Talked to Dad on Turkey Day, thought I’d see what he thought of the current situation, and to my surprise he spurted out, “I’m glad Obama’s in charge”. Well, some background - Dad’s rather Conservative Republican. Voted for Nixon once (couldn’t do it the 2nd time). Liked Reagan and the last I remember was defending Cheney quite a lot. Though stopped giving to Republicans when he saw the debts mounting and when they couldn’t stop the “no new taxes” mantra even in the face of a huge school shortfall. Suffice it to say Dad’s a bit of an ideologue but not a complete ideologue. And though Dad still voted McCain, his heart wasn’t in it, as he notes.

And while this is an anecdote, not a statistical survey, at least it’s something that says at least Obama’s veer to the right (or consistent driving to the right, depending on perspective) isn’t without some benefit. Because I’m largely inclined to believe that any sop tossed to the right is greeted with scorn and ridicule and just as an opening for another attack. But perhaps there are some fence-sitters out there who really do care about some economic and moral principles, who aren’t just delirious Rush fans looking at Democrats only as traitors and terrorists.

Now of course I’ll be happier when I see Gitmo closed, our troops heading out of Iraq, and something of a stabilized economy. I suppose there’s more I could ask for, but I never was into the hope and change stuff, just a return to normal mediocrity and mild outrage and I’ll be happy.

And Dad’ll probably be happy not having to listen to this.

With 1 week left before the Martin-Chambliss runoff in Georgia and just a few percentage points separating the two candidates, you’d think there’d be some incentive for the President-elect to make the 2 1/2 hour flight to Atlanta to give Martin some support. You’d think the chance of an extra vote in the Senate would be worth a photo-op. My guess is Obama either doesn’t want to look partisan in time of a meltdown and/or doesn’t want to own a defeat if Martin can’t pull from behind. Or maybe for some reason he thinks he wouldn’t help.

I’m counting on a long 8 years feeling puzzled. Or maybe I’ll figure it out somewhere down the road. But no time soon.

Update: Oh, too late, Sarah Palin’s showing up on Monday to campaign, and it seems everyone thinks Obama has more important things to do than help Martin. Considering he doesn’t take office for 2 more months, I figured he could spare 8 hours for a quick appearance, but that’s just my inner child speaking. (Counting 2 hours flight time each way plus whatever slack and speaking time)

I felt daring and took my 2 daughters to see “Night at the Museum” today - we never go to these popular type movies in theaters, but it was their birthday and something different felt in order, and the movie turned out much funnier than the trailers made it out to be, and the trip through history was much more diverse than the prequels showed.

Except.

There were 3 females in the whole movie. One was the ex who’s found a geeky but stable new boyfriend. One is the to-be-squeeze, an attractive museum guide who seems unable to resist the cliched advances of a loser night watchman despite a pretty pathetic verbal exchange. And then there’s Sacajawea, whose main claim to fame seems to be as an object of desire for a wax Teddy Roosevelt (the better-than-he’s-been-in-a-decade Robin Williams). Oh, and Sacajawea’s main lines seem to be “I can’t hear you, there’s soundproof glass between us!” Quite the historic figure she cuts - a rather unique minimalist take on one of the most famous translaters of all time.

Yes, in a movie that traipses through history with a sympathetic Attila the Hun, a resurrected Akhmenrah, western railroad workers and a rather hip Octavius behind the wheel of a dune buggy, we can only summon up a single famous woman with no dialogue in the context of being TR’s girlfriend (she even melts TR’s wax torso back together for him, what a gal).

Oh, did I mention that besides Stiller & Williams, they manage to find some other serious actors like Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Owen Wilson, and the quite familiar if not household name Bill Cobbs?

When I tried to explain this phenomenon to my young girls, I got to thinking about Bechdel’s Rule, named for a woman whose friend never went to a movie unless it a) has at least two women who b) talk to each other about c) something besides a man.

Or as Jennifer Kesler explains, Bechdel’s Rule is a test a good scriptwriter should always fail. And that’s in enlightened “liberal” Hollywood. I suppose because as long as Hollywood wants to make money, movies with white male leads who aren’t bitterly clinging to guns and religion sell better than chick flicks? (Hmmm, is there a version of this rule that sums up the political landscape?)

