We're not quite dead yet

We'll be back with new material in the next week.

I eVoted

I walked into the elementary school to cast a few votes in today's primary election. Nobody in the room even tried to hide the grey in their hair. Today was an experiment because they introduced electronic voting.

Those of us on the voting end probably had little problem using the touch screens. The system is far less complicated than the switches of yesteryear. The biggest problem is that the booths provide little to no privacy. I thought that few people would have problems but at least one older lady had quite a few. There were signs posted that said "please take no more than 3 minutes in the booth." One of the poll operators said she had been in there for "quite some time," which in old people speak translates to much longer than 3 minutes.

Most people seemed to make it through ok. What might cause problems are the poll operators. You go to the desk, sign the registration and then they give you a card with a chip on it. It contains your party affiliation and some other information and you insert it into the voting machine. The machine that takes the input for party affiliation flashed a lot of red lights for the person before me. Only one of the operators knew what that meant...

I don't know what kind of voting machines they were... I just know they weren't Diabold, which is a good thing.

I didn't actually vote for much. I didn't vote for Governor, Lt Governor, US Congress, or US Senate. I would rather vote no confidence for Santorum, Platts, Swan and whoever is running for Lt. Gov. than vote for the only people running. I also didn't vote for state council because I had no idea who any of the people running were. So while I did get my "I Voted" sticker (added to my computer) I didn't really do much voting.

Tomorrow is the Primary

At least in my district.

I'm going to go out and vote... since I don't really have much to do with my time.

I think I'm still a registered Republican, which means I actually get to make a choice for my state senator. The old state senator, Bruce Smith, is retiring after 25 years so we're picking who gets to serve for the next 25 years.

My district is heavily republican. A Democrat is running, but honestly, he's just as bad a choice as the Republicans. Most are running on how opposed they were to the pay raises because Smith actually voted for it... as if it's a real issue.

I like Jay McKiernan's idea about forced 8 year term limits for the state house and senate, but he doesn't have any position on policy save for the general reduction of state government. He probably won't get very far in either pursuit so he's mostly an unknown.

Carl Meiss wants a law that requires everyone in PA to have health care. I'm not sure if that means he wants the state to be required to provide it or if he wants to arrest people who don't have it. He also wants to cut property taxes and raise sales taxes which are worse for the poor.

Mike Wilson wants to cut property taxes and tax incomes for education, which doesn't solve the problem of education disparity. He does say he would like to increase the state contribution to public education that would come from increased sales tax and taxes on gambling.

Scott Perry is a Penn State grad, but that doesn't help him with me. He wants to give districts control over their taxes, including how to tax their inhabitants. He says Philadelphia gets too much infrastructure money and he thinks the citizens should decide when the legislature should get a raise. In 2003 he was convicted of doctoring Department of Environmental Protection discharge monitoring reports... so his chances aren't too great anyway.

The lone Democrat is Laurence Ellsperman. He was upset with the pay raise and that's why he is running. He agrees with McKiernan that there should be an 8 year term limit. But he wants to cut property taxes and raise the sales tax a half a percent. But he wants more standardized testing and to throw money at a monument for veterans of Iraq. He also thinks PA takes too much trash from other states, which is an odd thing to be against.

McKiernan will probably get my vote. He isn't the least bad, but he won't stick around for long, giving someone else a chance in 8 years rather than 25.

Nintendo Takes it in the Teeth

In track it often pays to be in second place. You let the leader set the pace and cut the wind for you. You conserve energy, push at the end, grab the gold and perhaps do a little jig.

I imagine Nintendo spends quite a bit of time staring at their collection of bronze medals. They wonder if they should cut back the research and development budget just a little bit. If you follow video games, you can probably already guess what I'm getting at. The PS3's controller's eery mimicry of the Wii controller.

While Sony and Microsoft slug it out with flashy graphics and saturation marketing campaigns, Nintendo tries now things and pushes the gaming envelope. They were the first to take a flagship 2D title into the 3D world. Mario was 35 in the Virtual Boy long before anyone was even contemplating 3D -granted the Virtual Boy was a trainwreck in terms of profits. They took a chance on a two screen handheld with a touchpad interface and the DS matches or beats the PSP in most markets. Now the Nintendo Wii is based around a motion sensitive controller that is completely foreign to current gamers. Nintendo is the only company that I see actively pushing new ideas and experiences into the video game sphere. Yet it hasn't been a dominate force in years.

Capitalism is terrible at rewarding innovators. The guys who bring new products to market deal with bugs and initial consumer wariness only to be cut down from behind by the second wave; people who fix the initial product's failings and have Marketing budgets instead of R&D budgets. They reap huge profits by standing on the shoulders of people with real balls and imagination.

Don't Look Now...

but there's peace in Darfur...

