{advertisement}

Presidential Rally at U of MN

Here’s the write up of my experiences at President Obama’s rally on the University of MN campus this past Saturday.

The Line

Wow, The Line. 

The Hubby and I left the house at 11:15am.  President Obama was rumored to be speaking at about 3pm, and local dignitaries and politicians would start speaking about 1pm.  We figured we’d get in line around noon and have a couple of hours to get seated.  As we were leaving the apartment, we heard an MPR correspondant says that thousands of people had already lined up to hear President Obama speak.  I really had no idea what thousands of people might look like, but we had heard that the Fieldhouse could hold 7,000 people so we decided to try our luck in line.  It turns out that thousands (lower-case “t”) in a stadium is nothing, but when you make all of those people stand in a single/double-file line Thousands (big freaking capital “T”) is a hell of a lot of people.

We rode our bikes from our home in LynLake to the rally on the U of MN’s East Bank.  The Fieldhouse is at 18th St. and University Ave.  We rode up University and parked our bikes when we came to road blocks at 16th Street.  We started to walk east up University toward the Fieldhouse, but were redirected by security.  Crowd control was pretty lousy from where we started – there were no signs or rally volunteers to direct us to the end of the line.  We had no idea where we were going, and so we decided to follow the small group ahead of us who were wearing U of MN sweatshirts and jackets and saying words like Obama, line, and Washington Avenue.

Below is a map of the East Bank campus.  The red line is the path we walked from our bikes to the end of the line.  The yellow circles are the Fieldhouse where President Obama spoke and the overflow seating in the Sports Pavillion where the Hubby and I ended up – more on that later.  The blue line…that was The Line.

These are some pictures from The Line.

This was our first view of The Line as we came around the west side of Northrup Auditorium.   This is the NW corner of the Mall.

After walking down the Mall and around Kolthoff Hall, we finally found the end of The Line outside of the Wiseman art center.  We were actually on the Washington Avenue footbridge for a while.

Ah, chalk art advertising!  I’d forgotten all about this college campus mode of communication.

This was when we turned onto Church Street.  I believe that’s Lind Hall on the right.

Trekking between Lind Hall and the Engineering buildings.  Doesn’t that statue look like it’s saying “Yes We Can!  Only a few more feet!”

After walking a few blocks along Washington Avenue we took a left at Walnut Street and filed up past the McNamara Alumni Center and back down the Aquatic Center. 

The Umbrella Tree – Rally volunteers were announcing that no umbrellas would be allowed inside the Fieldhouse, so this tree was being decorated with pretty ornaments. 

Next we took a jaunt up Scholar’s Walk.  It was here that we started hearing rumors that the Fieldhouse had filled to capacity and that the Fire Marshall was rerouting us to overflow viewing.  A good number of people left the line, but I’d guess about 500 people or so stayed and filed into the Sports Pavillion to see President Obama speak on a big screen.  By this time it was almost 3pm so we had missed all of Mark Dayton’s speech as well as Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar. 

The big screens were actually two screens back-to-back so that each side of the bleachers could be utilized for seating.  The absolute worst infomercials were playing while we waited for President Obama’s speech to begin!

*sigh* This was as close to our President as we got.  But hey – the seating was comfy and we had an excellent view of the screen.

The Demonstrators

One of the things that I really like about big political events like this are the demonstrators.  I like seeing people get out and get excited about their views, projects and groups.  So I was a little bummed out that we saw less than ten groups demonstrating.  I mean – captive audience, people!  I only saw two “anti” signs – one against the current administration and one against democrats.  I saw two anti-war groups, a small contingent from the Minneapolis Urban League advertising an upcoming event, one guy with a sign about ending violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt (?), and there was one Green party group handing out fliers.  The most organized group was from the MN Committee to Stop FBI Repression.  They had people along the entire route handing out fliers  to bring attention to the September FBI raids on seven Chicago and Minneapolis homes of anti-war protesters.

The lady with the yellow sign is not so happy with the way things are going in our country. 

Yay! This is the kind of thing I was hoping to see.  The Radical Roosters had a small group of people dancing and chanting up and down the Mall.

“Democrats Flush Away Prosperity”  Is that why my toilet sometimes gets clogged?

