On Partisan Differences

This is an edited version of a comment I made regarding my friend Kern's blog post comparing liberal and conservative ideologies.

Both parties/philosophies appeal to a range of socioeconomic classes and intellectual levels. It's a common fallacy of both sides to only notice the lowest level of the opposition's appeal. Rush Limbaugh continuously explains to his listenership why liberalism has a more basic, superficial appeal. I think most of my readers will find that Rush appeals to, in turn, an intellectual level beneath us. That's not to say his criticisms of liberalism are invalid. They are valid. He's just selecting the dumbest, most extreme targets within the liberal camp.

Taken too far, it might sound like there aren't differences between Democrats and Republicans or Liberalism and Conservatism--and there are. The media structure is a case in point. However, we mustn't forget that both parties must necessarily appeal to the lowest common denominator (and the highest) to stay afloat, albeit through different but equally reprehensible means.

Part of my generation's confusion is caused by the fact that the parties act differently depending on whether they're in or out of power. The parties are generally more hypocritical and aggressive when they're in power.

Remember that at the ideologies' cores lie different foundational assumptions about the world. Liberals assume that glitches of the free market are efficiently repaired by bureaucratic intervention. They assume people will do things whether they're illegal or not. They assume people need help to survive hardship and to rise to the top. They assume that laws reflect realities.

Conservatives assume that bureaucracy is less efficient than free market. They assume laws proceed from morals. They assume laws are effective. They assume that enabling is the greater danger to not helping. They assume people will survive hardship and that cream rises to the top.

All of those assumptions are flawed, but grounded in seeds of truth. Frequently, liberals and conservatives battle over the position of an optimization curve (ie the Laffer curve) that is poorly defined. In the absence of solid statistics pointing out the obvious answer to a dilemma, people resort to their assumptions, and this is where most political disagreements originate--from the gray areas. If it was black and white, we'd be in agreement.

Picnic Day

So last week was Picnic Day, the greatest annual event in Davis. Every year a hundred thousand people or so flock to the university's (and city's) open house. Live music blasts from five stages at any given moment, all of the departments put on events and every imaginable animal show finds a place here. Undergraduates wander drunkenly through crowds of visiting families. This year my family came; that is, my sister, mom and the Norrises, family friends whose daughter is a freshman here. Everybody slept in my living room and everybody was delightful.

I joined KDVS for the Picnic Day Parade. The weather was a perfect, cloudless low 80 degrees (the last one I was in was a sodden death march).


I thanked Allison for babysitting my family and began to show them around. The sheepdog trials are the most awesome event at Picnic Day, which is saying something.


We lounged in the grass and watched the incredible spectacle. The dogs work like their lives depend on it.


I slipped off to chat with to Jill and her mom, who were by then pleasantly tipsy. We lounged in the grass some more and her mom, Ra, snapped a couple of pictures of the two of us. This one was a keeper.


I met back up with my unit for some more grass-lounging as we listened to the Battle of the Bands, where school marching bands take turns playing songs until they succumb to exhaustion.

I later showed the Norrises my radio station, capping off my favorite Picnic Day yet.

On Values

People unconsciously cultivate their sense of self-worth through their assignment of value. They tend to value the traits they possess. Thus, the meter they judge the world by shows them in the most favorable light.

I value cleverness, curiosity and rationality because I perceive myself to possess those traits. When I judge others, I usually find myself superior in the qualities I value. I don't value organization, athletic prowess or piety very much because while I can see the usefulness of such traits, I do not have them.

I see this tendency in everyone: successful entrepreneurs value business savvy, stylish people value fashion sense and pilots value good flying. While such worldviews are not objectively correct, they serve a vital purpose in individuals' psyches.

It works both ways, of course. Striving for a quality tends to enhance it and that fixation tends to positively distort the quality's worth. This is useful, because it has a tendency to encourage people to develop their unique talents. The artist works to become more creative and the scientist to become more observant.

There is a crucial exception to this tendency. Whenever individuals strive to be something they're not, they act out the axillary to the self-worth principle. This axillary is less influential, but it is also vital in regulating human life. Poor people aspiring to wealth, cubicle-bound employees writing the great American novel and introverts desiring charisma all provide for motion and adaptation in themselves and society.

The balance between these two tendencies mostly leaves people with a net sense of self-worth, but not everyone. I won't pretend like I understand depression, but I will clarify that these are tendencies, not rules impervious to circumstance.

