Posts

Posted on

Small Expectations

By now, everyone agrees that the presidential debates, as well as just about everything else about the race for the White House and other high-profile political contests, are a matter of expectations. A candidate does well, or “wins,” if he or she meets or exceeds expectations; they lose if they fail to live up to what the world expects. In 2000, Bush triumphed in his public meetings with Gore because the world — the media, especially — badly “misunderestimated” him. He didn’t fall down or throw up or start barking while the camera was on him. He thus exceeded expectations. He won.

A key tactic in the contest of expectations is to put a damper on what people might hope for in a debate or campaign. “Our candidate — hell, we’ve tried to stop him from humping the other guy’s leg, but we just can’t get him to quit.” So when the candidate somehow makes it through the televised debate without exhibiting the previously advertised weakness for leg humping, it’s a triumph of character. Expectations: Exceeded! Debate: Won!

None of this is news and maybe it’s not even worth saying anymore. But the really troubling thing is the way we all come to buy into it and accept it. Reading some of the blog coverage of the Alan Keyes-Barack Obama coverage the other night (such as on Archpundit, expectations were a major theme (Keyes scored points by dropping his usual combative, hyper-righteous stance on everything while on the air). I’ve found myself doing it, trying to guess how the Cheney-Edwards debate would be viewed.

I was discussing this (online) with my brother John last night. The game is troubling because the process of diminishing expectations plays to people’s most cynical (or at least disappointed, resigned) feelings about the way the world works. “You know, they say this thing is supposed to get 25 miles to the gallon. Figures that it gets just 16.” So even people who. like me, feel it’s desperately important to try to steer the country in a different direction from the one Bush and company are headed, start looking at Kerry with low expectations, just hoping they’ll hear something, anything, to make them feel good about their vote.

Bottom line, I guess I say, ‘Screw that.’ Refuse to play the game. If we don’t demand the best from the people we’re giving our votes to, we’re not going to get it. It’s healthy to want more from the people leading us and to be disappointed when you don’t get it. But don’t expect less. Expect more and make noise about it.

So that’s my well-meaning screedlet for today.

Posted on

More Smoke

SatellitefireIt’s Day Three of the big smoke. The sunlight this morning is a dull, hazy grey-yellow. A little worse than a typical day in Los Angeles; definitely atypical for these parts. The latest from the fire, up north on the border of Napa and Yolo counties, is that crews have cut lines about halfway around the blaze. The Chronicle ran a remarkable picture this morning — a satellite photo that shows the smoke plume. Impressive how far it stretches.

Posted on

Desert Wireless

Cimg2195_1I’ve got a story on Wired News today about a company in Montreal that wants to mobile wireless hotspot setup. The hardware, including satellite dish and a diesel generator, is built into a trailer that you can drag almost anywhere to provide Wi-Fi for disaster workers, film crews, or itinerant journalists and bloggers.

Posted on

Smoke

Cimg2331Monday: A beautiful, clear, hot north-central California autumn day. The wind was up all day, coming over the hills from the northeast. About an hour or so before sunset, I was walking down to the store and saw this striking arc of thin cloud, billowing out to the southwest; almost an illustration of what the wind seemed to be doing on the ground. It was breezy well into the night. I went for another walk after 10 o’clock, and the warm breeze seemed to be gusting down the western face of the hills. This is the kind of condition — Diablo winds, the local cousin of Southern California’s Santa Anas and a variation on what meteorologists call foehn winds — that makes you think about fire in these parts (the hottest, driest, windiest episode of Diablo winds that I can remember since I moved here in the mid-70s kicked up the morning of the big Oakland Hills fire in October 1991). High pressure centers, usually well to the north and east of the Bay Area, help set up a wind from California’s interior out over the coast. The winds start out warm and dry, and as they rush over the various spurs of the coast ranges and descend the leeward side, they get even hotter and drier.

Cimg2346_1_3Tuesday: There was word late Monday that a fire had started earlier in the day up on the border of Yolo and Napa counties, a lightly populated area a good 70 miles or so north-northeast of here. Though the acreage wasn’t large when I heard about it — a few thousand acres — what got my attention was the number of tanker planes and helicopters the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had already assigned to it — something like a half dozen planes and 10 choppers. That’s major. Those dry winds, which calmed down here overnight, apparently kept going up there, and now the fire has burned about 30,000 acres (almost 50 square miles, about the same area as San Francisco, if you’re wondering). By early afternoon, the air in the central Bay Area turned murky (the picture’s looking across to Treasure Island from the Ferry Building). Everything smelled lightly of smoke. It’s not expected to get better tomorrow.

