vote no on prop 8

tonight i decided to do a bit of a dive into the "yes" on proposition 8 campaign -- i'm trying to understand the fundamental arguments for this proposition. ok, some quick background. the proposition is quite clearly titled: "Eliminates the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry." a similar proposition was passed by voters in 2000, but struck down by the california supreme court. this proposition would embed the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman into the california constitution, and could not be struck down by the state supreme court.

now, among other things, the "yes" campaign has put a lot of focus on the effects of this proposition on schools and churches. first, on schools, the "yes" campaign has this interesting video:



i think it's worth watching, for educational purposes. these are massachusetts residents who discuss their perceived effects of the MA law. anyway, some stirring quotes. if the bill is passed, there will be "homosexuality at every level" in our schools, and in every discipline: "math, reading, social studies, spelling." indeed, spelling. can you spell "fear-mongering" and "intolerance."

i love this desire the parents express concerning their children: that their children "not have them face adult issues when they're children." one of the parents expresses their revulsion at having their children exposed to these ideas prior to "their choosing." !

now, to the effects on religious institutions. i love how the "yes" campaign is letting others say things for them, rather than actually saying what is the truth. take this line, from the "yes" site. it appears in a letter to the editor of the orange county register:

Churches will be forced to perform same-sex marriages even if that is contrary to the church's position. Churches would not be able to use their doctrinal beliefs to defend their positions.

now, i don't know where this is coming from. the separation of church and state is guaranteed by the US constitution (the amendments, i think, to be exact). so the IRS, the law.. they are not going to be gunning for churches that resist marrying same-sex couples. this is A+ fear-mongering.

anyway, i can't see how if you're in a same-sex partnership, but it's not titled marriage, that somehow people are going to afford what you have the same dignity and respect as what married people have. "separate but equal" in this case seems to smack of discrimination based on sexual preference. if you feel your religion compels you to vote for this resolution, i don't expect to convince you otherwise. but i'd really like to know if there are more compelling arguments to support this resolution. 

finally, this proposition, despite amending the constitution, still needs only 50% + 1 of the vote, not a super-majority. and current polls indicate that the yes campaign is leading. so..

vote no on proposition 8

take some action

human effort, human dignity

yesterday i went to the commonwealth club to moderate a debate on the war between russia and georgia over south ossetia. i arrived a few minutes early and there were still people sitting in our room, so i wandered into a discussion on the latest proposition to ban gay marriage in california. i sat right next to the door, expecting to slip out when my room was free.

as i sat there an obviously very sick man, unclear if he was old or young, hobbled with his cane to the door. i opened the door for him and stood out of his way. he beckoned to me and i followed him outside. he then asked if i would write his question for the speakers (questions were only taken in written format for this event). i said yes, and he began to speak most eloquently, but stilted, with obvious physical exertion, on basic human rights, the decay of roman and greek societies correlating with increased sexual freedoms, human dignity ... he let it all loose. 

i couldn't keep up with him, and told him as much. we managed to piece together one question on human dignity that wasn't too long and really probed the psychology of a voter who would decide to vote for the proposition banning gay marriage. i told him that i had to run this up to the podium before they stopped taking questions. the unnamed man shuffled slowly back to his seat, and i submitted the question.

then, i waited. we waited. i wanted, i so badly wanted, our question to be read. the sick man had his head flopped over in his hands at his seat. he looked exhausted. he had put in a lot of energy coming to me and working out a question. the moderator continued lobbing questions at the panel. one, then another, then another. the moderator finally said that she only had time to read two more questions.

the first wasn't ours.

i so hoped that the second would be. i waited. i crossed my fingers.

...

it wasn't our question. i was late for my event and couldn't bear to see the sick man. i stood up and left.

obama in the new yorker

the recent cover-controversy issue of the new yorker has a great article about obama's political days in chicago. to all the obama people who are disappointed with his recent big flops (public financing of presidential campaigns, fisa), get real. he's a politician. running for president. as the new yorker writer puts it:

Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them. When he was a community organizer, he channelled his work through Chicago’s churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian. At Harvard, he won the presidency of the Law Review by appealing to the conservatives on the selection panel. In Springfield, rather than challenge the Old Guard Democratic leaders, Obama built a mutually beneficial relationship with them. “You have the power to make a United States senator,” he told Emil Jones in 2003. In his downtime, he played poker with lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. In Washington, he has been a cautious senator and, when he arrived, made a point of not defining himself as an opponent of the Iraq war.

on the cover: i think hertzberg's analysis is on point. not the best cartoon, but people are way too sensitive. i think it's quite amusing, but no where near as funny as the recent ahminijad cover:


recall that around this time ahmadinejad claimed there were no homosexuals in iran, and senator larry craig had his unfortunate footsie incident in a public bathroom.

human research: how to

i'm taking an online course about research on human subjects. after each module they administer a quiz. after the 'international research' section they were really grasping at straws.. here's one of the questions.

