War. Instead, I like having a character that I can fine tune to a greater extent while combat itself feels more intellectual than reflex. It’s really kinda funny how long menu-based fighting stuck around when it really kinda sucks. Action RPGs are typically more simple fun while tactical RPGs are more of an intellectual challenge. But adding a time element to menu-based makes things twitchier and harder but not particularly more fun. Similarly offering full behavior programming a la FF12 removes some of the monotony and is a neat build challenge, but it doesn’t sound like it makes combat more fun.
There’s been a lot of fun menu-combat-based RPGs, but I think they’re mostly fun despite the combat limitations. I think the good number of action-RPGs and tactical RPGs from recent years, e.g. Jade Empire, show that designers have figured this out.
Posted at 02:56 AM in Games | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (1)
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I vehemently recommend U2-3D to any fans of the band.
There's not quite the energy of being at a live show, but it dang near gets there. The wide range of well-mixed camera angles get you way closer to the whole band in concert than anyone but the closest row of fans and often closer than them. The 3d does really add to the experience by making it feel that much more real, and for one song and the credits they really play around with it.
I think this format really works. Particularly for superstars like U2 that already do a highly effective mix of medium. Man those Latin American concerts seemed awesome.
I did see it in IMAX, not sure how much of a difference it made, but it sure felt worth it.
Posted at 10:58 PM in Film, Music | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Here’s my long promised review of Andrew’s Amazon writing contest entry.
To read it yourself, here’s the prologue and here’s chapter 1 (click the button on the right side of the screen to download).
Meta-fairy tales are all the rage of late, so the big question is what does "Waiting for My Happily Ever After" bring to the table. In short, the new factor is writers as the nemeses of characters. I won’t go into too much detail since the excerpt itself introduces the larger world first through hints in discussions and then action. I’m interested in the world and its conflicts, which is good as just subverting existing fairytales is pretty redundant these days. Moreover, how magic works and the characters’ world interacts with ours seems fairly straightforward, which is nice as playing loose with those rules can easily undermine a story.
There’s a fair number of characters introduced pretty quickly. It’s a bit too early for me to tell how well I’ll like them. Thankfully the Prince Charming character, who could easily just be an annoying chauvinist seems to show some depth in addition to his multiple flaws. My mind isn’t made up yet on the protagonist, but she does have a good line about heroics that drew my attention and makes me think she has some potential.
As for writing style and pacing, the excerpt was a quick read although I sometimes lost track of the action. Quick-paced and light feels right for this story and means it’s pretty easy for you, dear reader, to judge for yourself.
Posted at 05:53 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Reading a few more conservative blogs pays dividends. There’s a new Indy trailer out!
Not sure how I feel about the kid. Female villain seems alright so far. They seem to be handling the transition to the Soviets well. Also, the tombs may be a little too elaborate. No need to get too fancy just because you have the special effects budget to do it.
But mainly the action and lines are good, and well, it’s Indy. Looks like they’re going to hit at least Die Hard 4 quality, which would make me a very happy. If it’s better than that I’ll be overjoyed.
On a side note, the editing felt a little choppy. I think they were cutting it for time due to the first twenty seconds or so of prior movie summary. Trying to trim things for trailers is pretty common, so I’m not going to worry about it.
[Updated after reading the Vanity Fair article Isaac Chotiner linked to]
Good news: Spielburg specifically talks about slow-cuts, not fast-cuts, that’s a good sign. I’m guessing old style may just be harder to work into modern trailers.
Lucas is apparently obsessed with his particular MacGuffin and thinks that they’re key to the Indy movies. Eh.. maybe, maybe not. Apparently they brought in the father-son dynamic to Last Crusade because the MacGuffin was weak, but I think that dynamic would be much better than a Arc like strong MacGuffin. I worry a bit, but he’s got Ford and Spielburg pushing back against him, so I think it might just be okay.]
Posted at 03:01 PM in Film | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Dani Rodrik notes that the WTO has just ruled against China.
The WTO has made a ruling that Chinese import surcharges on car parts violate WTO rules. This is the first time that the WTO has ruled against China since the country joined in 2001. China’s intention with the policy was clearly to discourage imports of car parts and thereby encourage upstream production of inputs for its auto assembly industries...
