12,008?

So I guess you know you've reached success when those who spoof you are themselves successful. This video is a spoof of Yes We Can, in case you haven't seen the original yet.

Engagement

"Hyde and Jenkins (1973) found that incidental and intentional learning conditions produced equally strong memories provided that subjects in both conditions were engaging in equally deep processing."

-John Miyamoto, 2008.

Why do I care? Because it points out something of enormous importance. Seligman and Csíkszentmihály have demonstrated that engagement is *deeply* related to happiness. And Hyde and Jenkins pointed out that it doesn't matter if students *want to learn*, as long as they are engaged in the material, they *will* learn.

So why the hell do we arrange school in such a way that it's *so* deadly boring/unengaging? They can still learn if they *want* to, but ... they're not going to be as happy.

Mr. Miyamoto is doing a relatively good job of teaching some deadly boring subject matter in my congnitive psych class this quarter. So Clinical psych is too depressing, and cognitive too boring. Social psych, on the other hand, both quite fascinating and not super depressing. =)

In five weeks, I'll be done with *all* my undergrad psych courses, and I can move on the the really beautiful stuff--the mathematics. Hooray.

Plural of the day

Hippocampi, the plural of hippocampus. Most people have one.

Let's say, theoretically, that your hippocampus was removed by an evil doctor in India who was selling them for enormous profit. What would be the biggist effect? Here's a hint: HM (So watch out for evil doctors)

Obama cruises to victory in Washington

So obviously the numbers aren't in yet. So the above is a prediciont. 100's of people showed up at my caucus location today. There were 8 precincts meeting there, and 78 people for my one precinct alone. We had 6 delegates to the next level, and they went 4 Obama, 1 Hillary, 1 Edwards.

Reports of Obama winning delegates 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 from all over the state.

including this:

43 - 2230 Delegate Count

Obama: 5
Clinton: 1

(The final tally was 4.44 for Obama and 1.44 for Clinton with a few undecideds. Had to have a coin flip to figure out who got the last delegate. Tails it is, Obama wins!)

Sometimes luck and everything else is just going your way =)

You gotta feel bad for the Hillary people. =) They were nice. It went pretty well. I had some fun discussions with neighbors I'd never met before. I got elected delegate to the javascript:void(0)
Publish Postcounty convention.

I predict of the 78 delegate to the national convention today from Washington today, Obama gets 50 or more =)

Guess we'll see.

Which is worse?

Can someone help me understand this?

People in Missouri are having prayer vigils over 5 civilians shot by a criminal lone gunmen there yesterday, and are apparently rather shaken up over it. It's at the top of national headlines.

But are they, or anyone else, or the national media, particularly concerned that gunmen whose salaries *we pay* continue to kill civilians, incluiding children, every week in Iraq? (The correct and bloody obvious answer here is: "NO")

Which is worse? (I know my answer. What's your answer?)

Is a reasonable explanation for this that Americans are essentially more human than Iraqi's? If you say not, can you justify your answer or provide an alternative explanation?

Proof that Brits can be just as silly (and rude, and horrible) as Americans

I just want everybody to know I'm *totally* on Archbishop Rowan William's side on this (which, based on my record, probably doesn't bode super well for him, in one sense).

Obama in Seattle

Today I went over to Key Arena in Seattle for the Barack Obama rally.

Wikipedia says it holds 17,500 people for concerts in the round. Major news outlets are reporting there were 20 to 21,000 people there. The building was packed. Mayor Greg Nickels, who was also on the podium, said he gave the fire marshall the day off and that we were over capacity.

I bused over on Metro from University of Washington at about 10AM. All the buses leaving UW for Seattle Center/Downtown were *packed*. I guess Obama is popular among the 30,000 undergrads at UW. =) I got down there a litte after 10 to be greeted by a *really* long line. I joined a friend in line (the brilliant Russell and his two brilliant daughters), and he had another friend who had been queuing since 8:30, who got in very near the front and saved seats for us. The seats were *awesome*. We were in the first row of seats just behind the state--about 20 feet from the candidate--separated only by a couple rows of people standing down on the floor.

Video here. If you look carefully near the beginning--the thin guy sitting on the left side of the stage is U.S. congressman Adam Smith. You can see my rainbow colored sweater behind him if you look between his legs. =).

I had some friends who got there a little after 11 and were turned away because the building was too full.

Obama finally came out after 1PM. After his speech, the traffic was crazy, and I had to catch a bus home and it took forever--I got home at around 4PM. Crazy long day. But definitely worth it. Hillary had *maybe* 6000 last night here in Seattle. McCain, who admittedly is a Republican in an extremely democratic town, is at the Westin Hotel in Seattle at a $2300/person dinner and then will address "the public".

