What political junkies like me live for...

The Globe has a story about their latest poll in the MA Governor’s race. It shows that after a brief period where the voters considered Kerry Healey’s arguments and her relentlessly negative attacks on Deval Patrick, they have pretty much decided to tune her out.

Healey’s strategy of raising Patrick’s negatives has not been very effective. Despite being hammered by Healey’s negative ads, Deval Patrick remains very popular among MA voters – 60% have a favorable opinion of Patrick, 27% have an unfavorable opinion of him, 8% are neutral and 5% don’t know enough about him to say. Patrick’s net favorability rating is still quite high -- +33%, down from +47% in September, but nowhere near Healey’s level.

You can really go crazy and read the entire poll, with tons of dizzying detail, right here.

After a brief dip in other polls this month during the attack ad onslaught, Patrick’s favoribility rating is back to where it was just after the primaries. The gap between the two is also the same: Back in early September there was a 36% lead for Patrick. This was a fake number which quickly fell to 25% and stayed there for a couple of weeks. After a few more weeks of Healey’s hard-hitting, woman-scaring, lawyer-demonizing vitriol, the gap closed to about 12%. But after the people got a good taste of what they were being spoon-fed, they’ve all but repudiated it, giving Patrick back his 25% lead.

If these numbers hold and are proven accurate by the election next Tuesday, I will be incredibly, immensely proud of my fellow citizens. Not because they’re choosing my guy, but because by all indicators they’ve taken this race very seriously.

There have been 4 fantastic debates where lots and lots of substantive issues have been discussed. Tons of non-televised forums have been conducted and there has been really comprehensive coverage of all of the candidates. I even think that Christy Mihos and Grace Ross have received, for the most part, fair and equal coverage (if not as in-depth). Their inclusion in all of the debates has been a testament to the media’s determination to truly serve the public’s interest.

The only thing that could really bring me down over the last week of the campaign would be some tawdry scandal and the inevitable mindless media frenzy that would ensue, or if voter turnout was low. But barring that, I’m feeling pretty proud to be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Coolest Nerf Gun… EVER!

Man, do I ever want one of these!

Studying the Obvious #5

Today, I’m going to refute a study that, on the face of it, sounds obvious, but is really a bunch of crap.

Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida has done the math and figured that vampires are a mathematical impossibility.

Why is this crap, you ask? Simply put the good professor’s assumptions about vampires were dubious.

He estimated that the human population was around 536 million people in 1600 and assumed that he first vampire was created around this time. If Dracula bit one person per month and turned each victim, who would then have bitten one person per month, the human population would have to had doubled every month in order to keep pace. Clearly, it has not, as we are only now approaching the 6.3 billion mark a scant 400 years later.

Several problems here:

1) Vampires don’t turn their victims by simply biting them. Everybody knows that you have to drink a vampire’s blood to be turned. They can be -and often are- very selective about whom they turn.

2) Vampires are known to hibernate for long periods of time. Years can go by between feedings.

3) The idea of Vampires, or similar blood-sucking, near-immortal, super-strong creatures have been around for a lot longer then 400 years. The Babylonian Lilu, Sumerian Akhkharu and Indian Vetalas are just a few examples. Furthermore, the preponderance of similar legends among varied and disparate cultures implies some common origin.

So a study like this has enough holes in it that even a layperson like me can tear it up. Do vampires as we know them really exist? I would bet that they don’t. But even if they aren’t real, something made our forbears write down stories about them… There’s something out there.

Studying the Obvious #4

Who didn’t know that this was coming next?

Everybody knows that scientists are just grown-up geeks who spent their formative years watching Star Trek, Star Wars and other science fiction shows. So is it any surprise that just a few weeks after the art teleportation was in the news, cloaking devices are having a similar renaissance?

The good people at Duke University have taken the first step on the path to a shroud that can render people and objects invisible. It only works on microwaves, but the principle of bending light around something to create the appearance that light is passing through an empty space is as old as magic hand-held laser pistols and projected energy shields.

But the girls locker room is safe for now. Currently, the only thing that this device makes invisible are the… um, invisible rays that cook our food.

Mess o'Potamia

Yet another example of how badly Bush’s blunder in Iraq is can be found here.

500,000 people have been turned into refugees in their own country since February’s bombing of a mosque in Samarra. 100,000 of these people have fled I the last month alone.

10 more U.S. soldiers killed yesterday.

I really don’t understand what the hell we’re doing there anymore.

A sad, sad day in America

President Bush signed into law the new Military Commissions Act, which, among other things, allows him to designate anybody as an “enemy combatant” and hold them indefinitely. No trial is required, no hearing before a judge where the government must present reasons for detention is allowed, and there is no guarantee that anybody anywhere will ever review the circumstances of the case.

