(link to gallery - image is 9th from the end, and the L.A. Times does not provide permalinks to specific images).

This is an awesome shot with iconic potential. A somewhat nerdy looking guy standing on top of a police car, with his fist in the air, shouting in protest. Look at the energy and defiance captured in this shot. It tells a compelling story. There’s nothing in the shot that indicates what’s being protested, but it becomes more universal in it’s lack of specificity. If I were that guy, that would be my new Facebook profile picture.

Now, on to California’s ballot initiatives. Good news before bad. All maps are taken from the Los Angeles Times.

Prop 1A: High Speed Trains

We’re gonna get our high speed trains! Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2.5 hours for well under what any airline can offer will soon be a reality. And the jobs that will be created to build, operate, and maintain this system are just what our economy needs. Honestly, I’m surprised it passed. I’m surprised that a lot of counties where the system will not be going through (i.e. Santa Barbara and Imperial Counties) voted in favor of it, while counties where the system would be going through (Tulare and Sacramento Counties) voted against it.

Prop 4: Parental Notification of Abortion

Also good news. Not really a surprise though, since this is the 4th time in 6 years that California voters have shot this scheme down. The Yes on 4 campaign was running some pretty reprehensible ads, implying that pedophiles (everyone’s favorite boogeyman) had a strong interest in this initiative going down, so that they could continue to get underage girls pregnant with no consequences. Conversely, they were saying, “If your daughter is taken advantage of by a sex offender, punish her with a child.” Yeah, that’s pro-life.

Prop 5: Drug Treatment

This was a surprising disappointment. Just goes to show how much influence the prison guard union has in this state.

Prop 8: Elimination of rights

This was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the night. However, that’s all it is–a disappointment. It is not the end of the world. It is not a landslide. It is not a mandate. It does create a Constitutional conflict that the courts will have to resolve. Here are some interesting bits from Wikipedia’s Prop 8 entry:

On July 16, 2008, the California Supreme Court denied a petition calling for the removal of Proposition 8 from the November ballot on the grounds it was a constitutional revision that only the Legislature or a constitutional convention could place before voters. Opponents also argued that the petitions circulated to qualify the measure for the ballot inaccurately summarized its effect. The court denied the petition without comment. The question of whether Proposition 8 is a constitutional amendment or constitutional revision remains unresolved. (emphasis mine)

So, there’s still a question about whether Proposition 8 is even valid. I don’t think it’s likely the courts will want to take this issue up anytime soon, but it’s bound to come up eventually.

According to Joan Hollinger, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, “Constitutional scholars agree that the amendment cannot be effective retroactively.” The principal reason the amendment cannot be effective retroactively is the provision of the United States Constitution that prohibits the states from enacting laws which impair the obligation of contracts in Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution. The Ex Post Facto clause of the Constitution generally has been construed to prohibit the enactment of statutes which impose criminal penalties on conduct not previously defined as criminal, or which increase the penalties for act after the act has been committed.

This is interesting, because it means there will be same-sex marriages recognized by the state when the law states that they will not be recognized. Basically, what Prop 8 has done is it has made it the official policy of the State of California that we hold equality under the law to be a non-negotiable right of the people… except when we don’t.

Finally, to those despairing over this loss, keep in mind that Proposition 22 passed with 61.4% of the vote in 2000. Proposition 8 is only passing by 52% with 95.4% of the precincts reporting. The people who see gays and lesbians as less than equal citizens have seen their 22.8 point lead on this issue become a 4 point lead. They have lost 18.8 points, or 82.5% of their lead in just 8.5 years. And they had to trick people with lies, hide behind children, and compare the supporters of equality to Nazis to hold on to those 4 points. If they want to celebrate that, I say knock yourselves out, guys. Enjoy those 4 points while you’ve still got them. Because if the courts don’t overturn Prop 8, the people will repeal it. Maybe not in 2010, maybe not in 2012, but it will happen. This conflict is far from over, and we have time and the best values and traditions of America on our side. We are going to keep sticking our agenda in your face, because our agenda is equality. Nothing less; nothing more. We are not going to go away. We are not going to shut up. We are not going to go back in the closet. And you cannot change that.

Let’s look at the polling history. All data is taken from the Opinion polls section of Wikipedia’s “California Proposition 8 (2008)” entry.

Except for the first poll, done back in May by independent Los Angeles television station KTLA, support for Prop 8 has not broken 50%. Only briefly in October, when the Yes campaign finally started blasting ads out of their substantial warchest, did we see them pull ahead. That too, however, was short-lived.

