When they called Pennsylvania for Obama, a McCain win was nearly impossible. When they called Ohio for Obama, it was done. At that point, Obama could lose Virginia, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, AND Nevada–and, short of all the Democratic ballots in Iowa, Minnesota, or the West Coast spontaneously combusting, still get to 270.

Of course, at that point all the news networks just talked about how a Republican has never won without Ohio, it’s looking rather bad for McCain, blah blah blah. Only the friggin’ mathematician was willing to actually call it. Of course, the media has an interest in making a race close, or appear to be close-it keeps people watching longer. Or maybe the news networks were charitably trying to encourage voting on the West Coast, so all the Californian Obama folks wouldn’t go home and let Proposition 8 pass. (Unfortunately, it looks like it did anyway. California! What the hell is wrong with you?)

In any case, at that point I walked to the grocery store to buy a box of chocolates, a bottle of wine, and some broccoli (don’t ask) and updated the cashier on the results. As a young black dude, I figured he had about a 93% chance of being an Obama supporter. Yep. He was.

DC went nuts at the news, as you’ve probably heard. My roommate went downtown to join in and asked me and Nelson to join him. I almost wished I was still unemployed, so that I could have spent the night screaming and dancing and hugging random people in a fully historic fashion. But we didn’t. Instead we sat in the exercise room of the condo building (we don’t have a TV, and I was having a hard time getting the news outlets’ online streams to work) and watched McCain’s concession and Obama’s acceptance over a glass of wine.

Last night in part of his speech, Obama reprised New Hampshire, and I was reminded of when I first saw him speak. I was at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place with Elaine, getting food before attending an acapella concert at USC. They had a tiny TV on the wall, tuned to Obama’s speech after losing New Hampshire. When I say I “saw” Obama speak, I mean it literally. The TV’s sound was off, so I didn’t actually hear what he said that evening until later when I ran across the ‘Yes We Can’ video. But I just looked at him, addressing the crowd, and I knew–this is the next president of the United States of America.

Obama’s right, that the struggle has just begun. The two most recent movies I’ve seen are An Inconvenient Truth (finally) and the short version of I.O.U.S.A. They’re kind of frightening. This country has hella problems. They’re gonna be challenging to fix. Right now there is no goddamn way the government can afford to support all the programs I wish it would, even if Obama supported all of them (he’s significantly closer to the center than I am–still mad about FISA) and could get them passed (Democratic congress, yes, but many close victories and centrists there too). Our country is neither solvent nor sustainable at this juncture. But I think that Obama’s the guy to tackle these things. He won’t be able to fix things right away, or ever without grassroots commitment and support. But I trust him to talk to experts instead of industry hacks, to cross party lines, and to present some very interesting ideas. I can’t wait to see what’s to come.

Crossing my fingers: Bruce Schneier for Homeland Security chief and Lawrence Lessig for FCC head/IP czar, anyone?

On the other hand, the small dose of CNN I have seen recently makes me want to set the exercise room television on fire. With C4. And plutonium. For mostly the same reasons as this comic.

Is Obama a noncitizen Muslim terrorist who never graduated from Columbia? No! Is he the anti-Christ? No! Does McCain have a chance of winning Pennsylvania? No, unless Obama devours a live puppy on live TV today–and even then, like a third of voters have already voted! Yet the mere utterance of these things is apparently enough to obligate the media to dignify and amplify them with coverage…

Mostly, though, this post is an excuse to post the cover art I drew for them.

Yay pretty things!

Obligatory soundtrack: O Shenandoah, from last year’s Concert Choir concert.

Nelson, Gavin, Nelson’s friend Dean, and I went “leafpeeping” at Shenandoah National Park last weekend. It was cold but excellent. Besides looking at trees, we hiked, climbed rocks, found someone’s totally bitchin’ sunglasses in a crevice, and saw a natural spring (not that exciting but still kind of cool).

More pictures on Nelson’s Flickr.

Afterward we stopped by a tourist trap and bought a gigantic sack of apples, apple cider, and fudge. The trip took a turn for the unfortunate when it turned out that the (plain, no nuts) fudge I purchased nevertheless had peanuts in it. And Nelson had eaten some. So the rest of the evening was occupied with baking soda baths, Chinese medicine, and other attempts to ameliorate Nelson’s swollen throat, horrible stomachache, and full-body rash. Sigh.

