Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
-
The Pirate Bay is A-OK.
Anybody else remember when the recording industry embarrassed itself by getting Swedish police to raid all of the servers owned by The Pirate Bay and their host, only to (surprise!) not find anything illegal?
When the site was back up two days later, they got a surge of new users, and their little intellectual property reform think tank (Piratbyrån) and political party (Piratpartiet) became wildly popular as symbols of privacy and liberty in the digital age enough that they’ve qualified for more than $100,000 for a youth political program and are expected by many to get multiple seats in their parliament. So it was basically the Streisand Effect times a million.
Well, here we go again!
-
I feel sorry for other plumbers.
If I was made politically famous and artificially relevant like Joe the Plumber, I’d probably use the opportunity to ask important people about about things that I felt were pressing. The idea would be to do some good by highlighting important, complicated issues and getting to the bottom of them. And maybe that’s what Joe the Plumber’s intention is.
But then again, he’s just come out and basically said, “I think the media should be banned from reporting on wars.” Hear it from his own lips for yourself at about 1:18 in the video, and when he explains, see if you can spot the flaws.
Here’s the transcript in case you can’t believe your ears, along with the obvious problems I have with his explanation.
-
Brief thoughts on the election.
I’m pleased that Obama is going to be our next president, and I was also very happy to hear that Tanaka will be the next mayor of Coronado. However, I was disappointed that Prop 5 failed and that Prop 8 passed. I think that within a few decades, we will be embarassed about Prop 8 in particular.
As for the youth voter turnout, I was a little sad to hear that it only went from 17% to 18%, but I think I know why. I believe that it’s still very confusing for college students, who are very often away from their counties and thus unable to vote on election day unless they re-registered, got absentee ballots in time, or knew to ask for a provisional ballot (which still might not even be enough to let them vote). I was an absentee voter myself, but I still got to see a lot of my peers realize on election day that they couldn’t vote. So I think it’s a lack of knowledge and fundamental convenience, not an abundance of apathy or laziness.
Anyway, like I said over on Facebook already, I offer my congratulations to the winners, my condolences to the losers, and my respect to everybody willing to be civil and work together.
-
Ideas for verifiable electronic voting.
Elections are coming up, and once again, lots of places will be using touchscreen machines. Many of the exact same machines were proven to be compromised in 2004 and 2006, and one of the main companies, Diebold, was taken to court in California and eventually settled for millions of dollars and changed its name.
Anybody who knows me knows that I love technology though. I think that the current electronic systems are terrible (enough that I voted early as a permanent mail ballot voter), but I also think that they offer the potential of having elections that are more fair and verifiable than old fashioned hand-counting. Here are my ideas for how to do it.
-
How I plan to vote.
This is how I’m thinking about voting on the upcoming November ballot measures here in California. I’m making this public because I invite your opinions and constructive discussion, and in particular, I welcome well-reasoned counterarguments. If I’m going to have my mind changed, it better be done before the votes are cast!
For the propositions, I used the Voter Information Pamphlet and Ballotpedia together to make my decisions.
Loading ...