This should really frighten people.

Consider this scenario: You are traveling overseas. You are out one night and you strike up a conversation at a bar with a person and a pleasant evening ensues. Maybe you are in Eastern Europe. Perhaps you’re in Israel, or China, or Canada. You share a few rounds of drinks. Maybe American foreign policy comes up and you express your disdain for some of Bush’s statements and blunders. You slap each other’s backs and share some laughs.

On your way home a few days later you get stopped at the airport. Security personnel ask you to accompany them into a room off to the side of the metal detectors. There you are roughly searched and questioned on how you know the man/woman that you were seen with a few nights ago. It turns out that he/she is a known terrorists and is under surveillance. Some of the folks that you were drinking with at the bar are members of a terrorist cell and you kind of look like somebody that was seen with him in Tangiers a few years back.

Uh, oh.

You are handcuffed, blindfolded and hustled onto the tarmac and into a waiting private, unmarked jet. You hear more voices in unaccented English barking questions and letting you know that it will go much easier if you just come clean.

After a few hours the plane lands and you are taken into a building (or maybe it’s a cave; you can’t tell because you are still wearing a blindfold). After another, short conversation with some new people, who now have Middle-Eastern accents, the pain begins.

This is not an excerpt from a Tom Clancy novel. Its not a theoretical nightmare scenario thought up by left-wing activists at the ACLU. This has already happened.

Just ask Canadian citizen Maher Arar. He was picked up by US authorities at JFK airport on his way home from a vacation in the Middle East. He was arrested without notice, flown to various countries that explicitly sanction torture and violently interrogated… For an entire year. Nobody notified his family. No charges were ever filed. His family showed up at the airport to pick him up and he just never got off of the plane. Only a massive, intense investigation by independent parties even revealed that he had been taken prisoner in the first place.

Again, this is not fantasy or conspiracy theories. This has all been documented and proved by court proceedings and independent government investigations in Canada that took place after the fact. The Prime Minister had to apologize and more investigaions are forthcoming. Read about it here.

This is just one of the cases that we know about, and it is our fault. Ours.

Every single one of us kidnapped Mr. Arar. Each American citizen tied him up and blindfolded him. All of the men, women and children in the US attached electrodes to his body and flipped the switch. We took a year of his and his family’s lives life away from them for no reason other than we are scared and we want to lash out at anybody who looks funny to us.

Instead of learning from incidents like this, we have embraced them. Instead of saying to ourselves that this was wrong and we need to make sure that we live up to our ideals, we have institutionalized the practice. We didn’t even bother to consider what some of our friends do in situations like this. Our indifference and ignorance sentenced this man, and may be sentencing others who are just as innocent.

But thanks to this law, we’ll never know.

Our Founding Fathers could never have imagined a situation like this and they knew it. They knew that it would be useless to try and anticipate every conceivable situation and write laws to cover them. They weren’t fortune-tellers. But they did now something about unjust imprisonment and torture. They understood that at the very heart of a free society is the idea that the government can’t exert power over your life or property without a really compelling reason; and even then only when an impartial a-political judge agrees.

Without that most basic of safety nests, how can we really call ourselves free people? And why do we want to live our lives any other way? How can we win if we do?

Book Report: A.D. 999

A.D. 999
By Jadrien Bell
ACE Books
309pp - $5.99
Raiting: ***1/2 (out of 5)

The war between Heaven and Hell rages on in this smart, quick , fun and very well-researched piece of historical fiction. Set against the backdrop of the end-of-the-world fervor that took place at the end of the first millennium, author Jadrien Bell (who is really prolific Star Trek writer Christie Golden) chooses not draw parallels between people’s irrational fear at that time with the Y2K madness that was sweeping the globe when the book was released. Instead, she chooses to actually validate that fear and weaves fictional characters, Pagan mythology, historical events and real people into a story about Satan trying to bring the world to an early end.

Alwyn is a young devout monk with a deformed, useless hand. Kennag nic Beathag is a pagan midwife from the Highlands. They can’t stand each other, yet they are thrown together by their respective gods to stop Satan from bringing about the Apocalypse before God’s anointed time.

The plot is very interesting: Satan is using the world population’s fears and anxieties about the ending of the first millennium as fuel to exert control over the major power brokers of the day. His main thrusts occur after he usurps power in England by manipulating the weak king Ethelred Unraed. He also tricks Loki and the Unseelie Court into helping him fulfill the prophecies in the Book of Revelation.

