New York

The grand New York post!

We left Saturday at the leisurely hour of 10:30am for our 1:30pm flight. It was nice not having to scramble to get everything together, but it was a shame to lose a whole day to travel. Thu and I took the SouthAndEastBayShuttle.com and although they took pretty good care of us, Sunnyvale was the first stop so we had to spend a lot more time getting there than anyone else. The flight took less than the expected five and a half hours, but with time change that meant we didn't land until about 10:30pm. We arrived and figured out the AirTrain and LIRR to get into Manhattan, where we met Tabitha and Kyra at the Penn station. We had soup and hot chocolate before traveling up East Harlem where Tab lives.

On Sunday we went with my sisters and the roommates to morning brunch at Isabella's at 77th. The place was very nice, if crowded, and you get a drink included with breakfast (starting at noon). New York is cold in November, but that's not so inconvenient as the extreme HEAT indoors. Seriously you guys, the thermostat is not binary. After brunch we went to a craft market to stock up on cold weather gear and I got some fingerless gloves that transformed into mittens. They were quite practical but Christian said they were girly. I had seen someone with a British accent wearing some on the train the night before, so I decided not to let it bother me.

In the afternoon, my sisters had plans to see a play starring Harry Potter so we went to the Nintendo Store and to the Empire State building. We got to the top just as the sun was slipping behind the horizon, so it was very neat. We went shoe shopping briefly because Thu's feet were starting to hurt and we saw the Times Square new years eve ball inside Macy's! Then we headed up to 107th for a restaurant called Thai Market which was very good. To finish the night, we went back to Tab's place to start making an Apple pie for Thanksgiving dinner.

Monday we had breakfast at Tab's house and then went walking around the north part of Central Park. We tried to go to the New York museum, but it was closed on Mondays. We did see the conservatory garden which was quite different now in the cold than it was in June when I was here.

At 1:30, my parents landed at JFK so we headed back uptown to meet them as they came off the bus. Knowing they would be hungry when they arrived, we went to Reggio's coffee shop in the Village where the first cappuccino machine was brought over to America. Then we all went to the Pod hotel to check out the rooms and to get Thu and I checked in. We went back to Tab's for dinner prepared by Chrystelle and some games and then Thu and I had to take all our stuff to the hotel at about 11:30.

On Tuesday I had gotten tickets for the family to see the Rockettes, which my friend Michelle was an assistant choreographer for. We met for bagels in the morning, but the rain made it hard to eat around the cart so we found shelter in a public building. The show was very impressive, and a good time was had by all. Thu and Christian came with the family. We found the same Brazilian restaurant our family ate at last time we were in NY, but I was not as impressed this time. In the afternoon we went to St. John's cathedral and Columbia university. Then we wanted to try to get somebody tickets for Wicked through the lottery so we all entered our names. I won! Thu and I grabbed some Pizza while the family went to China Town for Dim Sum and to meet our friend Becca at the bus station coming from Boston. The show was fantastic, and the seats were superb.

Wednesday morning we decided to go to the Moma museum and Dave's friend was able to hook us up with free tickets. Most of us stayed for a while to keep out of Tab's way while she prepared turkey dinner but Mom went back early to help. By about 5pm we were all back at here place helping and getting her small, but not so small, apartment ready for eating Turkey. Dinner went well and we had plenty of food. We had planned on seeing the parade balloons being blown up this night, but we were too tired from eating.

Thursday morning we got up early so we could get to 66th street 2.5 hours early. Crowds grew and grew until there was standing room only and everyone kept warm by proximity. Finally the parade started and we saw classics as well as new acts. I saw Rick Astly and yelled out "Rick Roll!" He looked directly in my direction and looked horrified/dismayed, as if I had ruined a magic trick. Turns out he later disappeared into the cartoon's float he rode on and rick rolled the entire nation in front of Macy's.

After the parade we enjoyed mob-rule to get onto the subway (Someone had opened the emergency gates and everyone flowed in, despite the illegality of it but who was going to stop thousands of people trying to get on the train?) We rode up to 90th for Starbucks and Carmines for our second Turkey. This time we had the Balches and Rebecca, so an 18lb turkey was all that would suffice. Since we got there early and had Christian with us, we had excellent service and plenty of company.

At this point, some went home to nap but Mom, Dad, Thu and I went down to Belvedere castle and WTC. Then we met up with the girls for ice skating but were too tired to join, and just watched. Somehow, my parents had enough energy to join the girls for a movie but we decided to go home and finally sleep off the turkey.

