In his remarkable essay, We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore, Garrison Keillor says:

“Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this.”

He speaks to a point I mentioned briefly and have been thinking a lot about: the very different concepts of democracy and capitalism. Ralph Nader, who is considered to be a radical leftist, is clearly and consistently a small-d democrat. He is unquestionably fighting for democratic ideas. Democratic ideas are now considered to be leftist tactics to redistribute wealth or some such nonsense. This is really important, especially to those people who vote Republican because of their agreement with a certain percentage of the Republican platform: The Republican party is a tool of the rich elite in this country to, probably somewhat unintentionally, destroy democracy in this country. We will be a country, and really are now a country, that is ruled by a military plutocracy. This is contrary to the most basic principles outlined by the founding father of the United States of America — that we are a democracy. Look up the word “democracy” folks. We ain’t it anymore.

The disappearing breed of conservatives that Garrison describes as “the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships” should abandon the Republican party.

What bothers me most about the political warfare raging between the right and the left these days is that is it undemocratic. A quick gander through the dictionary gives one definition of democratic that seems particularly apt: Befitting the common people; — opposed to aristocratic.

Opposed to aristocratic. This is important. What is aristocratic then? Essentially a ruling class of the nobility.

So when we all talk about how great democracy is what we are saying is that government should not be made of of aristocrats or nobles and that is should be for the benefit of the common person. Under democracy we find something similar but still important: The common people, considered as the primary source of political power. This is something our fore fathers considered very important: that rights were not granted to the people by the state, the rights are first and government is formed second to protect them.

Now I don’t like George W. Bush or the Republicans and chances are somewhere around 50% of you reading this don’t like John Kerry or the Democrats. Fine. No problem. We need that debate, we want that debate and we should all encourage that debate. What we should not do is:

1. Prevent people from speaking their opinion
2. Prevent people from voting for the person of their choice
3. Prevent people’s vote from being counted

These things are undemocratic. They deny the voice of the people to be heard.

But I’d like to go a bit further in two ways. First, tricking people by telling half-truths (i.e. 99% of political advertising) is also undemocratic because it prevents people from speaking their opinion and it prevents people from voting for the person of their choice. We should have very high standards for political ads and require that they not be misleading. We have people making sure that I don’t mislead you about your shampoo, I don’t see why we can’t have people making sure we don’t have blatantly misleading political advertising. I’d love to just let the market decide but the people in question own the market. Thus the role of government.

Which lead nicely into my second additional point: the United States of America, in order to be true to the Constitution of the United States of America, and in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and other writings by the architects of this great nation, cannot be and will not be ruled by an ultra-rich elite. It is the duty of our government and the duty of the American people to make sure that our democracy does not become a plutocracy, which is just the capitalist form of an aristocracy.

I’m not talking necessarily about the fact that most politicians are rich. I think it is the natural interest of people from certain professions, especially people who are not scrambling to keep food on the table. I’m talking about the direct influence of money on the political system. From elections to legislation to enforcement the influence of big money is enormous. We are starting to believe that’s just the way things are.

To attempt to conclude, I am a capitalist. I believe in markets. I believe taxes should be as low as possible and still buy us a quality government. But I do not believe for one minute that capitalism and democracy are the same thing. They are not. Democracy is a concept that has a small parcel of socialism in it. Socialism is not a bad word at all — our families are socialist, our military is socialist. The reason democracy has a small helping of socialism in it is because without it the plutocrats can eventually rewrite the rules to be exactly what they want. It takes a very strong state to be able to hold back the onslaught of the wealthy as they attempt to take full control of government.

Don’t be fooled — democracy is hard to achieve and we have not necessarily achieved it.

So I’m a Dad now. This is my first blog entry on dadhood. I have typically despised the gushing “new Dad” phenomena. All of a sudden otherwise normal men start driving the speed limit, talking in baby talk and losing all sense of spontaneity. I don’t expect non-Dads to understand this post just like I didn’t understand previous new Dads. But I can report that you don’t have to turn into a pussy just because you are a Dad. On the other hand, it is totally weird the emotions that come over you when you have your first child. First of all and most obvious is the immediate and intense love you feel for your child. When Myles was born he was born C-section so when they whisked him out of the operating room I followed him and was with him for his first few minutes out of the womb. He was small and purple and he was crying. Immediately I felt an intense feeling of responsibility for him. He was mine. He was helpless and delicate and he immediately needed love and care. He held on to my finger as they cleaned him and and I rubbed him and spoke to him and welcomed him to Earth. As time goes on (he is 4 months old now) the feeling of love and intimacy grows as you bond together. Right now I am on an airplane and he is hundreds of miles away. If this plane went down I would cry like a baby all the way down, not so much for Myles but for myself and for the love and joy that would be robbed of me when I died. I miss him right now and I know in some way he doesn’t quite understand he misses me. He is my buddy.

