Europe Travelblog

Matthew is home now

We brought Matthew home from the hospital this morning - everything is going well. He's spent the afternoon sleeping, nursing, and trying not to be smothered with love by his big brother.

I'm posting here one of our favorite pictures from the hospital and a couple videos. The picture is one of many at http://matthewfinney.shutterfly.com/, and the videos are from my YouTube channel.

Third Debate: McCain did better, but not well enough

McCain is really far behind. FiveThirtyEight gives Obama a 95.1% chance of winning on November 4 and 270towin gives Obama over a 99.5% chance of winning if the election were held right now. That's a huge deficit, and this was McCain's last chance to make a big splash.

Unfortunately for him, tonight was just not enough.

In by far the most interesting debate of the series (whether due to the format, the candidates, or the moderator, I don't know), McCain did a lot better than he had done before. It's possible that his attacks on Obama as another tax-and-spend liberal were likely very effective for the Republican base. However, the Republican base is not who he needs now. Since the economic meltdown, the Independents have been moving strongly to Obama, and I don't think that the red meat for the GOP base will sway those Independents.

It didn't help that McCain made a lot of flubs - Sarah Palin's experience is with a child with Downs Syndrome, not autism. His laugh line about insurance was supposed to be about "hair transplants", not just transplants (and since it flopped so badly in the second debate, I'm surprised he even tried again). There were a couple of others, but I don't remember them right now (I'm a bit distracted).

Lots of McCain's facial expressions were negative, and I think he'll get knocked down on the visual of seething contempt vs. Obama's confident smiling (apparently, CNN's instant poll has Obama winning "likability" 70% to 22%).

I don't have a lot to say about Obama here - this debate was simply a lot less important for him than it was for McCain. As some have noted, we're in "dead girl, live boy territory" (a reference to an old political line that the only way the leader could lose is if he's caught with a dead girl or a live boy), and Obama just needed to avoid a major gaffe. He did what he needed to do.

As I'm typing this, I'm seeing from the pundits that the instant polling from all the networks is that Obama won - apparently even from Fox! I'm surprised that the reaction is that consistent, but it probably means that we should be getting ready for President Barack Obama. And I think that's great news for America.

Hello, Matthew Walter Finney!

After 23 hours of natural labor, Matthew Walter Finney was born at 2:23 on the morning of October 14, 2008. He is completely healthy and is looking great. He was 9 lb 1 oz in weight and 20.5 inches long. Jenny is healthy, too (though sore and tired).

He joins his big brother, Douglas, in being born at the same hospital, though his entry is much less traumatic. We're very excited to be able to room in with Matthew for a couple of days and to get to know him and teach him how to nurse.

Jenny was very, very impressive. We came to the hospital after her water broke, and Matthew was born 23 hours later. In order to be able to have the best chance possible to breastfeed successfully, Jenny decided not to have help with inducing, an epidural, or any other painkillers. I have never been more impressed with anyone than I was of her last night.

I have uploaded pictures of Matthew to http://matthewfinney.shutterfly.com/.

Travel-Related Visual Representation of the Candidates

My train-obsessed two-year-old son likes Sarah Palin best of these. I think he'll grow out of it.

Second Debate: It was Boring; Advantage Obama Again

It was just not a very interesting debate. It seemed that all of the answers were just excerpts from the stump speeches, and little was different from last week. The Town Hall format was supposed to make a difference in how the candidates answered questions, but (except for the effective moment with McCain shaking the hand of the Chief Petty Officer) it didn't really make a difference. The rules were so confining and the crowd was so obediently polite that the format didn't open things up at all. Heck, both candidates whining about the rules (to which they agreed!) will probably be the main point of ridicule on SNL.

Both candidates played it safe. For Obama, that's ok because he's currently very far ahead (FiveThirtyEight gives him a 89.2% chance of winning on November 4 and 270towin gives him a 99.1% lead at this moment). For McCain, though, this debate was just not enough. Barring some huge unexpected situation, this debate and next week's debate are likely McCain's last chances to change people's minds. I just don't see that McCain did anything to change the race.

