Mime on Fire

Election Night Drinking Game

2008-11-02T19:17:00.002-05:00

The American presidential election is one of the most complicated expressions of democracy in history. It would be un-American to not have an equally complex drinking game. With that in mind, I'm not responsible if you can't handle the game.

There are four parts to this game.

PART ONE: Presidential Election
Hopefully They Didn’t Fuck it Up This Time – Drink once if Florida goes blue. Drink twice if it goes red. Drink again for every time the 2000 election is mentioned.
Upper Cackalacky – Drink twice if North Carolina goes blue. Drink once if it goes red. If John Edwards is mentioned, finish your drink.
The Real Part and The Fake Part – Drink twice if Virginia goes blue. Drink once if it goes red.
Biggest State No One Cares About – Drink once if Missouri goes blue. Drink twice if it goes red.
Steel Mills and Angry People – Drink once if Pennsylvania goes blue. Drink twice if it goes red. Drink once every time Pennsylvania is mentioned as important for McCain. Finish your drink if the rioters in Philly haven’t stopped burning the city down yet.
Future Former Home of LeBron James – Drink twice if Ohio goes blue. Drink once if it goes red. Drink every time the news cuts to aerial shots of long lines at the polls.
What Would Peyton Do? – Drink three times if Indiana goes blue.
City of Sin. And Some Other Stuff. – Drink once if Nevada goes blue.
Wanna Go-Ta North Dakota? No. – Drink once if North Dakota goes blue
Moonshine and LUDA – Finish your drink if Georgia goes blue.
High Altitudes, Low Oxygen to the Brain – Drink once if Colorado goes blue.
The Motherfucking Desert – Drink once if New Mexico goes blue.
Is This A State? – Drink twice if Montana goes blue
I’ll Husk Your Corn– Finish your drink if Nebraska splits its electoral votes.
WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOUSE – Finish your drink if Arizona goes blue.

PART TWO: Senate Races
Drink once if the following senate seats go blue (Dem candidates in parentheses). Drink twice if they go red.
The “LOL” Candidate - MN (Franken)
The Godless Candidate - NC (Hagan)
The Non-Udall Candidate - OR (Merkley)
The Non-Felon Candidate - AK (Begich)
The Other Female Candidate - NH (Shaheen)
The Udall Mountain Candidate - CO (M. Udall)
The Udall Desert Candidate - NM (T. Udall)
The Governator Candidate - VA (Warner)

Finish your drink if the following seats go blue
M…I…S…S...I…Fuck it - MS (Musgrove)
Polio Survivors Unite - GA (Martin)
This Is For Firing Tubby. Assholes. - KY (Lunsford)

PART THREE: House of Representatives LIGHTNING ROUND
Putting the “Angry Mob” in “Representative Government” - All 435 seats are up for election. To participate in this round, drink for 435 seconds straight. Then, immediately check yourself into the nearest hospital.

PART FOUR: Bonus Round
These rules are to enhance your TV watching.
Keeping Palin’s Seat Warm – Finish your drink if Ted Stevens wins his seat back.
Time to Fire the Campaign Staff – Finish your drink if a political ad plays during election coverage.
Beaten Like A Stepchild – Drink once if someone passes 300 Electoral Votes
Beaten Like A Three-Legged Dog – Drink twice if someone passes 350 Electoral Votes
Beaten Like A Thief In A Third-World Country – Finish your drink if someone passes 400 Electoral Votes
White Devils Be Crazy – Drink at any mention of Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers or Rashid Khalidi
Pretty Sure They Can Defend Themselves – Drink at any mention of Israel. Finish your drink at any mention of the “Death of Israel”
HOLY FUCKING SHIT ATTACK ON AMERICA – Drink at any mention of the word “crisis”
Dead Girls Don’t Say No. But They Do Vote. – Drink at any mention of voter fraud.
Voters Can Be Purchased With Crack-Cocaine or Delicious Walnuts. – Drink at any mention of ACORN
Apparently, We Live In A Country Western Movie. – Drink at every mention of the word maverick. In fact, drink twice. You know what, just keep drinking until the word maverick sounds like “mooverick”. Fuck.
Turns Out, Not The Best Pickup Line – Drink at every mention of the word change. Finish your drink if the next word is “clothes”.
Your Campaign Contribution Paid For This – Drink every time you see confetti or balloons.
Is It Too Late To Cancel Future Elections? – Finish your drink at any mention of 2012.
One For The Gipper – Drink at any mention of Reagan. Drink again if you forgot what you had for breakfast this morning.
J-F-Something – Drink at any mention of JFK. Drink again if the CIA did it.
Happy Family Redistribution Plan No. 10 - Drink at any mention of socialism. Then, drink from each of your neighbor’s glasses.
The Crucial Cave-Dwelling Diabetic Demographic – Finish your drink at any mention of Osama bin Laden.
Seriously? That’s The Best You Could Come Up With? – Finish your drink if you see a “Nobama” sign.
The “Why Haven’t You Made Up Your Fucking Minds Yet?” Township – Drink at any mention of swing or battleground state.
He’s Running On A “I Hate America” Platform – Finish your drink at any mention of the term “Un-American”. Drink again if you can name an American politician who committed treason.
Just Call Him “The Poop Czar” – Drink at any mention of Joe the Plumber. Finish your drink if he shows up on TV. Drink again if your toilet is clogged.
You Know They’re Laughing At You, Right? – Drink at any mention of “Name” the “Profession”.
Where Politics and Funny Cat Videos Can Co-Exist – Finish your drink at any mention of “YouTube”
We’re Not Bitter. Some Of Our Best Friends Are Black. – Drink at any mention or sighting of the Clintons.
American Jihadist – Drink at any mention of the world “Muslim”. Drink again if Obama converted to Islam in the past five minutes.
Alan Keyes, Where Are You? – Finish your drink if the Republican talking head is a minority.