In other words, policies encouraging domestic content were successful--at least in these two important cases (Sutton speculates that they would have been less successful in smaller economies).
Perhaps such policies have outlived their usefulness and the WTO decision makes economic sense. Perhaps. But what is clear is that there is no room within the WTO procedures for the relevant economic arguments to have played a role. Domestic content preferences are illegal period, regardless of whether they help a country industrialize and grow.
The decision is up for appeal, the final ruling gets made in 2009. If memory serves, the effect of China losing this case against the U.S. would be that if China doesn’t drop the program, the U.S. can place proportionate measures against China that also violate WTO rules. In one fairly extraordinary case against the U.S. these measures would be be to allow violation of intellectual property rules proportionate to the impact of variable U.S. rules on online gambling.
Anyways, I think this is actually an area where the WTO could helpfully evolve. I mean, it’s all well and good for China to pursue policies that help its economy but why shouldn’t that then allow other countries to pursue proportionate policies (or perhaps proportionate environmental or labor protections). Perhaps distinctions could be made between policies that accomplish demonstrable good for the country and policies, like corn ethanol subsidies, that just represent state capture by a powerful interest group. Good policies could be countered only by other good policies. Also countries could give aid, and be acknowledged as giving such, by waiving retaliation in such cases.
Unfortunately, the obvious economic problem is how to determine what’s a good policy. I don’t think there’s consistent ways of knowing in advance. So maybe you’d just have to set benchmarks and give something a couple years to play out, if it meets the benchmark, by saying increasing upstream production, than it qualifies as good. If it doesn’t, than the WTO becomes a helpful kill mechanism for failed policies.
Posted at 10:20 AM in Politics, Race | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Sen. McCain today voted against a bill to apply the restrictions against torture in the Army Field Manual to America’s intelligence services. (Via Kevin Drum). The bill passed 51-45, but will be vetoed.
Why? Kevin Drum quotes an old Joe Klein article to explain.
I attended Frank Luntz’s dial group of 30 undecided — or sort of undecided — Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night...and it was a fairly astonishing evening. Now, for the uninitiated: dials are little hand-held machines that enable a focus group member to register instantaneous approval or disapproval as the watch a candidate on TV.
....When John McCain started talking about torture — specifically, about waterboarding — the dials plummeted again....Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. "I don’t have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11," said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.
I wonder if the Republican base will be satisfied now.
For some less depressing news, Will Wright’s next game Spore is coming out this September. Evil Avatar has links to a great two part interview with mouth watering details.
Posted at 11:27 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Three bills passed the Iraqi parliament today. One on provincial powers, one granting amnesty to thousands of mostly Sunni uncharged prisoners, and the 2008 budget. They used classical log-rolling to get it done. By passing three bills at once, everyone got something they were happy about. The need for such logrolling was predicted in a piece by Ilan Goldberg who argued that trying to pass the benchmarks one at a time because all the issues were linked.
Apparently the vote was unanimous (although it was arranged that those who objected would have a chance to leave the chamber first). That seems odd to me, but hey maybe it ties into Iraqi political culture. 206 of the 275 were in attendence.
On government structure, the provincial powers law, which I’m told is among the most important of the laws that need to get past, devolves a lot of power to the provinces. In addition, Kurdistan gets 17% of the budget after certain national ministries, like Foreign Affairs and Defense, are removed. However, that’s just a one year compromise.
The provincial election date was apparently controversial as some of the current parties are likely to lose. They’re now mandated for October 1st. That may cause trouble with the Sunni "Awakening Councils" which wanted provincial elections in March or April.
Anyways, the bad news is that there’s increasing reports of Sunni infighting. In addition, the de-de-Baathification law still seems highly dubious and no word on an oil proceeds law.
Posted at 05:24 PM in Iraq | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Good, the voters could use the time. It’s pretty miserable out there. Take care. The precipitation wasn’t that bad but the sidewalks were really icy. Not sure how the roads were, local ones I drove on weren’t that bad.
My sympathy to the judges (and my Mom who acts as an observer and will now be up an extra hour and a half).
Posted at 08:01 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Just another reminder to my fellow Potomac Primary voters in MD, DC, and VA to go vote (for the general, I’ll try to be better about reminding people of registration and absentee vote deadlines).
