Math camp

...has begun. Prior to the first semester, polisci ('political science') grad students are required to take a refresher course in mathematics. For many of us, you could read refresher as 'the only math I've taken since kindergarten. Lagrange multipliers? You gotta be kidding - subtraction's a stretch!' Or that's how it feels anyhow :) The topics happen to be fascinating. I'm constantly thrilled - and more often befuddled - by the beauty of logic and numbers. Which is lucky because we're being taken on a whistle-stop tour these next two weeks. It's like an all-you-can-eat restaurant: except, all-you-can-cram. The aim is to get everyone to a similar base level. Digestion can wait until the proper stats and modeling courses begin in September.

I whiled away the weekend in New York City. A Saturday-afternoon outdoor rave at a MoMA outpost in Queens, replete with beach, bar, contemporary art, and a surpassingly attractive clientele; my jaw hung in gobsmacked awe. Ignoring a slight glitch on the train back to New Haven, my adolescent dream - that the Big Apple might one day become a second home - wasn't shattered. The city's definitely close enough for a fun-filled evening stopover.

Since arriving, I've tracked the main American news religiously. I pick the word with care, for two crucial ongoing debates do hinge on questions divine rather than secular. One is the furore surrounding California's Proposition 8 - the law, enacted by referendum, which struck down gay marriage in the Golden State last year. P8 has just been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge. Supporters are girding themselves for a Supreme Court tussle whose outcome would seal the fate of gay marriage across America. There's a twist: Arnie Schwarzenegger, Governor and guardian of his state's laws (if not its economy), doesn't even want to appeal Vaughn Walker's tightly-reasoned, and maybe irrefutable, judgment. Under rules of standing, this could affect whether the nine justices decide to hear the case at all. Whatever happens, polling shows a heartening shift in public attitudes. A majority of Californians now support full marriage rights - a sign of popular penitence. Most think this great struggle for due process and equal protection under the law, in the eloquent language of the courts, is close to being won.

Which is sadly more than can be said for the planned construction of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero. (Actually a full two blocks away.) Despite Obama's iftar speech approving the go-ahead, eighty-something percent of Americans say they're opposed. Much commentary spewing from the right has been hateful, crass, border-line racist - up to and including that of the House Minority Leader, Newt Gingrich. If you want to know what a mob sounds like, take a listen. Thankfully, NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg is committed to the project and the noble ideal it embodies. But the forces arrayed against him are daunting. Their ranks may yet prevail.

And so the world is awash with contradictions. A group, once marginalized, painted as a threat to national identity and a decent way of life, is embraced into the mainstream waters of this totemic democracy. Gay rights look soon to be secured. At the same moment, Muslims, the new great threat, are more vilified than before - less able to practice their religion openly.

It would be very wrong to suggest the United States is exceptional in these respects. Relative to any other country, America is special only in how free individuals remain to do as they please. Yet politics here accentuate group trends, highlighting extremes of class, ethnicity and creed. For a budding political scientist, I guess that's what makes the US so compelling.

Time for me to wrap up and snuggle up. Good night from America. The place and the people grow in my estimation, which was already high, every day. And right now there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Math class at 10am sharp!