Our new President, Barack Obama, was born in 1961. This puts him on the older end of my generation, Generation X.

A common stereotype of Gen X’ers is that we’re pessimistic and lazy, and yet Obama’s campaign message was one of hope, and as one of our country’s youngest Presidents and the first African-American elected to this office, he’s hardly a slacker.

Another stereotype is that Gen X’ers are cynical. I don’t think that’s true; we just tell it like it is. In his acceptance speech tonight, Obama talked about all the work still ahead for the country, and I appreciated his honesty. I don’t know that 4 years will be enough to fix everything, but at the least it will be a start.

Categories: memes, politics
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Come Election Day, Kevin and I will be voting no on Proposition 8. If you live in California, I hope you will be too.

Please read our friend Irvin’s story. Also, please read current ACLU president Anthony Romero’s story. Let’s not spread any more hate.

Categories: memes, politics
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I have a confession to make: I didn’t watch the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The reason? I couldn’t get TV reception.

I don’t really watch TV. Back when Kevin and I lived in apartments, we had several hundred cable TV channels, not that we ever took advantage of them. They were just included in the rent, and it wasn’t possible to opt out. Looking back, I find it strange that many of our neighbors also subscribed to several hundred more satellite TV channels, as evidenced by the telltale receivers on their balconies.

Then when we bought this house, Kevin installed a giant antenna on the roof just so I could watch one show, the Gilmore Girls, but reception was bad because of a huge hill that stands between us and Mt. Wilson, and after every windy storm Kevin had to climb on the roof to readjust it to make it point in the right direction. He hadn’t touched it since GG ended in ‘07, so when the Games began airing, we turned on the TV and got… static.

At first it was no big deal. I’m not a sports fan anyway, so I made do with Internet photos, videos, and recaps via blogs and Tweets. But I did feel a little bummed after hearing just how spectacular the opening ceremonies were. Then, after the Games, I started ruminating on how much I might be missing by opting out of synchronous TV viewing experiences…

I’ll leave the philosophy for another time. The short story is, we bought a $25 digital TV converter, and now suddenly we have over a dozen broadcast TV channels. On Friday we watched the Presidential debate, and so did a lot of other people. Next Thursday we’re going to watch the Vice Presidential debate. We don’t have TV viewing plans beyond that at this point.

Categories: TV, politics
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The Associated Press obituary is positively poetic. (Via Publishers Weekly.)

Categories: news, politics, reading
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Today all the news outlets were running silly little summaries of a new Pew Center report called One in 100 that addresses the prison population in the US. The report itself is well worth a read as it’s very well written and there are excellent graphics and charts throughout. The (currently popular) outrage over civil rights abuses in China is put in some context by the knowledge that there are 50% more people incarcerated in the US, despite China’s vastly larger population. One in 100 US adults is behind bars, one in fifteen black men.

Oh wait, did I mention that California spent $8.8 billion last year on corrections? Texas took a distant number two in that regard at $3.3 billion. Governor Schwarzenegger wants us to spend $10.3bn in 2008 according to his January budget Proposal. For those who’ve been following the news, this is the same budget proposal where he suggested that it would be a good idea to cut $4bn from education. I can’t imagine a better recipe for disaster.

I’ve read reams of literature on the increased effectiveness (not to mention vastly lower cost) of community-based reform for non-violent criminals. 48.4% of our prison population is incarcerated for non-violent offenses. There’s something terribly wrong with these statistics and nobody is doing anything about it.

Categories: politics
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