roll for initiative

And here’s my final offer for 2008 dream tickets, take it or leave it:

(And yes, again … it could be Gates/Oprah in 2008.)

I call this one the “Compassionate Rationality” ticket.

Hmmm … or we could call it “If we only had a brain … AND a heart”.

Billg would be the benevolent technocrat … using science, rationality, and technology to address our nations top issues. (Note, that when I say Billg, I’m referring to the Bill Gates who funds the worlds largest charitable foundation, not the Billg who ran Microsoft - people tend to like the former but not the latter.)

As some of you will note, pure unmitigated rationality can be a bit cold. So … we add one part Oprah to warm the ticket a little.

Billg and his cranially super-endowed cabinet would propose rational policies to address issues like health care, taxation, foreign policy, immigration, etc., etc., etc. While Oprah would be the heart of the operation, bringing actual compassion the White House. And she’d make a great foreign ambassador. What world leader could resist her charming ways? Kim Jung-Il would immediately disarm and begin democratisation after Oprah talked to him and got him to open up about his difficult childhood.

Yeah, so they’re a bit short of on the political experience department. However, at least we’d have smart people running the show again.

Man, remember back when the biggest problem our country was facing was weather or not the President got a blowjob? Wow, those were the days…

I’ve been thinking about another potential dream ticket for the Democrats in 2008.

Don’t get me wrong, Hillary/Obama or Obama/Hillary would be awesome. But in case they Hillary and Barack can’t put aside their differences, here’s another possibility:

Oprah/Obama ‘08

or it could just as easily be

Obama/Oprah ‘08

In any case, my slogan for them is “O2 in ‘08 - a breath of fresh air”. (Not bad, if I do say so myself.)

Why O2 in ‘08? Because everyone loves Oprah. And the more people know him, the more people like Obama.

Which is not to say that the more people know him the more they like him. It’s a fine distinction, but an important one. It’s been said (and been said by people way smarter than I) that Obama’s playing a tight game. He’s doing all the wooing and saying all the right things … but he’s also taking care not to say any of the wrong things.

Here’s his official position on the issues. You’ll notice that there’s nothing there about abortion. (And strangely, there’s no search function on that site, so one can’t search the Senator’s official site for his “official” position on a very important issue.) However, you can do a Google search and find various oblique references to Obama’s Pro-Choice position.

But that’s not my main point. My main point about the O2 in ‘08 ticket is that it would freakin’ RAWK! Yeah, yeah, they’re both from Illinois so the technically can’t be on the same ticket, but that’s why Cheney moved to Wyoming (damn that pesky 12th Amendment). He was from Texas but that’s where Ivy League Bush wanted to go to be more folksy. So, Oprah’s got houses (estates?) in CA and NY and maybe someplace else so it wouldn’t be too difficult to pull a Slick Dick around that issue.

Oh yeah … let’s get back to the O2 ticket. Oprah is Oprah. She’s beloved by millions. She’ll make you laugh, she’ll make you cry, she’ll give you things from “Oprah’s favorite things” list. I think the reason she’s so popular is because she’s got mad EQ (that’s Emotional Quotient, y’all). She has this amazing ability to connect with millions of people in a very intimate and personal way. Okay, yeah I heart Oprah. I can’t catch her every day (you know that whole work thing), but if I’m flipping through the channel and she’s on I’ll stop and get sucked in for a spell.

As for Obama, to hear him is to love him. Those of you who remember his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004 know of which I speak. That skinny black kid blew my socks away. If you’ve got some time, it’s worth a watch. Part 1 and Part 2. Obama’s got as much charisma as Oprah’s got EQ.

My completely uninformed guess is that she would take about 75% of the woman vote. And O2 would take 99% of the black vote and 80% of the other minority vote. And even if they take only 40% of the white male vote their landslide with other demographics would take them all the way to 1600.

Who’s ready for some fresh air?

Just a quick little reaction shot to the most recent WayLay comic.

An alternative theory:  Both the woman and the dog survived the fall, but the woman was knocked unconscious.  The dog was probably freaking and was trying to get out of the barrel.

But in any case, if things did go down like Ms. Lay suggests, I’d still have to excuse the dog.  In his defense, he wasn’t a consenting passenger on the trip over the falls.
See, I’m a dog owner.  I love my dogs.  One thing I’ve learned is that the human-dog relationship is one based on trust and respect.  We have a tight little mini-pack going, my dogs and I.  I give them food, water, attention, and the structure to make them happy.  They return that attention ten fold and give me companionship.  It’s a great trade off, but I don’t do things that puts them in mortal freakin’ danger.