Well, not quite. What we have is one of many first steps towards peace. Unfortunately, many previous first steps have been on less than solid ground.

A peace treaty was signed by the largest rebel group and the Sudanese government, but if it were that simple, this might have ended 200,000 bodies ago. Two of the smaller rebel groups walked away from the table.

And even if this peace treaty is followed letter by letter, it still leaves quite a few problems. A segment of the population that lives in displacement camps. Prideful government opposition to peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts. A culture that has to deal with the loss of about 450,000 lives.

How do you go about living in a country that condoned genocide? I don't know. The next few weeks are going to be very important, and if the government yields to the UN and lets peacekeepers in, it will be another step towards real peace.


That above is what I would call important news. I don't know too much about Darfur except that it's Bush's Rwanda. The below is a less important note...


Santorum. Not the frothy mix of lube and excrement made in the process of anal intercourse; the offensive one often preceded by the words Senator and Rick. He was one of the Senators behind a bill that sought to buy Alaska for $100 a constituent. It met massive opposition and highlighted Santorum and friends non-existent grasp on reality. This bill offended me.

On Tuesday, Santorum said the $100 check would be "immediate relief." Apparently those of us in PA pay the nations highest gas tax at 31 cents a gallon. I guess immediate tested better than temporary or short-lived or stop-gap in the focus groups.

Santorum wanted to bribe the American people so they would let his oil friends (over $400,000 in oil contributions) drill in Alaska. I could care less about the Alaskan Wildlife Reserve, but a little extra oil isn't going to drive prices down. It isn't going to ease our dependence on foreign oil. All it might do is lessen public support for alternative sources of energy as pro-oil politicians ring the "problem solved" bell.

The money he was bribing us with was gas tax money. 85% of the money goes to our roads. This was our money already. PA already has terrible roads, and he wanted to take money away from them? (Actually our roads are terrible thanks to poor government regulations. Drive over to Maryland and you'll find far better roads at a much smaller relative budget. Our roads are only 6 feet deep, theirs are 8. However, the problems that stem from this lack of regulations require a larger repair budget, so I think my point is still valid.)

An 11% gas tax was not the problem with pump prices.

The only problem that Santorum's bill actually addressed was fuel standards. The bill did give the Department of Transportation authority to raise fuel efficiency standards. It isn't something he's ever supported in the past, but flip-flopping is the new black in Republican circles. It was tied to a bill that had no chance of passing, but he'll be able to campaign on the issue anyway.

A problem that wasn't addressed was obvious price gouging. After Katrina, oil companies saw they could charge more and demand wouldn't fall. Now prices keep going up. Any company found guilty of price gouging now has to pay a fine, but after a very short White House investigation, no guilt was found.

The other problem is "royalty relief" which might require some explaining. You could either read this New York Times article or my awkward summary

A Clinton plan that made sense at $10 a barrel translates to free money at $70 a barrel. Royalty relief is only starting to come into effect and probably didn't have much to do with the recent record profits. When gas was $10 a barrel, it wasn't profitable to explore for oil in federally owned deep sea areas. It takes a long time to set up deep drilling oil rigs, and a lot of them are only now starting to draw oil. Clinton's plan had a price trigger at $35 a barrel; meaning that anything above $35 a barrel was subject to typical royalties. The problem is those price triggers were waived for any project started in '98 and '99. The oil coming from '98 and '99 projects should pay royalties in the amount of 7 billion dollars over the next 5 years. The oil industry is fighting the price triggers for other years which could end up costing the US around 28 billion dollars en total.

Though re-enacting those royalties wouldn't be a permanent solution, it would be far less short term than drilling in Alaska or giving people $100 and shitty road repairs. Of course it (and any other real solution) requires Republicans to act on behalf of the common man and against the oil industry. I wish I could see that happening.

Puppy Punting Pope Ponders Prophylactics

I'd be happy to stop giving religious people a hard time if their bizarre belief stopped killing people.

The Pope is gearing up to announce his momentous decision on whether or not -let me check my notes here –married couples where one partner has AIDS should be allowed to use condoms. My more cynical side is disgusted that nearly five decades after the sexual revolution the Church is just now dangling its pinky toe in the water.

My more pragmatic side recognizes that it took them 350 years to figure out the heliocentric solar system. I assume it took them so much longer to figure that one out because they didn't have access to high speed internet for most of that time. Seriously the Pope is old, but he's wired.

I'm writing this entry now, before a decision is rendered, because I want one thing to be perfectly clear: I don't give a rat's ass what the Pope thinks about condoms. The idea that he is some kind of expert on the science of condoms is laughable. In this digital age I can get to the CDC's website just as easily as I can get to the Pope's. The CDC is a consortium of doctors and scientists – the Pope is an old man steeped in Christian mysticism and ritual. Only in a world of madness and despair would we ever turn to the Pope for guidance on questions of science and practicality.

