Yesterday, just one day after his speech on race, Barack Obama spoke in North Carolina on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war and set forth his vision and five-point plan for foreign policy. It is a logically argued, hopeful, powerful political speech.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Obama Sets Forth His Foreign Policy
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Obama's Speech on Race
Here is a video of Senator Barack Obama's speech on race in response to the controversy surrounding his pastor, Rev. Wright. Below is a transcript. Please listen to or read the whole thing—it is a candid and thoughtful argument that suffers if digested in small bites. [If you need a downloadble file, I don't where one can get the whole speech, but here is a PBS NewsHour page with a downloadable file with some excerpts of the speech and analysis (which I did not find that useful).] Barack asks us to confront difficult issues and reject the politics of division.
REMARKS OF SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: 'A MORE PERFECT UNION'
Philadelphia, PA | March 18, 2008
As Prepared for Delivery
"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Monday, March 17, 2008
House-Sized Particle Device Circles Europe
The KATRIN spectrometer is part of an experiment to try to measure the tiny mass of the electron neutrino. I'll discuss what that means in three subsequent posts, Electrons and Their Siblings, Neutrinos and Their Siblings, and How to Measure Electron Neutrino Mass.
In this post, let's just consider the trip the KATRIN spectrometer took in January 2007.
They had to get it from where it was made, near Munich, Germany, to Karlsruhe, Germany, a distance of 400 km. But there was no way to do this directly, so they had to take the 9000 km route depicted on the map!
Along the way, it had to navigate some tight quarters!
Here's a video of the trip through that town, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, just north of the destination of Karlsruhe. The best part is from about 1:00 to 4:00.
Be sure to tune in for future physics posts which will explain what this thing does.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Why c squared?
[originally posted 2/17/08. Update added to end.]
This post is in response to a comment on my post Physics Factoid: E = m c squared, which asks "Why is the conversion factor c2?" This will be slightly more technical than most of my posts, but should make sense to anyone who has had high school physics.
There are two parts to the question. First, why is the factor something squared? Second, why is that something c, the speed of light?
The answer to the first question is that the factor has to be some speed squared to get the units right. Most people don't value units enough. You can often solve a problem just knowing the units involved, and you can certainly tell if something is askew if the units aren't right. For example, if you ask someone, "what's the area of your living room?" and they answer, "Thirty feet," you know they misheard the question because an area has to be in square-feet.
The units of energy are mass·speed2, for example, kg·m2/s2. The kinetic energy of a mass m moving and velocity v is ½ m v2. [application to space junk]
So any formula writing energy in terms of mass has to involve something with units of speed squared.
But why the speed of light? Well, the theory of relativity is based on the idea that all observers, no matter how fast they are moving relative to you, must observe the same physical laws. And there is only one special speed which they all measure to be the same—the speed of light. In fact, you can show that the theory doesn't work if you try to add a second special speed. A short way of putting it is that in relativity there is only one constant to work with, the speed of light.
Now I could derive the formula for you, or show you it gives the correct kinetic energy in the low-speed limit, but a simple answer is that there is no other speed it could be!
So in summary, the factor has to be a speed squared to get the units right, and the only speed it could be is the speed of light.
[Answer to Comment added 3/8/08]:
Here is an attempt to answer the comment by 'dubiousraves'. I'm going to use some algebra, so stop reading now if you have math phobia! :)
I assume that you accept that the rest energy of any particle is some constant K times its mass, ie
rest E=K m
So we just need to figure out what K is. Further, its kinetic energy (at speeds much smaller than the speed of light) is ½ m v2. Now the total energy of a particle is its rest energy plus its kinetic energy. The theory of relativity says it has to be proportional to the factor called gamma, γ= 1/√(1-v2/c2), which is the same factor that accounts for the length contraction and time dilation. The total energy is thus
total E=γ K m.
When v=0, the particle is at rest and γ=1. In that case the total energy equals the rest energy (when something is at rest, it has no kinetic energy). Now when the speed v is a lot less than the speed of light (which is always true in everyday life), then v2/c2 is much smaller than 1. In that limit we can use the formula 1/√(1-e) ≈1+e/2 (this comes from a Taylor series expansion), for any quantity e that is much smaller than 1. So for small v, γ≈1+½ v2/c2 . If we plug this into the total energy, we get,
total E=γ K m≈(1+½ v2/c2) K m = Km + (K/c2) ½ m v2.
So to get the kinetic energy right, K needs to be c2. As a check, let's plug in K=c2:
rest Energy= K m = m c2,
total Energy = γ K m = γ m c2 ≈ (1+½ v2/c2) m c2 = mc2 + ½ m v2.
