High School Reunion

Yesterday I attended my 10 year high school reunion and I was pleasantly surprised and had a good time. From a cynical perspective, not much as changed in that the same groups of friends seemed to coalesce to catch-up, but this seemed to derive from continued connection and shared interests. It was great to see everyone and hear about people's endeavors. Most people were young professionals or in graduate school and those that were married were married in the last couple years, overall similar stories to Liz and me. Although I saw many people who I have had casual contact with over the years and heard about through the grape vine, the most inspiring aspect of the reunion, was seeing two disabled students from our class Andre and Tapua, both have had stable jobs for several years. Tapua suffers from mild but permanent mental disabilities and physical disabilities. She was always affable and gregarious and during high school our class was very inclusive of her. Over the past 10 years, I had occasionally wondered how she was doing out in the world. I was moved to learn that Tapua seems to have been particularly successful, working for the state for the last 9 years (several of my friends not facing the same challenges and having more resources have not had the same success). Seeing how proud she was of this accomplishment really made me feel good. She has permanent challenges and clearly will never have an easy life, but seeing her being a happy contributing member of society made me proud of what can be (in an Obama hope sort of way). Go humanity!

Liz is blogging

Hey Everyone, Liz is blogging, you should head over and check out her site "No Refunds" and she says it is decidedly less political than this place. Anyway, i think she will be blogger about recipes and stuff should be good.

Those Crazy Canadians

This is an old public safety message from Canada...

Humanity's Genes and the Human Condition
the genetics of psychosis

Last weekend I was at a symposium on campus called "Humanity's Genes and the Human Condition" organized by Sydney Brenner. The speakers were excellent, and I plan to put up a few posts over the next couple of days. The pictures below are from a talk by David Porteous about the genetics of psychosis. Dr. Porteous started his talk with an anecdote about Bryan Charnely an artist with schizophrenia. The pictures below are from a series of painting as he took himself off his medication and resulted in his suicide about three months after the first painting. The Final painting shown here was found on his easel along with his body. The complete series of self portraits as well as information about the life and work of Bryan Charnely can be found at this website. This really brought home to me the idea of titrating the chemistry of life. How do we define "normal" and who should decide the level of medication etc. There are no clear answers, but the "project" is striking.

Robert Reich has two interesting posts. You should check them out here.

The Illuminate Thread

My friend Brett Tracy and his friend Joe Miller rode their bikes from Chicago, Il to Portland, OR and down to Davis, CA. They stayed with Liz and I the other night on their way from San Francisco to Davis. They have documented their travels on the their website The Illuminate Thread. The are also having an art show this weekend back in Chicago with work from their trip.

Crazy!

For those of you who are not familiar with the Phineas Gage story it is crazy. Gage was a railroad construction foreman now remembered for his incredible survival of an accident which drove a large iron rod through his head, destroying one or both of his frontal lobes altering his personality. I had hear this story a couple of times and the rendering I saw of the spike was not that large. Below is the spike next to his skull (kept at Harvard).

On The Marketplace Blog

My question made on to the question of the day (11/14) on the Marketplace blog.

Protest Proposition 8

Help support equality for all, protest proposition 8 this Saturday, November, 15 at 10:30. You can find the nearest protest spot here.

It's All Monopoly Money

This is a little old, but I really think people should read this interview with Margret Atwood on Marketplace, she hits the nail on the head.

Atwood: OK, here we go: 'I knew from fairy tales such as "Peter Pan" that if you ceased to believe in fairies, they would drop dead. If I stopped believing in banks, would they too expire? The adult view was that fairies were unreal and banks were real, but was that true?'

Vigeland: And did you find an answer?

Atwood: The answer is that money and banks and all of these kinds of institutions that we have built up, they're all human inventions. Money is really just a sort of Monopoly token. It's not good for anything: you can't wear it, you can't eat it, you can't smoke it. Similarly with banks. Part of our belief in banks is that they're safe. If we stop believing they're safe, the bank actually vanishes because nobody will do business with it or put money into it. Wouldn't you say that's true?

The economy is based on trust and once that trust is violated it begins to unwind. We're are still in the process of unwinding. There is also an interesting article from the motley fool describing the uncoupling of the Chinese economy from the US economy.

A Day Late

I know this is a day late, but I just wanted to thank all our veterans for their service to our country. In particular, I personally want to thank my friends Marty Laye and Nate Coker and Nate's dad for their service to our country. I also want to remember my grandfather who served in world war two. I know there are many veterans out there, so thank you. If you see a veteran this week don't forget to thank them.

I guess that's me...

sorry to everyone I bothered!

Palin, You're Done!

Just to pile on here for a bit. Palin, you are done politcally. I think this is the demise of the unholy union between the religious right and fiscal conservatives. The intellectuals of the republican party are like rats leaving a sinking ship. The Republican party is done and they wont be back to for a while. The party needs to do some soul searching. When they re-emerge, the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will no longer be driving the party. Most of all, Palin will not be a viable candidate. I don't think she will be re-elected governor Alaska.

Yes We Can!

