I am … unhindered by talent

And the day after I get around to posting this, he announces that he’s not running after all. Sigh. The reasons he gives in his new video are clear and convincing, however, and there’s always the possibility that he might run in the future when the notice is not so short.

It’s probably old news for some of you that Lawrence Lessig is considering running for Congress, but I only just had time to watch Lessig’s video, and I definitely want to put in a plug for it, and for him, and for his possible campaign. Lessig has written some excellent books (Arne Kildegaard and I have used both Free culture and The future of ideas in our interdisciplinary network economics course), and is a wonderfully clear thinker with a powerful grasp of what’s necessary to effect change (rather than just make noise). (He’s been a key player in the Creative Commons movement, for example.)

I couldn’t claim to have done the sort of homework needed to make any concrete statements on his policies or particulars, but I can say that he’s a smart, effective guy who’s trying to address real and important problems. And that seems to be a pretty good pedigree for someone running for Congress. I quite like the message of the video as well, and think it would be quite fascinating to see him take on an extremely experienced and successful (his words) politician.

I’m also impressed by his willingness to actually stick his neck out, because I know that I find that hard. I’ve thought, for example, about running for school board in Morris, but I’ve never quite screwed up the courage to try it. It’s obviously very important, and I care a lot about (and frequently disagree with) the Board’s actions. I also know, however, that it would take a lot of time to do well, and probably be pretty frustrating (you’ll never make everyone happy, and there’s likely to be a shortage of easy answers). Thus nothing has actually happened (at least so far).

So well done to Lessig, and best wishes.

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It actually took me a second to get it - how annoying that a web comic would actually be subtle enough to challenge a little :-).

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Gravel? I’d never actually heard of him, and at this point he’s pretty much out of it, so it’s all a moot point. The ordering of everyone else is roughly as I would have guessed, although I didn’t expect such a big jump between Obama and Clinton. Nice to see that it correctly deduced that Huckabee and I live in different universes. I can’t decide if I actually want Huckabee to get the nomination in the hopes that he just has to then lose the election. I think not, though, ’cause there’s always that chance that he’d win. And then we’d have to move. And I’d be sad.

Who should you vote for?

Mike Gravel				114
Barack Obama				109
Hillary Clinton				57
John McCain	-12
Ron Paul	-33
Mike Huckabee	-123

You expected: Barack Obama
Your recommendation: Mike Gravel

Party: Democratic
Born: 1930, Springfield, Massachusetts
Family: Married twice. Two children and four grandchildren
Career: US Army; Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps; taxi driver; barman; brakeman; property developer
Political career: 3rd Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, 1965-6; US Senator from Alaska 1969-1981. Environment and Public Works and Finance and Interior Committees; chaired the Energy, Water Resources, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees
Hot topic: Fair tax
Did you know? Born to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Marie Bourassa and Alphonse Gravel; Mike spoke only French until he was seven years old
Supported by: Ralph Nader

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As far as I can tell, most of the major news outlets have yet to report the details of yesterday’s Democratic Caucus results from Stevens Country, MN. The county DFL chair Peter Wyckoff has, however, sent out the results, allowing me to fill that key gap. Arguably the best news of the evening is that there were 540 total votes, which is way up from 192 votes in 2004. Not being in Morris, I don’t have anything concrete to say about the reasons for this, but an increase in participation is almost certainly to the Good.

As far as those silly candidate like things go, Obama pretty much cleaned up in Stevens Country, mirroring his success in Minnesota in general:

It’s hard for me to make a lot of immediate sense out of the results nationwide as they seem extremely scattered. One thing that I think is interesting, though, is that Clinton only carried more than 60% in one state (Arkansas - her previous home), while Obama carried 8 states with more than 60%, two of which were over 70% and one (Idaho) with a whopping 80%! OK, I realize that 80% of the handful of people in Idaho aren’t going to swing a national presidential election, but the fact that he carried so many states so strongly does seem to speak to larger questions of electability in November.

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In a well written and thoughtful endorsement that (not surprisingly) focuses on tech related issues, they’ve gone for Obama and McCain (with a strong preference for Obama between the two).

Obviously technical issues aren’t the only important issues facing the country, and silicon valley tech issues aren’t necessarily always the same as general science issues. Nothing was said about the war in Iraq, for example, and while they wisely include things things like math and science education in their focus issues, there’s no mention of the continuing struggle over the stain of creationism in that education.

Not perfect, but a thoughtful summary of positions on an important set of issues.

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Great minds (which clearly leaves mine out of the running) continue to be annoyed by the same cultural artifacts here and there.

Yesterday at lunch one of the locals asked whether I found it awkward being away from the U.S. election coverage during all this primary action. As was the case when we were here in the UK during the 2000 election, we generally find the coverage here to be better than what we’d get back home. It tends to be more focussed on issues and have more depth (less oriented towards sound bites), so no tears shed here. And, with most news outlets on-line now, you can really choose to read/watch/listen to pretty much whatever news sources you want to, regardless of your physical location.

