Congratulations President (Elect) Obama!

After months and months of campaigning, it's finally over! And the US didn't screw things up this time around! I know the polls pretty much had called the election for Obama, but I was still a bit worried that something was gonna go wrong. I was impressed by the polling; they were pretty accurate. I was following FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics quite closely and while each individual poll is not that reliable, they are pretty reliable if you average them all together and weight them appropriately (as 538 did).

Anyways, nothing I can say would be anything more than what has already been said by all the pundits and newscasters. Well, except for the fact that even here in Toronto, people are very interested in the election. After volleyball, I went to the Wheat Sheaf for wings and beer, a pub that seems to have a bit of a sports inclination. Even there, the tv's (maybe 6 - 8 of them) were on CNN for the election coverage and when John McCain was giving his concession speech, the place went quiet.

Congratulations President David Palmer.... err... I mean President Barack Obama ;)

Got out of jury duty!

I got summoned to jury duty, but I got out of it :)

I wrote them a letter saying that I was a student and couldn't afford to take time off, etc. The amazing thing was that less than 24 hours after I put the letter in the mail, they called me to confirm that they got my letter and that I was off the hook! I was amazed! Not that I got out of jury duty, but that the mail got to them so fast! I always figured that the postal system was super slow and took at least a few days, even if it's in the same city, since I imagine that it has to go into some huge sorting facility, etc., etc. I was only sending it a few blocks away, but I still didn't expect it to get to them that fast, especially not by the next morning.

Anyways, it's a relief. It really doesn't make sense for students to have to do jury duty because it can really screw with you if you miss classes, especially if the hearing lasts a long time, you could even miss a whole semester and have to retake the entire year. For me, while I don't have any classes or anything, if I'm gone, there's no one that will do my research for me, so it'd have to be totally put on hold and research is highly time sensitive in that it's easy to get scooped. Students are in school to learn, no point taking that away from them.

The little pamphlet that comes with the summons to jury says that "If this is a particularly difficult time for you to attend, because of your employment, business, schooling, or personal circumstances, you can, by a request in writing, ask to have your jury duty postponed to a later date." I know several people that have gotten out of jury duty. Seems like only the unemployed, severely bored, or people not smart enough to get out of jury duty actually do jury duty, which makes me question the quality of the jurors. I hope I never have to rely on a jury...

How non-Americans can influence the elections

As a bit of a political news junkie, it frustrated me a little bit that no matter how inspired and moved I am by a candidate, my vote doesn't count.

I have, however, found a way that the world can influence American politics: (illegal) donations.

I'm not saying that I, as a non-American, went to Obama's donation page and made an individual contribution, which required me to lie about being "a United States citizen or a lawfully-admitted permanent resident". I'm just saying that people can do that...

Money counts. Obama and Clinton raised over $100 million each in 2007 and there were reports of Obama getting over $30 million in January and $7 million since Super Tuesday (2 days ago). With Obama's coffers, he was able to run TV ads in most of the Super Tuesday states, while Clinton was only able to do so in about half of them. Obama was even able to run ads during Superbowl, which usually costs a stupid amount. The money is used for all aspects of the campaign from hiring people, getting the word out, traveling costs, nomination fees, etc.

Obama has a big grassroots (netroots?) campaign and apparently a lot of his hundreds of thousands of donations are small contributions made online and by individuals, compared to other candidates that get most of their money from big donations from large corporations.

If I was "a United States citizen or a lawfully-admitted permanent resident", I would totally make a legal donation to Obama's campaign, but as it stands, I can't :). If you want to watch a good video of Obama, this is the one that really impressed and inspired me. It's a video of him giving a talk and Q&A at Google: