This is where I will be spending election day tomorrow, Precinct 414 just southwest of Richmond, Virginia. I am going, with others, to ensure that the election process is run fairly and to help anyone who has questions or needs help to vote. The polls open at 6 am and close at 7pm and we [...]

This morning a user on YouTube left a comment on my profile at that site. The comment was short and said something close to ‘like terrorists everywhere, anybody but John McCain.” I don’t have the comment because I deleted it. Later I watched a speech by Robert Kennedy and reflecting upon it and speeches by [...]

With our presidential election just a number of days away, I found it interesting to revisit the themes that Jared Diamond explores in his book Collapse. In this video lecture, Jared summarizes his thesis. In doing so he relates the astonishment of his UCLA students when faced with examples of societies that cause their own [...]

“The Washington Post reports at an “ear-splitting rally in the Richmond coliseum and a late-afternoon speech at a chilly park in Leesburg, Obama promised to deliver the Commonwealth in the Democratic column,’ saying at one point, ‘I feel like we’ve got a righteous wind at our backs.’ USA Today adds that in Leesburg, in a [...]

According to current Maryland Police Superintendent, Terrence B. Sheridan (who has invited the suspects to view their files before they are deleted) the surveilance campaign targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war. The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich [...]

I am writing this quick note to let people know what its like to volunteer for the Obama campaign in Washington DC based on my experience today. Two key takeaways: (1) there is no minimum time commitment, you can do 5 minutes, 25 minutes, an hour, 5 hours, etc., (2) there is a 60 second [...]

In my opinion access to health care is a human right. In implementing a health care system, other than the one that would naturally occur in the absence of government regulation, I think the challenging goal is to (1) design the system in such a way so as to prevent waste and ensure that the [...]

Don’t think that I don’t know. Know how you look at me with your withering eyes. I see you, cynical and old. You sit smug and cold in your own conclusions – that things have always been the same – that we can never change. But I say to you that we have already changed [...]