I’m still feeling pretty good about the Potomac Primary. I think we got more attention in the area than we would have gotten on Super Tuesday. Good job leaders.
Anyways, in an interesting dynamic, I’ve found vehement Clinton hating columns, the kind you get from Andrew Sullivan or Frank Rich, tend to endear me to her. I’m still strongly in Obama’s camp, but they aren’t helping in my case at least. In terms of Obama critics, Paul Krugman sometimes goes over the line too, but I tend to think he’s more fair and he at least has an issue he cares about, namely the mandates. Krugman really doesn’t seem to be enjoying playing that role while Sullivan and Rich relish it.
That said, none of the three columnists are intermediaries and the candidates themselves have been playing nice lately.
In other news, Europeans seem to really like Obama. Friend of mine was recently in Europe and was being regularly told to vote for him (with some animosity towards Hillary Clinton even). The Obama support didn’t surprise me, I know some supportive Europeans personally, but I was a bit surprised at the Clinton-hating. I figured that Bill’s still popular enough over there to get her some credit. I’m guessing Ireland at least is pretty Clinton friendly.
Posted at 11:14 AM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Chris Orr gives a great epilogue to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign by realizing that Romney is like Superman, as interpreted in Kill Bill 2.
It occurred to me that the same is true of Mitt Romney’s desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona--angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic--is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be.
And in other Republican takedown news, here’s a version of Obama’s "Yes, We Can" video redone for McCain.
Posted at 11:38 PM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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First off Obama event Monday at Cole Field House at the University of Maryland College Park. I probably won’t make it because I’m still considering taking Tuesday off for campaigning. If you can, RSVP here. The event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 10:30.
[Update: For those busy at their jobs, there’s an event with Michelle Obama at Chevy Chase High School Monday evening. Doors open 5 pm, event at 5:30. RSVP encouraged]
The Purple Line isn’t really at issue in these elections, so I don’t have any special insight on who to vote for. My Representative is Van Hollen and I think he does a pretty good job. His opponent is anti-Purple Line but she’s also not much of a threat.
I probably should have switched my registration so I could vote in the more competitive Al Wynn (incumbant) vs. Donna Edwards primary. I tend to agree with the Post’s endorsement of Edwards (via Yglesias).
Mr. Wynn has long touted what he regards as a pragmatic ability to work across partisan lines. We’re all for bipartisanship, but in Mr. Wynn’s case, too often his stances have been unthinking and out of step with his district’s interests. His vote to scrap the estate tax suggested he was indifferent to his own middle-class constituents. By flip-flopping on fuel-efficiency standards and opposing campaign finance reforms, he showed his contempt for clean air and clean government. And he seems scarcely aware of the import of his votes to permit federal courts to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case and to support a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning: granting federal courts a license to meddle in private affairs and cramping free speech.
I don’t tend to automatically follow the Post, but their argument is sound.
For fellow Montgomery County residents here’s the League of Women Voters Voters’ Guide. Basically a one stop shop for candidate information.
Posted at 09:30 PM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Andrew Sullivan quotes a reader that echoes a point he made in the Conservative Soul.
If I’m forced to act in a Christian manner by threat of law, am I
really a Christian? Seems like this is quite detrimental to the Church.
And to be honest, I’m less afraid of social conservatives in this
regard as I am of fiscal liberals. If the government hijacks my income
to redistribute it into some form of pork designed to help the less
fortunate, especially when it doesn’t go toward its intended purpose
anyway, not only are they stealing from me, but they’re preventing me
from being charitable. It’s destructive for all parties.
The poor aren’t a tool put here for well-to-does personality morality play. They are individuals with their own interests and their "individual freedom" is generally a lot more constrained by economic conditions than the freedom of those capable of noblesse oblige.
This applies to me as well of course. The poor aren’t here to provide fiscal liberals with the benefit of being charitable with other people’s money. What matters is outcomes. Rampant poverty, beyond generating immense suffering, can be a nightmare for society at large. Creating a underclass that lacks hope of advancement almost inevitably leads to crime and violence.
