View from a Farley The Current Events and Opinion Weblog of Chris Farley

The Case Against Sarah Palin

In my several years following politics, Sarah Palin is probably the worst candidate I’ve seen ascend to the vice presidential level. I’m going to present a very clear case against Sarah Palin in this post, but even if you don’t agree with any of those reasons, here’s one more: When voters choose a vice president, they realize that his or her Constitutional duties are to be ready to assume the presidency. When nominees choose a vice president, they realize that the most important factor is the vice president’s preparedness to assume the presidency. Sarah Palin is not ready to assume the presidency and she is therefore unfit to assume the vice presidency.

Her experience is limited to salmon fishing and moose hunting. Her foreign policy experience is non-existent. John McCain is 72 years old and he’s had several recurrences of cancer. The actuarial tables aren’t looking so good. McCain’s death is not imminent, but it is more likely with this particular president that he will expire before his term is done. Voters understand that, so they immediately look to the bottom half of the ticket. And who do we see there? Sarah Louise Palin.

So who is she? Palin is in the middle of her first term as governor of Alaska. Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Population: 5,469 in the 2000 census. How can people who say Obama is inexperienced say that Palin is even comparable? While Palin was mayor of a 5,500 person town, Barack Obama was a state legislator serving 12.5 million people. While Palin was governor of a state with a population of 650,00, Obama was in the United States Senate serving 300 million people.

Going further back, Palin attended the University of Idaho with no further education. Obama started at Occidental College, then transferred to Columbia University. He attended Harvard Law School and became president of the Harvard Law Review (I mention that because it is no minor accomplishment). I’m not against public or even community colleges, but do you think that Palin’s degree in journalism is going to be much help in anything but being nice to the press?

And now to the issues. Palin is pro-life, but also pro-capital punishment. In other words, everyone should have their babies because if they do something wrong, she’ll just advocate killing them later. This is not the woman I want to run the country. She supports drilling in ANWR, even though that will clearly not help anything. As for other issues, she’s such an unknown that nobody really knows where she stands on most important issues.

Given that her state is so important as it is her only experience, it’s worth it to think what some of her colleagues think about Palin’s appointment. Fellow Republican State Senate President Lyda Green from Palin’s own town said,”She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What will she do to the nation?” In the article linked above, Green cites an oil tax increase Palin pushed through and a $500 million state subsidy Palin awarded to a Canadian firm to build a natural gas pipeline with an uncertain future.

To top it all off, Palin even said to a question about VP speculation, “I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the V.P. does every day.”

Normally VP picks don’t matter so much, but in this particular case, McCain’s choice really matters. She is not ready to be vice president by her own statement. She’s not ready to be president. Her views are shrouded in mystery because she’s never had to address many national issues in Alaska. She has zero experience on the national scene, zero experience of the international scene. Sarah Palin is not a good choice. She’s a small time governor being brought out on to a big stage.

Please, please, somebody who has read this explain to me why they would still vote for Palin. In my opinion, even if someone were voting for McCain, the Palin choice would be enough to persuade someone to vote for someone else. If the VP has to assume office, Palin isn’t ready.

The Amazon Kindle in Education

It’s back to school for me on 3 September, but at the moment I’m fully engaged in buying books and such. Textbooks are, after all, important. Where else would one find either annoying but colorful blurbs on vaguely related topics surrounded by some content (at the less advanced levels) or remarkably dense, black-and-white books? These pieces of bound paper are worth something, though, because my books for this year cost over $600! The college students among you will probably ask if I left out a zero or two, but this is for 9th grade. $600 for 9th grade textbooks!

On top of that, the books weight about 25 to 30 pounds in total. They take up a bunch of space and are inconvenient to move and carry around. So what is the solution?

E-books! I can completely reduce the clutter, the tonnage, and the inconvenience. I can put all of my books onto one device. As far as e-book readers go, the Amazon Kindle is the clear winner for a number of reasons, including its ability to download books over the air and its independence from a computer. The obstacles to that oh-so-elegant solution, however, are not few.

First, my school does not support e-books at this point. With good reason as well! E-book technology has not developed to the point where it’s suitable for classroom use. You can’t take notes on the ink, for example. It lacks a built-in dictionary. The ability to configure many Kindles at once would be helpful for school as well.

Second, the availability of textbooks is a problem. McGraw-Hill publishes nearly all of their textbooks electronically as well as on paper, as do many publishers, but I’d have much more trouble finding my obscure French textbook on the Kindle.