More interesting is this graph, which displays the point changes from one poll to the next. With the exception of the change from the first to the second poll (making the first poll suspect), there aren’t many large swings in the Yes vote. They’re only moving about 3-4 points a time. The No vote, however, appears to change by wider margins. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, it means No voters aren’t as committed as Yes voters. On the other hand, it means the undecideds lean towards voting No. They waffle back and forth between No and Undecided. However, that’s in the opinion polls, not the actual election, which is the only poll that really matters. I only have myself as a guide, but even when I lean towards voting Yes on a proposition, I usually don’t if I still have doubts about it. That’s a fairly conservative quality (not in a political sense, but as Barack Obama described it during last Wednesday’s interview on The Daily Show), and I suspect it’s a quality I share with most people. Furthermore, the ballot is a lot like a multiple choice test. I think a lot of people forget that they don’t have to vote either way. There is no “Abstain” box. When pressed on something they’re unsure of, I think most people will vote no. But again, that’s a personal intuition, not really based on any hard evidence.

So, to recap, these are the things in favor of those who value equality in the law:
1. Support for Prop 8 hasn’t polled above 50% since May, back when the California Supreme Court issued its ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
2. Conversely, opposition to Prop 8 has polled above 50% in several polls.
3. Opposition to Prop 8 has polled higher than support in the last 3 polls.
4. Since mid-October, the No On 8 campaign has closed the funding gap from $10,000,000 to $1,000,000. That means more money has been donated to the No campaign than the Yes campaign over the last couple of weeks.
5. If you add up the numbers from all 12 polls and average them (which actually gives the Yes side an advantage, given that the KTLA poll’s numbers are quite a ways off from the other 11), of the 10,198 participants in the polls, 43.7% have said they would vote yes, while 49.8% have said they would vote no, leaving undecideds at 6.5%. If we throw out the KTLA poll, it breaks down 43% in favor, 50.9% against, and 6.2% undecided.

These are the only things that give me pause:
1. The last poll that showed a result outside the margin of error (#8 on the first graph, conducted by Survey USA on October 4-5) showed support ahead of opposition by 5 points. However, it also recorded undecideds at their largest number since the first poll conducted in May.
2. In the last 3 polls, the Yes campaign appears to have moved more voters to their side than the No campaign.

If I was a betting man, I’d put money on Prop 8 failing by 1 or 2 points. So get out there and vote No on Prop 8 on Tuesday!

On one level, I can totally geek out on the science of light and visual perception with this. I always found the character of Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation rather fascinating. I didn’t identify with him quite the way I did with Data (or Spock or Odo, in other series), but I was always interested in how a blind man could see what is invisible to everyone else. What human beings see is not reality. We see an interpretation of reality. Visible light is a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. X-rays, heat, microwaves, the color green… they’re all the exact same thing vibrating at different frequencies. We’ve just evolved these structures that we call eyes, and they, along with the optic nerve and visual cortex, take a thin slice of those frequencies and convert them into electrical signals that the brain uses. Hearing works in much the same way. Hell, every sensation you have is an electrical impulse in the brain. So I was always fascinated by Geordi’s VISOR, which took a larger chunk of the EM spectrum and converted it into electrical signals for Geordi’s brain. Geordi could see the invisible, because the line between visible and invisible was drawn somewhere else for him. That’s an ability I’ve often wanted for myself, thus my interest in infrared and ultraviolet photography, but the line between visible and invisible is probably in a different place for everyone. And not just on the physical level either.

When I received the e-mail today informing me of the show reception for Mr. Eckert, in which it stated that he was “totally blind,” I’ll admit with some embarrassment that my first thought was of the movie, Pecker, in which the hot new artist at the end of the film is a completely blind photographer. The whole film is a humorous comment on art and photography in general (well, and fame and celebrity, but I’m not addressing those), and the moment is played for laughs. However, what Mr. Eckert does is absolutely art, and I find it extremely inspirational. This is what makes it art, in my opinion: “I am not trying to depict the sighted world. I am trying to show the world I now see using my other senses.” His work shows us the truth of his reality. That’s what art is about–the truth. It’s not about beauty. But the truth can be beautiful, and in Pete Eckert’s case, it is. And for someone who has lost their physical capacity to see to produce work like this–images that are so intense, so beautiful, so real–should, at the very least, remind us that our limits, like our vision, are often only in our heads.

The opening event is on Thursday, August 7, 2008, from 6 to 9 PM at the Leo Kesting Gallery at 812 Washington Street, New York City. If you have the means, go.