He's such an academic...

So Barack Obama just gave this big speech on race in America. It was eloquent and passionate and thoughtful and actually addressed both white and black racism and the underlying anxieties beneath both of them.

However, he also quoted _his own book_. At length.

Maybe you have to be a faculty brat turned professor to realize that Obama was shaped not just by his multicultural upbringing and the streets of Chicago, but very, very much by the ivory halls of the University of Chicago law school. :)

Random post of the day...

When you're sleeping on your side, with or without a partner, what do you do with the bottom arm? I feel like I've been consistently waking up with sore or stiff arm muscles, but I have yet to find a really comfortable posture.

Random funny baby moment: I'm waiting to do a Monthday post until I can get good video of Mac turning on the radio and dancing, his latest hobby. Unfortunately whenever he sees me taping he stops and focuses on smiling at himself on the computer, the narcissist. :)

Still, I needed to share a moment from Sunday. I asked cerebralpaladin to get Mac dressed and ready to go outside. He decided it would be fun to let Mac pick out his own outfit.

The results? Periwinkle blue onesie, yellow-green-blue polkadot capri-length leggings, , navy-blue horizontally striped socks, and a black corduroy jacket. And that was before I insisted that he put on the necessary bright red winter coat and blue snow boots.

I felt like I needed an emergency response team of "Queer Eye for the Straight Baby." I guess he'll never be a fashion designer. :)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Rest in peace, Arthur C. Clarke.

I first got to know Clarke through the Rama series, which were increasingly flawed but wove together religion and science in ways that most science fiction writers, contemptuous of organized religion, never dreamed of. There's one sequence where the hero simply walks slowly through a cathedral, looking at the frescoes of a 21st century saint who was martyred by a dirty nuclear bomb in the center of Rome. In "The Star," the Jesuits are the heroes. In my favorite book, "The Fountains of Paradise," humanity must consider whether the claims of a millenium-old temple on a sacred mountain and its devout monks have precedence over the need for a well-situated space elevator. He offered a future in which hard science and research does not imply an abandonment or absence of faith, even while challenging the narrowness of many doctrines of human faiths.

Above all, he had hope in humanity and its potential.