Year: 2006

We got the House and probably the Senate. Ah, the world looks different. And for the kicker, Rumsfeld resigned. Yippee!

Random election thoughts:

* I shook the ’04 curse. Although to be fair, I was mildly buzzed at most. Maintain baby, maintain.

* Anyone who voted for the independent candidate in Virginia is clearly retarded. You knew going in how tight it would be and that you are one of the few battleground states. To simply piss your vote away is unforgiveable. Your punishment is a 3-day lecture from Ralph Nader.

* Rick Santorum ended with a classy concession speech. And he has done a lot of good for Pennsylvania. But sorry, you are the very stereotype of a conservative moralizing idealogue. Out you go! Your punishment is having your family picture roundly mocked.

* Allen may not challenge the recount. All kinds of funny tricks with voter turnout and suppression went on. If there’s a recount, all that gets investigated. Hmm… losing control of the Senate, but retiring with some dignity and freedom, or barely possibly tying the Senate at a deadlock and going to jail… tough one. My vote is for gallant concession.

* You read it here first. There will be turncoat Rebublicans who suddenly become Democrats. Both at the local and national level. There were already hints Chaffee was going to do this, now he is saying it publicly.

To sum up: I’m looking forward to the next two years.

Yes Jabley, I intend to get drunk before checking results.

I’m gonna shake that ’04 curse!

Dennis Leary and Lenny Clarke’s hilarious guest-broadcasting at the Red Sox game. Lots of great ethnic humor, and see how far Mel Gibson’s stock has fallen.

Watch a woman being animated from the inside out (I reccomend the 4x button)

How not to read a book

An enormous map of Springfield (from The Simpsons). Someone spent way way too much time on this. That’s a good thing.

Forget whether what you believe is right — test how self-consistent they are (I was pleased by my 20% score)

Scott Adams cures himself of Spasmodic Dysphonia, the first ever cure. (This is a serious piece, not Dilbert comedy).

This essay was written by his brother. Very angry and touching at the same time.

Charles Murray (the man who helped to bring you The Bell Curve and similar discredited attempts at science) brings you some more foolishness today in The New York Times editorial page. His column regards the recent law that tries to make online gambling much harder. It contains this pip:

In the short term, this law all by itself could add a few more Democratic Congressional seats in the fall elections. We are talking about a lot of people (an estimated 23 million Americans gamble online) who are angry enough to vote on the basis of this one issue, and they blame Republicans.

Please. He might as well have said, “We’re talking about a lot of people (Over 200 million people have heard of the game of poker), and they all hate Republicans enough to declare war and bring down the Republic.” 23 million people represents almost 8% of the US population, and almost 20% of voters. Reading this you might think that 20% of the voters have actually swung into the Democrat column. You’d think we’d hear about such a huge landslide change in the electorate like this. No? Hm, maybe 23 million isn’t the right number, let’s dig a little deeper.

How many of those 23 million are not active gamblers (one bet last year shouldn’t count)?
How many of them aren’t eligible voters?
How many of them even know about the new law?
How many of them aren’t particularly mad because they know how to get around the new law?
How many of them aren’t particularly mad because they believe it’s a good law?*

What’s left is people who are genuinely annoyed by this. Of those…

How many are so mad, it overwhelms any other political ideas they have? (I sincerely hope the answer is very low.)
How many of them ever vote? (If the answer is yes, doesn’t that imply they do have some pre-existing political ideas?)
How many of them actually blame the Republicans (the vote passed overwhelmingly by both parties, and was part of a big security bill)?
How many of them already vote Republican (so their vote doesn’t change)?
How many of them are in districts that are heavily tilted to either side (so their vote doesn’t matter)?

I don’t know what number comes out of the other end, but my guess is that it’s insignificant. Charles Murray is an idiot.

*I myself play the lottery once in a while, even though I think they’re immoral.

Today is October 15th. Tonight, while having dinner at a restaurant, they played Christmas music. On October 15th.

To make it worse, we were eating at a Chinese buffet! Somehow I don’t think the owners religious beliefs were influencing the programming decisions.

If I had a business, I would have a big banner outside that said, “No Christmas music until December 15th. Shop in peace!”

Whenever there is a holiday, there is no garbage pickup. But we never actually miss a day.

One of our pickup days is Tuesday (yes, one of our pickup days. I like DeKalb county).
If the holiday is Monday, pickup is normal. If it’s Tuesday, they pick it up Wednesday. And of course, if it’s Wednesday, pickup is normal.

On Wednesday, the garbagemen have to pick up garbage for twice as many people, all the Tuesday and Wednesday pickups. They have to work twice as much.

So how is that a day off? Imagine if you got July 4th off, but then had to work a 16-hour shift on July 5th. I think they’re getting robbed.

Just read it.

Note that guilt and innocence is irrelevant here. We got rid of habeus corpus, so there’s no reason to bother finding out.

An amazing classical piano improv, from a 14-year old. Goldie Hawn picks out 5 notes, she plays a beautiful and complex piece based on it. (Go to timepoint 16:40) (This was referenced from a Freakonomics post.)

