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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
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10:01 pm
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Believe it or not, for someone as interested in political theory as I am, I am surprisingly uninterested in political races, they just don't do it for me, partly because I assume everything that comes out of a politician's mouth during a campaign is bullshit, or at least only incidentally true. That being said, I've noticed two things about the Democratic primary that I think are worth noting.
The first one is that the primary system is seriously broken. Whether or not you think that Clinton should drop out at this point because it is unlikely that she will win, you have to admit two things. First, although unlikely, it is still entirely possible that she could win, and not just because the Superdelegates decide to overturn the "popular" vote.
Right now, Obama has 1,487 pledged delegates and Clinton has 1,331. This is a difference of 156 delegates or 5% of those that have been assigned so far. There still 417 delegates from 7 states and 2 territories that have yet to be assigned. While it is unlikely that Clinton will catch up, it would take the sort of wins in every state that we just haven't seen in this election, it certainly could happen. Nonetheless, there have been calls for the past month, or more, for Clinton to drop out. Perhaps she should, but nonetheless, this means that would mean that, even in a close race such as this one, if your are an voter in one of the states or territories that vote in the last 6th of the primary, you shouldn't expect your votes to matter. If I lived in Oregon or Guam, I would be pissed about this.
My solutions: Have a couple starter primaries in small states, as we do now with Iowa and New Hampshire, then move on to a single super-primary where everyone else gets to vote. This would give dark horse candidates a chance to prove themselves in a few cheaper primaries in order to raise support for the rest of the race, the current justification for having the primary system the way it is now, but at the same time, it would mean that every state can actually matter in the primary.
My second observation is how Obama supporters are looking at this race. At times, there have been suggestions that the primary be changed midstream to give Clinton a better chance to win. Most notably some people have suggested either seating Michigan and Florida delegates based on their previous votes, possibly with do-over elections in those states to account for the fact that the votes might have come out differently if voters knew that their votes would matter (and if Obama was on the ballot in MI). I have also heard some rumblings about counting caucuses differently. These calls are usually made on the bases that barring MI and FL delegates, or the structure of caucuses are unfair or undemocratic. Obama supporters tend to respond to these suggestions by saying that these were the rules of the game when Clinton got into it, and they shouldn't be changed now. There is definitely something to this, and I agree for the most part.
What throws this off though is the superdelegates and the chance that they may throw the election to Clinton despite Obama winning the most delegates through primaries and caucuses. Obama voters say that this would be unfair and undemocratic. The problem is that, like not seating MI and FL delegates and fully counting caucuses, this too is part of the rules; Obama knew that superdelegates would play a part in this primary the same way Clinton knew that MI and FL delegates wouldn't be seated and that some states would have caucuses. You can't have it both ways. Either Obama and his supporters have to live with the fact that superdelegates may change the result of this primary, or they have to accept that the rules can change midstream. I place the blame on Obama supporters here because I haven't heard the same rabid objections by Clinton supporters about complaints about superdelegages as I have by Obama supporters about MI, FL and the caucuses.
My solution: Don't change the rules midstream on either account, Clinton and her supporters have to live with the fact that MI and FL don't count and caucuses are democratically cheesy at best, Obama and his supporters have to live with the fact that superdelegates are part of the process.
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(show me that you care)
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| Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
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2:49 am - What MP3 player should I get?
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I'm pretty sure that I lost my mp3 player, which basically sucks. I was out at the movies tonight and I heard something fall out of my jacket pocket, but everything seemed accounted for and I didn't see anything on the floor. I originally thought that it was my lighter, but i found that in my pocket. As I was on my way home on the subway, I realized that I had probably brought my mp3 player with me, but that it wasn't in my pocket, so this is what I must have lost. When I got home, this was confirmed, when it was not where I might have left it. I called the theater, but unsurprisingly, it hadn't been left in the lost and found.
The end result is that I'm going to get a new mp3 player. As long as I'm getting one though, I would like to upgrade a bit. Basically what I'm looking for is something like the iTouch, except not from Apple, because I'm of the impression that anything you buy from Apple has a 25% "coolness" surcharge, and I'm just not that interested in being hip.
My criteria are basically these:
-8GB+ of memory
-Wifi compatability
-A web browser that is comparable to that on my laptop (i.e. will let me see real versions of webpages, including flash)
-Something that isn't going to create a huge bulge in my pocket
If it doesn't require that you only add proprietary applications, that is a bonus as well.
