So on Saturday plumtreeblossom and I went to Worcester for a Barack Obama rally [warning: bacground audio]. The campaign was encouraging local groups to have simultaneous rallies nationwide on that day, and plumtreeblossom found this one. (Boston didn’t have any when she first looked, although there were signs that one might get organized last-minute.) And of course she asked me if I wanted to go, and of course I said yes.

Because I was driving, we got there very late (and had to resort to old, 20th-century technology by stopping and buying a map), but we got there. It was fairly small but lots of fun and totally worthwhile. And there was a bagpiper! That was quite a surprise. We had a great time meeting people and talking and listening to the speakers and the programming, and we came back with Obama swag.

I ended up taking a bunch of pictures (and plumtreeblossom took a couple of me), and they’re up on my Flickr set of the event.

I’d been on the fence about whether to participate in the LiveJournal content strike, but after reading this post about it by sunspiral, I will be participating. Since I don’t post every day anyway, you wouldn’t know unless I told you, so I’m telling you. ( Some explanation, but not enough :-) )

As a Republican senator during the decision to go to war in Iraq who has since left the party, Lincoln Chafee has a nearly unique perspective. DailyKos diarist smintheus has a fascinating post quoting Chafee on why so many Democrats (including Clinton) voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Chafee’s claim — that many personally anti-invasion Democrats voted to allow Bush to invade because they were afraid of political fallout — is exactly what I had assumed, but it’s useful to hear it from somebody who was in a position to know and who is no longer beholden to either major party.

I think I may want to read Chafee’s book.

I don’t remember how I stumbled across rojonoir’s journal, but he posts some interesting stuff.

The reporting on the recent encounter between Iranian speedboats and American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin Strait of Hormuz that I’ve heard has struck me as really odd. Even after a day or two, when NPR was mentioning “questions about the accent” of the alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers in the recording released by the military, and that the alleged threat was received on an open channel and not definitely coming from the speedboats, I felt like there must be stuff missing from the story.

Well, rojonoir has collected (and summarized) a couple of articles giving much more background about the incident, and yes, there’s been stuff missing from the coverage I’ve heard about this in the US media. Specifically,

• No part of the Strait of Hormuz is in “international waters”, because it’s so narrow. The inbound traffic lane, where the US ships were, is entirely within Iranian territorial waters. There is, however, an international treaty granting all ships right of passage through the strait, provided they follow certain restrictions (like not collecting intelligence, and surfacing if they’re submarines). The US does not follow those restrictions, and has not ratified the treaty. (The linked article suggests that the US has not ratified the treaty because it doesn’t want to be bound by the restrictions it doesn’t like.)
• The threatening statements received over the radio were probably from a known (albeit pseudonymously) prankster, who evidently broadcasts that sort of stuff all the time.

(rojonoir also reminds us of the tragic shooting down of Iran Air 655 by a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz, which doesn’t directly clarify the recent incident, but sure casts an interesting light on it.)

As always, docorion is wise in this post on our government’s ongoing efforts to protect us from terrorism by keeping us terrified itself. If you haven’t already, you should read it.

Happy birthday to omegabeth, who got a lovely present for her birthday. (Sorry, omegabeth, your friends couldn’t afford to get you an impeachment and war-crimes trial, but it’s the thought that counts, right?)

Yesterday, nex0s posted An Incomplete List of Incidents of racism that have affected her and her family. Just big, serious, scary ones, not the everyday ones. It’s a long list. It’s depressing and infuriating, but I encourage you to go read it.

Massachusetts is not going to have a popular vote to deprive same-sex couples of equal rights under the law! I was first alerted to this news by qwrrty, who I gather was there. The line “The narrow 45-151 vote means Massachusetts remains the only state in the nation to allow same-sex couples to marry” in that article seems odd to me — yes, 45 votes is close to the 50-vote minority required for a petition-initiated constitutional amendment to be defeated in Massachusetts, but still, a 45-151 vote is not “narrow”. I guess you could say the measure was narrowly defeated, but calling it a “narrow vote” strikes me as odd.

In 25 years or so, people are going to look back on this vote with shock that almost a quarter of Massachusetts legislators thought it was a good idea to deprive same-sex couples of the right to marry, but from this vantage point, I am so proud that more than three quarters of my state legislators believe in equal rights for same-sex couples under the law.

I need a “proud of Massachusetts” userpic. [EDIT: Thanks to qwrrty, I have one.]

I’m really sleepy, so I don’t have time to do justice to my lovely NYC trip to visit K. and hang out with cathijosephine and her mom, but I can’t go without posting something about it, so very briefly:

Had a lovely time catching up with K., telling her about my life since she saw me last and hearing about her travels (notably Vienna) and her music and multimedia projects. It was great! She’s doing some amazing stuff (which I’m not sure I should talk about since they’re in progress) that I look forward to hearing more about. And I got to see her delightful apartment, which looks like it works really well for her. Yay for a good work- and living-space! And she took me to a scenic lookout over the Bronx and a scenic (no, really!) lookout over New Jersey, and took me to her favourite local Indian takeout place.

Sunday I met cathijosephine and her mother (who is in New York for a conference this week) for brunch, and then we had a nice long walk from 32d Street to Chinatown — stopping in at a makeup store, a goth/fetish clothing store, and THE MOST HUGEST COSTUME STORE EVAR which was like Hallowe’en in April on our way. In Chinatown, we met K. and A., and wandered around Chinatown for a bit, stopping into a bakery for yummy baked goods and bubble tea. (Or in my case, bubble coffee.)

Then K., A., and cathijosephine’s mom bade us farewell at the bus pick-up, and cathijosephine and I rode back to Boston, getting here around 9. It was great weather, and light out for most of the trip back. The bus was run by some other bus company, filling in for Fung Wah to deal with overflow, and it took a different (and more scenic) route out of the city than I’ve ridden before. On the bus I finished Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, and cathijosephine finished her nap, and both of those things made me happy.

(By the way, I highly recommend Dreams from My Father. It makes me wish Barack Obama would hurry up and get elected President already and get his eight years over with so he can get back to his true calling as a writer.)

On my trip to Hawai‘i (mostly during my flights), I finished a couple Pratchett books, Soul Music (about Music with Rocks In) and Interesting Times (about the Agatean Empire, with its complex politics, Great Wall, and Forbidden City). Today on the T on my way to see plumtreeblossom, I finished Moving Pictures (about Holy Wood and the spell it casts on people), out of order. I had actually started it before the trip, but, um, I dropped it in the toilet, and then didn’t feel quite so excited about reading that particular copy any more.

I also finished Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope in Hawai‘i, and appreciated it a lot. He (or his ghostwriter, I’m not sure, but I suspect he wrote a lot of it) is not as good a writer as he is a speaker, but it’s still a very engaging, interesting, and thought-provoking book, and makes me feel good about the notion of him as president (although to be fair that’s a notion I felt pretty good about to start with).