The past few weeks Pinky has been at the library practically every night so until she is done with her Hawaii-research you get me or Kim writing blogs.

Last night I was watching some old Futurama cartoons and came across this:

That’s funny.

But it also made me think. When Bender (the robot guy) said that he can’t vote because he’s a former convicted felon, I wondered if that was something that’s based in reality or not. So I looked it up.

Come to find out, the right to vote is different from state to state. Almost every state in the U.S. does not allow people currently in prison (felony conviction) to have any voting rights. Most states reinstate their right to vote upon release from prison (in some states there is a period of time where they can’t vote right away). But in other states if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony you are barred from voting for life.

To me, this is unfair. What kind of ‘conventional wisdom’ could provide a logical argument for disenfranchising over 5 million thinking adults in this country? Universal suffrage (which I’ve heard people refer to the U.S. as having) is supposed to extend voting rights to all adults regardless of race, sex, beliefs, intelligence, economic status or social status.

So why are prisoners being singled out for exclusion? It’s not like they’re stupid. Nor are they evil (if you believe prisoners are stupid or evil you need to meet more prisoners and ex-prisoners). Do you think allowing prisoners to vote would result in the election of evil candidates? (we are not doing so well in this regard already, and they are being elected by supposedly non-evil non-ex-felons) Actually, it makes sense that we should value the votes of prisoners. I think they are a group of people who have a unique and valuable insight into matters of law, power, and the inner workings of society. They are often the people whose lives have been most directly impacted by the issues that politicians like to talk about.

Plus! If you look at who has the highest rates of convictions and incarceration in this country, I think you can make a reasonable argument that the disenfranchisement of prisoners and ex-prisoners is not only unwise but also racist and classist.

Bunny

Another blog entry by Kim.

Americans love polls. And polls love politics. Here are some polling Q&A that made my head hurt:

• Over one-third of Americans believe that America is ‘not ready’ for a woman president. (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, December 2006) Is there something wrong with women that I don’t know about?

• 41% of Americans would not vote for a presidential candidate if s/he were homosexual, even if s/he were well-qualified (Gallup Poll, December 2007). According to a 2006 Gallup Poll, 91% of Americans say that they believe that America is ‘not ready’ for a gay or lesbian president. (Incidentally, another poll [CNN/ORC Poll, May 2007] found that 71% of Americans feel that policies towards gays and lesbians are either “Moderately Important” [30%] or “Not That Important” [41%]!)

• 48% of Americans would not vote for an atheist. (Gallup Poll, December 2007)

• 45% of Americans say they would be ‘less likely’ to vote for a presidential candidate if they were Muslim. (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, and pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, August, 2007)

• Americans are ‘less likely’ to vote for a Mormon (29%) than someone who’s been divorced twice (26%). (ABC News/Washington Post Poll, February 2007).

• 14% of Americans say that political lobbyists have ‘too little’ power and influence in Washington D.C. 18% think nonprofit organizations have ‘too much’ power and influence. (Harris Poll, February, 2007)

• 58% of Americans feel that corruption is ‘widespread’ in Washington. (CBS News/New York Times Poll, October 2006)

• When asked “How much of what is said in commercials for or against a political candidate do you believe?”, 69% of Americans answered with ‘not much’ or ‘nothing at all’.

• A CBS news poll (January 2008) asked the question: “Which one is more important to you in a presidential candidate: having the right experience, or having fresh ideas?” Most Democrats favored ‘fresh ideas’ while most Republicans favored “right experience”. I don’t think this is a good poll because it did not provide alternative choices such as “stale ideas” or “wrong experience”, or even various permutations of the above - for example, “the right experience with wrong ideas”, which is what I would have selected had I been polled.

Okay, I lie down now.

Coming back to the desert is always nice (because I do love the desert) but after staying in Hawaii for over a month I guess I’m feeling a little sad. And cold. I don’t know exactly why I feel sad but I do. I don’t know how long this feeling will last.

We were really busy the whole time we were there so I didn’t have much time to ‘play’ or do anything that wasn’t research or production-related. A couple times Bunny or Daisy suggested that maybe I could spend some time looking for my mommy but in the end I didn’t do any of that. I wouldn’t know where to start and I don’t even know what she looks like. As you probably know lots of times kittens don’t look anything like their mommies.

Bunny, Daisy, and I all learned a huge amount from the Hawaii-people while we were there. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t summarize everything we did in Hawaii right now - it’s too much stuff to list and my head is crowded with ideas that need sorting. The noise in my head is similar to children smashing Lego with small hammers. I’ll just try to bring everything together in the Hawaii episodes we’re working on.