Third, the design of the Kindle (the only viable option) would be problematic. It has some design quirks (the placement of the “next page” buttons, for example) and the screen is a bit small.

Like most things, all of this will be solved in time. My school (as well as many others) will start support e-books when the technology progresses to where it needs to be. The availability of textbooks is a work in progress. As time passes, more books will be published electronically and as schools and consumers switch to e-books, that will surely fuel more electronic releases. My design prayers will be reportedly answered as early as October with my small screen fears allayed next year.

With those changes made, Amazon will have created an electronic device that mimics most of the features of a regular book and enhances many others (please give us a dictionary that would allow us to tap a word and see the definition or something similar). The only “big” missing feature is the ability to write on the “paper.” That will help the Kindle infiltrate the education market because taking notes in the book is crucial for students. But in the case of a touch screen, write-able Kindle, it is not Amazon that is slowing the process. The underlying electronic paper technology cannot produce those results yet.

So it seems that my dreams of walking out the door to school with nothing but my Kindle and my laptop in hand are a bit far off. I’d probably still have to pay about $600 anyway because the high price of textbooks is due to the content on the pages, not the cost of the pages themselves. I can hope, though, as I’m lugging my books out my front door.

Changes and Updates at View from a Farley

Times are changing for the world and so too they must change for View from a Farley.

I initially conceived View from a Farley as a weblog and podcast. I come from a background of video podcasting, so I felt that I should do what I know. Without the financial backing to do a video podcast properly (I wanted good equipment or no equipment), I went to audio podcasting. I even invested in an excellent theme by Geoff Smith, but the audio part of View from a Farley never took root. For one reason or another, writing has come more easily to me than podcasting. So today, the View from a Farley podcast is officially dead. (However, since I am all-powerful on my own website, I can ressurect it if I ever feel motivated to do so.)

View from a Farley will now exclusively be a weblog. The purpose is not changing, but some other things will.

The number one rule of successful blogging, according to several accounts, is to write every day. Especially at the beginning, it seems, not showing up is the worst thing you can do. Most bloggers manage it well, but I’m not content to throw up a YouTube embed with a couple words. The nature of View from a Farley is that it requires much more time than a typical personal blog. If only this could be my full time job! Unfortunately, my other commitments are pressing and showing up everyday is just not going to happen. You will instead be hearing from me most days and you can always be bothered by me on Twitter!

Several people noticed and commented on the new theme. By no fault of the designer, Matthew Heidenreich, and coder, Adam Kiss, the theme is not what I wanted. Of couse I approved the design every step of the way, but I don’t like it in action. It’s a shame not to use this theme, though, so it will be around for a while. If there are any changes that could be pulled off with relative ease, I would be happy to hear about them.

Regarding plans for the future, I’ve been asked if I plan on monetizing through advertising at any point. To answer, I’ve considered it, but AdSense hates me and it’s difficult to get a traditional sponsorship. If any opportunity ever arises, I would consider advertising, but I’m not planning on living off View from a Farley. I’d hope to cover my operating costs and other things to help the site (new theme, etc.)

I also wanted to communicate how much I appreciate your comments. View from a Farley was intended to be my thoughts and initially I didn’t care if people listened to what I was saying or not. Today, I care very much. I want people to listen, I want more people to read, but what I like best are the comments. I love it when a conversation develops in the comments (so feel free to hit reply in the comments instead of just writing a new comment). Intense Debate provides excellent tools for actually having an intense debate, so I hope people use them.

Thank you to everyone for reading! Expect me to be back with a real post in the next few days.

It Counts Now

About a month from now, I’ll be sitting in a classroom. I’ll be sitting at my laptop, cracking open a book, cracking a joke (perhaps at my teacher’s expense). Ninth grade is the beginning of the end. On 2 September, everything counts. I trigger a countdown clock to leaving home and going to college.

In a lot of ways, this is exciting. In others, it’s depressing. If I keep looking forward to what’s next, I will be a step ahead, but I won’t be focused on what’s happening now.

In preparation for the years ahead, I am moving myself forward. I will no longer continuosly look over my shoulder for the Internet would-be-predator who has haunted me for the past few months. I’m past the point of caring about him. I have neither the time nor the motivation to pursue act against him on behalf of me and others. It’s just no worth it. I’m cleaning my room, too. You never know, I might even become a Buddhist or something.

The next few years will be interesting. If I look at just the past year, I realize how much has changed. I’m looking forward to the next 70 or so years.

