tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48078600120474605552024-03-13T03:04:37.735-07:00Joel For PresidentNo, I'm not really running for president,
I'm just trying to solve the world's problems in my own mind, that's all.零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-38190172406789938772022-09-09T23:24:00.002-07:002022-09-09T23:24:14.904-07:00School Loans? School? Why?<p>I've been thinking about the school loan fiasco.</p>
<p>
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who proposed public schools for the poor
(there were none in the US at the time), consisting only of three years --
just enough to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.
</p>
<p>
Back then, kids would study and go home to help with what it took to keep the
family alive. They would usually apply what they learned immediately, which
made what they learned meaningful.
</p>
<p>
Beyond that would be scholarship funding for the exceptional capable learners
and apprenticeship for those interested in a trade. Education would continue
basically at the interest and will of the individual and his or her family.
</p>
<p>
There is something to be said for making education available and egalitarian,
as we have. But we have gone way too far. Education has lost a lot of meaning,
and has become more of a (potentially useful) recreational activity in
general, and in some ways just another market to compete in.
</p>
<p>
I am thinking we should go back, if possible, to making education something
that happens at the interest and will of the family (when children are young)
and the individual (from the beginning), and back to making it something we do
concurrently with making a living.
</p>
<p>
Why at the interest and will of the family and individual? Because people
learn best when they are not being force-fed or spoon-fed things they did not
choose to learn.
</p>
<p></p>
<blockquote>OH! BUT THINK OF ALL THE LOST OPPORTUNITIES!!!!!!!!!!!</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>
or whatever the argument. No. Just No. Wrong on every level and from every
angle.
</p>
<p>
Educators have always had the ability and opportunity to influence their
students to widen their horizons. On the converse, far more damage is done
trying to force people to widen their horizons than any benefits gained --
other than benefits to those at the top of the social hierarchy who think they
have a vested interest in keeping their position there.
</p>
<p>
(Not all at the top have such delusions, although forced education does seem
to bubble more such deluded people to the top.) <br />
</p>
<p>
Why concurrently with making a living? Because then we wouldn't need to take
loans out to take a mix of classes that are more than half not even relevant
to the individual's interests, and more than 90% irrelevant to making a living
-- and more than half of which are likely to induce false ideas and ideologies
that actually interfere with making a living.
</p>
<p>
Making a living is not the ultimate goal of education, but opening
possibilities to make life interesting while making a living is close to the
ultimate goal of education.
</p>
<p>
The ultimate goal should be something like to help make whole human beings,
but people who don't understand what I mean might argue with me instead of
looking for a different way to word the goal. The words are not important, and
argument may or not be useful, but it would be a distraction from today's
rant.
</p>
<p>
So I'm going to leave the question of the ultimate goal open and focus on the
goal of making it possible to keep life interesting while making a living.<br />
</p>
<p>
Suggesting something systematic is always going to result in promoting
non-optimal ideologies, but I'll toss a few ideas out here for examination:
</p>
<ol start="1">
<li>
Make day-care and pre-school optional again, both in terms of legal
enforcement and in terms of requirements for entering primary school
grades.<br />
</li>
<li>
Limit in-school time to half a day during the first three plus-or-minus
years while the students achieve, <b>at their own pace</b>, basic
proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic.<br /><br />
</li>
<li>
Part of the reason for limiting in-class time is to allow the students time
to apply what they've learned outside of class, as much as possible in
natural situations. <br />
</li>
</ol>
<p>
In order to get this to work, we're going to have to find ways to promote
appropriate places for very young children to play.
</p>
<p>
Constructing a market for Japanese-style 塾 <i>(juku)</i> and お稽古
<i>(o-keiko)</i>, and similar activities seems to be a partial solution, and
may not be out of the question, but it's just pushing the problem off to
another version of the same thing.
</p>
<p>
Ultimately we need to have the parents involved. Presently, most of what we do
"for the children" involves taking the very people who ought to have the most
motivation to keep the children safe, happy, and constructively occupied out
of the equation. (I know, this is partly because a small number of parents are
not conscious of what will happen in the future if they abuse their kids. But
it is far more because all too many parents seem not to know how, and seem to
be afraid of learning how.)
</p>
<p>But where are parents going to get the time to be involved? <br /></p>
<p>
Walk with me down a side-path for a ways. What if we got all the people who
are on the welfare rolls and had them work two-to-four hours a day on
something useful to society?
</p>
<p>Competition for jobs would get stiffer, right?</p>
<p>What if we got rid of all the non-essential jobs?</p>
<p>Competition for real jobs would become brutal, correct? </p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>
Because seven out of eight working hours for most people are spent in things
that are not essential, and at least half of our working hours are spent in
things that have no benefit to society. (Not including emergency medical
workers and such here.)<br />
</p>
<p>
What are we doing all day long? Fighting the modern equivalent of warfare --
market competition.
</p>
<p>Parents should have the time.</p>
<p>
That parents don't may be partly on the parents themselves, but it is at this
point in our modern society mostly on the people who insist on, having made
enough for their own retirement ten times over, or tens of thousands of times
over, insist on keeping in the game.
</p>
<p>
Somebody donates a quarter or a half of his n-billions of dollars to charity,
but doesn't take himself completely off the payroll, off the board, out of
management? He is being duplicitous. He should be shamed and shunned.
</p>
<p>
If they want to stay in the game? Divest, divest, divest. Get their tanks off
the playing field, get out of their power-assisted robot shells and Kevlar
body armor and play friendly football like the rest of us. <br />
</p>
<p>
We have to be willing to get our superstars out of the way -- if they won't
move over voluntarily, move them out -- boycott and such.
</p>
<p>
Cut back on the things we do for senseless competition, and no one, I repeat,
no one would need to work for hire more than four hours a day five days a
week. Max.
</p>
<p>
And with the extra time, there would quickly be plenty of people training to
do emergency medical work and such, so even the emergency medical workers,
firefighters, and so forth would be able to get their daily working hours way
down.<br />
</p>
<p>Back to the topic of education.<br /></p>
<p>
So what do children do outside of school? That has to be between them and
their parents, really. <br />
</p>
<p>
When does the first year start? That's another thing that parents and children
have to work out between them, on an individual basis.
</p>
<p>
Oh, and how do you decide when to end the first three plus-or-minus? Again, on
an individual basis.
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ALL THESE DECISIONS!!! CAN WE TRUST PARENTS TO MAKE THEM RIGHT? <br /></p>
</blockquote>
<p>
First, there is no single right decision that can be specified in general.
It's going to be case-by-case, and the people in the best position to make
these decisions are the parents and the children themselves. No one else has
close to enough information. Not government. Not the schools. Nobody
else.
</p>
<p>
(Think about this. What's the first thing that happens when government and/or
schools take these decisions over? Tests. Tests. Evaluations. And more tests.
Because they don't have the information. Unless they take over the DNA along
with the evening meals and bedtime, they can't have enough information, and
not really even if they do that. Institutions bigger than family are too big
to be able to work with at the necessary level of detail.)<br /><br />Second,
if we can't trust the parents' decisions in most families, we've already lost
our society. Same thing as innocent until proven guilty; we have to trust them
until and unless they prove irreparably that they will deliberately make too
many wrong decisions that result in repeated serious abuse.
</p>
<p>I'm getting off-the topic. </p>
<p>
But I'll note that, if the primary language is not English, more than three
years may be necessary. Japanese, for instance, will need another year because
they will start with the 仮名 <i>(kana)</i> writing system first, but then
they also have to get the basics down for the 漢字 <i>(kanji)</i> writing
system, as well. And to make it work in just another year, a new, more regular
approach to the <i>kanji</i> is going to have to be developed. Other languages
exist in which grammar and character forms interact, and I have to assume
those will take extra time.<br />
</p>
<p>
There's a lot more to think about here, but I need to talk about what happens
after the first three (plus or minus) years.
</p>
<p>This is where we have to get really creative.</p>
<p>
Before we do, no, we don't have to require children who can read, write, and
handle numbers to continue institutional education or equivalent. Once they
have the foundation, they can continue on their own. The whole reason we have
been requiring children to stay in school is that too many haven't been
getting the foundation.
</p>
<p>
That said, institutional education can be done in a meaningful way. And if we
do it in a meaningful way, the reason some kids won't want to continue will be
that they have some better option more appropriate to the educational path
they want to take. And that's not a bad thing.<br />
</p>
<p>How do you make school meaningful?</p>
<p>What has more meaning to children than the real world?</p>
<ol start="4">
<li>Bring the real world into the school.<br /><br /></li>
<li>
Half of the day can be retained for guided instruction -- lecture, practice,
labwork and etc.<br />
</li>
<li>
But the guided instruction part should be entirely elective. <br /><br />
</li>
<li>
Students need meaningful problems to solve anyway because humans are
problem-solving animals. <br /><br />
</li>
<li>
But students who have meaningful problems to solve will generally choose
naturally what topics they need to solve them. That's why students can be
allowed to choose their own course.<br />
</li>
</ol>
<p>How do you give them meaningful problems to solve?</p>
<ol start="9">
<li>The school should operate as a microcosm of the students' real world. Give them opportunities to experience things they will experience in the real world as adults.</li>
</ol>
<p>Sure, cleaning and helping in the cafeteria if there is one. But manufacturing, setting up and operating stores, working with money, operating in-school postal systems, making and enforcing rules, the whole thing.</p><p>Under adult supervision, of course. Parental involvement, of course. Probably using an in-school currency to reduce temptation to the supervising adults. But, to the extent that it can be relatively safely done, letting the students apply the things they are learning in real-world ways.<br /></p><p>In middle school, a similar approach would continue, but the currency of the real world would replace the in-school currency, the internal postal system would integrate with the external system and so-forth. <br /></p><p>In high school, most students would begin to learn trades and/or begin to work on actual research projects coordinated with local colleges and research institutions. <br /></p><p>College/university would become integrated with industry, such that most students would actually be working their way through school. <br /></p><p></p><p>Yes, this would require that the current totalitarian intellectual property regimen would have to be significantly weakened, but that is a given. Published works that remain under copyright for the life of the author plus seventy years is insanely beyond the control for a limited time that the Constitution granted, and basically gives the artists' associations powers that the government is restricted from, powers that the government should not be capable of giving. </p><p>And the patent mess, where the threat of suit is of more consequence than actually going to trial and getting a decision allows invalid and expired patents to be wielded with as much effect as valid, original, new patents also must be resolved.</p><p>Just as important, the existing databases have to be fixed. You can't attribute when you can't trace where your ideas came from.</p><p>You can't teach and you can't learn if every day becomes a trip through an IP minefield. This is no small part of the current cost of education.</p><p>Loans and their repayment are the tip of the iceberg here.<br />
</p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-78141904328439961792022-06-24T19:15:00.001-07:002022-06-24T19:15:13.559-07:00Thoughts on Dobbs vs. Jackson (clinic)<p></p><p>I had not intended to take time on this, but I think, in the aftermath of<i> Dobbs vs. Jackson (clinic)</i> it's important for voices for sanity to be heard. </p><p>(I
should not be understood to assert that I am, myself, especially sane,
but I think my voice for carefully considered response is a voice for
sanity.)</p><p>First, <i>Roe vs. Wade</i> was right but wrong. It used
bad legal reasoning to come to a conclusion that was expedient and
probably even necessary at the time. Also, the legalistic guidelines in
the decision <b>did</b> constitute judicial legislation. <br /></p><p>Likewise, <i>Planned Parenthood vs. Casey</i>, while it sort-of fixed the judicial legislation problem, attempted, but failed, to fix the legal basis of <i>Roe vs. Wade</i>. </p><p>And we need a legal basis. </p><p>Without
a legal basis, we have have the nation riding a seesaw that is
threatening to come off its fulcrum or just break because too many
people are riding it too hard.</p><p>I do not like the idea of amending
the Constitution. Amendments tend to turn out to be atomic bombs when
wrenches or hammers should have been sufficient.</p><p>The Constitution would allow Congress to pass a bill that </p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>
encourages the States to refrain from creating a legal framework or
even an environment of repression against women in laws regulating
abortion, </li><li>encourages the States to pass the actual duty and authority for regulation down to individual communities, and <br /></li><li>prohibits
any state from punishing anyone who crosses state or community
boundaries to obtain, assist, or perform an abortion in another state or
community.<br /></li></ol><p></p><p>Yes, when I say "encourage", I do
mean that we must give the states and communities room to try to figure
out the best approaches for their people. </p><p>(Really, this is what should have happened immediately after the decision in <i>Casey</i> at the very latest.)<br /></p><p>Note
that I am not taking a middle-of-the-road approach here. I am firmly of
the conviction that abortion, while not exactly murder, is close enough
to killing that the current anything-goes attitude has become a moral
albatross, and an indirect contributor to the public ennui that breeds
violence in general. </p><p>(Don't kid yourself. Ennui does breed
violence, and is the primary driver in the current expansion of
violence. This world was never intended, by nature, evolution, or any
other creative force by which it may have come into existence, to be
completely friction-free. </p><p>By whatever means we came into existence as a species or race, we are problem-solvers. <b>We need problems to solve.</b>
This is, in fact, one of those great chances for us to act together to
actually work to solve a problem instead of just trying to throw money
and legalistic rules at it.)<br /></p><p>I am also firmly of the
conviction that a woman must know that she has means of recourse against
incest, rape, serious health issues, and even seduction. </p><p>Abortion
should not be the first suggestion. The technology may be safer now for
the mother than in the past, but it still is not risk-free. And,
really, it runs against the human drive to preserve the species, even if
you don't find any other moral issue with it. (Among other moral
consequences, consider that men who encourage the women they have sex
with to have abortions do not learn self-control any more than the women
who resort to abortion to appease them learn how to say no.) <br /></p><p>Abortion should remain available as one option. <br /></p><p>Other
options need to be presented at a much higher priority, such as support
for women who are pregnant and/or raising children without a support
system. Yes, we need to revisit the welfare system of the welfare state
we have created.</p><p>You just can't have a national welfare system
that works. Too many of the details can't be determined without context,
and the context does not exist at the national level. Even the States
are too large these days, but they have a better chance of being able to
set up a framework for the individual communities to work within.</p><p>One
thing we can do at the national and state level is provide incentives
(both negative and positive) to corporations and individuals who cross
state lines to make excessive profits to let social conscience become a
greater motivation in employment, work environment and scheduling.
