Here in California there’s a ballot proposition that eliminates the right of gay people to marry.  It was considered a slam-dunk to defeat a couple of months ago, but it has received massive funding from evangelical groups, and has become the hottest item on the ballot.

Not surprisingly, gay people are pretty popular in California, so it’s surprising to see this being pushed so hard. The primary focus of the Prop. 8 people is that if it is not passed, teachers will be forced to teach all about gay marriage in schools.  See, it’s a freedom of speech issue:  Don’t force teachers to do this!

I find this baffling.  Did we really learn about marriage in school?  Not that I recall.  When anti-miscegenation laws were finally ruled unconstitutional in 1968, were schools forced to teach about interracial marriage?

“They’re taking away our right to say that homosexuality is a sin.”  No, they’re taking away your ability to keep homosexual couples from sharing health insurance benefits.  You can still think it’s a sin, and say so, just like you can about interracial marriage — if you want people to think you’re a bigoted idiot.

When I posted a few years ago my support for gay marriage, I got the most hate mail I’ve ever gotten, largely of the form, “I can’t believe you said this.  I thought you were a moral person.”

If you take the anti-gay propaganda and change the word “gay” to “black,” it’s right at home in 1958 Mississippi. Is that really where you want to be?

I’m of mixed minds, hearing about Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’s conviction on corruption charges.

On the one hand, there was little doubt he received a great many gifts from supporters over the years, and some of these gifts fell on the wrong side of the law.

On the other hand, Stevens has worked for the state of Alaska since before it was even a state, and nobody suggests that any of these gifts caused him to put his own interests above the state’s.  (For example, like Alaska representative Don Young accepting lobbying money from a Florida company to put in earmarks for a Florida highway.)

Back when I was in college, I interned for Ted Stevens over a summer, and learned a lot about how government — and in particular, a Senate office — works.  Ted, and his entire staff, worked their butts off for outrageously long hours protecting the interests of Alaska.  He is often criticized as a pork-barrel senator (Bridge to Nowhere?), but, frankly, that’s his job.  And he’s one of the best in the world at it.  Not a bill has gotten through Congress in the last 20 years without some pork in it for the state of Alaska, and that’s all Ted’s doing. He’s a good guy, smart, and funny, and fierce, and loyal beyond reason to the state.

My hometown of Delta Junction was saved time and time again by Stevens.  He postponed the closing of the local military base, Fort Greely, and when he couldn’t postpone it any longer, he managed to convert it into an anti-ballistic missile launch site.

Now, ABMs don’t work worth a damn, and are a horrible idea in the first place, but there’s no question that they benefit Alaska (and especially Delta Junction). It’s not Ted’s job to protect Americans or spend their money well.  It’s his job to get that money into Alaska, and he did that exceedingly well.  So well that some of the people he benefitted gave him nice gifts.

If they had just paid to send him on juicy fact-finding vacations in Maui (as they did for my local representative, Don Lungren), or donated millions of dollars to his re-election campaign, which might choose to spend that money on his wardrobe, I guess, that would be just fine, legally speaking.

It seems clear that Ted broke the law, so his convictions aren’t wrong.  But as much as I disagree with his national politics, I can’t help but defend him.  He isn’t corrupt.  He didn’t sell out the state.  He never asked for favors or did legislation because of them.  He’s been great for Alaska.

My suspicion is that W. will pardon him before leaving office, and that seems just fine with me.

I played this game pretty obsessively last week.  It’s not unlike Heroes of Might and Magic, with turn-based fantasy tactical battles.

I’m often sickened by our political campaigning process.  Democrats cry about Republicans bringing up irrelevant crap when we should be talking about the struggling economy, and then suddenly talk about the cost of Palin’s wardrobe as if it’s some sort of issue.

It’s not.

