The democratic national convention has now officially nominated Obama as the democratic nominee for POTUS. Earlier in the week Willie Nelson performed. Tonight Vanity Fair and Google throw a shindig. As it happens, I could have finagled to hang out with Willie Nelson backstage. And it is not inconceivable that I could have swung an invite to the VF/Google party. (A long complicated story involving poker, kiteboarding, and an indolent brother). So, you may be asking yourself, am I now in Denver hanging out with all the politicos? Actually, no. I’m sitting in Waimea, Hawai’i. For years I have been wanting to go observing, but for some reason observers are hesitant to allow theorists to play with their $300M toys. But why should Julianne have all the fun?

Alison Coil and Ben Weiner have been kind enough to let me tag along on one of their observing runs. We’re looking at outflows from post-starburst galaxies at high redshift. We’d like to understand whether winds from starbursts or AGNs might have inhibited subsequent star formation. (More details in a future post.) We’ll be using the Keck observatory on Mauna Kea, arguably the world’s premier (Earthbound) telescopes. Our nights were allocated months ago. Apparently this is not the sort of thing you can switch at the last minute because you want to go to a party. Even a Google party.

So a difficult choice had to be made. After much soul-searching, science won out. Instead of socializing with movie stars and shaking Obama’s hand (again), I’ll be standing on a 4200 meter summit in the middle of the Pacific.

Cell phones around the country greeted their owners this morning with text messages proclaiming that Barack Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his Vice-Presidential nominee. An interesting pick; I would have been more excited by Kathleen Sebelius or Wesley Clark, but I can live with it.

The things you need to know about Joe Biden are: (1) He has been a Senator forever (half of his life). (2) He is a smart guy, not a stuffed suit. (3) He has formidable expertise in foreign policy. (4) He is somewhat prone to gaffes. (5) He is feisty, and effective in attack-dog mode. (6) He can be a bit of an asshole.

The best news about the pick is that it shows Obama wants to take the fight to the Republicans, especially on foreign policy. There is nobody McCain is likely to pick for VP whom Biden would not be able to make look silly in a debate. As Ezra Klein points out, all you need to know about why Obama picked Biden is contained in this very short clip:

He can think on his feet — literally, and apparently while chewing peanuts or something — and manages to effortlessly eviscerate Rudy Giuliani with a single sarcastic look. Most importantly, he gives the impression of being completely comfortable with the intricacies of foreign policy; this will contrast well with McCain, who loves to talk about foreign policy but is somewhat fuzzy on many of the actual details.

Biden is far from a perfect pick. He is a Washington insider, with a long track record of votes to be sifted through for ammunition for the other side. He voted for the Iraq war, even if he did try to craft a less-crazy resolution than the one that eventually passed. He has criticized Obama and praised McCain in the past. He voted to confirm Clarence Thomas. He said that Obama was the first “articulate and bright” African-American national politician. During a previous Presidential run, he had to drop out after a speechwriter plagiarized from British politician Neil Kinnock — including giving Biden some Welsh coal-mining ancestors he never had.

Nevertheless, I can live with the pick. Politics aside, I think Biden would be just about a perfect Vice-President, except for one thing. That is, he would be great at the actual duties of being a Vice-President — he will be a loyal and forceful advocate for the administration’s policies to the outside world, will provide invaluable inside expertise and ability to get things done, and will be an intelligent and loyally-critical voice during internal deliberations. He won’t be a yes-man, nor will he be a Cheneyan separate branch of government. The one downside is that I wouldn’t actually want him as President; he doesn’t seem the type to successfully steer a complex administration through the inevitable bumps in the road.

So here’s hoping that Obama wins the election, and goes on to a healthy and productive eight years in office.