A Slice of Good Friday Mania

Today is Good Friday and I feel good. Really good. One cup of coffee and I feel like a demigod: potent, wise and I can practically see Fortune's broad grin beaming down at me. If this is what cocaine feels like, I ought never to try it.

I'm surprised it took me this long to find coffee. My first tentative steps towards the drink left me jittery. Somehow, its effect changed once I drank it with frequency. My hat is off to the people who predicted that. A coffee addiction sounds like fun. I haven't acquired one yet, but I hear it takes a little time.

My neurobiology professor is talking about sodium channels and action potentials and all I can do is silently laugh at the the phrase "refractory period". I wonder if I'm the only one in class who finds that uproarious. I guess information transmission is a beautiful thing...

If I was born to be anything, it was a critic. I love to make fun of people. Of course, it's a sign of familiarity and affection, but that's always been a tough sell for people who didn't grow up in a family like mine. Maybe one of the hangups is the ambivalence implicit in my critiques-- I'm as likely to say something flattering without prompting as harsh. I impose objectivity on unusual circumstances and it throws people off.

Sensualist Dream

My fellow blogger Rob challenged some friends to write a paragraph with the title "Sensualist Dream", whatever we thought it should be. Here's my submission.

Curled up in my bed, comforter wrapped around me, I gradually become conscious of the world. I can hear rain on the roof and sense the light of the muted sky. I am curled up, wrapped around my blanket and my blanket is wrapped around me. The walls are insubstantial, they are only half there. Now only a third, now a quarter. Soon I will forget there were walls at all. I am a cloud, floating on the sea, drifting away. I notice delicate conformational changes in my cloud. Finely tuned responses to invisible forces around me, my form moves in perfect concert with my environment. A passing bird wouldn't suspect my cloud as anything but ordinary. My cloud begins to take interpretive liberties with its reciprocation, flowing more and more freely, assuming wilder and wilder forms. Maybe a giraffe, now a ballerina, now a simple, beautiful girl. Her very curves caress and embrace me wholly. I linger on that moment. The pattering rain reminds me of the preciousness of every moment. I think of the dew-cool land stretching out in all directions. I think of the hills near the bay, green with rain, rolling endlessly, hiding oaks in their seams, and the blessed inhabitants of that Eden, the fluffy sheep. The fluffy sheep don't believe in time. I don't either. The fluffy sheep bah in unison, at first very quietly, but with increasing volume until it feels as if the entire world has joined in. The fluffy sheep have crowned me king. King of the dew-cool grass, king of the sky, king of the hills and of the oaks hidden in their seams. King of all things conceived, king of all the worlds pulsing, exhuding, emanating from my cloud. My clouds' wisps are fractals. Worlds within worlds, thoughts within thoughts, my realm is bounded cozily by infinity. I take to tracing the outline of my realm. The vast expanse yawns ahead of my walking figure. My pace quickens. Faster and faster, until I am rushing with my thoughts sprawling rampant alongside me, like a stampede of animals fleeing wildfire, the desperate glint of animal fear in all their eyes. Squirrels, rabbits, deer and bears alongside each other, fur flying, trampling each other, the desperate agony of flight overshadowed only by the threat of fiery death. Outlines of some animals blur into phantom streaks of outreaching terror, others burst into flame, flying like torches through the night. I can hear the torchlight like a million needles, like grim laughter. Hopelessness grips me and my will falters. I allow the wildfire to overtake me. Like a wave, it overtakes me all at once. Yet, it does not burn. The flames licking my flesh are pleasantly warm. I lean back into the feeling. The flames lick over all my body. I close my eyes and withdraw into my mind, searching for patterns in the sensation. The heat intensifies gradually, almost imperceptibly, to a pleasant burn, then hotter. Pleasure begins to flicker back and forth with pain, but still the heat grows. I fight to keep my attention on the good in the feeling, but the intensity makes my task increasingly difficult. I can only perceive the heat as pain. Barely tolerable, my skin begins to sear. Every nerve ending in my body screams with pain. My mind's order begins to break down and writhe. My mind joins in screaming chorus with my skin. My muscles capitulate soon after, thrashing against the unbearable scorch. Then, just as suddenly as that wave of wildfire had overtaken me, the inferno vanishes, leaving all but the vestigial glow of heat on skin. Like a sunburn, I feel all my skin radiate heat off, to my blanket, and reflect back onto my skin. I bask in my oven of afterglow, pondering life's caprice.