February 29th, 2008 nick
The Pew report that came out yesterday about 1 in 100 American adults being incarcerated is so so so so sad. Thanks to Becca for first pointing this out.
The discussion that I think is missing from the articles on this issue (at least so far) is: what policies can be changed to reverse this trend? There’s a little discussion on some of the drug policies (three strikes, etc…) that target small-time users but it’s got to be bigger than that, right? Who is making the decisions to incarcerate more people? And what decisions are those, exactly? Basically, how did we drive ourselves into this ditch?
For Dan Bern’s take on why things are so screwed up, check out this archive.org page and use the little player on the right to listen to song 8, “Jail”.
There’s also a good article in this week’s New Yorker, “The Lost Children”, by Margaret Talbot about immigrant families being imprisoned.
I’m curious what Obama’s response to the report will be.
Is it weird that, as an American, I’m much more ashamed by this prison stuff than I am by any of the wars that we’re currently waging? The only countries that execute more prisoners than we do are the likes of Iran, China, and Sudan. And no one imprisons more people or even a higher percentage of residents than we do. We call this freedom?
Posted in politics | 1 Comment »
February 28th, 2008 nick
But he’s not running for president. Damn, if he doesn’t have the most compelling message of them all, though. Infrastructure: more constructive and practical than hope, less destructive and divisive than war.
Posted in politics | No Comments »
February 28th, 2008 nick
Last month we started watching the Wire. About time, apparently, as it was all anyone asked about in Hawaii when I told them I was from Baltimore. Literally, three or four folks all asked whether I watch the Wire in those first five minutes of conversation where you’re uncovering things that you have in common. People feel like by watching the Wire they have an in on Baltimore. And they do, I guess. But while it portrays the poor, corrupt side of Baltimore, it misses the eccentric Baltimore art thing, the not-quite-new-york-hipster and family-raising punk crowd that enjoys Red Emmas, Velocipede, Normal’s Books, The Book Thing, and The Loading Dock.
But in any case, the Wire was pretty good. We got sucked into the first season and closed it down in less than two weeks. The side-by-side portrayal of the counterpart hierarchies of gangs and police struck home. The best line of the whole season was when Carver (a cop) says (and I paraphrase), “y’know the reason why we’ll never win this is because if they fuck up they get beat up, if we fuck up we get a pension.” The way to be a successful cop (at least in Wire-world) is to not do your job. The way to be a successful dealer is to do the best job possible because if you don’t, someone else will.
And, since we’ve been watching it, I’ve counted about five headlines in the Sun that are storylines lifted from episodes in season one (or vice versa, I suppose) — a murdered witness, raids on and arrests of minor players in a bigger game, police brutality, etc… Not much uplifting about it all, but they sure weave a compelling (and realistic) storyline.
Posted in books & movies | 1 Comment »
February 27th, 2008 nick
Bush being out of office so we can stop reading about sleazy, under-the-table, make-you-want-to-scream partisan hijinx. Like this.
Posted in politics | No Comments »
February 23rd, 2008 nick
Ordered seed before Hawaii from Fedco (cheap, Cecilia-recommended, big selection). The final list was short:
- Dwarf White Sugar Snow Pea (hearty germination, small plants — good for our backyard)
- Green Wave Mustard (nice spicy green, and only $0.60)
- Klari Baby Cheese Pepper (organic, fleshy, yellow pepper)
- Rose de Berne Tomato (organic)
The challenge this year is going to be managing heat in the backyard containers. We’re going to try some plastic on top of the soil to help keep soil temp more constant and to reflect light up onto the plants, and maybe a tarp to give some shade (and heat relief) in the hottest months.
Posted in gardening | No Comments »
February 23rd, 2008 nick
I arrived back from Hawaii on Tuesday and promptly came down with a cold. Ah, to be in the climate where you can sleep out under the stars there every night and walk around shirtless. I wouldn’t want it all the time, but to slurp it down for a week is just right.
Anyways, the Big Island served up the usual smorgasbord of adventure: hiking on volcanic craters and hardened lava flows, snorkeling with the turtles, getting thrashed about by waves, jumping off 40 foot cliffs into shark-infested waters, etc… If you think I’m joking about that last part, just check out the pictures. Off the edge of the cliff, we saw a large school of fish that was getting harassed by a large slender fish with black tips at the edges of its fins — Katie, the marine biologist who was with us, said it was probably a black-tip reef shark. Not dangerous to humans, so they say. Matty and others had a few whale sightings too, but I didn’t see any. Joanne and Francis put us up like kings again — they have an amazingly simple and beautiful place on the dry (south-west) side of the Big Island. Also, we got to hang out with Masulis’ Carleton friend Anna Laube (whom I didn’t know at school) who is making music as a singer-songwriter in SF right now. Her music is pretty sweet. Check out her website.
After the Big Island, it was off to Waimanalo on Oahu for Kaimana. I hadn’t played men’s ultimate in since I played at this tournament 3 years ago, I don’t think. And boy was it ever fun. Even got me thinking about training a bit and trying to play some men’s ultimate this summer/fall. Voltron was one of the three best teams there, but we managed to lose a close game in Semis. The only time the other team had the lead was when they won the game at hard cap, 12-11. That part sucked. I played solid (only 3 turnovers all weekend) and stepped it up in Semis a bit — getting a nice D in the sky on Hollywood and putting a sweet toss to “The Kid” in the back corner of our endzone after not throwing much upfield all weekend. Anyways, it felt real good to be a contributor on such a solid team. Some photos, taken by Matteo, are up online too. Best food of the weekend (why didn’t I take a picture?) was poke (pronounced poh-KAY), raw tuna with fresh onions and scallions marinated in soy sauce. Mmm hmm.
