Capital is closed

I had a great week. Last Sunday, I left for Baltimore, Maryland, with my friend Robert Mayo to teach another of the Auction Technology Specialist courses offered by the National Auctioneers Association.

Monday night we went to the the Pier in Annapolis and ate oysters at a place called McGarvey’s Saloon. While the area of town appeared quite affluent, with brick buildings and very nice aesthetics, the meal was delicious though surprisingly affordable.

Tuesday we went with Sarah Sonke with Auction First as she took us on a guided tour of our nation’s capital. She used to live there for a time, and was quite good at taking us between the various sights and monuments.

We first stopped in front of the capital building, where I took the picture on the right.

Robert’s son is named Lincoln, so high on our list of priorities was the Lincoln Monument. We passed the mall and the various museums on our way from the capital to the Washington Monument. As we arrived at the Lincoln Monument, we realized it wasn’t going to be very easy to get there easily on foot, so we went past it and turned around by the Watergate and Kennedy Center. Coming back from another angle, we stopped just north of the Vietnam Memorial where we exited the vehicle. We walked through the Vietnam Memorial on our way to the Lincoln Monument, where we got several pictures and Robert purchased some memorabilia from the store conveniently located in the corner of the monument itself.

Once we got back into the vehicle, we continued our tour, driving as close as we could to the White House. We ended up by the Air Force Memorial, the Pentagon, the Jefferson Monument and the Ford Theater.

Before we left town, we ate at Ristorante Luigino where I had the petto e cosciotto d’anatra, or leg and thigh of duck. We were sitting among a bunch of suits who were loudly discussing the proposed automotive industry bridge loan [read: bailout].

The class was well received, as was the last one. We had a great time, and the restaurant connected to the hotel had fantastic crab cakes, which I ate at nearly every meal. The market catfish was also quite good.

Sale on political merchandise

We came back Thursday, getting to the airport about four hours before our flight’s departure, leaving us plenty of time to mill about. We stopped to eat one more crab cake at one of the airport restaurants before we left, and I also found a neat shop that had some political merchandise. They told me I wasn’t allowed to take this picture when I asked, but the coolness of the sale on McCain merchandise was too cool to pass up. I walked behind one of the shelving units and literally shot this picture from the hip.

As for the pictures, I’ve included some below. My camera sucks, and Robert’s was set accidentally to a low quality setting, so none of the pictures are really good as pictures go, but I thought I’d share nonetheless.

Having said all of this, there were several very notable victories last night. I’ve been becoming less and less proud to be an American over the course of the last eight years, but over the course of 24 hours I’m realizing that I can start to believe in this country again.

Don't forget to vote!

Politics is my Olympics. It’s like a Super Bowl in which we can all participate. I don’t follow sports very well, but I look forward to the circus that happens in this country once every couple years. This year’s final act has been a roller coaster ride.

Today is a special day. It’s a day when those of us who follow politics finally get to read the last page of the chapter we’ve been reading nearly exclusively for more than the last two years. Today, each state selects from among a subset of a large number of candidates for President of the United States in this election year of 2008.

How does this information relate to auctions or technology? The next president will have the ability, if not a perceived mandate, to make what could be drastic changes from our economy to foreign relations to the environment to national defense to our military involvement around the world. All of these issues are important, but they’re outside the scope of this blog. Our presence on the world stage is tightly integrated with the technology industry. That industry is directly tied to science.

How many times has public perception changed during the course of the last few thousand years? How many empires have risen? How many forms of government have been devised? How many fluctuations have we seen in mores? How many republics have failed?

All of the answers to the above questions are influenced, at least in part, to the sum of the knowledge of the human race. As time moves forward, we know more about the world. This accumulated knowledge, with a few exceptions, certainly molds new political ideas. Knowledge pulled us, perhaps kicking and screaming, out of the dark ages when, as the general public became more well-informed, they threw off the fetters of abstract, dogmatic teachings in favor of an empirical reality that better matched what they observed. When the church said one thing, and people observed another, the domain of the church - the unexplained - grew smaller. As we learn more, our knowledge becomes the basis of new beliefs as these new beliefs replace the outdated, older beliefs. Note the difference between knowledge and beliefs.

While science can be wrong, it is self-correcting. Any time science is found to be incorrect, the hypothesis is modified and retested. Once a hypothesis has been tested and found by many different, unrelated scientists to hold true under all conditions, it becomes a theory.

Some politicians don’t understand what a theory is. A theory is the closest science can come to fact. A theory is really a collection of facts that describe a phenomenon. Many politicians preface the term evolution with theory of in an effort to discredit it. They don’t understand that they’re validating it in they eyes of anyone who understands the scientific method. It’s like talking about the theory of gravity or the theory of relativity as if they haven’t been found to hold true in our tests.

There are a host of concepts that modern day con artists are trying to propagate on us as a culture. Alternative medicines like homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture and chiropracty are fine if their placebo effect cures your headache, but can be the most immediate and dangerous of the pseudosciences to us if we try to use them to cure real diseases. Creationists, and their cousins the intelligent design crowd, fall into the same lack-of-any-credible-scientific-evidence-whatsoever group as those who propagate The Secret, the concept that wishing really hard for something happy to happen can actually make it occur. The fun party tricks of the likes of Sylvia Brown and John Edward can actually become harmful to those who believe in them and, in my opinion, demand legislation to protect the gullible, first amendment be damned.

It’s important that we recognize and pay attention to the stances held by our politicians. From Kansan Sam Brownback’s fear of stem cells and evolution to Alaskan Governor Sara Palin’s doubt that global warming is man-made to Senator Barack Obama’s remark that the science is inconclusive regarding the alleged link between autism and vaccinations - all of which are destructive to the public well being - those who make up our government are many who have questionable if not deplorable stances on scientific issues.

We must hold our politicians to the highest standard, a standard above belief and pseudoscience, above mores and norms, above religion and superstition. We must hold our politicians to acknowledge and respect the domain of science and that of the peer-reviewed scientific community.

The most brilliant political mind who never ran for office was a guy named Aaron Sorkin. He said, “Decisions are made by those who show up.” Show up tomorrow. When you vote tomorrow, make sure that you think about science as you pull the lever.

Second, this clip shows some mainstream media finally acknowledging some of their own ignorance in their wrongly-alleged vaccination-autism link. I love how that little pansy Lauer gets his misinformed ass kicked by a doctor.

Red county choices

I guess that the benefit of living in a red township of a red county in a red state is that you don’t have to worry about choices.

I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily have anything against those candidates listed in the image here outside of simple party affiliation. I’m just bemoaning the fact that when I opened my advance ballot I noted the complete lack of party choice on the right column. I only wish I could vote for at least one Democrat for local office.

Image via Wikipedia

Singularity, live, Last Chance Saloon, Manhattan, Kansas, 18 October 2008
Click here to view the embedded video.

Getting Over You Again, live, Last Chance Saloon, Manhattan, Kansas, 18 October 2008
Click here to view the embedded video.

[embedded video player and chat removed after conclusion of event]

If you can’t make it, here’s a nugget for you:

http://www.palinaspresident.us