Also, as this is the second mp3 player to fall out of my pocket, if anyone has a good mechanism for preventing this, I would appreciate the suggestion.
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(15 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Friday, January 25th, 2008
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3:06 pm - How can you justify the cost of legal bills?
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I am currently in the process of writing a bill for a client that I have been doing work for. Since November, I have done about 100 hours of work on this case, which is an Art. 78 employment discrimination case where we are attempting to compel his employer to provide him with certain accommodations that may allow him to continue working there. We bill out at $275/hr (keep in mind that I get about 1/10 that per hour).
This means the bill is going to be for almost $30,000, this guy will get accommodations that might allow him to perform his job to a level that is satisfactory. He makes about $20k per year before taxes and is in his 40s. This bill isn't even for the entire case, it is for me to research his case, interview a few witnesses from whom we needed affidavits, and draft a Reply and Memorandum of Law.
It seems ridiculous to me. To top it off, people call up all the time looking for an attorney to help them with a $5,000 case. We would probably bill them more than that just to deal with the pleadings. At the same time, many of these people are people who have legitimate gripes. A recent phone call over a $5,000 case was almost certainly a winning case, but I had to scare her off by telling her how much it would cost for us to even write an angry letter to the defendant.
How is it possible to justify fees like this? I certainly can't. I wish I could offer to do a crappy job on this stuff for some clients, which would cut the bills down significantly (along with their chances of winning) but that would never fly with my boss and stands a good chance of getting me disbarred. This is one thing that I miss about working for a firm that solely worked for giant insurance companies. There, I didn't mind when we had to send out a bill for $30,000. Here, we're billing real people.
P.S. The time it took for me to write this is not going on my time sheet, just in case anyone was concerned.
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(7 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Sunday, October 21st, 2007
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11:39 am - Jafar was most likely a Christian European
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Although it was widely criticized by Muslims when it came out, the Disney movie Aladdin actually is one of the few movies where a Middle Eastern, presumably Muslim hero faces off against a European, possibly Christian villain.
Based on the titles of the various characters in the movie, the movie was likely set in the Ottoman Empire. In particular, Jafar's title of "grand vizier" at least originated in, and was pretty much exclusive to the top minister of the Ottoman Empire. However, despite holding such a high rank in a Muslim government, Grand Viziers, like most other officials in the Ottoman Empire were not Turkish or Arab, and certainly not born Muslim. Instead, non-Muslim, usually European Christian children living in the Ottoman Empire were drafted through a form of "tax" called the "Devsirme." These children were then raised by the state to either hold civil office or to become "Janissaries," a type of elite soldier in the Ottoman Empire. It was actually illegal for Muslim parents to volunteer their children for this program. Additionally, although many of these children eventually chose to convert to Islam, they were legally allowed to keep the religion of their parents, again often Christianity.
As such, Jafar, as a Grand Vizier, was most likely of European, probably from the Balkins, and possibly Christian. And of course the good guys in the story, definitely the Sultan and Jasmine and likely Aladdin, were Muslim Turks.
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(6 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Monday, August 20th, 2007
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2:28 pm
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As some of you might know, I'm currently looking to get a new job and move to Brooklyn or Queens. Part of this is figuring out how much I need to be making so that I don't get evicted and starve to death. To date, I have little experience dealing with any bills other than my (sizable) student loan bills. I know some of the people who read this already live in these boroughs, or at least are already living on their own, so I'm hoping someone can give me some advice.
My question is how much do you think you need to be making to live relatively comfortably in that area. I'm not looking to be able to afford $100 meals or anything, but I'd like to be able to afford to occasionally go see a movie or go out drinking and not have to be digging through my couch for spare change to try to pay the rent.
Thanks for any advice.
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(2 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Thursday, May 3rd, 2007
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12:24 am
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Tonight, the Daily Show did a "report" on colleges that have gotten rid of their Native American team names and mascots. I really do not understand the drive behind this.
It seems to me that team names are chosen because there is something inspiring about the name. This is why half the high schools in this country are named the Eagles (which is at least seen as a noble powerful animal) and why its funny for the schools team in South Park to be named the Cows (not generally something people try to be like). And it of course teams don't just pick animals as their team names, plenty of teams are named after humans: the 49ers, the Celtics, the Pirates, the Rangers, the Cowboys, the Vikings. All of these being groups that have attributes people would want to aspire to. It would seem that having a team named after your group would be a good thing.