Question 4 Multiple Choice/Single Answer - select only one answer (1 point)

Which of the following is the LEAST important activity when protecting human subjects in international research?

(a) Assessing local transportation conditions
(b) Considering local customs, norms, and laws.
(c) Consulting with members of the community from which subjects will be recruited.
(d) Determining if the research might present unique risks to subjects given local socio-economic conditions.

oy.

hillary clinton and stupid blog comments

i am sad that it's almost surely over for hillary's presidential run.. i really think she would've been the better candidate. so i was reading news stories and blogs and calming myself and i just had to write this:

i, like many people, enjoy reading the comments that appear after news articles, blog entries, etc.. but when you go to a highly trafficed blog or news story that accepts comments, you often have to filter through just pure trash, like the first comment on an LA times article concerning hillary clinton's likely concession event this saturday:

Those who would seriously think of not supporting Obama because he beat Hillary are being emotional and not very analytical. ........women!
Submitted by: David
6:22 PM PDT, Jun 4, 2008

i want something that can just filter this and other insulting, stupid comments. now, don't misread me: i am perfectly happy to read comments that go against my opinion, that are by respectable commenters.. but as for the stupid comments, i wish they could be compressed into one bullet that says "500 stupid comments" and i could read them if i wanted to revel in the stupidity of those around us.

sigh.

the san francisco budget

sf requires the mayor to issue a balanced budget, and that budget came out today, and it makes some tough decisions, cutting 150 city jobs and reducing certain services (also increasing spending for things like cops, the roads, etc..). anyway, i won't go into the details here, you can read more at the chronicle site.

what galls me is all the reader reactions i'm seeing. newsom either cut too much or not enough. or not the right thing. or spent too much on X. what i find so startling is that i have yet to find one response which says something to the effect of: "man, maybe the voters passing a ballot measure which guarantees money to X (say, the library system), handties our politicians needlessly." no one seems to trust the politicians very much here, and they'd rather put the budgeting decisions in voter hands. well, if you do that, you have to realize the consequences, because voters aren't going to produce an entire budget. they just impose constraints.

here's a bewildering reader comment that the chronicle actually printed, for some bizarre reason:

There are so many ways to cut costs. One would be having a database of interpreters who are paid only when they are called out. Or a database of people who will volunteer their time. Then again, everyone that is from another country who chooses to live here should only be allowed to do so if they can read, write and converse in English.

- Mary French, 52, Lower Nob Hill, San Francisco (see here)

paper or plastic? how about both

while shopping today i observed the most annoying and interesting thing in the checkout line. the cashier asked the patron "paper or plastic?" she thought for a moment, and then said "both." both! the cashier looked at her funny and then she said "you know, paper inside the plastic." -- ah it's for ease of carrying, very nice.

oy.

waste -- we don't even think about how much we waste. today while shopping i thought "huh, it's sort of dumb to use these new plastic bags for my vegetables when i have the same ones just sitting at home." well, at least i took a canvas bag to the shop -- ease my conscience a tad.

oy.

on my birthday my net stuff accumulation was +12 toy horses - 10 marbles.. give or take. oh, and of course gifts of wine. and a poster.

oy.

looking around my room now, i realize i have so much junk, and i wonder if anyone would find much of it useful. like, what the hell is that easter egg basket with the frizzy pieces of string going to do to improve anyone's life? waste. though, maybe i can get raja to ride in it.

hmm... maybe it is better that it just inhabits a spot in my room -- who knows, it may end up in the landfill otherwise.

oy.

baby mama, videoblogging and chompin the bit

tonight i saw baby mama with some friends. all the friends were women. i went to a chick flick with a bunch of women. warning bells? meanwhile, men all around me were cozying up to iron man, which looked far more appropriate for me.

but i baby mama'd anyway. and instead of typing up my thoughts, here's me, video blogging! what? yeah!



i have to work on my delivery. could use some plants behind my head. i'll work on presentation and the set, i promise, if you think this is worth doing.

finally, i chose a wolf parade song that i thought was an appropriate contrast to this one-shot, easy-does-it-margaret culture.

undulating hand skin

last night in boston i encountered the most power hand drier i have ever used. the way it man-handled my skin made me want to film it. and i did! WARNING: the video is a bit disturbing.



after making this video i realize i need more powerful video editing software. there were things i wanted to do that just aren't easy or possible in windows movie maker. i'm learnin..