During the 2000 election several well-meaning people independently offered to send us U.S. newspapers so we could keep up with things. Given that it’s damn difficult to get good international news in the States, it’s not entirely surprising that people assume that it’s hard to get U.S. news when abroad. Given that the U.S. election was front page news over here, however, we declined :-).

Thanks to James Good for the cool image.

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I highly recommend “Science, delayed” over on Science- Progress.org. It’s a short, clear case by Chris Mooney for how seriously messed up the U.S. Congress is when it comes to science, and how important it is for us all to speak up.

The short version is the the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), created in 1972 to provide non-partisan “user-friendly scientific advice to members of Congress”. After several successful decades (and providing a model for numerous other countries), it died a partisan death in 1995 at the hands of Gingrich The Newt and crowd. Mooney and others had hoped that the OTA would be reconstituted when the Dems regained control of Congress in 2006, but an attempt to include it in the legislative appropriations bill over the summer failed.

The problem? Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), a physicist and supporter of the return of the OTA found that many of his colleagues just didn’t see the point.

Many members of Congress don’t even see the scientific component to many policy issues. “I use voting as an example,” Holt explains. “Not a single one of my colleagues really understood the problem that was presented by unverifiable voting machines. Scientists or engineers would get that immediately. But Congress didn’t.”

I’ll understand if you need leave the computer for a bit to go rock back and forth in a dark corner and moan. Go ahead - I’ll be here waiting for you when you’re done.

I certainly wouldn’t expect any politician to understand all the complexities of the technical and scientific component of every issue that comes before them. That would be an insanely superhuman task, which is why politicians (should) have (good) advisors. From a statement Holt made before the House Science Committee:

None of us in Congress have time to analyze scientific and technological advances and make reasoned, logical determinations of their direction and impact on industry, nations, and education, but we vote on decisions about topics on a regular basis that include technical or scientific components. The connections to science and technology are not always obvious, especially to Members who avoid science and technology, which are most Members. We cannot do this alone.

Unfortunately, it appears that most Congress Critters don’t have “official” science advisors (if they have them on their staffs, it’s bloody difficult to find that info on-line), which is exactly the gap the OTA was intended to fill.

Given that almost every issue of substance these days has a non-trivial science/technology component, this is particularly disconcerting. From Mooney’s piece (his emphasis):

But in truth, science pops up again and again across a wide diversity of political issues, including many unexpected ones, which is why the entire Congress needs the service of an agency specially suited to analyze issues with that in mind, as well as to look forward to future science-related quandaries on the horizon.

Where do your legislators stand on the restoration of OTA funds? We’ve got to ask these questions if we want them to take the issues seriously.

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The last seven years of mismanagement, deception, and chest thumping give one at least slight pause before owning up to being from the U.S. out here in the wide world beyond Kansas. Obama’s win in Iowa, however, is something we can all be proud of regardless of the final result in November. To quote the NY Times:

Mr. Obama’s victory in this overwhelmingly white state stood as a powerful answer to the question of whether America was prepared to vote for a black person for president.

The caucus result does have a very scary side in Huckabee’s success:

Polls of Republicans entering the caucus sites found that nearly 60 percent described themselves as evangelical Christians, and by overwhelming numbers they said they intended to vote for Mr. Huckabee.

This is exactly the crowd that semi-elected Our Fearless Leader, and we’re all in trouble if they lead us down another garden path.

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In doing my homework on things to see while I was in Dublin early in December, I was particularly struck by the description in one book of “Famine”, a sculpture group by Rowan Gillespie. The sculptures represent victims of the enormously tragic famine of the mid-1800’s, where a full quarter of the Irish population died or left the country in hopes of better elsewhere.

I walked out to the sculptures on the first of my two nights in Dublin (which was a long haul). It was indeed a incredibly powerful piece of art, perhaps more so in the dark. It was a bit weird, though, to have the holiday lights as the back drop for this harrowing set of figures.

It’s not clear in the shot above, but the man is carrying what I presume to be a small girl across his shoulders, and is bowed beneath her weight. Quite terrifying, really.

Sadly, as the assassination of Benzir Bhutto makes clear, we’re still learning how to live together on this small rock, and often not doing a great job of it.

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From the Center for Democracy and Technology:

The House today approved, by unanimous voice vote, legislation that permanently prevents consumer’s phone numbers from being automatically removed from the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. Without the legislation, those numbers would be scrubbed from the list after five years. CDT supports the elimination of the five year expiration rule. A companion bill in the Senate is waiting for a floor vote. The House bill is H.R.3541; the Senate bill is S.2096

(This was actually posted by CDT on the 11th when it actually happened. I’m slow.)

Hopefully the Senate will have the sense to do the obvious, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to poke your Senatoid (for those in the U.S.) just in case.

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