February 2007 Archives
There's a recent poll asking Americans the following question:
If your party nominated a generally well-qualified candidate for President who was _____, would you vote for that person?
Catholic? Sure. 95% yes. Black? Not a problem -- 94%. A woman? 88%, a number high enough to keep us from despairing too deeply about the possibility of a Clinton nomination. Even being Mormon, like Republican hopeful Mitt Romney, doesn't disqualify you from the job, as 72% of respondents said they'd give a Mormon their vote.
Here, it starts to get interesting. Rudy Giuliani, current Republican frontrunner for the nomination, has been married 3 times. But only 67% said they'd vote for someone on their 3rd marriage. John McCain, the other Republican frontrunner, was born in 1936. He'd be 72 years old at inauguration if he were to win. But being 72 years old was a barrier to all but 57% of respondents. To me, that's a shocking number, and it says a lot about how Democrats should talk about these guys.
And if you're homosexual, the nation is not ready for you to be President yet. You only get 55% yes in this poll. And atheists, apparently, are even more hated than gays, which blows my mind. An atheist gets 45%. Only 45% of people would vote for a well-qualified atheist that earned their party's nomination.
I know that my liberal Portland enclave, plenty of people would vote for an atheist, and maybe that skews my perception. But what, in Americans' minds is the connection between God and President, exactly? Is God on "our side"? Would he turn against us, strike us down, if we entrusted our nation to a heathen?
I guess we won't find out for quite a few years.
This is a letter I wrote to the President of the United States of America last week.
--
From: joshb@well.com
Subject: We're warming the world.
Date: February 2, 2007 12:41:34 AM PST
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Do you believe this yet?
Your last two opponents, Vice President Gore and Senator Kerry, they both would have committed enormous national resources to alternative energy research.
You had that chance. You could have been a visionary. It's one of your goals, isn't it? To demonstrate that you're not just "one of the guys," you're a leader who truly knows what's best for America.
Really, even if Iraq had gone perfectly, and the peaceniks would be forced to eat their hats, would it have been truly visionary policy? Freeing the oppressed people of an Arab nation would have been impressive, sure, but not world-changing.
Figuring out how to keep the American economic engine running without filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases? That would have been visionary. Even starting us down that road would prove you understood the capacity of America's leadership.
Instead, you've shown us you can barely see to the end of your nose, much less 10, 20, 50 years into the future. Fifty years into the future? It's going to be warm.
Please help. You can have a greater impact on this impending global catastrophe than any other man on the planet.
Josh Berezin
Portland, OR
Computer scientist Jim Gray is missing at sea.
His sailboat looks like this:
Amazon has acquired satellite images of the ocean in the area around his last known location. They look like this:
You can help look for him. Maybe we can find him. I don't know the guy, but I like to think he would do the same for me.
Update 2/6:
During the last 5 days, Mechanical Turk workers looked at more than 560,000 images from 3 satellites, covering nearly 3,500 square miles of ocean. A group of experts is currently reviewing the images that workers identified, and sending their results to the appropriate authorities.
More information about the search is available at: http://helpfindjim.com