First, having Barack Obama elected to be our 44th president is a milestone that all of us should be cherishing, for a number of reasons. The fact that he is both African-American, and the product of a mixed-race marriage (illegal until just a couple of generations ago in many parts of the country), is testament to how far we’ve come as a nation. The fact that he is the grandson of a Muslim, grew up abroad for a time, and has a non-Western European name are milestones unto themselves. They defy many of the unfortunate stereotypes that grew about the United States in the previous eight-year absence of good news.

But in a few underreported ways, Obama’s ascension to the presidency points to triumphs of a different sort. First, the era of divisive, identity politics has, at the very least, taken a hiatus. The religious right’s strangehold on electoral success and its influence on domestic legislation and foreign policy stance have also taken a backseat to a more broad coalition of groups interested in greater inclusiveness, cooperation and dialogue. The electorate is now more likely to give the president-elect reign to take a different approach with respect to health care, financial sector regulation, foreign relations, and other matters, when trying a different approach was previously considered anathema (”appeasement”, “socialism”, etc).

In two important ways, though, Obama crossed the Rubicon. First, he was able to raise a majority of his campaign contributions from 3 million contributors across the country. We’re talking small, $25, $50, amounts. What this means is that the largest “lobbyist group” he is beholden to are, effectively, the American people, who will be holding him responsible to his entire platform, not just a set of pet interests. If he doesn’t deliver? The largest, by far, source of reelection revenue will dry up.

Second, Obama is going to draw on the strong wellspring of support that was granted him from the very start, domestically and abroad. The perception of our country, by its own citizens, and former critics outside the country, was turn on its head after almost a decade of having almost every negative stereotype of Americans confirmed by the actions of an irresponsible government. Sure, with high expectations, there is bound to be disappointment, as unrealistic expectations are confronted with realpolitik. But I firmly believe that Obama’s judiciousness and his surprisingly consistent message and refrain from hyperbole on the campaign trail will suit him well as he sets out to make tremendous changes in the way our government does things.

The fact that he will be working with strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress won’t hurt, either.

Moving to a more specific struggle, that of marriage equality, in the midst of a streak of bad news in four states, there is an ember of optimism. Despite the continual passage of anti-equality legislation, each subsequent election and poll shows the gap narrowing. With even Republicans and evangelicals saying that gay couples deserve equal protection under the law, with only the institution of marriage itself something they are defending for heterosexual use only, the debate has taken on a different tenor than it had when gay people were routinely described as perverts, deviants, and sick, by those opposing the granting of equal rights. If the predominant debate is one of nomenclature, then we have also come a long way on the sexual orientation civil rights front.

Finally, in the aftermath of an unusually long campaign that involved record numbers of (especially young) people, one wonders if the momentum of political engagement will continue and spread into both local and international awareness and involvement. Should be an interesting couple of years (you do know that the 2010 elections are just 24 months away?).

Since we had a lot of questions that might well be asked by others taking a look at Dyalogues for the first time, I thought I’d answer some frequently-asked questions. If any others come up, feel free to pop them in the comments for this blog entry, or, of course, you can send us an email.

• Who’s your target market? Who’s going to use this?

We believe that, at the beginning, bloggers and entrepreneurs will take to Dyalogues.
Bloggers are the ideal userbase, because they are comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas online, and they’re always looking to attract new readers to their blog. Each dyalogue you participate in includes an excerpt of your bio, plus followable links to your blog and elsewhere people can find you. The more popular your dyalogues, the more traffic to your blog.
Entrepreneurs are always looking for mindshare, and are often eager to share their thoughts on what’s going on in their industry with like-minded people. For instance, the owner of a green tech startup can debate with another green tech startup owner he/she knows on how best the government can spur innovation and growth in ecological technologies. The resulting dyalogue is excellent publicity for both businesses, and a highly-readable reference for interested readers.

• How is this different from having an IM/chat session with someone?

Two differences: 1) Dyalogues are not real-time, and 2) they’re public. When one person writes their response, their counterpart receives an email notifying them that it’s their turn to respond. So, the dyalogue proceeds at a pace that’s comfortable for both participants (and gives you time to write a thoughtful response). And dyalogues are public, and shareable with your friends and others. Your dyalogues will live on our site for as long as we’re around! (A bit more about the differences here)

• Why can’t I just do the same thing through email?

