My Thoughts: Sarah Palin

Okay, so what do I think about Sarah Palin? I know that most of you have been waiting all weekend for me to get around to writing this post. No? Too bad. I'm going to tell you anyway.

First, I should probably start by saying that I thought that it was a good choice by McCain. She's young, charismatic, and she has an interesting personal narrative. Not to mention that she's a woman. I think it was classy of her (or do I mean cagey?) to acknowledge Ferraro and HRC during her acceptance speech. And since I was a Clinton supporter initially, I think I'm the target audience for this pick.

My news sources (and that's NPR, the NY Times, CNN International, and a variety of feminist bloggers for those of you who wondered - I don't care what Fox News says about this or any other issue) are divided about whether it's a good pick. Good because of the reasons I mentioned earlier but bad because it's harder to criticize Obama for not having experience, when the country would only be a heart attack away from having someone similarly inexperienced as president.

But I think I'm going to stay away from that here, and talk about identity politics a little. My understanding of the term (perhaps based on a Fresh Air interview I heard one time, but maybe not) is that it basically means that people support candidates "just because" of their race/gender/religion etc. rather than their actual qualifications/positions on issues. This isn't an issue for Protestant white men, just for the handful of candidates who don't fit that description. WASPy men are always elected because they're the best qualified for the job (note: this sentence is ironic).

But identity politics can work in another way. I might vote for someone who has the same race/gender/sexual orientation as me because I believe that an African American/woman/lesbian would have similar values as me, and might govern in such a way as to make life better for African Americans, women, and lesbians (note: I'm only marginalized in one way. I use these other ways as examples).

I should confess here that I'm sort of and old skool feminist - believing that sisterhood is powerful and that women should get equal pay for equal work - that sort of thing. And so I was totally with HRC - I wanted a woman to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling. I thought that the symbolism would be meaningful. And I guess that I also thought that as a woman, she'd govern in a way that respected women and tried to make their lives better. I'm sure that was idealistic, but there you have it.

I don't feel the same way about Sarah Palin. She hasn't defined her position in many cases, but Ms. Palin and I disagree on many issues that are important to me. She supports the death penalty and wants marriage to be only between a man and a woman. She supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She believes in "personal responsibility" to improve health care. And she doesn't trust women to control their own bodies and choose when to have a child. I don't know exactly what women's issues are - but these are some of mine.

And before I end this little diatribe, can we please stop talking about how pretty she is? I realize that she was a contestant in a beauty pageant. I won't hold it against her, but I fail to see how it's relevant in this election. "Sure," I imagine the pundits saying "Obama gave up a job in a big law firm to work as a community activist on the south side of Chicago, McCain was a POW in Vietnam, and the tragic death of Biden's wife and child inspired him in his senate career, but did you know that Sarah* was once a contestant in the Miss Alaska pageant?" The other one will say "Yes, she's a real firecracker!" and then they'll chuckle in a patronizing manner. Lets all remember that she's not the host of an MTV reality show. She's a candidate for VP, people. Is it too much to ask that we treat her as such?

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*Because we call female candidates by their first names. Makes them less threatening.

Barak Obama's speech

So, I'm doing something similar to Bitch, Ph.D. and watching Obama's speech and typing my comments at the same time. Only it's not live, because I couldn't stay up that late. So I'm watching the video from the DNC website. I know that only Sara and Katy keep reading if there's anything political on this blog, but I can't help myself. I'll post a picture of a completed leg-warmer tomorrow.

Right now he's saying "Thank you so much" a lot of times.

People are waving signs that say "change" and chanting "yes, we can."

Oh man, I bet it would be awesome to be there. He just accepted the nomination and people went crazy. The spectacle of this whole thing is something I've been talking about here alot.

He thanked Hillary Clinton. Classy. I wonder what his daughters really think of her. And also Bill - I heard that his speech was excellent, maybe I'll watch that later.

His children are so cute. It makes me remember how mean everyone was to Chelsea.

Now it's his personal story again. Wait - is he wearing a flag lapel pin? I thought that was a thing! That he refused to wear it...

Thoughts of the economy. Living in Germany makes me appreciate how little safety net American's have.

We are a better country than the past 8 years would suggests! So true. I think there's a lot of good things about the US. Good job, Obama. I want to believe that things will be better - and that we're better.

More chanting. I like the chanting.

George Bush is a punching bag here. Clearly he deserves it. Health care and education and the economy. I think that Obama has to be doing well on domestic issues. I hope that the idea that McCain as elitist catches on. He does have 7 or 8 homes....

He's hitting domestic issues hard. I think that's good. The economy is clearly not McCain's strong suite. I wish that he'd talk a bit more about health care or the environment.

Obama's daughter is falling asleep. So cute.

He's talking about the role of government. This is really different than messages I've heard in previous years. No more "the era of big government is over," but "government has a responsibility to the people."