The death, destruction and devastation caused by raging hordes of Viking raiders, plagues and natural disasters are described just vividly enough to be disturbing but not so much that it makes you blanch. This is not small accomplishment. For the tension to ratchet up, there needs to be a feeling that bad things are happening and that people have a right to be scared. Thankfully, a nice epilogue at the end of the book allows the author the chance to tie up all of the horrific events in a way that makes sense.

Alwyn and Kennag’s characters are explored nicely and it is a pleasant journey hat they are on as they struggle with their faith, their motivations and each other. In fact, it is probably the brightest part of the book, even if it is a touch frustrating because they are such products of their times.

Smartly, Bell stays away from the heavy-handed religiosity that has bogged down similarly-themed tales. In his world, the God of Abraham & Mohammed co-exists quite peacefully with the Norse and Celtic deities. In fact, it is each strain’s greatest champions who must unite to defeat Satan.

Only once does one of the Celtic gods refer to the Christian God as “The One,” and even then it is not clear if it is in a tone of reverence or submission. Furthermore, at the end of the book, the same character talks about the “different paths to the sacred” and says that the new religion’s dominance in the world is just a natural part of human evolution.

Scripture too plays a part here and it is both extolled as vital and accurate, and derided as hopelessly confused. The entire plot of the book hinges on the fact that the prophecies of the Book of Revelations are Truth, yet time and time again, Kennag points out to Alwyn by word and deed that some of the Bible is clearly mis-interpreted or has been deliberately twisted. (Satan takes great pains to use Bible verses to manipulate the king and his court.)

It seems that the only religious stance taken is that God exists and He/She/It can work in many ways via many forms. The rest is left open to the reader.

There is fantasy here to be sure, but at just over 300 pages you can put this puppy down in a weekend. There is just enough real history inserted for it to be called “informative,” though not accurate. It is very thoughtful but fun enough that you don’t feel like you’re working too hard while you explore the ideas being conveyed. Check it out if you're looking for a treat... Highly recommended for anybody who enjoys historical fiction or fantasy.

Watch out, Superman!

No word of a Lex Luther appearance in this story. But the Man of Steel should be wary of space rocks dug up in Kansas.

Be on your best behavior

This weekend Boston is hosting the 113th annual International Chiefs of Police conference. 14,000 high ranking officers and department heads will be here, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, FBI head Robert Mueller and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace.

You can see the details here.

So when you see the drunken conventioneers stumbling through downtown tonight and tomorrow, leave them alone. They’re all packing.

Say it again, Sam.

I was going to write something about how frustrating it has been to listen to Kerry Healey over the past few weeks. I am sick of the anger and vitriol that she spews. I’m sick of hearing her rail against Deval Patrick on every slightest thing, twisting his words and making like there are cover-ups about past events when there clearly aren’t. I mean, the guy is human and has made mistakes; we all have. But come on, is everything really so dire?!

I was going to, but I don’t have to. The Globe’s Brian McGrory did an awesome job all by himself. Check this out.

You'll take me alive, coppers!

What do you do when you can’t get a job? Rob a bank… and go to jail. At least that’s what this guy decided to do.

The irony in all of this is that the prosecutor gave in to the man’s demands of having him put into jail for 3 years until he is eligible to start collecting Social Security.

Wow.

When the plebs go marching in...

I have rarely been disappointed whenever I have attended a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the Boston Pops. I’ve seen the Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker and checked out free opera on the Common. This is not to say that I am a patron of the Fine Arts, but I’ve kind of done enough to consider myself literate.

After reading this article in today’s International Herald-Tribune I’m even more thankful that I live in Boston and not New York. If it was the other way around, I may not have been able to afford even my casual, occasional forays into the arts world.

Apparently, its big news that the Metropolitan Opera’s new program to offer some choice tickets to their performances, which usually sell for $350, for as little as $20. The goal? To get new blood into the seats and interested in Opera.

The story portrays an air of excitement in the arts world and some surprise that the sales are doing so well.

"At all of these institutions, box office response has been overwhelming. The Signature's $15 tickets - which normally sell for $55 - sold out within the first 48 hours for August Wilson's "Two Trains Running," which begins performances Nov. 7. City Center's six- day dance festival sold out in three days last year, so the program was extended to 10 days this year"

It figures that some snooty artsy-fartsy folks would be surprised when they actually make art accessible to the peasants and said little people come in droves. The original $350 price tag alone shows how out of touch these guys are with the real world.

You can see a show at Symphony Hall for $30 all of the time. Sure, you might be in the 3rd balcony, but some of those seats are right on top of the stage and there are very few bad seats in the house. And the best seats? Well, even those are attainable. At $75-$111 you can get down o the floor close to the stage for about the same amount that you might spend going out to a bar for the night.