I tend to think that preventing such an underclass is accomplished most easily with government programs that provide some essentials and shift the overall incentive structure. Poorly designed programs can get in the way and should be changed or dropped. But the marginal increase in personal freedom for the poor from an effective programs is much greater than the marginal decrease in freedom that comes from taxation.
Posted at 03:16 PM in Feminism | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Lori Gottlieb’s new article in the Atlantic, "Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough" is enjoyably torn to pieces by Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon.
Gottlieb’s argument in short is that being a single parent is hard and that settling for a guy is much better. Moreover, you’ve got to settle young because by the time you’re in your mid-thirties to forties the dating market sucks for women.
It was fairly obvious it was going to be a terrible piece based on an awful line of argument in the start.
And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.
So, there’s no women that don’t want to have children? Or have settled and got a relationship that wasn’t better to leave? Or settled and were left? This kind of false consciousness argument deals with critics by simply saying their personal experience is invalid or ignorant. It avoids the heavy lifting of making a real argument and makes it easier to use the kind of sloppy thinking common in this piece. There’s no stats, no in depth interviews with people that settled or are happy not settling, just Gottlieb’s personal experience which she generalizes to an argument relevant for all women.
Anyways, I certainly buy the idea that single parenting is hard. In some cases, it can also be fairly inevitable, so I do support subsidized child care and other programs that make things easier for all parents but single parents in particular. But in terms of her immediate practical it sounds like what Gottlieb needs is not a husband but a strictly childrearing partner. She might even want to consider moving in with her other single mother close friend in the same predicament. There’s economics of scale in child-rearing and I don’t think having sex with one another is really that key to successfully raising your kids.
Posted at 01:34 PM in Feminism | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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I got a nice long reply from Todd (Millenia) so I’ll do a follow-up here to get me a free entry and I don’t have a comment feed set up yet. I’ll quote a few excerpts.
But at the same time I think it’s not so good to say that the influence of hardcore gamers as the ideal consumer has little influence, primarily because without that ideal consumer, where would the risk/reward equation pan out? Sequel glut works because it is presumed that the (relatively static) audience for product A will pay for product B with the same IP and generally speaking the same features.
This is true. Not all audiences are relatively static (albeit still diverse in genre tate) in the way gamers are. Even movie fandom seems to have less tolerance for sequels.
I mean, even in the realm of Guitar Hero, our resident positive example... that is standing on the shoulders of Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, and similar stuff. To be perfectly blunt, GH takes those damn flashy disco music Bemani games and mans them up a bit by including rock music and excluding techno (and not requiring you to gyrate around like you’re having an eplieptic fit). So not even that is exempt.
Also true. And at the same time Rock music is generally more white, particularly in that it will include say the Beastie Boys and exclude some non-white groups that are on the edge with rap. (I don’t think GH or RB are doing anything wrong on this front, just the larger issue of where musical boundaries are drawn). I mostly notice this because I’m playing more DDR and, well, honestly I’m not a big fan of house and R&B. That said, I do miss some of the techno-y and disco-y DDR ones, although some of those aren’t appropriate given the instrument focus of GH/RB.
People don’t make games that look bad unless that’s... an artistic choice, and even then "bad" is usually just shorthand for "heavily stylized"... there’s the simple fact that video games are... well, video. It’s a visual medium.
True. There’s not going to be say a Dogme 95 school of games. But I think in film and television, equally visual media, the pace of visual innovation is a lot less punishing. If a film takes an extra year in production, it won’t "look old" the way a game will. Katamari Damacy as Todd references later, is definitely an important exception. I think it may have been a less risky bet in part because the PS2 was becoming a more mature platform at that point. Other games still pushed its graphical boundaries, but I think there was less expectation of new and shiny graphics.
Anyways, I didn’t mean to say No More Heroes doesn’t do some control innovation. I’ve heard it actually has some neat stuff and better sword controls than the Zelda games. It’s just "high concept" (quoting from one review) in the way that Kevin Smith is often "high concept," lots of meta stuff that’s great for the hard core fans, but reveling in genre more than innovating with it.
The market strength of the Wii is its universal appeal and unique approach, not it’s graphics; I will totally agree there. But I think that if developers don’t spend time making the control scheme of the wiimote work, and work in a consistently understandable way, then the platform is going to fail.
