My question is, how many colors does it take to fill in the map so that each state borders only others of the same color?

One would seem to be the obvious answer. But it looks like we’re getting pretty close using two.

via Newsdesigner

My real-life neighbors have stopped giving me free bread, soup and pastries – as they used to do – because their grandson no longer works at the bakery from where the goods came. But they brought me a lawn sign of their preferred political persuasion. They are old-school democrats, by which I mean they are old people who are democrats. He flew combat missions over Berlin in the Second World War. Got hit in the eye with shrapnel.

Once, when I asked him if he thinks about the war much, he said, “I’m pretty much over thinking about it. Got too many other things to think about.”

Doesn’t everybody. Like me, I have squirrels living above the porch. The squirrels are not political, though, so at least there’s that.

But I’m sure they, like everybody else, will feel a great sense of relief when this thing is over. In March I joked about the “grueling race” that was coming between Bush and Kerry. I should have joked more. It was worse than we thought it’d be.

And yet, it wasn’t all that bad. People are still speaking to each other. Some lawn signs have been defaced, true, but the things that hold us together are still holding. The tabloids are still more interested in Mary-Kate’s emotional state than the state of the union. And I’m guessing no matter who wins today (or sometime this month), they will continue to be.

So it’s not our democracy I’m worried about. It’s our children. They’re always the biggest losers on election day. Why? Because we let them vote. Or at least, we let them pretend to vote. Schools everywhere today will be holding mock elections, letting 7 and 8-year-olds fake-choose our next commander-in-chief. This is not a new thing. I did it when I was in grade school; in 1988, Brimhall Elementary was a landslide, a crushing and decisive win for Dukakis.

When I went home that day I thought, “OK, that was nice, what’s next?” We’d elected the president, we’d made the tough choices and picked our man. Let’s move on. Bigger things.

So I was a little surprised that night when the evening news came on. It seemed word of the Massachusetts governor’s victory had not spread rapidly. By the next day, it was clear the rest of the country had vetoed our vote. Or invalidated it. Perhaps we had mispunched?

The mood at school was glum. The whole experience was meant to help us learn about democracy, but the only thing we were learning was that it didn’t work. We picked Dukakis, not Bush. Period. What kind of democracy is this?

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t allow kids to vote. It’s a good introduction to the democratic process. It’s just that we shouldn’t let them vote for the losers.

On the other hand, picking the losing side is a good way of proving to yourself that the world doesn’t end if your man (woman?) doesn’t win. It happened to me in ’88, and then again in 2000 and 2002. In my entire voting history I’ve never been on the winning side. Or maybe it’s that the winner has never been on my side. But that builds character.

And it’s never diminished my enthusiasm for voting. Today after work my girlfriend and I are going to walk down there hand-in-hand, like two school-kids, hoping the vote tally comes down on our side. And after that exercise of civic duty we’re going to go exercise it a little more.

At The Gap. It’s the first Tuesday of the month; 10% off.

Maybe it’s related to social proof; people look to others to figure out what’s right. If you isolated an average, uncommitted debate viewer, I bet they’d have trouble telling you who won. At the very least, whatever their impressions were of who won, they wouldn’t be very strong ones.

For my part, I thought it was pretty much a draw. Kerry seemed nervous at the beginning, Bush seemed calm. But later Bush was repetitive; coming back to the same points over and over again. That’s fine for the campaign trail, but in a debate it comes across as defensive, as if you think every argument from the opposition is an attack that merits the same defense.

To me, Bush’s strongest argument was that Kerry can’t lead the war in Iraq because he doesn’t believe in it. And Kerry’s defense was poor: “I made a mistake in how I talk about the war in Iraq. But the President made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?”

Well, that’s just Bush’s point. If Kerry believes invading Iraq was a mistake, that’s fine, but it makes you wonder what he’ll do when he takes over command of that mistake.

Lehrer put that question to him: “Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?”

Kerry: “No, and they don’t have to, providing we have the leadership that we put – that I’m offering.”

So, from Kerry we get the following, in close succession: the president made a mistake in invading Iraq, but Americans in Iraq are not dying for a mistake. Uhh…

Kerry was strongest when attacking the President on the execution of the war: “This president just — I don’t know if he sees what’s really happened on there. But it’s getting worse by the day. More soldiers killed in June than before. More in July than June. More in August than July. More in September than in August.”

