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Archive for November, 2008

Global Warming & Epistemology

Posted in Me Thinking So You Don't Have To on November 27, 2008 by themaroon

I just came across a comment on Non-Hacker News about an article from a global warming skeptic (I fixed a couple typos):

I don’t understand why people are so ready to believe in global warming. Even if it is true, the effects will not be significant for a very long time, much too long for us to take the measures we are taking now.

I’ve also read enough convincing and levelheaded counters from smart, independent people that I also am not convinced global warming is caused by people, or is necessarily happening at all.

For reference there is Michael Crichton, this guy, and James Hogan (highly esteemed hard sci fi author). The last author has written a very interesting book called Kicking the Sacred Cow that I highly recommend. It debunks and/or shows persuasive alternative theories to many "facts" we "know" today. Besides global warming, he also tackles topics like Darwinism, the big bang, catastrophism, and AIDs.

I like the comment because it gets to the crux of the matter, which is epistemology. When faced with a complex argument, how do you decide what is true and what is not? In this case specifically, how does one come to an informed opinion about whether or not climate change is occurring, and if so, why?

It’s important when reading articles like the ones the commenter mentioned to realize that it’s fairly easy to convince lay people of anything with selective use of facts and logic, especially when the attempt is well-written. It’s much harder to do the same to experts. Cherry-picking data won’t fool someone who has ready access to all of the rest.

The overwhelming majority of experts in climatology believe that climate change is occurring, that the cause is largely man-made, and that we don’t have much time to avert the potential crisis. That’s an incontrovertible fact. You can argue about why that is. Some say it’s due to social or political pressures, or Al Gore, or a host of other reasons. But you can’t really argue that they don’t endorse the idea. Even the ones funded by oil and coal companies do.

Personally, I like Occam’s Razor here. One explanation is that there is some cabal of scientists and left-wing politicians who have formed a global conspiracy with the intention of destroying our economy by forcing a widespread and expensive change in energy policy, and that said cabal has ensured that anyone who disagrees will never be published or elected and will be laughed out of the scientific or political community. Another explanation is that most climatologists who studied the issue believed that the data pointed to anthropogenic climate change. I don’t know about you, but I’d lump the people in the first group in with those who believe that Bush engineered 9/11 and ones who think The DaVinci Code was a documentary.

It’s also important to consider sources. Neither Michael Crichton nor James Hogan are or were climatologists. They’re both authors. Smart authors who know more about science than most, but still not climatologists or even scientists. And the original article’s writer is a software engineer.

As an uninformed person (i.e. non-climatologist) I’ll accept the word of the vast majority of informed persons (i.e. climatologists, including the ones who have clear incentives to the contrary) over the word of a couple authors and a programmer. That doesn’t mean I’ll be correct 100% of the time, and I might not even be on global warming. I accept that. A broken clock is right twice a day, and sometimes hapless skeptics are too.

Nobody can be right about everything, and the nature of climate change is that the ultimate decisions have to rest with citizens, the politicians they elect, and entrepreneurs, most of whom can’t be expected to know everything about everything, or even everything about global warming. The best they can do is take the most informed opinions around and act on them.

And that’s what many of us who believe we need to take action on climate change are saying. We’re not saying we have any special knowledge about the problem, and we’re not saying that it’s unquestionably mankind’s fault. What we are saying is that clearly those who devote their lives to the study of such matters overwhelmingly agree that we need to take action, and that we therefore should because we have no better advice to the contrary.

So I side with them. I won’t always be correct in doing so, but in the long run I’ll have a much better track record than those who simply choose the argument that is politically expedient or causes them the least concern.

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My Kind Of Town

Posted in Pointless Words of Wisdom on November 23, 2008 by themaroon

There’s nothing more amazing than walking down the Las Vegas Strip when the town is relatively empty. At any normal time in any normal economy, you’re at least somewhat insulated from the sheer insanity by the throngs of drunken, middle class convention-goers who form a pasty white buffer between you and the madness. But the weekend before Thanksgiving at the outset of what may be the next Great Depression feels like that empty Times Square scene from Vanilla Sky but with hookers and margaritas, both measured by the yard.