True enough. As Todd says in the full text, I don’t think the DS has often taken the touch screen from gimmick to intuitive control. Part of that might just be the ergonomics, having to use the pen or a thumb pad just isn’t that natural particularly if you’re playing while walking around. That said, even strictly genre games like No More Heroes and Resident Evil 4 seem to be attracting a lot of people to the Wii control scheme. So they may provide more platform support that the more non-traditional Kirby’s Air Ride [Canvas Curse (I've made this mistake before)] did for the DS. If that part of the platform stays strong, the intuitive appeal of the wii-mote may lead to broader based gaming regardless of graphics.
Posted at 05:42 PM in Games, Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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[I'd meant to post this on 2/4, but just saw that it was still in draft mode.]
Sullivan linked to a piece with a disturbing new trend from the unrest in Kenya:
In Kenya, I can store funds on my phone and transfer or liquidate these as necessary. It is also the primary internet surfing device for a good number of people I know. In addition, the mobile phone can be used as a social networking and newsgathering tool. Services such as Kazi560 and Ushahidi.com are to be applauded for catering to, and harnessing the power of, the bottom of the pyramid respectively.
Unfortunately, what can be harnessed for good can equally be exploited for sinister purposes. Regarding the escalating violence in Kenya, the ICRC spokesman in the country, one Bernard Barret is quoted as saying that rumours are being spread by mobile phone text messages predicting imminent attacks by one group or another and that this is heightening tensions. It’s difficult to attach a positive or negative value to these messages collectively. If they’re true, then they serve as a useful warning, enabling those who are due to be attacked to protect themselves or to flee.
As the PCR project notes, the spread of cell phones in Africa is usually cited as a positive example of innovation. In this case, I think it’s a matter of cell phones particularly texting, facilitating mass mobilization for good and ill. ’R’, The author of the piece went on to speculate on the differences between radio and text messaging:
It is an entirely different [than radio] to send these [text] messages to a carefully selected list of people on your contact list who will in turn send them on to their own select list of people so that the message spreads like a virus but catches only people who answer to certain ‘characteristics.’
She goes on to note that text messages would be harder to crack down on. This is true, but at the same time, they’re in the hands of the people unlike radio stations. If a community has lots of ties between potentially fighting factions, text messaging could be used either to protect friends or lead counter-demonstrations. But lacking such connections, text messaging can reinforce unhealthy divides in society.
Posted at 09:57 AM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Millenia has a neat post up on the innovation implications of this year’s top selling games. It’s well worth reading the analysis, but I’ll skip to the conclusion:
Think about it again, too; Guitar Hero effectively brings the Wii aesthetic to the single-player consoles. Unique interface, fun and easy to learn (well, unless you’re Gabe), great to play together... see where this is going?
Perhaps the most important change, though, is the phasing out of this idea of the hardcore gamer as the only gamer... The more we conceive of the ideal audience as the prototypical hardcore gamer the more clone-sequel syndrome is going to run rampant. That’s ridiculous and it doesn’t encourage developers to stretch the medium at all...
So I say, bring on the Guitar Heroes of 2008.
First, I agree with the sentiment and the bit about multiplayer gaming that I didn’t quote. I think hardcore gamer culture is probably a secondary factor to the proliferation of sequels. I think the original Guitar Hero was an exception, admittedly one that may have been possible because of a willingness to target non-gamers. But it’s presence on the list is in the form of two sequels, and the third game was a step back in terms of art design.
Anyhow, I don’t think companies are uncreative because they’re targeting hard core gamers, I think they’re uncreative because building a game is capital intensive and risky.I think ten million is basically the low end at this point for a major release. The innovative non-sequel to Guitar Hero is Rock Band, but that falls under a different rules. Successful studios and top game makers can to a degree write-their own tickets but Will Wright, Harmonix, and Valve aren’t not enough to provide industry wide innovation.
I Millenia is right in that we’ll see a lot more innovation in the near future, but one of the big drivers will likely be increasing freedom from the tyranny of graphical innovation.Both the Wii and the Nintendo DS have interface innovations, but I think that neither of them allows for lots of graphical advances in the way that the X-Box 360 and PS-3 do.That will free up a lot of capital and thought for other sorts of innovation or just allow the production of cheaper games. That said, I don’t see indy games playing the innovative role that indy films do. Indy games are fun and can be quite good, but for reasons I don’t entirely understand, possibly profit model or lack of console access, they’ve just never really taken off.