(What? am I attempting a radical change in topic? Nooo --) <br /></p><p>Among other things, here's one idea that many hypercompetitive types seem to think has gone out of style, but -- <br /></p><p>Yes,
employees raising children and/or taking care of elderly parents (etc.)
do deserve at least equal effective pay compared with single employees
because, even if they need more time off, they are helping maintain the
economic ecology within which the company makes its profits. The
taxation and corporate regulation systems could be fixed to encourage
corporations and their investors to do so.<br /></p><p>The problems we are
facing as a society are deeply, deeply tangled, and trying to fix any
one of them with a quick, big ideological band-aid is just not going to
work.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-23242918720739966412022-03-20T17:59:00.000-07:002022-03-20T17:59:04.082-07:00On the Russian Manifest Destiny<p>A FB friend, Carolyn Rabe Tinney, has been sharing some analysis pieces with me, </p><p>One is an <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/398089.php?fbclid=IwAR2ZI6Z-VUN0cmXNVobEarGC98JrLUT8L1e8bpoKvVVlT6y9s63TZmB3n9c#398089" target="_blank">analysis of Putin's strategy in the Ukraine</a> that explains his state of mind in more clear terms than simply "delusional":</p><p><a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/398089.php?fbclid=IwAR2ZI6Z-VUN0cmXNVobEarGC98JrLUT8L1e8bpoKvVVlT6y9s63TZmB3n9c#398089"></a></p><blockquote><a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/398089.php?fbclid=IwAR2ZI6Z-VUN0cmXNVobEarGC98JrLUT8L1e8bpoKvVVlT6y9s63TZmB3n9c#398089">http://ace.mu.nu/archives/398089.php?fbclid=IwAR2ZI6Z-VUN0cmXNVobEarGC98JrLUT8L1e8bpoKvVVlT6y9s63TZmB3n9c#398089</a></blockquote>Another is an explanation of the mindset he has expressed, of <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/12/putins-thousand-year-war/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&fbclid=IwAR11zm_yHHdPPCtywXutJDDd_HYKzgIVnDZliGkg883HMFz6FdMcVQTE-x4" target="_blank">carrying on the destiny of a thousand year-old empire</a>:<p></p><p><a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/12/putins-thousand-year-war/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&fbclid=IwAR11zm_yHHdPPCtywXutJDDd_HYKzgIVnDZliGkg883HMFz6FdMcVQTE-x4"></a></p><blockquote><a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/12/putins-thousand-year-war/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&fbclid=IwAR11zm_yHHdPPCtywXutJDDd_HYKzgIVnDZliGkg883HMFz6FdMcVQTE-x4">https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/12/putins-thousand-year-war/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&fbclid=IwAR11zm_yHHdPPCtywXutJDDd_HYKzgIVnDZliGkg883HMFz6FdMcVQTE-x4</a></blockquote><p></p><p>So I am finding myself of the opinion that the best prayer I can pray for the people of the Ukraine -- and the people of our world -- is for the leaders of Russia to have their hearts softened and their minds enlightened as to the futility of power politics.</p><p>On power, I reference a peculiarly Mormon scripture from the book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, Abraham chapter 3. Read the whole chapter, note especially v. 19, in context.</p><blockquote><p><a href="https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/3">https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/3</a> <br /></p></blockquote><p></p><p>No matter how big you get, there is always someone bigger to take you down. </p><p>And ultimately, there is God.</p><p>Even if you don't believe in God, there is nature -- time and death. </p><p>Fighting them is futile.</p><p>Nothing we build in this world can ever be permanent. Not empires, not our own strength. Empires fall. Humans, every human, eventually gets weak and dies. </p><p>Believing in your own superhumanity is exactly the same as taking the comic books of the western world seriously. This is the fatal sin of the very Nazism they despise.<br /></p><p>So we need God to find someone to sit Putin and the members of the Federal Assembly down and ask them, what will Russia do after they die? Where do they expect to find someone to carry on the destined legacy they have convinced themselves is theirs? </p><p>Why do they think they have a chance to succeed in building a permanent Russian empire when every Tzar before them has failed? </p><p>And what use is it to build an empire that will ultimately crumble to dust?</p><p>But that is precisely the question that ultimately leads, not to Democracy, but to governments that recognize that the freedom and sovereignty of the individual citizen -- the will of the people -- is the only real, viable basis for government.</p><p>And it seems to be the question they refuse to face, I suppose because they think it will cost them their glorious destiny to admit it is just dust. If they could only face the question and find a real answer, how much greater a destiny could they fulfill?<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-12698584896371823122021-11-23T01:13:00.006-08:002021-11-23T01:13:44.742-08:00Notes to Self on the Value of Jobs<div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">These are some notes to myself on the value of jobs:<br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">There is no such thing as unskilled, just unpopular skills. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Some
unpopular skills are unpopular for good reason, but there are also a
lot of things people do to hold society together that they can't get
people to pay them to do.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
longer I live, the harder it is for me to find truly lazy people. It is
easy to find people who, for various reasons, waste a lot of energy
doing things that don't add value to the world, but many of those get
paid a lot for what they do anyway. (And then we find ourselves back at
the question of why some skills are popular.)</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="ecm0bbzt e5nlhep0 a8c37x1j"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql b0tq1wua a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d9wwppkn fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb hrzyx87i jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Money
is a proxy for value. It's a poor proxy, but it isn't money itself that
is the problem until the causality inverts and money starts defining
value. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Also,
it is hard to have things of value unless you can exchange them, and
it's hard to exchange them without a proxy of some sort.</div></div></span></div> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="ecm0bbzt e5nlhep0 a8c37x1j"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql b0tq1wua a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d9wwppkn fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb hrzyx87i jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">And
it is impossible to contact without interfering. You can't move without
contact at some level. Not interfering is not really an option.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Refraining
from exploitation is closer to being possible, but that requires
understanding one's own value system, and it is the lack of
understanding the value system that causes problems with proxies for
value.</div></div></span></div> </div></div>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-46096793846204584182021-11-22T19:28:00.002-08:002021-11-23T01:10:40.874-08:00Was Kyle Rittenhouse an Underage, Out-ofstate Imported Gun-nut Vigilante?<p>Here are some things i have been able to find out:</p>
<p>
According to evidence at trial, Rittenhouse's father lived in Kenosha at the
time. Kyle Rittenhouse lived with his mother in Illinois and worked as a
lifeguard in Kenosha, something like a half-hour away. He was not an outsider,
even though he was repeatedly portrayed as such.
</p>
<p>
He has been portrayed as a white supremacist without evidence. Many real
things about him have been mostly ignored, including that he was a cadet in a
firefighting/EMT program.
</p>
<p>
The morning before he killed two men and seriously injured another, he had
gone downtown with his sister to see what damage had been done in the protests
the night before. He spent some time cleaning up graffiti at a high school.
</p>
<p>
The weapon was not carried across state lines, and it was legal for him to
carry it in Wisconsin. This is a technicality, and you can argue about whether
Wisconsin law should allow a seventeen year-old to carry even a long-barrelled
rifle of that sort. You can argue about the morality of a friend buying and
keeping the gun for him -- apparently in Wisconsin, since he did not carry the
gun across state lines after all. </p>But he has been portrayed as carrying it illegally, and that is not true.
<p>
These facts make a difference when you start trying to talk about him as a
"gun nut" or an imported underage vigilante.
</p>
<p>
You can argue about whether he should have been out there that night trying to
help his friends and relatives keep damage from the protests from escalating
further. You can argue about whether carrying the gun openly was wise.
</p>
<p>
The evidence shown at trial does not show that he was out there looking for a fight.
Far more, unless the evidence was seriously manipulated, it definitely shows
that he was attacked, and can be interpreted without any contortions that he was attacked for trying
to defend his friends' and relatives' property. </p><p>(Notes to self:</p><p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must-learn-covington-catholic-story/581035/">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must-learn-covington-catholic-story/581035/</a><br /><br />Andrew Coffee IV<br /><br />Ahmaud Arbery) <br /></p><p> </p>
零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-54492353334431998722021-07-26T04:07:00.000-07:002021-07-26T04:07:08.616-07:00Reparations, Reparations<p>
A friend posted a link to (moderate? maybe) right-wing media coverage of some
of what underlies BLM and other current attempts at fixing the race problem in
the USA. In it, I found
<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bet-founder-billionaire-calls-for-reparations-black-americans-2021-6?fbclid=IwAR3HW4oLhq2_WFsFDacHuRwY3KVkKAUzJbaLE_FbGT7SDaJTbuDRL_TJ_n4" target="_blank">this article talking about the reparations bill and (implied ironic)
support it gets from the billionaire community</a>:
<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bet-founder-billionaire-calls-for-reparations-black-americans-2021-6?fbclid=IwAR3HW4oLhq2_WFsFDacHuRwY3KVkKAUzJbaLE_FbGT7SDaJTbuDRL_TJ_n4" target="_blank">https://www.businessinsider.com/bet-founder-billionaire-calls-for-reparations-black-americans-2021-6?fbclid=IwAR3HW4oLhq2_WFsFDacHuRwY3KVkKAUzJbaLE_FbGT7SDaJTbuDRL_TJ_n4</a>
</p>
<p>
My problem with this is that I grew up in a town where we actually had a
moderate level of success in required desegregation. </p><p> (Forced would be a bit too strong of a term. Most of the community was okay with it. And, on the other hand, there were a minority who resisted, many of them real-estate agents and others who tried hard to keep some neighborhoods exclusive -- I assume so they could charge higher prices for land that really wasn't that significantly different.) <br /></p><p>I was in a middle class
neighborhood, with various cultures (and races) represented on our street and
most streets in the neighborhood. Even the exclusive community on the north edge of town
had something of a mix. (I'm not sure how the exclusivists made it work. You had to have a certain income to even get properties there shown to you as a potential buyer, among other things, and I think that the non-white members of the community had a certain agreement with the majority white members that they wouldn't try rocking the boat too much. Token non-whites? But the word "token" itself comes from the contexts in which such exclusive communities are assumed to be justified, so be careful how you use it.)<br /></p><p>I did not realize it, but it was a very progressive community for the time.
</p>
<p>
Apparently, that kind of community was not common. And it really didn't work on
an ongoing basis, even though the cultural mix is still there.
</p>
<p>
Particularly, there were a lot of, especially black, football players who rode
into college with the expectation that a football scholarship was all they
needed to be set for life. And discovered the hard way the difference between
the small pond and the big pond relative to how good they were.
</p>
<p>
If we (royal we) had really wanted them to succeed, we had to teach them the work ethic that was
necessary in the larger community. We had to teach both them and their parents that the
football scholarship, for all that they were working their hearts out for it,
was not going to be enough to keep them out of the ghetto unless they used it to get other education, other degrees. Athletic scholarship students working in parallel on non-sports degrees needed to become the rule, not the exception.<br /></p><p>But that work ethic conflicted with the culture they were raised in. Not with the black
culture, but with the white ghetto culture.
</p>
<p>
In a very real sense, Odessa was/is the ghetto to Midland's
middle/upper-class.
</p>
<p>
The whole concept of paying one-time reparations is part of that white ghetto
culture. When you give people money like that, most of them use it to solve
their immediate problems instead of setting even part of it aside to provide a path
out. USD 300,000? For half of those who receive it, it'll be gone in a year,
most of it spent on stuff that adds to the profits of the worlds richest
people, adding to inflation and adding to the income gap. For another thirty percent, it'll be gone in another three years.
</p>
<p>
Less than ten percent will attempt to use it for education or investment and
such, and the resulting inflation will eat away at that, too.
</p>
<p>
That people want to do something is, I suppose, commendable. </p><p>That they don't
want to figure out what needs to be done is being lazy -- Throw money at
the big problem instead of giving time and attention to all the little
problems that are the social calculus that produces the big problem.
</p>
<p>
What we need is middle- and upper-class folks deliberately cutting their
workweeks down to twenty hours so they can go out to the ghettos to mentor
people who need mentors more than money.<br /></p>
<p>
But before they go, they need to learn the difference between do-gooding
(trying to teach lower-class people their own false ideals) and actual helping -- reaching out to actually help people get what they need to solve their real -- not ideal --
short-term problems first, then staying with them for the middle and
long term, and refraining from pushing solutions on them. </p><p>Forced solutions are non-solutions. </p><p>It's kind of like the difference between doing the math for a student and helping the student learn the math, except the solutions that keep people out of the ghettos require helping them to invent their own math and their own tests. Teaching them your math will only help the ones who can make the logically jump from what you teach them to what they need.</p><p>(And, in keeping with that thought, I'll do as I usually do and refrain from trying to draw a lot of conclusions for you. You figure out what conclusions make sense for you.)<br /></p>
零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-28468515986954291212021-06-05T22:13:00.008-07:002021-06-06T12:16:20.221-07:00About the Texas Heartbeat Act<p>
Well, as usual, I found myself embarrassed that I have believed news reports
without doing my own research.
</p>
<p></p>
<p>
Here is a
<a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB8/id/2395961" target="_blank">link to the actual bill</a>, so you can also read it yourself:
</p>
<p></p>
<blockquote>
<a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB8/id/2395961" target="_blank">https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB8/id/2395961</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Having read this law, here's my analysis:</p>
<p>This law does not criminalize abortion in any sense. Most news sources I read at least got this much right. At least one did not.</p>
<p>It specifically prevents using its provisions from becoming basis for suing a woman who receives or considers an abortion. It also specifically prevents use of the provisions by a rapist or abusive boyfriend/spouse, etc. Many news sources I read failed to see this at all. </p><p>I even assumed it wouldn't have properly disallowed this kind of misuse of the law, so I guessed it wrong, too.<br /></p>
<p>It specifically provides for exceptions in case of medical emergency. Multiple news sources missed this.</p><p>What this law requires is</p><p>1) that medical abortion providers or assistance groups (in other words, clinics, Planned Parenthood, etc.) be qualified and properly inform people of their qualifications;</p><p>2) that medical abortion providers perform proper medical examinations and explain the dangers and negative health effects specific to that person in getting an abortion;</p><p>3) and that medical abortion providers and assistant groups also inform those seeking abortions of the options to abortion, including the availability of financial support through government and other sources and the father's legal duty of support.</p><p>The sixth week is a minimum -- even the above three requirements are not required until the sixth week.</p><p>This bill is mostly about establishing minimum best practice. </p><p>[JMR202106070407 -- edit]</p><p>Which, as a friend points out, does leave the problem of who certifies the certifiers, which is a variation of the who watches the watchers conundrum, and the conundrum can be exploited by bad-faith actors.</p><p>Exploiting law is a separate problem, and the conundrum is not unique. It essentially applies to all of law. Various philosophers, lawyers, and mathematicians have worked it out, and there is no solution other than for all members of the community to watch the watchers. I guess I need to explain that conundrum in a blog post some day.</p><p>Note to myself -- I think I noticed some possible ex-post-facto issues in the bill, which would be a particular vulnerability to exploit.<br /></p><p>[JMR202106070407 -- end-edit] <br /></p><p>As near as I can tell, that's all.</p><p> </p>
零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-15824132158360610502021-05-12T09:49:00.006-07:002021-05-16T17:17:51.091-07:00Trump Was Chosen by God<p>(Read all the way through before allow yourself a knee-jerk reaction.) <br /></p><p>If you don't believe in God, I'll put it this way: </p><blockquote><p>Electing Trump was a natural consequence of the current conditions in the USof(N)A.<br /></p></blockquote><p>When I say Trump was chosen by God -- or by natural selection, if you prefer -- it is not in praise of Trump. </p><blockquote><p>It is not in praise of Trump -- </p></blockquote><p>although he did do a passable job, given his personality and the mess he had to work with.</p><blockquote><p>It is in <b>condemnation</b> --</p></blockquote><p>It is not so much in condemnation of the ordinary citizens of the USof(N)A, although we do, in general, need to become more actively involved in the community processes, and less willing to be just led along by any party that puts on a good show. <br /></p>
<p>
It is in great condemnation of the career politicians of all parties who have
necessitated electing a man like Trump.