Perhaps McCain's problem is that he has used up his chances to shake things up. He's already rolled the dice at least four times in the last few weeks: the surprising "Celebrity" ads; canceling the first day of the RNC; the shocking Sarah Palin choice; and the silly "suspension" stunt). Some of these worked for him (Celebrity, RNC, Palin at first) and some flopped (Palin once she was interviewed and the "suspension"). He needed a game changer in this debate, but maybe his bag of tricks has simply run out.

And even if he finds another trick, chances are that it wouldn't be successful. Looking at the four gambles he took, the first was very successful at improving his numbers compared to Obama, but each successive gamble was less successful than its predecessor. It could be just coincidence (or an artifact of my bias), but I think we might be seeing diminishing returns as each gamble makes him look less Presidential.

McCain both needed a gamble tonight and would likely have been hurt by a gamble tonight. Not a good place for him to be.

VP Debate: Biden wins

Sarah Palin did better than expected; at least she didn't swallow her own tongue or something like that. However, in order to be able to do that, she had to literally and explicitly ignore questions for which she wasn't prepared. I think that's why we didn't get a moment like the Couric interviews gave us; with Couric, Palin couldn't avoid the questions for which she was unprepared. Here, she could just say "I don't care what you want me to talk about, I'm going to reiterate my talking points about energy."

While this meant she didn't completely embarrass herself, it didn't hide her overall unreadiness for the job. There were many questions in which I noticed the golden moment when she transitioned from "I don't know how to answer Gwen... how do I get to a talking point" to "I'm on my script; now I can look at the camera." She wasn't really answering questions - she was working from a script.

Also, her refusal to answer the question about whether she thought gays couples should have equal legal rights as straight couples was painfully awkward. The look of disgust on her face in that section as she talked about how she "tolerates" gays told a lot more about what she thinks than her words said.

Biden did much better, in my opinion. He didn't have any major gaffes, and he was able to avoid the pitfall of appearing to condescend to his younger female rival. His early zing about the Bridge to Nowhere was well received in the left-leaning young crowd with which I saw the debate. His late fusillade against the McCain as a "Maverick" was strong - too bad he waited so long to deploy it.

I think the moment that has the greatest potential to be Biden's either strength or undoing was when he got emotional talking about his son almost dying from the car crash that killed his wife and daughter. The moment was very powerful for me as a counter to the idea that only a "hockey mom" understands real people, but how will it play? The Conventional Wisdom is that a similar moment saved Hillary in New Hampshire, but also that a moment of tears killed Muskie's campaign in 1972.

In my eyes, the debate was a win for Biden - he answered the questions, and he answered them well. He was also able to take a lot of shots at McCain that Palin couldn't deflect.

On another note, it was very interesting to have the debate at my alma mater. We watched the debate on the other end of campus, at a special program for young alumni and students at the art school. It was very interesting to go through the police checkpoint, to see the McCain boosters outside the security perimeter, and to see the riot police getting prepared to handle the event.

We also had an interesting conversation on public transportation on the way back. The woman sitting next to us was in town just for the debate - she's working for the Obama campaign. The really interesting thing is that she's not even an American! She quit her job in her homeland of Denmark this summer to come here to work on Obama's campaign. The passion behind this election is amazing.

First Debate: It's a Tie; Advantage Obama

Right now, McCain is behind. With the Palin pick being increasingly seen as a mistake and the �suspension� being seen largely as a political stunt, McCain needed a big win to change the momentum. He�s currently at risk of being seen as preferring �Maverickness� to stability.

For Obama, the big goal he had was to appear presidential and knowledgeable. The concerns about his inexperience and �otherness� are still strong, so he needed to show that he was intelligent, ready, serious, and presidential.

I thought both looked largely ready to be President. Even if Obama got under McCain�s skin a bit more, neither had a home run and neither had a major blunder. That plays much better for Obama - he needed just to show that he was in the same ballpark of competence on foreign policy as McCain, and he did it. McCain needed to show that he�s more competent and not erratic. He succeeded on the second, but not on the first.

Overall, though, we'll have to wait until tonight's SNL parody to see how this debate will be remembered...

Update on the SNL parodies:

The opening Sarah Palin sketch was great. I think that Palin has officially become a Quayle-level embarrassment and liability, if not worse. She possibly could redeem herself on Thursday (at my alma mater!) or if Biden messes up, but I doubt it.

The debate sketch was ok, not great. I think the "McCain is a maverick out of control" idea reflected the past week enough to resonate, but the "race card" and "protecting Chicago corruption" gags against Obama seemed to be more about making sure they hit both sides than a commentary on the week.

Both Obama and McCain did well enough in the debate itself that there wasn't much directly to make fun of, but McCain's week was so bizarre that he really opened himself up for an attack, and it hit home.

A Better Date and Time API: Joda Time

As part of my employer's Java News Brief series, I have written an article on A Better Date and Time API: Joda Time. In the article, I discuss Joda Time, a major improvement over the date and time APIs built into Java.

Previously, I have written articles in the series on an Intro to JGoodies Forms, Units and Measures with JScience, an Intro to JGoodies Validation, and in Writing Music in Java: Two Approaches.

Check it out!

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is one of the most popular non-fiction books in the last decade, and it's easy to see why. While it took me a long time to read it (I think I actually started last year), I very much enjoyed this summary of the history of mankind. Jared Diamond has a great way of capturing broad events and trends across centuries, cultures, and continents.

Guns, Germs, and Steel won a Pulitzer Prize for its discussion of how cultures evolved. Starting from the question of a New Guinea native about why the Western societies (Europeans and Americans, mostly) were so much more successful than native New Guineans. From that point, he discusses how differences in tools (Guns), diseases (Germs), and technology (Steel) are the direct causes of the success of the Eurasian-based societies.

Fortunately, he goes further, delving into the questions of why those differences developed. He rejects the idea that races are inherently inferior or superior to each other, instead demonstrating with many examples how such differences are the indirect result of many natural effects. For example, one of the reasons that people from Eurasia colonized the Americas instead of the other way around is that Eurasia is oriented mostly East-to-West and the Americas are oriented North-to-South. That difference in orientation means that the same basic climate exists across thousands of miles and through millions of people in Eurasia, so new discoveries in agriculture were able to spread to many different cultures. In the Americas, however, the zones of similar climate are much smaller and separated, so innovations are not combined.

Additionally, he gives examples in another direction showing that the natural environment determines the success and failure of societies more than any inherent racial tendencies: showing what happens when groups of the same people expand to different places. In particular, he shows how the differences in geography, flora, and fauna of different Polynesian islands easily explains the different societies discovered on the islands.

Guns, Germs, and Steel gives a lot food for thought about how we as a society got to where we are, and goes a long way to explain how European and American cultures became dominant, but also demonstrates that such dominance is not guaranteed to last.

The biggest unexpected pleasure in reading the book for me was reading something that simply accepts that the origin and history of human that science has discovered is the best explanation possible. I've spent so much time in the past few years debating science on a political forum, so I've become sadly accustomed to having to defend the notions of evolution and an Earth older than 6000 years old. It was interesting to read in this book about how evidence from archaeological pottery findings, animal husbandry, plant discovery, tool development, and linguistics all seamlessly work together to provide co-ordinated scientific evidence of how human cultures changed and competed. It was refreshing that Mr. Diamond never felt that he had to apologize for coming to conclusions that didn't mesh with the pre-conceived ideas of particular religions and ideologies.

The only real gripe I had about the book is that it was sometimes repetitious. Certain points about the North-South vs. East-West orientations of the continents were explained many times throughout the book. Perhaps some will read the book as isolated chapters and need that approach, but it was a bit frustrating for me as I read it linearly.