Blowing out your knee and Politics...

Among many things, I am currently a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering studying the underpinnings of why females suffer anterior cruciate ligament injuries (a.k.a ACL injuries) at a much higher rate than males.

When I get to that point in conversation, most people like to try to take a shot at guessing the reason: Is it because females have bigger hips? Is it because females are physically weaker than males? Is it because of their hormonal cycle? Is it because girls have cooties?

My answer in almost all cases is "Yes." The literature on this topic ranges from soup to nuts and would make an interesting blog post all by itself (well, to me anyway). My point is that while we have some ideas as to aspects that are more important than others, it is likely to be exceedingly multifactorial in nature.

This is where the politics aspect comes in (yeah, I know... nobody ever accused me of being brief). Like my research topic, the cause of the Dems abject failure to make any tangible gains in this election is likely to be just as multifactorial in nature. As such, I get more than a little DHP when I sift through all these columns, blog posts, news reports, etc. that each have their own little panacea: we need to move left... we need to move to the right... we need to get religion... we need to energize the base... we need to tell Hollywood to shove it... we need to be cheese-eating surrender monkeys like the French.

I have no idea as to why this is... perhaps people are just full of themselves, or maybe they have each have their own little drum to beat for whatever issue (Based on most of what I have read, I would lean towards the former). But I thought this would be good to mention up front as I imagine that I will be posting my thoughts on these various topics over the next few days... no one alteration in the Dems strategy will be a magic bullet that slays the Rovian werewolf, nor are all the proposals out there of equal worth. It will be important to make deliberate critical accessments on each of these aspects rather than hitching our wagon on whatever fails out of this immediate aftermath.

Not exactly sage wisdom, eh? But for many out there, it apparently needs to be said...