Normally it’s fairly easy, if you stick to the middle of the sidewalk, to avoid the throng of Mexicans pushing their little prostitution advertisements at you. But when there’s almost nobody else in town it’s just you and them, mano y mano, and I get the feeling that they’re getting a little more aggressive for fear that if they don’t drum up some johns quickly they may not be employed next year. None of them have resorted to just shoving the hooker baseball cards into my pocket yet, but when it happens I won’t be surprised. If they do, I hope I get a rookie card. It might be worth something one day if she ends up getting busted in an airport bathroom with a Congressman. And I’m curious what sort of performance statistics they put on the back of those things.

On the way to my hotel, my friend Russ and I were walking by and one of them tried to sell us tickets to somewhere that had “naked men”. We were well-dressed (I had on an orange cable-knit sweater from Brooks Brothers and boot cut Banana Republic jeans) but really? I was a little offended (not to mention a little shocked that anyone of any gender or sexual orientation would want to see naked men) that someone would assume that any guy whose pants didn’t have a hole in them must want to see other guys with no pants on at all. I would say that my wedding ring should have prevented that, but this is 2008, or at least it was until November 4^th.

Apparently Treasure Island (now, out of a misguided sense of hipness, called TI) has gone adult-themed. When I first came out here, about a decade ago, the little pirate show that runs twice an hour was aimed at children, with pyrotechnics and cute little “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” type songs. Now it’s full of half-naked women dancing to hip-hop. Maybe that’s what piracy is like nowadays, which would surely explain why so many Somalians are making it their occupation. If so, I do live pretty close to Lake Erie…

I also saw in passing a girl I once met (she, umm, “dated” someone I knew) working in a bar right on The Strip. I remember when I first met her she told me she worked in marketing at Imperial Palace, which is, by the way, trying to follow in Treasure Island’s scantily-clad footsteps and rebrand itself as IP. Unfortunately, when both your casino and your cocktail waitresses were made before World War II, no amount of abbreviation can make you cool.

When she said she worked in marketing I was just barely sober enough to hold back “really, because I would have guessed you for a stripper”. If you saw her, you’d understand. One glance and it was clear there that the only college diploma in her past was the one she probably regrets having done unspeakable things with at a frat party.

So today I found out that what she meant by “marketing” was that she pours margaritas behind a glass wall while wearing a shirt scientifically designed to look as if at any minute it might buckle under the weight of her surgically-enhanced cleavage. Only in Vegas could the job description for someone whose one and only requirement is a double D cup have the word “marketing” in it.

Regardless of the incredibly low occupancy rate Vegas is still Vegas, perhaps even more so than ever. You may be able to get a room during CES, which is any anomaly akin to being able to buy the latest Tickle Me Elmo in mid-December, but the buildings are still bigger and more expensive than anywhere. And as if to say “fuck you” to the millions of people struggling to pay their ballooning adjustable rate mortgage, they’re opening even better ones soon. While the rest of the world is worrying about layoffs and deflation, MGM is building a complex that costs five times more than GM.

As the town’s biggest fan, I can only hope les bon temps will keep roulering. Las Vegas is the American city, the one place I tell visitors from other countries they must see before they return to their soccer and public health care. For the most part, if you’ve seen one big city you’ve seen them all. Cracked concrete as far as the eye can see, weird smells you can never quite place but are sure they’re from some as yet undiscovered combination of bodily fluids, and clothing stores so expensive that the few people who can actually afford them are too smart to shop there. If it weren’t for the weather and the funny accents you probably couldn’t tell New York from Chicago or Los Angeles or London.

But Las Vegas is unique, totally unlike anything else you’ll ever see. It’s half good and half bad, but it’s one hundred percent American. It’s over the top in every way, and it could never be replicated because no other country has the proper blend of opulence and ignorance that, when mixed together and baked at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit in July, form this rich and gooey capitalistic cookie.

And that’s why I love this town, “marketing” jobs, Mexican pimps, and all.

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Startup Lessons

Posted in Startup on November 16, 2008 by themaroon

Someone asked me recently what the most interesting thing I’ve learned from doing a startup was. I couldn’t think of one specifically that stood out, but here are my top two.

#1: It’s probably easier to raise $5 million in funding than it is $500,000.

That’s not what you’d expect. I would have guessed difficulty in raising funds would be linear, but it isn’t.

The primary reason is that there are two typical investors: angels and VCs. Angels are just wealthy people who typically sums of between $10 and $100k, with $50k probably being a good average.