The only reason this has even made it to public comment (I think) is a bunch of representatives feeling slighted because a bill passed Congress without going through their committee (the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and IP–the measure was part of an Appropriations bill, so it went through that committee). The grumbling at the opening of the session about how important their committee is, prestige of the Appropriations committee be damned, rah rah rah, I think bears this out. So the representatives have been receptive to the patently ridiculous argument that the NIH mandate *changed* copyright law and, thus, should have fallen under their purview.

Lots (probably millions) of nonexclusive license copyright agreements are agreed upon every day. Every time you upload a video to YouTube, you’re giving YouTube a nonexclusive license to that video–the license allows YouTube to display the video without violating your copyright. Professionals everywhere provide or exercise nonexclusive licenses to works. The less assholish scholarly journals only demand a nonexclusive license to an author’s article (more commonly, journals force authors to transfer their copyright entirely to the journal).

The terms of a nonexclusive license are not set in copyright law–they are determined in a contract. Like any contract, the terms vary from license to license, depending on what it’s for. My understanding of contract law is that two parties can write a contract requiring virtually any condition of either party (other than illegal activities or selling yourself into slavery or something). If I’m a research funder, I can stipulate in a funding contract that the researcher wear a big red clown nose at any and all conferences when presenting the research I’m offering to fund. The researcher is free to take my money, and accept the conditions attached, or go elsewhere for funds. That’s how contracts work.

It has always been a standard part of NIH funding contracts that the federal government gets a nonexclusive license to the work being funded. (What’s the point of funding research that you can’t even read?) The new condition with the mandate is that the author deposit the research in PubMed so the public (the people ultimately paying for it) can read it, not just NIH employees.

Bottom line: it’s a contract. It’s not a copyright law! The only way the NIH OA mandate conflicts with copyright law is if you change copyright law, which is what the publishers are trying to do now. After all, if it really conflicted, why haven’t the publishers just sued the NIH (as they have also rattled sabres about)?

Maybe because they’d lose.

The overlap is not with copyright law as it is, but copyright law as publishers wish it was: a hypothetical legal regime where if a contractual agreement theoretically threatens a revenue stream created by a copyrighted work–even a contractual agreement made long before the author transferred the rights to the publisher–that contractual agreement retroactively violates the publisher’s copyright. It’s a case of “if value, then right.” The law doesn’t work that way. The publisher is “buying” (read: getting for free–or even being paid to take in some cases) the rights *as is* when they take the article from the author. If the author’s previous funding agreement with the NIH makes those rights look less valuable to the publisher, then don’t “buy” them–just publish research that uses funding sources that don’t make this stipulation. But if this is all bullshit, as publishers’ record profit margins and the legion of financially-secure journals that put their stuff online for free before the mandate suggest, then there is no conflict *even* in the publisher’s la-la land version of copyright law.

Then the only thing publishers are losing is a certain degree of autonomy; they no longer decide whether or when to put their material online. Just satiating publishers’ neurotic control needs is not worth the cost to scientific advancement and public access.

The bill is being considered because the committee members have ego problems. It’s being advanced because big publishers are control freaks. Why do important policies have to be threatened with the chopping block for the sake of various interest groups’ psychological tics?

***

Wow… The NIH witness compared eliminating the NIH mandate for the sake of publishers’ whining about theoretically going out of business to banning Google for the sake of artificially propping up Altavista–holding back innovation for the sake of a deprecated special interest. A relevant comparison, I think–lots of commentators compare industry copyright maximalists and other rent-seekers to buggy whip manufacturers all the time. To which Rep. Berman growled, “You’re saying that this is like Google, like YouTube, where people can violate copyrights, grumble grumble grumble…” and the NIH guy apologized! I didn’t know ‘Google’ was a dirty word in Congress!

Another Berman quote: “I’m disturbed by going from open access to health and biomedical research to talking about technological progress… The NIH is not Napster.”

And now he’s embarrassing himself with his misunderstanding of Google.
Berman: “Doesn’t Google have it [all the biomedical research out there already]?”
NIH guy: “No, they link to us.”

Jeez, it’s not like you HAVE to be technologically illiterate when you’re old. Plenty of old people get technology–after all, they’re the ones who first built this stuff! And, on the other side of the coin, it’s not necessarily bad to be technologically illiterate. Lots of people get by without using high technology much (see: one of the two major party presidential candidates); that’s fine for them.

The problem is when old techno-illiterate people are US Representatives serving on the Subcommittee of Courts, the Internet, and IP. It’s a problem when they are responsible for making intelligent technology and information management laws. But it does make for hilarious Congressional transcripts.

