Campaigning on Foreign Soil

I have been trying to figure out why I find Obama's trip to Berlin so unsettling. My conclusion is that I don't have one big complaint, but a bunch of smaller ones.

• I generally don't like meddling by elected reps outside the executive branch. Fact finding missions I can endorse, but the (sometimes implied?) commitments made on behalf of the nation are rather presumptuous. It sounds like Obama crossed this line in Iraq, but perhaps the fact he is talking about a time during which he might be President excuses it somewhat?
• I don't like absentee voting, which otherwise provides a valid reason for campaigning wherever ex-patriots live. If you are ordered out of the country during an election (like a soldier), sure, that's fine. But people that have chosen to live outside a country probably have differently aligned interests. Yes, I am an absentee voter (depending on the whims of Oregon officials) - but I fully support the stripping of that right. I think the fact that the States have full control over who can vote in their elections probably complicates that issue though.
• Speeches to foreigners (like, say, throngs of Germans) seem to imply one of two things:
  
  • "I am willing to throw US interests under the bus to improve relations with you"
  • "Start getting used to taking your marching orders from me"
  Neither of those sound very good to me.

McCain is certainly doing his fair share of foreign visits as well, but they haven't stood out to me as being particularly offensive.

JibJab Does McCain and Obama

The Bush/Kerry one was hilarious - this one is pretty good too.



Via Double Blind.

Cropsharing in Portland

Some crazy hippy* in Portland is running a collective farming operation with the food being grown in local backyards.

I discovered this on my last trip to Portland; much to my surprise, my grandparents' backyard had been converted to cropland (beans, I think).

It sounds like the arrangement details vary quite a bit, but I understand it often works something like this: farmer dude bikes over, creates garden, comes back periodically to maintain garden, and splits harvest with land owners and shareholders of the farming collective.

My first thought was that bringing back sharecropping (a fairly oppressive form of employment, as far as I can tell) to give power to the people was fairly ironic. But I suppose that in this particular mode it's a bit more free-enterprisey - you aren't dependent on any single landowner for your sustenance.

My second thought was that I like the idea of putting my own monster backyard to productive use without doing any work myself, but I am pretty paranoid about the possibility of toxins in the ground - I live pretty close to a highway (when was leaded gas banned?). The hippy in question has a feel-good answer about handling lead and miscellaneous "poisons", but I don't know enough chemistry to know he's correct...

Thanks for your question, Craig. I forwarded your question to Kollibri, who responds that he tests for lead in all his plots.

Also, he amends the soil so that the pH remains above 6.5. Even if there were poisons present in the soil, this would prevent their uptake into plants.

Anyway, pretty neat idea. Anyone doing this in the Lower Mainland of BC?

* I know crazy hippies. Trust me. Plus, his adopted name means "Hummingbird Earth Sunflower" and he was inspired to this task by the fact that sufferers of Hurricane Katrina were dependent on the outside world for food (underwater gardening, anyone?).

Update 2008-08-04: My grandmother has supplied additional details about the arrangement.

Movie Review: Get Smart

I haven't seen even a single episode of the old TV series by the same name, but I still enjoyed Get Smart.

Steve Carell is joined by The Rock, Terence Stamp, and the guy who plays Hiro on Heroes for this silly movie, which is punctuated by moments of side-splitting brilliance. There is the occasional parallel to real-live current events, but not much beyond some good-natured mocking of President Bush.

I recommend it if you're looking for a chuckle.

Carbon Emissions vs Consumption

It seems that I've confused "carbon emissions" with "carbon consumption" - probably because I care a little about the latter, and not at all about the former - resulting in a thoroughly sketchy claim that BC's new gas tax won't reduce carbon emissions. It's a lot harder to get out of the carbon consumption chain than the carbon emission chain.

Thanks to Sacha for only quoting the least crazy part of that post!

So, does this mean that the environmentally friendly choice at Safeway is plastic bags because it raises the price of gas? It's all so confusing these days...

That being said, I'm not going to take too much crap from anyone that extols both the economic and environmental benefits of this tax restructuring - if there's one thing that economic growth does not normally lead to, it's a reduction in carbon emissions.


See also this chart at Google's Gapminder.