No, the great irony in this debate is that people waiting with bated breath for the Pope's response are hoping that the Church might finally be calling for a ceasefire in its war against the war against AIDS.

The Church, with an already impressive track record of picking losing horse in important social battles – slavery, universal suffrage, the holocaust, multiculturalism, ect… - does everything in its power to undermine the fight against AIDS in Africa; using the pulpit to decry the evils of condoms. They’re not just kicking puppies, they’re kicking Lassie as she tries desperately to drag Timmy from the well.

How the Church manages to maintain its moral credibility is a mystery to me. And by mystery I mean “I actually know exactly why but this post is getting long as it is.” My point is that the Pope heads up the slowest moving, least relevant philosophical body in the world. In an age where information and communication moves at the speed of light the world is still taking its cues from a group of men hopelessly dated and entirely irrelevant.

The very design of the Church is problematic – the Bishops recommend new members to the Pope. He appoints the Bishops and promotes some to Cardinal, the group that elects the pope. No other system is as perfectly designed to ensure leaders be selected from an entrenched status quo witht eh possible exception of America's "two party system."

As long as the world looks to these men for leadership, it will never be fully committed to the battle against AIDS.

If tomorrow the Pope decides married couples where one partner has AIDS can use condoms, bear this in mind: His opinion is a dime store novelty; given profile, not for its weight, but because it signals a shift in thousands of years of dogma.

The real war against AIDS is being fought by humanists and scientists.

If you want to help, you can start here.

Army Short on PR Victories

So I'm reading the NYT on-line and I come across this article. It claims that the Army found a set of hilarious out-takes from the newest Zarqawi video. I got all excited and went to snag a link to the video to put up here. Bumbling terrorists, I can think of nothing better - not to mention that PR victories like this are the kind of thing that we really need in an insurgent war.

I did find it and you can grab it here. I found it a bit of a let down. If this is really the best the Army can do to discredit Zarqawi we're in for a long haul.

Sorry this post wasn't more patriotic, I honestly had intended for it to be.

Kiss Kiss Bye Bye Internet

What could possibly unite Moveon.org and the Gun Owners of America? You might think the answer would be rabid grizzly bears assaulting a group of dyslexic children…

But apparently it’s net neutrality.

About a month ago, the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet (see, already boring most people) rejected a proposed amendment to guarantee your personal photo blog the same bandwidth treatment as Google or eBay. More specifically it would have stopped telecommunication companies from charging content providers more based on their size or content.

They say they have no intention of doing what this amendment would have prevented, but they are rather reluctant to have those words written into some kind of legal document.

We’ve grown up on the internet. The people who created it have weighed in on the issue but most of us who speak fluent internet, be it in buzzwords or markup language, are too lazy to care about the issue. “The internet can’t change” think they. They think wrong.

But maybe you don’t.

Maybe you’re thinking, “wait… amendment? Amendment to what?” Good, you’re paying attention. It was an amendment to a bill that gives telecoms (Verizon, Comcast, AT&T) free reign when it comes to deciding what to do with their monopolistic empires. What they want is the ability to do is charge the Amazons of the internet more for using more bandwidth. But says you, “companies such as Google already pay for the bandwidth they use.” (Finacial Times [requires trial subscription.]) You’re right. Can anybody say logical fallacy?

We already pay for the bandwidth we use. Charging more simply because a website is large and can afford it is unethical.

But I still hope.

The bill only passed the House subcommittee and hasn’t come before the whole body quite yet. With the major internet players making a fuss and the possibility of Financial Sector involvment, the Republican majority house is looking at a war between big business on one side and big business on the other; the new free market internet kids and the old guys out of Monopoly with the monocles and the top hats.

Then there’s the Senate, more susceptible to national public opinion and fronting a bi-partisan bill that sides with logic and reason. Well, nothing that comes out of the Senate is fully on the side of logic and reason, but that bill favors free markets and competition on the internet rather than windfalls for the internet oil tycoons.

Thank Olympia Snowe (R Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D North Dakota) for being the senators least behind the technology curve (or at least having interns that they listen to.)

You may be wondering what logic the telecoms use to convince people they aren’t just money hungry beasts. Some are arrogant and think people won’t notice the inherent logical fallacy, saying “for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts.” Edward Whitacre (AT&T CEO) to Business Week.

Other more market savy telecom spokesmen say they need more money to pay for fiber-optic lines so they can distribute movies faster. I say “Fair enough.” Asking companies to pay more when they use fiber optics lines makes sense.

Asking companies to pay before they’re installed does not.

If the telecoms see potential profit in fiber optics lines then they should build them. If they don’t have enough money (a laughable concept) then they should get venture capitalists to help them. Any investment is a risk and it is unacceptable to expect the people you intend to sell your service to… to front the money for the service.