Clara Raubertas // Freelance Web Design, Web Development, and Web Consulting // Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts clara raubertas design. development. consulting.

5. Peace - Gene Wolfe

6. Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Krug

7. Midnight Robber - Nalo Hopkinson

8. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin

9. Generosity - Richard Powers

10. The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience - Kirstin Downey

11. Where the Girls Are - Susan Douglas

Books! Kind of like websites, but you can take them outside and sometimes they have complex ideas in them.

What I’ve been reading:

• Metamagical Themas - Douglas Hofstadter:
  Hofstadter is one of my all-time favorite authors — I love his broad range of interests, smart analysis, and clever writing. This book is a collection of his Scientific American columns from the early ’80s; thought-provoking and fun (even if his strong concern about the possibility of nuclear war doesn’t seem as urgent today as it must have then).
• All The King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren:
  This classic is a dense political novel; I read it after Jesse taught it for a course on Southern Literature and Culture this spring. Fantastic prose, intricate structure and plotting, complex ideas conveyed through fiction - highly recommended!
• The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan:
  A classic, obviously. Friedan’s analysis is straightforward and chilling; despite the amount of time that has passed, the concepts ring true; although it isn’t as strong as it was a few decades ago, the feminine mystique of relegating woman’s function to the sexual still exists.
  She more or less leaves out queer women, women of color, and lower-class women, but even with these problems, the ideas are still valuable. (This book was also fun to read while watching through the first season of Mad Men; the character of Betty is obviously based on Friedan’s examples.)
  I’m in the middle of The Second Sex right now and both books share a key takeaway for me: it’s impossible to fully develop yourself without a role in the world that involves meaningful interaction with other members of society, something that’s been denied to women in a lot of times and places. Finishing up The Feminine Mystique actually helped inspire me for another project that’s in the works — stay tuned!!
• The Drunkard’s Walk - Leonard Mlodinow:
  Read this one for the book club, and it was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. Mlodinow gives clear explanations of key ideas in randomness and probability along with straightforward examples of their application and engaging anecdotes about the mathematicians who discovered them.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about whether my activities were “pointful”. As a teenager, I’d obsessively analyze all the work I was doing and judge it by whether it had any measurable, real-world effect — “this shift at the bookstore was pointless because there were two of us and business was slow enough for one of us to handle”, or “my role as a stagehand is pointful because no one else in the show is available to turn on this light at this time”. I’d abandon “pointless” activities in favor of tasks where my presence made a quantifiable difference to some observable outcome.

As you might expect, this could get pretty depressing at times! Now that I’ve reached the ripe age of 23 (and, of course, now understand everything), I have a different perspective. I went canvassing to get out the vote in New Hampshire on Election Day — was this “pointful” by my old standards? Absolutely not! Every voter I talked to had already voted by the time I got to them — and even if I had been able to remind someone to go to the polls, it would hardly have made a difference, from my teenage perspective, to Obama’s tens-of-thousands-of-votes lead. Similarly, I gladly and proudly voted myself — but everything I voted for in Massachusetts was much closer to a 60/30 margin than a 50/50 one. My teenage self might have asked, why would I think it was so cool to participate in these things if it was so obviously pointless?

I used to focus on myself as an individual actor, but my appreciation has deepened for my role in emergent systems. My individual actions in getting out the vote and voting didn’t “make a difference”, but I was one of many cells making up larger systems (the campaign’s organization of volunteers, the electorate) that clearly did affect the outcome of the election — just like individual neurons in my brain die all the time without affecting my thoughts, but neurons certainly aren’t “pointless”, since all of them together collectively make up the larger system of my brain!

I was thinking about this because I’m reading I Am A Strange Loop, which explores some of these issues of emergent properties; it’s by the author of the extremely excellent (but long!) Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is also interested in these questions. For a breezier introduction, check out Steven Johnson’s take.

Also, I’m excited to be reading something new after taking almost six months to read Gravity’s Rainbow. Talk about intense! GR is also, in some sense, about the relationship between actors and larger systems. But it’s not about systems that emerge naturally from the combination of less complex elements — it’s a massive paranoid fantasy, full of ambiguity about what levels of the systems have agency, whether they’re constructed top-down or bottom-up, or whether they even exist!

Regular old emergent systems are much simpler.

Yesterday’s debate — unlike much of what we’ve seen so far in this campaign — included reasoned, substantial discussion of issues and underscored some of the legitimate policy differences between the two candidates. One major policy difference, of course, is their tax plans — illustrated with the “Joe the Plumber” example. Obama, in the tradition of the Democratic party, favors a progressive tax plan that taxes lower-income people at lower rates; McCain, in the tradition of the Republican party, favors a plan that taxes people at more equal rates, so that lower-income people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than under Obama and higher-income people pay a lower percentage.