The crowd goes wild as Obama walks out to accept the presidency. What can I say, we did it! I spent the three days leading up the election walking precincts for the Obama campaign in Las Vegas. I have teared-up so many times over the last few days. To join to the choir, America, I am so proud of us. Thank you to all of you have worked on the campaign and supported us. On Monday evening after walking precincts I was challenged/accosted by a drunk guy in the casino/hotel elevator. Not that he wanted to hear my answer, but he asked me for one accomplishment of Obama that qualified him to be president. To answer, I think the most stunning accomplishment is the implementation of bottom-up and top-down organization. If he runs the country the way he ran the campaign we will live in a better place. It is funny, many fiscal conservatives think that the government should be run like a business (those parts that should be around at all). There is a Quest commercial bragging (in a non-political way) about how they built a communications network for the RNC in two months. The Obama campaign organization dwarfs that. I heard that the campaign had 8 million volunteers, that is 2% of the population working for the campaign. There were 24,000 volunteers canvassing in Ohio. The Republicans dissed community organizing, but it kicked their ass. I don't expect the Obama administration to fix everything, but I certainly have hope that we are headed in the right direction.

The most rewarding aspect of the trip, is that I feel I made a difference. Towards the end of election day, I was waiting by the car after canvassing my neighborhood for the third time and a group of teenagers drove up and asked for Obama buttons and a kid on bike came by a little while later. As I was waiting for the rest of my team to reassemble, a guy driving by saw me and pulled over to ask where his polling place was located. I told him the location and handed him a door hanger with directions. As he drove away he said Obama is going to win. A few seconds later, a woman driving by saw me and started cheering. It made me tear-up to see our nation taking the election so seriously. As we drove home we were listening to the local NPR station which was talking about incredible ground presence of the Obama campaign, just out walking their dogs or driving around people new we were there.

Finally, the morning after the election I shared a cab back to the airport with a couple of other volunteers, an undergrad from Berkeley and a middle-aged mother from Idaho. We were ebullient. When we got to the airport, the woman from Idaho said she was so proud of our generation and insisted on covering our cab-fare. On the plane, I was seated towards the back, so I had a view up the aisle and I could see many people were watching CNN. As CNN analyzed the results, they went to Nevada and showed a county-by-county view which showed a red state with two blue counties containing Reno and Las Vegas. The pundit explained that Las Vegas pulled the state blue. I clapped a little bit to myself and the next thing I new the plane erupted into applause. This is the America I want to live in.

Yes we can!

Jody on TV

My friend Jody, has flown to Virgina to work for the campaign and was interviewed on TV.

http://www.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/home/headlines/33699284.html

Stevo In Nevada

For those of you who don't know, I am in Nevada volunteering for the Obama campaign. I signed up to "Drive-for Change" and travel to Reno to help canvass, but about week ago I received a call from the Nevada headquarters asking if I was willing to travel to Las Vegas because they had a lot of Bay Area volunteers in Reno and 70% of the population is in Las Vegas. If I could get myself there they would provide housing. So, i talked to my Dad and he agreed to finance the flight (Thanks Dad!) and I am putting in the sweat equity. Here is a picture of me "Fired-up" in a shirt I made for the trip.



I flew out from San Francisco on Saturday and after a two hour delay due to rain, I was off to help turn Nevada blue. For those of you who have not flown on Virgin America to Las Vegas before, let me simply say it is basically the "Party Bus" of planes. The interior of the plane is super modern with an uber trendy feel with neon lights and personal interactive entertainment system with video games, movies, you can even track your flight on google maps in flight!

Upon landing, I grabbed a cab to the Imperial Palace. The cabby (who I don't think could vote) was excited about a Obama presidency. As I stood in the check-in line, I noticed the people in front of me had a Berkeley Bowl bag, so I introduced myself. It turned out that they were a group of friends from Berkeley and San Francisco who made the trip to turn Nevada Blue. Later that night I was getting dinner alone, when some Stanford students came in, but there were no more tables available, so I shared my table with them. It seems like there are ton of volunteers here. I have heard that the obama campaign has 8 million volunteers, that is more than 2% of the country working for Obama!

On Sunday morning I met up with my carpool group. Waiting in the lobby it was immediately apparent who was there for the campaign, just from the dress and general appearance of the Obama supports, many of whom who have found the stairs in the hotel/casino (no easy feat.) Below is a picture of my co-canvassers a group of artist friends from SF. I have found people as concerned and fanatical about the election (think checking the polls incessantly). We covered our rental car with Obama schwag.



We are based out of the local Sheetmetal Workers Union Hall.



Here is what were are up against, but I have to say from my canvassing there is very strong support for Obama. We just need people to vote!





The day has gone very well. We have canvassed more territory than hoped for and 50% of the electorate has voted early. The campaign seems very please with the way things are going. After a hard day of canvassing we made our way to Whole Foods, which is an oasis in Las Vegas, to get food that fit our dietary needs (think vegetarian, wheat free, etc...) as we sat there enjoying ourselves we realized what an image we were with organic food checking the poll results on our wireless devices. All we needed was some arugula.

HaHa. I am just watching CNN right now and McCain is imploring his supporters to volunteer for him. I just have to laugh. To bad he wasn't a community organizer, he might have been more on top of things.

This just in!

WOW! Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the first precinct to vote in the country went for Obama 15 to 6! Dixville Notch has not gone Democratic since 1968. Hopefully it keeps going!


Thanks for reading to the end. Don't forget to vote and remind your friends and family!