Details after the cut
Posted at 05:13 PM in Games | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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From Evil Avatar
Despite appearing quite niche, the LEGO Star Wars series proved rather successful in combining two classic properties into one nostalgic masterpiece. So, it was no surprise to hear that the industry would want to capitalize on that, offering up two more upcoming LEGO translations: Batman and Indiana Jones. However, a bit more surprising is the revelation from Edge (via CVG) that, in an attempt to make the latter more family-friendly, TT-Games have removed Nazis:
Quote:Perhaps partly in keeping with this, according to Edge Traveller's Tales has chosen to remove Nazis - and any reference to them it appears, from what TT says - from the game, "Lego having already replaced them with an anonymous genocidal, occultist, trenchcoat-wearing master-race". The studio explains it has left it down to the strength of the Indy characters to show they are bad guys - but "that said, we like to reinforce the fact that these really are terrible, terrible people".
This seems silly to me. I'm fine with not using Nazi iconography. Switch to iron crosses and such. But making them generic is just dumb. But keeping the 'genocidal master race' keeps in the offensive bits.
From commenter Kamalot here's a link to an interesting article on lego and guns.
Lego has upset fans by giving some of its play figures realistic-looking guns and pistols.
For generations its products have been seen as providing harmless fun - it was even said that for years it refused to supply green bricks in case boys used them to make tanks.
But critics accuse it of changing its stance, partly because of tie-ins with big-budget films and partly to counter the challenge of action-packed computer games.
The new versions of its Star Wars Stormtroopers now carry guns so large they can hardly hold them, despite the previous ones having nothing more alarming than a torch.
The company's latest Batman sets also include semi-automatic pistols and Tommy guns.
I actually would have more respect for having an Indy without the guns (using the old loud speakers) than an Indy without the Nazis. Indy movies have some sense of history and place, that is key. There's certainly violence as well, but the Lego sets can focus on the tomb raiding and not say the terrific tank battle in Last Crusade. I think you can make a great Indy movie without Nazis, although Temple of Doom isn't it. But it would require a new enemy that actually feels grounded, like the Soviets or some such. If I were inclined to write such a thing, which I'm not, I'd love to see an Indy movie set in occupied China or some such. Good enemy in the Japanese and nice intrigue from the Communist-Nationalist struggle. That said, there'd be a lot of potential to get such a thing wrong, as some of the mistakes in Temple show.
[Addendum: This isn't really an issue in the sets, but there's no real plotting there. We'll see what the specifics are when the game actually comes out.]
Posted at 12:33 PM in Games | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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From an interesting reader email to Andrew Sullivan:
In states where the black population is less than 5%, Obama has a
record of 7 wins, 2 losses and 1 undecided (NM). In states where the
black population is 20% or higher, he is undefeated at 4-0. However, in
states that are between 5-20% black, his record is a fairly dismal 4-10
(with one of those victories being Illinois).
I remember reading about this idea in Clarence Page’s Showing My Color. Page’s example described differing perceptions of native American groups based on how common they were in the community. When tribe A was at 15% they were described as lazy, drunk, etc. Tribe B at 5% was hardworking and generally a model minority. In a different area where the population figures were reversed, tribe B was described as lazy and tribe A was suddenly the model group.
He mentioned the dividing line being at about 15% although he didn’t cover the fact that there also seemed to be an upper bound. The upper bound might not mean that stereotypes have gone away, but that stereotypes are countered by political clout. Also we’re talking the Democratic primary, so the effective clout of African Americans is probably doubled relative to the general election.
This is not to say that voting against Obama is racist, but I do think the politics of race and racism do play into the election. The same is of course true of sex and sexism, but the demographics on sex of course have a totally different dynamic.
Posted at 10:04 AM in Politics, Race | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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It’s a fundraiser. Here’s the information about the pub. The recommended donation is $25-$2000. If you’re on the fence about going I’m willing to match up to a $25 donation. So if you only want to put in $12.50 I’ll kick in the rest. I can only do this for a limited number of people, because I haven’t done any side contracts in a while. (Campaign finance laws mean that the matching funds will need to be in my name, I’m far from maxed out, but I figure they’ll be happy to let us in as a group).