Finally. – Finish your drink when the election is called. Congratulations. You made it….What? The country isn’t fixed yet? On second thought, you may just want to keep drinking.

Super Tuesday Drinking Game

2008-02-02T16:30:00.001-05:00

So while helping my roommate get rid of his beer supply on Thursday, we came up with this game for the whole family to enjoy while watching Super Tuesday coverage. Enjoy.

Right-click on the picture and save it, then you can print it out and share it with all your friends!

(note: GERMS is the Georgetown EMS. Substitute your local emergency medical services in the event that Ron Paul wins a state.)

The Case for Compulsory Voting

2007-08-11T12:54:00.000-04:00

I don't have many opinions. Well, I should rephrase. I don't hold many convictions. I'm perfectly happy to have arguments about almost anything long into the night, but there are few occasions when I can claim to be absolutely bent in one direction or another. By conviction, I mean that I am right, and you are wrong.

This is one of those occasions.

Specifically, I'm referring to a fundemental pillar of our (or any) democratic system: the ability for the masses to directly or indirectly select those who govern them, generally known as voting. However, voting in a democratic system extends beyond merely the right to vote. Calling it a "right" to vote is too narrow of an interpretation. On the one hand, voting is a democratic right because one is entitled to do so, but the concept of entitlement arose because democracies were themselves spawned from governments where such a right did NOT exist. In other words, democracies have arisen as a critique of the relationship between the government and the governed, specifically what obligations the government has toward the governed. Largely ignored is the other half of the social contract: what obligations the governed have toward the government. Mostly, when people think of obligations toward the government, taxes exclusively spring to mind. But voting is just as critical as tax dollars, if not more so: without tax dollars, government cannot function; without votes, there is no government to function. Though one could question our duty to pay taxes, it is unquestionably our duty as participants of a democratic process to actually participate in the process. Whether there are 10 people in the process or 10 million is immaterial; voting is an integral part of a democratic social contract, and failing to fulfill that contract is as morally dubious as a government sleeping on the job, so to speak.

So, fine. Voting is a moral duty in a democracy, and it is something we ought to do, for the sake of maintaining the system. Is that enough to mandate it by law? In short, yes. Laws are made on far less justification than that. More importantly, compulsory voting effectively eliminates the significant number of shady 'Get Out The Vote'-type organizations, as well as neutralizing the effect of manipulating voter turnout via referendums on 'hot button' issues (See: 2004 gay marriage/civil union referendums). Elections will cease being battles to bus, distract, and bully voters into the voting booth, and instead (ideally) will move to persuading the American public. A better way to analyze this, I think, is to look at three likely objections to this idea and address them in turn.

Objection #1: Some people cannot make time to vote
This one's pretty simple. Make Election Day a national holiday. Give people the day off. Really this is something that should be done anyway, along with standardizing election procedures across the country. The election process is currently a disaster (See this map for a small illustration), but that is a matter for another post. But standardizing Election Day as a holiday would help consolidate voting to just that day. And for the sake of argument, compulsory voting should start just for major national elections. Say, presidential, gubernatorial, and U.S. Congress.

Objection #2: People should be allowed to not vote if they do not prefer either candidate
This could maybe be accepted as a legitimate argument if that was the overwhelming reason for people not voting, rather than just apathy or plain laziness. Smarmy remarks on the voting public's condition aside, it seems important for voters to express that they find all of the candidates truly distasteful. However, this can merely be solved by adding a "None of the Above" or similarly worded option on every ballot. This solves the important differentiation between universal dislike and simple laziness, and clarifies the political statement one hopes to make by rejecting all candidates. If everyone who normally wouldn't show up votes "None of the Above"--about 100 million or so potential voters stayed home in 2004--it would send a more powerful message that politicians are not engaging the American people (Bush and Kerry each got about 50 million votes, give or take). In the current system people may not vote. But we have already shown why people ought vote. This is an additional step to ensure that compulsory voting does not reduce political options.

Objection #3: Compulsory voting will enable America's "idiotic masses" to vote for a candidate for "stupid reasons" such as hair color, height, personality, instead of "policy reasons".
On face, this is basically an ad hominem attack, and it is the most popular objection from the post-Watergate generation. There are two false assumptions that this objection makes. First is that there are 100+ million simple-minded morons who don't vote because they are too busy drooling on their couches to get up and go to the voting booth. Honestly, this is pretty mean-spirited, but on a more basic level it implies that everyone voting now is voting 'intelligently', a concept which I'll get to soon. Likely the stupidity demographics are similar between voters and non-voters. Second, it assumes that there are 'right' and 'wrong' reasons to vote for a candidate. Often personality and character judgements are erroneously labeled as 'wrong' reasons or 'worse' reasons for voting for a candidate, as opposed to something such as economic policy. In reality, it is impossible to make that distinction. If the fairly accepted practice of dramatic policy changes between campaign promises and actual policy implementation continues, it could concievably be argued that character is the only reliable voting metric. Even beyond that, voting on policy is still making the subjective judgement that Policy X is going to be more beneficial for the country--or just as likely, for the voter--than Policy Y. This judgement could be just as 'wrong' as a character judgement. Arguing that some people will have different and therefore incorrect criteria for judging candidates is not sufficient reason against legislating compulsory voting.