</p>
<p>
And it is in condemnation of the vocal majority (they aren't a real majority,
they're just the noisiest group) of Americans who put their own personal wants and ideals ahead
of the needs of individuals and of the country. </p><p>Ideals are always separate from reality. Ideals are necessary for discussion, but the ideals that imperfect humans espouse always contain the seeds of their own contradiction. </p><p>Ideals that do not admit a certain degree of compromise can never meet the needs of any individual. </p><p>(That is, they can never meet the needs of any individual not willing to twist the meaning of the ideal to their own ends.)<br /></p><p>A country is a calculus -- a summation of individuals. Without the individuals, there is no country. Ideals that do not admit a certain degree of compromise will, without fail, destroy a country.<br /></p><p></p>
<p>
It's time to get off your high horses and work for real change before more
drastic measures have to be taken. </p><p>And it's time for everyone who has been in office more than eighteen years to
go find a better way to make a living – a better place to serve. </p><p>You think Trump was bad, next time you might get someone like me. <br /></p><p>I can't be elected president, on technical grounds, even if I could somehow break through the popularity barriers. I've been out of the country too long to meet the residence requirement. </p><p>But there are more than a few obstinate language/system geeks like me who do meet the requirements, who would be quite willing to apply very careful standards on every act of Congress requiring the president's signature, and quite willing to return every rejected bill with quite detailed objections, including technical objections, even though line-item veto, <i>per-se,</i> is not allowed. </p><p>And more than a few such individuals would be quite happy to help Congress to dismantle the behemoth that federal government has become, and find a way to push all the real power back where it Constitutionally belongs -- back to the States and to the citizens.<br /></p><p>And to be quite vocal, and quite obstinate in his or her efforts.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-30855730381928624172021-01-17T16:23:00.003-08:002021-01-17T18:29:16.394-08:00Biden's Record on Busing (and Detours on Sensibility and Reporting with Shade)<p> A cousin of mine passed along a cherry-picked list of places where Biden has failed to toe his party's line, or the party line of a certain faction among the Democrats, criticizing his record.</p><p>Or, perhaps, expressing dissatisfaction. It can be hard to tell between criticism and expressing dissatisfaction.</p><p>Well, I read that list last night and shrugged. (I'd seen it before.)</p><p>This morning, I thought maybe I should check the list. The easiest item for me to remember was busing, so I plugged something like<br /></p><blockquote><p>Did Biden vote against busing?</p></blockquote><p>into the Web search engine, and found a lot of evidence that he has -- sometimes.</p><p>You have to check. </p><p>(Kind of like, yesterday, when I plugged the name of a certain person arrested for committing voting fraud in Texas, along with the words "voting fraud". And I found reports that she had, indeed, been arrested. Then I shared one of those reports from a news source that would be local there on my BassHook feed. </p><p>And then I found a report that the woman claimed she was trying to work a "sting" on the people who were working a sting on her. I noted that in my BassHook feed and moved on. <br /></p><p>It makes a sort-of defense -- not a smart one, however.<br /></p><p>If you are thinking of trying a counter-sting sting, be sure you let a few people you trust know what you are doing, to improve your ability to assert that is what you were doing. Preferably, one of those would be a lawyer, and, preferably, the lawyer would discourage you from doing so -- except perhaps in extreme circumstances. </p><p>I don't have any idea if that was really what she was doing. Anyway, don't try to run a sting alone. It leaves you with no real defense.)<br /></p><p>Back to Biden: </p><p>Not surprisingly, one of the sources I found was <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/28/18965923/joe-biden-school-desegregation-busing-democratic-primary" target="_blank">a mixed news/opinion piece from 2019 on Vox, critical of both his and Harris's stances on busing</a>:</p><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/28/18965923/joe-biden-school-desegregation-busing-democratic-primary" target="_blank">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/28/18965923/joe-biden-school-desegregation-busing-democratic-primary</a><br /></p><p>Also not surprisingly, Vox is now supportive of Biden, since he has been able to get Trump out. People do change their stance for expediency.</p><p>I debated the expediency of giving Vox more clicks, but half of my purpose in this rant is to express the need for more information. </p><p>If we want to talk meaningfully about something, we should have the topic of our conversation in front of us.</p><p>Otherwise, we generate more heat than meaning -- witness the excessive activism since midsummer. <br /></p><p>So, reading the article (and other sources), I find that Biden has opposed bills that mandated busing based solely on numbers.<br /></p><p>Uhm, can I say, bravo for him? </p><p>That wasn't his only reason for introducing bills and amendments to
bills that limited or would have limited the reach of court decisions
and legislation on busing. He seemed to take a somewhat reasoned
approach, and he was also sensitive to the opinions of his
constituencies. <br /></p>Maybe -- <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/11/we-usually-get-president-we-deserve.html" target="_blank">if we have to have a Democrat in the Whitehouse for the next four years, for balance</a> -- maybe a Democrat who can understand that arbitrary, overly simplistic rules can cause problems might be one of the better options? and that he has to listen to all the people he is supposed to be representing, not just the ones who voted for him?<br /><p>Just maybe?<br /></p><p>Many of Biden's arguments against forced busing tend to focus on the allocation of resources. I'll go with that. </p>I'll also note that forcing people to do the right thing generally causes resentment, and that resentment tends to boil over. I think a good argument could be made that busing is no small part of the cause of the violence of the past several months.<p>Busing has had some good results, as well. It's been a mixed bag.</p><p>That's not surprising, either. Politics is always a mixed bag.</p><p>Excessive adherence to ideologies is not helpful.<br /></p><p>And lack of information causes more problems than too much.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-89749444446429728692021-01-11T03:07:00.001-08:002021-01-13T03:32:16.289-08:00Poor Choice of Words -- Trial by Combat<p>I'm looking at one of the places where the rally for Trump last week took a turn for the worse. </p><p>Giuliani was talking about getting access to the ballot boxes that were mentioned in some of the complaints the courts refused to consider. The words "trial by combat" appears to me to be expressing his intent to have experts other than the ballot box companies' experts and the state election commissions' experts examine them.</p><p>It only makes sense to find experts who would not have a conflict of interest. If you think there might be something to be found, you should not want the experts hiding it. And if you think there is nothing to be found, you should not want to leave Trump room to continue complaining.</p><p>True?</p><p>In what scenario would you want to hide flaws in the system?</p><p>In what scenario would you want Trump to continue complaining about nothing? </p><p>Whichever side you're on, under what scenario(s) would you not want an independent expert to do the examination?</p><p>Back to the really unfortunate choice of words. I can only assume that Giuliani would not have considered the effect such words would have an a crowd that included rough-and-ready types who were not experienced with some of the metaphors lawyers use.</p><p>Why should I assume that?</p><p>Giuliani is a lawyer. He is smart, even if he misses a few things. If he were intending to incite a riot, he would not use words like that with the C-SPAN cameras rolling.</p><p>It's clear why politicians tend to want speech writers to prepare their words for them. Too many of those who spoke at the rally spoke off-the-cuff. Too many poor choices of words were used.</p><p>Was Trump's failure to more vigorously point out that the metaphors were metaphors was because he thought foolishly that a small mob could somehow take sufficient control of the Senate proceedings to force a declaration that would not have been immediately canceled once the insignificant threat was gone?</p><p>Or was it because he was not aware that there would be a few there eager for a riot, just enough to drag a few of the more impressionable participants along in storming the Congressional chambers?</p><p>Well, you make up your own mind.</p><p>The question I have is still, why did all the courts to which the evidence was submitted, in all the states where it was submitted, fail to even give the evidence Trump's team gathered the dignity of a "Here's why this is not a valid complaint." </p><p>It was all blanket rejected with no explanation other than "It wouldn't effect the outcome."</p><p>Sure, giving each of the complaints time for examination would have made it hard to keep the schedule for the Electoral College's vote. Is that enough reason to refuse to even properly examine the evidence?</p><p>Sure, Trump says and does things that appear foolish at too many times. Does a bad habit of shooting off at the mouth earn even a foolish president so much scorn as to refuse to take his legal team's work seriously? <br /></p><p>Did they expect Trump to turn tail like a dog used to being beaten and slink off? What were they expecting?</p><p>The only way to resolve the question in a way even remotely compatible with the traditional interpretations of the Constitution was to deal with it when it was presented.</p><p>So we are left with the questions unresolved. Biden and Kamala are left to fight a severe deficit in public perception, perhaps as severe as the deficit Trump faced. So is the Congress that will now be nominally of the same party as the president.</p><p>I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It may motivate more Americans to stand up and demand good behavior of the people they elect to represent them -- and demand better behavior of the members of the media, but that's for another post. </p><p>I hope it so motivates everyone who reads this, of whatever political persuasion you are.</p><p> </p><p>I also hope that it motivates people to demand that the various state election commissions return to <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/11/when-i-posted-about-usually-getting.html" target="_blank">verifiable voting</a>, enough people that those commissions will have a sudden attack of common sense and return to verifiable voting.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-28591956036016468232021-01-07T19:30:00.013-08:002021-01-09T15:40:52.784-08:00Fighting Corruption<p>
A number of members of Congress and other "High Officials" have gone on record
against attempts to overturn the results in the Electoral College. But they seem to me to be only telling half the story.<br /></p>
<p>I need to clarify a few things before I dig into this:<br /></p>
<p>
For those who read the New Testament, in 2nd Peter 2: 10, Peter declares
among the sins of certain wicked people, the sin of "speaking evil of
dignities". Some read that to mean "of dignitaries". If he meant dignitaries,
he would have said dignitaries. Some note the mention of "despising
government" in the previous sentence and assume that dignities means the acts
of governing bodies. But the whole phrase is about "walking in the lust of
uncleanness, despising government", clearly meaning that they despise the need
for being governed by God.
</p>
<p>
The right to criticize the unjust acts of governing bodies is actually one of
the dignities which the wicked speak evil of. The right to speak out in
support of the just acts of governing bodies is another. So is the personal
responsibility to figure out which is which. These are some of the dignities
Peter speaks of.<br />
</p>
<p>
The Constitution doesn't specify any means to overturn an invalid election. It
doesn't even specify a means of declaring an election invalid. If we do not
want to risk further implicit erosion of the Constitution by redefinition, we
should return to the assumption that a power not given to Congress by the
Constitution is not given by Congress. </p><p>Each state is tasked with determining the validity of that state's election processes in the Constitution, and that is as it should be. (Except now states are getting too big.) <br /></p>
<p>Declaring the election invalid at this point should not be considered an option.</p><p>There are a couple of theoretical ways to let Trump do a second term now. </p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Biden and Kamala might both have a change of heart and submit a document to Congress declaring themselves unable to discharge their duties, and then Congress might decide to choose Trump to fill the vacancy since he did get so close to half the vote.</li><li>Biden and Kamala might take office and choose a cabinet, and then the cabinet might declare them unfit. And then Congress might choose Trump to fill the vacancy.</li><li>Impeach both Biden and Kamala. And, then, the choice of a new president to finish out the term devolves to Congress, and Congress might (low probability) choose Trump to fill in the rest of the term.<br /></li></ol>
<p>Other than that, it <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/11/we-usually-get-president-we-deserve.html" target="_blank">appears that the democrats get a turn for four years</a>.<br /></p><p>However, I have watched governing bodies go ballistic, refusing to respond to
their constituents' rightful complaints, and I have watched that happen this
whole past election process. The problems with the election process were known
from well before election day, and they were not addressed then, and they have not yet been addressed.<br /></p>
<p>
I've blogged about a <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/11/when-i-posted-about-usually-getting.html" target="_blank">few of the problems here</a> and in my main blog (and, I
think, in my computing blogs and freedom blog and elsewhere -- <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/05/so-what-is-problem-with-vote-by-mail.html" target="_blank">lots of technical issues</a>).<br />
</p>
<p>Various state governments have behaved very irresponsibly in the election processes.</p><p>Perhaps we should consider <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-awkward-proposal-for-amendment-to.html" target="_blank">an amendment to make the election process less vulnerable</a> before the next election. <br /></p>
<p>The Constitution does not give us a way to declare the election invalid.
The only direct recourse it gives us is the right to seek judgements of
treason against the perpetrators. That's a lot of work, so we need to think of
some less direct means. <br />
</p>
<p>
(If we want it to be possible to legally and Constitutionally overturn an
invalid election, we must propose and pass an amendment adding the means to do
so before the election occurs, not after. But we must be careful, when we do so, not to make the processes even more vulnerable.) <br />
</p>
<p>That's a full stop.</p><p>How do we fight corruption?<br /></p>
<p>As I say, I have watched governing bodies railroad the "desired results"
through on many occasions in the past, perverting the democratic processes as they do so -- because waiting for the democratic processes to work properly means waiting too long for whatever reason they think of, and I
watched it happening in the election processes this past year or so. <br /></p>
<p>
A million or so demonstrators is a million or so demonstrators. Something is
wrong when a million people get out in the streets about something. That was
true last fall, and it is true now. Even if those millions were mostly all extreme
leftists or extreme rightists, it would still be true. </p><p>A million people is one in four hundred. That's people close to you. They are not even mostly extremists, just people willing to speak out when their conscience moves them to do so.<br />
</p>
<p>
Did we think it had ended when the left went quiet after the elections
in fall?
</p>
<p>
This is not going to end until either (1) God comes in the sky -- in other words, the natural consequences of bad acts catch up to us -- or (2) each individual in the US
learns by him/herself how to listen to his/her own conscience and do what God
tells him/her to do through it. </p><p>We don't want to wait for the natural consequences to catch up to us. That's a very violent end. </p><p>So you and I need to listen to our consciences and do what they tell us to do. And we need to advise our friends, enemies, and acquaintances to do likewise.<br /></p><p>
Yes, that's very difficult, because it requires each one of us to learn to weed
through, not just our own personal baser instincts, but also all the overlays of
false rules about what is right, wrong, and gray that the traditions we have
inherited from our culture have imposed on us, which now make it hard to listen
to our own consciences.And we have to learn to set peer pressure aside. </p><p>It requires both brave and wise enough to do what's right and brave and wise enough to be sure we understand what's right.<br /></p><p>
For those who believe in God, conscience is the connection we have to the God which created us. For those who do not believe in a God which created us, the conscience is the innate patterns of what works and what
doesn't which evolution has imparted to the human mind. </p><p>I don't care which you prefer, as long as you aren't so seriously confused as to deny the existence of conscience.
