Edit: See comments, I've changed my mind on this issue, but left my original writing here to show what my commenters are responding to.

This mosque debate keeps coming up, and shows no signs of going away, so I feel the need to express my opinion.

I'm somewhat distressed that my liberal friends who I usually see eye-to-eye with are almost all quite judgmental of the opinion that there could be any good reason to oppose this particular mosque on this particular site. There seems to be an overriding feeling that religious freedom demands that we not only allow this mosque to be built, but that we also give it our moral support.

My feeling at the moment is that there's not any good basis to actually deny the legal right of the mosque to be built at ground zero, but that I would criticize the imam's decision to move forward with the project at this location. I would join the voices that urge him to move it elsewhere. As Pope John Paul told the Catholic nuns who were going to move into a building near Auschwitz and build a cross there, "keep the idea, move the address."

If we agree that they have a legal right to proceed with the project (just as, by the way, their detractors have a legal right to protest outside it every day of its existence if they decide to) we can stop talking in terms of a religious freedom question and ask the more interesting question of whether it's a good idea that deserves our moral support.

The self-stated mission of the Cordoba Initiative is to improve Muslim-West relations. But this building hasn't even been built yet and already the project is worsening Muslim-West relations. To build bridges and cultivate trust you have to be sensitive to the other side. What if a Christian organization built a center like this in a Muslim country, but put a picture of Muhammad on the side? It would be an instant fail, even if their genuine intention was to improve relations.

I think the analogies are useful: an American cultural center at Hiroshima in 1954, or at Dresden? A German cultural center at Auschwitz in 1954, or on the beaches of Normandy? The analogies help because they take the "religious freedom" argument out of it. If we grant that the project is legal (thus satisfying religious freedom), it's becomes a question of whether the gesture is sensitive or not and whether we should give it moral support.

I don't think it's unreasonable to petition the imam to relocate this center. The US is almost 4 million square miles in area. New York City alone is 500 square miles. Why must this center be built on the 0.000025% of the country where Islamic extremists attacked us? Why would a center devoted to building east/west relations want to evoke that memory which is still quite fresh in people's minds? Why does the imam resist a land swap arrangement, which could be the perfect compromise -- allowing the center to be built without causing offense to >50% of Americans -- without any explanation but that the project will continue according to plan? I just find it hard to believe that someone who is already creating such division and mistrust is going to build east/west relations once the project is actually built.

Are there bigots who are opposing this just because they don't like Islam? Are there people who truly don't respect religious freedom? Probably. I haven't really read anything from people like that, but I'm sure they're out there. Don't let such people side-track the debate.

The point is that this project is achieving the opposite of its stated goal by uncompromisingly moving forward with a plan that is insensitive to the very Westerners it is trying to build trust with. What they're doing might be legal, but I think it's a bad idea and this is why I oppose it from a moral standpoint, though I don't deny that they have the right to build it.

I'm sending a care package to a friend who is going through a crappy crappy time. Any ideas for cool/cute/weird/day-brightening things to put in there? I have my own ideas of course, but wanted to tap into the vast array for anything particularly creative...

Conservatives complain that the left "blames America first." I'm sure there are some on the left who are guilty of going too far in that direction, like saying that 9/11 is all our fault. But I just don't think these conservatives realize how damaging it can be to go too far in the other direction.

I was surprised when I came across Glenn Beck's website The 9/12 Project -- I could agree with almost all of the project's principles. The only one I straight up couldn't agree with was "I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life" (why do conservatives insist on tangling government with religion?). The one that made me a little queasy is "America Is Good."

To say "America Is Good," full stop, makes me queasy, not because I think America is bad or because I feel the need to "blame America first," but because it is a blank check. It is unqualified. Regardless of what we actually do our country is good, according to this attitude.

To me that attitude leads straight to this quote from the elder George H. W. Bush:

I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.

"I don't care what the facts are," and in this case the facts were that a U.S. warship had just shot down a civilian Iranian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655) that was operating according to its scheduled flight plan. It was transmitting a "friend-or-foe" beacon indicating that it was a civilian aircraft. The U.S. ship launched the missiles from within Iranian territorial waters.

If Iran had shot down a U.S. commercial airliner, we would have been very angry. And in fact, we were very angry when the Soviets shot down Korean Air 007 five years earlier, even though that aircraft had ventured into Soviet airspace due to a navigational error. Ronald Reagan said at the time:

I'm coming before you tonight about the Korean airline massacre, the attack by the Soviet Union against 269 innocent men, women, and children aboard an unarmed Korean passenger plane. This crime against humanity must never be forgotten, here or throughout the world.

[...]

This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations. --Address to the Nation on the Soviet Attack on a Korean Civilian Airliner.