It is no secret that the American political system is imperfect. Compulsory voting is not a panacea. But it is (I believe) a needed improvement over what we have now. I feel quite strongly about it, though I have difficulty believing it will ever see reality, because it flies in the face of political inertia. And "if we don't have to do it...why bother?" Think it over. Myself, I'm tired of the song and dance every election to dazzle me into voting. I am, however, ready to argue the point. Hit me with it.

Outsourcing Sheep

2007-07-25T12:18:00.000-04:00

I can’t sleep. Again.

Approaching the problem logically, this doesn’t make any sense. I’m not under a great deal of stress. I lack a relationship to have issues with. I haven’t burned a village, forgotten to feed my fish, or committed any other moral wrongs that might hold me from enjoying a good night’s rest. My neighbors no longer fuck noisily at all hours of the night---and morning too, now that I think about it. She was a screamer. Anyway, the point is that I am free of outside distractions. But still I don’t sleep.

Well, I should clarify: I sleep fine. Better than fine, most nights I sleep like I’ve been put under, and it takes a minor Act of God to wake me. It’s getting to sleep that is the troublesome part.

Insomnia is a funny thing.

I can be tired until the moment that I lay prone in bed. Minor sensations become major events. Or maybe my ankle. A small itch is suddenly cause for concern. My sheets are suddenly uncomfortable; stretched too tight, bunched too loose. It’s too hot here, it’s too cold there. I try to clear my mind, thinking ‘sleep’ over and over. The day’s events drift forward for review, my mind haphazardly making any associations that it can. Regrets, hopes, people, crude jokes. Anything is fair game this late at night. I turn once, twice. Adjust my pillow. Maybe punch the pillow in frustration a few times. Eventually, my exhaustion vanishes. Nothing left to do but get up again. Meanwhile that stupid clock keeps ticking. If it were possible, I'd say it was mocking me.

I've tried counting sheep. Boring myself to sleep doesn't work. So, the question I then pose is: How do you get to sleep at night?

Sins of an Electronic Empire

2007-06-13T22:53:00.000-04:00

Destino is an animated short that was created by the Walt Disney Company in collaboration with Spanish painter Salvador Dali. It is a mostly wordless 6-minute film that follows a dancer as she wanders through Dali's paintings. The project was revived and completed in 2003 after being put on hiatus for more than 50 years due to the Disney Company's WWII-era financial woes. It premiered in 2003 at the Annecy International Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, and promptly vanished into thin air. It is not available on any video format, nor it is available online. As of now, there are no plans to make the short available, which is really a shame. Two of the greatest artistic minds of their generation, and the collaborative result is stashed away in a vault, so to speak. These are the kind of movies that you hope something like the Internet would make available. I'd gladly pay a few bucks to buy this. But that seems highly unlikely now.
If such a work became available through say, download on a peer-to-peer (P2P) site, but still wasn't available via any legitimate distribution, and would never be released as such, what then does downloading it entail? In other words, the moral (and legal) argument against pirating music and movies is that you are obtaining a product without appropriately compensating its creator or owner. This argument has undeniable merit, so long as appropriate avenues of compensation exist. There isn't really a solid argument for downloading the new album by Linkin Park or something when I could have just bought it, other than the fact that it's free, but that isn't so much a moral argument. But, let's say there is an album that is no longer available in stores, and only 10,000 copies were pressed when it was released in 1950, of which 8,000 got mailed to an incinerator by accident. The only way I could theoretically obtain this album is by throwing down an obscene amount of cash in the direction of a shady ebay seller. But in this scenario, the amount of compensation to the owner is the same as if I downloaded the movie: zero. So if we're making a value judgment, the damage done by each action in this scenario is more or less equal.
What about music and movies that are available by some legitimate means? Besides buying a movie from a store who bought it directly from the distributor (in other words, a revenue stream from consumer to artist. More or less.), I could also buy it used, or new from my friend down the street. Or off of ebay, or any one of innumerable methods. But, technically, any of those latter methods still offers the same amount of compensation to the artist as in the first scenario: zero. So if we're still making the judgment based on who's fairly getting compensated, it has to still weigh the same, right? But there's another facet here. Someone who downloads an album still might not pay for it if downloading wasn't an option. They might just choose not to buy it. However, someone who's buying that same album off ebay IS clearly willing and able to purchase the album, but the artist is still not being compensated due to the means of purchase by the consumer. So in both cases we have the artist not getting compensated for his/her work (because it is their work, after all), but on the one hand potentially no compensation is gained from eliminating downloading, and on the other fair compensation for artists would be increased by eliminating resellers. What kind of value judgment should we make there? And I wonder, should the RIAA be suing resellers instead?

2007-04-10T02:39:00.000-04:00

Instead of going to bed early, I decided to change my roommate's boot screen from the default (the one that says "Windows XP" when you start up) to one that says "My hand smells like poo" in big, garish font.

That seems to me like the very definition of 'mature use of time'. That's what I get for not having class tomorrow.

Mix tomorrow, in other news.

And press run (oh no!)

Sound bites for the MTV generation

2007-04-09T01:46:00.000-04:00

Fact:
I should be asleep right now.

Opinion:
I could use another day of break.

Reason for fretting:
A New Brain (the show I'm producing) opens Thursday

Open threat/plea:
If you are in the area, you have no choice but to come see the show.

Cheap plug:
Tickets are available at http://performingarts.georgetown.edu/BOXOFFICE/maskandbauble.htm#brain

Questionable forecast:
A full blog post (and another mix, or two, or three) will be here shortly.