Patriots Test

Great artwork with cutouts of ordinary 8 ½ x 11” paper

Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn analyze The Fellowship of the Ring

Well, this is bizzare. Lifesize cut outs of our soldiers being used by their loved ones to make them feel less lonely. Or something. Pretty freaky.

Connect any two things. It’s like six degrees of separation with no limitations.

Earth’s size, movin’ on up

Take the Morals Test (This is part of a Harvard study.)

Belief O Matic! What religion should you be?

Strangest vehicles ever

Rapping lyrics transcribed (hilarious)

This is a great magic trick, online. It’s clever, but with a few minutes thinking, you can figure out how they do it. Or at least make a pretty good guess how it’s not done. Don’t worry, that puts you way up on some people. Check out the comments by other trying to figure out how it works.

For those who don’t know, the GOP has been gunning for some time to require photo IDs and create other barriers to voting. In a previous post, I came out for photo ID. Now, I’m not so sure. There are a few reasons.

One, I’ve become convinced that many citizens don’t have photo ID for perfectly valid reasons. The elderly, poor, and rural often don’t have them. Two, the political motivations have become more and more blatant. Consider this recent article.

“You have to show ID for almost everything to rent a Blockbuster movie” said Mr. Pearce, a Republican in the State House of Representatives. “Nobody has the right to cancel my vote by voting illegally. This is about political corruption.”

See, here’s the thing. There have been virtually zero cases of voter fraud, of “voting illegally”. This is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. So why is the emphasis being put here, instead of say, on electronic voting machines. (Computer scientists have demonstrated how elections could be stolen without anyone knowing. This is not to say it’s been done, but there is absolutely no way of knowing. Scary.)

And then there is the obvious codeword, “Cancel”. Why do all the Republicans who talk about this speak of canceling votes? Who says that these people will all vote for the opposite as you? It’s as if Republicans are for it because the people without formal photo ID are overwhelming Democratic. It’s like they’ve all been told to use the codeword “cancel” instead of using their own words. It’s like they are ignoring all the serious problems with elections for trivial little ones that favor their party. Why, it’s almost as if this is a partisan ploy, designed for partisan purposes!

Anyhow, here’s my real thoughts. People shouldn’t need voter ID cards, they should have minimal civic knowledge cards. If it comes to cancelling votes, I don’t like the idea of my vote being potentially cancelled out by people who just don’t know the basic facts. I don’t mind voters believing things I don’t or having different priorities. That’s just democracy in action. But what about the people who can’t name a senator, or how many branches of government there are, or what century the Declaration of Independence was signed in, or vote for candidates because they have good hair, or have the vaguest conception of what the office they are helping to determine actually does. That’s the crime.

Today David Brook’s contributed one of the most dishonest Op-Ed’s I’ve ever seen. It’s a case study in why his writing is despised by so many.

Worse, more and more people are falling for the Grand Delusion — the notion that if we just leave the extremists alone, they will leave us alone. On the right, some believe that if we just stop this Wilsonian madness of trying to introduce democracy into the Arab world, we can return to an age of stability and balance. On the left, many people can’t seem to fathom an enemy the U.S. isn’t somehow responsible for. Others think the entire threat has been exaggerated by Karl Rove for the sake of political scaremongering.

This “Grand Delusion” would be a serious problem. If it actually existed. There is not one politician of any importance who believes we can just leave the extermists alone. Not one. This Grand Delusion is about as real as the idea that if you eat pop rocks and then drink a coke, you’ll die. The whole idea is a complete lie and Brooks knows it.

Back in early 2004, I decided to start bike-riding again. My bike had seen better days, and I brought it to REI for a tuneup. Bought a few things for it also. Ended up with about $300 worth of stuff.

I noticed they had a membership card that got you 15% off. That sounded good to me, that’s a cool $45 in my pocket. You might think that would just ring it up at the register, and end up with a $255 bill to pay. That’s how it works at Home Depot for instance. No.

Let’s look at some of the barriers that REI put in the way of my getting that $45.

• You have to get a membership card. They give you a temporary one at first.
• You have to make the purchase with your membership card, it appears on your statement. This means you have to give them all kinds of information about who you are and where you live and such so they can bill you properly.
• You don’t get your money off at the register. You don’t get it in a monthly statement once they confirm you’ve made the purchase. You wait until the end of the year to get it. Nice float they get on that.
• Then, you don’t get it at the end of the year. Now what consumer is keeping track of that $45? At the end of the year who notices that there was an REI check due? And when is the end of the year… December? January? April 15th?
• Incredibly, I had all the paperwork, and called them about it — you have to actually request the refund. Imagine that — I wonder what the attrition rate is of people never claiming their discount. So sometime in 2005 I called them.
• I missed the window for 2005, I had to call again in 9 months.
• I finally made the claim, I was informed that half the stuff I bought was not eligible for some reason or other. It’s been two years by now, I’m hardly in a position to throw facts around, but I’m sure there was no disclaimer or notice when I actually bought the stuff.

The other day, I recieved my check. Two years later, for $17. Whoopee.