Friday, February 08, 2008

Just before the caucus

Unless you’ve been mouldering under a rock recently, you must be aware that the precinct caucuses for Washington Democrats and Republicans will take place tomorrow afternoon.  It’s the first of several steps on the way to electing delegates to the parties’ respective national conventions—the Dems in Denver and the GOP in St. Paul.

Unless you’re really out of it, you’re also aware that this year’s Democratic caucuses have suddenly taken on real honest-to-god meaning in the party’s nominating process.  The two remaining candidates, Senators Clinton and Obama, are basically deadlocked in the delegate count after Super Tuesday, and Washington is one of the biggest prizes to be fought over between now and the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

The precinct caucuses are the first of three steps used by Washington Democrats to choose 78 of our 97 delegates to the DNC.  Delegates elected from precincts will gather on April 5 in Legislative District caucuses, and delegates from the LDs will meet on May 17 at their Congressional District caucuses.  Those CD caucuses will choose delegates who will represent us in Denver.

Right after the 2004 precinct caucuses, I wrote a rather lengthy blog post about the experience.  Tomorrow’s events will be generally quite similar.  This time, however, I’m running the show instead of working for a candidate.  I’ll be one of the site coordinators, as well as the PCO of my precinct.

Though I’m extremely involved in the presidential election season, I’m not particularly wedded to any of the candidates.  Whatever it was that Howard Dean stirred in me four years ago hasn’t been touched by any of the 2008 candidates.  I gave a few bucks to Chris Dodd awhile back, more for his stands on habeas corpus and FISA than due to any belief that he’d run successfully.  Had he stayed in the race, I would have caucused for John Edwards; his message of economic populism reasonated with me. 

Now, with just two candidates to choose from, I’m still undecided.  Not between Clinton and Obama ... between Uncommitted and Obama.  Anyone But Hillary is still my watchword, as it was from the start.  She is simply too much a creature of the “inside the Beltway” mentality for my taste.  Which is not to say that I’d vote for someone else if she ends up as the Democratic nominee, just that I’ll look elsewhere unless and until her name is the only one in the running.

Why not simply move to Obama?  Mainly because he doesn’t stir me.  His oratorical skills are extraordinary, but I’m not convinced that the substance is really there.  Since he’s the only remaining not-Clinton candidate, I’ll certainly switch to him if there are too few others in my precinct choosing Uncommitted to earn a delegate, but I’m sort of thinking I want to keep my options open as long as I can.  Or maybe I’ll just stop playing these games with myself and sign in for Obama.  I still haven’t figured it out.

Now I’m off to copy off more sign-up sheets, more maps of the precincts, and so forth.  We’re expecting a huge crowd tomorrow afternoon.  See you at the caucus!

Friday, January 25, 2008

The local Draft Board ... should I serve?

Those of us who are “of an age” remember the influence of the Draft Board on the lives (and deaths) of us and our brethren.  Even if the closest we ever actually came to experiencing that influence was listening to Arlo sing about the Group W bench.

Several years ago, when speculation about the possibility of an Iraq War draft was rampant, there was talk in liberal circles of applying to join Selective Service local boards so that a less militaristic viewpoint might be represented.  Just to see what would happen, I submitted such an application.

This week, I received a response.  Here, in part, is that message:

Hi [N in Seattle],

I also left you a voicemail, but about 3 years ago you sent an application to the Selective Service System to become a Seattle Local Board Member.  Since we had no vacancy at that time, your application was held in my files, until now when a retirement of an active member has created an opportunity.  If you are still interested in this position, I would be glad to provide more details. ...

I can certainly fulfill the qualifications for becoming a Draft Board member—I’m an American citizen, (well) over 18 years old, neither active in nor retired from the military, live in Seattle, not employed in law enforcement, no criminal offenses.  Though I don’t yet know what the time commitment would be, I’m sure I could arrange it so that I could participate if I wanted to.

But do I really want to?  The draft was a fearsome institution to those of us who grew up during the Vietnam era.  I was in high school and college as the war heated up, so when I registered my classification was 2-S (student deferment).  In the December 1969 draft lottery, my birthday came up as #149.  Thus, I retained my deferment in 1970, when the draft took those with numbers up to 195.  When the 1971 draft reached only to #125, I dropped the deferment, was briefly a non-draftable 1-A, and then became a 1-H ... no longer subject to the draft.  I was fortunate, but even that not-so-close brush with Selective Service left a bad taste.