On Friday morning, Thu and I packed up and went up to Tab's apartment at 120th and had breakfast with Mom, Dad, and Kyra as they prepared to fly home. Then we went with Tab to do some Black Friday dress shopping, and some excellent pizza at Patsies in the village. We got some cupcakes and then went to karaoke for drinks and songs with Dave, Chrystelle and Christian and of course Tabitha. Then we stumbled over to Mojitos for more drinks and guac, before finally heading home. We tried to watch Wall-E but only got through the Presto short and Up teaser trailer.

On Saturday, we went to the central park and Columbus circle to try and see the indoor snow. It never did snow before we went back to Tab's to make turkey sandwiches and prepare for our flight home. Although the seats in Delta flights are really hard and we were surrounded by Russians who didn't follow the airline educate, we got home without too much problem. The plane got home 45 minutes early, but we circled the airport for at least that long before getting back home.

Our vacation didn't end there, because Sunday was our scheduled Couple's massage at Watercourse Way in Palo Alto. What a great way to end a high-impact vacation! I have never felt so rich-- not wealthy like I had lots of money but upper-class like I was some great thinker or beloved figurehead. The steam room, dry brushing, massage, hot stones and hot oil really took out the knots from cold, stressful walking and sleeping of the week before.

Historic

The election is over but I still want to keep campaigning. I nominate this as the best quote from Barack's speech.

"This victory alone is not the change we seek--it is only the chance for us to make that change."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-barack-obama-speech,0,524762.story

McCain also had a very nice speech. But it was absolutely ruined by his supporters, booing whenever Barack was mentioned. You stay classy, Arizona.

http://www.freep.com/article/20081104/NEWS15/81105013/1118/RSS

Winner 2008: YouTube!

There have been some fantastic videos this year. On election night (since I already voted!) I will be kicking back, watching the election coverage and re-visiting some of my favorite videos this year. You know what? Forget that. It's election-eve, I'm gonna do it now.

I'm not going to embed these since you loose the full-screen button.

- Palin vs. McCain debate
- Synchronized Debates
- Wassup beer commercial parody I didn't like the original and I didn't think I'd like the parody, but this really packs a lot of current events into one package.
- McCain's QVC infomercial
- Yes we can The video that got me interested in Obama.
- Palin rock You may have to sign in to enjoy this one :)
- 3 anti-Prop 8 ads in that endearing Mac style
- The vet who did not vet
- Just neat Obama video
- Will Ferrell as President Bush
- The hilarious presidential roast
- Colin Powell endorses Obama
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2nsGtd7y3c
- Another cool video
- Explaining the economic crisis
- A message from Sarah Palin
- Lil O'Reilly
- Money as debt
- The great schlep
- Disney presents: Sarah Palin movie
- Backwards candidate

Getting into the election now

I have never been so informed about an election until this year. In fact, with exception of Apple products I've probably never been so informed about a single issue in all my life. That's not to say I'm a political expert, just interested.

So when my friend asked me where to go for information on the election, I was taken aback because all my information was gleaned over months of daily news reports, speech videos, friends and relatives. How do you get involved this late in the election without all that previous knowledge? Not only knowledge of lipstick and celebrity status, but how anger, experience, the Clintons, age, race, and elitism factor into this race.

I told her how I felt, and planned to gather some resources to help her determine her own view. Here's what I would have sent her, but I found a better site down below for this sort of one shot election decision below.
http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/ - Barack's plan
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/ - McCain's plan
http://www.electoral-vote.com/ - good for daily news and a snapshot of how the election is going.
http://labs.google.com/inquotes/ - Choose what topic you want to know about and get random quotes from candidates on the subject.
http://factcheck.org/, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ - Reports on the truthfulness of various ads. I take issue with their method of "unbias". They give equal time to each candidate but not all lies deserve the same weight. Factcheck.org videos are the worst, with the formula being 1 McCain, 1 Obama and one 3rd party ad checked even when there are 3 gregarious lies by McCain and the Obama lie is only a lie in certain contexts.
http://troykoelling.blogspot.com/2008/10/do-you-know-where-money-comes-from-this.html - My own blog pointing to videos about money and the financial crisis.

But then I found this site glassbooth.org. First, it lets you rank issues as important or not. Don't worry if you think it seems like you are supporting an issue you care about, because on the next page it takes only the issues you care about and asks you whether you support or oppose it, and how strongly you feel this way. Finally, it compares your answers with various candidates and shows you which one you are most like. Most importantly, it lets you "find out why" the candidate is aligned with you or not with links to their votes and quotes. Glassbooth.org is a very good site.