(And before signing off, just want to acknowledge one of the best Web information resources I’ve ever encountered: the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology. Amazing.)

Posted on

Athletic Notes

Forget the Cardinals, Braves, Yankees, and Red Sox and all the baseball playoff heroics. Forget the Patriots and their winning streak. The truly memorable sports event of the weekend was the Bizz Johnson Trail Marathon, up in northeastern California, near where the Sierra Nevada give way to the Cascades and the mountain country opens into the Great Basin. Pete Danko, my friend and one of my athletic inspirations, ran. And he did pretty darn well. Way to go, Pete!

Posted on

Happy IPD

It’s October 11th, and it’s the Monday closest to the date Columbus landed in the New World. In Berkeley (and in some other places, too) that means it’s Indigenous Peoples Day. The city adopted the holiday back in 1992 as part of its response to the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival. It set off a lot of chortling, even among some Berkeleyites; note also that Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19, and International Women’s Day, in early March, are also local holidays here; what I like about all that is it’s a real-life attempt to try to look at history from a different perspective. (And I admit that I wasn’t sorry to see Columbus knocked off his pedestal; I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder that Leif Ericsson doesn’t get enough press, though he does get an officially designated day, too — October 9).

Posted on

The Bush Bulge

BushbulgeNever mind what the president actually says during his joint appearances with Kerry: Are the words really his? I have missed out on the fever of speculation about the humplet that appears on Bush’s back in some video from his first stammering, mumbling, slurring encounter with Kerry. The Washington Post points out 1) that Bush’s people only grudgingly give a straight answer to questions about the bulge and 2) that a new site, Is Bush Wired?, is dedicated to explaining the bulge.

My question: Does it really matter. What difference does it make that Bush has a voice in his ear telling him what to say, if he does? I suppose it would confirm the view of people, like me, who have come to believe he’s some kind of idiot (emphasis on “some kind,” because I persist in believing he’s not as stupid as he looks). But I can’t really think of anything that would make my opinion of Bush lower than it already is. People who like Bush — a species of citizen with whom I’m personally unacquainted — are going to be inclined to ask why it’s a big deal even if someone’s talking into his ear. Reagan fans don’t think less of Dutch even though he nodded off in public and had to be prompted by Nancy from time to time. So why shouldn’t W get a little help, especially when he’s up against a silver-tongued intellectual like John Kerry?

Posted on

25 Years Ago Today …

Happy Birthday, Eamon (he’s celebrating his 25th birthday at Japan’s Disneyland; ust talked to him on his cellphone, and he’s waiting in line for the Peter Pan ride; he says the crowds there — it’s a holiday called P.E. Day; yes, physical education day — are really intense). Anyway, Ea-chan, I can hardly believe it’s been 25 years since I watched you born at the little cottage on Prince Street.

Posted on

Campaign Notes

BushMy friend Garth has an important and timely contribution to the national dialogue over the presidential election (see shirt, left). I couldn’t agree more. This is actually art for a T-shirt he just made up, and my very own size XL version is in the mail (though I know I may have to contend with passers-by, even here in Berkeley, who feel that this is a crude way to express one’s sentiments; and I’d probably hesitate to wear one to a Bush rally, say, or in the state of Kansas. (Speaking of Bush rallies and appropriate apparel for same, NPR did an interesting story this morning on how the president’s campaign is apparently using Secret Service agents and White House staff to hassle and intimidate people engaging in outrageous acts like wearing Kerry or pro-choice T-shirts and to keep such hooligans from attending presidential events.

Posted on

Into the Trenches

Salon.com ran an excellent piece Thursday (it may be a registration required kind of thing) by a jazz pianist from Oakland who decided to volunteer for Kerry in one of the swing states. He wound up in Pennsylvania, and spent a week calling undecided voters and visiting bingo games and senior centers to talk to people. What I like about the piece is partly the passion that drove him to make the trip in the first place and partly his empathy for some of the undecided:

“What is touching about some of these undecided seniors is the responsibility they feel about collecting all the information before making a decision. ‘Well, Al and I are planning on watching the debate and reading some more and then we will probably make up our minds.’ Or ‘we just don’t know enough.’ It is the older generation’s inbred sense of the importance of a vote. It is a precious thing, to be cast with care and deliberation. Most of the seniors are leaning toward Kerry, but most are not excited by him. …

“… Elsa is 90 and undecided, although it says on the phone list that she is a registered Democrat. ‘Well, I don’t really know. I don’t like Bush, I know that.’ I ask her what she is concerned about. She hesitates and I tell her about my concerns about the war and that our young men and women are dying in a needless war. Elsa starts to cry. Her voice breaks up. ‘That’s about it … that’s what gets to me. Oh my.’