Sign off:
Goodnight moon. Goodnight bowl of mush.

Signs of premature aging

2007-03-18T20:07:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I noticed a small white hair on the top of my head. Thinking nothing of it, I pulled it out. Over break, I noticed another one, and pulled it out again. Now, I've got at least half a dozen, and I've given up trying to pull them out. A high school English class would no doubt describe that as a sign of 'succumbing to stress', but in reality that couldn't be farther from the truth. I mean, there's lots of stuff going on, but I'm not on the verge of freaking out. Life is actually pretty good right now. Allow me to elaborate:

I might have the best class schedule ever conceived. All of my classes are concentrated on Monday and Wednesday, with the exception of a discussion section on Thursday afternoon. So since I've been back, I've had 3 stretches of a week or more where I've had no class. Which is kind of cool, but I like being able to have Tuesdays and Fridays available to do things like schedule 3 meetings for my show, or having a language partner, which is tentatively going well. I'm paired with an awkward Chinese physics grad student, who has been in the country for all of 8 months. I feel only slightly bad saying that he fulfills almost every nerdy Asian stereotype you could imagine. But he's a good guy, and it helps my Chinese, so hopefully I won't fail my proficiency exam later this month (assuming of course the Chinese department tells me when this exam is actually going to occur), which is a source of minor worry. In any case, I enjoy having time to breathe during the week. I gladly exchange it the occasional nights of work freakouts.

I'm going to spend the summer in D.C., living on the Georgetown Housing Department's dime, as well as finding another job. The only problem is that it kind of limits my vacation time. So Goal #2 for the summer is to find small (less than a week) excursions to go on. Goal #1 being to find a job. But not having class will be completely awesome. DC - Class = Everlasting fun.

Finally, what's really been taking up most my time is the play I'm producing. A musical, to be specific (even though I have the musical skill of a paralyzed turtle). On paper, producing consists of hiring people, managing a budget, scheduling stuff, and being a general overseer. In practice, it really consists of sending out lots of e-mails, making overriding decisions, and preventing everyone else's nerve endings from fraying. Essentially, I have to know when to push/bother people and when to calm them. It's an interesting balance, and if anything a study in how people react to pressure. I guess I should plug the show. It's titled A New Brain, by William Finn, and it goes up in Poulton Hall from April 12-20. Get tickets at http://performingarts.georgetown.edu.

Producing has generally been pretty enjoyable, but I'm still ambivalent if I want to do it again next year, when I'm not sure about making such a huge time commitment to this little shin dig. That decision is really hard to make when I'm right at the peak of a show's craziness, but the goal is to think on it this weekend and make a decision. So that's really been my life in a nutshell.

In miscellany, I've got a side project trying to redesign the logo for the radio station on campus. Back when I was web director, I was essentially art director as well, and the concept I came up with was a red-on-white scheme that focused around this logo:

The webpage was based on a red and white scheme of icons similar to the one above, kind of a "Peace-Love-Radio" sort of thing.. It's kind of a simplified guy on headphones, and I like it because it's simplistic and can easily be adapted by just focusing on the arcs, like for the banner that we had printed:

But when I quit my position under a mountain of incompetence and a readjusting of priorities toward theatre, they reverted the webpage to a bloggy format, and unfortunately also abandoned all the art design too. So now they're left with a logo that looks like crap, or at least ready for an upgrade.

My first runthrough is kind of a more obnoxious layout from a white on black color scheme.

Because our call sign is kind of...non-existent...emphasis of the website is crucial. So that's something to play with in my spare time.

I've also completely killed word games. Between Scrabble and Text Twist (hi score: 98,340), it is a complete and total addiction. More on that in the next post. Which hopefully will be sooner than 3 months from now. And I'll also talk about music. Yay music.

Questions to leave you with: A song to dance to? To study by?

[Music] Scribble

2006-12-21T00:55:00.001-05:00

So I'm back from China, which is cool. More on that later. For now I wanted to turn my attention to music, to which I listen to way too much of, but don't talk about that much. Ripping off a friend, I'm going to post a quasi-"best of 2006", but this time only covering non-rock. This doesn't necessarily represent my favorite songs or albums of the year, but I feel like this mix picks up a lot of the highlights in what is a pretty wide category. This might also prompt me to post random mixes of stuff I like at later points. Without further ado, here is the obligatory cover art and tracklist, followed by a download link.

1. J Dilla - Lightworks
2. Clipse ft. Bilal - Nightmares
3. Herbert ft. Roisin Murphy - Movie Star
4. Lupe Fiasco ft. Jonah Montranga - The Instrumental
5. K-Os - flyPaper
6. dj BC - Boxing Fats Domino
7. UNK ft. Outkast & Jim Jones - Walk It Out (Remix)
8. Ratatat - Lex
9. Saigon - 2 Hour Banger
10. Killer Life - That's Life
11. Rhymefest ft. O.D.B. - Build Me Up
12. Soil and Pimp Sessions - Satsuriku New Wave
13. Basement Jaxx - Take Me Back To Your House
14. Nelly Furtado ft. Lil Wayne - Maneater (Remix)
15. Justin Timberlake ft. T.I. - My Love

Download

That's all I got. More to come now that I'm in the developed world.