I am a busy person and having Myles hasn’t changed that. I travel and go to meetings or go to my observatory. I work a lot and enjoy getting out with the boys for a beer now and then. I’m not going to hover constantly over my son or avoid living my life to be with him. Yet he is undoubtedly the most important thing in my life now. It is funny because I was very much on the fence about having kids. I wasn’t against it but I could easily imagine a life without kids. I still can, and I know it would be a life very much worth living. But somehow this take-it-or-leave-it feeling was replaced by the most-important-thing-in-my-life feeling within minutes of him being born. I love my son deeply and I look forward to every minute that we’ll spend together in the decades to come. Now I am on the fence about another child. I could take it or leave it. I used to say that I don’t see the purpose of my life to raise children. I still don’t. I want to raise my children in the context of my life, but I will never give up the ambitions and adventures that I treasure. I feel sorry for parents who do. I may not make every baseball game as Myles grows up. I may be gone on trips now and then or busy at meetings and such. I think my son will benefit from having a father that is constantly interested in learning things and doing things. None of that changes this wonderful feeling of fatherhood. I am not the most responsible person in the world. I won’t enumerate my vices here, but I am not your stereotypical Dad. I play in a band. I study astrophysics and go SCUBA diving. I enjoy the hell out of life and rather than having my children being something that inhibits that, I intend to live a life where my children enhance it. For you non-parents out there, being a parent is absolutely nothing to fear. It is fun and satisfying and can be an ultra-enjoyable change in context for your life. Whether you have your own children or adopt children, I believe the feeling is really the same. These children need you and love you and without question you will find that you need and love them, too. Being a Dad is cool.

The FCC has changed its mind and ruled that when Bono said “fucking brilliant” on national TV at the Grammys he was using “the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language”. They said it was both indecent and profane. Interestingly, reports Fox news story above, “the decision also marked the first time that the FCC cited a four-letter word as profane; the commission previously equated profanity with language challenging God’s divinity.”

Meanwhile, This American Life ran an interesting story as part of their “Propriety” show which discussed these issues. One of their guests has done study after study to try to determine if profanity harms children. He has never found any evidence that profanity in any way harms children. Furthermore, he found that children as young as 2 years old already know most swear words. Children old enough to comprehend Bono on the Grammys have heard and probable said the word “fucking” many, many times.

Well, what about the idea that if children hear Bono swear that they’ll think it is OK to swear. This researcher said that children learn these words from their parents. Who has more influence over a child, his or her parents or Bono? I’m very scared if the answer is Bono. It’s not the Bonos of the world teaching our kids to swear.

So if kids already know the words and perhaps even use the words, and if most adults know the words and perhaps even use the words, why are we so concerned about this stuff? I think our media can be mostly children-friendly but must it be entirely children-friendly? Can the adults in this world have media available to them that is not necessarily rated G?

First of all, I really believe that if your kids hear profanity or perhaps even use it themselves, it is not a big deal. Good parenting can make sure kids know what is appropriate and what is not. I will make sure my kids know that using language like that is for adults and is rarely appropriate. (And I’m a Dad now so I can say that). At the same time, I’m not going to freak out if me or my friends or some guy on TV swears in front of my kid. It’s not a big deal.

The bigger picture is this pseudo-moral bullshit that is going on. There are a bunch of church ladies (men included) who think they need to be the morality police. They don’t like gay people, they don’t like premarital sex, they don’t like swearing, etc. These people (mostly on the Christian Right) are using our government to evangelize their religious values. For good reason people in Europe and other places think we are a bunch of prudes.

Fucking relax, people. Republicans love to bitch that liberals want to legislate their lives. Here is their chance to put their money where their mouths are and drop these “morality police” issues. The world is not nor can it ever be G-rated. Don’t cheat your children by tricking them into thinking the world is G-rated. If you are a good parent Bono saying “fucking brilliant” is not a threat.