If you are interested, I matched 71% with Barack Obama and 58% with John McCain.

So that's my advice for being informed when you go vote. Next challenge: Amendments and Propositions.

Money is debt

Do you know where money comes from? This video is entirely fascinating and relevant, despite being released two years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy-fD78zyvI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfXavRTM4Fg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yvRZoM-2r8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0p8LepIuVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzXZ_Hs1g6U

It's 45 minutes, so get comfortable. Despite that, I've watched it 3 times in the last 2 weeks and learned something new each time. I'm not sure the solutions are viable, but the problems are real, frightening, and immediate. The proof is in the news.

McCain gambles

McCain is gambling with his political campaign, and so far it's working. Three notable gambles: 1) Sarah Palin 2) Canceling the RNC for the hurricane 3) Pausing the campaign to return to Washington for the economic crisis.

Time magazine profiles each candidate's gambling habits: Candidates' Vices" Craps and Poker

I'm trying to write shorter blog posts, but let me say a quick thing about each of McCain's gambles. Sarah Palin has turned into a pinup girl. The press is allowed to take pictures but no video or audio, and no questions. The RNC hurricane (a better name Might be Gustav but who will remember that?) ended up being a non issue, and McCain played the right bet here. The campaign pause is a total publicity stunt. He has not stopped TV commercials and has made appearances on 5 (five) television networks since he announced he would stop campaigning. If people called "STUNT!" on any of these things, they would realize they cannot vote for John McCain.

Here by accident, is a nice video wrapup of this blog post

Costs

"Americans in general want a clean, prosperous environment, with lots to do, good paying jobs, nice homes, good transportation, healthy food. But what are we willing to do to get there?" asked a friend. She mentioned that one way she is adjusting to the changes that the US is facing is by a 12$/month unlimited bus pass. I'm jealous! Here's the rest of my reply:

First and foremost, I think that as Americans we need to pay more attention to the total costs associated with our actions. Your bus pass is partially paid by taxes, probably on some people who don't use public transportation very much, if at all. But even though their tax money isn't getting them from point A to point B, they receiving lighter traffic because you seek out alternative means of transportation. They are ensuring that somebody drives less and saves the environment. And they are keeping the bus driver employed, off the streets and earning money to be taxed by the local government. All in all, that sounds like a good cost!

The federal government also has programs that need to be paid for by taxes, but Bush recklessly offered tax cuts (favoring the rich) without cutting the programs those taxes paid for. This irresponsibility caused the budget deficit to rise higher than ever before. Just take a look at this graph, where the national debt (as percent of GDP) is clearly rising over the periods of Regan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

But both McCain and Obama know that raising taxes on people who are just scraping by will not help the economy. The difference is that Barack recognizes that there are some people who can afford to continue paying for the programs their representatives voted into place. He has not proposed raising taxes on the rich. Taxes for people making $250k will return to what they were when Bush took office, because Barack is just going to let the tax cuts expire as they are scheduled to do. The republicans have done a good job painting this as a tax increase, but in fact this is just the post-Thanksgiving sale at Bloomingdale's expiring on Friday night.

What are the costs of the Iraq war? Ten billion US dollars a month, Four thousand US casualties and Twenty thousand Iraqi people dead. What are the costs of the Paulson bailout plan? Seven hundred billion dollars per year, non-reviewable, and non-recoupable by us, the tax payers.

You are right that we are going to have to make adjustments no matter who gets elected in November. But to me, the adjustments are in how we pay for these mistakes. We can't just put it on our Chinese Express credit card and hope the problem goes away.

So the image I would like to see the United States follow is one of more intelligence. You know I was called "elitist" for saying that? (by my own mother!) Where else in the world can you elect a candidate because he's not too smart, not too rich, and not too handsome? I think we should be selecting the best president we can, and right now that is Barack Obama.

Golden Parachute

John McCain admits that the economy is not one of his strong suits, so one of McCain's personal economic advisors is Carly Fiorina. She successfully ran the IPO of Lucent in 1996 and she was named by Fortune magazine as the most powerful woman in business in 1998. But she does not think John McCain or Sarah Palin would be qualified to run a business. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/16/fiorina-palin-couldnt-do_n_126827.html

How hard could it be? Well, Fiorina, who successfully ran the IPO of Lucent then went on to smash HP into the ground. On her watch, HP's market value was cut in half and the board of directors asked her to leave.