He'll cut taxes on 95% of working families. Really? No more dependence of foreign oil in 10 years? These are impressive goals...

Good, talking about energy efficiency. Yes! Drilling is not a long term solution. Hmm, calls for "clean coal," and nuclear. I wonder how that's going to be taken. He also calls for renewable energy - wind and solar.

He calls for improvement in education. Always good.

Health care. As someone who can't buy it on my own, I really hope that he does something. This is clearly a crisis. For me, anyway.

Equal pay for equal work. It's amazing that we still have to talk about it. Hopefully it pulls in the 2nd wave feminist Clinton supporters.

He also calls for personal responsibility. I agree, but how does the president do that?

He's talking about what a bad idea the war in Iraq was... That's getting good reaction from the crowd. Good thoughts - "ending the war in Iraq responsibly," "restoring our moral standing," something about direct diplomacy.

Not a red America or a blue America, but the United States of America! Disagreements are patriotic. This causes more chanting "yes, we can!" He's talking about our common purpose as Americans. I really like this part of the talk. He talked about gay American leading lives free from discrimination, abortion, and immigration and the things that we can agree about on all of these issues.

I wonder if Obama (and everyone else) practice these speeches in the bathroom mirror beforehand.

I also really like this part. The promise of America, and the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech. I think this speech ended in a powerful and inspirational way.

And now his family comes out. I wonder if it's hard for these little girls to get so much attention. They seem to be dealing with it well. Here come the Bidens. Hugging, patriotism, streamers, flag waving, fireworks. Now comes the soaring music. Damn, that's a lot of confetti.

Even sitting in my lab at 9:30 in the morning I found that pretty inspirational. Hopefully it'll be reflected in the poll numbers.

Meanwhile, if you want to see something really cute, check out the video on Katy's website (right under the haircut pictures). Nell is such a quick learner!

In which the word "sass" or some derivative is used eight times

Those of you who know me know that my particular knitting style can be characterized primarily as "lazy." I don't like to used knitting needles smaller than U.S. size 8, and I'm not really into things like "counting stitches" or "following patterns." The result is that, while Tracey doesn't do shitty work, I do it almost exclusively. For example, I recently knitted a hat. The pattern claimed that the brim was for "maximum sass." People, let this be a warning. Don't try to achieve maximum sass. I think that my sass quota is very low indeed. I'm going to stick with a minimum of sass. There's no picture of the hat. I'm just not sassy enough to pull it off.

Anyway, Kristina was nice enough to direct me to a yarn store, where I purchased materials for leg warmers. Right, you're thinking that in order to wear something so very, um, distinctive, a person must have at least some level of sass (and we've already established that I don't). But I've heard that it's cold here in the winter, and my other option is to purchase some long underwear. I'll probably do that too, but in the meantime check out the beginning of my very functional leg warmers.

The fulfill all my requirements - knitted on size 10.5 needles, no pattern, and only a minimum amount of counting (every 6 rows for a new cable twist).

Anyway, I think that they're going to be as cute as can be expected of legwarmers (and sassy, too!), but I'm a little concerned that I'm not going to be able to pull them off. My thought it that I'll wear them under my jeans. Wide legs are in now, right? What do you think? I was perusing the internet for pictures of leg warmers, and I doubt I have enough sass to pull these looks off.



On the other hand, maybe I can convince people that it's very stylish in the U.S. Being an alien has it's advantages.

Today's theme: Sitting on my computer

Prepositions in other languages are hard, so it's probably not nice of me to use this particular post title. Someone who isn't a native English speaker said he was sitting on his computer the other day, and the image made me laugh.

I was thinking that I might comment on Obama's choice of running mate, but it turns out that I don't have that much to say about it. Biden. David Brooks of the NY Times likes him, and I'm with him on most of the issues (you know, after about 15 minutes of internet research). I also appreciate that he talks too much and says stupid things. It reminds me of, um, this friend of mine. So we'll have to wait 'till the convention speech to see what he says there.

Alright, so after thoroughly researching Joseph R. Biden Jr., I continued my internet browsing and decided that if my friends are all making mangas I would too.

Whadda ya think? The problem is that these things have sort of round faces and big eyes, and I don't have either. Still, I think she can hang out with Sara and Melissa's avatars.

Also, I enjoy the "Indexed" site that I've linked to over there on the left. When I was looking at it the other day, I found a card that might sum up my problems.

I think that a similar graph might be drawn for the relationship between "how happy people are for you" and "how often you remind them of your accomplishments." I couldn't think of single words for those ideas. But I suspect that if the axes were labeled in German there would be a single word for each. It would be long and consist of five word stuck together, but it would very precisely convey a single complex idea.