On the way back we stopped in Los Angeles and spent a few days there - UCLA’s research libraries in the evenings and a bunch of assorted interesting stuff during the days: we saw the Takashi Murakami exhibition at the Geffen (just amazing); visited the National Resources Defense Council offices in Santa Monica (we’re going to try to do an episode about environmental racism with them); Museum of Jurassic Technology (again, I love that place) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation (first time for me, I was really impressed) in Culver City (not far from where Bunny and I first met); and we even took a day trip up to San Simeon with our friend Tim to see Hearst Castle (truly nauseating/fascinating).

These are from the Murakami show. Thank you Pam for the lovely buttons.

Oh so ironic to find this parking sign in Los Angeles (the space was empty).

Indoor swimming pool, Hearst Castle.

Traveling can be fun but it’s a really wonderful to all be back together in one place again. I missed Mimi and Kim a lot. One nice thing about being away is that while we were gone Kim did a bunch of blogging and decided that it’s not so bad. So according to her she’ll be blogging “sometimes” from now on. It would be great if Mimi would blog too, she always has an interesting (some might say ‘bizarre’) way of looking at things. We spent a few days sorting through the mountain of material we brought back from Hawaii and I think we have a pretty good outline for how to proceed now.

I just read through this entry and it’s quite a mess with all the jumping from topic to topic, isn’t it? I’ll try again tomorrow. I think I’m tired; my eyes are throbbing. @.@

Finally, before I head off to bed, I wanted to extend my deepest ‘thank you’ to everyone that has been teaching and helping us these past few weeks and months: Eiko, Karen, Candace, Callie, Dean, Heijin, Jackie, Lianne, Bianca, Po’ohina, Bunzie, Fran, Daniela, Brian, Kekuni, Terri, Kyle, Joan & Puhipau, Paul, Richard & Nancy, Bok-dong, Nancy, Jon, Teacup, Tinkerbell, Su-Fei, Tim, Maya & Emi, Pam, Tim’s Mommy & Daddy, Jon’s Mommy & Daddy, Stan, Dennis, Lori, and Lisa. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to include everyone - my sincerest apologies.

~ pinky

From the e-mail pile:

Dear Pinky, You’ve discussed various wars on your show, but one, large war that you haven’t touched upon much is World War II… I have heard many different opinions, but I would love to hear yours… Thanks! Kachie

My   reply:

Dear Kachie, My friend Teacup has the most succinct summary-characterization of the Second World War that I have heard so far: “World War II was basically a turf war between imperial powers.” I can go with that. Thank you for your question. Bunny

Posted by Bunny.

Bunny just posted a new homepage picture and I wanted to share some background information about it.

The landscape photograph was taken at the Pali lookout on the island of Oahu, a site very popular with tourists. When you stand at the lookout and face north you have an expansive view of the windward side of the island, and it’s just breathtaking. The site itself is all concrete and railings, with a large parking lot and hundreds of tourists coming and going constantly.

It gets pretty crowded. We took this photo by standing on a wall. Most of the tourists were from Japan and the United States but we also met people from all over Europe, China, Australia, New Zealand, and more.

We thought it was interesting that a lot of the people took photographs of the sign that had a picture & explanation of the landscape spread out in front of them, but hardly anyone actually stopped to read it. Average time looking at the sign must have been something like 10 seconds or maybe even shorter.

Here’s a close-up of the sign (below, click on it for a much larger version).

In the distance (right side of photo) is Mokapu peninsula. This was, and continues to be, a sacred place for Native Hawaiians - with ancient fish ponds, springs, archaeological sites, burial sites, temples… However in 1918 the peninsula was seized by executive order of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and given to the U.S. military. Now Mokapu is occupied by a very large U.S. Marine Corps Base, which of course sits directly on top of the aforementioned everything.

In Hawaii there are 10,000 other stories that follow this kind of logic. Our upcoming Hawaii-episodes will try to explain how Hawaii became a colonial holding of the United States of America, and at the same time we’ll try to talk a little bit about some of the consequences and future implications that arise when one nation tries to erase another. I’ll post updates on our progress here in my diary (a.k.a. “blog”) for those of you who are interested in stuff like that.

~ pinky

[ note from Bunny: If you want to see something crazy, go check out the Marine Corps Base Hawaii’s website (example screen capture here). They actually have the nerve to talk about protecting and respecting sacred Native Hawaiian sites even as they bomb, build on, dump on, dig up, burn, or otherwise destroy hundreds of sacred sites throughout Hawaii. The photo of the burial mounds at Mokapu now transformed into a military golf course just blows my mind. They have no shame. ]