Friends get first priority, but if a random Obama fan in my area can prove he or she has watched my China slideshow, I’ll extend this offer to them.
Posted at 11:13 PM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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I left work around 9:30 today. Have a big meeting tomorrow so I’m probably just going to stay up late enough to get the preliminaries from California and then get to bed so I can be back at work at 8 am.
Normally I’d be a more down about the hours, but we actually got a heck of a lot done today. For once I feel actually ready for a deadline, I’ve got a product I can be proud of and I know most of the supporting data cold. Helps that we just got a new terrific GAO study, but also it’s a result of a lot of hard work.
That said, I think I can safely avoid the workaholic path because I am still fundamental lazy.
Posted at 11:05 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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I’m not saying it’s called Super-Tuesday because someone once got super powers from a radioactive voting booth, but I’m not saying it isn’t either.
On a more serious note, on the Democratic side at least, all the primaries are proportional. So your vote matters more than usual. The percentage of delegates won will depend on the percentage of votes each candidate gets, not just on which candidate got the most votes.
Anyhow, my endorsements are Obama and McCain but consider yourselves encouraged to vote regardless of you candidate of choice. (Also, there’s still local politics which you have more of an impact on and typically have more of an impact on you as well.)
Posted at 02:03 PM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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From Matt Ygelsias’s travel experience:
[Dallas-Fort Worth] airport appears to have discovered an as-yet-unknown-to-me way of making air travel unpleasant -- there are no electrical outlets anywhere. At first, I’d thought this was just a particular instance of the common airport phenomenon of insufficient outlets. But no -- there are these power charging stations where you can pay money and charge up your iPod, cell phone, laptop, whatever. Nice work. It makes you wonder why they let you use the restrooms for free. Both in the airport and on the plane, that’s a potentially lucrative profit center.
I’ve been seeing more desk areas and less outlets in a lot of new airports. I thought that most of the desk areas were free and just crowded but I’m not sure. But I’ve spent many a minute hunting down outlets so the idea that they’re going to start intentionally giving us even less is scary.
That said, I’d be willing to pay to get outlets on international flights. It’d be cheaper than buying an extra battery.
Posted at 04:57 PM in Travel | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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With Maryland’s primary a bit more than a week away and Super Tuesday coming up, I figure it’s time to commit. Both Clinton and Obama are legitimate choices that I’ll happily support in the general election. I think there’s been two main changes since I endorsed Edwards for Iowa:
1) Obama has demonstrated that he can get out the vote in Iowa.
2) Obama showed in South Carolina that he can actually win without Edwards working as his hatchet man.
[And well Edwards dropped out. That said, if he'd gotten more delegates was still in third, and stayed in I'd probably be endorsing Obama at this point anyways. I like Edwards role shaping the race, but at this point it's less about ideas and more about who is going to be the candidate. There's a reason I endorsed Edwards only for Iowa.]
I think that does speak to the fears of Obama being untested in national campaigns. However, that doesn’t solve matters.
In terms of identify politics, this race is great! We’re going at very least to have a female or African American major party Presidential nominee for the first time ever! I think there’s legitimate identity politics reasons to choose either of them, but I’ve got no special insight there so you’ll have to figure that out on your own.
In terms of foreign policy, the basic shape of the campaign is unchanged. They both promise to pull combat troops from Iraq. However, Clinton hasn’t renounced her vote on Iraq and Obama still has a more diplomacy based approach. I’m a bit worried about the pace of pullouts under either of them. However, I do want us talking to all of our enemies and Obama has made a stand in that direction.
In terms of domestic policy, the main differences are on the question of health care mandates. Essentially they’re a legal requirement that everyone gets healthcare which would be paired to make health care affordable. The mandate issue is debatable, but Obama has fouled the waters by running an attack add against mandates in the style of the old Harry and Louise adds. He can achieve universal health care without mandates up front, but much like social security, need everyone in to get the program viable in the long term. Jonathan Cohn has good in depth analysis. Universal Health Care is on the agenda for both candidates, but this mailer seems to show that it’s a higher priority for Clinton.