In any case, we’ll have to fill in our daughters’ image of women in history from a different source than Hollywood. One of my favorites is Lise Meitner, a physicist who wasn’t allowed work in a Berlin lab so she came in for free anyway and discovered nuclear fission in the process (but got left out of the Nobel Prize for the sake of the dudes). And her compatriot, Hanna Reitsch, perhaps the greatest test pilot ever and winner of the Iron Cross. I’m thinking of a filmscript I could write. Where they get together and talk. About the war, about Meitner’s exile as a Jew, about Reitsch’s first tests of the helicopter and the V-1. And most of all about their completely opposite takes on their most important career and personal and moral decision - in Hanna’s case to stand by, in Lise’s case to work against. A man. Adolf. The Great Dictator.

Think it’ll fly or bomb?

The blogging software refused to take all my changes to Chinese Checkers, so here’s a new post to follow up.

I wanted to say that I should have titled yesterday’s post “We’re All Marxists Now”, but more accurate would be, “We’re All 1930’s Keynesians Now”. I’m reminded of all of Ataturk’s dam building projects, the huge Kruschev block houses - just pour concrete and stir. Mao had The Great Leap Forward where every peasant was making his/her own pig iron in the back yard (millions died in the ensuing famine). Pol Pot had “Return to Year Zero” - everyone out of the cities, back to the fields and rice paddies - full employment, manual labor at its finest. Yes, we can race towards the bottom of the pit or pyramid, every American manning a shake machine or a maquiladora worker or out busting our backs on a road crew.

Think for one about currency velocity - how money turns over. Money for construction is slow money, and let’s just say if this is the only level of jobs we’re capable of growing, we should be ashamed.

Now take an example of Amazon.com. 16,000 workers, estimated revenue for the year $17 billion, profit of roughly $500 million - almost $30K profit per worker - much of it on growing exports, based on extremely fast transactions - money in seconds, product in a few days. How efficient is it to push growth on a company like Amazon vs. pouring concrete? How easy is it to export our concrete business? How easy is it to increase productivity of an Amazon employee vs. a concrete pourer? How easy is it to grow Amazon’s business model? (They’re now doing probably as much electronics as the books they started with). Note that Amazon has introduced the Kindel for convenient downloadable portable reading - what kind of increased efficiency effect will that have on the rest of our & the world’s economy? Compare that to whatever minimal multiplicative effects from construction?

Now apply the same principles to Google and eBay and Microsoft and Cisco and the myriad of small, efficient, guerrilla startups. What are the effects of our pharmaceutical developments on world health? (Not just slow development - distribution, affordable availability). The steel in our cars is not the most interesting part - it’s the increased electronics sophistication, the composite materials, improved fuel system designs, battery technology. (Many of our huge steel mills of yesteryear can be efficiently replaced by localized flexible minimills such as hot roll mills.) Certainly we need physical infrastructure, but let’s not worship it like the throwback days of early civil engineering, building the Hoover Dam and Empire State Building. There will be no breakthrough technologies coming out of added road construction.

We also risk another misstep like we had with ethanol - big windfalls to corn farmers with a distortion of our food prices and destructive effects on arable land - if we just throw money at alternative energy, not to mention the slow pace of introducing new energy approaches (look at the turtle-like pace for CFL bulbs and the high premium to pay for them) . In short, it’s probably not the prime candidate for quick stimulus cash to provide high velocity job-affecting returns, unless there are promising near-market products to roll out.

Rather than low-tech industries like concrete-pouring highways and construction of new schools, low-footprint virtualized service areas like software and finance are much more flexible, innovation pays off handsomely, results can be exported and replicated elsewhere, and the benefits roll out in a number of ways, such help improving sales, greater efficiency in functions like searching and assisting consumers, and lowered costs and time.

And one of the dirty little secrets of our current educational system is that like the library before it, the resources of schools are more and more affordable and accessible at home, with teaching methodologies changing as well. I recall a time when school books were basically rented for the year (don’t write in the margins!!!). Now with a $400 computer, on-line resources and lesson plans, books for $15-20 (used for less), and additional inexpensive teaching tools, the educational portion of our schools revolves around the face time with teachers, their skills, as well as how conducive the environment is to learning. Will we keep pouring money into the school system of the 1800’s Great Plains, or actually address “No Child Left Behind” in a meaningful 2009 fashion?

Economics has changed as much as the world has changed in terms of technology and organization and distribution of resources. Marx and Malthus would be amazed, and it seems so would we. Catch up.