I was yotta stoked to see Washington state governor Christine Gregoire there to announce her endorsement (and more importantly her superdelegate vote) for Obama. I'd written to her a couple weeks ago, and gotten all my friends here in Washington to write to her, asking for her endorsement. Obama is making huge headway against Hillary's lead in superdelegates over the last week or so.

Obama was just as kewl in person as he is on television, only more so (not that I've seen him on "television" per se. I watch stuff on the internet though). His smile lights up the whole arena. His speech was very very ... connective. It just *works*.

The secret service guys are even scarier in person than they are on television. They hardly look at Obama. Their eyes are roving, roving, with this unbreaking intense concentration. One feels he is safe with them around--that they'll spot any baddies before anything can happen and take steps, rather quickly and decisively, to prevent it.

Obama said if we raise fuel efficiency requirements to 40 miles per gallon, we could save all the oil we import from the persian gulf. How simple is that. Crazy! Let's do it. Go Obama. The caucus here and in 2 other states are tomorrow. So tomorrow we'll have 161 delegates allocated.

The kewlest thing was the way Obama took responsibility and time, right in the middle of his speech, to pause and get some help for a young lady standing on the floor near the front of the stage who was experiencing some medical difficulty. I mean he *noticed*, and stopped his speech to ask that a chair be brought for her, and to ask that an EMT come and help her. I just thought that was profoundly kewl. It's *so* easy in such a crowd to assume that someone else will help.

The Zen Candidate

In case you haven't seen this, or heard of him, here's presidential candidate Mike Gravel. It's an official campaign video. I found it made me peaceful for the first while, and then astoundingly tense. I don't think any of the other candidates could pull this off. What would it be like to have this guy for president of the U.S.?




Your reactions?

The candidates in Seattle

Tonite Hillary Clinton is in Seattle at the Pier 30 Events Center: seating capacity 6,000

Tomorrow morning Obama is in Seattle at Key Arena: seating capacity 17,500

Hmmm...

I'm going to see Obama in the morning. Hope there's room to get in. I'm going early =). I'll write about it for you =)

The Great Turkish Bombard

So a mysterious Hungarian (or possibly German) fellow named Orban, a master founder, offered to make some of these for the city of Constantinople, who declined the offer. So Orban moved on to offer his services to Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed paid to have a bunch built. The could shoot 1500 pound granite rocks a mile. It took 60 teams of oxen and 400 men to move one of these puppies. Mehmed set them up a mile or so outside Constantinople, and after 90 days of firing 7 rounds per day from each cannon, he breached the walls, and thus ended the Roman Empire, and thus did Constantinople become Istanbul.

They have a 30 inch bore. Dude. For 1453, pretty seriously awesome engineering. Nearly 500 years later, future engineers would design the first atomic bomb. Is that forward or backward progress?

Slicing and dicing

In "The Audacity of Hope", the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech that vaulted him into the national attention, Barack Obama said this:

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

So how right is he? Show me one national media outlet that's not slicing and dicing the electorate into conservatives, independents, liberals, white, black, hispanic, men, women, rural, urban, heterosexual, homosexual, blah blah blah etc. Astounding. Have "they" (we) been doing this all along? Why hasn't someone pointed this out before? Is it harmful?

from Mars Hill Church today

In the back page of the U.W. daily's (the student daily newspaper) annual sex edition today: A full page ad from Mars Hill Church (for the unitiated, that's the Seattle fundamentalist megachurch we love to hate) which says in *really* big font:

Does God think you're a pervert?

(For the record, their answer is *very* likely something like "Yes, God thinks everyone is a pervert. And unless you pray the formulary American Christian prayer to become "a follower of Jesus", you are going to Hell. And you deserve to)

BICBW.

What do *you* think? Does God think you're a pervert? For the record, any God I believe in does *not* think about me that way =).

Barack Obama wins Super Tuesday-More States, More Delegates!

Note--please keep in mind that the delegate totals you are seeing in the media include the count of superdelegates, who were not popularly elected, and can change any old time each superdelegate chooses. Clinton has a 91 delegate lead among the super delegates.

Which means that, for intance, right now Obama has an 18 delegate lead over Clinton among popularly elected delegates.

Go Obama!

And yet more notes from Super Tuesday--In Iraq, and Gaza

In Iraq on Tuesday,

78 civilian deaths, including:

Adwar: 4 family members (parents and 2 children) during raid by US forces.

The U.S. spent another $500,000,000+ to continue our occupation of Iraq. (that's just for Tuesday, February 5th)

-Israelis killed 9 Palestinians in retaliation for attacks on Monday that killed one Israeli and 2 Palestinians. No mention was made in press articles of how many Gazans have died recently due to Israeli blockades preventing heat and food from getting to many Gazans in the middle of winter.