That line of argument is powerful: consistency is good, but not at the expense of reason. If Bush is so consistent that he can’t acknowledge when he’s made mistakes, that calls into question his ability to lead.

Still, Kerry would prefer not to be the whiny one, always pointing out what’s going wrong. And when he talked about how he’d do better, I wasn’t impressed. This proposed summit of his is a vague and confusing notion; hundreds of roadside bombs a month and he wants a summit? And I’m not in the camp that believes that bringing back our allies (another notion in need of more definition) will suddenly make everything better.

Overall, I think a tie (as I saw it) is a win for Kerry. He showed that, at the very least, he’s not significantly more flawed than the president. And he wasn’t aloof or boring. If we left it there, I don’t think it’d have much effect on the election.

But the debate doesn’t end when the debate ends. The media has to figure out who won. And I think if that pendulum keeps swinging Kerry’s way, it could reinvigorate his campaign.

Still, the same could be said for motorcycles, and I don’t foresee myself purchasing one of those anytime soon. I’ll take two or four doors for my transportation needs, and speed-dial telephone for my security needs, thank you very much.

So, when it comes to gun control, I generally fall in favor of it. I think it should not be easy to get a gun. That seems like a reasonable guideline. It should also not be easy to get a wrecking-ball crane. Put them both in the same category.

And guns, when gotten, should be used with extreme care and hesitance. If you are going to kill an animal with your gun, try to be very sure the animal is not also a human. And if you are going to kill a human, don’t, and try also to make sure the human is not standing very near to an animal. You may alarm either or both of them and are likely to receive an irritated response.

Now, the NRA likes to claim that gun control laws work against the very wrong people; those who are sane, law-abiding, safety-embracing individuals. These people, they say, are the ones best suited to have guns, for they are trained in their use, safekeeping, and maintenance. Again, this is something I’ve heard regarding motorcycles; people who use motorcycles are safe, because they are trained at using motorcycles.

Well, those are nice ways of thinking about it, but the fact remains that even good, honest, helmet-wearing motorcycle-riders get crushed when their bikes are blind-sided by SUVs. Similarly, even good, honest, law-abiding gun owners have the potential to cause great harm to themselves or others. All it takes is a few moments of distraction, a bit of poor judgment, or just plain stupidity.

Those are basic human faults, and they can make cars, javelins, and roller coasters dangerous too. But guns are different, because they’re meant to cause damage, and because they’re so good at what they’re meant to do.

So, people should be able to buy guns. Those people should undergo training (as extensive as is reasonable) and periodic renewals of their licenses. Anyone who keeps a gun in their home should be required to have it in a safe place where kids can’t get it. This does not include the underwear drawer or a shoebox under the bed. Those places have never kept kids from finding condoms or porno magazines, and they won’t keep them from finding a gun.

And, seriously, what’s this about the assault weapons ban expiring next week? I mean, come on. Right? It’s like, um, excuse me? What THE HELL do you need with a weapon that is designed to kill many dozens of enemy fighters and could probably mow your lawn (if that wasn’t so ridiculously dangerous)?

I know, I’ve heard, the assault weapons ban was sort of worthless to begin with; there have been near-identical copies of those banned guns legally on the market for years. But still, where’s the replacement law that actually works?

I was listening to a gun-store owner on the radio today as he ripped into the assault-weapons ban for being utterly ineffective. He said the best way to stop these gun from getting out there was to make it illegal for anyone to legally purchase a gun and then go sell it to another person without the new owner getting a background check. When I heard that, I began speaking to the radio.

“You mean that’s legal now? That’s not legal. How can that possibly be legal?”

But there was no response. Needless to say, I agreed (despite his rude rebuff of my questions). If you buy a gun, any gun, you should undergo a background check and training. And you shouldn’t be able to sell that gun to anyone else unless they’ve undergone the same. This is kids’ stuff, people. What’s the hold-up?

I’m not saying people shouldn’t be able to have guns. But if gun owners are really as safe and law-abiding as the NRA says they are, they won’t mind ensuring everyone’s safety by supporting a law that makes buying, owning, and reselling a gun a closely guarded process.