[Life] Must be something in the air

2006-10-19T01:29:00.000-04:00

The more time I spend in China, the more I am convinced that the most noticeable difference here is the smell. I haven't spent too much time in a lot of American cities, but my impression is that for the most part, places that I've been are pretty smell neutral for the most part. I'm not really sure of a better way to describe it. In Harbin, on the other hand, I can hardly walk to class without my nose being put to the test. That is not to say that Harbin reeks of dead animal all the time, but when I'm outside, I can't help but be subjected to smells of dust, soot, gasoline, compost, or whatever else happens to be around. None of it is particularly different from smells one would experience in the States, but for some reason I find it more noticeable or more prevalent here.

You never really give much pause toward the environment, I think, until you live in or visit a place that is significantly more polluted than where you live. I can (and do) rag on Cary every chance I get, but really it's pretty clean. Even Georgetown/DC could be a lot worse in terms of pollution. It's only autumn in Harbin, but the relationship between Chinese society and its waste is striking. I get the sense that the Chinese know they have a problem (as evidenced by maybe one in five people I see walking around with their noses and mouths covered), but they can't do anything about it. I can see the compost from the cafeterias unloaded from the compost tanks next to the building every day at 1:00. It's ladeled from the tank into oil drums, and then the drums are carted away to parts unknown in a pickup truck. Smoking is completely ubiquitous, as is spitting. My one-on-one teacher told me that in the winter, due to the massive coal use, you can see the snowfall on the ground get blacker and blacker. I find this fascinating in a macabre sort of way, and I'll definitely get pictures when that rolls around. The temperature is fast dropping, so I imagine in November we'll get some snow.

I feel like I've finally settled in, but I'm still in disbelief at 1) how fast the semester has gone by and 2) how much I miss being at Georgetown. I also miss english books. I only brought Catch-22 with me, and I'm kind of itching to find a copy of Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski, but I'm not really holding my breath at being able to. Luckily I've been able to feed my appetite for music here, but I'll save that commentary for a year-end retrospective.

I've also been trying to write a little bit more when I have the free time, just to kind of exercise my brain. Nothing groundbreaking, just anything creative. I think I finished a short story yesterday, but I'm not really sure what to do it with it, if I want to clutter up this blog with writings, or if I'll just make a new blog for it. We'll see.

In terms of assorted stuff for China, I'm in the second day of midterms. On Friday I leave for a week to go to Kunming, a city in the south of China. I'll be unwired for the week, but it should replenish my stock of nutty stories. Also, in November we're going to camp on the Great Wall for a weekend. Which should be insane. And cold. Really, really cold.

And that about sums it up. See you next week (or tonight, if I get bored)

[Rant] I want to talk about politics

2006-10-18T04:23:00.000-04:00

So if that isn't your bag, wait for the next post, which should be coming soon. By the way, I've opened up the commenting so that anyone can comment, not just people registered on blogspot. Not that anyone really reads this.

The midterm elections are coming up in a couple weeks. I'm half a world away, and to be honest I haven't been following things too closely. I still think the Democrats are going to find a way to blow it and not gain control of either side of Capitol Hill (the House has been locked down via gerrymandering, and I just don't see them taking the Senate), but that isn't what this post is about.

I want to talk about campaign finance. Money is the engine of the political machine in America. And the gears. And the oil. We're just along for the ride. When most people hear the words 'campaign finance', the immediate reaction is usually a groan or a bewildered look, followed by a snide comment about greedy politicians. And why not? The campaign finance law in the U.S. are is as complicated as it is long. And it is very, very, long. It is long and complicated because having Congress draft campaign finance law is a little like having prisoners design their own cells. Congress may not be a bunch of crooks (mostly), but you'd have to be blind to not see the conflict of interest. After all, Washington D.C. has lobbyists by the truckful, who funnel enormous amounts of money to political parties and causes in order to influence the actions of government. For the corporations, unions, trade associations, etc. who make up these lobbies, lobbying is strategically worthwhile, as the pursuit of their extremely focused policy goals are considered unlikely to ruffle large waves of dissent among the disorganized masses. What has ruffled feathers, unsurprisingly, are the waves of corruption scandals that are being revealed, the most prominent name-drop being lobbyist Jack Abramoff. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone: pork has long been part of the political vocabulary as a way to describe (essentially) legalized bribery or corruption.

The question then, is how do we fix it? One step toward a solution is simple, but implausible.

Outlaw all political contributions by non-voting entities.

I think the definitions of most of the terms are pretty clear. Non-voting entities means if this entitity (lobbyist organization, corporation, foriegner) is not able to register to vote within the United States, they are barred from making any sort of contributions (monetary donations, free services, etc etc etc.) to political parties, political candidates, or any organizations that they may own. Oh by the way, that kills anonymous political donating too. Since when are anonymous political donations conducive to transparency? Answer: they aren't.

It's simple, straightforward, and will never, ever get passed. But let's ignore that point for a minute. Let's look at what it could do.

Take the money out of politics
Okay. It won't completely take the money out. But it will slash the hell out of campaign budgets, hopefully allowing politicans to have platform statements that don't look like lobbyist press releases. The double whammy would be completed by putting a cap on individual political donations (remember, the only ones that would be allowed). Something nice and low, like $10,000 a year. Sure, campaign budgets will be smaller, but if you think that political campaigns are models of efficiency now, you're probably delusional.
Foster genuine political campaigns
For politicans, ascertaining the wants and needs of an unfocused population is an unquestionably difficult task. But by having to pander to the masses to fuel a campaign, and without a guiding lobbyist influence, one would hope political platforms would evolve to reflect more sincerely the candidate's policy visions. This not only returns more control of the campaign back to the candidate, but one would think that the majority of campaign time would now be spent trying to convince voters about the importance of issues. Also, if the amount of money required to run a campaign diminishes by a factor of 3 or 5, that would increase the amount of people able to run. Who knows, out of that talent pool might emerge better leaders than the ones we have now. It couldn't hurt.
Diffuse political influence
As trite as this may sound, the point of a democracy (or a republic, whatever) is to put the government at the service of the people. Not one person. People. So campaign finance laws on principle ought to ensure that political influence is not concentrated away from the people. So far they have failed in that respect. Shutting off the valve of undemocratic political influence is the first step in remedying the situation.