I hope that helps.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Obama's "Leader" Ad
This 2 minute ad is running in Texas on the evening news. In it, Barack explains why we need change, and what he means by it. Below is a transcript.I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message.For years, we've watched politicians divide us, seen lobbyists put their interests ahead of ours, and heard our leaders tell us what we want to hear, instead of what we need to hear.The question you have to ask yourself is this:Who can take can take us in a fundamentally new direction? I'm running to finally solve problems we talk about year after year after year.To end the division, the obscene influence of lobbyists and the politics that value scoring points over making progress. We can't afford more of that -- not this year, not now.I've spent my life working for change that's made a real difference in the lives of real people. That's why I passed up a job on Wall Street -- to fight joblessness and poverty on the streets of Chicago when the local steel plant closed.That's why I turned down the corporate law firms to work as a civil right lawyer -- to fight for those who have been denied opportunity. That's why I fought for tough new ethics law in Illinois and Washington -- to cut the power of lobbyists -- and I won.That's why I brought Democrats and Republicans together to provide health care and tax relief to working families. And that's why I opposed this war in Iraq from the start. It wasn't popular, but it was right.This country is ready for a leader who will bring us together. That's the only way we're going to win this election. And that's actually how we'll fix health care and make college affordable, become energy independent and end this war.I'm reminded every day that I'm not a perfect man. And I won't be a perfect President. But I can promise you this: I will always tell you where I stand and what I think. I will listen to you when we disagree. I will carry your voices to the White House and I will fight for you every day I'm there.On Tuesday, help change Washington; let's bring Democrats, Republicans and Independents together, not just to win an election, but to transform a nation.
Monday, February 25, 2008
KT Tunstall Explains the Loop Pedal
Since the loop pedal plays such an important part in KT's live performances (like this), I thought I'd have her explain to you how it works.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Spy Satellite and Space Junk
The US military just destroyed a spy satellite with a missile strike. Let's forget, how unlikely it was that the satellite would have hit near anyone if they had just let it reenter the atmosphere on its own. Let's also forget that this strike was a simple way to make a flawed missile defense system look good (I am sure that the path of the satellite was much more predictable than any real incoming ordinance). Let's also forget about the worry that the strike could contribute to the militarization of space. What I want to concentrate on is the possible effect of all the junk that the explosion produced, and the resulting danger to satellites and astronauts.The photo above shows about 10,000 objects of baseball size or larger in low Earth orbit tracked by NASA. There are perhaps 600,000 objects larger than a centimeter which are too small to track. Now if that doesn't sound worrying to you, note that objects in such orbits move around the Earth at more than 17,000 mph (27,000 kph), and the energy of an object goes as the velocity squared. That means being slammed with a 1 kg object at orbital speed involves as much energy as a 60,000 kg 18-wheeled truck crashing into you at 70 mph (113 kph), except that in the former case the energy is concentrated into a much smaller object. This is what being hit by a tiny object going 17,000 mph looks like:
So how many pieces of space junk did the spy satellite strike create? Well, it is estimated that the Chinese destruction of one of their satellites in 2007 increased the amount of space junk by about 30%. [It is fair to note, as Rampant Clam's Comment points out, that the Chinese satellite was in a more stable orbit than the US satellite, so what the Chinese did was far worse because it created much more long-lived debris.]
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Physics Factoid: Composition of the Universe
This pie chart shows what makes up the Universe. Amazingly, about 96% of all the mass-energy in the Universe is invisible in the form of dark matter or dark energy. I'll do posts on each of them, but briefly, dark matter is related to ordinary matter except it doesn't interact with light, so it is invisible and doesn't clump into planets and stars (unless you count these); dark energy is a mysterious energy which is causing the Universe to expand faster and faster, and may well be the inherent energy of space itself.
Of the 4% of the Universe that is in "normal" matter, most is in interstellar and intergalactic gas--only about 1/10 (0.4%) of the total is in stars like our Sun. Finally, all the elements other than hydrogen and helium make up less than 1/10 of that slice (0.03%--not shown).
[Image credit: NASA]
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Huckabee Can Win the Nomination
As I write this, VA was just called, and MD, and DC have not been called. [Update: McCain just won MD, which is assumed in the calculation below anyway.] [Update 2/15/08: Romney has endorsed McCain, so assuming his delegates will support McCain it is now extremely difficult to see how Huckabee could win. This does not take away from the point of my post: the press said a Huckabee win was impossible, when it was not.] [Final update: Huckabee has now conceded. Of course the point of this post was never that he would win, but that the press said it was impossible when it was not.]
I am not a fan of Huckabee. In fact, I find some of his rhetoric very troubling. But I am sick and tired of the media trying to decide the race. They were wrong about Obama for the longest time, tacitly assuming Clinton would inevitably be the winner.
Obviously it is still mathematically possible for Huckabee to win the Republican nomination. In fact, it is not at all unreasonable. Consider the following scenario.
As of now (not including MD & DC, VA's 63 added in), Huckabee has 241 delegates, and McCain has 729+63=791 delegates. Suppose that McCain wins all the remaining blue states (less conservative states) and Huckabee wins all the remaining red and purple states (more conservative states). Let's also give Huckabee Guam, American Samoa or the Virgin Islands, which have 9 delegates each. That is,
McCain wins MD,DC,RI,VT,HI,OR, for 143 delegates, giving him a total of 935 delegates.