$150K on clothes sounds like a lot, but for a person who’s going to be in front of TV cameras and huge crowds every day for three months (assuming she loses the election), I suspect it’s not as crazy as it sounds.   A friend of mine just spent over $3,000 last week at Nordstrom’s, and she’s not a media personality. It’s the RNC’s money, and making her look good in front of the camera is obviously important to them.  Is it any crazier than the Obama campaign spending $400,000 last week advertising in Michigan, which John McCain has already written off?

I bet Obama spends a surprising amount on makeup.  Seems crazy to us, but probably not to those in the know. I bet Katie Couric spends that much on her wardrobe, too.

In Alaska she could campaign in mukluks and a parka.  That won’t fly in Virginia.

It’s fair to make fun of her for seemingly not knowing what the job of the Vice President is — though Dick Cheney proves that it doesn’t have to be limited to its Constitutional charter.  But leave her alone about her clothes.  It’s even stupider than John Edward’s $400 haircuts.  Is it just too confusing to talk about tax plans?

“Fine words butter no parsnips.”

OK.  John has two jobs making good money, and he buys a house for $1 million with 10% down, borrowing $900,000 from Big Bank.  The real estate market drops by 40%.  John loses one of his jobs, and can no longer make payments on the house.

Now what?

John can sell the house for $600K, have nothing, and still owe the bank $300K.

The bank can repossess John’s house, and sell it for $500K.   John’s broke, and the bank loses $400K.

John can stay in the house and underpay on the mortgage, letting his debt increase from $900K to $1 million+ in a couple of years.

Or the government can buy the loan from the bank for $900K and lower John’s loan amount to $450K, so he can keep making payments.

So John gets screwed, Big Bank gets screwed, we put off knowing who gets screwed for a while, or America gets screwed.

I’ve been predicting the possibility of a serious financial collapse for a few years.  My previous target date was May 2008, which was off base — but not by as much as it looked like at the time.

Mary’s annoyed because I look so chipper that our retirement fund has dropped $60,000 in the past few weeks. I just feel like the shoe is finally dropping, and that gives great opportunity when things recover — and I’m pretty sure they will.

It was pretty clear for a while that folks were borrowing more money than they could afford to buy houses that were priced higher than they were worth.  This went on for years, but in the end, somebody’s going to get screwed.  Is it the banks, who end up foreclosing on houses worth only half what is owed?  Is it the homebuyers, who end up paying far more than they should, trapped in a house they can’t afford?  Or, most likely, is it people with dollars, who end up holding worthless paper as our government resorts to printing our way out of the mess?

In the Great Depression, the dollar became outrageously valuable, because everybody wanted some, and nobody would part with theirs.  I’m pretty sure that won’t happen this time, because we don’t have a gold standard.  If people want more dollars, we’ll just print more.

How is one supposed to invest when there’s hyperinflation?  Darned if I know.  Everybody says gold, but I’ve never been a fan because it has no inherent value.  (You can’t eat it, or use it to heat your house.)

A depression might not be the worst thing to happen to the planet.

The basic idea of Burning Man is pretty straightforward.  A bunch of people go out to the desert, build cool art projects, and hang out and chat with each other.  At the end they have a party and burn it all to the ground and clean up.  It’s a big desert camping trip.The key word is “big.” Some 50,000 people show up, which makes for a heck of an impromptu campground.  Here’s an aerial photo (not mine) of the 2006 festival:The basic layout was the same in 2008, but it was quite a bit bigger.  The empty circle in the center is 2 kilometers across.  Getting to the 60 foot Man statue in the center was kind of a trek.With fifty thousand people showing off, one had no hope of seeing a significant portion of the festival.  Some of the more prominent camps were convenient located on The Esplanade, the center circle, but lots of fantastic stuff was hidden away in the back streets, or placed a mile away from everything in the middle of the desert.The logistics of clearing the toilets for so many people were pretty impressive.Here’s a picture I took from the Man.  Or the 1MB stitched together panorama. 

One of my favorite Richard Feynman quotes:  “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

That means we don’t believe Einstein because he was smart, but because we can check his math.