This is not meant to address every problem with the American political system, but it is meant to address what I think is the most serious one: money. It is meant to be a starting point from which the current campaign finance tangle can be blown up and start anew. Quite frankly, I have a hard time seeing how anyone can disagree with the basic principle. But I'm sure someone will find a way.

That's all I got. Regularly scheduled incoherency will return later this week. The month has been kind of out of control, so this blog has been neglected. Oops.

Honk Honk Crash

2006-09-17T00:45:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm eating some large and delicious grapes, and spitting the seeds out onto one of the incalculably many small, entirely useless pieces of paper that I have collected while in China. Everytime I buy something, I get another small useless piece of paper. Sometimes I get four or five of them. Most people in the civilized world call them reciepts, but I can't imagine ever needing so many. Everytime I leave the supermarket on campus, a nice man (or woman) blocking the only exit will stamp my newly acquired small useless piece of paper. They aren't checking to see if my reciept matches what I've bought, and the stamping chute is only about 3 feet from the registers in any case. I've also seen some people walk by and ignore the stamp man. In short, I don't know what the stamps are for, and neither do any of my classmates. I suspect that the person who is doing the stamping also doesn't have a clue. I'm not sure if I'm comforted or profoundly disturbed.

In other news, my roommate might be a machine. I say that because I only see him maybe four or five days out of the week, and I think it may be because he needs to be plugged in and recharged for the remaining days. I can't actually prove it, though, until I see a little indicator light start blinking on his forehead...In all seriousness, I don't really mind having a single most of the time, as my roommate is a little aloof. However, part of me also wishes he was around more, because I feel that I'm missing out on an opportunity to improve my Chinese.

To me, the following picture is particularly striking:
Why is it striking, you might ask? Because a boot on the wheel is about the only way you'll ever see a car in China that is stopped. The list of things that are more terrifying than traffic in China is a short one that only contains such things as "being on fire" and "being mauled by a bear". Honestly, it is as if someone showed up last Thursday in China with a few hundred thousand cars and told the people of China to 'enjoy themselves' and 'the brake is the one on the left, but you don't really use it much.' American roller coasters have nothing on driving in a Chinese taxi. Honestly, it is difficult to explain unless you go. Here's the best analogy I can think of:

In 1981, a Japanese company called Konami created a game called Frogger. The object of the game was to guide a frog to his/her home, which just happened to be on the other side of a busy highway. The game is today considered one of a handful of 'classic' videogames, and also serves as the inspiration for the Chinese national pastime, jaywalking. Jaywalking is more challenging in China because the cars, buses, motorcycles, and bicycles give you every indication that they are not going to stop. And really, except for some taxis and the occasional bus, they won't. While deep down you feel like you can call their bluff, the only real option is to get out of the road as fast as you can. The rules of the road in China are simple: traffic laws have only the power of suggestion, and right of way is determined by size. That's it. You can (and I have seen someone do this) drive a car on the sidewalk if you've got a small enough car and big enough balls.

Speaking of small cars, Chinese cars look like toys. I don't have a picture of one yet but I will try to get one. Besides the jin bei brand, almost every Chinese made car I've seen has looked like a rectangle with wheels on it. It is a wonder they actually function without exploding or just plain falling apart.

Okay, that's all I'll spend on traffic in China. Quick hits before I go..

My one on one professor carries around a Playboy purse. I'm not kidding. Apparently it is a somewhat legitimate looking brand here.
I'm not entirely convinced that most people here understand the English that's written on the clothing they're wearing. Yesterday at dinner, I saw a guy wearing a baseball cap with "PIMP" in huge letters on it (my friend took a picture, I'll try to get it), and our waitress at the resteraunt had a shirt that read "ONE BIG LIE" on it.
The other international student dorm at HIT's campus is much, MUCH nicer than ours. I'm sort of bitter about that.
There is construction going on on campus, which involves ripping up every road on campus, replacing all the wiring underneath it, and rebuilding the entire road. This makes actually walking around on campus kind of harrowing.
One thing I forgot to mention is that there are two Canadian diplomats studying with our CET group. They're pretty much awesome. I get the feeling they enjoy getting to be sort of students again. Sadly, they're only here for half the semester.
Last Sunday night we lost electricity in the dorm, but only in part of the dorm. The rooms all had power, but the hallways and everything else were pitch. Apparently this is something that happens often. Why an entire building doesnt lose power is completely beyond me. This is China's premier tech university, why was the electricity designed by a six year old?
Last night I watched the first half of Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke. It was completely and utterly stunning. Films do not usually provoke any emotion in me, but I was almost moved to tears by the end. I'll post my more complete thoughts on it when I finish the film.
Favorite picture that I've taken so far:

Alright, I'm out. Until next week.

Frozen Lanterns

2006-09-09T00:35:00.000-04:00

I write today from the frozen reaches of the communist Orient, by which of course I mean I'm in Harbin, China, where it is a balmy 50 degrees F and rainy. I'm just wrapping up my first week of classes, and with it, the language pledge, where I am forbidden to speak anything but Chinese for the duration of the program. I'm still allowed to read and write in English, though, so this blog isn't a covert subversion of my studies. Which would probably be more exciting to read, as I'd be writing in English secretly under my bedsheets or something, scribbling a word here and a sentence there while looking out for Big Brother. Alas, no such cheap thrills will be found here...yet.