* I just started officially working part-time at SPARC, doing various interesting projects. I’ll be animating a OA 101 video in Flash (now that my tablet pen is no longer borked), editing several HD videos of people talking about Open Access (on a Mac G4! I’m slightly frightened–it may not even be faster than my decrepit PowerBook), helping organize the Digital Repositories conference in Baltimore this November (including designing the program and signage; yay for flexing my ancient InDesign skills!), and redesigning the Alliance for Taxpayer Access site.

* I also started teaching my first LSAT class at Kaplan. So far it’s been going fairly well, other than an extremely chaotic first day where the manager had to take off for an emergency and didn’t do the full orientation and I had no idea what the hell I was doing. The students seem to assume that I do know what the hell I’m doing, and I think they’re learning. I get so nervous preparing before lessons, though.

* I finished my first freelance web design project, for a inflatables rental company in northwestern Virginia. Here‘s the before; here‘s the after. My responsibilities were pretty much limited to making things not broken, as opposed to suggesting web strategy, editing copy, or changing the site design more extensively. But hey, it’s done. Here’s hoping I actually get paid!

* I have other freelance projects in the pipeline as well: Jennifer’s father owns a biocide chemical company whose site needs a redesign, and I’ll be revamping Nelson’s personal site and Wrong Side of Dawn‘s site soon. So that’s good. I guess.

* Between all of these jobs, I’m working around 54 hours a week: 3 days a week (including Saturday) at Kaplan, 2.5 days a week at SPARC, and the freelance stuff…all the rest of the time. Even though most of my work is doing things I enjoy, I’m still feeling the lack of a barrier between work and life. Add in the fact that despite all this work every time I do my budget calculations I get a different answer regarding whether or not I can pay my bills, and it gets rather unpleasant. I’m not sure what I can do about it, though.

* Speaking of budgets, medical bills may yet be the death of me. First I had to go to the doctor twice in eight days (don’t ask). Then, a painful back problem I developed earlier this summer (thanks to my laptop bag) recurred starting a few days ago. The first time, Nelson’s dad (a chiropractor) was able to fix it when we visited NJ. (He was astonished how messed up my back was–apparently pretty much all my vertebrae and most of my ribs were out of whack. Said he hadn’t seen a case that bad that wasn’t caused by some major athletic-type injury.) Since then, however, I (stupidly) continued using the bag, and now it’s back.

Today I sucked it up and bought a new laptop bag that’s better for my back. It’s a nice bag, and looks professional enough that I won’t feel weird wearing it on the Metro, but spending eighty dollars on a goddamn backpack has put me in an extremely foul mood. Hopefully the new bag will keep the problem from getting worse, but thanks to my Kaplan schedule I have virtually no chance of visiting Nelson’s parents in any reasonable amount of time. Thus, either I can put up with periodic symptoms of painful breathing and being unable to lift weighty objects, or break my budget further and pay $??? (uncovered by my health insurance) to see a chiropractor here. Haven’t made a decision on that one yet.

* And then Nelson and I stopped by the Apple Store today. I lusted after all the shiny new computers that run faster than mine and can run Parallels so I could do my own goddamn IE testing for freelancing jobs instead of relying on Nelson (and being unable to test IE 6 even then). Shiny new computers that I may not ever be able to afford, except with law school loan money. At which point I won’t be doing pretty CPU-intensive webthings with them anyway. Grah.

I know I have plenty of other things going for me, but right now I feel stressed out, overcommitted, and poor. I guess that’s what this post is about.

Nelson and I went berrypicking again today at Butler’s Orchard in Maryland.

Beautiful sunny day–warm, but there was a breeze so it wasn’t too bad out there. It was the end of the blueberry season, but we still managed to pick six pounds or so. We ate some of them on buckwheat pancakes with sliced banana for dinner.

Don’t have any pictures of the blackberries, but we got a decent number of those too–four pounds, I think. Half of them I think we ate while picking, though. :p

I didn’t used to think I liked blackberries all that much. The ones you get in the store tend to be tart with a lot of pithy stuff. There’s a reason for that. Blackberries that are truly ripe are IMPOSSIBLE to transport. There’s no way you could reliably put them in grocery stores. Even just taking them off the plant and putting them in the bucket tends to make them fall apart. So Nelson and I ended up selectively eating most of the ripest berries. And–my God–there is nothing more delicious than a truly ripe sun-warmed blackberry. They are amazing. Nelson likes the not-quite-as-ripe ones that we brought home too, but for me the whole point of pick-your-own blackberries is so you can eat them right there, right off the vine.