Furthermore, even when team names apply to an ethnic group, it seems that no one minds. I certainly am not offended by the Yankees, although as a life long northerner, and American, I am most likely a Yankee. You don't hear many Dutch or New Yorkers up in arms about the Knicks. I haven't even seen a single Irish person complain about the Celtics despite the fact that their mascot is clearly the Irish equivalent of blackface.
I can almost see how Native American groups may be offended by the Reds or Redskins, since it is might be seen as a racial slur, but I really don't understand why something like the Florida Seminoles would be offensive.
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(3 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Tuesday, April 24th, 2007
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11:31 pm - Bush is looking a gift horse in the mouth
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I was listening to the news on the way home, and I realized that the Republicans seem to be winning the rhetorical fight over Iraq funding. Bush has presented his power to veto the Iraq funding bill as "proof" that the Democrats are just playing politics with this issue, as if they know that Bush will get his funding no matter what (following his veto) and they are just using this bill to give a nod to their anti-war constituents.
What struck me was that this bill does not work in the way normal bills work. If the Democrats passed a bill banning handguns or drastically raising CAFE standards without enough votes to override a veto, those might be examples of show bills, passed with the full knowledge that they would never actually become law. On the other hand, a veto over this bill does not result in a no-strings-attached Iraq funding bill, it results in no Iraq funding bill.
Bush's veto power may be able to prevent the Democrats, with their slim majorities, from passing bills he doesn't like, but if he wants Congress to do something (in this case fund the war in Iraq), he can't just use his veto pen to do it. In order to get things done, he needs to work with Congress.
The only problem with the above analysis is that it might not work in practice. Bush is basically playing a game of chicken with the Democrats over Iraq funding and betting that when it comes down to choosing between letting the funding run out and giving Bush a blank check, the Democrats will blink and give Bush the blank check. With the way the discussion is going, it looks like the Democrats will have to blink and give Bush what he wants or risk looking like they are leaving the troops high and dry.
The Democrats really need to get their act together on this. Instead of dragging their feet to just get one bill onto Bush's desk, they need to send him a continuous flow of Iraq funding bills with varying degrees of restrictions. They also need to pump up the rhetoric to make it clear that they are willing to work out some compromise and it is only Bush's refusal to even come to the table that is leaving the troops high and dry. Unfortunately I don't have much confidence that they have the cohesion or the political skill to pull this off. They'll probably end up both giving in and looking like they don't support the troops.
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(show me that you care)
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| Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
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12:39 am - Jumping on the Gun Bandwagon
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I was talking about gun control with < the other day, and now that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ragnarok20 the other day, and now with this shooting in VA, I figure I might as well right a post on it, or at least post a modified version of a comment I wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) libertarianism
I do not think that the first part of the Second Amendment can be read as only allowing guns within a well regulated militia, I think that the second part makes that pretty clear, but I think that the "well regulated militia" phrase does go to the purpose of the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment is not about self-defense nor is it about hunting or fulfilling the Freudian fantasies of the founding fathers. I believe that the purpose of the Second Amendment was so that a militia can be formed to protect against tyranny. After all, this was the purpose of the Constitution in general and the Bill of Rights in particular.
I happen to think that the tyranny that the founding fathers had in mind was actually tyranny by the federal government over the states, since this was what most of the rest of the Constitution was concerned with, at least up until the Fourteenth Amendment, but I can see where an argument can be made that it was also intended to protect citizens from the States as well.
Either way, I still see the Second Amendment as giving at least state government, and possibly the federal government a wide authority to regulate where and how you can own guns. Basically, if you can own a gun, have relatively easy access to it (even if you have to go home, take off the trigger lock, and load it) and occasionally go to a shooting range to become proficient in its use, the government has complied with the Second Amendment.
If you agree with me that the purpose was to provide the States with a defense against Federal tyranny, you get at least two additional results. The first is that registration requirements would be practically mandated by the Second Amendment. If a state is going to be able to summon a “well regulated militia” should they need one, it makes sense that the state would need to know which of their citizens has a gun. The second is that state (but not federal governments) would be free to regulate who among their citizens is allowed to own a gun, or even ban gun ownership within their state completely. After all, the state should be able to give up or limit their own right. The later restriction does however run afoul of the clear language of the Second Amendment, so it would not necessarily be the case.
It is worth pointing out that just because the government can place certain requirements on gun control does not mean that it should. There are valid arguments on both sides of that argument.
