The Theory of Mediocrity

I've been working on this post for almost a month now and suffering from severe writer's block.

It seems like every few months some politician or pundit starts ranting about science that they clearly don't entirely understand. The outcome tends to range from humorous to downright terrifying. Take, for instance, the "series of tubes" incident from a couple years ago. It was relatively painless and everyone had a few laughs at the 84 year old senator's expense. (Ironically the series of tubes analogy is actually a fairly good, if overly simplistic, one.) But Senator Stevens clearly had no idea what he was talking so vehemently about. That's a dangerous situation with a relatively simple solution. We need to learn to trust scientists again.

I don't know when we stopped trusting scientists, but (as I often do) I blame the 80's. More accurately, I blame Reagan. Sure, it probably isn't his fault, but the culture that decided to elect an actor over a navy man who did his post-grad work in nuclear engineering has clearly been convinced that scientists are not to be trusted. Since then, and for as long as I've been alive, it's been an ongoing discussion of elitist attitudes.

I actually had someone ask me the other day why I should trust the experts on a topic over someone with a business degree. He called me an elitist and accused me of looking down on business majors. He didn't seem to care that it was a question of constitutional law, and when I offered to defer to his expertise on business questions he thought it was all a big joke.

Let's face it, experts are not always right, but as a general rule they know a lot more than the general public does on their subject. That is, after all, why they are called experts. They've typically gone to school for many years on their subject, and generally worked in the field as well. They don't just walk in off the street, declare themselves experts, and start pontificating on the subject (well, not usually).

Don't misunderstand me however, I'm not saying experts should control everything. Scientists are not necessarily good leaders, those are two unrelated skills. A good leader however should trust his advisers. A good leader doesn't have to be the smartest person in the room, in fact a good leader only needs to be smart enough to surround himself with people who are smarter than him and then listen to them.

We, as a society, need to stop punishing elitists. We need to stop beating up the smart kids in elementary school. We need to start rewarding the best and brightest instead of just the ones with a good throwing arm or the ones who can hit a fastball. We need to stop giving jobs to people who look and sound like us and start giving them to the awkward people who can do the work twice as well. And finally, we need to stop electing the people who make good drinking buddies and start electing the people who can outsmart us all.

My Words, Like Silent Raindrops, Fell

Okay so tomorrow is the "Day of Silence". The whole event is based on ending discrimination in highschools and colleges against GLBT students. It's certainly a noble cause and something that more people should put effort into. They point out that one of the biggest factors is that no one talks about the problems that GLBT students face. They have therefor chosen the only natural form of protest, being silent.

I'm going to give you a minute to let that sink in.

Yes, they're trying to fix too much silence by being deliberately silent. They explain it best on their "speaking cards":

"Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies in schools. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence?"

This message always bothered me. The whole concept that people notice silence seems to fly in the face of their problem that no one is noticing the silence. There isn't much more I can say on this. GLBT students need to be noticed. Stand up. Speak, shout, yell at the top of your lungs if you have to. Do anything other than stay silent.

That Thing You Do

In the ongoing saga that is the Democratic primary we finally have something new to talk about. Pennsylvania, home to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and probably a couple people who live in between. In the latest battle of what I expect will be a grand lesson in Pyrrhic victories Clinton has once again proven that she wins in urban areas. Anyone that was surprised she won has either slept through the last three months or they've been drinking a bit too much of Obama's Kool-Aid.

At this point one of them really needs to bite the bullet and bow out. There are valid arguments for either one of them getting the nomination, but neither one of them is willing to make that admission. Obama is in the lead with the delegates and if the general election were a national popular vote he would be the clear choice. Unfortunately for Obama we don't have a national popular election. We have an electoral college with winner take all systems in most states. Obama has won the primaries in 26 states at this point compared to Clinton's 15. But is it a question of quantity or quality?

Of those 26 primaries, Obama has won in 12 states that are considered "safe" by the Republicans. In other words, no matter how badly he beat Clinton there, he won't win them in November. Additionally 9 of the states he won are considered "safe" by the Democrats. By comparison Clinton won 3 "safe" Republican states and 5 "safe" Democrat states. I'm choosing to ignore the "safe" states for the same reason the candidates will in the fall. They're almost guaranteed to go to their party.

This leaves Obama with 5 swing states and Clinton with 7. The only swing state that has yet to vote is West Virginia which I will predict with relative certainty that it will go to Obama. In fact, while I'm here making predictions, I also predict Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, and North Carolina will go to Obama. I'm hedging my bets on Oregon and Indiana which I think could go either way.

Now then, assuming Obama takes West Virginia we have 6 swing states vs 7 swing states. They are: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

Obama took Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Virginia for a total of 55 Electoral College votes.

Clinton took Arkansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas for a total of 95 Electoral College votes.

To put this in perspective, the required number to win is 270 Electoral College votes and the "safe" democrat states account come to 201 Electoral College votes. Furthermore the last 2 elections were decided by less than 40 Electoral College votes. Now, this isn't to say that Obama or Clinton wouldn't take the swing states they lost in the primary, but they'd certainly have an easier time winning states that already voted for them once.

I also feel obliged to point out that had Florida and Michigan not been so Earth shatteringly stupid in holding their primaries early, Clinton's Electoral College total would get another 44 vote bump. In the end, while I think Clinton is more electable, I think it's more important that it be decided before the convention. The democrats are shaping up to throw away the easiest victory they've had in years with this dirty campaigning and that's bad politics.

The China Syndrome

Alright, so apparently Beijing is hosting the summer Olympics this year. I don't think this is news to anyone but it's more interesting than anything that's been going on in the presidential election lately. It seems people with too much money and/or time on their hands (i.e. protesters) have a problem with China's handling of Tibet, Taiwan, Darfur, Human Rights, and the Spanish Inquisition.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been awake at some point in the last 50 years that China doesn't have the most stellar record on dealing with problems the way Americans and Europeans think they should. But with a population the size of Europe and North America combined but only 1/4 the GDP it's a bit ill-conceived to expect them to react the same way (and that's before we even talk about the societal and governmental differences).

Don't misunderstand, I'm not defending the Chinese actions or positions, just trying to point out the western hypocrisies on the issue. Is China mishandling some of these situations? Almost certainly. If the Olympics weren't being held only months before a presidential election would we still hear politicians crowing about it? Almost certainly not.

Let's face it, as Americans we don't care about other countries unless they get our attention for some reason. There's a lot of talk about saving the people in Darfur but when it comes right down to it we have a "not my problem" attitude. We can't fix Darfur without significant military force and, ironically, most of the people who protest the genocide are also opposed to military force. This leaves me with a conundrum as to how they expect us to fix things. Are we supposed to stand at the border and yell at them until they do what we want?

So now China is hosting the Olympics and people are suddenly concerned about all of their problems. Naturally they're addressing their concerns in the only most reasonable of ways, by harassing the Olympic Torch relay. In the end no big sweeping changes will come from the protests. They aren't going to affect national or international policies because as soon as the Olympics are over the attention will be gone and people will still be dying.