I have, however, had good luck finding part-time jobs. As I mentioned previously, I’m doing contract webmonkey and video work for SPARC. I’m really enjoying working there and yesterday I got a raise! :)

I also started training to teach the LSAT for Kaplan on Thursday. Training’s just one night a week (plus outside-of-class stuff) for the next three weeks or so, and after that I’ll only have one or two classes on nights and/or weekends, at least in the beginning. My trainer and fellow teacher wannabes are pretty awesome folks, and learning to be a teacher is a general skill I want to have anyway, so I’m enjoying that, too.

That same day I got a gig fixing/redesigning the website for this guy’s inflatables rental business (you know, bouncy castles and the like). Nothing too fancy, but it’ll keep me busy and hopefully be something I can put in my portfolio later.

There’s also a bunch of part-time/freelance web jobs in my bookmarks that I’m eminently qualified for, including a gig redoing the website for a law firm (bingo!). I should apply to those this weekend.

So I’m sort of revising my expectations. I mean, if I do get a legal assistant job from the staffing firm, and it’s a good work environment with at least some benefits, I’d probably take it for security’s sake. But the main reason I was extremely gung-ho on finding a full-time position was health insurance worries, and now it turns out I’m still covered by my parents. Other benefits are great, but I can open an IRA on my own. I can (hopefully?) figure out how taxes work for freelancers (oh god payroll taxes). If I can patch together around 40 hours a week of freelance work, I will be just fine financially. And contracting has its own advantages: 1.) you can do all sorts of different gigs rather than the same thing day in and out and 2.) you can generally choose where and when you want to work.

So the current state of things isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just up to me to make sure I have enough part-time jobs to equal a full-time one. And learn how to do withholdings.

In other news, I finally got my stimulus check. Finally! Clearly now the economy will turn around…it was just waiting for my $300 to get here. :p

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner [cell]!”

I participated in something similar last year–the Harvard free culture conference Dance Conspiracy where we danced around the streets of Cambridge to someone’s laptop broadcasting short-range radio. You’d think that enough flash mob-style dance events have happened by now to make them clearly non-dangerous (as if they were ever legitimately scary to begin with; it’s a bunch of happy people dancing, for Christ’s sake! It’s like the opposite of terrorism!)

To hell with the War on Fun. When I go back to DC, dancing at the Jefferson Memorial is at the top of my list of things to do.

Nelson’s parents informed him that the Perseid meteor shower was coming, so we decided to try and watch it. But where could we go that would be untainted by the glow of DC sprawl? Gavin and I opened up Google Maps and looked for nothing. Few roads on the map, few houses on the satellite view. Unlike Minnesota, a lot of the “nothing” on the East Coast is forest, so we had to look out for trees too. Eventually we found a little green patch out west called “Sky Meadows State Park”. That seemed promising.

We got there and were greeted by signs saying “Park closes at sundown. NO TRESPASSING”. Our reaction was, mostly, Please. You don’t name a park “Sky Meadows” and expect people to not stargaze there. I don’t know how many people came out to the park for the Perseids (except for the occasional, roundly-cursed headlights of cars coming or going, it was very dark–which was the point), but there were at least two cars on our stretch and more over the hill past where we were.

So the five of us (Nelson, me, Gavin, and Nelson’s two visiting friends Matt and Kamraan) laid down on towels, munched on some popcorn and strawberries, and looked up.

Gosh.

So many stars.

I’d hardly ever seen the Milky Way before, let alone that clearly.

Ironically, despite the great viewing conditions, we were having the hardest time identifying constellations. The only one I found was the Little Dipper. Matt said he found the Big Dipper and maybe Orion, but I couldn’t recognize them at all. Everything was upside down or something.

And, yes, we saw meteors. A lot of little ones, and a few big ones that left a glowing skystreak for a moment or two after the meteor was gone. It was a beautiful and relaxing evening. Totally worth the lack of sleep the next day when I went to work.

Last night, we were returning to the car after a night of pinball at John’s Place in Fairfax when I glanced up. Amid the streetlamps and store signs, I could see maybe four stars. Normal for the urban sky–now incredibly disappointing. The glowing orange sky of LA is only going to be worse. But at least then I’ll be able to find my steadfast Orion again.