VCs are institutional investors who raise funds often totaling in the hundreds of millions, and are paid in such a way that they are incentivized to deploy the entire amount into investments. So, VCs like to make bigger investments because then they can make fewer. That means less due diligence, fewer board meetings, etc.

Not many VCs make it their business to invest amounts of money that small. It happens, but it’s often just something they do to lock up right of first refusal on future rounds. A lot of companies would much rather raise $500k than $5m, so they’ll do it if they like you enough, but it’s relatively uncommon.

Raising $500k from angels means convincing somewhere between 5 and 20 different people, all with their own habits and goals, to invest in you at the same valuation and terms. That happens too actually, even outside of the few syndicates that exist, but again, it’s hard to pull off.

#2 Our patent system is deeply flawed, but it works pretty damn well in spite of itself.

Before starting up, my view of patents was pretty simple. You invent something, submit a patent, and if approved you’ve now earned the right to make it exclusively. Sounds easy, right?

In reality it’s anything but. An actual patent does little beyond give you the basis with which to sue someone. And when you do, you’re not on very firm footing, as patents are overturned possibly more often than not.

It turns out they’re anything but ironclad rights to a monopoly on your invention. They’re really just ammo. They seem to function, in the real world, much the way nuclear weapons did during the Cold War, to create a sort of mutually assured destruction with each company’s arsenal preventing their opposition from pushing the launch button. The legal fees involved most often wouldn’t be worth it for either party.

Also there are the patent trolls (more akin to terrorists with roadside IEDs in the war analogy) which I think are an integral part of a working system. Most people dislike them (hence the name) but they serve a valuable purpose, which is to create a secondary market for IP, further incentivizing innovation.

Trolls don’t just pull patents out of their ass and start suing. They buy their IP from companies, often ones in bankruptcy, which gives a little back to investors who might otherwise have lost it all, encouraging them to try again. Or they buy them directly from inventors, freeing people to create without having to worry about executing their innovations as a business. A lot of brilliant inventors don’t have the slightest interest in the process of manufacturing a product or getting it onto store shelves.

Certainly the trolls go too far sometimes, but on the whole it’s a respectable business model, and one that I think encourages, rather than stifles, technological progress.

(Note that I’m not necessarily talking about software patents here, which I think are the biggest blight on the system, just patents in general.)

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This Will Look Way Better Once He's In The White House

Posted in Politics on November 15, 2008 by themaroon

So I was watching President-Elect Obama’s first YouTube address (which will be replacing the outdated AM radio weekly updates) today (found via avc.com) and all I could think about was the background:

Early ’80s style wood paneling? Really? Where did you tape that, my grandpa’s basement? At least move up to the kitchen, where there’s some smoke-stained floral-print wallpaper. I know you don’t have access to the Oval Office yet, but at least that room you used in your infomercial looked like it was decorated sometime after I was born.

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Let GM Fail

Posted in Politics on November 13, 2008 by themaroon

A lot of the big buzz in the news lately has been about the political divide over bailing out the American car companies. I have to admit, I can’t see the benefit of this in any way. I can’t discern one good thing, in the long run, that will come of dropping more money down this abyss.

For one, it’s not as if these companies are going to just vanish and take all of those jobs with them if the government doesn’t help out. They’ll go into Chapter 11 and continue operations much as they did before, at least in the short term, while their ownership is restructured. But even if they did just disappear overnight, which they won’t, long-term demand for cars won’t drop anymore than it otherwise would. Competitors will just step up and make the amount of cars they were selling, and they will largely employ Americans to do it.

This fascinating (though a little dated) NPR article clearly shows why GM in particular can’t compete with the Japanese manufacturers. It’s 100% the fault of the unions. Unions have blocked them from automating much of the process, so GM spends 34.3 man hours to create a car, whereas Toyota spends only 27.9. Thanks to unions, every GM car produced costs $1,525 in health care, while Toyota pays $201. Average GM salary for (all unionized) assembly-line workers is $31.35/hr, while Toyota (mostly non-union) is at $27. GM loses $2,331 per vehicle while Toyota makes $1,488.

That last one fascinates me the most. Why doesn’t GM just make fewer vehicles and sell them for more? “Sure we lose money with every sale, but we make it up in volume” is supposed to be a joke, not the business model of a multi-billion dollar industry.