The bottom line is that art should be more accessible to all, and the fuddy-duddies who run the foundations and large companies need to open up their doors further. Their mission is to enrich society, after all.

I’ve got your zeitgeist right here for ya!

If you’ve never heard of Universal McCann -or as I will heretofore refer to them, “UniMac”- well, you aren’t in the internet marketing business.

I’m not in that industry, but I came across this 3-month old research study written by them while I was looking for something else. (BTW, how much creativity do you think that search engines have encouraged with stuff like this? You start with one train of thought, looking for something specific, and you get taken off on an unexpected tangent. I don’t think that I want more accurate search engines!)

UniMac conducted a bunch of surveys and focus groups in order to try and quantify how pervasive usage of new forms of media is among heavy users of the internet. The study is full of lots of pretty charts and graphs, but here is the headline from their conclusions:

“Digital fluency has become the zeitgeist of modern day culture with a younger tech savvy segment adopting new media platforms and leading the way, not to mention teaching their elders.”

Basically, just about everybody up to the age of 45 who uses the web is using blogs, watching YouTube and signing up on social networking sites at about the same rates. Most telling, I thought, was the figure that 71% of all internet users 16-34 are blogging. This, coupled with their other finding that 1/3 of all 16-34 year-olds are practicing digital piracy (AKA “file sharing”), indicates that the social and economic revolution that the internet has inspired over the past 10 years is only tip of the iceberg.

"File sharing is commonplace and hints at where the web is going – electronic social interaction beyond the written word."

This dovetails with a great article that I read in New York magazine a few months back. In it, funny-man/critic Adam Sternbergh observes that today’s 35-45 year-old set are just as likely as their 18-24 year-old counterparts to be into the latest trends. In fact, they extrapolate their “trendiness” into pretty interesting manifestations.

"When did it become normal for your average 35-year-old New Yorker to (a) walk around with an iPod plugged into his ears at all times, listening to the latest from Bloc Party; (b) regularly buy his clothes at Urban Outfitters; (c) take her toddler to a Mommy’s Happy Hour at a Brooklyn bar; (d) stay out till 4 A.M. because he just can’t miss the latest New Pornographers show, because who knows when Neko Case will decide to stop touring with them, and everyone knows she’s the heart of the band; (e) spend $250 on a pair of jeans that are artfully shredded to look like they just fell through a wheat thresher and are designed, eventually, to artfully fall totally apart; (f) decide that Sufjan Stevens is the perfect music to play for her 2-year-old, because, let’s face it, 2-year-olds have lousy taste in music, and we will not listen to the Wiggles in this house; (g) wear sneakers as a fashion statement; (h) wear the same vintage New Balance sneakers that he wore on his first day of school in the seventh grade as a fashion statement; (i) wear said sneakers to the office; (j) quit the office job because—you know what?—screw the office and screw jockeying for that promotion to VP, because isn’t promotion just another word for “slavery”?; (k) and besides, now that she’s a freelancer, working on her own projects, on her own terms, it’s that much easier to kick off in the middle of the week for a quick snowboarding trip to Sugarbush, because she’s got to have some balance, right? And she can write it off, too, because who knows? She might bump into Spike Jonze on the slopes; (l) wear a Misfits T-shirt; (m) make his 2-year-old wear a Misfits T-shirt; (n) never shave; (o) take pride in never shaving; (p) take pride in never shaving while spending $200 on a bedhead haircut and $600 on a messenger bag, because, seriously, only his grandfather or some frat-boy Wall Street flunky still carries a briefcase; or (q) all of the above?"

There’s some Upper-West-Side pretentiousness packed into that lead, but you get the idea. The generation gap is closing fast, and my generation (the Gen-Xers) are at the forefront of the change.

Folks born in the early and mid-1970s are old enough to remember what the world was like without the internet. We can recall when Star Wars represented groundbreaking, cutting-edge special effects. We remember when there were no cell phones and when beepers were all the rage (posting messages onto beepers using numbers was the precursor to IM-ing). At the same time, we were young enough when the technology revolution hit that we could adapt to it and absorb it into our consciousness. We trail blazed on AOL and helped drive the development of broadband networks with our insatiable appetite for MP3s and porn.

Your welcome, world.

I think that in addition to spurring new ways to do business and making the world more “flat,” the Internet Revolution has also empowered individuals to be trailblazers. There’s so much disparate stuff on the web that you almost have to innovate every day in order to make sense of it all for yourself. You are forced to always be exploring and changing your methodology; there is no real chance to get set in your ways.