Sorry “intrepid woman”, but if this story is actually true, you broke the human/dog contract when you put your dog in that situation.

Election 2008 is ON!

Various candidates have exploratory committees and it’s pretty much guaranteed that both Hillary and Obama are going to make a run for the ol’ White House.

According to this Newsweek article, Hillary beats everyone, including McCain and Obama. Barack does pretty well, too, but he looses to McCain.

Me, I like both Hillary and Barack, but both are caught in a kind of electability Catch-22. I think most people would say they like Hillary and Barack. And I think they would like to vote for either one of them, too. But these people will say that they aren’t going to vote for H or B because they think that Hillary and Barack are “unelectable”, unelectable because “most people” won’t vote for them. I do think most people aren’t concerned by and probably don’t want the race to be gender- or race-ified, but because they think that race and gender matter to the “average” voter, race and gender are going to end up mattering. It’s a race-to-the-bottom Catch 22 that’s going to end up hurting two very good candidates.

All of this is a bit problematic for Hillary and Barack. Most people would vote for them save for the fact that most people don’t think most people would vote for them. If said “most people” would stop worrying about what other “most people” would do then the candidate that “most people” liked might get the most votes …

(Honestly, this is hardly an original thought. If it weren’t for Source Amnesia, I’d say that I’d heard this originally on NPR, but that’s a safe bet since 90% of my “original thoughts” actually come from NPR.)

In any case, as Balmer would say, let’s break free from the Tyranny of Or … and let’s go with a super Democratic ticket for 2008 - the Hillary-Barack 2008 ticket. Or really, it could just as well be the Barack-Hillary 2008 ticket. Or they could both be co-Presidents. Maybe Hilary can take foreign policy and Barack can do the domestic management. I really don’t care how they split it.

I just want people who are smarter than me in charge of running the country again. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?

Ants are way cool.

When I was little, I used to play with ants in the backyard. I’d see a trail of ants running from someplace to someplace else and I’d wonder how they knew where they were going and why they were rushing so much. Ants rush all the time. They never walk. Hell, they never just jog or even run. They always sprint sprint sprint. (Well, I’m sure they walk when they’re foraging, but when they’re going some place they’re going there SPRINTING.)

I’d place stuff in their way to see if I could distract them. Little branches, leaves, maybe even a burning match or two. But nothing could tear them away from the task at hand.

Later I took to lighting a candle and dropping little beads of wax on the little guys. I felt a little guilty about it, but I was sure they were still alive - just suspended in the wax. If I could’ve figured out a way to melt the wax without hurting the ants I was sure they would come back and immediately head off to their original destination.

One summer my brothers and I went to visit one of my mom’s cousins in Parati, a few hours south of Rio. It’s where The Emerald Forest was filmed. Mom’s cousin lived in a ranch in the middle of a tropical forest. His backyard was full of paths through the forest, one of which led to a little creek.

We spent much time hiking and exploring, seeing all the jungly vegetation and animals. One day we hiked up the creek. It was part hiking, part bouldering, part slogging through the creek, and the occasional wading. After following the creek for a while we came up to a huge boulder that was over 30 feet across and about 10 feet high. It blocked the entire path and since the creek couldn’t go around it, it went over it, making a waterfall that splashed into a large lagoon.

We stopped for to play in the lagoon for a bit. After splashing around, we decided to continue. We worked our way around the lagoon and found a spot where we could climb up on some smaller (yet still amazingly huge) boulders to scale up to the lip of the waterfall.

I remember being the first one to come up onto the waterfall. I pulled myself up, looked over the edge and saw, about a foot in front of me, a river of red army ants. It was a swath of ants about a foot wide that came up one side of the boulder ran for about 10 feet and then disappeared on down the other side.

And it was solid. You couldn’t see the boulder below the ants. They’re must have been hundreds of thousands of them. We stood there and just watched them for a while. We couldn’t see where the trail began or where it ended but the army ants just kept on coming and coming and coming. After a while, we decided to turn back - nobody wanted to try to cross their path.

Why am I going on and on about ants today? Well, today I got to hear E.O. Wilson talk. Dr. Wilson is THE ant researcher and is one of my childhood heroes. He spent his entire career at Harvard studying ants and ant society. His theory of sociobiology is largely based on his work on ants. He’s already won the Pulitzer (twice, once for On Human Nature and again for The Ants). I imagine he’ll win a Nobel one of these years, too.

In any case, it was awesome seeing him in person. Maybe in my next post I’ll ramble more about ants, sociobiology, and why EO rocks.