Now here's what really gets me angry: failures are rewarded. Fiorina was awarded a $21 million dollar cash severance along with the ~$21 stock valuation she held (a valuation that would have been higher had she not wrecked the company). Is this what she thinks happens to people who loose their job? No wonder McCain thinks the economy is doing alright, the unemployment rate is higher than ever so clearly all those people have a nice severance hidden away.

The HP fiasco is personal too. My Dad's aunt was an employee for HP for many years and one of the nicest people you will ever meet. She was within months of retirement when Fiorina led the merger with Compaq, and she was made redundant. Months away from a big party, cake, pension and health care, she was laid off.

Ultimately, a "Golden Parachute" is up to the company's board to dole out but it's encouraging to hear Barack put workers first in this situation:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gG5qWh

Recipe for entertainment

When I want to be entertained, there's a couple things I look for:

- I want to suspend belief. Don't give me every day stories and especially don't give me reality TV. I want to escape my life.
- Create a world for me to believe. While I want to visit a fantastical world, it must have rules that my nerd mind can understand and extrapolate from.
- Give me some mystery. Maybe some of the world's laws aren't fully explained to me at the beginning, or maybe some of the characters have unknown pasts. I need to be engaged in finding out more.
- Romance and sexual tension between the principal characters should be the continuing theme in the show. That means that 99% of the episodes cannot have mushy happy endings, because there needs to be a reason to continue watching.

So here are some of my favorite shows:
- Buffy the Vampire slayer: A world where vampires rule the night, but they can be killed by fire, beheading, and of course, a stake through the heart. Buffy loves Angel, but the real story is Zander and Buffy, two childhood friends who could never be together.
- Alias: A story of agents in the CIA. Physics and Laws are consistent with our own, but the lives of agents are seriously unbelievable. I believe the story was strongest when Will Tippen was around, but there's still a certain "forbidden" aspect of the romance between Sidney and Vaugn.
- Highlander: Immortals live among us and kill eachother with swords. The love interest here is not Duncan, but instead Richie and Tessa. The rules are very strong but we don't know why: Immortals can sense eachother when close, they cannot kill on holy ground and in the end, there can be only one.
- X-Files: This one has less rules and more suspension of belief. Scully and Mulder can never get together, but there will always be the romance.
- Firefly: Captain Mal and Anora are classic examples of the strained romance. If you can believe the post-apocalyptic world they live in, then the cowboy, space theme is not hard to believe.
- Heroes: definitely suspends belief, but the story changes so often it hasn't been able to capture my attention past the first season. Hopefully this will change with the new season.

Great Speakers

I'm a big fan of speeches. I remember in High School when I discovered Patrick Henry and his speech on freedom.

Today, I've watched 3 great speeches. First, I watched Martin Luther King Jr. on a low resolution, black and white youtube video talking about his children playing with white children. Then, I watched Obama's speech from 2004 on a low resolution, color youtube video, when he talked about there not being a Red America and a Blue America but a United States of America. And finally tonight, I listened to Barack accept the nomination for presidency in front of 75,000 people in my mile high home state on a glorious full resolution, color youtube video with great sound. That's progress!

By choice, I haven't watched any analysis of the speech, and that's the great thing about YouTube. But here are the things that stood out to me:

"We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past."

"Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them."

"America, now is not the time for small plans."

"And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our "intellectual and moral strength." Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient. Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents; that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework; that fathers must take more responsibility for providing the love and guidance their children need."

"Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise."

"John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

"We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe."

"So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. "

"I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."

"This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores. Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZCrIeRkMhA

Listen up

Listen up because this is important. How can I support Barack Obama when I believe myself to be conservative? Former representative and Republican, Jim Leach spoke at the Democratic National Convention last night:

...the way today’s Republican Party has broken with its conservative heritage.

The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values. The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us. The party that formerly led the world in arms control has moved to undercut treaties crucial to the defense of the earth. The party that prides itself on conservation has abdicated its responsibilities in the face of global warming. And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts.

How can anyone call themselves a conservative and support military operations overseas? How can anyone call themselves a conservative if they let the government choose what a woman can do with her body? How can a conservative government have so much power that they may ask telecommunications companies for records which incriminate American citizens, and they would comply? Would a party aligned with conservation spend more than it takes in?

Sure, there are some policies I'm not in favor of because I think they will be costly. But in my voting decision, I'm going for total cost conservatism not just line item.