A good example of this constant evolution can be found here. CNN has an AP story about the theory that our culture’s fascination with social networking sites may be nearing an apex.

"As the novelty of their wired lives wears off, they're also are getting more sophisticated about the way they use such tools as social networking and text and instant messaging -- not just constantly using them because they're there.

“I think we're at the very beginning of them reaching a saturation point,” says Bugeja, director of Iowa State's journalism school and author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.

It seems that we may have gotten through the “wow” phase of these new way of communicating and we are now actively trying to find the best ways to take advantage of them in our lives. For some, that may even mean dropping them altogether.

“The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt," Henderson wrote in a column in the student newspaper at Iowa State University, where he studies history. “It seems we have lost, to some degree, that special depth that true friendship entails.”

So, after just 18 months, we are already starting to talk about how this particular phase of internet development may have run it’s course. I wonder what the next iteration will be? Which technologies will be merged and how will they revolutionize how we communicate, collaborate and socialize?

It’s an amazing time to be alive.

Search This!!!

The Globe got it wrong today.

In their editorial, “Careful Searches on the T” they endorse the MBTA’s new policy of randomly searching passengers for explosives. While the paper may think that this “makes practical sense,” I most certainly do not.

If I have done nothing wrong, if I am not acting suspiciously, then the government should not be able to require me to submit to a search in order to use public transportation. Its that simple.

If you want to strip-search every single person who enters an airport, fine. If you want to install metal detectors at every train station and forbid all dangerous materials as a requirement for entering the system, I would not have a problem with that, either. But to have agents of the government singling out people at “random” for searches… That’s just unacceptable to me.

You wanna search my bag? Get yourself a warrant. Or have some damn good probable cause.

I may end up walking to work a lot from now on because I’m going to be wearing a bright red button every day that reads: “I DO NOT CONSENT TO A SEARCH.” I will document every time that I am stopped here and will be sure to note the name and badge number of any officer who asks me to leave the system for refusing a search.

Stay tuned… and don’t submit!

Nobel Awards

One of the reasons that I point out crazy/stupid research studies (as I have mentioned before) is because I once had a subscription to the journal Science, and ever since I’ve been fascinated by scientific studies in general. But the other reason is because I attended a couple of the first Ig Nobel award ceremonies back in college and I love the idea of recognizing scientists who do useless, funny or just plain stupid research projects that ultimately make you think.

This year’s ceremony took place last night and you can read about it here and here.

My favorite of this year’s winners was Dr. Lynn Halpern, who tried to figure out why humans hate the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. (Leftover biological programming.) Tomorrow, if you so desire, you can attend a free, public discussion session with the winners at MIT’s Stata Center in Cambridge at 1:00pm

The 16-year old event gets bigger every year. I can remember when the ceremony was held in a random auditorium at MIT, with the “winners” rarely showing up to accept their awards. These days, however, Nobel laureates (that’s real Nobel Prize winners) gleefully participate in the pageant and the winners are eager to be on hand. 7,000 nominations were received for consideration this year from scientists, corporations and governments and even more are expected next year.

According to The Guardian, some in the scientific community are starting to view the Ig Nobels with as much prestige as their much more lauded cousins.

I’m with them.

Culpa Me-a?! Culpa You-a!!

Deval Patrick made a Mea Culpa yesterday in response to the whole LaGeuer situation. He apologized for making comments about the level of his involvement in the case (which amounted to a couple of letters over 4 years and a single donation to pay for a DNA test) before he has researched his records fully. His involvement took place while he was running the Justice Department’s anti-racism division and, subsequently, while he was running Coca-Cola.

Given that he was not an activist for the cause and merely voiced his support for a re-examination of the evidence, and that he was pretty busy during that time, its reasonable to expect that he may have forgotten all of the details of the situation 5-8 years on.

“In 2001, we were a blessed family, and we were able to make contributions in excess of $100,000 and, frankly, I couldn't tell you, in detail, what any one of them was,” Patrick said, adding later, “I appreciate that people are very skeptical about that, but I have a lot of stuff on my plate.”

Perhaps the haranguing by the Globe will stop now.

What will really prove the point that I tried to make yesterday will be if the Globe decides to spend some time/resources examining Deval’s decision-making skills. Now that the headline-making “Gotcha!” aspect of the story is spent, will they bother with the time-consuming, just as important examination of the underlying issue that they raised?

Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said Patrick made an error in
judgment by standing up for LaGuer, but “he wasn't alone in making it.”

“The question now is -- is it a pattern,” she said. “The way Deval Patrick
puts this to rest is to do what he started to do today. Rule number one -- never answer a question you don't have an answer for, and two -- apologize, which he did.”