</p>
<p> That much of a definition is sufficient, without me having to explain that
when I say God, I invoke the grand unifying principle that many physicists and
other scientists seek -- the parameters that existed at the instance the dynamic
universe came into being, and underlay the path of evolution as the universe
was formed, or the fundamental principles by which the static universe functions and continues to function. </p>
<p>
When I speak of God coming down in the sky, I speak of the course nature
follows, including natural consequences of our acts, as society and as
individuals.
</p>
<p>
If we could simply agree on that much of a shared definition, we should be
able to quit fighting about religion, or about the relationship of explicit religion with atheism and agnosticism.
</p>
<p>Conscience, and freedom to follow one's own conscience. A lot of people think that is what the current political argument in the US is all about, and they are not exactly wrong. But the argument is not directly about that.<br /></p>
<p>We have three major factions (and numerous minor factions) of people who
don't want to allow others to live by their conscience. </p><p>(This is not some crazy conspiracy theory. Factions and their jockeying for power and resorting to extra-regular means have been part of history forever, and they didn't suddenly disappear just because explicitly democratic processes became the accepted norm in recent history.)<br /></p><p>I can suppose that the reasons for members of these factions may be that they themselves are too lazy or scared to get
acquainted with their own consciences, but that is not mine to suppose. They
simply aren't willing to behave as if they trust others to be free to follow
their consciences.<br />
</p>
<p>
They have agendas, things they think they must force to happen, to "save society". I can presume that is because they don't trust the individuals of whom society is composed to be interested in saving themselves, but, again, I presume too much. </p><p>These factions are trying to destroy the Constitution of the United
States of America, so that they can destroy this lousy, messy,
in-the-way-of-their-ambitions free country.
</p>
<p>
One of the major factions is overtly redefining anything in the Constitution
that gets in the way of their agenda.
</p>
<p>
One is behind the scenes restructuring the legal infrastructure so that the
original Constitution cannot function.</p><p>One waits in the wings for the other two to do their dirty work, ready to step
in and "save the day" when all appears ready to crumble and fall.</p><p>All of these factions cross nominal party boundaries. <br /></p><p>All
three think they are using President Trump as a pawn.</p><p>God has other
plans. Or nature, if you prefer.<br /></p><p>God is still, ultimately in
control. Nature will prevail.<br /></p><p>That does not mean everything will be all right. Everything will not be all right. <br /></p><p>Nor does it mean anyone should now be quiet. If your conscience tells you to speak up and speak out, you should do so. Just remember to keep listening to your conscience as you do so.<br /></p><p>Hang on. It's going to be a rough ride. </p><p>There are certain things you believe in, which form the core of your understanding of what's right and wrong. Examine, them, yes. Refine your understanding, yes. But don't give up your belief that there is right and wrong, and that you have a right to know them.
</p>
<p>If you are Christian, part of your core beliefs may be that Jesus' name means that God is ultimately our friend, that He ultimately wants to give us all the happiness and joy we are willing to receive. <br /></p>
<p>
If you are not, and you believe in God, you must still believe something similar. </p><p>If you prefer not to believe in God, I strongly urge you to believe that it is in our nature to seek happiness and joy, and that, even though nature provides us an apparent chaos from which to win happiness and joy, nature does not oppose itself. The universe is not, ultimately, against you, me, and everyone else.<br /></p><p>Believing this does require us to sacrifice a lot of false ideals, but that's
a lot easier than the alternatives. <br /></p><p>The universe is not out to destroy us all. It is all right for us to struggle to gain happiness. <br /></p><p>God Is Our Help, if we just believe in Him, He will help us to be happy. </p><p>Fighting corruption starts with you and me listening to and following our own consciences.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-71760160146518793522020-12-05T23:34:00.004-08:002020-12-05T23:46:31.245-08:00Forgive the Student Debt!!! (Or Not?)<p>There are loud and numerous calls for forgiving the student debt. We've duped the poor (former) students into buying a worthless higher education on time, and dumped them into an economy where it is really hard to pay that debt back.</p><p>(Pardon me? I did not sell that snake oil. On either end.)</p><p>Well, there would be valid reasons for helping them get out from under that burden.</p><p>But.</p><p>"We" can't exactly forgive that debt. We don't own it. That is, we don't own the burden of guaranteeing it. At least, not at this time.</p><p>Who owns the guarantees on that debt?</p><p>Well, it's difficult to untangle. The government that demands business be transparent has serious difficulties making its own operations transparent. </p><p>We hear China owns no small part of it. We can be fairly sure that most of the several thousand billionaires and millions of other high-net-worth-individuals all over the world also own no small part of it.<br /></p><p>If we could get them all to forgive the student debt in all countries, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. </p><p>But what is being called for is something else entirely -- for the US government to buy that burden back from those who bought the bonds. </p><p>So here's how it works. Get people to borrow money from you. Some time later, sell the burden of final guarantee for the burden to the government. That means, if the people who borrowed the money can't or don't repay it, the government has to pay you. Sometime later, get the government to "forgive the debt" by paying it off to you. And you get both the interest and the principle.</p><p>Here's what is not being told: "Forgiving the debt" ultimately means paying it off -- making those who are already rich all that much richer.</p><p>Those rich people were the ones who set the rules up to demand higher education, you see. "Our worker pool needs more training!" they said. (Who gave them permission to call us "their worker pool", anyway?)<br /></p><p></p><p>So, as I said, if we could get them, not the government, to forgive the debt for student loans, that might not be such a bad thing. </p><p>Except, there are reasons that's not such a good idea, either. Debt is never a simple thing. Those individuals of high-personal-worth actually serve to focus our economic activities on specific business. If they suddenly lose their wealth and somebody is not ready to step in with more money, businesses fail. Jobs disappear. Etc. Economic depression.</p><p>That was the excuse for bailing out the banks about ten years back, and it is real. Uhm, well, it isn't exactly entirely the stuff of the imagination of ambitious money-grubbers. It's real enough to cause ordinary people serious harm.</p><p> Why? is a very good question.</p><p>If you don't understand why, it's time for you to learn what money means. </p><p>None of the popular explanations you can find in books or on the web have it right. What does</p><blockquote><p>Money is a proxy for value.<br /></p></blockquote><p>even mean? </p><p>Okay, how about something that is often claimed,<br /></p><blockquote><p>Money is value. <br /></p></blockquote><p>Really? Bits of paper and metal, ink in a ledger, charge domains in some storage medium. But it took, for instance, Ms. Rowling a long time of working hard to convert the value in her first stories into enough money to continue writing without working a day job. </p><p>At any rate, <br /></p><blockquote><p>Money is not raw value. <br /></p></blockquote><p>So, once again, how about </p><blockquote><p>Money is a proxy for value. <br /></p></blockquote><p>Money is not a very good proxy for value. The things that are of most value to you, you wouldn't want to trade for money. (Well, you shouldn't.) And usually, if someone wants to trade you money for them, it's less for the thing it is than for the control they hope to gain over you in the trade. So, <br /></p><blockquote><p>Money is power. <br /></p></blockquote><p>Yet it isn't power to do the most important things. If I mention the power to breathe, you may counter with the idea that money can buy doctors to fix your inability to breathe, but I already have the ability to breathe. Without money. <br /></p><p>And a man who has ruined his ability to breath is often unable, even with billions of dollars, to hire enough medical expertise to fix his lungs before he dies. So, again, something money is not:</p><blockquote><p>Money is not unlimited power. <br /></p></blockquote><p>Debt actually is more powerful than money, if you simply want to control people. Is it surprising that people buy and sell debt? <br /></p><p>How about this one?</p><blockquote><p>Money is freedom. <br /></p></blockquote><p>Rich people (and many wannebee rich people) write books detailing how they had to live according to very strict daily routines to get their wealth. You have to sacrifice for that freedom.<br /></p><p>And, once they have it, they have to keep up the routine, because with the money came responsibility to manage a company or some such thing. </p><p>Ask them if they are really free, and they say, they are free to hire a limousine to take them somewhere. But they are not free to walk there on their own. Free to buy expensive clothes, but not to wear comfortable clothes -- unless they have enough cachet to turn their comfortable clothes into a fashion statement. </p><p>And money doesn't buy the cachet -- not on a long-term basis. Show your money and you get attention, but the minute you put your money away, the attention dries up. Real cachet takes more work.<br /></p><blockquote><p>Money is only temporary cachet.<br /></p></blockquote><p>In <i>Hello Dolly</i>, Horace says something like </p><blockquote><p>Money is like manure. It should be spread about making little green things grow. </p></blockquote><p>(US currency being printed with green ink added a certain overloaded semantic -- pun -- to that quote.)<br /></p><p>My response when I first heard that was a bit pithy --</p><blockquote><p>Money is like pus. It tends to gather where the wounds in society are. <br /></p></blockquote><p>Okay, I'll skip forward a bit. Money is a fairly good proxy for apparent value, much of the time. Thus, sales campaigns are battles to drive your own products' apparent value up in the market.<br /></p><p></p><p>Money is an imperfect proxy, or exchange medium, for value. </p><p>What happens when we forgive a debt -- assuming that the debt is truly forgiven and not just transferred to a new owner?<br /></p><p>The money has already been plowed into the economy. And the former debt-owners lose the power that owning the debt gave them. But it does give the former debtor a bit more room to make more value to bring back into the economy. <br /></p>I suppose I could wrap this rant up by offering one or more opinions,
either on student debt or on something really abstract like the lack of dimensionality in current financial instruments, but I want to leave a certain question
dangling: <br /><p>The question is not why we shouldn't give the former students a little more breathing room. </p><p>The real question is what do we keep doing wrong with money, so that it keeps ending up getting in the way when people want to do good things?</p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-11433423442455962972020-11-22T14:16:00.009-08:002020-11-22T14:27:29.590-08:00Gratitude for Political Trials<p>(From a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/joel.rees.5832/posts/1020743551780012" target="_blank">post to FB</a>:)</p><div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-testid="post_message"><p>I have been spreading my <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"type":104,"tn":"*N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/givethanks?__eep__=6&source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG"><span class="_5afx"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz">#</span><span class="_58cm">givethanks</span></span></a> tags in dark corners of the web.</p><p> So I'll post a few here, too.</p><p>
It's a great world God gave us, where we don't have to all do the same
things, where everyone is allowed to make mistakes, even rather
drastic mistakes, and we all do.</p><p> It's a wonderful world where we don't all have to be grateful for the same things.</p><p>
I can be grateful it's Donald Trump and not me going the extra mile to
point out how vulnerable our election process has become to foreign
influence. I sure don't have the money to do it, and it needs to be done. </p><p>I can likewise be grateful it's Joe Biden who is going to
have to face the ambiguities of having won the popular vote in an election seriously marred by bad polling practices. And I can be
grateful we have a few months to make it clear to as many people as possible why I have to feel this
way.</p><p> And I am grateful.</p><p> And I'm very glad that enough of
my fellow Americans are willing to put up with the ambiguities and
continue solving their own problems while it gets worked out -- that there will be enough people who keep on keepin' on that the
world won't come grinding to a halt and the country won't be torn apart.</p><p>(And, while there is a bit of irony in this post, I am not being sarcastic. I am just acknowledging ironies. We can and should be grateful that the world doesn't match our ideals.)<br /></p></div>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-26018859524860574632020-11-20T22:41:00.009-08:002020-12-05T20:44:33.004-08:00Once More About Elections Processes and Fraud<p>If you haven't yet listened to the challenges to the election results, you should. <br /></p><p>When I posted about <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/11/we-usually-get-president-we-deserve.html" target="_blank">usually getting the president we deserve</a>, I was assuming that none of the factions in the current contest would be stupid enough to make use this soon of the tools of voter fraud that they have been putting into place. I was naively hoping that there would be time for common sense to reign back the erosion on election practices that has taken place.</p><p>I had been hearing what the normal news outlets have been mentioning about the challenges that the Trump Campaign legal team have been mounting with a mixture of, I don't know, cynicism, ennui, exasperation, disappointment, rolling eyeballs, etc., that they would be "dragging this out yet again". <br /></p><p>Last night, a friend posted a link to a youtube video of the Trump campaign's legal team' press conference:<br /></p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/buQCdCSDWQQ">https://youtu.be/buQCdCSDWQQ</a></p><p>I don't know why I find it astonishing. I don't know why I want to be so naive. <br /></p><p>Voting has to be a transparent process to be valid. </p><p></p><p>In the simplest case, where voters are not intimidated by threats from the parties presenting their proposals and candidates, secrecy is not necessary. A simple raise of the hands in favor or against is all that is necessary. Everybody can see who voted for what/whom, and everybody can count.</p><p>But people get their ego's all tangled up in the results of elections, and then attempt to alter the outcome unnaturally. So the simplest case doesn't scale well.</p><p>There are many ways to try to alter the results of elections:<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Campaigning itself is one such attempt. <br /></li><li>If campaigning doesn't appear to be working, and people aren't willing to accept that, they might use intimidation, explicit threat, and actual force to prejudice the outcome. </li><li>And if that doesn't work, they might prepare to attempt to alter the outcome by legal technicality after the fact. </li><li>But legal technicality relies on vagaries of courtroom process, so, if, during the election, it becomes apparent that they are going to lose, they might try to alter the outcome by interfering with the process, so they don't have to gamble on those vagaries.<br /></li></ul><p>Election best practices has provided a means of circumventing these problems.</p><p>Elections best practices require that the ballot be cast in secret, but counted in the open.</p><p>With or without a lot of thought, it's clear that there are contradictory requirements here: cast in secret, count in the open. </p><p>Once it's open, it's no longer secret.</p><p>Somehow, you have to reliably separate the identity of the voter with the content of the vote in between the moment the ballot is cast and the moment it is counted.</p><p>Here is one simple way to do it: </p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>A place to store the ballots which have been cast -- a ballot box -- is prepared, and inspected and shown to be empty, and secured before voting starts.</li><li>The ballots are counted before voting starts, to be sure there will be enough for all the registered voters, and to be able to check the number of ballots in the box and the number left over against the number of voters receiving ballots.<br /></li><li>Judges, ballot handlers, and observers are also provided. Observers must include representatives from all parties with interest in the results, and they must be allowed to actually stop the process and ask for corrections to be taken, if irregularities are observed.</li><li>Votes are taken as follows:
<ol start="1"><li>A voter requests a ballot.</li><li>The voter is given a ballot and some sort of covering that hides the content of the ballot. Neither the ballot nor the cover provide a means of identifying the voter.<br /></li><li>The voter is provided a place to mark the ballot in private.</li><li>The voter marks the ballot by hand in private, and places the ballot in its cover before submitting it.</li><li>The ballot is submitted directly to the election judges, who transfer it directly to the ballot box without exposing the ballot contents.</li></ol></li><li>At the end of the designated balloting period, the ballot box is opened and the contents counted in the presence of the judges and observers. The counting process itself has to be observable. If machines are used, they should only be used to verify a hand count.</li><li>Judges and observers must be allowed to record the counts taken and take their records with them.</li><li>The ballots must be packaged and the packages sealed before being transported from the balloting place.<br /></li><li>Ballots and counts must be transported to a central place where the ballots can be securely stored until the election results have been properly certified, and the counts can be tallied with the results from other ballot places, and the results for each balloting place must be published.</li></ol><p>The reasons for being so particular are roughly as follows:</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>If we aren't careful with the ballot box, it's too easy to stuff it with fake votes.</li><li>Counting the ballots used and the ballots not used is a way to anonymously check that the box hasn't been stuffed and that valid ballots haven't been discarded.<br /></li><li>Without observation and without someone competent to judge, it is way too easy for the election place staff to do all sorts of things to undermine the results. Especially, observers from each party can help to keep the others honest.<br /></li><li>Concerning what the voter does:
<ol start="1"><li>It's way too easy to buy the vote of someone with an unrequested ballot.<br /></li><li>Disclosure of the contents of the ballot also subjects a voter to potential reward and/or retribution.<br /></li><li>Observation of the voting being cast is another way to discover the contents of a ballot.<br /></li><li>Use of a machine provides places to hide devices to eavesdrop on the vote. In fact, it's hard to design an electronic machine that would not leak at least some of the details through radio noise.<br /></li><li>The more hands and the longer a distance a ballot passes through before being put in the ballot box, the more opportunities there are to use sleight-of-hand to misdirect the ballot, slip an added ballot in, or surreptitiously observe the contents before the ballot goes in the box.</li></ol></li><li>Counting the votes once at the voting place helps assure that the ballots that are sent to central storage are the same as the ballots that are received there. It means that more people have to be present from the time the polls close until the counting ends, but that is a good thing. More eyes reduces temptations and provides more opportunities to blow a whistle on fraudulent activities. Moreover, no voting place should be set up to take more votes than two or three people can count and check by hand in an hour or two. And machines at this stage are too much temptation for hidden shenanigans.<br /></li><li>The more records of the results at the various stages, the more opportunities to confirm their validity.</li><li>Sealed packages are significantly harder to open and alter the contents of than unsealed packages.<br /></li><li>Central counting is too much temptation for shenanigans, if it's the first count. On the other hand, centralizing the second count allows the use of machines at that point. Secure storage and published results from each step allows greater confidence of the results, and of the results if a review and recount is required. <br /></li></ol><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First observation: Yes. This takes time. </li></ul><p>There is no necessity that the process be finished overnight, or even in a day. This can actually a good thing, because it can help prevent parties with too much interest in the results from knowing whether they want to take the risk of interfering with the process until it's over. <br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Second observation: Machines which can be used to hide or expose parts of the process must not be used in the voting or counting process.<br /></li></ul><p>Except, there might be limited use for those voters whose physical limits would prevent them from marking the ballots by hand. And they can be used at a central location to confirm the original hand counts.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Third observation: Mail-in ballots prevent the use of both observers and judges in critical parts of this process. Their use must be limited to by-necessity-only.<br /></li></ul><p>It's extremely frustrating for me to have to point this out, but it's just not possible for judges and observers to see what happens between the time the ballot is requested and the time it is submitted, to make sure that the ballot does not get diverted to fraudulent purposes. </p><p>And it's not easy for them to observe the request and submission process, either.</p><p>Cries of "But mail-in is so much less stressful!" notwithstanding, mail-in, if allowed, must be limited to cases of necessity.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Fourth observation: Society must support the polling process in ways we do not presently support it, if we want valid results.<br /></li></ul><p>People whose jobs prevent them from attending a regular voting place during the designated times are prevented from voting, and that also biases the results. <br /></p><p>But mail-in is not a solution.</p><p>This is a place where we can improve current practices. I can suggest a few things that would help:</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Employers should be required to give employees necessary paid time off to go vote.</li><li>Voting judge, observer, and counting duties are no less important than jury duty. Failing to properly staff a voting place is just begging for fraud to occur. We should be willing to do something similar to jury duty for election duty. <br /></li><li>Alternative voting places and times should be provided instead of mail-in. Alternative voting places would make it easier to provide election judges and observers, and more possible to confirm who has already voted. Computer systems could also legitimately be used to determine who has voted already, but only carefully secured systems.<br /></li><li>Mail-in ballots, if used, must never be opened and counted until after the voting places have closed and all voters have been confirmed, to avoid encouraging ambitious voters from doubling up. They must also be stored securely and opened and counted in the presence of judges and observers, just as in-person ballots.<br /></li></ol><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Fifth observation: Counting votes by machine to confirm the original hand count is an extremely simple process. It does not require the use of software developed by big companies, and especially not by foreign companies. </li></ul><p>I suppose I should expand a little on my impressions of the charges being made. <br /></p>People working for the election are supposed to be working under oath, or as if under oath. Trump's legal team has found people willing to testify under penalty of perjury that people who are working for the election have broken their oaths.<br /><p></p><p>Should I believe a hundred or so odd-ball malcontents who are willing to cooperate with the monkey pretend president with the orange hair? Or should I believe the thousands and hundreds of thousands of dedicated election workers?</p><p>I know how easy it is to get swept up into following the egoist. <br /></p><p>And I have also worked real jobs for a long time. I know how easy it is for dedicated, hard-working, well-intentioned workers to say, </p><blockquote><p>This is unreasonably difficult. Getting the job done is more important than getting it done right!</p></blockquote><p>and carelessly invoke truisms like</p><blockquote><p>The perfect is the enemy of the good! <br /></p></blockquote><p>and convince each other to do things that shouldn't oughta be done.<br /></p><p>I don't know who has broken their oaths. But it is apparent that a number of people have. At bare minimum, a number of people are seriously deluding themselves about what is right. </p><p>I hope we can solve this without somebody starting witch hunts, but it looks difficult, unless one side yields things they think they shouldn't yield, which is also a bad result.<br /></p><p>Whatever happens in these challenges to the election results, we should be looking at these as a wake-up call. We shouldn't be so caught up in our pursuit of good ends that we ignore the potential damage from our methods. </p><p>We are treating our elections processes way too lightly. <br /></p><p><br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-70417980174721688512020-11-07T08:32:00.006-08:002020-11-07T16:53:30.931-08:00We Usually Get the President We Deserve<p>Trump has been a far better president than we had any right to expect.</p><p>What? you say, No! Trump didn't implement any of your favorite hobby-horse ideals!</p><p>That's actually a good thing.</p><p>We have heard, over the last fifty years, how "The perfect is the enemy of the Good."</p><p>Pure and utter mental waste.</p><p>Perfect and ideal are two separate things, although it is easy to confuse one for the other.</p><p>Let's borrow some ideas from arithmetic. </p><p>One added to one is two, right?</p><p>It's a perfect rule -- built on ideal principles. Some people think it a fundamental fact. </p><p>But it isn't.</p><p>One <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus" target="_blank">crabapple</a> added to one <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_(apple)" target="_blank">Fuji apple</a> does not make two Fuji apples. Nor does it make two crabapples. </p><p>One balloon's worth of air plus one balloon's worth of air may be two balloons' worth of air, but the volume does not double.</p><p>0.6 volts rounds up to 1 V, but 1 V + 1 V is not 2 V, if both 1s are actually 0.6 rounded up.</p><p>There are all sorts of ways one added to one might not result in two.</p><p>In order for this perfect rule to work we have to start with the assumption of an idealized non-compressible unit vector which adds linearly.<br /></p><p>(Wrap your head around that before the next time you berate a pre-school child for having trouble with your mathematics. Arithmetic does not work without mathematics.)<br /></p><p>Without the idealization of a non-compressible unit vector and the implicit single dimension in which it adds to itself, without the idealization of a number line, the arithmetic that we think is so basic just falls apart. </p><p>It is basic. It is real. It's useful to understand. It is also limited in scope of application. In order to make it work for us, we have to get used to remembering to add Fuji apples to Fuji apples and crabapples to (the same subspecies of) crabapples. And it's still approximate, because not every apple on the tree is as big or as sweet -- or as small and as sour.</p><p>Each apple is different. </p><p>A tree is a calculus of fruit, branches, and leaves.</p><p>A beach is a calculus of grains of sand, and when you look close, each grain of sand is different. </p><p>Snowflakes? But a ski slope is a calculus of snowflakes.</p><p>Society is a calculus of individuals. We are not all our president. </p><p>There it is. Say it big.</p><h3 style="text-align: center;">We are not all our president.</h3><p>A president is not a king-for-four-years on whom we hang all
our problems. At least he or she shouldn't be. Nor should we elect a man
or woman to four years of taking the blame for all our own problems. </p><p>We elect
a president to represent us as a group, and, while he or she does not represent any
one of us well as individuals, he or she usually represents us as a
group pretty well. That's what the election process is about, finding someone who represents us as a group.<br /></p><p>Recent elections have gotten us all excited about whom we choose for president. Most elections seem to be rather close. And then a winner is celebrated and installed into office. <br /></p><p>But if you study statistics, you know that elections are a statistical experiment. And less than 2% difference in statistics is generally considered not statistically significant. Often, less than 5% is not significant.</p><p>Statistically, it made no difference whether we installed Trump or Clinton in the White House four years ago. And it will make no difference whether we install Biden or Trump in the White House for the next four years, because the United States of America is a calculus of individuals, and the president of the country is just one more of those individuals. And less than three percent is not statistically significant.<br /></p><p>We think of the president as our leader, but we have it backwards. The president does not lead us. </p>The choice of president is a synthesis, a projection of the public or social identity.<br /><p>The president represents us.</p><p>Now do you understand why Trump was installed in the White House four years ago? </p><p>All those contradictions are a synthesis of the calculus of the country, a reflection of the individuals that compose the country. We are a country of contradictions, and we have been focusing a lot on our contradictions lately. So we elected a president of self-contradictions.</p><p>And he represented us, complete with our internal contradictions.<br /></p><p>As Biden and Harris's less optimal traits become clear, we will find something similar, because we currently compose a nation of factions.<br /></p><p>And it wouldn't have mattered if Trump had won a second term. Less than 5% is not statistically significant.</p><p>What matters in the calculus of society is what each individual does. Biden/Harris, if the current numbers are confirmed, will represent us as a group. Biden is a politician, and Harris will soon feel the reality of what politics outside the California bubble is like, and know the burden of learning what a real politician has to do. (California's bubble is weakening, as well, but that's a topic for a rant for another day.)<br /></p><p>For four years, we have been polarized. The choice of president was not what mattered. It was the calculus of individual discord that produced the polarization. If Hillary Clinton had
been elected, it would still have been four years of polarization, because we chose to focus on how are differences don't fit together according to our ideals.</p><p>Are we going to continue to waste time and energy fighting each other? Or are we going to go back to finding unity in differences? We've done that before, you know. We have found unity in difference.<br /></p><p>It takes many different types of people to make the world go 'round. </p><p>We need our garbage collectors. We need our doctors. We need our farmers. We need our philosophers, including those who make rhyme and rhythm for their philosophies. We need our poor people and our rich people. </p><p>I'm not sure we need our billionaires, their existence is a huge burden to society, warping the weave of social fabric around themselves in excessive and unnatural ways. But if they can quit trying to impose their visions of perfection -- their ideals -- on all of us, using the logic of the weight of their supposed personal worth, we should be able to get along with them.</p><p>We definitely don't need to keep our desperately poor in their condition of desperate poverty. If we can learn to let them be different, we ought to be able to find a way to let them get out of their desperate circumstances. (Let them out, not force them out.)<br /></p><p>I had no preferred candidate in this election. I have had no preferred candidate in any of the last several presidential elections. (No, not even Romney was that close to what I would consider an ideal president. Maybe Reagan? It's been too long, but I think he represented our country pretty well as we navigated the world conditions that resulted in the breakup of the old Soviet Union. But still not my ideal.) It doesn't matter. I've continued to do the things I think are most important for me to do.<br /></p><p>Society is made up of a lot of individuals. Society cannot exist without the individuals. </p><p>Society cannot function if each individual does not do what that individual understands to be the best thing for that individual to do.</p><p>I can't do what you think is best for me to do, because your idea of what is best for me is, at best-formed, only a collection of "NO! NOT THAT!" and "YOU GOTTA DO THIS!" opinions -- uninformed opinions, since you have at best only a superficial view of what I'm up against. </p><p>If I were wasting time worrying about what is best for you to do, it would be the same. </p><p>None of us really has any time to get more than a superficial view of the struggles others are having. You have to make your choices. I have to make mine.</p><p>To the extent we fight each other over the choices we make as individuals, we interfere with the functioning of society.</p><p>Sure, there are some choices which themselves interfere with a functional society. Taking bread from the poor man and giving it to the rich man is a wrong choice. And trying to persuade the rich man to share his bread with the poor is a far more functional choice than trying to force him to do so. (And, as individuals, choosing to fight each other instead of looking for places and ways we can work together -- can't we see how destructive that quickly becomes?)<br /></p><p>Gender confusion? Yes, that's another place both (all) sides try to force others to conform to their own ideals. I think I could, if we could sit down and discuss it rationally, convince you that most gender confusion is derived from society's imposition on the individual of Machiavelli's false ideals. But we would argue about what that means. It's more functional for me to let you figure out what it means to you, if you will let me figure out what it means to me.</p><p>Insurance. Borders. Etc. There are lots of things we could fight about, if we choose to fight. But we don't all have to be thinking, doing, and saying the same things. </p><p>Lasers are useful, but if laser light were all we had, we would have no colors, no warm spread of sunlight, just a bunch of idealistic monochrome beams randomly scanning the darkness, interfering with each other.<br /></p><p>Everything we fight about, we can find ways to let each other be what we are -- different. </p><p>And that is how we achieve unity, because it takes a lot of different wavelengths to light up the world, a lot of different people to make the world go 'round.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-69345028033164179882020-10-04T22:57:00.004-07:002020-10-04T23:02:11.263-07:00The Problem of Electronics Waste and Health<p>First, you may be hiding your eyes from the problem.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here are some links to articles on it:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://greencitizen.com/learn-more/harmful-effects/">https://greencitizen.com/learn-more/harmful-effects/</a> <br /></li></ul><p> This is kind of an overview of the problem.<br /></p><p> </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/magazine/e-waste-offers-an-economic-opportunity-as-well-as-toxicity.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/magazine/e-waste-offers-an-economic-opportunity-as-well-as-toxicity.html</a></li></ul><p>(NYTimes is likely to hit you up for a subscription.) This is a bit more in-depth:<br /></p><p>Lots of "recycling" is cover for shipping to countries in Africa, east Asia, South America, and other countries with poor economies, where really poor people are paid dirt wages to poison themselves, shorten their lifespans, and mess up their children's genes.</p><p>And that is in spite of the fact that the materials in electronics waste are rather valuable.</p><p><br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412014002116">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412014002116</a></li></ul><p>This talks about why it's a hard problem. Even in a developed country like Sweden, even with more advanced recycling methods, workers are exposed to the poisons. </p><p><br /></p><p>Continually keeping your electronics hardware modern has a huge cost. The purchase price is the tip of the iceberg.