This company and the union lobbying dollars that have it on life support are not worth saving. It’s time to pull the plug. We can give them all of the government money in the world, but unless we do something about the core problem they’ll never be able to compete. It would be cheaper and better to just let the companies go out of business and have the government pay those workers $60k a year. I’m certainly not advocating that either, I’m just pointing out that any proposed bailout that’s significantly more expensive than just paying the salaries you’re trying to save in the first place is, without a doubt, a bad idea.

The core problem is, of course, that unions are a form of price fixing and as such they prevent market efficiency. GMs is forced to sell cars at a loss to compete on price, because the unions ensure they have to pay more to ship one. The workers themselves benefit from the short term gain of higher salaries than the open market, which doesn’t value people who have no skill beyond the ability to pull a lever very highly, would otherwise pay but in the long run they find themselves out of a job and with their pensions evaporating.

One of the biggest promises of the Obama campaign was the ability to change the way politics work. Of all of the Presidential campaigns in the modern era, his was the only one that largely raised money in a grass-roots, from-the-people fashion. And though I’m sure he got his share of lobbyist bucks too, he’s the first that competed largely on the basis of individual donations.

So it will be interesting to see which way he goes with this. He’s talked about fast-tracking the loan money that Congress has already approved, which I’m fine with since it’s a sunk cost at this point anyway. But beyond that, what will he do?

My hope is that if he does help them out he will, as Henry Paulson has called for, do so only with assurances of their long-term viability. Without sweeping changes, including undoing much of the damage unions have done, we can’t stop GM from failing, we can only delay it. The path to solvency for our auto industry won’t be popular with the unions, but anything less is just throwing money down the drain in the midst of the second greatest financial crisis in our nation’s history.

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Here's Something I Never Thought I'd See

Posted in Politics on November 12, 2008 by themaroon

A Fox News anchor telling a comedian that there is no liberal bias in the media. It’s like some bizzarro universe Daily Show.

Тюмень ландшафт

Also, wtf is with the Xbox on the shelf behind them? Did they do this interview in the lunchroom? How awesome would it be to play Guitar Hero with Bill O’Reilly?

America's RSVP for the Global Century

Posted in Pointless Words of Wisdom on November 11, 2008 by themaroon

The most amazing thing about Obama’s election to me has been the ensuing celebration. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and I’ve asked some people older than me and they hadn’t either. All around our country and the world, people are cheering.

It isn’t just the race issue. Well, maybe in Kenya it is, but everywhere else it’s more than that. It’s about America joining the Global Century. And even though we might be a decade late to the party, much of the world (including many Americans) are just glad we showed up and are hoping we brought the beer.

The 20^th was clearly the American Century. From the Spanish War on, America was the superpower. We decided two World Wars, became by far the world’s largest economy, defended capitalism against the communists, and invented new technologies that improved quality of life all around the world at a breakneck pace. We had our missteps, of course, but it was the century in which we cast off our isolationist tendencies and became the modern world’s leader in nearly every respect.

The 21^st Century, however, doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to globalization. Advances in communications and travel have shrunk the globe. The Third World is rapidly moving forward. Free trade has shifted the balance of power and will continue to do so until borders are little more than lines on a map. The European Union is strengthening, and radical Islamists, who thirty years ago might as well have been on another planet, are delivering their hate-filled message to our doorstep.

Obama once said of our struggling lower classes “it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” That quote may have been his greatest political mistake, but it was dead on. The only thing he left out was patriotism.

Patriotism has become the panacea for the unwashed masses, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, to the point where politicians are now criticized for not wearing a flag lapel pin. People are clinging, first and foremost, to the memory of the American Century. And just like their religion and guns, the Republican Party has, for the last decade, used patriotism to play the populist card against them in order to remain in power.

By choosing Obama, we’ve ended that cycle. We’ve signaled that it’s time to accept that we are citizens of the world. We’ve sent a message both to the very vocal minority in our nation who still is not on board, and to the rest of the world, that we won’t be ruled by fear anymore. We’ll make calm, rational decisions rather than ones motivated by misguided patriotism, and xenophobia. We’re ready to join the Global Century.