Starting Over

Starting over is easy for most people. A teenager who has messed up their high school career can easily re-invent themselves in college. And again in graduate school. And again at a job. And again at another job. There are many, many opportunities for people to pick up and move on. The impressions that other people have of a person don’t change easily, so it makes sense to just move on having benefited from past experiences.

The starting over concept doesn’t have to be on such are large scale as starting over on one’s life. I do it all the time when I write. After a few paragraphs, I decide that my writing has gone in a bad direction, so I delete and start over.

So what would happen if we apply this concept on a much larger scale? How about our system of government? It seems that the government that has served us relatively well for the past 200 years would benefit from a shake up. No, the government isn’t in total collapse, but wouldn’t it be better if we applied our past experiences to government today?

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” [sic.] But Americans have always just “dealt with it.” I’d love to see a huge shake up to keep things fresh and to keep government honest.

But it will never happen. Just something to think about if anyone wants to buy an island and start a government with me.

Ones and 0s

I’ve dealt with only a few negative comments in my blogging career, but I’ve seen other people get all sorts of hateful comments.  I hope up-and-coming bloggers and podcasters are inspired by Geoff Smith’s song, “Ones and 0s” and video, produced in conjunction with Jonathan Davis.

Ones and 0s by Geoff Smith from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

Buy Geoff Smith’s new dynamic album at ringtonefeeder.com.

Different

There are few things more ironic than a conscious effort to be different. And it’s not just the people who dress all in black or tattoo their entire bodies that I’m talking about. Every time somebody does something just for the sake of setting themselves apart from everyone else, I cringe.

It’s obvious to me that the people who so consciously try to be different are reacting in an extraordinarily predictable way. It’s the Tom Sawyer effect in action — a parent, or more likely society-at-large, implicity or explicitly, forbids something, like destroying one’s appearance. The response is to do exactly what is forbidden. The choice to be different is irrational precisely for that reason. In this case, the person is not rebelling against society’s ideology but against its expectations.

Similarly, I know of one case in which the sibling of a friend consciously made a decision to be different. She came from a family that loved red meat and would eat steak or something similar most nights. The person decided to become a vegan. A more rational decision would have been to just cut back on red meat, but she had decided to be different at all costs.

Of course, the irony of such a decision lies in its hypocrisy. Entire groups form whose sole mission is to be different from everyone else. In the end, trying to be different just pushes people from one organized group into another. In that sense, they fail to achieve their goal every time, but they succeed in alienating a whole bunch of people.

So why do I care? People should be finding ways to do things that work for them, not do things specifically because they don’t work for other people. If people deviate from the social norm for a legitimate reason, then I accept that, but people who do things just to be different are living a life of hackery. The problem is that people in the second category believe themselves to be in the first category.

I look forward to your comments!

The Capitol Steps

My range of emotions needs to be stretched for me to show outward happiness. I smirk, but I don’t often smile. I chuckle, but I don’t usually laugh. Political satire, however, can usually put me over the edge. I was in the Berkshires last weekend and, for the fourth or fifth time, I saw The Capitol Steps. Their satire is spot-on and takes quite a while to get old.

Their humor is dry and the product is musical! When political satire and music collide, the result is funnier than just political satire on its own. They post weekly audio clips of their songs at their website, www.capitolsteps.com, but it’s really a shame to miss the visual aspect.

I’m not sure how the justices would feel about that, but President George H. W. Bush said of them, “The Capitol Steps make it easier to leave public life.” The group is a mix of former congressional staffers (both Republican and Democrat) and professional musicians. It’s a combination so dangerous that no one is safe. The TSA gets butchered in this next clip.

Mike Huckabee is the target of this next one. The Beatles’ “Let it Be” has been turned into “Huckabee.”

The Capitol Steps perform live at the Ronald Reagan Building and Internation Trade Center in Washington every Friday and Saturday. If you’re in Massachusetts, they’re at the Cranwell Restort, Golf Club, & Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts every night except Tuesday, through August. I strongly suggest seeing them live. They’re constantly on tour so they may be coming to a town near you. I promise you that you’ll laugh if you’re even vaguely aware of current events. Failing a live show, buy their new album, “Campaign and Suffering.” I’m sure you can find more of their work if you crawl around YouTube, as well.

UPDATE: Thanks to Max Murphy from Mac News Weekly for the new image.

Cali Live

I’ll be on Cali Live this evening between 9 and 10 PM EDT.  My segment will be towards the end, sometime after 9:30 PM EDT.

Check out CaliLive.tv for the stream, or go directly to UStream if that link does not work.