The switch by Arlen Specter to the Democratic party is big news. It’s not big news that also requires big analysis. Frankly, the Republican spin on this is probably more accurate than the Specter spin. This was a simple political calculation. If I had to put money on who would have won a Specter vs. Toomey primary battle, I would have put that money on Toomey. Specter barely beat him in 2004. The Obama and Clinton campaigns got a lot of moderates to switch to the Democratic Party. That primary electorate would be even more conservative now than it was six years ago.

In a Specter vs. Toomey general election, Specter probably walks away with it pretty easily.

I had planned to take lunch at about 12:30 today, but I was working on a project and looked up and found that it was well past 2:00. I turned on Hardball. I am somewhere between amused and frustrated (but mostly amused) at watching the northeastern media elite try to parse the current, controversial statements from Sarah Palin. For better or worse, growing up in the south means that I generally understand what evangelicals mean when they open their mouths. The coded way in which they often speak means that you have to be precise in parsing their words.

Sarah Palin said, in reference to the folks at the McCain campaign that she couldn’t find anyone that she wanted to hold hands and pray with. Repeatedly, Chris Matthews and his guests have stated this as “she couldn’t find anyone to pray with” and then saying that she’s accusing the McCain staff of being godless or something. The operative word in this context is “want”. It’s a judgment that is as much about social attitudes and relationships as it is about religion. Where religion comes in on the thing isn’t “I’m a Christian and you’re not”. It’s something closer to “you’re not my kind of Christian”.

I had several comments about my last post. They were largely along a similar line. It’s a line I’ve heard before. Essentially, people are bothered by what they see as an anti-feminist message where women are portrayed as blank slates that can, or perhaps need to be, programmed to do various kinds of dangerous or skeevy things. This is precisely what I was talking about when I said that I see Joss Whedon doing things here that other people don’t seem to be seeing. I would say Dollhouse is every bit as subversive of those notions as Buffy was subversive of the notion of the helpless blonde cheerleader who either falls victim to the scary forces in the world or who needs a man to save her. Every bit as subversive. It’s not as over the top. It’s far more subtle. It should be. Thanks to Joss Whedon and a lot of other folks, the TV viewing audience (or at least the right segments of it) are a lot more sophisticated than it was a dozen years ago. The thing about Dollhouse–the problem with Dollhouse from a marketing perspective–is that it doesn’t give away its secrets in the first episode or two. We’re used to getting the hook for a show early and then seeing how it builds over time. I think it’ll take a full season to even get the hook for this thing, though I’m feeling out more and more bits of it over time. What you may have seen as the gimmick behind this show as revealed in the first episode or two isn’t the gimmick behind this show.

If you’ve only seen an episode or two of this show, decided that you knew what it was about, and then quit watching on the grounds listed above, you should reconsider. This is a darker show than what he’s done before. That’s for sure. Whedon himself has said that the premise makes him uncomfortable and, therefore, he’s not surprised when it makes other people uncomfortable.

After the first episode of Dollhouse, I wondered whether I was a moron or just too big of a Joss Whedon fan. The show was so roundly panned by most people I know that I doubted whether the wonderful potential complexity that I saw was really there. People whose opinions I respect on TV shows, on movies, on fiction generally were not very high. Since the days after the first episode, I have largely avoided reading anything anyone I know was saying about the show. I figured I would watch it for however long Fox was willing to keep it on the air and be sad and outraged when they eventually cancel it–probably just as it’s really hitting its stride.

I have been more and more impressed with the show each week. When I have read stuff in the media about the show, it has still mostly been not that positive. A lot of the specific story and plot objections have seemed completely unfounded to me, though. It really seemed to me that they didn’t understand what Whedon is doing with the show. Again, I was starting to wonder whether I was a moron or too much of a fan boy. If the media people (who generally appreciate Whedon’s style) weren’t big on the show, weren’t seeing the layers that I see, then maybe they aren’t there. Maybe the fan boy thing was clouding my judgment. Maybe I looked at the lengthy period of brainstorming and development between Whedon and Dushku prior to actual production as an indicator of quality that wasn’t there.

