Category: Uncategorized

Open Source voting architecture

I would love to see an open design, open source, development of a voting infrastructure. I know security nut geeks would flock to this idea. I’m almost surprised I have heard no one advocating this. Why the hell not?

If that wouldn’t lay to rest concerns about election machinery going around on the net, I don’t know what would.

Further, that would be a major boon for the open source movement.

Maybe it’s the anti-authoritarian [anti-establishment?] stripe behind open source. Hmmm.

[see also]

to keep in mind, what we want v what we want to be

A long time ago, when talking with it somehow came up that from time to time she had difficulty determining whether her attraction to a person was admiration, a desire to be like that person, or attraction, a desire to have sex with that person. I know that applies to me more often than I think is good. All those beefy guys with the hot bodies. Maybe if I spent more time at the gym, and less time drooling over them….

I’ve noticed that the more I workout, the more my desire for what I want to be, and what I actually am converge. But given its rapidity, it’s got to be due to the mutability of desire. And a general increase in self-acceptance so long as I’m working out. Perhaps it’s part of Dean Ornish’s maxim to love one’s body more as a functional unit, than an aesthetic one.

prediction and justification

So, for alot of us, it felt like 51% of the US electorate took a giant steaming dump on our values system on tuesday. And there’s some truth to that, though it’s more indirect than you may think.

This triumphal “values voter” that is splashed everywhere is dramatically overstated. And that’s something people ought to remember.

It was 22% of the motives, a bare plurality. But even more important than that is a little tidbit from psych: Humans are great at determining _what_ they will do. They suck at explaining _why_ they will do it (and presumably why they did it). I suspect the fact that Bush’s voters didn’t know the issues nearly as well as Kerry’s voters is more an indication that they didn’t care about them, rather than that they were underinformed. Asking what issue led you to vote for which candidate (especially if it’s multiple choice) is about like asking if you’ve stopped beating your wife: it’s loaded with assumptions. So not all of them deliberately took a steaming dump on our value system, many just didn’t care about it, or felt it was a minor consideration. (This is a massive generalization, I realize there are party loyalists on both sides who probably cast their vote in spite of their better judgement, and people who legitimately know, and agree with Bush’s policies, plus single issue pro-life (so long as it’s our babies, and not the citizens of other countries) voters, etc).

I’d like to back these claims up with facts, but I’m short on time so take it with a grain of salt, according to your natural inclinations.

There’s also the question of what constitutes a valid source of information for whom. Some people point to the bible as meaningful, while I, in heated annoyance derided it as a book of fairy tales (it is a little bit more than that, but not much, and again with the short on time.) Meanwhile, I view newssites (nytimes), deductive reasoning, and a few other things as valuable, while many who think the bible is solid fact would rationalize that away as liberal bias and irrelevant, incomprehensible wool-gathering.

reframing gay marriage

Let me propose a hypothesis to you. Most of the people who voted to outlaw gay marriage don’t really care about gay marriage at all. They care about their own lives and the rising divorce rate, resulting from the tumult and chaos that is part of our changing society. The thing is, even if homos didn’t exist, society would continue to change and they’d still be unhappy. Divorce rates are high for totally unrelated reasons. A successful response would be listening to the concerns that people are voicing, and how the Republicans successfully sold people on it, then designing something that actually addresses people’s concerns rather than resisting the proposed Republican “solution”.

Talk about the rising divorce rate, and how it can be reduced. Say, mandatory waiting times for marriage with offers of education or counseling. Then point out how outlawing gay marriage will hurt straight people by creating unstable marriages as gay people deperately try to conform, until they can’t take it anymore, and end up killing themselves or divorcing their spouse.

Our fundamental values are right.

Ranting about the stupidity/malice/inattention/thoughtlessness of the American public accomplishes nothing except piss people off. They are real people. They matter.

The failure to identify and address people’s concerns is where the Kerry/Edwards ticket lost. It’s not about having the answers. It’s about providing people with a warm fuzzy. On the bread and circuses front, the dems need more circuses.

do I stay or do I go now

Advantages to staying:

  • Maybe I can make a difference in the way things turn out.
  • Much less of a headache.

Advantages to going (to one of a few industrialized nations, most prominently Canada):

  • better educated citizenry
  • gay marriage
  • less drug paranoia.
  • healthier economies
  • universal health care
  • better development of alternatives to petro
  • better development of alternatives to car
  • more (local) environmental conservation

Just a few thoughts, time for class, back in a few.