Red and Blue all over

Journalists like to use the shorthand of red state/blue state to talk about the political leanings of different areas of the country, but I've always objected to the terminology.

It's a shorthand that doesn't respect the broad middle that makes up most of the political spectrum.

That's why I like this map so much, which shows 2008 county-by-county election data. Red is 100 percent Republican, blue is 100 percent Democratic, and purple is everything in between.


It's from Robert Vanderbei at Princeton and shows that even starkly partisan places like Texas are deeply purple. Sure, there are wide swaths of Utah, Nebraska and Kansas that are bright red, but the neither red nor blue dominates.

One more note: Barack Obama's win over John McCain is sometimes called a landslide in the press. Sure, the electoral count was lopsided, but the popular vote was about 52 percent for Obama and 46 percent for McCain.

That's like inviting 50 people to a party and having 26 say they like gin martinis and 23 say they like vodka martinis, with one left over who doesn't drink.

That's no landslide. That's an even split.

Scalped

I love this time of year. Temperatures claw their way into the 50s, the Red Sox return to Fenway, and the scalpers awake from their long winter hibernation and bloom like daisies. I've long hated scalpers, probably dating to the time I headed to Fenway on my lunch break from my cushy state job and a scalper trying to move a $20 seat for $60 told me "A guy wearing a suit oughta be able to afford that." My reply: "I got this jacket at Marshall's."

I don't know why I was complaining. A 300% markup is about standard. And I don't so much mind that, since I think the market should be allowed to price itself.

What makes me angry is the uneven enforcement of the state's antiquated ticket scalping laws, plus the fact that the scalpers operate in plain sight of police officers, probably because the scalpers are mobbed up, something documented by the Boston Herald a few years back.

You might say they officers are there to keep the peace and not police scalpers, so I offer my au contraire moment: I was trying to get rid of a single seat to a September 2003 Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway. The markup was running around 500% that day -- tickets going for five times face value.

I agreed to sell my $27 ticket to a girl near the Kenmore Square T station for $60, until an ogre of a man came over and asked if I was selling it for face value.

Me: "Sixty."
Him: "Face value," showing his police badge.
Me: Stunned silence.
Him: "You're going to sell that ticket to her for $27, because scalping is illegal."
Me (to the girl): "You're getting a deal."

The ultimate insult came a moment later. "Don't worry. I'm not going to arrest you. I can tell you're not a professional."

Of course not. The professionals were the guys less than half a block away with stacks of 50 tickets who the police never hassle.

Will it change? A Boston police captain was quoted this week saying this would be the year they cracked down, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Women's studies

It seems natural to think that Harvard's selection of Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president can begin to undo the harm done to the public perception of successful women by NASA's Capt. Diapers last week.

There are critics, among them author Richard Bradley who in essence told The New York Times that Faust was sloppy seconds. Was he insinuating she got the job because Thomas Cech dropped out of the running?

It's impossible not to view Faust's appointment in terms of the last Harvard president's departure -- Larry Summers's long exit began in 2005, when in a speech in Cambridge he explored the idea of intrinsic differences in aptitude between men and women in science and engineering.

Notwithstanding that the speech began with an acknowledgment he would attempt to provoke the crowd, notwithstanding that he said he thought the "largest phenomenon" that explained the lack of women in top science research jobs was the "general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity," Summers was toast when he used the phrase "intrinsic aptitude" -- "in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude."

He might as well have leaped onto the third rail.

But let's flip the question, as a Boston think tank did when it looked at boys and girls performance in public secondary schools. I won't get into the detail, just the highlights. Boys are more likely to drop out, more likely to be put in special education, more likely to struggle on standardized testing.

This prompted a Boston Globe editorialist to say that "better training regarding the cognitive differences between boys and girls should help to close the gender gap."

The cognitive differences between boys and girls.

No hue and cry followed this editorial, because saying that boys are not as smart as girls is not a big deal. Imagine if Larry Summers had said the same. I guess he kind of did.

The point? Drew Gilpin Faust has a lot to overcome in a world where even our double-standards have double-standards.

I am the face of TSA

Since the Transportation Security Administration rummaged through each of my bags on my return trip from the Cradle of the Confederacy to the Cradle of Liberty, I will now allow my long simmering anger over our nation's completely backwards baggage screening procedures to roll into a full raging boil.


Let's start with the latest carry-on restrictions. Dump out that bottle of water, but sharpen up your scissors, screwdrivers, crochet hooks, and pliers. Lighters? Nope. Shaving cream? Nope. Contact solution? No way. But don't forget your claw hammer.

Worried? I wouldn't be. What evil can someone wrought with a hammer? They won't be able to smash your snow globe, since the TSA now confiscates snow globes before you get on the plane.

So unless you're some sort of contractor on a day trip, you're going to have to check bags. Why? Because back in August British authorities uncovered a plot to use liquids and gels to make an explosive on board U.S.-bound jetliners.

That must've been the first anyone had heard of such a plot, right, otherwise we would've been vigilant long before August, right? Not exactly. We'd known for years that gels and liquids could be used in this way, but our national security plan involves closing barn doors only after the horses have hijacked airliners. It's utterly totally completely reactive.

And how long have we known that a bomb in a checked bag is a successful terrorist method? When was Lockerbie? Yet still not all checked bags are screened and x-rayed. Sure, there's a red flag raised if the person who checked the bag doesn't get on the flight, but that method of protection only works if terrorists aren't willing to die with their luggage.

So how do we rearrange the deck chairs of commercial air travel? The TSA opens my bags to see what I got for Christmas. Of course, I shouldn't complain. I'm complicit in all this too. When I bought the locks for my luggage I actually uttered the words: "Oh these locks are the good ones -- The TSA can open them."

The good locks are the ones that the government can open?

I couldn't help but think of the final chilling lines of George Orwell's 1984: "He had won victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."