</p><p>Even just learning how to separate your data from the OS and the applications so you can periodically back it all up, wipe the disks, and do a clean re-install will allow you to keep using your hardware at least twice as long. If we could all do that, we could easily cut the electronics waste in half. <br /></p><p>If you are willing to give Microsoft the boot, there are many operating systems based on the Linux kernel or one of the BSDs, which can give you efficient and effective use of computers too old to run MSWindows at all -- five, ten years, or more. <br /></p><p>Up until last year, China accepted a lot of our electronics waste.</p><p>I can no longer find the references, but the initial reports I read about where the most recent Corona virus came from indicated that it had crossed the species gap from animal to human in the kinds of towns in China where electronics and other poisonous waste was regularly being processed, and was first recognized in the Wuhan district of China, where a lot of those who would have contact with the impoverished workers would be concentrated for logistics and management purposes.<br /></p><p>This would be no surprise. Overwork, crowded conditions, lack of hygiene, shortfalls of nutrition, immune systems already taking damage from other causes create a ripe field for the jump.</p><p>China has since banned imports of electronics waste, and has been stonewalling on the topic of the virus, so much that their total mortality numbers are impossible to believe, and the source of the initial outbreak of record has moved to the Wuhan capital itself.</p><p>Yeah, this sounds like a conspiracy theory. And? Have we some reason to believe the Chinese government has become less willing to alter the flow of information to serve their purposes? I don't think so.<br /></p><p>Statistically, if you are healthy, you are less likely to catch it. If you do, you are less likely to become seriously ill. There are statistical outliers, of course. There always are. But, statistically speaking, being healthy is your best defense, a defense not really available in impoverished communities.</p><p>It's easy to think you can't afford to do what's necessary to keep your electronics around. Competition won't allow it. <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/09/sustainable-development-and-sustainable.html">The bottom line won't allow it.</a> If you take time for these kinds of things, you won't be able to keep yourself in the billionaire club. <br /></p><p> But it comes back to you. This pandemic is not going away until we can learn to slow down and take care of these kinds of things.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-32791037070617932742020-10-01T05:18:00.001-07:002020-10-01T05:19:06.625-07:00Magical Solution to Debate Lack of Quality<p>(That this is repeat of a <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/10/magical-solution-to-debate-lack-of.html" target="_blank">four year-old blogpost</a> needs to be posted again is quite a disappointment. Trump has been a much better president than the country deserved, and he stepped up to the responsibilities quite a bit, but it's still pretty much a game of king-of-the-hill to him.) <br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Invite the top three third party candidates to the next one.<br />
<br />
If they'll come.<br />
<br />
(They might prefer to avoid the noise fight.)<br />
<br />
If they would join the debate, the Donald couldn't just focus on <b>Biden</b>'s perceived weaknesses.<br />
<br />
Frankly, that the debate organizers have failed to go out of their way
to invite the third party candidates again this year says something to me
about the debate organizers' motivations and goals.</blockquote><p></p><p>I said this last time, as well, but I'll say it again, also: a vote for third party candidate you can support <a href="https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/09/make-your-vote-meaningful-vote-for.html" target="_blank">is not a throwaway vote</a>. Every vote for someone else tells them they're messing up. The major political parties need to get the message that they have long since ceased to represent any real constituency. <br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-45070961750348774492020-09-26T23:38:00.009-07:002020-10-04T22:59:09.627-07:00Sustainable Development and Sustainable Economics -- Sustainable?<p>I had a dream yesterday morning, jut a little before I woke up to get ready to go deliver the mail. <br /></p><p>I was visiting a young boy in a wheelchair.</p><p>I could tell his body wanted to do something active, so I lifted him up onto my shoulders and let him use his arms to climb around on my back and shoulders and swing from my arms, helping him when his strength was insufficient.</p><p>When he was played out, I turned my back to his wheelchair and let him slide back down to sit.</p><p>He wanted me to come back the next day, and so did his physical trainer and his parents. The trainer pointed out that it seemed to be a good alternative approach to helping him develop the muscles that were not developing.<br /></p><p>I had to explain that I could not visit every day due to other obligations, and there was some discussion of how often I could visit.</p><p>There were several limits to my ability to visit every day. One was that I had other obligations. Another was financial limits, in that making a regular commitment would require me to refrain to commit to other activities -- activities that would bring in pay.</p><p>A third limit was that making the visits regular would quickly relieve the visit of its novelty, equalizing it in effect with other, more normal methods.</p><p>In other words, making it a planned regular activity would rob it of its effect. <br /></p><p>I don't remember if I explained clearly to them that I was sure that they would end up making my visits part of his "new training schedule plans", where I knew such plans were not appropriate. If such visits ("sessions") did lead to progress, progress would be in fits and starts and reversions. And the boy would need freedom to not play some days.</p><p>It was about this point that my eyes opened and I checked the alarm clock.</p><p>Most of the jobs I have had in my varied and spotted career have been the sort that do not result in sustainable family economics. </p><p>Many of my jobs just haven't paid enough. <br /></p><p>In many of my software and computer related jobs, the company was looking for a superman, but what they needed was for everyone in the company to buckle down and learn what they were actually selling, what they were actually producing, and devote time and resources to closing the gap. And to learn what computers cannot, in principle, do, so that the sales group would quit trying to sell things that were impossible.</p><p>They thought I could be their superman.<br /></p><p>People don't want troubleshooters. They want magicians. </p><p>-- and that's not a sustainable economic model for anyone.</p><p>In my private tutoring in English in Japan, some of the parents and students understood what I was doing and approved. But most could not let the bait of improving test scores alone long enough to let their children or themselves really relax and learn to communicate in English. </p><p>Side-track on test scores -- If you design a test to display what one group of students has learned, there are other groups of students who were progressing in different but equally important areas, and the test fails to show their progress. The test rewards the two groups unequally. And there is much more to be said on the limits of tests which will have to be discussed elsewhere.<br /></p><p>The English lessons themselves are a case in point. The best way to help a child who has not been progressing in school is to let that child explore the subject on his or her own. The student knows where he or she is getting stuck, and it may be in a blind alley or it may not, but the gaps can't be bridged if the student is continually being forced to study for the test instead of being allowed to fill in the lacks. </p><p>You can't plan lessons in advance for the kind of teaching that is needed.</p><p>But without a plan, you can't have a sustainable activity.</p><p>Without a sustainable activity, in the current economic environment, you can't have sustainable development or sustainable economics. <br /></p><p>Which brings me to my point, but does not bring you to the same point, I suppose. Let's try another tack.<br /></p><p>A common complaint about popular songs is that (at any particular point in time) so much of it sounds the same. And well it should. The captains of the industry are devoted to that great principle of sustainable economics -- if it sells, make more of it.</p><p>Every now and then, some artist breaks out of the mold in just the right way to catch a wave of interest, and you get another big hit, and then everybody works on figuring out ways to copy it without infringing on the laws on intellectual property.<br /></p><p>In case you aren't aware of how those breaks (hit songs, boom cycles) happen, here is how it happens: there will be groups of artists who are willing to set aside the principles of sustainable economics and forego immediate profit. (Willing to, as a technology teacher warned his students, "eat dirt and go naked".) The new hits come out of a few of those groups. </p><p>But the profits are rewarded (somewhat randomly) to individuals from those groups (who are then dragged away from those groups by management). The profits do not return to the groups where the hits came from.<br /></p><p>Maybe that brings you closer to the point.</p><p>Is sustainable sustainable?</p><p>Yet a different tack on the concept -- </p><p>Ideals are good, right? But every ideal humans have developed in all our recorded history sooner or later leads to a dead or violent end. </p><p></p><blockquote><p>${White_supremacy} was an ideal that many found perplexingly reasonable -- mostly many ${whites}. But, surprisingly, many non-${whites} who preferred, perversely, to let someone else take the burdens of being socially superior. </p><p>That preference may have been fear of retribution against contrary opinions in many cases, but in others was something else -- Leading is hard, and even most individual ${white_supremacists} perversely want someone else to lead the movement.</p></blockquote><p>And basically, every political movement and ideal can be substituted in the place of ${white_supremacy} in the above paragraphs and it comes out the same.</p><p>Ideals adopted by the crowd quickly turn divisive and violent. <br /></p><p>Should we get rid of ideals, then? </p><p>Apparently, they are necessary. Otherwise people can't seem to see which way to head. But they are also necessary to abandon when the time comes. It is necessary to be ready to discard previously held ideals in favor of better ones, one at a time, when each ideal is no longer beneficial to the individual who has been holding it.<br /></p><p>And society works much better when we don't all have to have the same ideals at once.<br /></p><p>Sustainable development and sustainable economics seem like really good ideas. Okay, they are really good ideas. But in the end they are just another ideal.<br /></p><p>The terms themselves contain an internal contradiction (just like all ideals, really). </p><p>You cannot plan real progress, and without progress there is neither development nor economics.</p><p>Now, someone will point out that what is currently being called sustainable development in the international community is making use of our ecological resources in renewable ways.</p><p>Renewable? <br /></p><p>How many people understand that all energy in our world comes, ultimately, from a very radioactive nuclear reactor in the center of the solar system? We are protected from it by distance, by atmosphere, and by a convenient magnetosphere. But without that huge source of (ultimately, non-renewable in a universe subject to entropy, but that's a long time away) energy, none of our economic activities are renewable.<br /></p><p>Nuclear energy.</p><p>We have a lot of radioactive materials spread out all over the world. This was true well before such as the Curies, Einstein, Dalton, et. al. helped us understand the atomic nature of matter -- even well before Leucippus and Democritus. In some places they are naturally concentrated in ways that are dangerous to our safety there.</p><p>We also have a lot of nuclear reactor waste that has been concentrated by human means. And it's not going away anytime soon, either. </p><p>Leaving it all there to slowly radiate away into the darkness is actually a waste of a good resource, a waste demanded by those who fear what happens when we mishandle it.</p><p>We are mishandling it now. </p><p>We should be researching ways to use it safely, instead of sweeping it under the metaphorical rug of some mountain or desert in some remote part of the world we think we're safe from.</p><p>Most of the waste of our current economic activities is not radioactive. But it is still quite poisonous, quite dangerous to our health, and quite wasteful. </p><p>Consider our old computers and portable phones. At least subliminally, you have to be aware that most of that ends up in highly toxic industrial dumps somewhere.</p><p>And the irony of it is that some of the very resources we are running short of are hiding in those dumps.<br /></p><p>In too many of the ways it is used today, "sustainable" means "doing what we are already doing". That means continuing to call dumping waste "renewable", as long as we can find another place to dump most of it after a little processing to remove something currently of value.<br /></p><p>And that isn't sustainable. Not in the long run. <br /></p><p>So what is the answer?</p><p>Is sustainable not sustainable?</p><p>Or is it only temporarily sustainable and then you have to do it again?</p><p>Laws don't work. People always find loopholes so they can keep doing what they know how to do.<br /></p><p>Right now, the answer is this: </p><p>Those who have amassed great wealth by promoting the economic activities that generated the waste must learn to invest in their children's future by supporting the currently unprofitable activities of finding and developing safe ways to recover our waste -- preferably ways that don't entail seriously underpaid people working in slave conditions in distant countries poisoning themselves to got it done.</p><p>What if they insist on keeping their wealth instead?</p><p>What good will their wealth do if the next pandemic comes before we have proper vaccines for the current? </p><p>Or if the slowly degrading plastics building up somewhere in the confluence of ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean ends up poisoning all the food-grade fish in the world? </p><p>Or if the radioactive waste dumps in the deserts and mountains start leaking into the very place where rainwater for the continent is absorbed back into clouds to rain on the rest of the continent?</p><p><a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-problem-of-electronics-waste-and.html">I don't see very many of our multi-billionaires jumping on this.</a></p><p>Popular movements, popular charities, popular areas of technological development -- things everyone is already doing, mostly activities that indirectly support the companies where they have their fortunes salted away, sure, they jump on those. </p><p>But not on the unsustainable activities that will lead us back to a new round of sustainability.</p><p>We can't be sustainable with short-term views of sustainability, and five and ten years is way too short-term.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-77629035669292128742020-09-26T19:43:00.004-07:002020-09-28T16:54:48.791-07:00WEAR THE MASK, FOR *** SAKE, YOU FOOL!!!! (a Response)<p dir="ltr"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtEbviu1Cov0_cbRMkusgMjOusY6JkSmiaMK_BwRzZSEQFQQl-ua96HDrg7_y_j5eQNeMk-OvPN-Eg2Hliroqq7jN1rt75qqKzGWmcX_1PGMggEBAzAufqZV1dW2Yv0ImNEXQK7joYO88/s1000/DSC_0238mask-ubuntu_1000.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtEbviu1Cov0_cbRMkusgMjOusY6JkSmiaMK_BwRzZSEQFQQl-ua96HDrg7_y_j5eQNeMk-OvPN-Eg2Hliroqq7jN1rt75qqKzGWmcX_1PGMggEBAzAufqZV1dW2Yv0ImNEXQK7joYO88/s320/DSC_0238mask-ubuntu_1000.jpg" /></a></div><p><br />More people are getting sick for several reasons. </p><p>The changing of the seasons is only part of the equation. </p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Use of masks is also only part of the equation.<br /></p>
<p dir="ltr">Masks never could be more than a low wall, and if they are not kept clean they quickly (three days or less) begin to defeat their own purpose. A dirty mask helps neither the wearer nor the people he is around. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The materials masks are made of become allergenic after long term use.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And I could go on about masks, but they are only part of the equation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If you believe in God, may I ask you to consider that God may be trying to get us to slow our collective pursuit of the rat race down.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If not, let me tell you about how excessive and inappropriate competition is weakening all the foundations of our society, including our bases for maintaining health.</p><p dir="ltr">As best we can understand it, and much to the Chinese government's dismay and embarrassment, the virus made the jump from animals to the human population in slave-labor populations in China, where
it is impossible for people to maintain nutrition, hygiene or other necessary conditions for health.</p><p dir="ltr">From there, it traveled first among populations in poverty, and communicated to the upper middle class where those populations touch -- ergo, from the slave-labor conditions where it jumped to the relatives and friends in slightly better conditions who work in sweatshops making our high-tech gadgets and such, and from there to their managers. </p><p dir="ltr">Their managers have the means to go traveling, and it was a large group of vacationers who first brought it from China to Japan, to places like the snow festivals in Sapporo and Hokkaidō. </p><p dir="ltr">In the developed world, it was the people with compromised immune systems who picked it up first (and whom it hit worst). This is not a surprise, really, since it is the immune systems' job to defend us. </p><p dir="ltr">We were surprised when the methods of kicking certain parts of our immune systems into high-gear backfired, and excessive immune system reactions began to turn deadly.</p><p dir="ltr">Think about this carefully. These are partially immuno-compromised individuals who have adopted the habit of taking various drugs to help them keep working in spite of having really bad colds. In times past, a cold that bad could be deadly, but we have drugs to deal with the cold symptoms now.</p><p dir="ltr">Well, it turned out that those drugs had side effects that turned against us in this version of the cold virus. (Corona viruses are cold viruses, remember?) This should also be no surprise. </p><p dir="ltr">When you push your body too hard with those drugs (including antihistamines and excessively high doses of vitamin C, and such), you go down, and the doc has to take you off those crutch medicines and convince you to get rest and nutrition. Even if the doctor can't convince you to go off the drugs, he or she really tries to convince you to get some rest. </p><p dir="ltr">(Take notice of this: It's the rest and nutrition that heals you.) <br /></p><p dir="ltr">A virus that kicks up a high-level response in the body combining with drugs that kick up a high-level response is going to result in a violent reaction, and the violent reaction can result in death and debilitating disease.<br /></p>