Nighttime lows in Seattle this week are around 3 degrees celcius, or 38 fahrenheit.
Nightimee lows in Gaza this week are around 3 degrees celcius or 38 fahrenheit

Number of homeless in Seattle: 6000

Number of people in Seattle who will sleep tonite with no heat: probably much lower than than.

Number of people in Gaza who will sleep tonite with no heat: no idea. More than before the Israeli's tightened their blockade. Probably a *lot*. Way too many.

Number of people in Iraq tonight who will be mourning the violent loss of a loved one during the past 5 years: in the millions.

Number of people in Iraq tonight who will be morning the violent loss of a loved one during this last week: in the thousands.

Notes from super tuesday.

-Heard being chanted at Mitt Romney's speech: "They haven't!" Is that his campaign slogan? Nice ...

-Ann Romney said, referring to herself and immediate family: "Now I can say: we've been everywhere." (well, everywhere in America works out to everywhere, at least from a republican perspective, doesn't it?)

-Ann Romney also said, referring to her husband: "I can't wait for him to get his hands on Washington" (maybe I just have a dirty mind ...)

-Ok, help me out here. Is Mike Huckabee's wife taller than him? Can't they do something about that? I mean it looks like only an inch or so. Someone should get him some shoes that boost him a little, if his wife is going to be on the podium. Or something. Maybe it's really sexist. But ... well ... what can I say? Doesn't work for me. =)

-Janet Huckabee: "People have been giving [to our campaign] from resources that they didn't have"

-What is she not telling us?


-Can anyone understand what McCain's fans are chanting at his speech? I just can't tell what it is.

-Huckabee said "the pundints"

and

-"Keep your oil--we don't need it anymore than we need your sand" (huh?) (what are the sand


-Go Huckabee. The vision of an Obama v. Huckabee contest is beyond delightful.

-Obama wins 13 and maybe 14 of 22 states, leaving 8 or 9 for Clinton. And probably hold nearly even with her in delegate counts. Pretty freaking amazing for someone who was trailing Clinton by 8 to 12 percentage points in national polling a mere month ago.

-McCain emerges as the republican front runner--a man Obama I think can easily beat in the general, but who will pose a much more difficult obstacle for Hillary.

-By the way--is McCain crazy? He's 70 freaking years old. why doesn't he relax and take it easy? Being president for 4 years has got to age you at least 10 years, so he's gonna be like 80 by 2012, if he gets in. That's crazy.

Tornados!

Holy criminy! 30 tornadoes touched down already in Arkansas and Tennessee this evening, and counting.

Dude. Maybe I'm completely nuts. But I wish I were there. =)

The official "truth"

"Well we *only* tortured *three* people ... umm ... parasites. And they were really really "bad" people ... umm .. parasites"

or, Byron adds, maybe this:

"We only tortured, er - [whispers] how many did we decide?"
[whispered reply] "Three, sir"
"Three terrorists."

For my Washington State friends

Please be aware that if you want to vote for Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee, and want your vote to count, you have to attend the Washington State Democratic Caucus this Saturday, Feb 9th, at 1 PM. The primary ballot, which you may have already gotten in the mail or sent in, for the primary on Feb 19th is absolutely meaningless. All the Democratic delegates to the Democratic national convention are being elected at the caucus.

Yes, we are the weirdest state in the union. Every other state has a caucus *or* a primary. But not us! NO! We must have both. But the primary *doesn't* count--only the caucus on February 9th.

You can find your caucus location here.

You can register to vote and/or change your address at the caucus location. And you can vote as long as you're going to be 18 by election day, November 4th.

Yes We Can

Holy criminy, this video kind of blew me away. It's largely because he can inspire this sort of artistry, and the hope that drives it, that I'm more excited about a presidential candidate than I've ever been in the 16 years since I've first became elegible to vote. Go Obama!

One upmanship

This conversation with my not yet six year old daughter a few weeks ago led me to to imagine what it shall be like to attempt to keep up with her intellectually over the next few decades.

Eowyn: I'm a tiger. I'm going to eat you up.

Benjamin: Well I'm a bear, and I'm going to eat *you* up!

E: Well I'm a *bigger* tiger!

B: Well I'm a virus!

E: What's a virus?

B: (short explanation of virus)

E: (after *briefest* of pauses to digest virus explanation) Well *I'm* a black hole!

Thus does Benjamin's ship sink, having been disintegrated in whole by my lovely daughter. What the *hell* was I supposed to say next? Completely and utterly speechless I was. A black hole!?! No fair!