On one hand, I definitely can see how having a well-armed populace can discourage crime, although I am not nearly as confident as many gun-rights activists as to the efficiency of such a policy. Criminals are not always the best at weighing the consequences of their actions and even if they are, they may (in my opinion correctly) think that the element of surprise is enough to put the odds in their favor. Crime certainly is not unheard of in situations where the criminal should at least suspect that they would be dealing with armed victims.
On the other hand, the shooting in Virginia may actually turn out to be a perfect example of why stricter gun control could be a good thing. While it is true that gun control will not really keep guns out of the hands of career criminals, it will do a good job of limiting the harm an otherwise law-abiding person can do in a moment of rage or insanity. The longer it took this person to get a gun, the more time there was for him to come to his senses or for someone to notice that he had lost them. A well-armed populace may discourage robbers, but it also means that an argument that would otherwise result in nothing more than a few punches and a few bruises can turns deadly.
I do not have enough information to make an informed decision on what would be safer, so I'm pretty much agnostic on this issue, I just do not think that it is as black and white as either side makes it out to be.
An additional thought: If I am right about the trade-offs involved in a gun ban, current gun bans may actually be the reverse of how they should be. Generally, it is more difficult to own a gun in large cities and high crime areas, than in small towns and low crime areas. If gun regulations prevent impulsive crimes at the expense of deterring planned crimes, it would make more sense to allow people to own guns in cities, where there are proportionately more planned crimes, but ban them in small towns, where almost all crimes are the result of impulsive arguments between otherwise law-abiding citizens.
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(3 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Thursday, April 12th, 2007
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9:43 am
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Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was one of the best authors of the 20th Century. If you haven't read "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater," you should go do so now.
current mood:  sad
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(show me that you care)
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| Friday, March 23rd, 2007
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7:37 pm - MMMmmmm, Pork
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In news reports and discussions of the House's passage of the Supplemental Appropriations Bill, there have been numerous accusations that it has more pork in it than a McRib sandwich. This gives me an opportunity to repeat my argument that, pork, like a McRib sandwich, can be a good thing.
This bill actually represents the perfect example of good pork. A large percentage, but not quite a majority, of Congress wanted to do something, in this case provide funds for the Iraq war with a timetable attached. To get the votes that they needed, they went around, worked out deals with some of the reluctant members of Congress, and came to various compromises; things like "if you vote for our appropriations bill and we'll throw in some funds for your constituents to build peanut storage." Based on this compromise, more people are able to get what they want. It's kind of like making an agreement with your significant other that you will go see a Hugh Grant movie this weekend if they go watch 300 next weekend.
This also demonstrates the problem with a line item veto. It would be no more fair for the president to approve the bill but veto the peanut storage than it would be if you went to see the Hugh Grant movie and then your significant other flaked out on you and skipped 300. The President certainly has a role in this, he can reject or accept the deal, but he shouldn’t be allowed to accept half the deal and screw the people who only agreed to the deal for the other half.
Now not all pork is a good thing. The problem comes when people sneak pork into bills that they would vote for anyway. At this point, they are basically double dipping, they are getting the primary benefit of the bill, and then banking on that bill’s popularity to get something else they wanted. It’s kind of like using the Hugh Grant movie to get your significant other to go to 300, when you were just talking about wanting to go to the Hugh Grant movie.
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(1 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
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10:12 am
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| Monday, March 12th, 2007
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9:48 pm - Sometimes even when you win, you lose
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I came across a very strange legal problem at work today.
A is suing B (who we represent). B is defending against A's action, but at the same time suing C for indemnity and contribution. C just made an Offer of Judgment for $10 (the amount in controversy is about $750,000).
The way an Offer of Judgment works in this jurisdiction is that if B turns down C's settlement offer and then doesn't get a judgment against them for at least 75% of theit offer, B has to pay C's legal fees.
Normally, this wouldn't be much of an issue; we feel pretty confident in B's case against C. The catch though is that we feel pretty confident in B's case against A as well and if B wins that case, there will be nothing for C to contribute or indemnify (well maybe attorneys fees, but that isn't as strong of a case). If there is no judgment for C to contribute to or indemnify, then we will collect nothing from C and nothing is less than 75% of $10. This means we would have to pay their legal fees, even though we won. And of course we don't want to accept their settlement offer because $10 wouldn't really cover the $750,000 that B would owe if A wins.
Basically, B is getting screwed.