I attended a speech by NASA Director Sean O’Keefe at the Denver meeting of the American Astronomical Society. He lightly touched on many encouraging topics in regards to NASA’s role in empowering space-based astronomy. But most of his talk was spent defending his decision to cancel the upcoming servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In a nutshell, this dooms Hubble to die an early death.

His argument is basically that a mission to Hubble is sufficiently different from missions to the International Space Station (ISS) that it would take too long and too much money to prepare for and execute. He has said that NASA will adopt every recommendation by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). This means that there must be repair and rescue contingency plans, including having a second space shuttle on the ground ready to launch.

Besides this intellectual argument he also very much played an emotional card. When NASA fucks up people die and everyone pays attention. I can only imagine how difficult it is to look in the eye of a kid whose mom or dad isn’t coming home from work ever again. Even so, O’Keefe maintains that he is not risk adverse. He says being diligent is different from being risk adverse.

These are not irrational arguments. There is one primary issue that O’Keefe’s position necessitates: Is HST worth it? This is the whole issue. Is HST worth the chance that people die working on the project. Is it worth the dollars, time and effort necessary to do the work. The astronauts have said they’ll do the mission. Astronauts know better than anybody the risks involved in manned spaceflight. The HST is the single most revolutionary scientific instrument in history. Furthermore, the HST has capabilities that no other planned space telescope has for the next 20 years (and probably much longer than that). Almost every astronomer in the world agrees that the HST should be a priority for the foreseeable future.

A secondary question is: should NASA implement every recommendation of the CAIB? I feel the answer is no. It should not be required that every possible safety is in place for every single mission. We should weigh the risks on a case by case basis. There will always be risk but we can’t become paralyzed by it.

The cancelled HST servicing mission is already planned and ready to go. If they outfit it with the most important subset of the CAIB’s recommendation, it will be safer than any previous shuttle flight. The Hubble is worth it. It has fantastically successful capabilities. Save the Hubble.

CNN is reporting that the FBI is warning of suicide attacks in the United States. This, unfortunately, is a no-brainer. The terror that was been waged in Israel is exactly the kind of terror we are going to see in the United States. Ever since 9/11 I’ve been worried that we would start to see this. I don’t think it will take very many such attacks to really cripple the American way of life. We will probably be very willing to slash civil liberties after the 10th bomb goes off. It will be not be pretty and I sincerely hope it doesn’t start happening.

Now the best way to eliminate your enemies is to turn them into friends. I’m not suggesting we kiss and make up with the likes of Osama Bin Laden, but I do believe that our mid-East policy is so horrible that we causing our own problems. We need to have a balanced and rational and not utterly self-serving policy in the middle East. We need to be fair and we need to prove that we mean to harm to the Arab and Muslin people. This may be hard because the neo-Conservatives do mean them harm!. They have a Biblical approach to policy in the middle East and it is completely nuts. We absolutely, for sure, need a win-win approach to the middle East and this is a mindset the Bush administration is incapable of.

Now it is true that for some people, John Kerry does not seem like all that compelling of a candidate. He’s male, white, rich and a politician. He does not have that straight-talking charm that seems to motivate people who are turned off by the political process. He has a voting record that the Bushies will tear apart over the next months before the election. His views on some issues are complex enough that his words can be twisted into sounding like he is on both sides of an issue.

I want to remind you of a few reasons why you must vote for John Kerry. First of all, and most importantly, when you actually listen to John Kerry on the issues, he is right on. He is very, very smart, he really understands the issues, he has a lot of experience working within the political process and his views are based on (what I think is) a true desire to solve problems. He is not a slave to his political ideology like Bush is. As the late great Paul Wellstone said, politics is about making people’s lives better. It is not about trying to convert people to your political ideology. John Kerry is brilliant when it comes to the messy business of dealing with the actual issues. If you are turned off by John Kerry I would encourage you to listen to him directly on the issues and tune out the character-bashing chatter that the Bush adminitration is orchestrating.

Second, and less importantly, the lesser of two evils is still better than the greater of two evils. You may not think John Kerry is perfect but George Bush is a catastrophe. The Bush administration are right-wing extremists in a country that is almost exactly 50/50. We need a President in the center, or at least closer to the center than Bush.

