fling93 loves fishies

Quick Thoughts on the First Debate

Just some of my quick thoughts on the debate. I already know I’m voting for Tyler Cowen, but I wanted to watch to see if anything interesting happened. Per Dan Drezner, The Washington Post has a full transcript.

I think it was a clear win for Kerry, both on substance and on style, albeit a bigger edge on style. It’s unfortunate that image and style will probably make the bigger difference, but as that was supposed to be an advantage for Dubya, this is a very surprising turn. But Dubya just took way long to think, seemed to be on the defensive, and did not look poised, once having a complete deer in headlights look after Kerry talked of the President’s plan merely being “more of the same.” He was also very, very repetitive (the wife remarks it’d be a good drinking game to do a shot every time he said “hard work”). He also looked a little too disturbed in the reaction shots to Kerry’s points, and seemed like he was often trying to interrupt Kerry, which gave the impression that he was worried about the damage being done (kinda like in A Few Good Men when Demi Moore idiotically says, “I strenuously object!”).

Rambling, Running, Ranting, Romping (but alas, no Raving)

Couple of totally unrelated things I wanted to talk about. So this is going to be one of those rambling posts that don’t really go anywhere.

Running

First off, I ran in the 28th Annual Bridge to Bridge Run in San Francisco on Sunday. I’d run it a few times before, but this was the first time in about five years or so. I used to be in much better shape at my last company, where we had a weekly volleyball game. Plus we had a co-worker who was an avid biker (and by avid, I mean he regularly does centuries), and he would organize these mountain-biking trips almost every week. And I also used to play some pickup basketball every week on Sunday. I’d be in such great shape that running a 10K would really require no extra training.

Nowadays, I don’t really do any of that. The company I work at is much smaller, and the only semi-regular sporting event is cricket, which I tried but isn’t really my thing. I haven’t biked in over a year. That pickup b-ball group fell apart, and I haven’t yet found another one. Combined with the fact that I’m spending a lot more of my free time writing for this blog, and I haven’t exactly been keeping myself in shape this past year.

But then, as I mentioned earlier this year, my cousin Rich entered a triathlon. Rich had never really been all that athletic, but a friend of his convinced him that this was something that anybody could do with the proper training. Indeed, I think that is true for a good many things, including writing (which I’ll hopefully discuss further in a future post). Being inspired by that example and knowing full well that a specific goal is very helpful for motivation, I decided to run the Wharf to Wharf 10K in Santa Cruz this year. Rich signed up as well (and my wife too, as a walker).

The Case Against Bush

Update 12/10/04: You might be looking for Ron Suskind’s New York Times piece on Bush vs. “the reality-based community.” I wrote this independently of his piece, and while it’s somewhat similar, I don’t agree faith is as central as he thinks. Also, Glen Wishard comments at Winds of Change that the Union of Concerned Scientists is not a nonpartisan group, so I’m removing them as one of my examples. And the rest of the discussion over there is also worth checking out. Also added a tidbit on Larry Lindsey.

I know this is a really long post, so I’ve broken it down into smaller chunks, and I’ve included links to the different sections that you can use to navigate and/or bookmark for later (and I finally also added permalinks next to the headers within the post itself):

• Flip-flopper?
• Cognitive bias
• Blind stubbornness is not resolve
• Ignoring your own people
• Hearing only what you want to hear
• Opportunity cost and threat prioritization
• The Duelfer Report — no WMDs
• The 9/11 Commission report — no ties with Al Qaeda
• The real reason for the war?
• Contrast with other leaders
• What’s a conservative to do?

Anyway, I try to stay as nonpartisan as possible on this blog, and it’s generally not too hard, as I strongly dislike our plurality two-party system, partially because I’m a moderate libertarian who’s roughly equidistant from both parties ideologically. So I’m not really joking when I say that I plan to vote for Tyler Cowen, even though he’s not actually running (indeed, I did). But that’s mostly because California is not a swing state. If I did live in a swing state, I wouldn’t vote for a third party candidate. Unlike 2000, it’s already clear that John Kerry and George W. Bush are very, very far apart, and I think it’s pretty clear which one is better qualified to lead.

Unlike Dan Drezner or Armed Liberal (who have now both come off the fence), I won’t try to keep anybody in suspense. I’d vote for Kerry. And this is because I think there’s a very strong case against the way Bush governs. I think we are better served with a pragmatic leader who will listen to and respond to new information rather than “stay the course” no matter what.

NaNoWriMo

Been taking a bit of a breather, in case that wasn’t obvious. That last monster of a post had been taking up a lot of my time the past few weeks. And I’m not going to have much of a break until NaNoWriMo starts.

Wot’s dat, you say? National Novel Writing Month, where the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. It doesn’t have to be great. It can be utter crap. It just has to be 50,000 words. The idea is more about motivation and the artistic process than the actual result. I guess it sounds kinda like an extended stream-of-consciousness exercise, but my impression is that it’s much more than that.

Electoral Reform, Part II: IRV, an Improvement

In Part I: The Problem with Plurality, I illustrated the serious issues with our current voting system, plurality. If you haven’t already read it and are not familiar with Duverger’s Law, I recommend you read it first before continuing.

Here, I’ll discuss one of the better-known alternatives to plurality, Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV. One of its bigger attractions is that it’s relatively simple. There are only two things you have to understand: runoffs and ranked ballots. I’ll start with the latter.