I also found this list of online personality tests. Since one of my favorite subjects is me, I took a couple. I found that I should never be told to shoot the people holding guns (because I panic and shoot guys with cell phones), that I associate white men with weapons, and that based on my personality it's likely that I've experimented with drugs.

And I decided that I'd try to make polenta.


I found some at the organic shop that Kristina recommended, and I thought it might be an interesting undertaking. I looked around for some recipes online and found a few I might try. I also have some jalapeños that I might try to use...

And that's all for today's post. I'm off to round up some food and do my grocery shopping. I also went to the yarn shop today, so I'm going to get a movie and watch it while I knit tonight. Clearly my life is a thrill a minute.

I'll be in my lab all day, signing autographs

Humility, like tact, has never really been my strong suite. Other people downplay their accomplishments, but that's not really my thing. Even when I've knitted a crappy scarf or something. I can't wait for people to comment on it - instead I jump right in. "See this?" I say. "I made it." At that point they're obligated to say "Um, yeah, that's really, um, nice." Unless they're Amisha, but that's not really the point here.

The point is that when my last paper was accepted, it was announced on the white board in the lab here in three languages. But since then it's been announced in a much bigger way.

That's right - Tracey and I have had our recent papers profiled in Nature News. I expect the calls for interviews will be coming in soon. I'm sure that I'll be very much in demand. You know, despite the fact that neither my name nor Tracey's appear in the article. Julia insists that she tried, but Nature kept editing out her attempts to blame us for the research.

Our names are actually mentioned on the Georgia Tech website news story. I've actually always wanted to be on the Georgia Tech website. I made it in the alumni magazine once (holding a stone crab and talking to Mark), but this is for something I've actually done.

I should probably wrap this post up now... I'm going to have to deal with the press and paparazzi at my door. I wish I'd worn something other than my "biologists do it on the bench" t-shirt today.

Bad News

Gentle readers (especially those of you who are scientists) I have bad news. Increased beer consumption is correlated with lower rates of publication among scientists. This study actually came out in February, but somehow I missed it. I found reports of this important discovery initially in the New York Times, but (and you should appreciate the dedication that I bring to this blog) I went to the original paper.

Here's the citation (it's available through GT), since it's quite likely that the link won't work:

Grim, T. 2008. A possible role of social activity to explain differences in publication output among ecologists. Oikos 117: 484-487.

I'll include the major figure from the paper as well.


I think that my major criticism of this study is it's scale. It's quite likely that the forces that influence publication rates in the Czech Republic are different than the forces that influence publication rates in other countries. Also, Grim considered only evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology. My hunch (and I have no data for this) is that scientists who work in these fields might consume more alcohol on average than scientists in other fields. Might there be some sort of intermediate consumption hypothesis? Also, perhaps someone can take a closer look at the statistics and comment on that. Finally, there's always the issue that correlation does not equal causation. Does beer consumption lead to low publication rates? Or do low publication rates lead to beer drinking? Or maybe there's some third factor (I think he tried to control for age, but it could be something like depression or marital status) that relates to both. I'll leave it to you to discuss.

Things that are round

I always try to choose answers to the polls (over there on the left) that will cause people to be evenly divided on a subject, but I can't quite do it. Tug-of-war is dominating. I like the idea, but Tug-of-war also makes me think of field day, and how they chose the fat kid to be in the circle at the back of the rope, and that makes me sad. I wasn't the fat kid, but field day was still stressful. The only even I ever remember doing well in was spitting watermelon seeds. I haven't practiced a lot since then, so I don't know if I'm still able to do it well. I did spit cherry pits out of the window of the break room one day here, which prompted the Germans to lecture me on the importance of liability insurance. You'll be relieved to know that I purchased it with my health insurance. Just in case I manage to break a car windshield with a cherry pit.

It seems like I meant to have a point with this post... Oh yeah - Katy requested earlier that I report the results of the women's semi-final soccer matches. I'm sorry to say that Germany lost to Brazil, but the U.S. beat Japan 4-2. So hopefully the U.S. will beat Brazil in the final and we can stay ahead of China in the medal count. I say "we" because I've contributed so much to the team effort. I think it's all the time I spent training with Michael Phelps that really pushed him to be so impressive in the Olympics.

Now I've titled the post, because I see a theme developing - the round things so far include soccer balls and cherry pits (don't say fat kids! That's not funny.) So the next thing on the list (I can't help it, I like to organize my thoughts in this format) is also round.

Saturday night Jenny and I invited ourselves over to Kristina's house. She's a good sport, so she made us dinner. We were hanging out when Charles called and told us to check out the partial lunar eclipse. So we got some beers and a blanket and set on a hill by the planetarium looking at the moon. I didn't take pictures, but it looked like this:


You get the idea. It was all very nice. The problem with eclipses is that anytime I think of them I end up singing the song. You know...

"Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart"

I'll leave you with that for today.