Once that’s done, we can focus on stopping the people who get their weapons on the black market, hide them in an economy-sized can of baby food on the changing-table, and trim their front yards with AK-47s.

Come to think of it, this isn’t the first time an oppressive regime of schoolchildren has been targeted by militants; it happens in Israel all the time. Hamas and other Palestinian groups regularly attack targets, like city buses, where young kids can be found. Again, we can all agree that an attack of this sort – in which the suicide bombers’ belts are often packed with nails and ball bearings – are outright atrocities. But the long suffering of Palestinians at the hands of little Israelis under the age of 14 gives us a window into those suicide bomber’s minds. Years of humiliation at the (diminutive) hands of Israeli 10-year-old border guards, countless hours standing in line for work permits that Israeli school-children don’t even need, and of course the destruction of scores of peaceful homes (OK, maybe a few were bomb-factories) by unfeeling 6-year-olds driving gigantic bulldozers – is there any doubt that all this has contributed to a culture of hatred and violence?

Terrorists around the world have had enough; they’re tired of wasting precious time and ball bearings on misguided targets. It’s children – oil-grubbing, capitalism-spreading, virtue-corrupting children – who are the real source of their problems. In Israel and Chechnya: children. In Iraq and Indonesia: children. Spain, Turkey, and Bali: children again.

Of course, it’s contrary to public opinion to treat the little ones as legitimate military targets. But the terrorists are up against a vast propaganda machine; a sprawling conspiracy of misinformation meant to warp the minds of the world in favor of children. In the media (especially the western media) they are made out to be a peace-loving, innocent bunch. But, the terrorists argue, this is not an accurate depiction of reality. On the streets of Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq there is suffering so great, humiliation so deep that some feel their only recourse is to strike back – through deliberate, targeted attacks – at the ones who have caused them so much pain: school-children.

Let us all denounce this unacceptable means of protest. There is no place in the civilized world for kid-killing. But let us at the same time send a strong message to children in powerful countries; your foreign policies are breeding hatred in the streets, and if you don’t do something to change that, it won’t be long before every school in Israel, Russia, Iraq, Spain, Turkey, France, England, Argentina, Germany, and the United States is a target for terrorism.

Let’s just hope it’s not too late.

This just in from the Democratic National Convention: there are reports this morning that some of the balloons dropped last night after Senator John Kerry’s acceptance speech may have slowed his exit from the FleetCenter. It remains to be seen how this mix-up will affect the democratic candidate’s standing in the polls, but top campaign insiders say he won’t waste time making up the wasted time.

“John Kerry has always been a leader in times of hardship,” said Kerry’s mother. “He won’t let some balloons keep him from reporting for duty. He can do better. And HELP IS ON THE WAY!”

We’ll be covering these important developments and other equally important developments, such as the historical precedent for balloon-dropping, throughout the day.
Reporting live from Boston, this is Every News Media Outlet In Hysterics Over the Convention.

This week on the radio, on the internet, in the newspapers and in my living room, all I’ve seen is the very definition of non-news.

When a soap company sends out a press release saying that their product is better, stronger, and more ethically sound than all the others, it is generally considered (except in the most news-starved places) to be garbage. Literally garbage. These press releases accumulate on the fax-machine trays of newsrooms all over the country like pizza boxes on dorm-room countertops.

The Democratic National Convention and the upcoming Republican convention are such pizza boxes. News garbage; remnants of real news. To be sure, the national gathering of delegates to designate their presidential nominee has real news value. It only happens once every four years; there are sometimes dissenting factions within the party; and it’s the first real look the American public gets at the nominee.

But when the news media starts airing wall-to-wall coverage of an overblown political rally, it can mean only one thing: someone is taking a vacation.

Please, by all means, cover the candidates’ speeches. Go ahead, televise the remarks of important political figures (the Clintons, Barack Obama). Report on the views of the delegates and protesters and critics. All that, you may do, dear producers of the news-media, and my stomach-bile will remain unperturbed.

But this week has been too much. The swift-boat crewmates. The daughters. The wives. The friends. The convention is a public relations concoction. Everyone knows this. The politicians, the reporters, even the viewers know it. And yet there it is on my television: Move America Forward; Stronger at Home; A Tested Leader.