On the other hand, I doubt that there were any people with a story even remotely similar to mine on the Local Board in my New Jersey hometown.  I assume, without evidence, that that Board consisted entirely of people who were gung-ho to get as many kids into the Army as was humanly possible.  I assume, without evidence, that they would have made it extremely difficult for anyone who appealed for a hardship deferment or Conscientious Objector status.  I strongly believe that if the draft is ever reinstituted, a Draft Board that is truly representative of Seattle must include members whose view of military adventurism is, shall we say, skeptical.

I should also mention that there’s something of a personal interest involved here—my nephew, who turned 14 earlier this week, lives here in Seattle.  He’ll register with Selective Service four years from now.

I haven’t yet replied to the message I received from the local Selective Service representative.  I’m leaning toward doing so, if only to obtain further information about the time and effort that would be required of a Board member.  And, perhaps, to see whether Selective Service would seriously consider putting someone like me on the Board.

Finally, for your listening and viewing pleasure, here are a YouTube link to Arlo performing Alice’s Restaurant Massacree (embedding is disabled, since it runs nearly 20 minutes) and the trailer for the 1969 movie Alice’s Restaurant:

[Also posted as a diary on DailyKos.]

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Wood or silverware

Five years ago tomorrow, I wrote Peace Tree Farm’s very first post (reproduced below).  Those readers wishing to commemorate the occasion might want to consult this webpage before deciding on an appropriate gift. 

Another year, another blog…

I can’t say what shape this enterprise will eventually take.  There are daily events worthy of comment and discussion, in a myriad of arenas, but the one or ones that inspire me to bat out a few words can’t be predicted.  It might be a political decision or it might be a baseball game; a piece of music or a magazine article; scientific research or a well-cooked meal. 

Whatever I happen to discuss, my viewpoint will be one of seeking rationality, of following the subject to its logical conclusion ... even if that logic sometimes takes us to a reductio ad absurdum.  It’s a viewpoint tempered by 50-some years of living, by two years residence in the Pacific Northwest after spending most of my days in the Northeast, by a career of research into healthcare and the quality thereof, by Woodstock and the assassinations, by close observation of governments in action, by Herman Melville and Bill James, by Bob Dylan and Dan Bern, and by much, much more.

As the title says, today is opening day.  Who’s pitching tomorrow???

You’ll have to be the judge of whether the 326 entries written since then have lived up to that original intent.  In that time span, my subject matter has been vastly more on politics than on baseball, music, or magazines.  A sign of the times, no doubt.  I’ve mentioned Woodstock three times; the death of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or Martin Luther King Jr. six times; Herman Melville not at all; Bill James once; Dylan ten times (he’s been the topic of five posts); and Dan Bern once.

My blogging history has been one of diminishing returns.  I wrote 142 posts in PTF’s first year, over 43% of my entire output.  Year Two totaled 69 blog posts, followed by 47 in Year Three, 46 in Year Four, and just 23 (including this one) in Year Five.  It isn’t entirely that I have become less productive in that time period, though I must admit that sloth and outrage fatigue have played a not-insignificant role.  I’d prefer to believe that the largest portion of my decrease in blogging is a reflection of the numerous progressive blogs—both here in the PacNW and throughout the land—that have created such a vibrant netroots community.  I was here in blogtopia (y!sctp) ahead of the great majority of them, but it bothers me not in the slightest that I have been eclipsed by so many others.  With insightful, acute, talented, and prolific writers like Goldy and his HorsesAss colleagues, Dan Kirkdorffer at On The Road To 2008, Dave and Sara at Orcinus, and many others wielding influence in the Washington political scene, whatever I might come up with would be (at best) a “me too” afterthought.  And then there are the remarkable national progressive blogs like digby’s Hullabaloo and the immense orange community created by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.

I still spend a lot of, probably too much, time reading the thoughts and ideas of those other lefty-bloggers.  And I’m a fairly regular, and very longtime, diarist and commenter on dKos.  So it’s not like I’ve completely stifled myself on the web.

Will the next year see more frequent posts here?  I won’t promise that, but I do hope I can find the inspiration within myself to create material worth your reading-time, and hopefully more such content than I’ve produced recently.  Even if I’m long-silent, though, I expect to be here in 366 days to mark my candy/iron blogiversary.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

My health

I rarely reveal much about the person behind the nom de blog “N in Seattle”.  Not my style, not my strength.  This post, then, is going to be a very unusual one for Peace Tree Farm, because I’m relating a rather scary experience I’ve undergone in the last month.