If shooting down a civilian airliner is so bad (which it is), why do we refuse to apologize for it when we do it? Why does any American excuse the position "I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are"?

ingdirect.com: "We gave our site a minor facelift. So if you notice anything different after you sign in, don't freak out. You're in the right place."

youtube.com: "We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we'll be back 100% in a bit."

Did my bank seriously just tell me not to freak out? When did this happen? When did websites become my homeboyz?

The Internet gets more amazing all the time, in ways that I'm not necessarily even paying attention to. So one day I'm thinking to myself "I wonder if the Internet can help me learn math," and to my great delight you can now watch video lectures from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and probably others. You can watch them anytime, you can shop around until you find the best professor, and you can work at your own pace.

I always wished I had more time to take math and physics in college. Now I have the chance to fill in the gaps in my understanding. Currently on the docket:

• Linear Algebra from MIT. I took Linear Algebra in college, but didn't come away with nearly as strong an intuition about it as I wanted to. For example, the first time I read the Wikipedia page on eigenvectors I was totally floored, because it has this picture that visually illustrates what an eigenvector is. I learned how to calculate eigenvectors, but didn't understand what they actually represent. This MIT course is taught by Gilbert Strang, who appears to be very good at explaining high-level concepts and cultivating intuition.
• Differential Equations from MIT. I've never taken differential equations, and have almost no idea what they are or what they're used for, except that they're somehow closely tied to many physical phenomena. I'm interested because they seem to have some relation to the ultimate prize, which is:
• The Fourier Transform and Its Applications. I've desperately wanted to be able to write programs that analyze the frequency content of sound since I was in high school. I'm currently working through the book Understanding Digital Signal Processing, which is very good, but I want a chance to hear it explained in video lectures also.
• Computational Science and Engineering I. I don't understand entirely what this class is about, but it seems to be engineering-oriented and also covers Fourier Series.

The only thing I need now is a little discipline.

What are the chances that two nuclear submarines accidentally collide in the middle of the ocean in the same month that two satellites accidentally collide in the middle of space?

So here I was, watching the inauguration, getting distracted for a moment and not paying attention, when all of the sudden, this:



I know I have a weird sense of humor, but when he said "when the red man can get ahead, man" (with the little pointy finger) I bust up laughing, uncontrollably, for a good 30 seconds.

I went to an anti-prop-8 rally and parade today, and it was so awesome. It was just full of love and positive energy. For a bunch of people who just got a royal "fuck you" from the state of California, it was a surprisingly upbeat event.

The weather was beautiful, and from what I hear was even more stunning in San Francisco, which also had a rally. God clearly voted today, but unfortunately s/he is not a citizen of the state of California.

I climbed many trees and other city habitat to get good photos (feeling a bit like Zaccheus in the process), temporarily putting myself in more danger of falling than I normally would. But it all turned out ok.

From Marriage Equality March

From Marriage Equality March

From Marriage Equality March

From Marriage Equality March

My favorite sign:

From Marriage Equality March

The only people I could find who weren't having a good time:

From Marriage Equality March

Check out my pictures from Phil and Mary's wedding. They turned out awesome, thanks in no small part to this snazzy $1500 lens that I rented for $30. I never could have gotten those low-light portrait shots without it.

Whoa this is getting ugly from the Republican side:

At rallies this week in Florida, crowds jeered and taunted members of the news media. One man hurled a racial epithet at a black television crewman, telling him, "Sit down, boy".

Yesterday, for the second time in three days, a speaker at a McCain rally in Pennsylvania referred to Obama's middle name, Hussein, in an effort to cast doubt in his religion and background. Obama is a Christian.

At the same rally, shouts of "terrorist" and "liar" could be heard following references to the Democratic candidate. On Saturday, McCain running mate Sarah Palin sought to link Obama to Ayers. "Kill him!" one man in the crowd shouted, not specifying who.

--The Guardian

Holy crap, it's the two minutes hate! It is sad and truly frightening that this is what the Republican party has come to. They have turned themselves into the party of xenophobia and hate.

They are spreading insinuation about Obama's link to a 1960s "domestic terrorist" without recognizing that they are breeding a new brand of extremism themselves! If guys at their rallies are shouting "terrorist," "liar," and "kill him," how far are they from actually doing something violent? The McCain campaign is taking a scorched earth strategy here, which is dishonorable and wrong.

One lesson I take from this is that no matter how decent a guy is when he's nominated to the Republican ticket, he'll never survive the experience with his decency intact. Because winning on the Republican side requires "mobilizing the base," and the base demands red meat. The base thrives on culture wars. The base has this need to find an "other" and demonize them.

It's a dark moment on the Republican side of the aisle.