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(show me that you care)
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| Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
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2:06 am - February Facts
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There are two theories as to why February only has 28 days.
The first theory is that when the early Romans were setting up their calendar, they made most of the months either 29 or 31 days. The problem is that they had 12 months and an 355 days, which meant that one month would have to contain an even number of days. Since even numbers were seen as unlucky, they decided to make that month shorter than the rest in order to limit the amount of time you had to live through this unlucky month.
The second theory is that when Julius Caesar set up the Julian Calendar, February had 29 days (30 on leap years). This still would have made it the shortest month, but not as short as it is now. However, when Augustus Caesar renamed Sextilis to August after himself, it was only 30 days long and he wanted it to be as long as July, the month named after his famous uncle. This day had to come from somewhere and Augustus decided to pull it off of February. This theory was put forth by the 13th Century scholar Sacrobosco.
Based on the available evidence, it appears that the first theory is correct
In 1753, February had 30 days in Sweden. In 1700 Sweden decided to switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar by skipping the next 10 leap years. However, they failed to do so in 1704 and 1708. In order to make up for this they had a double leap year in 1753 pushing February up to 28 days. This put them in line with the Gregorian Calendar.
The plot of “Pirates of Penzance” is set into motion by the fact that the protagonist was born on February 29th. He was apprenticed to a group of pirates (rather than pilots, thanks to his nursemaids poor hearing) until his “21st birthday.” Since he was born on a leap year, this meant that he would have to continue his apprenticeship until he was 84 years old.
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(1 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Thursday, January 18th, 2007
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7:32 pm - Two Points on Bush's "Surge" and the Democrats Response
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My first comment is that I disagree with those who try to argue that the Democrats shouldn’t be criticizing or opposing Bush’s plan without a plan of their own. This is actually a pretty common argument and I almost always disagree with it for the same reason. Just because there is currently no alternative plan, doesn’t mean that the proposed plan is one that we should implement. Sometimes it makes sense to turn down the only current plan and just keep trying to work out a plan that will work. Imagine Bush’s proposed plan was that everyone poke themselves in the eye with a sharp stick; if no one else had worked out another plan yet should we still implement this plan?
Of course this argument also ignores that other plans have been proposed. It just happens that Bush, as the President, has the bully pulpit (read: access to prime time, network television broadcasts).
My second comment is that the Democrats’ proposed “non-binding resolution,” while probably inspired by political cowardice, may not be such a bad idea. The extent to which Congress can Constitutionally micromanage a war may be an open question, but I think most people would admit that as a practical matter, they are in no position to do so. While I am all for Congress bringing at least some measure of accountability to the way this war is run, they only have extraordinarily blunt tools to do so. Perhaps Congress can legally block funds or cap troop levels, but either of these set up hurdles that, should an emergency arise, would be difficult to do away with. On the other hand, a non-binding resolution doesn’t ham-string the President in the case of emergency, but it does encourage him to rethink his plan.
Beyond that, limiting funds for government programs just doesn’t work. It is far too easy to allocate those funds that all but require Congress to then provide the additional funds requested. Robert Moses proved this point 80 years ago while developing Jones Beach. He immediately went out and spent the entirety of the projects funds just building the foundation for two of the buildings, leaving the NY State legislature the option of declaring the first, already large amount of money an embarrassing loss or funding the rest of his project; they funded the rest of the project. And Moses didn’t even have the argument that failing to provide funds would endanger the troops.
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(2 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
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1:43 pm - I'm moving to Canada
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I really hate the medical system in this country. I'm currently somewhat sick. Not horribly sick mind you, I can still function well enough to go to work and what not. The problem is that I'm not sure whether I just have a cold, in which case I just have to deal with it until my body fights it off or if I have strep throat, in which case waiting until my body fights it off will probably lead bad things happening (e.g. scarlett fever). To answer this question, all I need is a 30 second throat culture.
The problem is that in order to get a throat culture, I have to make an appointment with my primary care physician and between now and a week from now, the only times he is available are smack in the middle of the day, times like 2pm. This means that I would have to take the entire day off work to reasonably go see him (I'd go at lunch, but the way doctors work, and the place his office is located, I'd probably have to take 3 hours off right in the middle of the day, which is pretty much the same as taking the day off). I called up my insurance company and they basically gave me three options: make an appointment with this guy, switch my primary care provider (with no guarantee that I won't then have the exact same problem) or go to the ER and hope that somehow a throat culture when I am only somewhat sick qualifies as an emergency and they decide to cover it (keep in mind that when I went to the ER with my throat bleeding, they didn't think that it was an emergency).