This, like yesterday, leads me back to Kerry Healey.

Is it just me or does she sound more despicable each and every day? Wednesday, she characterized Deval’s involvement with the LaGeuer case as a sign that he supports convicted rapists instead of their victims. Yesterday, she called him a liar, refusing to believe his apology and explanation.

“We aren't getting a straight line,” Healey told reporters before addressing students at a Wilmington middle school. “I think it's important, because honesty is always important in government.” She then added, “Did he not remember he donated money to help exonerate this violent rapist?”

Also released yesterday was a new poll by 7News and Suffolk University. It shows that even after a sold debate performance where she fixed her disdainful, arrogant attack-dog image from the first debate, and a week of attack ads, as well as several days of negative coverage of Patrick in the Globe, she hasn’t made up any ground since the Primary last month. The score? Patrick 49%, Healey 28%, Mihos 6%, Ross 1%, Undecided 16%.

Even if all of the undecideds broker her way, she’d still lose. Maybe its time for her to realize that “Attack! Attack! Attack!” isn’t working.

Studying the Obvious #3 - Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!

This is nowhere near “obvious,” but it is interesting nonetheless: It appears that toking a few will not only help you forget stuff by killing brain cells, but it can also help you remember stuff… by killing brain cells.

If you’re not stoned but still scratching your head in confusion, check this out. It seems that the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, which can kill brain cells when you smoke too much, also blocks the proteins that clump together in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s.

Which begs the question; if you smoke a lot and start forgetting stuff, how can you tell what the cause is?

Brave New World

Star Trek references will be all over the web during the coming days, as word gets out about the successful teleportation experiment at the Niels Bohr Institute. This wasn’t a duplication of the well-known experiment a few years ago where a particle of light was sent from one spot to another. It wasn’t even a repeat of the teleportation of a single atom over a few millimeters 2 years back.

No, these guys sent both light and matter a half meter.

To this day, instantaneous transportation is the stuff of geek fantasies (see NBC’s new show “Heroes”), but the first practical applications of this kind of Quantum Optics will revolutionize the way that we communicate rather than the way that we travel.

Currently, we send messages along established networks that require substantial investment to develop and maintain. Instead of transmitting your e-mail or phone call, imagine being able to teleport it from one point to another. No more wires needed. No satellites. In theory, we could communicate with space probes with no time delay. Real-time control of the probes on Mars or other planets would become a reality, cutting development time for missions drastically.

Your privacy will be assured, as it would be impossible to intercept information teleported from one point in space-time to another.

This doesn’t even get into the effect that it would have on our computers. Processors would be able to send massive amounts of information with little need for increased physical components. The space and energy limitations that we are coming up against now in the chip industry could very well disappear in the coming decade or two.

After that? The machines take over.

Grasping at Straws?

The Boston Globe has been all over Deval Patrick for the past 2 days. They’ve got themselves a story and they are doggedly pursuing it. The topic? Deval’s support of convicted rapist Benjamin LaGeur’s drive for a new trial & DNA testing last decade.

For those who don’t remember, LaGeur was convicted in 1983 of a vicious attack in Leominster where his neighbor was savagely beaten and raped. Ever since, he has maintained that the victim mistook him for somebody else. He has also pointed out problems with the chain of custody of the evidence that was presented against him. The fact that he is black and was living in mostly-white suburbs filled with folks who had recently fled Boston after the racial strife of the 70s also lent credence to his arguments.

After 15 years of courting high-profile politicians, social activists, the Innocence Project and the media, he finally won his long-sought DNA testing of the evidence. The result? The DNA was a match.

LaGeur is still behind bars, though he continues to maintain his innocence.

(Incidentally, one has to wonder why police departments and district attorney offices fight DNA tests. What’s wrong with confirming convictions or making sure that they got the right person? That’s another column, though.)

In addition to being a rapist, Benjamin LaGeur is a con artist, to be sure. And the fact that Mr. Patrick got caught up in his exhortations of innocence do raise legitimate concerns over his ability to make sound decisions. It’s a valid issue for voters to consider before casting a vote for him. Unfortunately, the tone and driving force behind these stories smacks of “Gotcha” journalism.

The Globe’s coverage is peppered with pointed highlights of inconsistencies with Duval Patrick’s account of when and how he was involved with this case. They note how he told the AP that he hadn’t been involved in the case for “15 years” and then released an e-mail saying that his last involvement was a letter written on LaGeur’s behalf (advocating for the DNA test) “10 years ago.”

When were the letters written? 6 years back.

Heavens to Murgatroid!!!