What does this stuff mean? Why is it news? Why do the conventions – moderately news-worthy at best, political publicity stunts at worst – deserve the kind of coverage they receive?

If the purpose is to present the candidates to the public, fine. Present the candidates. Televise their speeches, allow them to state their case. But if your goal is to let the public educate itself about the candidates, airing 15-minute campaign ads disguised as biography films is not the way to do it. Giving each candidate a huge chunk of the information spectrum to spew what is mostly vague, meaningless NON-NEWS is not the way to do it.

If those hours of television and radio time, those newspaper and Web pages were devoted to real reporting about the candidates’ records, their platforms, their actions and the results of their actions, that would be news-worthy. That would represent a real contribution to the voting public’s knowledge of the issues and the candidates.

Instead we see, for the most part, the news media descending on these non-news events like Flying Elvises on the plains of Las Vegas, if the plains were filled with lonely, topless dancers. And they treat the empty vacillations of the national parties like the real news that they’re not.

Why? I don’t know, maybe because it’s easy. Maybe they think that’s what people want to see.

And maybe it is.

But when I turn to the news and see nothing more than dressed-up press releases from the Kerry or Bush campaigns, all I want to do is turn it off. With all the balloons, confetti, and cheesy music, it starts looking a lot like the coronation of a prom king.

And to tell you truth, whether John Kerry or George Bush wins that honor, I couldn’t care less.

Update: I was just kidding with the balloon thing up top, but no sooner did I post it than I saw this (here’s the audio). What am I, psychic or something?

I hear all this talk of miracles, but when was the last time a 17,000-megawatt shock of lightning came down and fixed something? If a tornado swept through town and left a string of freshly painted houses in its wake, that would be a miracle.

But then again, who knows? It would be terrible for all the house painters in the city. So maybe one man\’s miracle is another man\’s disaster. For all its noise, this weekend\’s storm proved fairly harmless; no downed trees or lighting-smitten things. No freshly painted houses, either.

I woke up early Sunday morning with the distinct feeling that I was hearing fireworks. But not just little-kid bottle-rockets and black cats; these were full-sized Fourth-of-July type fireworks. I was in that semi-conscious state where just about anything makes sense, so somehow my brain avoided the fact that it was 3:30 a.m., and it was not the fourth of July.

How? Well, by concluding that since I was hearing fireworks it had to have been 10 p.m. (that\’s when fireworks are normally heard around here). This was an interesting conclusion, since I had gone to bed at 11 p.m. So somehow, according to my sleep-logic, after I fell asleep time moved backwards a week and an hour, so that the fourth of July fireworks could wake me up.

It was, of course, not fireworks but a thunderstorm. And a very pretty one at that. Huge bursts of lightning and thunder paired with a light, windless rain. It was the kind of storm you wanted to watch (once you realized what the hell was going on).

So I stayed up for a bit, turned with my head at the foot of the bed, watching the trees shiver and getting light mists of rain through the screen window. Every 30 seconds or so, a tremendous flash of lightning would crack the atmosphere with a sound like two railroad cars slamming into each other.

Sunday should\’ve been cool and dry, due to the night rain, but instead it was even hotter and muggier than Saturday. Seeking air-conditioning, my girlfriend and I went to the public-library killer, Barnes and Noble. I started reading Robert Reich\’s \”Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America.\” But the introduction and first chapter sounded more like a laundry list of why liberals weren\’t winning the Battle for America, so I stopped reading.

The book was on a shelf covered with books either promoting liberal ideas or disparaging conservative ones. Across the aisle was a shelf with books either promoting conservative ideas or disparaging liberal ones. Sometimes I like to stand in front of those two shelves and watch the books glare at each other.

Lately I\’ve been getting a lot of comments that I look like John Kerry. People come up to me and say, randomly, \”Did you know you look like John Kerry?\” As if it\’s a fact, like, \”Did you know you have two feet?\” Why, no, I\’d never bothered to look down there. I guess I do!

Except it\’s not a fact. The question people should ask is, \”Did you know that I think you look like John Kerry?\” To which I\’d answer, \”No, I didn\’t know, perhaps you have withheld oxygen from several parts of your brain, because I DON\’T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE HIM.\”

But instead people pose the question to me as if the resemblance is irrefutable, and they\’re just doing me a favor by letting me know. Of course, this isn\’t the first time I\’ve been compared to a politician. In 2000 everybody kept asking me if I realized I looked just like Al Gore. And once somebody told me they thought I looked like Paul McCartney.