justice department lawyer dismissed because she's gay

i listened to this NPR story about leslie hagen, a lawyer with the justice department who routinely performed outstanding work, was widely lauded by her colleagues, and was ultimately sacked for dubious reasons. anyway, it has recently come out that the likely reason for her removal was a rumor that reached her superiors: hagen is a lesbian.

what! what grounds is that!

this story made me angry in a way i wasn't when katrina happened. i just felt much more emotional. i think there's two reasons for this: first, it's much easier to get emotionally caught up in a single story, rather than the plight of untold numbers. this seems to be a a quirk with our minds that doesn't let us emotionally scale up with the numbers, at least not easily. in fact, without a face on the tragedy, we lose interest.

but it's not just that. there's something about an individual injustice where the individual really appears alone. in addition, while discrimination based on sexual orientation happens every day in this country, this was a somewhat unique confluence of discrimination, our federal government setting a very bad example, and an invasion of a private space.

first i wanted to hurt george bush. then i wanted someone to ask him point blank how he'd approach this situation -- but what would i expect to get from this line of questioning?

oh my blood is just boiling, i need to infuse it with some tea leaves, calming leaves, maybe lavender.

cnn disgusts me

today we went and saw some of the super tuesday election results (go hillary!) at a group gathering on the berkeley campus. the organizers had put cnn up on the screen. after an hour i was about ready to throw up all over wolf blitzer.

why?

well, are we mice or .. er ... people? mice want cheese. that's what cnn gave. they'd give you a nibble of new york, then a nibble of georgia (but not a peach!), then a nibble of another state. but no aggregation! none! eventually we pulled out a piece of paper, and started writing down the candidate names and the states, and the associated percentages, to get our own aggregate sense. very much like the graphic on the nytimes.com homepage (or for that matter the cnn page):


when did tv viewers become so illiterate that we aren't allowed to have the global picture?

all that wolf blitzer had, amusingly, was his reference to huckabee as a "burgundy" (the color of the red on the map). that got a good laugh -- i wish someone would call me a burgundy, that most refined pinot.

this song, from the juno soundtrack, seems quite appropriate for cnn:

do what you want. ask why later. or don't

as i told grant: "ok i'm just going to post my lame meta post that's me reflecting on the post i won't post." so here:

do you ever destroy things when you start to think why?

i had written this post on a fun memory i have about dancing. pure fun, a fond thing to look back to..

but then i dig and dig and dig and things pop out and suddenly i'm like, wait, maybe this memory isn't so perfect. stop asking why omar, just enjoy....?

and i do the same thing with things i plan to do.. "so why do you want to do this event omar? what if X, what if Y, what if ..?"

dear god if i could just switch that off, occasionally (and no, don't tell me to drink, that's not what i'm saying!) what fun it might be. oh but look i'm questioning already bah bah bah

locked-in syndrome

i am a somewhat claustrophobic person. plus i've been a bit distressed by recent developments in my life. while riding on the bart, these two things caught up with me quite alarmingly. i almost threw up and had to get off the subway for fear of being enclosed in the car. what prompted this was the following review, from a recent issue of the new yorker:

[The Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”] is about an unlucky man—Jean-Dominique Bauby, the real-life editor of French Elle, who, in 1995, at the age of forty-three, suffered a massive stroke. Lying speechless and outraged in a hospital near Calais, a victim of “locked-in syndrome,” Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was restored to full mental clarity but could move nothing but his left eye. Yet Schnabel’s movie, based on the calm and exquisite little book that Bauby wrote in the hospital, is a gloriously unlocked experience, with some of the freest and most creative uses of the camera and some of the most daring, cruel, and heartbreaking emotional explorations that have appeared in recent movies.

At first, we see only what Bauby sees—a blur of faces floating into view in fearsome closeup, like deep-sea monsters. Consciousness arrives: the blurs solidify into clear images of doctors and nurses and the surprisingly beautiful décor of Bauby’s cell—a turquoise-colored hospital room, with a curtain flapping in the breeze. Bauby’s Cyclopean gaze swings wildly from one place to another, and visitors, embarrassed and grief-stricken, pass in and out of his vision, which operates as a kind of microscope peering into the soul of whoever comes into its view. The doctors offer diagnoses and reassurances; Bauby is caressed, shoved, lifted, held, deposited, and washed with hands both rough and gentle, and, through all this, we hear his thoughts on the soundtrack—baffled and angry at first, then bitter (he faintly enjoys the black comedy of his situation), and, finally, soulful and eloquent. Ronald Harwood, adapting the text, has made Bauby’s complex internal life fully expressive, and Schnabel fleshes out brief descriptions of therapists and visitors into major psychological portraits. The movie, which was shot by the great Janusz Kaminski (Spielberg’s cinematographer), more than fulfills the promise of the sultry early scenes in Schnabel’s previous picture, “Before Night Falls.” Bauby’s book is concise and lyrical; the film is expansive and sensual, pungent and funny—a much larger experience. The impossible subject has yielded a feast of moviemaking.

