Archive for August, 2007
White Male Monopoly
Check out Automatic Preference for a great post on “Statistics, Power, and the 43-Term White Male Monopoly of the Presidency.”
If presidents were selected in a statistically unbiased way from the population, the chance of selecting 43 white men in a row would be less than 2 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s consistent with what we already know: the selection of U.S. presidents is far from fair.
We calculated a rough numerical measure of white supremacy and male supremacy in the U.S. presidency. White males have been chosen for the presidency as if they constituted 98% of the population.
Exclusion through language
A couple months ago Brownfemipower posted about the Inhofe Amendment. The amendment was contained within the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, S. 1348. (Note: S. 1639 has a similar English language amendment) This amendment would have amended title 4 of the United States Code to “declare English as the national language of the Government of the United States, and for other purposes.”
I was upset to read that Ron Wyden (D) from Oregon had supported the Inhofe Amendment. I quickly wrote Senator Wyden and I received a response this week:
Drift Creek North
The Drift Creek North trail is nothing short of spectacular, if you can find it… Wendy was reading our Oregon Coast hiking book while we were yurting and picked out the Drift Creek North trail as a possible hiking adventure. It was quite an adventure. The forest service road to the trail took over an hour to navigate as I dodged trees, thorns, boulders, etc. The trail takes you through what I would describe as an Oregon rain forest. It was beautiful. I had never seen mammoth old growth trees like this before. I think I could have spent a lifetime exploring that part of the Siuslaw National Forest. Here are a few photographs from our Drift Creek North experience.
Yurting in Newport, OR
I had my first yurt experience last weekend. I stayed in Newport, Oregon at the South Beach State Park. It was blissful. Here are a few photographs from my yurting experience.