Culture wars may come and go, but this difference in fundamental economic philosophy has been a mainstay of the clash between the Republican and Democratic parties for decades. Obama explained in the debate that he thinks the plumber of a few years ago, who was doing less well financially, deserved the tax break more than the plumber of next year, who will be doing better — he thinks that the financially better-off should “share the wealth”. McCain counters that a requirement to “share the wealth” will discourage growth.

Saying that McCain’s plan is better for economic growth has generally been the conservative reaction — one commentator says, “If that distinction were to permeate the consciousness of the US electorate with real force and clarity, McCain would win the election.” Well, that’s where I vehemently disagree; this difference in economic philosophy is a place where reasonable people can and do have different opinions (as evidenced by the fact that both parties continue to have a quorum of supporters!).

Obama’s plan isn’t “anti-growth” — in fact, it’s “pro-growth”, just in a different part of the economy. Obama and the Democratic Party want to encourage growth in the lower-income tax brackets. Most individuals and most small businesses make well under the $250,000 threshold that determines whose tax plan would make you pay more — and those businesses can benefit from a tax break that allows them to expand and hire people NOW, not later when they have more money. If your business is taking in that much, great! Mine isn’t — and neither are most other small businesses. McCain’s plan will help larger business owners who can already afford to hire new workers and grow their business. Obama’s tax plan will help small business owners like me to pay less in taxes and thus have more resources to grow our businesses, create jobs, and stimulate the economy at the level where ordinary Americans live.

I know Obama’s not likely to win West Virginia this year, and I know his campaign’s choice to spend most of their resources in more closely contested states (and states with more electoral votes!) is rational, but it still bugs me when my friends refer to my home state as hopelessly conservative. “Oh, West Virginia? They’re never going to vote for Obama!” Oh really?

West Virginia is a traditionally Democratic state! It’s voted Democratic six times in the last ten presidental elections, while Indiana — which has been considered a “swing state” this election for a while — voted Republican in all ten. Not to mention WV’s long tradition of organized labor, its Democratic governor recently elected with almost twice the votes of his Republican opponent, and its two-out-of-three Democratic representatives.

Plus, who could forget WV’s two long-serving Democratic senators (who do so much for the state!)*? Byrd has never lost an election, Rockefeller is expected to be re-elected by a wide margin this year).

Fortunately, as polls swing ever further toward Obama, I’m getting somewhat vindicated on this issue; Real Clear Politics just pulled WV into the toss-up column, and poll analyst and fellow U of C alum Nate Silver has a post up this week about the state’s chances in the general election.

* as an almost-native of West “by Robert C. Byrd” Virginia, I have to say that I am down with pork. I don’t claim to be a fiscal conservative! I’ve seen how some of Byrd’s projects have brought much-needed jobs and infrastructure to a state that generally has too little of both.

After a meeting a couple weekends ago I found myself too tired to do much EXCEPT ride the T, so I hopped on the Orange Line and rode all the way out to the end. Sitting on the mostly-empty train, watching the city shade into suburbs and nursing the remains of a small hangover, was remarkably relaxing — an almost meditation-like escape from work and daily life.

I got off at Oak Grove and walked around, but the most exciting thing I could find within a few blocks of the T was a laundromat (I should have done some preparatory research!). I also wanted to find a bathroom, so I decided to search at the next T stop — Malden — where, much to my delight, there was a bathroom INSIDE THE STATION!! More and more T stops have this feature now — this is an awesome public service. Keep it up, MBTA!

Walking around Malden was a little more exciting than walking around Oak Grove, but by that point I wanted to transition back into getting some work done, so I didn’t spend much time there. I also declined to take the opportunity to visit Wellington, which is now the only stop on the northern branch of the Orange Line I haven’t been to yet — I’ll probably regret not going on this trip, since from the train it looks like Wellington is even more nothing-more-than-a-parking-lot than Oak Grove. Maybe some preliminary research will help me discover the secret exciting parts of the northern Orange Line?

The next day, I went with a couple folks to the historic Adams houses, adjacent to the Quincy Center T stop. For most of my childhood — well, actually, probably until as recently as a year or two ago — a guided tour of a historical person’s home seemed like the Most Boring Thing Possible. But when a friend proposed this trip, I looked forward to it all week. Maybe it’s my somewhat newfound interest in politics, or just a broadening of my interests as I get older? In any case, I enjoyed learning about the Adams family and seeing their homes — plus checking out historic Quincy!

Help! I’ve become totally addicted to pointless, trivial political coverage!