A protester against persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

One of the many anti-FBI repression protesters.

The Talk

According to the MNDaily, approximately 11,000 people attended the President’s speech, which lasted about 30 minutes. 

The energy in the Sports Pavillion wasn’t very high.  One lady came in before the speech and gave a half-hearted try at riling up the crowd.  She yelled “Is everyone fired up…”  and a few people chimed in “And ready to go!”  She yelled a few more times and each time a few more people joined in, but it didn’t really get going.  Everyone was pretty quiet and probably subdued from standing in line for 2+ hours and then finding out that we weren’t going to see the President in person. 

I thought that President Obama’s talk was pretty standard fare.  He implored the audience to get out and vote, and to support Mark Dayton in the upcoming November 2nd elections.  He highlighted the government’s successes of health care reform, the federal stimulus, bringing troops home from Iraq and credit card reform, and reminded people that he’s got ambitious plans for improving the deficit and unemployment in his next two years in office.  He attempted to drum up enthusiasm and urged the audience not to forget all of the hard work we did in 2008, and to not lose the enthusiasm that has brought us to where we are today.

A few remarks did get audience-wide applause, but ours usually ended well before the live audience had wrapped it up next door.  For a while we thought we might have a visit from one of the bigwigs because bomb-sniffing dogs were led around the aisles and people sitting by one of the far doors were being individually scanned with metal detector wands.  But alas, as soon as the President’s speech was over people shot up and walked for the doors.  

All in all, it was a good experience.  It was definitely exciting to be surrounded by so many pro-Obama enthusiasts, and it was neat to know that President Obama was visiting my city.  The pain of The Line was tempered by the group think that We Were All In This Together.  I wish that the speech hadn’t been quite so standard; I had watched video from his other stops in Las Vegas and California and a lot of the same material was reused, but what can you do?  The wins are the wins, the challenges are the challenges, we are where we are right now. 

I’d do it again.  But I’d definitely queue up earlier!

Presidential Rally at U of MN

Being Born Again is too difficult

I’m sitting here going through my camera phone photos when I find this gem from Friday night.  I think this post is located on the SW corner of Lyndale and Lake.

Does anyone know the significance of the 2/28/12 date?  I tried Mark 2:28, but I don’t think “Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” is relevant.  And everyone knows that the end of the world isn’t until 12/21/2012.

 

 

 

Being Born Again is too difficult

Off to see President Obama!

I’m so excited!  I’ve never been to a political rally of this magnitude!

The Hubby and I are leaving here in about 10 minutes (as soon as he can rip me from the computer) to go down to the University of Minneapolis East Bank.  We’re riding our bicycles down to the campus because parking and traffic are going to be atrocious.  We’re going to mill around the Field House where President Obama is scheduled to speak at about 3pm, hopefully snap some pictures of the crowds.  Doors open at 12:30pm  Mark Dayton will also be speaking.

 

Off to see President Obama!

Cup #3 Winner

And the CUP #3 Winner is JEN!

Jen wins 100 internet points for being the first one to guess “Bottom of an iPhone”.

It’s actually my iPod Touch, but since the two are identical I was willing to accept either.

Other points:

I award Michelle 25 points for correctly guessing  “Bottom of an iPod touch“.

Jeremy LOSES 5 points for impugning my honor with his comment: the image looks color altered and stretched. Even at an angle, the circular home button shouldn’t be oblong.  It’s creative cropping, lighting and camera angle, bee-yotch!  Okay, maybe the photo is a little fuzzy, but that’s just because my camera was being stupid and I had had too much coffee that morning.

But I am a kind and gentle game runner, so I also AWARD Jeremy 15 points for thinking outside of the box and realizing that human beings suck and that I might have done something sneaky like photoshopping unrealistic effects into the photo.  And I’ll throw in 5 points for the right answer and 5 points for being a returning player.  So that’s….20 net points.

I award Vicki 5 points for being a returning player and 5 points for a creative answer, and 5 points for pointing out the shadowing, but she gets no points for the wrong answer.  So I award Vicki a net gain of 15 points.

Thanks for playing, everyone, and keep your eyes open for the next CUP Contest!

 

 

Cup #3 Winner

Cup Contest #3

Welcome to the Close Up Photo Contest, #3!