You should use email if you want your conversation to remain private. Dyalogues are public and are meant to be shared. They have an easy-to-read, naturally conversational format. And if you have an intriguing “dual review” or debate, you’ll probably want to share it with others, because people like intriguing conversations.

• Can’t I do the same thing on my blog?

No, not exactly. Blogs are great platforms for monologues, with an “after-speech mixer” via the comments. The blogger has the “home-field advantage”, and comments are not the best way to have an in-depth conversation between the blogger and a respondent–they’re just not set up that way (you can’t restrict a comment thread to two people). More on the differences here.

• How are participants paired up with each other?

A key aspect of Dyalogues is that when you start a dyalogue, you have complete control over whom you dyalogue with. You’ll never get paired with someone you don’t have any interest in dyaloguing with.
There are three ways you can choose your counterpart:
1) You can invite someone you already know. Just enter in their email address, and they’ll be emailed an invitation to join you in dyalogue.
2) You can invite someone who’s already a user on the site.
3) You can choose to meet someone new, and designate your dyalogue as an Open Dyalogue. A link to your topic, with description and opening statement, is listed on our Open Dyalogues page. People interested in dyaloguing with you can enter their response to your opening statement. You’ll be emailed each time someone expresses interest. When you’re ready, return to your dyalogue page and select your counterpart from among those who’ve responded.

• Can more than two people participate in a dyalogue?

No. Dyalogues are strictly limited to two people. Why? There are plenty of options to have discussions with multiple people online already (like in blog comments or discussion forums, but these have some drawbacks that Dyalogues don’t). With exactly two people, you have:
- mutual agreement to talk to each other (no trolls, spammers or noobs jumping in and derailing the discussion)
- richness and intensity of discussion (each participant must directly respond to the other)
- no distractions or noise, which tend to arise when you have dozens of people jumping in and out of the discussion
- no “mob mentality”- Dyalogues is neutral ground where each participant is shown no “home field advantage”
We will likely put in various commenting features to allow people to weigh in on the dyalogue, but these will be peripheral to the dyalogue itself, which will always remain the focus.

• Are you guys in beta? When are you going to launch?

We are about to begin our private beta, after having hammered out all the bugs with our dozen-odd alpha participants. Our private beta means we’re limiting participation to people we’ve invited, as well as those expressing interest by signing up on our index/splash page. We’re looking to open Dyalogues up to the public near the end of the year.

• What does it cost?

Nothing. We eventually plan to support the site via advertising.

We’re pleased to announce that Dyalogues will be demoing Dyalogues at SF Beta next Tuesday! You’ll even have the opportunity to set up an account, invite a friend, and begin dyaloguing. Brainstorm some debate and/or review ideas, and come have a look!

Event: SF Beta 2.6 [event blog]

Where: 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco [map]

Date: Tuesday, September 23rd

Time: 7:00-9:00 pm

Tickets are $15 online or $25 at the door. You can buy tickets online via Eventbrite.

Many thanks to Peggy, Njoke, Seamus, Antun, Nicole, Aimee, Andy, Jonah, Malcolm, Tamara and Aaron!

REVIEWS

• Arts/Entertainment > Movies/Film: The Pursuit of Happyness
• Arts/Entertainment > Books: On Beauty, by Zadie Smith

DEBATES

• Politics > US Elections: Do celebrity endorsements help or hurt presidential candidates?
• Technology > Web/Internet: Should the US Government Pass Net Neutrality Laws?
• Politics > US State Issues: Should illegal immigrants be granted driver’s licenses?

We’ll have more to share soon!

Although not a natural science fiction fanatic myself (I could never get into any of the Star Trek series, for example), I’ve enjoyed the complex, layered storytelling of the world of humans living under constant seige by their progeny, called Cylons, who have been able to create humanlike versions of themselves. The entire human population of about 50,000, spread across about 50 ships, continue to grapple with everyday human quandaries along with the constant pressure of evading Cylon attacks, buoyed by the hope of reaching the mythical planet of Earth, where the lost “thirteenth colony” of humanity is rumored to live.