When asked, Deval couldn’t remember the exact dates of a letter that he wrote during the previous decade. Did he deny writing them? Did he deny involvement? Did he disavow his position?

Not hardly. To the Globe’s credit, they did include the meat of Deval’s position from his e-mail statement, though they added the caveat that he only “referred vaguely” to the eventual DNA test:

“My sole involvement in this case was more than 10 years ago, when I wrote a letter on Mr. LaGuer's behalf. At the time, there were serious unanswered issues concerning the facts and the fairness of the original trial.

“I understand that, in addition to other review, DNA testing was done in 2002,” he said. “On the basis of my review, I believe that the right outcome has been achieved and that justice has been served.”

There didn’t seem to be anything “vague” about the DNA test in that statement. In fact, if you hit CTRL + F on your keyboard and look for “DNA”, you will find it right smack in the middle of Deval’s e-mail above. What that one little word does put a negative connotation onto his words. Instead of simply presenting his explanation, they implied that Deval was ducking the issue by making a statement at all.

Instead of examining the issue and presenting readers with perspective, we get fed “but he said this… then he said this… and it was actually this…”

Please.

How about an examination of the entire situation. Why did Deval support the cause? Was it because of his background? Does his perspective as a black man having fought his way through the mostly white world of elite schools, law, government and corporations make him susceptible to cries of institutionalized racism? What does this say about his decision-making abilities? I want to know, dammit!

That leads me to Kerry Healey.

Back 25% in the polls, she is throwing mud like a bratty kid at the beach at low tide. Here’s a choice line from her:

“I will always come down on the side of the victim and the victim's family,” she said. “I will not be looking out to release dangerous offenders into society prematurely.”

Good grief! This case was never about should a rapist go free? It was about do we actually have the rapist? Nobody is on the “side” of criminals and looking to “release dangerous offenders.” There were legitimate concerns raised about the integrity of the system that convicted LaGeur. That fact that he’s now been proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt is a vindication of the system, a vindication that never would have taken place had DNA tests been allowed in the first place.

Kerry Healey knows this all too well. She’s just looking to score cheap political points, because they’re the only ones that she can get.

Rail Trails

According to the New England Regional Airport System Plan, which was released by the feds today, passenger traffic at Boston’s Logan airport, and New England airports as a whole, will jump by 75% within 15 years. Manchester & Portland’s facilities will see even more than that.

Damn.

Population is growing in our region; international firms are siting large, important facilities here again; our citizenry is among the wealthiest in the country and travels more than most; and domestic vacationing is continuing to grow. All of these factors lead to the projections, and they all point to an urgent need for expansion and integration of our transportation network.

Logan’s ability to grow is severely hampered by limited space and rightfully exasperated neighbors who are sick of the ever-increasing noise, pollution and traffic levels in their area. Boston’s airport is reaching it’s capacity.

Therefore, we need to start seriously integrating the 4 other major regional airports, Providence, RI, Manchester, NH, Hartford, CT and Portland, ME, into the industrial and economic fabric of the region.

Providence’s T.F. Green airport has already broken ground on their train station. It will connect directly with the downtown Amtrak station, meaning that folks all along the Northeast Corridor from Boston to eastern CT will have quick access to flights there.

How about a rail spur from downtown Hartford to the airport? With this, and an improved rail line that runs regular service from New Haven, CT to Springfield, MA (and eventually on up to White River Junction, VT), you could see the airport become a true engine of the Connecticut River Valley’s economic development.

Portland’s population is booming and Amtrak’s Downeaster service is the single fastest-growing rail line in the while country, both in terms of percentage increase in passengers and revenue. Cars are filled as soon as they can be brought into service. A rail improvement project has just been started to increase capacity along the corridor, and Governor Baldacci has issued an executive order to develop a plan to extend the line along the Maine coast to Brunswick and Auburn. Check out this map and you can see that extending the rail line, or building a quick rail shuttle across the harbor to the terminal would be a relatively short, easy task. Just doing that would give a burgeoning area an incredible boost.

Like Providence, Manchester’s airport could use an intermodal rail station at it’s facility. There are plans afoot for extending the MBTA’s commuter rail to the airport. This project needs a sense of urgency.

With rail connections made, something like 90% of the region’s population would be within 1.5 hours of TWO airport options. The next step would be to integrate regional bus routes and schedules with the trains. Logan Express-like services are being implemented along the Downeast route to make commuting to the Boston area easier. These feeder systems could help funnel travelers to their choice of airport.

A pie-in-the-sky feature that could be added to this system would be baggage and flight checking capabilities into the major rail stations. Imagine being able to get dropped off at the train station in Worcester, MA, check your bags and check into your flight at either Logan or Hartford!