<p dir="ltr">Now, a rudimentary understanding of epidemiology tells us that these kinds of pandemic continue until we develop herd immunity. </p><p dir="ltr">We develop herd immunity in several ways. </p><p dir="ltr">One is die-off. Horrible as that is, it is reality.</p><p dir="ltr">Another is by letting our bodies develop natural immunity by exposure. The low walls like masks slow the contagion down, which gives individuals more time to develop immunity. But if we then fail to strengthen our general health, to be ready for increased exposure, we lose the benefit of the low walls. </p><p dir="ltr">Pre-exposure through vaccines is similar to the low-walls in this -- if we fail to keep our health up, vaccines have limits.<br /></p><p dir="ltr">In modern society, we have often been able to dodge die-off by hygienic practices, by improving our overall health, and by the pre/faux-exposure of vaccines. But all of that also slows down the development of herd immunity, which means the viruses mutate and come back.<br /></p><p dir="ltr">They don't go away until we develop herd immunity, both by exposure and by giving up the behaviors which enabled the virus to make the mutation jump in the first place.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The virus jumped in slave-labor conditions where it is impossible for people to maintain health.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We pick it up and pass it on when our behavior causes us to have dropped immunities.</p><p dir="ltr">Those behaviors include bad nutrition, lack of sleep, high levels of inappropriate stress, use of mood-altering substances, poor social hygiene, etc. </p><p dir="ltr">How sick we get is also in no small part determined by our overall health, including whether our immune systems are within appropriate functional parameters -- we have seen clearly this time that kicking (some of) our immune systems into overdrive is another bad habit of modern society, and can cause a virus infection to turn fatal or debilitating when it otherwise wouldn't.</p><p dir="ltr">Even if you don't believe in God, you have to understand that nature itself is effectively telling us as a civilization, and me and you as individuals, to slow down.</p><p dir="ltr">-- to give up the bad habit of excessive competition, and the bad habit of trying to force everyone around you to compete in the games that you think you can win.<br />
</p><p dir="ltr">This is why this post is in my political blog. The causes of the pandemic, and the cure, happen to coincide with the causes and cure of our current social, political, and economic distress.</p><p dir="ltr">If we don't change what caused the pandemic, hanging on to your mask will be no better than trying to hang on to a clump of grass when you're dangling over the edge of a cliff. </p><p dir="ltr">Sure, wear the mask sensibly, but fix the other problems. </p><p dir="ltr">Slow down. Learn to give others a chance to live.<br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-36304104057587563992020-09-21T01:31:00.005-07:002020-09-21T15:18:27.627-07:00Cap in Hand<p>The Atlantic ran what I assume was an opinion piece, showing a picture of Donald Trump walking cap in hand in the dark with his top button unbuttoned, his tie hanging loose, captioned with the label "loser".</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7DGYTL36kbyiTVhuMUzPcW14kHwa0weDVIHMsuZ9ekA3jIbRwQ6kWiL7-ys9BjXXTMfJB9qJwr5Tap-C-OG4mfky5ekkH_pO3QQWgii-418Mx1aCBTl8Wr_FmL0hxlEZCWW520Vfdmqo/s960/trump_cap-in-hand.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="960" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7DGYTL36kbyiTVhuMUzPcW14kHwa0weDVIHMsuZ9ekA3jIbRwQ6kWiL7-ys9BjXXTMfJB9qJwr5Tap-C-OG4mfky5ekkH_pO3QQWgii-418Mx1aCBTl8Wr_FmL0hxlEZCWW520Vfdmqo/w400-h208/trump_cap-in-hand.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I won't comment on the contents of the piece. I saw it repeated all over the internet, with a unanimous, "TRUMP HAS DONE HIMSELF IN THIS TIME FOR SURE YOU CAN TELL BY HOW DEFEATED HE LOOKS!" refrain. Back in July.<br /></p><p>Uhm, guys, if anyone is listening, I know what it's like to walk home cap-in-hand. I know what it means to loosen my tie. I know what it's like to wear myself out fighting battles when the people I want to help insist on beating me. </p><p>I know what it's like to hear people using mockery to try to push me out of their way so they can promote their agendas. </p><p>I also know what it's like to watch the mockers sink their own ship when they succeed in pushing me out of the way. It's not something that makes me happy. And it's not something I want to see happen to my country.<br /></p><p>I don't agree with a lot of things Trump has said. Hey, after he shoots off at the mouth and takes some time to think about it, even he doesn't agree with a lot of the things he has said. </p><p>I don't think it's necessary to have a president who only says and does things I agree with. In fact, considering all the other opinions necessary to keep the country running, I think it would be a very bad thing to have a president who only said and did things I agreed with.<br /></p><p>But I consider the mockery he faces, and I definitely can't agree with that. And I think the mockery is a bad enough thing that I feel it necessary to say so in public.</p><p>When everything you say is mockery, it becomes really hard to communicate.<br /></p><p>If you are going to criticize him, find something of substance to criticize. (But criticizing people is surely not a constructive use of your time.)<br /></p><p>If you are going to criticize his record, find something of substance to criticize. (Better yet, quit criticizing and start trying to help find real solutions to our problems that aren't pie-in-the-sky. And quit blaming him for everything when you are at least partly to blame.)<br /></p><p>If your continual harping on his humanness doesn't seem to be winning you anything but echos from your echo chamber, consider opening yourself up to opinions outside your echo chamber. <br /></p><p>If the politics you promote don't seem to be winning in the polls, maybe you should reconsider your politics instead of blaming him for your lack of popularity.</p><p>Or maybe you should just state your opinions and let others state theirs, like I do. (Notice that I am not mocking you, just telling you I don't think mocking people is constructive dialog. I can see a difference.) <br /></p>零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-91352333554276859072020-08-11T06:44:00.001-07:002020-08-12T03:59:43.522-07:00Real-world Mask Use(This belongs in my <a href="https://joels-random-eikaiwa.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Random Eikaiwa blog</a>, but it's too political to put it there without annotation.) <br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Why are you looking at my neck?"<br />
<br />
Betty: "Sorry. I'm not a vampire, just wondering if you have a tracheostomy."<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Huh? Oh. You mean why is my mask down around my neck?"<br />
<br />
Betty: "Not meaning to be rude or anything."<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Just sarcastic is all." <br />
<br />
Betty: "No. Seriously. Masks are sometimes used to protect stomas."<br />
<br />
Afleo: "Nothing like that. I just forgot to pull it back up over my face. There. Is that better?"<br />
<br />
Betty "Yes. Covering both the mouth and the nose is much more effective at blocking potential vectors."<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "True."<br />
<br />
Betty: "So why do you pull it down?"<br />
<br />
Alfeo: (Breathes through the mask.) "Haaahhhh."<br />
<br />
Betty: "Oh. Your glasses get foggy."<br />
<br />
Alfeo:
"Yep. All steamed up. And that makes it hard to read the addresses on
the mail I have to deliver. Which kind of defeats the purpose of the
glasses."<br />
<br />
Betty: "I see."<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "So I pull the mask down when no one's around. And then I sometimes forget to pull it back up."<br />
<br />
Betty; "What do you do when people are around?"<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Take the glasses off."<br />
<br />
Betty: "Then how do you read the addresses?"<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Slowly. And when the address is in fine print like this one --"<br />
<br />
Betty: "Wow! That's tiny! I have a hard time reading that with my contacts in."<br />
<br />
Alfeo:
"Yeah. So I lift the glasses up to read it. It takes extra time, but it
allows me to keep the mask on when people are around."<br />
<br />
Betty: "Why do people print addresses so tiny?"<br />
<br />
Alfeo:
"I don't know. Maybe the address was too long for the label? The people
who write the addressing software didn't want to take the time to deal
with really long addresses?"<br />
<br />
Betty: "Why would systems engineers do that?"<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Deadlines. Speaking of which, I have to get back to work."<br />
<br />
Betty: "I'd better get out of your way so you can work fast. It looks like you still have a lot of mail to deliver today."<br />
<br />
Alfeo: "Thanks. I do."<br />
<br />零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-64297375248921874672020-06-13T17:55:00.000-07:002020-06-13T18:41:22.508-07:00What It Is Ain't Exactly ClearLinking a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/guslopez?__tn__=%2CdCH-R-R&eid=ARDday-W7FxWjMpJHs9qT-urQ5xhLvd1fyvNh3UfeVf6kesoYrWm_HIvih03ohG1t4-1n5vPL4DJoNH0&hc_ref=ARRG8e5Fe0M1O3Na57gb2EnKl01X0Y2YboTaQmm9VdxFVfZgEnbeCm9YWIWMrpUD5tU&fref=nf" target="_blank">BassHook post on the violence in Seattle</a>. View at your own risk.<br />
<br />
:-/ <br />
<br />
<iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="843" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fguslopez%2Fposts%2F10157645575697858&width=500" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="500"></iframe><br />
<br />
(I figured out that I could embed the original post, so I'm embedding that instead of my response post.)<br />
<br />
(Irony included. If you can't see the pictures through either the link or the embedded frame above, I'll spoil it for you. Street art. Lots of crowds, including children. Not the kind of violence you may have been hearing about, no apparent violence at all. Stores open and in operation. No weapons in sight. Just for the record, my nephew, who lives there, confirms the lack of violence and weaponry.) <br />
<br />
I'm going to post my additional comments from my FB post on it here, as well, unpacked just a little:<br />
<br />
Woodstock was not a Sunday
picnic for flower children, but the people who attended generally took
care of themselves and each other at a certain level of consideration and morality,
in spite of the fact that many were high.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodstock_redmond_stage.JPG" title="Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)"><img alt="Woodstock redmond stage" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Woodstock_redmond_stage.JPG" width="512" /></a><br />
(Image by <a class="external text" href="http://www.film.queensu.ca/Woodstock/" rel="nofollow">Derek Redmond</a> and Paul Campbell, used under <a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Creative_Commons" title="w:en:Creative Commons">Creative Commons</a> <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en" rel="nofollow">Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported</a> license, courtesy Wikimedia.) <br />
<br />
(It is true that the standards of morality observed at Woodstock are not the standards that I hope everyone will someday understand and choose. There is something about people that induces many of us to choose a lesser happiness that we can see now over a greater one that we can't yet see. But there were a lot of people there, and there was very little violence. Look it up if you don't believe me.)<br />
<br />
Altamont was intended <u>by the promoters</u> to be Woodstock West or something, but the results
were significantly more violent. I leave it to the reader to discern the
reasons.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Altamont_free_concert_poster.jpg" title="Unknown author / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)"><img alt="Altamont free concert poster" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Altamont_free_concert_poster.jpg" width="256" /></a>
<br />
(<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/63938057@N08/6465286069" target="_blank">Image by Flickr user Paille on Flickr</a>, used under <a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Creative_Commons" title="w:en:Creative Commons">Creative Commons</a> <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" rel="nofollow">Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic</a> license, via Wikimedia.)<br />
<br />
(Well, my own take on the difference between Altamont and Woodstock, Woodstock was organic. Altamont was a deliberate attempt to recreate the organic, and that generally results in something artificial. Artificial tends to be unsatisfying.)<br />
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">As a non-tangential tangent, I'll mention Kent State:</span></span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TRE9vMBBe10" width="480"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">FWIW, we've been through this before.</span></span><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gp5JCrSXkJY" width="459"></iframe><br />
<br />
There are people who need to say something, and <a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-is-causing-riots.html" target="_blank">they are trying to say it</a>. Instead of trying to keep them from saying it, the least we can do is let them have their voice. And it might not hurt to try to listen to what they are saying, to try to understand.零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-90815659778064124692020-05-31T00:13:00.000-07:002020-06-02T02:28:51.430-07:00What Is Causing the Riots?I don't mean who, and I don't mean to raise the question of paid anti-whatever protestors allegedly coming in from out-of-town, nor of apparently whatever-supremacist police officers who allegedly disguise themselves to do what the real protesters wouldn't in pushing the violence forward.<br />
<br />
Yes, that stuff is happening, and it shouldn't surprise anyone. If you haven't learned the lessons of history, nature abhors a vacuum, etc. There is no magic that will keep the USA safe for a free people if the people won't support their own freedom.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://reiisi.blogspot.com/2019/06/god-turneth-neither-to-left-nor-to-right.html" target="_blank">This is not a question of left versus right.</a><br />
<br />
What is it to support your own freedom?<br />
<br />
<> Is it carrying guns?<br />
<br />
Well, sometimes, but I think that is not the most important thing. Definitely not now.<br />
<br />
<> Is it voicing your opinions in spite of all the people who mock or threaten?<br />
<br />
Of course. But that is also not exactly the most important thing.<br />
<br />
<> Is it listening to people who need a listening ear?<br />
<br />
Now there is very important thing, even though it can be hard to distinguish one needy listening ear that you can't help from another that you can. It does work out if you try.<br />
<br />
<> Is it volunteering to help at the local library?<br />
<br />
How about taking time off your $100+/hour job to do it?<br />
<br />
How much do you make an hour? According to my sources, current average USA household income is $60,000 a year. That would be $5000 a month. If it meant a 40 hour workweek for a household with only one wage earner, that wage earner would be making about $30/hour. <br />
<br />
That's not easy to live on, but more than half of the households in the US are making less than that, with all adults working. (That's what average household income means.)<br />
<br />
If you are making more than $200,000 a year, are you willing to scrape a bit off of that to volunteer at the library, or do some other social service that nobody wants to pay for?<br />
<br />
Are you willing to tell your boss that his plans for world domination need to take a back seat to the needs of the people around you?<br />
<br />
If you are the boss with the plans for world domination, do you have a net worth more than USD 4,000,000 at, say, age forty? That's enough to retire comfortably. Are you willing to forego those plans for world domination -- to retire and let someone else take your place and earn a living?<br />
<br />
Actually, if you have that much, you could move aside and let three people make average wages.<br />
<br />
You say it's not that simple?<br />
<br />
Steve Jobs did it for several years to bring Apple back.<br />
<br />
Yeah, he was working, but he forewent his wages so others could also work. <br />
<br />
Bringing the country back is not a better purpose?<br />
<br />
I've said it elsewhere, and I'm not the first.<br />
<br />
Protecting your freedom means giving. Not just food, not just money, not just advice on how to make more money. <br />
<br />
It also means giving way, and getting out of the way, so that others can have their turn, so they can earn their place.<br />
<br />
That's how you keep the paid protesters from having no other work than paid protest.<br />
<br />
And that's how you keep the white supremacists from feeling like white supremacy is the only thing that will protect their right to work.<br />
<br />
Give up those plans for world domination. (World domination never works out the way you think it will, anyway.)<br />
<br />
Move over.<br />
<br />
Let others have a turn working.<br />
<br />零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-61529720184502566172020-05-14T05:28:00.004-07:002020-05-16T22:05:18.263-07:00So What Is the Problem with Vote-by-mail and Vote-by-Internet?<div>
I've been reflex-sharing some BassHook posts calling for
opposition to the spread of vote-by-mail. Several people whose opinions I
respect have called me on it. So I'm going to resort to the first
solution of the pedant and try to explain.<br />
<br />
(But I'm going to listen to myself, and see how much of the explanation makes sense.)<br />
<br />
[JMR202005171402: I have now written a bit more succinctly on this topic in another place: <a href="https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-inconvenience-of-voting-and.html">https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-inconvenience-of-voting-and.html</a>. You might want to read that before, or instead of, this.]<br />
