orichalcum

It occurred to me that if I had been ignoring the election for the past 15 months and had just started paying attention yesterday, I would have been presented with these two articles:

1. Clinton Donor offers Young Democrats $1 Million Bribe to cast Superdelegate vote for Clinton.

2. Obama Adopted into Crow Nation - speaks about Native Issues.

There's also a third article about Bill Clinton speaking at Transylvania University, but really, Undead President imagery is just a distraction here.

If i was a political neophyte, I think the choice would still be pretty clear - and as someone who's been following the race closely, it strikes me that these two pieces happen to encapsulate a lot of, well, what I've liked about Barack One Who Helps People Throughout The Land Hussein Black Eagle Obama and what I've disliked about the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. It comes down to what being a Democrat means to me - and it doesn't mean using your power and influence and money to intimidate people, especially not college students (though this does explain the mysterious lengthy delay of the YDs in endorsing, despite their membership's massive support for BOWHPTTLHBEO). But it does mean reaching out to disempowered groups and minorities and saying, "hey I care about your problems, and I know about them, and if I don't know about them, tell me."

I'm all for helping people _throughout_ the land_ - not just in Ohio and Florida, not just because they're part of a relevant niche poll group, not because they're black or white or Jewish or Crow or gun-owners - but because that's the President's job.

Anyways, hopefully after today I can stop obsessing over politics for a while.

1. A series of Flickr pictures of ordinary people and their BMIs and weight categorizations:
The interesting thing for me is that I would tend to categorize, looking at them, most of the "overweight" people as "healthy," the "normal" people as "thin," and the "underweight" people as "worrisome." "Obese" for me definitely comes across as "plump," but not, say, the stereotypical gamer or middle-aged academic build, which is, um, significantly larger than many of the folks described here as "morbidly obese". How do other folks react? I think it's entirely plausible that my viewpoint is heavily skewed by the sorts of people with whom I regularly interact - although I should add that I tend to think that most college student women come across as really thin to me. All of this makes me more skeptical of BMI measurements, particularly after the perfectly healthy apintrix's recent comments on the subject.

2. New Study Establlshes Widespread Harassment and Discrimination against Women in Science and Engineering Fields:
No, Mr.Summers, it's not just because women aren't well suited for tech jobs. 75% of women aged 25-29 in these fields are given the top rating on performance evaluations, compared to 61% of men. By ages 35-40, 52% of them have dropped out of their profession. 63% of women in SET fields face sexual harassment. One woman, Josephine, who used the nickname "Finn," found that "Finn" received a much wider variety of emails, including useful career opportunities, than "Josephine" did.

What particularly frustrated me about this study is that one of the proposed solutions is doing things like tutoring women in executive leadership skills. And yes, that's important - but it reminds me of John McCain's comment on the Ledbetter pay discrimination bill that women needed more "education and training" rather than a guarantee of equal pay for equal work. Because, you see, the real problem is that women aren't as good as male workers - except they are. It's just that their male colleagues don't believe that.

3. Sulu (or rather, George Takei) announced he's marrying his partner of 21 years in Los Angeles next month! Yay!