How BSG’s humans cope with the existential threat posed by the Cylons, who seek to destroy them as inferior progenitors in the course of natural evolution, echoes in some ways the way the West does the same vis a vis the threat posed by fundamentalist Islam (although, naturally, the threat is not nearly as dire nor as foreign). The philosophical, social, political and ethical decisions that the humans’ struggles force them to make mirror those that have continued to shape our societies in the face of the forces that threaten to erode them.

Philosophical issues: The predominant philosophical theme that runs through the series is what constitutes a sentient being, and if Cylons qualify. What exactly makes us human? Is it our physical appearance and bodily makeup, our minds and our capacity to think, is it our feelings and capacity to love, or is it something less tangible, our values and character, or a soul or spirit? For the first two or three criteria, the humanoid Cylons clearly qualify (”Boomer” shows a capacity to love that often overrides her programmed directives), so is it that they wantonly kill people that created them and that are so similar? People have been warring and killing each other since the dawn of humanity, so disregard for fellow man is obviously not a disqualifier.

There are barely-detectable (without the aid of a laboratory) differences at the molecular level between humans and humanoid Cylons, but these might be meaningless if humans and Cylons were not locked into an existential struggle against each other. What compels Cylons to want to destroy humans? It’s not clear, but their different theology suggests they think wiping out the human race would complete an evolutionary step.

BSG also explores determinism vs free will (esp as it relates to those competing motives in Cylons like Boomer), and immortality (via commemoration, legacies and memories, most vividly struggled with by Starbuck).

Ethical issues: The series’s characters grapple with ethical dilemmas that constantly test their values and ideas of justice. Ethical concepts dealt with include:

• Utilitarianism - Measuring and executing to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of humans present a neverending challenge, principally to the human leaders, President Laura Roslin, and Commander William Adama. Every decision, whether to rig votes for the vice presidency, or “jump” and leave raiders or ships behind, carries with it certain loss; the loss must be weighed against potential gain, or mitigation of an even greater potential loss.
• Justice - Human treatment of Cylon and human prisoners, what rights are extended to them, whether they are entitled to due process, and how punishment is meted, create ongoing dilemmas to those forced to make these decisions.
• Kantianism - The individual’s role in shaping his behavior vis a vis rational thought and experience is brilliantly explored through the conscious thoughts of Dr Gaius Baltar, who continually struggles to balance self-interest with moral accountability to his fellow humans.

Social issues: BSG offers a glimpse into Cylon social structures, largely collectivist, as a foil with which to contrast human society, which is a reflection of its “western”, individualist values. Appreciation for (and tolerance of) dissent, love and duty (”office romances”), nepotism and favoritism, and behavior incentivization are all explored throughout the series.

Political issues: The predominant political undercurrent is that between civilian and military government, embodied by Roslin and Adama in the series. Colonel Tigh declares martial law at one particularly chaotic point in the second season, and faces widespread noncompliance as civilians protest the dissolution of their elected government. The accommodation of a civilian government by a military engaged in constant warfare with an existential enemy is one that democratically-elected governments have had to repeatedly face in times of conflict.

…..

Let me say, in closing, that I’ve only watched a season and a half of this series that enjoyed huge plaudits through its end at the conclusion of four seasons, so I have another 45 episodes to be enthralled with, clutching my boyfriend on the couch, our eyes glassy with wonder and suspense.

With the series ending, we’ve lost yet another brilliant television show that made us think (while, sadly, so many others that don’t continue to live on). But, like at least one great “thinking person’s television” show, Six Feet Under, BSG ended when the majority of its viewers continued to cherish it.

This past week saw a powderkeg of an issue lit by the McCain campaign, or the Obama campaign, depending on who you talk to. Obama claimed that the Republicans would try to scare voters by reminding them that he’s “different” - an allusion to his name, age, background and race (”doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills”).

But is this “playing the race card”? The McCain campaign certainly thought so. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, responded quickly, with, “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

But was Obama playing the race card? What exactly is “the race card?”