I guess the first thing I'll talk about is the language pledge. It still seems bizarre to me that I haven't really spoken English in a week, and that in another 11 I'll be able to speak Chinese with what could be considered a reasonable fluency. What is starting to happen is that I'm no longer striving to translate every word from Chinese to English, then my English thoughts to Chinese. Rather, the goal is to more or less "think" in Chinese. That's the idea anyway.

One of the other things that helps is having a Chinese roommate...when mine is around, that is. My roommate is a slightly aloof graduate student who's wrapping up his research and patent application on something called "cold spraying". I don't know what that is in English, so Chinese is definitely out of the question. But even hanging out with the other Chinese roommates helps my language skills almost more than any single class would. Not that I mind terribly having a quasi-single, I just feel like I might be missing out. But its only the first week anyway. Edit: Check that. I just got back from dinner with my roommate and some of his friends. It was pretty great. Chinese dinners are long and involved (we were at the resteraunt for maybe 2 and a half hours), but it was a good time. Good to know my roommate exists as well.

Speaking of classes, mine are for the most part pretty quality. All of the classes are in the same building, the International Student Center, which CET uses along with programs from Russia and Korea, among other places. My one-on-one, self-designed class is focusing on Chinese technological development, specifically in the area of energy. The professor is this miniature Chinese lady who's been teaching at HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology) for about 20 years or so. Which is a while. My other required class is my one-on-two, which is pretty much a drill session emphasizing practice on tones. We'll prepare for the class by reading/quasi-memorizing fairly simple, but useful dialogues, and the teacher will then take note of and drill us on each set of vocabulary we pronounce wrong. Having only two people in the class really puts the focus on your performance, especially because they match you up with another student of similar Chinese proficiency. More than likely this will be my most useful class. My other two classes are "electives," in that we've got about six choices, of which we pick two. For me, those two are Conversation and Composition, which are exactly what they sound like. Mostly unremarkable things come out of those classes, my skills at each included. My conversation class has 6 people, and my composition class has 3. Which, you know, is pretty good.

A quick word on the other CET students. I'm really, really, really glad that they turned out to be functional human beings instead of obsessive Chinese nerds, which was my big fear coming into this program. I'm not really on either extreme in the group in terms of proficiency, which is good. And...that's all I'm going to say on that subject.

And now, a deft transition to the city of Harbin. Harbin is a strange combination of Chinese and European tastes. Some parts of the city center could be from any city in Old World Europe, save for all the Chinese people. There is a heavy Russian influence on the city, which might be why it looks pretty bland, but it also gives me reason to score one of those sweet russian fur hats. Besides the crippling cold, that is. Most of the Harbin that I've seen, however, is distinctly Chinese. Like most Chinese cities, the city of Harbin has a total infatuation with neon, an obsession which is rivaled only by ADD children and the 1970s. Walking on Harbin's streets at night is nothing short of a siege on the eyes. A bright, colorful, glowing siege.

So it is now approximately 1:30 in the morning, in China-hours. I started this post approximately 13 hours ago, but have since been pulled away for multiple different activities, not the least of which included playing mahjonng for about three hours. This is the first time that I've really felt that there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.
Which of course signals that I'm going to depart. I haven't uploaded my pictures to flickr yet, but once I do I'll post the link here. My goal is to make these blog posts more or less every weekend. We'll see how it goes. I'll leave with a story:

The other day I went to dinner with a friend (who is also American). For dinner I suggest that we go to this dumpling place that I had gone to before with some other people. The Chinese word for dumpling is Zhao zi (pronounced like j-AO z-ih). So we're making our order, and order one plate of dumplings with this vegetable inside called bai cai (literally "white vegetable". Think cooked lettuce). The other order we decide we want meat in the dumplings, so we make an order of pork dumplings. My friend is doing the ordering, and I bring up to her that this might be too much food. A plate of dumplings has about 50, which is a lot. The waitress knocks it down to 30, and cuts the price from 6 yuan to 4 (8 yuan = $1 US). However, we were in for quite a shock when they brought the food out. Before bringing out the dumplings, they brought us two other plates. The first plate was the pork we ordered. The first problem was, it wasn't in a dumpling. The second problem was, it was on a foot. The word for foot is jiao ji (pronounced j-ee-AO j-ee), which sounds suspiciously similar to the word for dumpling. So we got an order of pig's feet. Next, we got an order of bai cai, also on a plate (not on a foot though). After all of that, we got two more plates of dumplings, totaling about 60. Even without eating the pig's feet, we still couldn't finish it all. So we ended up leaving with about 40 dumplings in a bag, as well as half a dozen pig's feet in the other. I think the feet are still sitting in the CET fridge downstairs. Delicious. Still, the total for dinner only came to about $3 US, so I can't really complain.
For those of you keeping score at home, reason #6 to go to China is really really cheap food. Like pig's feet.

I could go on with lots of other mini-impressions on Harbin, but I'll save those for another day. Until next time...

*cue dramatic music*

2006-08-07T00:40:00.000-04:00

In what will be the first of two music-related posts, I have decided to post my version of the 5x5 grid that has been going around the internets. Basically it works like this: you post a list of your 5 favorite bands/artists, and then your five favorite songs from each of those artists.