There really need to be 24 hour triage centers that you can go to, staffed with semi-skilled professionals who can check you out and say "you should go home and have some chicken soup," "you should schedule an appointment with a doctor at your earliest convenience" or "you should get care from a professional right now." I mean do I really need to go to someone who went to school until they were 30 just so they can poke the back of my throat with a swab and see if the solution changes color?
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(2 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Sunday, December 17th, 2006
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12:41 pm - Maybe microsoft is evil after all
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I'm usually the last one to bitch about Microsoft's semi-monopoly over computer OSes, I think that its a good thing that programmers can expect their programs to work on 90% of the computers out there. However, Slashdot linked an article this morning that describes something Microsoft is doing that actually is evil.
Apparently, in an attempt to push upgrades to Windows Vista, Microsoft has decided to start screwing over Windows 2k users. I can't begrudge them the fact that they are designing software these days with their new system in mind, making everything 100% backwards compatible leads to lowest common denominator programming. I can even except no longer coming out with patches for old systems, I think it's a bit cheesy, but it's a matter of allocating resources. However, it seems like Microsoft has gone beyond this to actively screwing over users of old systems.
Apparently Microsoft has taken to actually putting code in their installers that will prevent it from install on older versions of Windows, even where it might work perfectly well on those systems. Now in my mind, this is a true monopolistic business practice. Microsoft is using their large market share to screw their customers and that is not good.
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(2 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Friday, December 8th, 2006
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8:48 am - It's not a tumor
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There are a couple myths out there that for some reason or another I have become interested in having disproven. Usually they are myths that I have seen pretty thoroughly disproved yet people go on believing. One of them is that talking on cell phones will give you a tumor. A study in denmark recently looked at 420,000 cell phone users in Denmark and found that 14,249 of them got brain tumors, 752 less than the expected 15,001 that would be expected in the general population.
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(1 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
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8:20 pm - "If it's 'political correctness,' it is so only in the sense that it’s a political notion, and a cor
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At The Volokh Conspiracy, they are talking about an article written by conservative pundit Dennis Prager. In his article, Prager compares the decision of newly elected Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn) to take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the Bible to 9/11 and the comparison isn't even the stupid part.
In his article, Prager suggests that everyone who holds office in the US should have to take their oath on the Bible because the Bible is "what America [note that he didn't say American's] holds as its holiest book." He then goes on to suggest that if you can't swear on the Bible, you should not hold office.
Now forget for a moment about how completely unconstitutional this idea is, it does easily violate not just the Establishment clause and the Freedom of Religion clause, but also Art. IV Cl. 3, which states "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Even without the unconstitutionality of this position, it just doesn't make sense. The point of swearing on the Bible is not to indicate your loyalty to the Bible, it is to indicate the sacredness of your oath. People swear on the Bible to indicate that they are swearing before God, who might very well send a lightning bolt their way if they fail to uphold their oath. This means you want a person to swear on their holy book and not your holy book (unless they happen to be the same). Otherwise, the oath will not necessarily have the importance to them that it is intended to have. If anything, this guy should be required to swear on a Koran rather than a Bible.
Now I will admit that this gets slightly complicated because we are talking about a Muslim. I believe that most Muslims see Allah as the same god as the Judeo-Christian God, and so you might get the same effect by having a Muslim swear on the Bible as you would having them swear on the Koran, but not necessarily and this certainly wouldn't be true of a Hindu or a Wiccan.
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(1 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Thursday, November 9th, 2006
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8:31 am - The Democrats' Agenda
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For the past 6 or so years, the Democrats have taken a lot of heat for not having an agenda and only existing as the "anti-Republican" party. Now that they have gotten control of Congress, this has lead people to wonder what they are going to do with it.
First, although they have managed to get control of Congress, this doesn't really mean that they can do all that much. As big as the Democratic waive was on Tuesday, it wasn't enough to give them much real power. For one thing, Bush still has his veto pen (assuming it hasn't rusted due to lack of use in the past 6 years) and the Democrats are nowhere close to the having the 2/3s majority it takes to override a veto. In the Senate, they may have a majority, but as the Democrats have shown over the past few years, you really need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and get anything done in the Senate. On top of that, in order to get these majorities, the Democrats had to cast a wide net while searching for candidates, so there majorities, particularly in the Senate, may include some Democrats who are less likely to go along with the Democratic agenda than some republicans.
