A Cry Heard Round The World: Kim Sun-Il died desperate and alone, but he did not die unheard.
Looking At And Longing For Mars: Reflections on a childhood dream.
A Robot May Not Harm a Human Being. Is The Opposite True?: Thoughts on the future rights of artificial intelligence.
Long After The Boys Of Summer Have Gone: What makes a relationship work?
Winter Of Our Feline Discontent: What the cat wants, the cat gets. But what DOES it want?
To Tell The Truth: There may be no honor among thieves, but can't we find it even in a few good men and women?
Should The Human Brain Retire?: We know that we cannot win forever. We know that machines will continue to improve. So why don't we let the human brain retire gracefully now, with honors?
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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Tue - November 2, 2004
Near To The Madding Crowd
Because honestly, wouldn't that be the perfect end to a day filled with political ups and downs?
It opened with me standing behind a man apparently as old as our country as he shuffled slowly—oh soooo slowly—to a table where he collected his ballot. "It took a lot out of me to get here," he told the volunteer. "But I wanted to vote. I may not have four more years, but with any luck, neither will he."
Now, the day looks likely to end with my wife, a card-carrying member of the Republican party, hooting as she dances a victory lap around my chair in an electoral college reenactment of Shock and Awe.
In between these events, I realized that:
• California is insane. We recalled Gray Davis, our Democratic governor, and from a field of Democratic candidates including the lieutenant governor, elected Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose previous professional experience involved discharging automatic weaponry at Richard Dawson. Now, mere months after Schwarzenegger scored stunning approval ratings in a statewide poll, more than half of us have again voted to elect a Democrat. What's up with that?
• New York is ungrateful. Don't get me wrong. As a liberal, I'm pleased by John Kerry's victory there, but whatever else one thinks about President Bush, hasn't he made "Remember 9/11" the battle cry of his term? The 9-11 Commission's report didn't exonerate the Bush Administration for the World Trade Center tragedy, but neither did it single out its policies as the sole or the proximate cause. New Yorkers may remember with sadness the exceptionally good reasons that this country went to war with Afghanistan, but Kerry's 58 to 40 percent victory today demonstrates that they also quickly abandoned the president who vowed to avenge their loss.
• We're still fighting the Civil War. Lincoln may have expected the Union to "cease to be divided" and to become "all one thing, or all the other." But it isn't so. Nearly 140 years after hostilities between them officially ended, northern and southern states still vote on opposite sides of the political spectrum, only these days, the south dispatches northern war heroes without even firing a shot.
• The Heinz Ketchup Motto is wrong. Anticipation wasn't everything.
• Republicans can't dance. And they need to be more gracious in victory. ;-)