So what does that entail? It starts with a complete and total rejection of our jingoism. The global economy is here, whether we like it or not, and we can adapt or fall behind. It’s been too easy, politically, to adopt Bush’s “we’ll do whatever the hell we want to” foreign policy, but it’s only hurting us. Our failures in both Afghanistan and Iraq have proven that. We’ve lost billions of dollars and thousands of lives, and we’re no better off than we were before we started. We’ve hamstrung ourselves to the point where we are now unable to deal with the very real threat Iran, who are failures have rightfully emboldened, poses.

Though conservative talk radio hosts view this as America-hating (because America is “the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth” as one of their least intelligent and articulate yet most successful examples points out) it’s time to accept that while we still need to look out for number one, our policies have a drastic effect on much of the rest of the globe. It’s time to be mindful of our role as the world’s leader, and return to setting a good example.

Joining the Global Century means taking the lead once again on key issues that matter to all nations, like climate change. We’ve spent 20 years telling environmentalists and oil critics to go fuck themselves, and now that we’ve changed positions and, on top of that, are fighting an enemy funded by our own fuel dollars, we’re suddenly mad at China for doing the same. We’re worried about the coal plants they’re building while chanting “Drill baby, drill” at rallies.

It requires, perhaps most of all, recognition that the global economy is not a zero sum game. We all prosper together. The seeds of the Global Century were sown by our own nation building in the aftermath of World War II. Our leaders learned from the mistakes of World War I that stable economies make for peaceful nations and unstable ones lead to war. They sought to prevent the sort of hardship that drew a direct line from one global conflict to another, and they succeeded. Look at Germany and Japan now. They’re two of the world’s strongest economies and most peaceful nations. Let us not forget why.

If we’re going to move forward, our next leader needs to mend the fences steamrolled by the Bush Administration. If we’re going to conquer the very real threat of Islamic extremism we need to fight it the same way we did communism, with the world on our side. We can’t do it ourselves, nor would we want to if we could.

We need to stop letting religion factor into what should be exclusively political decisions. Our government must return to agnosticism. Ridiculous restrictions on stem cell research have stalled medical technology, preventing untold life-saving treatments. Belief in Armageddon, derived from literal interpretations of a book that reads like the writings of a third grader who downed a bottle of Nyquil, has led to disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East. At home we’ve resorted to torture and invading the privacy our own citizens. Basic human rights like marriage or habeas corpus are being willfully withheld.

We need someone to put a stop to it, and John McCain just wasn’t that man. Barack Obama might be. That’s why conservative politicians (Colin Powell) and publications (The Economist) all around the nation, dozens of Nobel laureates, and leaders the world over endorsed him before the election. Whether or not he’s the man to do it remains to be seen, but at least he understands it has to be done. And now, as a nation, so do we.

That’s why people are cheering in the streets. It isn’t about race, and it isn’t even about one man. It’s about America giving globalization a try. It’s about choosing calm rationality over patriotic and religious fervor. It’s not just about change in general, but about a specific and sorely needed kind: progress.

Obama’s got a tough road ahead of him, and unrealistic expectations to live up to. But if he even gets half way there he’ll be remembered as one of the top Presidents in history. The primary prerequisite to being memorialized as a great leader is taking over a country in severe turmoil. The big three, Washington, Lincoln, and F.D.R all did, and the parallels between now and 1929 are striking. We’re in the midst of the worst economic crisis since then and we have two wars, one which is unpopular and one which may be unwinnable, on our hands.

If he makes a solid dent in the first two he’ll have his name in the history books for much more than being a black man. And if not, well, he can’t look any worse than the guy who came before him. For now I’ll keep my fingers crossed while I join in the celebration.

9 Comments »

Great Quotes

Posted in Dialogue on November 7, 2008 by themaroon

Cornell West (speaking about Sarah Palin’s intelligence): She’s not on the Dean’s List.

Bill Maher: She’s not even on craigslist.

Classic

It's Over, and Now We're Really Screwed

Posted in Uncategorized on November 5, 2008 by themaroon

If there’s one emotion that everyone on both sides of the political divide shares, it seems to be relief. We’ve been hearing about this damned election for almost two years, and we all can’t take it anymore.

Except me, I’m going to miss it. Yeah, it’s nice to not worry about how Obama or Biden might blow it. And I’m overjoyed at the thought of Sarah Palin and that frostbitten armpit of America she hails from fading back into obscurity. I’m even hopeful she’ll take Joe the Plumber with her.

