Voting rights

Why is districting done by judges or politicians? Shouldnt it be done by psephologists, demographers, and statisticians? Isnt there a constitutionally optimum, scientific, way to do it?

Solution for sign-rage engendered by political signs on front lawns

Print-off some sheets of stickers with thumb-up ‘like’ and thumb-down ‘dislike’ icons.  When you encounter, eg, a Tom LaBonge sign, peel-off a ‘dislike’ sticker and affix it to the sign.  Do it with finesse so subsequent passersby can easily tote the totals.

Property-rights rage engendered in lawn owners?   Dont worry.  1st amendment political speech rights trump virtually all other rights.

testing media

Parkman/Westerly public stairs closing

Click the below link to see a PDF supplied by Tom LaBonge’s office.   It contains the paperwork for closing the Parkman/Westerly public stairs in 1990.

Public Stairs

Voting in Silverlake (part 2)

In Silverlake I have to go to an Atwater/Larchmont masonic temple to vote.     So I was not surprised that the first pollworker couldn’t find my name.   Finally he asked, “Jeffrey Van”? looking up hopefully.  ”No, I’m Ronald and the last name is two words, van and Ammers.”   He looked some more, then threw up his hands in despair.  This attracted the attention of the pollworker sitting to his right. “Could I see your drivers license”, she asked me.   I showed it to her but she couldn’t find my name either.   So she gave me a provisional ballot.   As I was filling it out, the lady to *her* right asked what was wrong.   She mustve been a supervisor because she decided to look herself and immediately found my name.   She instructed the first pollworker, the man two seats to her left, to give me a ballot.   The lady in the middle took my provisional ballot and laboriously wrote ‘VOID’ on it.  The man, using a ruler, carefully crossed out my name on the ledger before him.

I didnt see any voting booths so I figured I should use what looked like a voting desk.  It would have been awfully easy to cheat and copy one of my neighbors. But my left neighbor looked like one of the 3 republicans who live in SilverLake, so I thought better of it.   I always liked Gerry Brown, so I voted for him.   Somebody had given me a list of how to vote on judges and I did that.  Then there were the propositions.  I knew to vote yes on 19 and did that too.  I don’t remember too much else, it was hot and cramped and the light wasn’t too good.  When I was finished, I extracted my ballot from the multiple choice test machine and carefully backed away from my voting desk.  I looked to see who my right neighbor was voting for.   Gerry Brown.   Good, Silverlake seems to like Moon-beam.

I turned around. A young man slouching in a lounge chair nodded towards a machine in front of him. I assumed that’s where I should stick my ballot. It went in making a solid sound.  The machine was in good working order.  I waited for it to spit out a receipt, but none was forthcoming.  I looked inquiringly at the slouched young man. “That’s it.” he said. “That’s it? I don’t get a receipt?”. “Nope, that’s it”, he smiled the way youngsters often do when they have to deal with old people.

Voting in Silverlake (part 1):

http://parabanger.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/voting-in-silverlake/

Sam harris

Finally heard him on air talk. Very disappointing. What does he mean by thriving or wellbeing. Why is it obvious that rape is immoral? Giving birth is painful, by comparison how painful is it to be raped? What do people born of rape think?

What makes it obvious that forcing women to wear burkas compromises their well being more than forcing people to wear helmets or use seat belts compromises their wellbeing?

Walking Man’s offramp

To KPCC’s Offramp.

You neglected to point out that if the Dr Feelgood allegations are true, they can also been seen as evidence Dr Abrams treated addicts as patients, not as criminals.

But he wasnt that heroic.   Marc Abrams was likely just fighting depression.

At some point in his life, ca 1980, he steeled himself, put one foot in front of the other and moved to Silverlake, opening a simple low-income clinic nearby.  He brooked no distractions.   If patients were liars or malingerers he hardly noticed.  He did his job, he paid his taxes, and he walked.

He walked, reading newspapers in the bicycle lane and courting a disaster…which never came.   Instead, Walking Man became a Silverlake icon.

When by July 2010 he couldnt take it anymore, he committed suicide.

p2p FB

One big problem (among many) with FB is “What happens when FB goes down? ”    It’s happened before and I predict a 24 hr outage before 2015.

A p2p FB is what is needed. Everyone has their own little server with their own little network of friends. Such a thing can never go down and it is hugely redundant so even if some nodes go down, the network is not much impaired.

Each person has a complete database of all their friends’ info (bio, blogs, pictures, videos, etc). Each person has a window that would be like the wall you have in FB where all your friend’s craps scrolls down the screen. But instead of your friends’ crap going to a central server and from there to your wall, your friends’ crap only goes to their friends’ walls. There is no central server,

With a p2p FB, besides there being no central server that can go down, there is no central server that knows everything about everybody and that can take advantage of that to the detriment of everybody on the system.   A p2p FB would be an ACLU/Electronic Frontier-compliant social network.

Wikipedia says:

Peer-to-peer social networks
A hybrid of web-based social networks, instant messaging technologies and peer-to-peer connectivity and file sharing, peer-to-peer social networks generally allow users to share blogs, files (especially photographs) and instant messages. Some examples are imeem, SpinXpress, Bouillon, Wirehog and Soulseek. Also, Groove, Collanos, WiredReach and Kerika have similar functionality, but with more of a work-based, collaboration bias.

But these seem to be mostly music sharing and work-collaboration sites. Diaspora was supposed to be a FB p2p, but it seems to be flaking out. NING had the potential but it’s gone commercial with subscriptions and advertising and it has a centralized database. Why isnt there a genuine free p2p social network site?

Voting in Silverlake

I voted yesterday at the local Masonic temple. Everyone was very helpful. But I didn’t really succeed in making my vote count, I don’t think.

I had been alerted that i should vote by a city booklet for democrats. From this i assumed that i had for some reason registered as a democrat even tho I hate democrats almost as much as republicans. However at the Masonic temple I received a libertarian ballot. That made more sense and i didnt question it.

I proceeded to vote in the lonesome booth dedicated to peace and freedom and libertarians. I noticed that My ballot had both parties on it and even asked a poll worker if it would be alright if i voted for both parties. I was told that my ballot would be thrown out if i did, so I voted straight for only one of them.

When I was finished somebody pointed to a machine i should stick my ballot in so it would be counted. I did and the machine immediately spat it out. A helpful poll worker told me to try it the other way around. I did and the machine spat it out again. We tried all the ways to stick it in but it always spat it out, so the pollworker said I’d have to go back and vote again using a new ballot.

Obediently I did as told and then returned to the machine and stuck it in. This time it spat out two ballots, mine and the previous voter. The helpful pollworker thought this odd and he quickly stuck the previous voter’s ballot back In. it stayed inside. Then we tried all the permutations of sticking mine in again, but it always spit it out again. So finally he had me sign some forms and he put my defective ballot along with the forms into an envelope and gave me a receipt and I was done.

When I came home and told my wife she mentioned that she herself was registered as a democrat twice at the temple, once for each last name she’s had. I mentioned to her that I was told I was the first person to vote libertarian at the polling place. Then we drank some wine and forgot about it.

But just now I remembered it again. In the silverlake masonic temple There were 3 booths for democrats, one for republicans, and one for ‘whatever else’.

Obama as the GOOD Manchurian Candidate

Obama is not really American, he’s too cosmopolitan.    He has seen the world.   He has a background like no other US president.    He is the paradigm of US presidents, a man devoted to the meaning of the Constitution, not a man devoted to a particular land,  people, or ideology.