Back at home, things at school are heating up, as my school-wide oral exams are probably going to be scheduled in early April sometime. Writing the paper for that is going to eat up a lot of time. Also, it’s time to start planting seeds indoors. And Johanna did some sweet painting of the kitchen window while I was gone, so it’s almost time to install the bar. We’re supposed to be picking up bar stools (craigslist) this weekend. Vespa’s set-up is nearly complete. A new 500GB hard drive is on the way as a back-up disk to use in conjuntion with Time Machine, the new backup software that comes with Macs these days. More on the install process later.
Posted in adventure, friends, gardening, travel | No Comments »
February 10th, 2008 nick
Just downloaded the past month of Wednesday and Thursday puzzles from the NYT website, along with a token Friday, Saturday and a few Sundays. Facing a four and a eight hour flight tomorrow, I’m determined not to give SkyMall an ounce of attention. Also, loaded up on back issues of SciAm, the Atlantic, the NYer and the Economist (when did I ever think I’d have time to read them here at home?), with Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins and Ratner’s Star by Delillo giving me some backup fiction firepower.Three long simulations are running on the cluster at school (if anyone asks, I’ve been monitoring them closely from my beachtowel). They’ve been running for over a day and are about one-eighth complete. The Kanteen is packed.The absentee ballot is in the mail.
Posted in travel | No Comments »
February 7th, 2008 nick
On Monday, my new 15″ MacBook Pro arrived. She’s replacing ‘agrippa’, my four-year-old 12″ PowerBook G4. I’ve decided to call her ‘vespa’. Something about sexy European names ending in ‘a’. Think about it.
But now I’m in this weird limbo-land. Double-fisting my two laptops, using agrippa for some stuff, vespa for others. I haven’t moved everything over to vespa yet, so I’m stuck doing most school work on agrippa but now that I’ve tasted the speed and luxury of vespa, I don’t want to work on agrippa at all! Oh, the agony. 
In any case, my main resolution is to try and use more of the native Mac applications for things (rely on Safari instead of Firefox for browsing, Mail instead of NetNewsWire for RSS feeds, Address Book instead of Palm, iCal instead of GoogleCalendar via Firefox, etc…). So far this seems feasible. Most of these applications were underdeveloped in past versions of the Mac OS but now they seem pretty well put together and evolved. When I get back from Hawaii on the 18th, I’m hoping to be on vespa full-time. Can’t wait!
Posted in tech, travel | 2 Comments »
February 6th, 2008 nick
As elucidated by the guy at electoral-vote.com (check out the tables that he posts there, sorted by the % of voters to vote for a particular candidate), Obama is kicking butt in states that caucus. This (partially?) explains why he did well in North Dakota but flailed in Oklahoma — he sends in the young, energized foot soldiers who rally the support of the caucus-goers but this cannot (and did not) happen in the states with straight primaries where the television coverage and ads dictate more of the outcome. This trend bodes well for Obama because the upcoming three states this weekend (NE, ME, WA) are all caucuses. And the next primaries (MD, VA, LA, DC) are all leaning Obama and have large black poplulations. I think Obama might be on his way to a lead (in delegates) within a week. Whether he can ride that wave to the white house, I’m not sure. But it’d sure be nice.
In other uplifting news, it looks like McCain generally is winning the states that he has no chance of winning in November. The places where he’s doing best are CT, NY, NJ, IL, DE, etc… So he’ll have to choose a right-wing wing-nut to really convince the religious southern GOPers that he should have their vote.
All that said, but the Iowa Electronic Markets still have Hillary over obama by about a 60-40 split. Now might be the time to buy.
Posted in politics | No Comments »
February 4th, 2008 nick
Woulda been nice to see the Patriots walk away with a victory last night. I wonder when Brady will start having nightmares reliving his beatings by the brothers Manning.
We spent the Super Bowl over at Nick’s house, munching quesadillas and coloring in wedding invitations. They are decidedly simple (one piece of paper, folded) but elegant I think. And cheap.
Favorite ads: the Doritos mouse-trap, the little talking baby for E-Trade.
And of course, following Super Sunday we have a Super Tuesday. The media seems anxious to give Obama the “momentum” but, honestly, I don’t see it reflected in the polling numbers. I mean, maybe he’s gaining, but he certainly isn’t ahead where it counts. I rely on electoral-vote.com for my meta-polling numbers, and Obama looks to still be behind in a lot of states. While I am leaning toward Obama in this primary season, I definitely don’t want to see the nomination process dragged out to the convention like some are saying it might be.
In other news, we went to a crazy show on Saturday night: Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey. Kind of an acrobatic, burlesque performance complete with a baton-twirling, see-through-skin-tight-blue-bunny-suit-wearing 6′4 gay emcee who was actually quite funny, a dude in a monkey suit who could dance, a waifish young male contortionist, a Michael-Jackson-quoting reverend and two musicians who made electronic noise and wanted you to call it music. Not a great show (Nick, who had been to other shows of theirs, said it wasn’t a even good one) but I got a kick out of it.
Finally, we’re not getting sick at all of No Shame, the new album by Sofia (check out their MySpace page for a few free tunes). It’s been in the CD changer since Christmas, but we can’t get enough of the accordion, clarinet, soft female voice combo. Awna and Alison are the two members — Awna used to be with the Be Good Tanyas and they both (still?) play with Po’ Girl. Anyways, check them out if you haven’t already.
Posted in miscellany, politics | 3 Comments »