<br />
Good explanations need backgrounds, so I'll give links to as much of the background in my thinking as I can. )These blogposts are about current problems in balloting systems and some suggestions I have considered for solutions to those problems):<br />
<ul>
<li>Some of what I think voting means: <br />
<a href="https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-vote-what-does-vote-mean.html" target="_blank">https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-vote-what-does-vote-mean.html</a></li>
<li>More of the same from a different point of view: <br />
<a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/09/why-vote-what-does-vote-mean.html" target="_blank">https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/09/why-vote-what-does-vote-mean.html</a></li>
<li>Still more, from yet another point of view: <br />
<a href="https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/09/make-your-vote-meaningful-vote-for.html" target="_blank">https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/09/make-your-vote-meaningful-vote-for.html</a></li>
<li>A different way of looking at the electoral college: <br />
<a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/12/elector.html" target="_blank">https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/12/elector.html</a></li>
<li>A kind of a different point of view on what constitutes vote fraud: <br />
<a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/01/revisiting-vote-voter-fraud.html" target="_blank">https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2020/01/revisiting-vote-voter-fraud.html</a> </li>
<li>Some brainstorming on possible ways to fix the electoral processes in the US: <br />
<a href="https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-awkward-proposal-for-amendment-to.html" target="_blank">https://joel-for-president.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-awkward-proposal-for-amendment-to.html</a> </li>
</ul>
For more background on my thinking, I offer this: I divide political systems called democratic into three rough classes, which nowhere near completely cover them all, but I think it is an instructive partition:</div>
<ul>
<li>Mob rule</li>
<li>Popularity contest</li>
<li>Free society</li>
</ul>
Under mob rule democracy, you generally have a small number of small groups of people who manipulate the will and actions of the people, getting them to choose and behave in ways in which they would not when they are of a sober state of mind.<br />
<br />
Under popularity contest democracy, you generally have a small number of small, partially hidden groups of people who put figureheads out and use them to manipulate the opinions and dialogue of the people, getting them to think and talk in ways in which they would not when they are in a sober state of mind.<br />
<br />
By contrast, a truely free society is one in which the people in general deliberately refrain from both manipulating and being manipulated.<br />
<br />
And if I describe them as being of a sober state of mind, I do not mean that they do not know how to enjoy life or enjoy themselves. Nor do I mean that they have no compassion.<br />
<br />
Separating oneself from any state of happiness is not a sober state of mind. Free people understand that a part of the responsibility of freedom is to find thei principle source of joy from within -- otherwise, they leave themselves too open to manipulation.<br />
<br />
And the compassion that free people are moved by is all the more real because the compassion is not forced. <br />
<br />
But that borders on mysticism.<br />
<br />
In an ideal society, from our point of view, it's questionable whether voting systems are even necessary. But if they are, it would seem that any voting system at all should work. In such a society, we think that there are none who want to take people's freedoms away from them -- for whatever reason people decide to try to do that.<br />
<br />
In this world, in the various social divisions of the various countries, there are movements to undermine the freedoms of the people. Why? Who knows why some people are dissatisfied when others behave in ways that vary from their own? But it is common self-delusion, to accept a glorious misery as a substitute for internal happiness, because the internal happiness is blocked by controvertion of conscience. And then to work to help others to enjoy the same glorious misery, by getting them to deny their own consciences, as well.<br />
<br />
If that feels like I'm poisoning the well, no. That well is already full of poison, I'm just pointing it out.<br />
<br />
You cannot be free if you deny your own conscience, any more than you can be free as long as you let society impose the social norm as a substitute for your conscience. Or, rather, letting society dictate what you believe your conscience should be telling you is one very common (and very destructive) way to deny your conscience.<br />
<br />
Social norms and standards are no decent substitute for conscience.<br />
<br />
Anyway, it is a fact that there are and shall always be, in any group larger than two, some faction that works to undermine freedom.<br />
<br />
How do we define a free country, and a free government?<br />
<br />
The government of a free country is not a government that is free in some sense, nor is it a government that attempts to force its people to be free.<br />
<br />
It is a government that operates to support the people in their freedom. In order to do so, it must be responsible to the voice of the people.<br />
<br />
There is a certain class of political persuasion that insists the voice of the people will always go wrong. There must, in this way of thinking, be a leader to lead the people in the right direction.<br />
<br />
History gives us plenty of empirical evidence to the contrary. In every case, when some small faction gains control, if it insists on keeping control, everything quickly goes south.<br />
<br />
(This is in addition to the theoretical demonstration I have given above.) <br />
<br />
I mentioned it in one of the blogposts linked above, but there is a verse in the Book of Mormon that is one of my favorites:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything
contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of
the people to desire that which is not right; (from <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/29.26#p25" target="_blank">Mosiah 29: 26</a>.)</blockquote>
It does not say that the voice of the people will or even should always choose the perfect or best option. It only says that the voice of the people usually chooses good options over bad.<br />
<br />
I can demonstrate theoretical basis for this proposition, by setting up an integral over the functions of conscience, but I'll leave it to you to work out for yourself whether a group of people who are free can follow their consciences and still come to a useful, positive, good consensus.<br />
<br />
Polling systems in every country have problems.<br />
<br />
Mechanically assisted polling systems are plagued by failure in the mechanism. One very prominent such failure is known as "hanging chads". But all mechanical systems suffer from the potential to fail.<br />
<br />
Electronic (including digital and even internet) polling has several additional weaknesses in addition to the potential of simple failure. Failures in electronic polling systems tend to be silent and invisible. Hanging chads tend to be visible. Failed levers and pulleys tend to be noticed. Failed or breached network interfaces are often entirely unnoticed.<br />
<br />
Unnoticed failures in systems are the ones which poison the system, and this is the danger in both internet balloting and mail-in balloting, that failures can go unnoticed long enough to undermine the system beyond repair. <br />
<br />
These are actually specific examples of an axiom which has no known counterexample in (mortal) human society:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h4>
Every system has vulnerabilities and failure modes. </h4>
</blockquote>
Those who study systems science are fully aware of this, even though it is often viewed as unprofitable to admit. (Microsoft and now Google are prominent among those large companies which attempt to practice systems science without recognizing the inherent vulnerability of systems, although Microsoft once was quite happy to use the exact same inherent vulnerability as its excuse for following the "80/20 rule".)<br />
<br />
This brings us to an axiom in polling, that the must dependable polling system can be nothing but the simplest.<br />
<br />
These are the essential characteristics of the most dependable polling systems known:<br />
<ol>
<li>Written ballot -- leaves a physical, visible record, readable by the unaided eye, that can be recounted.</li>
<li>Separable ballot -- serial numbers for counting unused ballots on one half, no identifying characteristic on the other. Both halves are kept in separate boxes after use. Matching counts helps assure that ballots have not been lost or added.</li>
<li>Voting judges from at least the leading contending parties present on voting site -- in theory, at least, competition between parties will keep them from colluding to pervert the balloting processes. </li>
</ol>
In addition to the above characteristics of the system itself, the following features of the system context are also required, to support the system:<br />
<ol>
<li>Visibility of the process is necessary, to give the voter confidence in both the ballot and the results, leading to a greater willingness to vote according to conscience and a greater motivation to vote again the next time.</li>
<li>Rules for the cases of no clear winner are necessary -- both for breaking ties and for determining when the consensus is none of the provided candidates (partially explained below).</li>
<li>Exceptional voting methods must be provided for exceptional cases (also partially explained below.</li>
</ol>
Internet voting removes all three of the system characteristics and the first of the context characteristics, although, if-and-only-if there is no failure, cryptographic techniques and cryptology can be used to create electronic equivalents.<br />
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The problem with any electronic voting method is that it requires some aid to the eye to read the ballot, and the aid can be deliberately broken in such a way that it shows a false image. Yes, there have been such incidences in real-world electronic voting machines, not just as proof-of-concept, but as actual attacks on the system.<br />
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Remember, the worst cases are those in which the attacks succeed without notice.<br />
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The problem with mail-in ballots is that it keeps only the first system characteristic above, when-and-only-when the mail system itself is properly functioning.<br />
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No, the mail does not always go through. You know that as well as I do.<br />
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The ballot travels through the mails, which are known to be vulnerable. There is no way to provide voting judges when the ballot is used, although voting judges can be provided when the ballot is officially opened.<br />
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How many times the ballot is unofficially opened is a problem. Certain printing and sealing techniques exist to partially ameliorate the problem of unofficial opening, but resealing is possible. And resealing failures can simply be discarded by the attackers in the middle, the same as ballots from an area known to the middleman to be part of the competing party's stronghold.<br />
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So, what are we to do for those who are disenfranchised by the simplest system?<br />
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There are many people who, for various reasons beyond their control, are unable to make it to the polls when they are open on election/polling day.<br />
<br />
First, employers really should be willing to support the infrastructure of the market their business exists in by releasing their employees, both to vote and to act as voting judges. This should be a no-brainer, but, in fact, it is not common -- and you end up with disenfranchising rush-hour jams just before the polls close.<br />
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Second, polls really should be open more than from 8:00 AM to 6/7/8/9:00 PM. I know it's hard to get judges for the early and late hours.<br />
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But I suspect that fines levied against employers who fail to release their employees to vote or to be voting judges would do a lot to alleviate both these problems.<br />
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I hear about mandatory voting, but I suspect that mandating votes will eventually mandate two extreme reactions -- rebellion against the system and blind conformance, neither of which lead to sober choices at the polls. Participation ultimately must be at the individual's choice, but there may be good reason to use various means to induce employers to release their employees to vote.<br />
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Third, although this is where things get a little wonky, especially for people with bipolar personalities, extraordinary voting methods should be provided for those who can't make it to the polls (as I mentioned above).<br />
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Ergo, absentee ballots and electronic voting machines for those who really need them, but only for those who really need them.<br />
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And they both should be used in the presence of voting judges from at least the leading parties.<br />
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Ergo, polls should be set up for members of the military to vote on location, and the times should be extended long enough in advance of and after the voting/polling day to allow all who have to be away on assignment to vote.<br />
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Similar polling arrangements should be made for emergency workers and others for whom the question of the employer is not sufficient. <br />
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For those for whom showing up in person is too much of a hardship, such as those living in elder-care or health-care facilities, the polls should be brought to the facility, complete with voting judges from the leading contending parties. In this particular case, electronic voting machines can be used, as a better choice than to disenfranchise those who need assistance. But the electronic voting machines still must produce a paper ballot, not an electronic ballot, separable, and anonymized.<br />
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Mail-in absentee ballots can be provided for those for whom bringing the polling place to the voter won't work. Again, they must be separable ballots, and they should be opened in the presence of judges from the leading contending parties.<br />
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How does this avoid invalidating the result?<br />
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These approaches depend on one more adjustment:<br />
<br />
When election/polling results are not statistically significant, the election should be done over. I won't dig into details here, but, mathematically speaking, when the top ballots are within 2 to 5% of each other, the result is essentially indistinguishable from a tie, and therefore there should be a run-off. <br />
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Along with this adjustment, there also needs to be a none-of-the-above option in every ballot. A hundred years ago, holding an election was difficult enough that trying to deal with a none-of-the-above option was out of the question. In these modern times, we can communicate quickly enough to start a ballot fresh when none-of-the-above wins.<br />
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The number of exceptional cases where voters need to send absentee ballots in by mail should never exceed 1% of the number of voters, so perverting the absentee ballot process really should never have substantial effect on the total outcome.<br />
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If we handle the rest of it right, we can handle the exceptions.<br />
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And now it's time for me to go to bed, so I'll have to finish later (about how all systems fail, and how electronic voting machines must not communicate or track their results, etc.). Have a good night.零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4807860012047460555.post-56626926700876695552020-03-19T07:35:00.000-07:002020-03-19T07:35:03.861-07:002 Can Live as Cheaply as 1, But Not If They Won't ShareMy dad used to tell me, two can live as cheaply as one.<br />
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I took his word for it, because I saw the principle operate around me every day. Our family was willing to share, and we were willing to make compromises with each other to make it possible to share.<br />
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One of the big compromises was rules and habits. By sharing rules and habits, we were able to eliminate a lot of waste. Eight people were able to live on an untenured professor's meager salary by handing clothes down, by sharing cleaning and cooking duties, by sharing space, by sharing from the common pot.<br />
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I have since had occasion to see many couples who can't seem to even live as cheaply as if they were two people living alone. For them, two can't even live as cheaply as two.<br />
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Why?<br />
<br />
Not only will they not share clothes, each insists on having more clothes than the others.<br />
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Not only do they not share cleaning duties, but they insist on making more of a mess for the others to clean up.<br />
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Not only do they not share cooking duties, but each insists on using all the pots, all the burners on the stove, the oven and the microwave, etc., then leaving their cooking on the stove and in the oven, not just to cool, but because they haven't got the time to put it all away and get it out again for the next meal.<br />
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Not only do the not share space, but they insist on setting up no-man's land between their own space and everyone else's.<br />
And not only do they not share what food they have, but they take food that others have cooked, put it on their plates, and then, instead of eating it, complain that it is not to their own liking.<br />
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I think it all boils down to their wanting to get attention, but not being willing to give attention.<br />
<br />零石http://www.blogger.com/profile/01111094813708912513noreply@blogger.com0