Lastly, when asked, people overwhelmingly think that the government works best when there is some balance between left and right. Right now we have all three branches of government effectively controlled by Republicans. We need to restore some balance. This forces some compromise and in a country that is 50/50, we should all recognize the importance of compromise.

I believe John Kerry is smarter, more experienced, more honest and better equipped to lead this country. Even if you don’t agree with all of this, chances are you agree that a little compromise and balance in government is good. Support John Kerry.

Reuters reports: “The Recording Industry Association of America (news – web sites) began filing lawsuits against individual users this fall, and so far has reached at least 220 out-of-court settlements, usually for $5,000 or less.”

Let’s do the math on this. 220 times $5K is $1.1 million dollars. Now subtract the estimated cost of each such suit to the RIAA. I’d say the cost of instigating any sort of lawsuit is at least a thousand bucks. Maybe twice that. Conceivably much more than that. So they are netting, and this is being nice, less than a million bucks a year suing their fans and their customers. The RIAA is a group of companies representing artists. How much do you think Mettalica’s share of that few thousand dollars is worth? How much does Madonna benefit from that? It’s a complete joke that the RIAA has gone to war with their fans.

They argue: it’s not the money it’s changing people’s attitudes about copyright infringement. I guess they want to put the fear of god in file traders. Again, what is the net benefit to Madonna? For the most part, pissed off people. The common case of file trading is a common trait of fan behavior and fan behavior is what creates revenues for record companies. Even for smaller names, the economics are the same — the best way to make money is to have a lot of people that love your music. Don’t sue those people.

I don’t think people should steal music. In this new networked world, record companies need to figure out how to create a valuable relationship with their customers because that’s what their customers want. Your average music buying listener loves to buy music. The mp3 phenomena is ultimately a good thing for record labels once they figure out how to capitalize on their real strength, which is that fact that customers like the artists they listen to. The market for any artist is as big as the number of people that like them. mp3’s introduce artists to future customers. The record companies have been slow to react to this fact. They still haven’t.

Here’s an example:

“Bless My MP3” — Fill out this form for an mp3 from our label. You answer these questions and join our list and we’ll give you a personal license for that song for free. It’s legal now. All you have to do is join our list.

Now market to your fans. Offer them (for a price) early release downloads, artwork, t-shirts and crap, show tickets, movie tickets, cool mp3 players. Use the songs they register to profile the person (a la Amazon) and market their favorite bands to them. Suggest other new bands.

This is one little tiny idea of how record companies could use the mp3 phenomena to their advantage.

A new articile is here. Even more music enthusiasts being sued for spreading the word about the artists they love. Another few grand will go into the record companies’ pockets and a few billion in bad blood will be created. The RIAA is killing music. Let’s kill them. Any label in the RIAA should be boycotted.

SCO, the shit-ass company that decided they can’t compete in the marketplace so they will compete in the courtroom, is now turning their attention to the Feds. This is not so noteworthy but provides a nice opportunity for me to bash them. Here is a quote from the above:

“Free or low-cost open-source software, full of proprietary code, is grabbing an increasing portion of the software market. Each open-source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software,” McBride said in a letter, republished by the Open Source and Industry Alliance. “This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate.”

This is the scary part about this SCO bullshit. Almost everyone agrees that SCO does not have much of a case. The problem is, we have a government, controlled by the Republicans, which always sides with industry. The above argument from McBride will resonate with the trickle-down good ol’ boy capitalists. Now clearly you cannot even wage, not to mention win, a war against Open Source. The government cannot take action against the willful cooperation of developers to contribute to Open Source. They can, however, back ill-conceived efforts like that of SCO. I wouldn’t put it past them. The problem is, the Open Source movement now has the vehement support of IBM, Novell, Apple, Sun, Google, Amazon, etc. If you are on the side of industry you can’t draw a clean line here — it turns out Open Source is good for industry, it creates great software, it adds a ton of value and in many ways it is driving our economy. For example, the Apache web server software is a big win for a lot of companies. It is bundled with a lot of operating systems and applications. Many companies dedicate paid programmers to Open Source.

So, as usual, McBride is wrong. His motivation is lining his own pockets and should not be interpreted as any valid economic argument against Open Source. McBride is a loser who makes his living litigating instead of competing and that is anti-marketplace. SCO is going to die and they should die and McBride should take his anti-competitive bullshit off the table.