Beyond that, I'm not so sure that a lack of an agenda is that bad of a thing. I know that for the past 6 years or so, my problem with the Republicans hasn't been that they have failed to do things that I wanted them to do, but rather that they have done things that I don't want them to do. This means that the main benefit (in my view at least) of a Democratic Congress is that they won't be so quick to approve many of these things. We will probably see less kneejerk authorization of Bush's expansion of executive power, fewer laws limiting civil rights of people in the name of fighting terrorism, fewer far right judges appointed, we probably won't see huge amounts of money wasted in a xenophobic attempt to keep Mexians out, we won't see as many plans based on trickle down economics, the sunset provision on the lifting of the Estate Tax will probably not be repealed, and we won't see Social Security gutted. One thing that we can count on the Democrats to do, which is one of the few things that the Republicans failed to do that I would have liked them to do, is start bringing some scruiteny to Bush's expansion of the executive branch and screwups in Iraq.
In a country where a recent poll showed that most people already think that the government does too much, it might not be that bad of a thing to have a party in control of Congress who doesn't really have much on their to-do list.
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(3 people who care |show me that you care)
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| Monday, October 30th, 2006
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10:39 pm - E-Voting
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In theory, I think electronic voting machines are a good idea. They can make voting easier by allowing virtually unlimited room on the ballot so that you can avoid confusing layouts, by allowing the displaying photographs of candidates to help ensure people are voting for the candidate that they want, and by verifying that the voter has not overvoted or undervoted (at least not unintentionally) before the vote is actually submitted. They can also help with the counting of votes, both because they can report the votes on a given machine instantly and because, unlike hand counting or optical counting machines, there is little to no chance of a computer miscounting (assuming the program has been properly debugged).
In practice though, there are some problems with electronic voting. If someone has access to the database where votes are stored, it is fairly easy to alter the results of the election in a way that is almost untraceable. Additionally, the voting program can be tampered with so that it does not accurately record the votes as they are entered. The latter is a particular problem when the company who designed the program has not made their source code available for scrutiny, as seems to be the case with most e-voting machines in the US.
There is a solution to these problem though, allowing people to check their own votes. Accomplishing this would be easy. First, assign each electronic ballot a unique ID and give this ID to the voter. This ID could be generated randomly each time a voter casts a vote to ensure anonymity. A portion of the number can also be unique to the voting machine so that the machine need only check against the numbers that it generated to ensure that the new number is unique. After all of the votes are counted, the vote databases could be made public, preferably through a webpage. Voters could then use their unique IDs to look up their votes and ensure that they have not been tampered with. You could even make the entire database available so that anyone may count the votes on their own to ensure that the votes were not changed prior to the official count and then changed back before the voters could check their votes.
This would not be perfect, as individuals voters could go in, vote for candidate A, and then later claim that they voted for candidate B and that their votes were tampered with, but at least everyone would be able to ensure that their own vote was properly counted.
On a side note, I am not sure I buy one of the objections to e-voting. Many people feel that e-voting is unacceptable because their is no way to recount the votes; all you can do is ask the computer to spit out the results again, and of course that result will always be exactly the same as the first count.
First, this is not true, assuming the machine actually records the individual votes rather than just keeping a running tally. If this is the case, you can always go back and "hand count" the database to ensure that the tabulating software worked correctly.
Second, this objection misses the point of recounts. We have recounts because older systems for counting votes are not 100% accurate. Hand-counters can misread a vote, count incorrectly or miss a ballot. Optical tabulators are unlikely to miscount, but can still miss ballots or misread votes. If there is a wide margin, this is not a problem since it would be unlikely that there would be enough errors to make up for the margin, especially since it is likely that the errors (assuming they are random) would be distributed similarly to the correctly counted votes. In a tight race though, these errors can become significant. If the candidates are separated by only one vote, a single miscounted vote can change the outcome of the election. To avoid this problem, we have recounts. If the first count agrees with the second count or at least is close, we can be more confident that we have the correct outcome of the election.
With e-voting, this is not a problem. If there is one thing that computers are good at, it is counting correctly. At the very least, when a computer counts wrong, it will count wrong in the same way every time, which means that it is easy to test to make sure that the program is working correctly ahead of time. As a result, recounts are not important with electronic voting.
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(2 people who care |show me that you care)
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