The way it’s commonly understood, playing the race card means accusing someone of being a racist in order to score political advantage or deflect criticism. Its practice has been levied towards Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton most frequently, although because of their history in politics and ready interest in speaking on behalf of the entire black “community” (of approximately 40 million Americans), this is not surprising. It had not been used to describe Barack Obama, who has studiously avoided mentioning racism, beyond his deep, balanced treatise on America’s complex history with race, after the Reverend Wright controversy.

It’s difficult, unless you’re hypersensitive to it, to see “my opponents will play up how I’m different from the classic US presidential profile in many different ways” as meaning “if you don’t vote for me, that means you’re racist.”

But the hypersensitive might exactly be the group that the McCain campaign would like to exploit. What the McCain campaign, which has been much more heavily reliant on negative campaigning against his opponent than Obama’s, has been quick to play as an opportunity for itself is the “race-card card,” or tapping into white resentment against perceived use of the race card by African-Americans.

Resentment against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton reached a fever pitch last year during the Don Imus controversy, when Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team players “nappy headed hos“. Right-wing bloggers and commentators at right-wing sites like The Free Republic and Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air fumed with indignation. (For a different reason, some black commentators also wondered both why Jackson and Sharpton felt the need to inject themselves in the debate, and why right-wing pundits were obsessed with their reaction.)

But did Obama’s original comment have any merit? Has he been an target, or did he raise the spectre of racism to a naive electorate? Let’s look at the attempts to highlight (or even fabricate) Obama’s “differentness”:

• conservative online magazine Insight publishes story alleging that Obama attended a Muslim religious school, a madrassa (not true)
• Larry Johnson alleges that he has a video showing Michelle Obama calling white people “whitey” (not true)
• many right wingers feel the need to highlight the fact that Obama’s middle name is Hussein (which is true, but would most certainly never be mentioned if it were John, or Sidney, for example)
• Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is constantly called a racist (which is not true; referring to the disgrace of the US’s racist past does not make you a racist)

While these sorts of rumors are not directly attributable to the McCain campaign, they are popular memes circulated in right-wing circles, and can only help McCain’s candidacy. And the campaign is quick to invoke the race-card card, while it largely remains passive when stories that can be easily proven to be untrue are circulated.

Publius at Obsidian Wings had this to say:

But the bigger problem here is that the Race Card Chorus plays on white resentment — which remains a poisonous brew. I’m a child of the rural South. But you know what? Actual racism is a lot less common there — we have a ways to go, but there has been real progress on that front. The more serious problem is white resentment. A lot of white people honestly think they have been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities. And it’s hard to overstate how deeply these feelings run. It’s not so much animosity toward people who are different — it’s the animosity of the aggrieved. They feel like they are the victims. That’s why race is a losing issue for Obama — it’s not so much that people are racist, but that they feel they are being punished because they’re white (yes, I know how completely absurd this must sound to the black community). And so this whole “race card” business feeds these flames (quite consciously, I think).

The race-card card might be more effective than the race card itself.

A friend of a friend who worked at Changing World Technologies first exposed me to this idea a few years ago. Using a process called thermo depolymerization (TDP), primarily organic feedstocks (like turkey offal) can be processed to yield fuel oil. Its first plant converts 250 tons of turkey waste into 20,000 gallons of oil and fertilizer (the nitrogen-based by-products of the process), at a cost of $80 per barrel. Keep in mind that crude petroleum is currently selling at over $120 per barrel.

Innovation in the world of waste has continued. Here are a few other companies I was able to find that are innovating in this space:

• Enertech Environmental: Converts sewage into a solid energy form (called SlurryCarb) that can be used in a manner similar to coal. The process removes the bulk of the water through a more efficient mechanical process, rather than boiling/evaportation. A plant coming online later this year in southern California will convert solid waste from 5 municipalities around Rialto into 145 tons of SlurryCarb daily. An existing company facility has been operating successfully in Japan for years.
• Solena Group: Uses sodium bicarbonate, a waste by-product from coal plants, to grow algae, which is gasified to create a feedstock for electric power plants. The company is in discussion to put up a 40 MW plant in Kansas using its technology.
• GreenFuel Technologies: Also grows algae for biofuel, although using CO2 from flue gases. Companies that would otherwise have to pay for the sequestration of CO2 can, according to the company, create a profit by growing algae and selling it to biofuel reformers. The algae can be converted to biodiesel through transesterification and ethanol through fermentation of the remaining biomass.
• Blue Marble Energy: Uses algae cultivated in polluted water to create biodiesel and ethanol. Should be a boon for China, which has no shortage of the stuff.
• BlueFire Ethanol: Converts biowaste to ethanol using concentrated acid hydrolysis. A $30 million plant due to be installed in southern California by the end of 2009 should yield 3.2 million gallons of ethanol annually.
• Poet Energy: Uses primarily corn cobs to produce ethanol in a low-temperature process. Its 65 million gallon per year plant inaugurated in Indiana last year is the largest ethanol production plant in the world.
• Coskata: This company’s process converts organic feedstocks into syngas via gasification technologies, and then proprietary microbes convert the syngas into ethanol. After proving the viability of its technology through a 40,000 gallon/yr plant early next year, it plans on scaling to a 100 million gallon/year plant elsewhere by 2011.
• DuPont Danisco: Uses corn stover and sugarcane bagasse, agricultural wasteproducts, to create ethanol. A joint venture between DuPont and Genencor, its 250,000 gallon/year demonstration facility will be built in 2009.
• Mascoma: Uses wood chips as the source of cellulose to produce ethanol. It has recently decided to build its first facility in Michigan, in part funded by the state.

Are flue gas, corn stover, sugarcane bagasse, wood chips, turkey offal, and municipal waste the only feedstocks with which to produce biofuels? Not even close. In fact, a recent study suggests cow manure processed anaerobically could supplant 3% of the US’s electricity production and erase 4% of the carbon dioxide which would have otherwise been created by coal-fired production.

I think all of this innovation is fascinating, and deserves the tax incentives they need to get past the very high bar set by the low price of coal (provided there aren’t any taxes/penalties assessed on high-CO2 coal use). The products produced recently from solar energy—food scraps, wood chips, algae, sewage, and municipal waste—ought to be recaptured so we can allow coal and petroleum to continue to sequester CO2 underground.

Was the cover offensive? I don’t think so. As a subscriber to the New Yorker, I understand their taste for satire. Last week’s cover was certainly not denigrating Obama or impugning his or his wife’s patriotism - it is making fun of people who parrot those bigoted memes and believe them to be true. Seeing all of the ultra right-wing fantasies parodied on the same page was, well, really funny.

Not to be outdone by its rival, Vanity Fair published its cover (which it thought was) capturing the same satirical spirit and aesthetic inspiration, but applied this time to McCain. He’s shown with a walker, his wife carrying pill bottles, the Constitution is burning and George W Bush accenting the wall above the mantle. Also funny, but perhaps not quite as aggressive in its caricature - otherwise, Cindy might be lying on the floor with a black eye.

The fact is, though, that McCain doesn’t suffer from anywhere close to the same degree of fabricated rumors as does Barack, having his religion, patriotism and allegiances impugned by political operatives. So, the Vanity Fair cover falls a little flat. I mean, he is old, he does admire Bush, and his wife does have a certain way with pill bottles. The only image that condemns is his burning of the Constitution.

So why did both the Obama and McCain campaigns condemn the Obama cover? It’s clear that too many people don’t understand satire, and will misread the cartoon as a representation of the truth (they might even think it’s a photograph!). Innocent Harry Potter suffered at the hands of a lasting email meme that J.K. Rowling was encouraging satanism among children (it was screamingly funny satire by The Onion, who, in a rare move, took the article off its site).

Good satire should give thinking people something to laugh and reflect about. It can expose and challenge the absurdities that we give thoughtless acceptance to. But not everyone exposed to such images will understand their intent; the danger appears when people accept them at face value. And, in an election where candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars for mindshare, a satirical image is just bad PR.