Of course, rail connections to airports are not the panacea of development, but one can’t diminish their importance. One of downtown Boston’s strongest draws for corporations is it’s incredibly close proximity to it’s international airport. If you work in Manhattan, expect at least an hour-long trip to the airport for your trip. If you work downtown, you are just a 15-minute Silver Line ride from your terminal.

Providing quick, efficient and easy access for residents and business major transportation hubs is vital to sustained economic expansion.

Don't Stand so Close to Me

Columnist Brian McGrory has a great piece in today’s Globe. He takes a swipe at holier-than-thou Senator Rick “Whack Job” Santorum for blaming the “liberal culture” in Boston for the priest molestation scandal a couple of years ago. I wonder if he thinks that GLAD, NOW and Planned Parenthood are to blame for the Republicans covering up for the pedophiles in their midst?

Yes, I used the plural there: Pedophiles..

According to Brian Ross at ABC News, his office has been receiving lots of tips about other members of congress that pages were routinely warned about but the Republican leadership never bothered to investigate or tell Democrats about. We will have to wait and see if any representatives are ever brought up on any charges (even Rep. Foley hasn’t been indicted for anything yet), but the court of public opinion has much lower evidentiary standards than U.S. District Court. A questionable e-mail and a former page on TV saying that he/she thought that somebody was “creepy” is all that it will take to ruin somebody at this point.

This is obviously a horrible situation. Parents hoping to create an unmatched opportunity for their children entrust them to the care of Congress. (Even though they can’t be trusted with our money, we happily send them our kids… But that’s another column.) Congress abdicates this responsibility in the name of political expediency, proving that no price is too high to pay for power.

It’s kind of idiotic, really. When the allegations first surfaced more less than 1 year ago, a full investigation should have been convened. It could have been done behind closed doors to begin with, but computers should have been seized and paiges interviewed. Once the extent of the problem was discovered, it could have been brought out to the light of day. The leadership would have lived up to it’s name and demonstrated an ability and willingness to do the right thing. They would have controlled the story.

Instead wheat we got were a bunch of hacks showing their true colors.

You can understand their logic, as flawed as it was. When the first “over friendly” e-mails were brought to the attention of the Speaker’s staff and the chair of the House Election Committee, their first instinct was to circle the wagons: How can we squash this? How can we solve the problem without associating ourselves with the perpetrator? How can we keep it quiet?

Notice the lack of what should have been the first questions on their minds: Has this guy ever hurt any of these children? Are there any other victims out there?

They didn’t want to know. And its that willful ignorance that really condemns the Republican leadership.

To the staffers’ credit, the child’s parents were consulted on the next step, and they asked that the issue not be pursued. Unfortunately, as any DA will tell you, the victim really doesn’t have a say when criminals are prosecuted. Not to mention the fact that if an investigation had been launched, they would not have even needed the recipient of the “over friendly” e-mails to testify, as the smut-filled, x-rated stuff is damning all on it’s own.

This whole tawdry, tragic affair should not be a rallying cry for Democrats. Republicans as a species are not more prone to committing these acts. What it should be is a rallying cry for all citizens; this is our fault. Our leaders in government are as bad as we deserve. If we do not demand accountability, oversight and ethics, we will get none. Its as simple as that.

A few sheets to the wind

So I'm remotely blogging again. Tonight I'm at The Good Life in Boston, my favorite bar in the whole friggin' world (the Luba Lounge in Montreal is a close 2nd).

The group that has gathered here is ecclectic, to say the least, and that's partially by design. Its a Saturday night and the early crowd is still lingering (mostly folks in their 30s and 40s; the "pre-gamers" and a birthday party) and the clubbing crowd is in full effect.

I can't get over the dichotomoty (and I can't get over the fact that I'm sober enough to use that word) of the peak-earning-years crowd, mixing with the hip-hop-loving, just-out-of-college, DJ-following crowd. Black & white, nobody cares what you look like.

Its almost unnatural.

The music is getting louder with every song and I can't even begin to comprehend how people are maintaing conversations. My ears are absolutely aching with the puslating base of old-school hip-hop and people screaming at each other so that they can be heard over the din. People are pressed up against each other as they try to writhe on the dance floor or move over toward the bar.

Its wonderful.

...

Sorry, I had to use the bathroom there. (Isn't live blogging *great*?!)

So its an awesome night. The staff is kick-ass as always, and I am proud to say that I consider a couple of them friends... The crowd is amazing... The music is groovin'... And I don't know why the hell I am blogging this anymore!

I'm out.