Huckabee wins OH,TX,WI,MS,PA,IN,NC,KY,ID,NM,SD,NE, Guam, American Samoa,Virgin Islands, for 703 delegates, giving him a total of 944 delegates.
Huckabee would have a plurality of delegates. Neither of them would have a majority, so it would be up to Romney delegates to decide. Would they really pick McCain over Huckabee? I doubt it.
So, while perhaps unlikely, it is certainly NOT mathematically impossible for Huckabee to win the nomination.
And if he did win, the press, which is always so eager to pick the winner, would haven been proven wrong once again. So, dear reader, if you are a member of the press, I urge you not to jump to conclusions.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
KT Tunstall
I thought I'd take a little break from politics and science and write a music review.
KT Tunstall is a Scottish pop star who burst onto the scene with her debut album, Eye to the Telescope in 2004. Her big hits from the album are Black Horse and the Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See. In 2005 she won Best British Female Solo Artist. She has a fresh, lively style, melding interesting rhythms, singable melodies, and a raspy, soulful voice. Her newest album, Drastic Fantastic, was released this past September.
Most intriguing of all are her one-woman performances. She uses a looping device to lay down rhythm and backgrounds, which she creates by pounding on and strumming her guitar, stamping on a tambourine, singing, and even making kazoolike sounds with her hand and mouth. [Here is a post with KT explaining how it works.] The video above is KT doing a cover of the Jackson 5 song I Want You Back.
There are various versions on YouTube of KT doing other songs by herself, notably Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, but there are no album versions of her I Want You Back cover at the moment.
Which brings me to an important point. We all need to pay for music. If you are sampling songs, or want a version that is not available from a paid music site, then by all means use YouTube or some free music site. But if you want to keep listening to something which IS available from a paid site, such as iTunes, please lay out the 99 cents. If you don't pay for it, you're either asking someone else to take up the slack, or you're saying the artist shouldn't get paid. Imagine going to work, creating beautiful things that people appreciate, and then being told that you won't get paid for it after all because people found a way to take it for free.
Anyway, in summary, KT Tunstall rocks.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Who Won Super Tuesday
There will be debates for days over who won Super Tuesday. Clinton won a few big states by small margins, Obama won many small states by big margins. Their cumulative vote total was very similar. They picked up nearly the same number of delegates. Clinton won slightly more, but most of her lead is due to (unelected) superdelegates she had before. So the cumulative total of elected delegates, according to CNN on 2/6 at 10 AM, is Obama 707, Clinton 706.
But one thing is not in doubt: Democrats won yesterday. Let's assume that John McCain will be the Republican nominee. Well, in each state that voted, whether the order on the Democratic side was Obama-Clinton, or Clinton-Obama, they each had more votes than John McCain in that state, except in his home state of Arizona.
Here is a list of states and the order of results, with O for Obama, C for Clinton, and M for McCain. Sometimes direct comparisons were not possible because totals were in state delegates instead of voters, or there was a primary only for one side or the other.
AK (state delegates; OC | M 4th)
AL OCM
AZ MCO
AS COM
CA COM
CO (state delegates; OC | M 2nd)
CT OCM
DE OCM
GA OCM
ID (state delegates; OC; no Repubs)
IL OCM
KS (state delegates; OC; no Repubs)
NM OC; no Repubs
MA COM
MN (state delegates; OC | M 2nd)
MO OCM
NJ COM
NY COM
OK COM
TN COM
UT OCM
Now to be fair, there were three competitive contenders on the Republican side dividing the vote, and only two on the Democratic side. But consider, for example the deep red state of Alabama, where you would expect Republicans to be way ahead (300K means 300,000; all numbers from CNN):
Obama 300K
Huckabee 226K
Clinton 223K
McCain 207K
Romney 100K
Paul 15K
Edwards 7K
Giuliani 2K
other Democrats 3K
other Republicans 1K
Total Democrats= 533K
Total Republicans - Paul=536K
(I leave Ron Paul in a separate category, because I think in an Obama-McCain race, a good fraction of the Paul supporters will vote for Obama.)
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
"Yes We Can" Song
Below is a link to (and embedded lower resolution version of) a beautiful music video montage by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas about Barack Obama's central message of hope. It is political poetry stirringly sung.
Link to high resolution version:
Lower resolution embedded version:
[the video clips are from Barack's New Hampshire "concession" speech]
Friday, February 1, 2008
Obama's 2002 Speech Against the Iraq War
In October 2002, the same month that Hillary Clinton voted for the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" (that's its actual name), Barack Obama delivered a speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago. This video montage presents an abridged version of the speech, delivered by people from across the country. Below is a full transcript (from Wikisource). Virtually every word Barack said still rings true today. That's what he means by judgement. If you can honestly say that Hillary demonstrated better judgement about this issue-of-the-decade, then by all means vote for her.
Transcript:
Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.
The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.
My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.
I don’t oppose all wars.
After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.
Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.
The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not – we will not – travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.
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