I feel pretty vindicated after last night.

A few days back, I read a really interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker about the difficulties of predicting who will be successful as a teacher. It’s an interesting article and it has shaken a little bit of my otherwise rock solid support for the current system of unions and tenure. Of course the problem with what Gladwell proposes is that in the real world of U.S. politics, we’d get the worst possible implementation of it. We’d lose tenure and job security without getting the more lucrative pay that, Gladwell correctly points out, is necessary to keep a realistic risk vs. reward structure in place.

I definitely think there’s something wrong with the state of education in this country when the block quote below is true. I’d say this is doubly wrong when, as we seem to know, that teacher training and credentialing as it exists does nothing to predict who will be good at being a teacher and who will not. The quote below is from TEACH California’s website. I find it ridiculous that our current system values someone with a bachelor’s degree in education over someone with a master’s degree in math or history.

Question: I have a master’s degree in the subject I wish to teach. Do I just need to pass the CBEST in order to teach in a k-12 classroom?

Answer: In order to teach, you must obtain a teaching credential; a master’s degree is not sufficient. Successfull completion of a teacher preparation program is required. You can easily locate teacher preparation programs by clicking on “Resources”, “Program Information”, and then “Find Credentialing or Graduate Programs”. Basic information about each program is provided. If you need more specific information, contact names and phone numbers are also included so that you can speak with the appropriate program staff.

I rarely write anything tech related here. I found something today that I’ve been trying to find for a while: a reliable means of syncing my windows mobile smartphone’s calendar with google calendar. In this case, that’s a samsung Blackjack II. I’ve tried several different on the phone apps, but haven’t been satisfied with any of them. Some of them have been spotty from the get go. Others have worked well for a while then lost their ability to sync with google’s calendar. Nuevasync (www.nuevasync.com) is a web based service that uses the same protocol that’s already on your phone for syncing with an Exchange server to sync with google. I’m only using it for the calendar, but it looks like they support mail as well.

I was actually searching for a solution for the iPhone when I found this. I bought my wife an iPhone 3g as a slightly early Christmas present. I’ve been so impressed with it that I’ll probably buy myself one sometime in 2009. This solution may turn out to be moot. I just changed jobs* and may again work for a company that will let me push my corporate email and calendar to the phone. I’ll find out in a couple of weeks. But even if it ends up being moot for me, maybe someone else who has had the same problem will find this post.

*My recent job search has been the reason this space has been pretty silent in the last few weeks.

After a six day occupation of their closed factory, the workers at UE Local 1110 managed to get a $1.75 million settlement last night. All of the money is coming from JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. The money will pay out their accrued vacation time, will give them the 8 weeks of pay they’re entitled to under WARN and get them two months of additional health insurance.

Hopefully, more workers in this ocuntry will take the lesson here and not just roll over when their plant, site, or office is shut down.

Apparently, Americans who claim they would kill for a good deal aren’t joking.

Merry Christmas.

Rachel Maddow takes apart the argument that Democrats should play nice with Joe Lieberman to get a sixty seat majority in the senate. Brilliant, but you really need to watch the whole six minutes.

Unfortunately the media plugin I’m using doesn’t seem to work with MSNBC’s embedded video code. Here’s a link instead.

China announced today that it’s going to unleash a $650 billion (yeah, billion with a “b”) economic stimulus plan over the next two years. They’re doing just the reverse of what we’ve done over the last twenty five years. They may be kicking the second foot of our empire into its grave in the process. Now that they’ve built the greatest industrial machine on earth, they plan to create their own mass consumer class. Once they’ve completed that, we become a much, much smaller part of their market. Propping our consumption up by buying our debt won’t have to be a priority for them anymore. We’ll need to undergo some major and painful restructuring to survive it. You can read about it at the Journal