Outkast
1.The Whole World
2.B.O.B.
3.Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
4.Hey Ya
5.Gasoline Dreams

The Avalanches
1.Frontier Psychiatrist
2.Electricity
3.Since I Left You
4.Extra Kings
5.Two Hearts in 3/4 Time

The Starlight Mints
1.Seventeen Devils
2.San Diego
3.Goldstar
4.Pumpkin
5.Eyes Of The Night

Wilco
1.I'm the Man Who Loves You
2.Late Greats
3.When You Wake Up Feeling Old
4.In A Future Age
5.Heavy Metal Drummer

Cake
1.Shadow Stabbing
2.The Guitar Man
3.Palm of Your Hand
4.Comfort Eagle
5.Italian Leather Sofa

Places not to go before you die

2006-07-30T15:16:00.000-04:00

So I just downloaded Google Earth again, mostly so I could look at things like this and this. But in honor of my imminent travels to parts unknown, and in honor of my return from vacation, I thought I would put together a little anti-travel guide, and present it in installments (read: as I come up with them). In other words, these places that if someone offered you a free trip to, you would laugh at them, and then say no.
Disclaimer: I have not been to these places. Why? Because I don't hate myself.

Installment 1
Nauru
A small island on the Equator, just south of the Marshall Islands, Nauru is perhaps best known for being an 8 square mile phosphate strip mine. 100 or so years of strip mining has the interesting side effect of desolating the surrounding area (not that there was much to begin with on Nauru), and as a result a significant portion of the wildlife around Nauru has been killed off. The economy of Nauru is dependent on three things: Phosphate mining, providing a haven for money launderers and seekers of asylum in Australia (God knows who would seek asylum in Nauru), and attracting aid from both Taiwan and China by waffling on its position between whether Taiwan is actually a country. Naturally, these three things lend to a flourishing economy, with an unemployment rate of approximately 90%. And really that's about it. I'm not sure how you actually GET to Nauru, but according to this Wikipedia article, you should only go if you feel like becoming obese and contracting Type 2 diabetes, or if you already have and need some support in the form of a small Pacific island where 90% of the population is obese and nearly half have diabetes. Hey, at least the view of the ocean is nice. Oh wait, its saturated in phosphate runoff? Never mind.

Pandas on ice

2006-07-27T22:38:00.000-04:00

Here lies the inevitable post about China. I want to try and avoid talking about myself here as much as I can, but this is an exception.

So in the fall--August 29th, to be precise--I will be spending the semester abroad in Harbin (pronounced har-bEEn) , China. For those who don't know (pretty much all of you), Harbin is a city of about 3mil, located in scenic Heilongjiang province, which is the northeastern most province in China. You'll also recall, Harbin was affected last November by a benzene spill caused by an explosion of a factory in Jilin. This tidbit I "forgot" to tell my mother until after I had been accepted into the program. Next to that, Harbin is probably best known for its heavy Russian influence, and its cripplingly cold winters. Temperatures dive to about -22 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. The guidebook I was sent has this to say about Harbin's winters:

China's northern most province, Heilongjiang is known for its subarctic climate. Come January, with its -30C weather and howling Siberian gales, the locals sensibly huddle around their stoves, swathed in thickly padded clothing, quaffing the local firewater. Activity slows to a crunch in this snowflake-spitting weather, while hibernating animals bypass the season completely.

By the by, this guidebook (Lonely Planet) for China is about a thousand pages long. The number of pages the entry for Harbin is? That would be nine. Coincidentally, nine would also be the temperature I will probably be praying for in mid-winter.

So why go there? Good question. The program I'm going to is known for its language-intensive curriculum. Students take a language pledge, where they pledge to speak only Chinese for the duration of the program. To be quite honest, I have no idea how that will turn out, or how it will affect updates here about my trip. So, in short, I am either going to learn Chinese really well, or freeze to death in the Siberian winter. Possibly both. Stay tuned.

I lost my tact in a drawer

2006-07-27T00:26:00.000-04:00

I'm skipping the introductions, because chances are you know me anyway. If you don't, an introduction won't do you any good. I'm not that interesting. Unless you consider a lack of tact interesting.

Rather, I would like to start with a burning question. It was prompted by this article. For the lazy, you really only need to read the first sentence:

More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too big to fit into scanners, or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate, radiologists reported on Tuesday.

Now, what caught my eye is not the first part. Those tubes are pretty narrow. Rather, the notion that someone's fat can be so dense that X-rays cannot penetrate is completely astounding. X-rays, you'll note, can have some nasty health effects if one is exposed for too long. (Hence those fashionable lead blankets). Although from this article, maybe we should be using fat instead of lead as radiation shielding. Could we possibly be missing the implications of dense fat preventing X-rays from penetrating? Would Cold War-era bomb shelters have been effective if we had lined them with fat? Or maybe just fat people. Could a bubble of extremely fat people protect us from nuclear fallout? Science needs to devote time and resources to further study on the subject. And pronto. I hear North Korea's getting antsy again.

While we're on the subject, this reminds me of the stories that I hear occasionally that go somewhere along the lines of "really fat person is stuck on couch." These stories end one of two ways. Either the fat person is removed using heavy construction machinery and a hole in the wall, or the fat person dies and is removed using heavy construction machinery and a hole in the wall. So I guess that's one way. But that leads me to my burning question of the night: What would possess a person to lay on a couch one day, and never get up? Because you know the breaking point is when the decision is made that "I have to go to the bathroom, but it's too far. I guess I'll just soil myself." Once that line is crossed, there is no turning back. More on this tomorrow.