Now, as anyone can see, these three people look nothing alike, aside from the brown hair. So here\’s what I think is happening: when people come up to me and say \”Did you know you look like John Kerry/Al Gore/Paul McCartney?\” they\’re really looking over my shoulder at someone who is standing in the background.

Which means, obviously, that I have three stalkers who look like these three famous men. Or, even more frightening, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Paul McCartney are all conspiring against me; watching me from behind. And every time I whip around to try to find the source of the chilling stare upon my back, they vanish, like ghosts.

Senator John Kerry, Vice President Al Gore, and Beatles\’ frontman Paul McCartney: ghost stalkers extraordinaire. Pretty freaky, guys.

Writing is like that for me. I can\’t write if there are people around, and I especially can\’t write if they\’re making noise. I know that sounds prissy. Eww, what will I do? All this commotion!

I know a real writer, one of those newspaper guys with the \”Press\” hats, would scoff at my fastidiousness. Those people write their stories on napkins with one hand and fend off attackers with the other. By \”fend off\” I mean \”swordfight.\”

I\’m sorry. I\’ll never be a real journalist. Or swashbuckler.

But I suspect those writers who say they can write anywhere aren\’t being fully honest. Every writer has some trigger, some condition that loosens up the keys. Some people like to write in the morning, others (like me) at night. Some people like music, others like alcohol.

Wait, did I say alcohol? Sorry, I meant LOTS of alcohol.

What? You never heard of Ernest Hemingway? Read \”The Sun Also Rises\”; the plot is just there to fill space between the drinking. And if the characters are drinking, you know damned well what the author was doing. Eh? Ehhh?

Writing, that\’s what! Ernest Hemingway was writing when he wrote \”The Sun Also Rises\”! Heh heh. OK, all you libel attorneys go away now.

Lately it occurs to me that almost everything I write on this site is fodder for the cannons of jurisprudence, and before long I\’m going to be bankrupt and in prison, writing funny anecdotes on the shower walls with soap. So, in light of that, I\’m going to include a legal disclaimer that says if you\’re reading this you\’ve waived the right to sue me for any reason. There. That was the disclaimer. Funny how you can\’t even read the disclaimer without waiving your rights. Laws are funny.

You know what else is funny? Accidentally giving everyone who ever reads this post the impression that I\’m a lonely, paranoid drunk. Not that I\’m not a lonely, paranoid drunk. I just don\’t want to give that impression.

Speaking of lonely paranoid writers (there I go with the libel again), Lileks had a good piece yesterday fisking Michael Moore\’s LA Times Op-Ed.

My point in linking to this stuff (or in pointing out why I thought the 42% vacation figure was misleading) is not to suggest everything Michael Moore says is invalid. And I don\’t expect anyone who loves Moore or Fahrenheit 911 to be convinced by Lileks\’ comments or anyone else\’s.

Many people will go on agreeing with the opinions Moore expresses in F-911 regardless of any factual or logical flaws in the argument. And that\’s fine. But, as Lileks argues, that seems like a matter of faith:

Believing in Bush’s perfidy gives some people the same comfort and emotional nourishment others get from believing in Jesus. It validates them, cements their view of the world…

Pivotal word: some. Others recognize Moore\’s arguments for what they are – propagandist and often incoherent – but continue believing in Bush\’s perfidy. And they justify their belief not by faith, as Moore would have them do, but by reason.

I keep mentioning Moore\’s failings because I\’d like to see more of the second kind of Bush critics, and less of the first.

Crackacracka cracka crack…

That was the patriotism of all the neighborhood kids, myself included, being expressed in unison. It was the patriotism of playing cards – kings and queens, those powerful symbols of anti-democracy – wedged in the spokes of so many bicycles.

I had spent the morning intensely focused on this. Along with my sister, I had wrapped red white and blue streamers around every available inch of my two-wheeler. Flags stood tautly scotch-taped to the handlebars.

We\’d done this all in the front yard of our apartment, part of a huge complex of student housing filled mostly with immigrants and low-income families. Our parents, who were then approaching their first decade of residence in the U.S., and were not yet citizens, watched approvingly from inside.

My dad left Argentina in the late 1970s to study at the University of Minnesota. He and my mom finally came for good in 1982, just before I was born. People often ask me why they came, and the stock answer is that they were both pursuing graduate degrees here. But that\’s a half-truth; they were pursuing graduate degrees here because they wanted to leave Argentina.

Everybody wanted to leave Argentina, or at least, everyone should have wanted to. Between 1976 and 1983 between 10,000 and 30,000 Argentines disappeared. Some for fighting against the government, others for simply being in the address books of those who fought against the government.

Many of their bodies ended up folded into oil drums, lying on the sandy bottom of the Atlantic. They\’d been drugged and dropped from planes, still alive and in unimaginable states of consciousness.

It wasn\’t unreasonable for my parents to want go to grad school in the United States. A clown college in Switzerland would have been more reasonable than staying in Buenos Aires.

Now, just under a decade later, their kids were out front wrapping colored toilet paper around their bikes. Oil drums and torture rooms and dictatorships weren\’t even in our vocabulary then. My parents could let us ride our bikes down the street to the parade by ourselves, without worrying about a black Ford Falcon swooping us up to take us to \”La Escuela De Mecanica de la Armada,” where so many of \”Los Desaparecidos\” (The Disappeared) desaparecieron (disappeared).

But before we went crack cracking down the street, we had to finish decorating. A few more ribbons here, a few more playing cards there, and so on. So focused were we, that neither my sister nor I noticed when Otto, the 7-year-old son of our Icelandic neighbors, came out of their house stark naked. When we looked up, we were faced with the snowy white of Otto\’s Icelandic nether-regions, just a few feet away.

Then, like the volcanoes that ring his island country, Otto erupted in a stream of steaming yellow lava. As he walked toward us (his little volcano pointed in our direction), we quickly weighed our options: stay and protect the bikes, symbols of freedom and democracy, or run away and let the Icelandic bandit ruin Independence Day?

Without even a glance at my dad, whose brimming patriotism was about to brim a little more, we chose the latter. The bikes were made in China anyway.

Luckily, Otto\’s mom intervened just in time, grabbing him under the arms and yanking him into the air. His snowy white behind soon turned bright red, as his mom administered swift punishment.

That left us free to ride. Free to join the parade. Free to ruin perfectly good playing cards. And free to listen to one of my dad\’s recurring lectures about how here, in this country, we were truly free.

\”Listen, sonny,\” he\’d say. \”In Argentina, Independence Day is nothing but military parades and religious ceremonies. Here you have freedom. FREEDOM.\”

I didn\’t know it then, but he said \”Freedom\” the same way Mel Gibson says it at the end of Braveheart. But with less face-paint.

It didn\’t mean much to me. Unlike my dad and William Wallace, I was born with the stuff. It was like running water to me; I used it every day, I didn\’t know how it got there, and it didn\’t occur to me that some people didn\’t have it.

But to my mom and dad, the 4th of July neighborhood parade meant a lot. It was just a bunch of kids riding noisy bikes, some people pushing lawn-mowers around in configuration, and pretty girls waving from the back of old-fashioned convertibles. But to them, it was Americans celebrating the most important national holiday however they saw fit.

No government ceremonies, no solemn military parades, no fear of wearing the wrong clothes or saying the wrong things. Many celebrated the 4th of July; some didn\’t. No one could tell anyone else (not even the undignified Otto) they couldn\’t participate.

It seems normal. To many of us, the 4th of July is just a day off work and an excuse to grill steaks. But my dad, now a citizen, still gets teary when the parade goes by. It\’s not because he places great significance on the date, or because he gets caught up in the cliché patriotism of the red, white, and blue.

It\’s because he knows those kids crackling by with flags taped to their handlebars are there because they want to be. Not because they have to be. Not because they\’re afraid not to be.

That may seem like a small freedom to those of us who have never lived without it. But there are places where that freedom lies lost, like an oil drum on the ocean floor.

This July 4th, my family remembers that freedom, if taken for granted, can disappear. And that patriotism is not in the things you say or the flags you fly, but in the choices you make.

This Sunday, I\’ll be out in front of my house, decorating my bike. Whether or not you do the same, remember, the choice is yours.