One of the problems with being an avowed altruist is that it's hard to talk about it with other people without coming across like you're trying to claim you're better than them.

One of the problems with being an aspiring effective altruist is that it's hard to talk about it with other people without coming across like you're trying to claim you're better than everyone else, including other avowed altruists, and definitely including non-altruistic plebes.

(This, I think, is something of a barrier to effective altruism becoming a more popular thing, and I'd like to see it change.)

But if I can't write about this in the locus of the interval between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can't write about it at all, and that would be really quite sad for me, so here goes.

In a story which is, at least, not completely apocryphal, tennis player Arthur Ashe was dying from acute AIDS when, in response to a fan's letter asking "Why did God select for you this fate?", he wrote:

The world over, 50 million children start playing tennis, 5 million learn to play tennis, 500,000 learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach the grand slam, 50 reach Wimbledon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals -- when I was holding a cup I never asked God 'Why me?'

And today in pain I should not be asking God 'Why me?'

Well, one's modus tollens is another's modus ponens^[?] -- maybe we should be more in the habit of asking "Why me?"

But

Ore Babarinsa, one of my classmates, had the following to say on recent events in Ferguson, MO via Facebook. With permission, I've copied his words without modification below.

So, I've purposefully stayed off facebook for the last 12+ hours because I wanted to spend some time thinking about this whole mess because I specifically since I find so often that immediate outrage requires reflection before it can be distilled into meaningful wisdom.

Firstly, to address the immediate situation. There's a critical failure of justice, and the rule of law that has occurred. Once again, the forces of moral cowardice and systemic racism have won out over wisdom, fairness, and any sort of allegiance to due process. There's no working around that simple fact. The necessity of an open, public, and fair trial for Officer Wilson was paramount, and that the grand jury failed to acknowledge this is galling.

Secondly, the riots on the ground are understandable, and I'm not going to sit in my Harvard Ivory Tower and finger-wag at those involved. I'd likely an active participant if I were anywhere near Ferguson. This said, the long view of history, and wisdom show that riots won't get us anywhere our goals of racial equity, economic redistribution of wealth, or any sort of meaningful political or social gains. Neither will insipid, simple slogans, hashtags, or boisterous threats of violence towards the state or law enforcement. Change is hard, and fraught with disappointments and setbacks.

Thirdly, as many of us forget, there is no easy way to fix this. There is no fixed set of enemies of progress. There is no plan for revolution, or system dismantlement that will lead you to

I'm still running an updated-almost-daily feed of readworthy links at My Faults My Own | Reading Feed. Check it out if you're a fan of these BoL's!

For reasons which may later become clear, I've written two subtly different versions of this post, for different audiences. Poets, dreamers, and readers who don't particularly care to erect walls between fantasy and reality, click here. Readers who don't have time for my mind games and just want to read a normal Bucket o' Links, click here.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip now ends,
The college stands another year, though still no more it spends,
The Game is near, the Band I hear, the freshmen all exulting,
While follow eyes the crimson flag, the Yalies we insulting;
                         But O Tom! Bas! Rav!
                            O the year we have in store,
                               When Gus and Sietse have left us,
                                  To lead us now no more.

O Captain! my Captain! Gus, hear the Mem Church bell!
Stand tall—for you Fair Harvard's sung—for you Ten Thousand trill,
For you TP and TomBasRav—for you town halls a-crowding,
For you they call, from Stillman still, for yet more club sports funding;
                         Here Captain! dear father!
                            Lead us forevermore!
                               It is some dream that you would leave,
                                 To captain us no more.

Not the Captain we deserved—the one we needed, true,
In uniform and beard he served—and fought for me and you.
The votes are cast, and soon we'll know the prez-elect—and then
We welcome Yale and know they'll fail to win the Game again;
                         Ten thousand men want victory!
                            But this much lies in store:
                               Gus and Sietse leave us soon,
                                  To lead us now no more.

Jeff Kaufman has an announcement on their blog, that I'd like to get behind here:

Clarifications, details(, and the real content of this post, let's be honest...):

(1) This is not a thing I feel very strongly about. (Kind of like vegetarianism!) If it makes your life harder to remember to (or you're in a social setting where it would be strange to) not use gendered pronouns, by all means do the easier thing.^[1] But if it's easier for you to not have to remember to gender pronouns, or which way the gender goes, or whatever, then I'm not so attached to he/him/his to insist that you need to use those instead of they/them/their. I think I'd object to being referred to with female pronouns, though, so don't do that, please. (I'd probably be confused the first time it happens, but I've come around to believing that I'd probably be 100% behind this if it started happening in settings that didn't confuse everyone in a way that made my

(1)

Vote! Today! Before 8pm!

Yesterday, I linked a polling-place guide from the IOP, which was two years out of date. The HPR has a good guide to candidates and their issues, but their polling-place list for Harvard students is also incorrect.^[1] As far as I can tell, the list goes:

• Harvard Yard (inc. Union; exc. Apley), Adams: Gund Hall (48 Quincy Street)
• Dunster, Leverett: Putnam Apartments (2 Mt. Auburn Street)
• Apley, Lowell, Mather, Quincy: Quincy House (58 Plympton Street)
• Quad: Graham and Parks School (44 Linnaean Street)
• Eliot: Friends Meeting House (5 Longfellow Park)

It's unclear to me where Winthrop and Kirkland vote; whether they're also with Eliot, or if they vote in Quincy with the rest.

The Crimson also has a bit on early polling results, especially regarding the four ballot initiatives (indexing the state gasoline tax to consumer prices, expansion of $0.05 bottle-recycling rebates to all non-alcoholic, non-carbonated drinks, banning casinos and dog-racing betting, and sick-leave entitlements for private Mass. employees).

Now go do that now, and come back when you're done!

(2)

Landry and Harris, pursuing the "hacker edition"^[?] of running for UC prez, make it onto the ballot despite collecting petition signatures for only 23 hours. Campaigning is prohibited for another week, and, while it's unclear whether or not the UC Election Committee counts private blogs as press, I'm going to shut up about them for that interval. Expect more later.

(3)

Speaking of UC ballot petitions, the Harvard Teaching Campaign is collecting signatures to put a referendum question on the UC ballot asking:

Do you support or oppose a cap of 12 students on all mandatory and graded sections and

(1)

Reminder: What may be your best chance this year to shape the future of your city/state/nation is tomorrow. So go out there and do the thing! If you're at Harvard and forgot where the heck you were supposed to go to do the thing, tomorrow's post has the rundown.

(2)

Michael Landry '16 and Connor Harris '16 have declared their candidacy for the Harvard Undergraduate Council (vice-)presidency. You may know Michael because the Crimson wrote a piece about him last week, and you may know Connor because he keeps saying smart things about transportation policy, urban planning, and liberal arts education to everyone in earshot.

Cutting to the quick, I'm going to go right out and declare my support for these two right now. I will inevitably write more later, but for now, you should sign the petition to put them on the ballot if you trust my judgment in matters of politics. Or, like, if you believe in the power of a free and open marketplace of ideas.

Update: Connor has announced the official Landry-Harris platform via press release at 1:30 am EST, Monday, November 2:

I'm running for UC with Michael Landry and you should all sign the petition for us to be on the ballot. Campaign planks to include, in descending order of seriousness:

1) better disabled access to Harvard's old buildings;

2) repealing the Thursday dinner dhall restrictions because they're annoying as fuck;

3) getting every department to publish their concentrators' average in- and out-of-concentration GPAs, so one could subtract the former from the latter, sort descending, and have a pretty good index of which concentrations are the hardest or have