Earlier this week -and without much fanfare-a city council candidate for this year's elections, went up with a brand new website; that candidate was yours truly. Although the site is a perpetual work in progress, and will be frequently modified and updated until I am fully satisified with it, viewers can still get a comprehensive look at my personal history, my political activism, my record of public service/community involvement, and also my political vision.

I hope many of you will go up and take a look at my positions on some of the many issues facing this city -and also the district in which I seek public office (again).

Stay tuned-in folks.

[Ed. note: The site itself is here]

One of the more bizarre and rambling speeches we have seen in quite some time as Sarah Palin goes Galt:

What a way to start the holiday...

Via Kos:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor's Picnic at Pionner Park in Fairbanks on Saturday, July 25, Palin said.

There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Sitting governors run for President all the time. Something's up, and there's more to this story.

It seems that Pedro Espada didn't campaign in 2008 ... or at any rate he didn't spend any money during the crucial months.

Espada's primary campaign committee, "Pedro Espada, Jr." (A39657), has yet to file a July 2008 statement, but all statements following that merely show "no activity."  In other words, from July 12, 2008 through the end of November Espada neither raised nor spent any money on his campaign.

Remarkable!  I'm working on a campaign in Queens now, and I'd love to know how to run it without spending any money.

There is another committee, "Espada for the People" (A30709), which is not listed as a particular campaign committee, but which did spend money in 2008.  Specifically, from January 12, 2008 until 11 days before the primary (there are no filings yet after the 11-day pre-primary filing), that committee spent $5,859.80, mostly on petitioning.

Again, remarkable!  I've been supporting a "Clean Money, Clean Elections" system under which a state Senate candidate could manage by raising only a few thousand dollars, but spending of public funds, to the tune of as much as a few hundred thousand dollars, would augment that.  But Pedro Espada has managed to win with far less.

Please, Pedro, tell us how you did it!  The campaign finance reform that you could enact would be truly amazing.

While on vacation in California, I was having a discussion with my wife (an atmospheric scientist), and a friend (an archaeologist). I am a Developmental Geneticist. So we were three scientists from three very disparate fields. I have been a scientist for 20 years. My wife for much shorter time and my friend for much, much longer. So we come at it from different chronological perspectives.

And one thing we each have encountered is the huge lack in science of the reporting of negative results. There is a perception in science that one must prove your hypothesis correct or it is not worth reporting. So when someone posits a hypothesis and DISPROVES it (which is common and healthy in science) they cannot publish it until it can be paired with related positive data. That often doesn't happen for years and sometimes is never published if the work goes in a different direction. This, of course, leads to many people repeating the same negative data over and over because they are unaware that it has already been disproven already by many other researchers.

This can be quite a waste of time and resources.  read more »

A friend of mine emails over this Monty Python YouTube, claiming it could just as soon be treated as commentary on the Democrats' anguish over losong their Senate majority. I think that's a little unfair, what with them winning the actual election and all that, but the sketch is nothing short of brilliant. Take a look.

Atlantic Yards Report

Some Friday fact-checking and a movie review from Atlantic Yards Report.

Don't expect the brief video Hold Out, by the multimedia company MediaStorm, to provide a full sketch of the Atlantic Yards development, and don't even expect main character David Sheets (right), a crusty and compelling Dean Street resident and regular at Freddy's Bar & Backroom, to have all the facts.

Backed by an ominous soundtrack, Sheets, a rent-stabilized tenant and plaintiff in the eminent domain case, offers his incredulity at the plans for Atlantic Yards, his deep frustration at the utility and other work that made life on Dean Street hell last year, his lament at the community lost, and his commitment to fighting the project until the end. It's a highly sympathetic portrait.

Some fact-checking

Do note, however, that the overview text asserts that, when announced in 2003, Atlantic Yards would cost nearly five billion dollars. That's the tab now, but it was $2.5 million when announced.

Also note that, at 22 acres and nearly 8 million square feet, Atlantic Yards would not be "three times the size of Rockefeller Center," as Sheets asserts, but rather just about the same size. The key difference: AY would be mostly housing, while Rock Center is mostly commercial space.

Nor would the arena be twice the size of Madison Square Garden, as Sheets states, but, at 800,000 square feet, would be fractionally smaller than MSG's 820,000 sf.

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I used to play in a park across the street from the county jail while growing up. I vivdly remember a time, when I was really young, heavily armed policeman guarding those facilities. The pictures of state troopers with shotguns, on the covers of the local papers, still burned into my memory. And activity of so many of government agencies surrounding the town. I would, later in my life learn, about the Brinks Armored Car Robbery and its connection to many radical organizations of the sixties and seventies. The images and memories of my childhood was the change of venue of the trial of Judith Clark, David Gilbert, and Sekou Odinga to the county courthouse across the street from my swingset. One night, a couple months ago, Josh was looking through the window of a new used bookstore in Brooklyn and pointed out a title on the shelf, "The Big Dance". He told me it was about the failed armored car robbery by the BLA in the early eighties, it immediately sparked my interest and I purchased it the next day. The Big Dance: the untold story of Kathy Boudin and the terrorist family that committed the Brinks robbery murders by John Castellucci is an interesting book written a couple of years after the robbery and trials. Castellucci was a journalist in the county where the events took place and he gives a very detailed account of the robbery and history leading up to it. Castellucci wanted to write a book that would display the motivations by providing a biography, of sorts, of each of person involved. He follows the political development of everyone from Kuwasi Balagoon to Marylin Jean Buck, and gives his analysis of the inner dynamics of the various groups. There is a lot of radical history from the 60's and 70's that I encountered for the first time in The Big Dance. He illustrates the involvement of these individuals in groups like the May 19th Communist Organization, Republic of New Africa, The Black Liberation Army(BLA) The Weather Underground Organization, and the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee And talks about events like the occupation and takeover of Lincoln Hospital, in the Bronx, by the Young Lords and other radical groups. This led to a drug detoxification unit being created to serve the neighborhood which, at the time, was suffering a severe heroin epidemic. It was in this program that Mutulu Shakur and other Panther 21 defendants would volunteer and help junkies kick their habits with alternative methods, such as acupuncture. The detox center would be a main component of actualizing the radical politics of many involved in the expropriations, and continued after being ousted from the hospital at BAAANA(Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America). It also explores the jailbreak of Assata Shakur in good detail. The book is practically a primer (for the 1980's) on living underground. It illustrates how the various expropriations were achieved, the materials they used, and the networks that sustained them. Even though the writer expresses his attempts of being unbiased his judgments come forth when discussing the politics and development of each individual involved. He writes with clear disdain on the idealism and anti-racism of the white revolutionaries in the group, Kathy Boudin receiving more of the direct criticisms.

TAP seems to have become a popular enough place that it's getting spam. Not just any spam, but the new "looks real until you investigate the link" spam that's the latest iteration of nonsense. I'm not sure if it's created by humans or by computers, but its volume is increasing.

This morning I found four comments in my feed reader that all looked real until that last "Make Money From Home", "Get Taller", or "cash advance" link.

Does troll-rating these things help? If multiple people do that, it takes them off the screen, which I think keeps them from working, but are there other costs? I'd like to think we could be self-policing on these and keep the administrative overhead down.

Iran Multitude is a new blog keeping track of what's going on in Iran, from the inside and out. Check it out here. (image from A1one's flickr stream)