and on it goes. find the whole article here. hopefully it doesn't have such a strong impact on you (luckily i doubt you'll be reading this inside a subway car in a dark station). i still haven't decided on whether i'll see the movie or not.

bike seat stolen, frustration mounting

sigh. i was looking forward to riding my bike, i step up to it, and there's no seat!

now, i should've expected this would happen, but i'm new to city biking. i had been parking my bike in a visible place near the bart, and not in the bart, as when i got to 24th and mission in the morning all the spots inside were usually full. and i hate taking my bike to berkeley.

but today my luck ran out. seat gone.

on the plus side, a wonderfully nice guy came outside, noticed that my seat was gone, and started talking to me about my loss, and what i can do in the future. namely, he showed me his pike, and the pinhead components he uses to lock all the bike parts that are attached to your frame. pinhead locks, for instance, attach your seat to your frame with a mechanism that has only 1 key, and cannot be readily removed. learn more here.

so tomorrow (or someday soon) i'm going to go and get a new seat and get pinhead components to secure it to my frame. woo!

ps i was going to include a picture of sad omar with his seatless bike i just learned that my camera's battery is dead. the night gets better and better!

pps it just did! i went to load picasa so i could find a stock 'omar sad' image (i'm loaded with those) and i got the error "The application failed to initialize properly. (0xc0000005). Click on OK to terminate the application." argh!

ppps: UPDATE this was not in the original post, but i had to add it. i was about to go to bed when someone i've invested with messaged me to tell me about a potentially large, difficult issue with the business. you know what they say: when it rains, it pores. good night!

i hate capital one (but not enough to call)

capital one is doing this ingeniously fiendish thing: they upgraded my card recently to some new rewards card and sent me lots of information about the card, in the mail. but now they are calling me to tell me about it.

imagine getting such a call from a real person. you'd be pretty pissed. but, they don't use a real person, they use an automated voice. if you're interested, you can press numbers and learn more and likely finally end up at a person. but who wants to wait when all you want to do is scream at them and tell them not to do this?

so instead, i just hang up. angry. but not as angry as if it were a human. and i think i heard more than i would've heard had it been a human (if it were a human i'd just get really angry and stop listening).

so good work capital one. bastards.

funny doors

today i had some great bad door locking moments. the first involves a change room in a mall. i entered the change room and couldn't figure out how to lock the door. i looked at the handle, nothing. i look around the handle, nothing. then i look up and notice a lone screw, sticking up at the top of the door, about half a room above my head. here it is:

what would you do with a screw like this? well, i turn it, and it starts going in. then i turn it the other way, and it starts coming out. but neither action actually locks the door. here's my sister and i, filming an interaction with the door.

and now here's the mechanism (shot from above, door in locked position):

the second door locking problem is even more amusing, but i didn't take any pictures because my sister somehow convinced me not to. i go into a bathroom stall in a ukranian cultural center in new jersey, and i can't lock the door. the alignment of door latch to lock is all wrong, and so the door cannot be locked. i puzzle for a moment, conclude that this door must be broken, and go to the next stall. the same thing! so i try a third stall. the same thing, again! i can't lock the door. is this some kind of sick joke? i can't find anyone to ask, but i'm sure it must be.

i am not a wirestripper

i am not a wirestripper.

and i never will be. after ruining about a foot of speaker wire while trying to strip it with an inferior tool and my perpetually shaky hands i've concluded that i am not a wirestripper, and never will be. and don't ever ask me to remove a splinter from your body, or operate on you, because i assure you, i'll likely regret it more than you, as you'll be dead.

sigh.

for me, this is one of those don norman moments, when at first i think i'm an idiot then realize that the tool i'm using was never built to do any task well, certainly not on first use.

here is a picture of the cheap cheap wire stripper i picked up from home depot (neha warned me that i should get the nicer one and i retorted "it's just wire stripping." how i eat my tasty words).



notice that the gauge adjustment, unlike any sane tool, is this screw you can move continuously along an axis (inside the left handle). that's right, there aren't even notches for recommended position given wire gauge. now, this gives this stripper the benefit that it can cut hypothetical 16.5 gauge wire (actually, such wire does exist but come on). how does this item continue to sell! are people's hands just so much softer than mine that the inexactness of their stripping tool can be offset by their ultra sensitive hands, which feel the prick of the insulation and thus strip without losing any copper? do they also feel my leg shaking under the table as the displaced air moves over their hands?

show me these people! i want to worship their hands.

now let's look at a reasonable wire stripper, courtesy youtube