My wife works at a hospital near fenway park, and got off her shift just as the sox won game 7 of the ALCS. We met near fenway, because she was advised not to drive home (that was excellent advice). The walk to and from Fenway was amazing. Every car horn blared, every person smiled. Complete strangers were high-fiving and clapping for one another. It's a cliche, but the crowd was electric and completely spontaneous. People just walked out of their apartments and started cheering; the crowd naturally streamed toward Fenway.

The spontaneity made the night fun for me, but I think the complete lack of direction ultimately made the crowd dangerous. Morons and hoodlums take advantage of moments like last night. 98% of the crowd is just caught up in the moment, jovial, and full of camaraderie. Because the crowd's energy is undirected, the bad actors in the crowd tend to pull everyone into trouble.

For the World Series, the city needs to plan more than police presence. They need to plan a direction for the crowd -- something for everyone to do besides milling around in the streets. That way, the police will be better able to remove the riff-raff from the crowd. When was the last time someone lit a fire inside Fenway? Most of the crowd is focused on the game, so the morons are easy to eject. The city shouldn't expect things to be safe if they are just going to watch as people "have a little fun". Everyone knows that Kenmore is the place to be after a series victory -- so the streets should be closed in advance, and police should be in control of the crowd as it forms. A successful plan would keep things tame and prevent the need for riot control techniques like the one that killed Victoria Snelgrove.

Boston.com / News / Local / Mass. / College student dies after police shoot projectile into postgame crowd

"We're going to party for a little while."
- Johnny Damon

DNC still raising money

So, remember all the hoopla about John Kerry's fundraising disadvantage? The basic argument went like this: because there were so many democratic primary candidates, and because the DNC wanted a unified effort in the presidential election, the Democratic convention was scheduled early in the summertime. As soon as John Kerry reported for duty and accepted the nomination, he could no longer raise campaign money. Hence, he was supposed to be at a desperate disadvantage to Bush, who started with a higher base of funds, and who had a late Republican convention, which allowed him more time to continue raising cash.

There is, of couse, a loop-hole. The Democratic and Republican parties can continue raising money to spend on unendorsed advertisements. For example, negative ads.

You can see contribution links on www.democrats.org, and www.gop.org
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Blackberry Post

T's birthday, but she is on call. So I am doing really cool stuff like blogging.
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

I love boston.

The New York Times > International > Middle East > U.S. Acquiesces in European Plan for Talks With Iran

The most disturbing aspect of this extremely unsettling article is "Not only are China and Russia opposed to sanctions, but a group of so-called nonaligned countries including Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia also oppose anything that might suggest that countries cannot have peaceful nuclear energy programs."

The opposition from the nonaligned countries illustrates the inflated importance of energy production in international politics. Oil is a tight commodity with shrinking availability. Nuclear energy is unacceptably dangerous in a terrorist infected world. The world needs safe, abundant, and clean energy. Our national security and economic outlook are aligned with world interest on this point -- the surest way to eliminate the temptation for nations to pursue nuclear energy programs is to discover an alternative.

For the first time since the space race, and perhaps in a more tangible sense, we need an aggressive scientific policy that focuses the nations intellectual resources on this specific goal: safe, abundant and clean energy.

Unlike rocket science, however, it would be in our best interest to give energy technology away as quickly as possible.