Correct answer is worth 100 internet points.  Hogwarts/Calvinball points system is in effect.  Last time, everyone who answered (before *and* after the winner posted his answer!) won 25 points.  I’m not saying that’s going to happen again; I’m just reminding people that participation and awesome answers may be worth additional points.  Again, entries will be accepted from Facebook or comments to this post.

The list of winners can be found on the CUP Winners page, located in the right side bar of the blog.

Here is your CUP!  What is it?

Cup Contest #3

Michael Shermer at U of MN

Last Thursday (10/14/2010) I went to see Michael Shermer speak at the University of Minnesota’s Willey Hall (timely write-up fail!).  Dr. Shermer was presenting “Why People Believe Weird Things”.  His visit was sponsored/organized by the Campus Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists (CASH) group at the U of M. 

Michael Shermer

I liked the lecture hall set-up – the back wall is rounded and the room focuses the audience’s attention down to the center of the room where the speaker is presenting.  But instead of having one screen and the people on the sides getting cruddy views, the room has two gigantic screens angled so that no matter where you sit you’ll have a decent view of the material.

Map of Willey Hall

Before the talk Dr. Shermer checked his set up, then hung around up front chatting with people.  The presentation started about 15 minutes late, but that was okay because people kept streaming in.  Dr. Shermer was introduced by the CASH activities director, and then we were off.  

He started by telling us about Skeptic Magazine and the Skeptic’s Society and he did a quick review of the topics covered on the screens up front. 

The pre-talk display was these six covers of Skeptic Magazine, of which Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher

One of the comments that Dr. Shermer made early on really stuck with me.  He presented the idea that smart people are very good at rationalizing their non-intelligent choices and beliefs.  I think that, like anyone, skeptics can make poor choices when we weigh evidence against our personal beliefs, and we choose gut over facts (I’m still struggling with Penn and Teller’s BS episode on recycling).   In the Q&A at the end of the talk, someone asked him to give some examples of the weird things skeptics believe.  He chose politics – ask a liberal why they believe what they believe, and they’ll tell you it’s because they’re right about x topic, and that yes, they believe that 50% of Americans who vote for Republicans/conservativism are wrong.  Confirmation bias, anyone? 

Dr. Shermer showed this slide during his talk.

Dr. Shermer was all about using the humor to get ideas across.  He was discussing the need for science education in America, and used this video got a LOT of laughs:

After that Dr. Shermer dug into some basic cognitive science topics like association learning and patternicity.  He gave a broad-level overview of some neuroscience studies that have attempted to explain where and what in the brain may be responsible for patternicity.  He showed some great illusions that illuminate how our brain handles facial recognition, and he presented his idea for how this might be related to the phenomenon of déjà vu.  He demonstrated how granularity, shading and camera position in photos can be used to trick our brain into making assumptions about what we’re looking at, and even into seeing things that aren’t there.

Crazy crate
 
Crazy crate

Jerry Andrus’s 3D impossible crate

Emergence

Nice doggy

Our Lady of the Chicago Underpass

Next he discussed agenticity: the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents.  This moved us further into the realms of conspiracy, skepticism and pseudoscience.   Dr. Shermer believes that human agenticity is behind animism, aliens, the 9/11 Conspiracy, JFK’s assassination, etc.  He discussed mind versus brain (“Mind is just the thing that the brain does”) and the brain’s role in creating near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences, as well as the phenomenon of sensed presence, or the feeling that someone is in the room with you. 

He also demonstrated how the priming effect works with a fun example.  Do you remember the hysteria in the 1980s when some people thought that if you played rock and roll records backwards you could hear satanic lyrics or chanting?  Dr. Shermer played Stairway to Heaven forward and backward for us.  When he played it forward he put the lyrics on the screen.  Then he played the song backward – without lyrics.  It sounded like a bunch of gobbledy-gook.  Then he played the song backwards for us again, but this time with these devised lyrics on the screen:

So here’s to my Sweet Satan.
The other’s little path
Would make me sad,
Whose power is faith.
He’ll give those with him 666.
And all the evil fools,
they know he made
us suffer sadly.

And it sure sounded like they were singing those words when we listened to it again.  Fun with tricking the brain!

Dr. Shermer managed to fit in a few more topics like why cold reading works (when someone goes to a psychic they’ll remember the hits (5-10 hits), but forget the misses (200-300), synchronicity, confirmation bias and expectation violation.

At the end of the talk we had about 30 minutes for Q&A.  There was a good mix of Q&A topics – cognitive neuroscience, pseudoscience, belief, atheism.  Nobody was too bumbling, although there were a few cringe-worthy seconds here and there while people rambled or struggled to get their question out.  There were no confrontational questions.

A few of my favorite moments from the Q&A

  • Dr. Shermer using Good Kirk vs. Bad Kirk to explain why emotions are necessary to decision-making.  Good Kirk is pretty accurate portrayal of what would happen without emotions.
  • “Don’t teach people what to think, but how to think.”
  • Someone asked if we could we erase memories like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The answer started out pretty party line (“We don’t yet know how we store memories, so we don’t yet know how to erase them), but somewhere along the line he managed to get to “Aliens are going to be so incredibly different from us.”  I don’t remember how we got there, but in reading my notes it seems like a fabulous non sequitur.

I enjoyed the talk, both the material and the way Dr. Shermer presented.  I’m really happy that the Campus Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists (CASH) were able to organize the talk and the $4 entry fee was very kind.  Next year CASH is bringing Jen McCreight from BlagHag to the U of M – yay!

Michael Shermer at U of MN

Congrats, Dan Choi!

Dan Choi is a former infantry officer in the United States Army.  He’s a West Point graduate, he served in combat in Iraq (2006-2007), he’s fluent in Arabic and has a degree in environmental engineering.

Oh yeah, and he’s gay.  He was discharged from the Army in 2009 for violating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).

DADT is very, very close to being repealed and we as a nation are very, very, very close to allowing openly gay men and women to enlist and serve in the United States military.

From Adam Levine, CNN
October 19, 2010 4:05 p.m. EDT

Washington (CNN) — The Pentagon has advised recruiting commands that they can accept openly gay and lesbian recruit candidates, given the recent federal court decision that bars the military from expelling openly gay service members, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman.

The guidance from the Personnel and Readiness office was sent to recruiting commands on Friday, according to spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.

The recruiters were told that if a candidate admits he or she is openly gay, and qualify under normal recruiting guidelines, their application can be processed. Recruiters are not allowed to ask candidates if they are gay as part of the application process.

The notice also reminded recruiters that they have to “manage expectations” of applicants by informing them that a reversal of the court decision might occur, whereby the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy could be reinstated, Smith said.

Later Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips in California denied the government’s request for an emergency stay of her order barring the military from enforcing its ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly. The government is now expected to go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Groups representing gays and lesbians have warned against coming out to the military because the policy is still being appealed in courts.

Today, Dan Choi re-enlisted in the Army.

This is a well-editted video of Dan Choi’s experience down at the recruiting office in NY Times Square (it’s only 4:10 vs. the 8:44 that is going around). It’s over at the Maddow Blog – clicking on the image below will take you to the original blog post and video.

Congratulations, Dan Choi!  I’m glad to have you back, and grateful for your activism that has helped bring us to this point.

Congrats, Dan Choi!

Sever's Corn Maze

On Sunday the Hubby and I went to Sever’s Corn Maze in Shakopee, MN.  The weather was beautiful – sunny with a clear blue sky, and a cool nip in the air to give it that perfect fall feeling.

This is a view of this year’s corn maze, Vikings 50th Season (the Vikings are the MN football team for you non-native, non-sports readers), from the air:

The maze itself is gigantic – it took us about two hours to wander through it and find all 26 of the hidden signposts that were scattered throughout the maze.  That little tan board to the left of the picture above is actually a bridge where probably 40 people or so can stand side-by-side and look out over the maze.

At Sever’s they have pony and camel rides (yes, camels in freaking Minnesota – right der alongside dah corn, eh!).  They’ve got an area where an old-timey band plays and visitors can buy “state fair food” like corn dogs, cheese curds, roasted corn, and fresh-squeezed lemonade.  There’s a petting zoo, a corn “pool”, hayrides, a miniature hay bale maze for the younger kids, a pumpkin patch, magic shows, carnival games and all sorts of other entertainment.

We had a blast.

Sever's Corn Maze