I thought it was bad during the primaries, but now that it’s convention season things have definitely gotten out of hand. It’s not even like I’m taking in new, useful information or perspectives — I’m just spending all day rereading different versions of the same irrelevant talking points. But it’s all so fascinating! There’s choice-based rhetoric from avowedly anti-choice candidates; there’s a well-delivered acceptance speech peppered with grade-school-esque put-downs and not exactly true statements; there’s flip-flopping and hypocrisy!

Palin’s speech last night seemed to indicate a focus on energizing the base rather than on drawing in independents (which either ticket needs to do to win), so as a Democrat I’m a little bit relieved. It seems to be the VP nominee’s role to give more partisan speeches, though, while the presidential candidate claims to have plans that transcend party lines — it will be interesting to see McCain’s response to Obama’s effective combination of inspiring rhetoric and specific policy proposals.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep my mind on something other than the election for at least five minutes between now and November, but for the moment, I’m gearing up for tonight — drink when you hear “maverick”!

Seeing the following in Slate (in, of all things, an article explaining why it’s righteous for liberals to vote for Obama just because he’s black) helped me clarify some of why I think it was important to bring up the issues my previous post:

(The conservative brand identity also doesn’t have much room for opposition to sexism, another legitimate source of liberal guilt. But Hillary Clinton’s problems, it seems to me, stem less from sexism than from Clintonism.)

Um, what?

Nobody is calling other presidential candidates bitchy, catty, shrill, or emasculating. Nobody is opening an article in a leading national newspaper with a comment on how much skin the other candidates are showing. Nobody is producing novelty nutcrackers modeled after other candidates (and displaying them prominently in places I run errands). Let me guess — could cultural perceptions of gender be at work here?

Yes, there are a lot of reasons not to vote for Hillary that aren’t sexist. If I didn’t think so, I would have voted for her myself. But to say that her gender isn’t a liability in her political career is an attitude both obtuse and harmful.

A lot of older feminists who voted for Clinton seem to think that young people who voted for Obama are naive about the issues of sexism Clinton and other women in politics face — but that’s not true of all of us. And a lot of young men who voted for Obama seem to think that their legitimate, non-gender-related reasons for disliking Clinton mean their perceptions are totally untainted by sexist cultural mores — but that can’t be true, either. People who support these two candidates are fighting when they should be uniting — uniting against racism AND sexism.

Like many people my age, I voted for Obama this year. But while I didn’t vote for the female candidate, it’s not because I think we’ve reached some sort of post-feminist utopia. I’m not choosing any candidate based solely on demographic factors, but I don’t think these factors are irrelevant to the effects a candidate’s election will have or the way a candidate is presented and perceived.

I’ve heard some of my male peers say that Clinton “wasn’t a good feminist candidate” because she gained political power partly through her association with her husband; I’ve also heard them say that it doesn’t matter whether we elect a woman president, because there are already female governors, senators, and world leaders in other countries. But I think it does matter — I think there’s a lot to be gained in terms of public perception from having a woman elected president of the United States. We still live in a country where men shout “Iron my shirt!” at an accomplished professional woman — if they think that’s funny, they don’t get it, and the day we do elect a woman president is one day closer to people like that “getting it”.

The New York Times describes some ways in which Clinton’s gender may have affected the race:

Mrs. Clinton’s supporters point to a nagging series of slights: the fixation on her clothes, even her cleavage; chronic criticism that her voice is shrill; calls for her to exit the race; and most of all, the male commentators in the news media who, they argue, were consistently tougher on her than on Mr. Obama.

The reasons I have for voting for Obama don’t make me blind to these factors — I very much do think that Clinton’s campaign has been presented differently because of her gender and that she’s had to contend with obstacles and perceptions that are never an issue for a male politician. This primary has been framed as a divisive, either-or situation, but it’s a false choice. Obama supporters and Clinton supporters are painted as people with no common ground, when in fact most of us agree about a great deal. Just because I ended up preferring Obama doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the challenges Clinton has endured solely because of her gender or that I don’t see the value in having a woman president for the sake of having a woman president.

It’s hard to graduate from the University of Chicago without getting just a little indoctrinated in the virtues of the free market. While I’m not a libertarian or much of a small-government advocate (I tend to think government-funded programs are a good thing), it does bug me when people think free trade should be restricted for humanitarian reasons.

This blog post from some UChicago economists points out that both Wal-Mart and trade with China drive the prices of basic goods lower than they would otherwise be. While there are plenty of things to dislike about Wal-Mart and its effects on local economies, it’s actually beneficial to the poorest people in the communities, who are effectively less poor when prices go down and their purchasing power goes up. The goods may be shoddy, but their availability is a boon to people who can’t afford higher-quality versions. The same argument in reverse applies to working conditions (both in Wal-Mart and in developing countries that are producing cheap goods) — the jobs may be low-quality and low-pay, but they’re the best options available to these workers (if Wal-Mart’s employees could find better jobs, they would).