Much like Freakonomics, The Tipping Point and Blink, Sway makes heady academic subjects - in this case, behavioral economics, social psychology and organizational behavior - accessible and relevant to a lay audience, illustrated through real-world examples of otherwise rational people acting irrationally. Why do humans often make irrational decisions? The book is replete with examples, and explanations of the cause or mechanism when known, that illustrate each of these phenomena:

1. loss aversion - we are more sensitive to the loss of something than we are elated by an equal gain
2. commitment - we repeat a pattern that has worked in the past even though it is obvious it no longer works
3. value attribution - we impart worth based on the perceived value of something, not objectively-measured criteria
4. diagnosis bias - it’s difficult to shake a first impression of something
5. the “chameleon effect” (the Pygmalion Effect and Golem Effect) - people tend to rise to the level of expectations set for them (even subconsciously)
6. procedural justice and fairness - we can make decisions against our own economic benefit if we feel fairness has been violated
7. rewards vs intrinsic motivation (altruism) - we find it difficult to be motivated by both financial gain and altruism at the same time
8. group dynamics and social pressure - an expression of a correct dissenting opinion can be blocked if there is perceived unanimity

The book includes many compelling examples to corroborate these, but let me share three of them:

• a Harvard MBA professor has a game in which students bid in $1 increments how much they’d pay for a $20 bill. The catch is that the runner-up also has to pay their final bid, even though they don’t win. Students will routinely bid well past $20 (in one case to $204), because neither wants to pay money for nothing, even though each bid after $20 is already a losing proposition. [an illustration of loss aversion and commitment]
• Swiss towns were asked to store the country’s nuclear waste. Their agreement dropped drastically when a financial incentive was introduced. [an illustration of rewards vs altruism]
• Israeli soldiers in a commander training program were completely randomly assigned a score that officers were told was an assessment of their commander potential (it was not shared with the soldiers). After the training period, soldiers who were assigned a bogus high commander potential score at the outset performed significantly better on exit exams than those randomly assigned low commander potential scores at the beginning [an illustration of the chameleon effect]

The reason this book is so important is that we’re all guilty of irrational behavior. The book demonstrates that the brightest, best-trained and most competent of us can fall into these traps that are often part of our neurological design. The book’s prescription? Awareness. Simple consciousness of an irrational drive can allow our rational mind to put in an override.

And, with that in mind, I’d like to play the devil’s advocate myself, with respect to three conclusions drawn from examples in the book. I have not investigated the original studies (although the Brafmans provide sources in the end notes), but based on what I’ve read, my skeptical mind wonders:

• in chapter 1, it’s suggested we choose flat rates instead of a la carte (pay-per-use) plans, like for cell phones and rental cars, because we’re trying to avoid a disastrously large bill. I have to disagree here. The reason I feel better about a flat rate, and I tend to choose them, is that I do not want the mental burden of having to weigh the value of making or accepting a call against its cost each and every time. The extra I end up paying for a flat-rate plan is worth it for the brain energy it saves me. [Update: research supports this!]
• in chapter 4, an NBA’s draft selection order was determined to have a pronounced effect on the amount of their game play. It’s suggested that the draft order is meaningless once the player has joined his team, with the other measured characteristics - scoring, toughness and quickness - being the only metrics that should matter. Now, I’m no basketball expert, but isn’t it possible that there are other unvoiced, latent talents that a team manager might measure subconsciously but might not be aware of enough to know to measure it? Like leadership, or dynamic with other players on the court? My sense is there might be something else to a team manager’s decision that goes beyond an individual player’s scoring potential that might make him an asset to have out on the court.
• in chapter 5, elderly people who had used negative and external descriptors of themselves showed more signed of degenerative aging than those who had used positive and internal words to describe themselves. I wonder if those who were describing themselves negatively, or focusing on their external appearance, did so because they sensed they were suffering from a medical problem or simple lack of wellness that hadn’t been isolated as part of the experimental protocol. I guess I’m wondering if the supposed cause of their aging wasn’t in fact an effect, instead.

These are not challenges to the relevant studies or to the book; they’re simply questions that came to my mind as I read each example. I had recently read two other fascinating books, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, that demonstrate that widely-accepted notions and even research can fail under closer scrutiny.

This book warns against falling into the trap of value attribution, too, so I’m fairly sure Ori and Rom Brafman can appreciate my doubts.

The Mashable Author Series will include a live chat later today with Ori Brafman, and has had two posts (an introduction, and on VC irrationality) guest-written by Ori.