But this election was holding back the one thing I hate more: Christmas. That holiday has been creeping so far up the calendar in my lifetime that I’ve been wondering when we’re going to have pre-lit trees in stores all year round. We’ll have day-after sales until right after New Year’s Day, and then on January 2^nd they’ll start rolling out the wrapping paper all over again.

I’ve been walking into Paneras and Targets for the last month and enjoying the lack of the same five shitty songs running on a loop, and now that the election is over, that’s what we’re all going to be dealing with. Instead of hearing the word “maverick” ten times a day, now we’re going to hear Jingle Bell Rock, and that is not change we can believe in.

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Signage

Posted in Politics on November 4, 2008 by themaroon

One thing that never ceases to amuse me about elections is the yard signage. What’s the logic behind these? Do the people who put them up just want to show their affiliation to their neighbors? Do they think these influence people? Do they, either individually or in aggregate? I wonder if anyone has ever just said “fuck it, I’m gonna drive down the road and vote for whoever has the most signs.” Maybe people keep a running subconscious sign tally in their heads and that comes into play in the voting booth. Or maybe it’s just a giant, aesthetically displeasing waste of resources.

Has anyone ever measured their effectiveness at determining the outcome? It might be a great indicator if it influences the independent vote. Or it might not, because they don’t give a good indication of the independent vote and don’t have any effect on it. I really don’t know, but I’d love to find out. If it is a reliable indicator, it’s the easiest, least biased one to measure.

Why don’t people have yard signs for anything else? People don’t really express their affinity for other brands the way they do politicians. And yes, politics are a brand, just like Coke or Gillette. You might say that people care about politics more, but I don’t believe it because I read tech blogs and have seen the mindless devotion Apple has inspired and the mindless hatred Microsoft has. The average American opens a can of Coke or Pepsi more times in one week than they vote in their entire lives. And given the health crisis we’re facing, and the almost incontrovertible evidence that it derives from our diet, the contents of that can may matter far more in their future than who gets elected tomorrow.

I wonder if there’s a profitable enterprise in printing yard signs for things like Pepsi or Apple. You’d think folks would want to express their loyalty to other brands as well. Maybe I should print up some signs for Heinz and Hunts and see what happens. Maybe the lack of an expiration date would make them unpopular. At least with a politician, you know there’s a certain date after which you can throw it in the trash, but Heinz is still going to be selling ketchup for the foreseeable future.

Also, if we’re going that far, we don’t even need brands. We can just make ones that say “I really like prime rib.” You’d be exposing your preferences to the world, and you’d have the added bonus of deterring vegans. Actually, if someone would make a sign that says “Vegans will be shot on sight.” I’d nail it to a tree.

Walking my dogs around my neighborhood a while back, I was subconsciously noticing signs and thought “wow, I can’t believe this area is so in favor of Obama.” I live in a pretty rural suburb, and would have guessed it to be McCain country. Then on the way back I noticed that they were mostly McCain/Palin 08 signs, they were just colored blue and white.

What the hell? Democrat signs are supposed to be blue, and Republicans red. Why did the parties get those colors? I don’t know and I don’t care. That’s just the way it’s always been. I have to think McCain’s made a serious mistake in breaking with the convention there. When I’ve passed by 10 of his signs in a row, not really paying attention, and thought they were for his opponent, something is wrong.

If there’s one key thing I’ve learned from studying usability, it’s that when you do something that is the opposite of what a people expect, it creates confusion. Switch from Windows to Mac and see how long it takes you to adjust to the close button being top-left rather than top-right (or, for the more computer literate, alt+w rather than ctrl+w) or vice versa. Neither is, as far as I can tell, any better than the other, but the difference really throws you for a loop until you adjust. If people expect McCain’s signs to be red, McCain should make his sign red, unless there’s a very compelling reason not to. Maybe it’s because he’s perceived as being hot-tempered, and we all know red is the color of anger.

My neighborhood is about a 50/50 split in terms of Obama and McCain signs, but that’s only because a few houses have multiples. One apparent Democrat has at least 10 signs in a row. Every day I drive by and he seems to have another. I’ve seen a few other houses with more than one Obama sign, some of them cleverly spaced apart so you’d almost think it was two separate yards unless you looked close enough, but I’ve yet to see two McCain/Palins.

Maybe ACORN is involved.