Actually, I think we need to go back a couple more months, to early October.  That’s when I came down with a very nasty cold.  It was so bad that I had to take a couple of sick days, and it never really went away, week after week.  I was constantly tired, slept even more poorly than usual, with post-nasal drip, congestion.  Even before coming down with that cold, I’d decided to get a flu shot—the first voluntary flu immunization of my life.  After putting up with the sequelae for far too long, I went to the doctor with complaints about my endless cold, but he didn’t find much of anything.  He suggested cough suppressant and nasal irrigation (yuck), which I tried for a week or so without apparent change.

So I made another appointment with the doctor just after Thanksgiving, this time laying out my entire collection of signs and symptoms.  Not just the still-lingering cold, but everything from brittle fingernails to depression to the occasional short bout of what I called heaviness or tightness in my chest.  This last item piqued the doc’s interest.  Hey, I’m an obese 57-year-old male being medicated for hypertension and hyperlipidemia, definitely at risk for coronary disease even though I’m a lifelong nonsmoker.  He did a brief EKG rhythm strip right then and there, and scheduled me for a stress test to be taken on Monday, December 10.

In the interim, I continued to feel just as lousy.  Then came the early morning of Thursday, December 6.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Discovery Institute ... theft and lies

In talking about congestion pricing on my show Saturday night, I couldn’t contain a brief outburst over how our local media and political elite continue to take seriously the Discovery Institute’s transportation proposals in light of its embarrassing role in promoting Creationism Intelligent Design.  My frustration stems not simply from the fact that Intelligent Design is ridiculous anti-science, or that it is part of a well planned and executed multi-year campaign to undermine science education in the US at a time we face growing global economic competition ... but that it has been promoted in such a shamelessly dishonest manner.

The Discovery Institute has proven again and again that it makes no distinction between scholarship and propaganda, and that there is no ethical boundary it will not cross in the interest of foisting its Christianist agenda on the American people.  This blatant disregard for the most basic rigors of academia—or even fair play—was highlighted recently by a virologist/blogger who discovered that DI fellows had stolen and manipulated a Harvard University/XVIVO video for use in their own presentations, without attribution, permission or license.

Here is the original Harvard/XVIVO video The inner life of a cell, with its scientifically accurate narration intact:

And here is a clip from a Discovery Institute presentation that features an excerpt of the video, now redubbed and retitled The Cell as an Automated City.  Notice how the presenter describes the video as “state of the art computer animation”, implying that it is somehow the work of the institute:

As ERV points out in his her post, this isn’t just a naive case of copyright infringement.  The Discovery Institute has plenty of lawyers on staff and on retainer, so they sure as hell know that scrubbing the Harvard/XVIVO copyright and credits off the video is not only dishonest, but illegal.

Maybe they think it is “okay” because they gave the animation a new title (Inner life of a cell became The cell as an automated city) and an extraordinarily unprofessional new narration (alternate alternate title—Big Gay Al takes a tour of a cell!).  Harvard/XVIVOs narration, all of the science, is whisked away and replaced with a “surrealistic lilliputian realm”, “robots”, “manufacturing”, “circuitry”, “nano moters”, “UPS labels”.  Maybe they think it is “okay” because they turned all of Harvard’s science into “MAGIC!”.

Hmm.  From my point of view, as a virologist and former teaching assistant, this isn’t just copyright infringement.  This is theft and plagiarism.  Taking someone else’s work without their consent, manipulating it without their consent, pretending it supports ID Creationists’ distorted views of reality, and presenting it as DI’s work.

ERV further points out that if the DI fellows responsible for this were at his her university, they would be expelled for their plagiarism.

But this is just business as usual at the Discovery Institute, and it raises a question:  if the Discovery Institute can’t be trusted to produce independent academic scholarship on its signature issue, Intelligent Design, how can its Cascadia Center be trusted to produce independent academic scholarship on regional transportation planning?  Of course, it can’t, and the media, business and political elites who ignore the institute’s established track record of distorting scholarship and science in the single-minded pursuit of its own private agenda, are little more than willful dupes.

Our region’s transportation planning is too important to be trusted to a faux “think tank” with such a shameful and embarrassing record, and every time one of our local media outlets unskeptically cites one of its reports or recommendations, it grants the Discovery Institute credibility it simply does not deserve.  Unlike a real think tank, the Discovery Institute produces “scholarship” to support its existing agenda, not the other way around, and thus it cannot and should not be considered a trusted partner in planning our region’s transportation future.