On the political style. Clinton fights hard and does machine politics. Obama is an inspirational coalition builder. I tend to favor Obama, but the mistake we made with Kerry was thinking a guy was highly electable even though most Dems weren’t huge fans personally. Go with your gut on this one. Here’s the Obama campaign music video that’s been going around, make your own call (via Ezra Klein).
So there’s reasons to favor either, but I’m going with Obama. I’m a foreign policy wonk and I’m hoping he’ll do well enough on coalition building to overcome his weaknesses on healthcare. There’s an event at 2:30-3:15 pm today at Georgia and Colesville in downtown Silver Spring I’ll be attending. I may also make a fundraiser on Wednesday at McGinty’s Irish pub, also in Silver Spring. I’ll post more information on that Monday or Tuesday.
Posted at 01:25 PM in Politics | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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So last week I attended a Montgomery County Council open forum in Silver Spring. I stayed for about a half hour of it. Went pretty well in my estimation, the questions from the audience were pretty good and the Council members were willing to engage the issues and indirectly talk about some of their areas of disagreement. The audience and County Council were both strongly pro-Purple line, so that was reassuring.
I’d been there to hand out leaflets before the meeting. That went pretty well, I’m rather good at leafletting and unlike many volunteer campaign activities I quite enjoy it. I was a little slow to recognize some of the Council members walking in but the one time it mattered I came up with a name.
Other causes leafletting were for saving a Piney Branch school pool, Clinton and Obama people, school board candidates, and group opposing adding gender identity to protected categories in the county. The group basically argued that male transvestites would run rampant in women’s rooms. There were three people in traditional Muslim garb and a woman in standard Western dress trying to get signatures to get a petition. The women’s husband was also hanging around in a low-key manner, I think because he realized, rightly, that the cause may inspire some fairly vehement disagreement.
The school board leafletter actually told off the one woman in Western dress for being a demagague. The husband then pointedly but silently returned the bit of school board lit, which I suppose is the classy way to handle it. That said, ideologically, my sympathies were with the school board lady. Harassing people in bathrooms will still be illegal regardless of whether gender identity is protected, their issue is scare-mongering. That said, I didn’t tell them off, but they didn’t bother me after I looked at their lit and returned it. I think they were more interested in attracting female support.
Posted at 10:23 AM in Politics, Travel | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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Last night I got dinner at Bamian and missed the Democratic debate. I kind wanted to catch that one, so I’ll see if I can find the whole thing online.
For now though, here’s a review, Bamian is a terrific Afghan restaurant in Falls Church. The atmosphere is nice if not amazing, the location not that terrific, you will have to drive or take a bus from a nearby Metro stop. However, the food is wonderful!
Anyways, the place was recommended to me by my Program head when I’d made an Afghan dish for a work function. Specifically he’d recommended the Aushak (dumplings) as an appetizer and Qaubili Palau (rice, lamb, carrots, and more) and Kadu Chalau (pumpkin with home made yogurt which was the dish I’d prepared).
So I had the Aushak and it was good, my friend had the Kabob Gosfand and liked it as well. I didn’t get the chance to do the Kadu Chalau this time, but will have to try it when I get back.
But, primarily, I am here today to praise the Qaubili Palau. (For the record, I think Qaubili os a different transliteration of the Afghan capital). The lamb was good but the rice, sweet carrots, and raisins (I think there was also some cinnamon) were perfectly blended and tasted incredible in combination. I’m a rice lover but typically I’m not even a fan of raisins in most contexts. The carrot preparation was particularly neat, they made carrot strips, I’m guessing with a peeler, and then just spread them over the top of the rice.
Other notes. MY friend was disappointed with the black chai, the green was alright, but based on the waitresses reaction I don’t think they specialize in either. I thought the bread was okay, I’ve heard they have great bread available, but maybe that’s something you can order extra. And, these dishes are pretty big, so unless you’ve got a large group you probably won’t need lots of extra bread. Large group with lots of trading is probably the best way to enjoy this place, but the two of us were still quite happy.
Group picture from the Bamian website. I’m guessing they won’t complain since I’m giving them a good review.
Posted at 07:46 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | 0 Comments | TrackBack (0)
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