Home on the range?

It’s Election Day all around the country. This year, here in Washington, it’s mostly about electing school board members and deciding whether the state should continue to have a monopoly on selling liquor. But next year is a presidential election, and, like many people, I’ve already been thinking about it.

I could have added to my recent lament (and I could have sworn I did) that the US is woefully locked in to a two-party system that offers us little real choice. It’s one cog of the machine in which corporations buy politicians and get favorable laws out of them. I’ve at times been tempted to support third-party candidates, but it seems hopeless: Voting for your favorite third-party candidate means not voting for your preferred major-party candidate, which helps your less preferred major-party candidate cruise to victory. It’s called the spoiler effect, and if you want to avoid it, you have to vote dishonestly. I’ve always accepted this as a sad reality of life.

But it doesn’t have to be so. Your vote doesn’t have to consist of picking a single candidate to the exclusion of all others. I’ve just found out about a system of voting called range voting. In range voting, a voter ranks the candidates on a numeric scale according to preference (say, 0 to 10), and the candidate most preferred by voters—the one with the highest average score—wins. This allows voters to express various levels of support for various candidates, eliminating both the spoiler effect and dishonest voting. With range voting, third-party candidates could get enough support to level the playing field without “stealing” votes that could cause one major-party candidate to lose to the other. Everyone wins, if you will.

There’s a related system called approval voting. Approval voting essentially takes the system we have now and makes it multiple choice: You can select (approve) more than one candidate, and the candidate approved by the greatest number of voters is the winner. In fact, approval voting can be thought of as range voting where the scale consists only of 0 and 1. The advantage over range voting is that it’s extremely simple, but it doesn’t allow voters to express their preferences as clearly and may not be as beneficial to third parties.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be very much interest in either of these systems. Although several organizations have used approval voting (including the United Nations and IEEE), it’s just not very well-known, and the main source of information about range voting seems to be a poorly designed website by the mathematician who developed it.

No voting system is perfect (otherwise there probably wouldn’t be a whole branch of mathematics dedicated to them), but range voting and approval voting sound much better than anything else I’ve ever heard of. I would really like to help out an organization that supports one or both, but the Center for Election Science (which supports approval voting) and the Center for Range Voting both seem to be tiny groups with little or no momentum; the latter, whose website is the poorly-designed one I linked to above, seems to consist of that one mathematician. (And actually, I just noticed that he’s the president of the former as well.) Meanwhile, FairVote, which advocates the apparently flawed system known as instant-runoff voting, has actual support and a spiffier name.

I’m now imagining myself spearheading an initiative for local elections to use approval or range voting. It would be pretty cool to make a difference like that. But if it’s even possible, it would be extremely tiring and expensive: Seattle is one of the most populous cities in the United States, so I’d need quite a bit of help. I’m not sure, but it might even be necessary to change state law to allow approval or range voting. So, semi-jokingly, I ask: Who’s with me? And a little more seriously, I ask: How could I start?

BBC readers complain about annoying Americanisms. A lot of them sound perfectly normal and correct to me, but I’ve never heard of others. And of course, some of them are genuinely annoying.

Festivals

I live near the Seattle Center, home of the Space Needle, the KeyArena, and numerous convention halls and other meeting areas. Every weekend, there’s some gathering or another going on in one or more of the buildings. A couple of weekends ago, I decided to check out two of them.

The first was called the Northwest Chocolate Festival. There were lots of booths by small, local candy companies. Some were offering free samples, and others had samples out that they were selling, but they didn’t want you to know that until you already had your heart set on eating some of them. ($2 for a piece of chocolate? Really?)

What I found more interesting were the booths and areas tangentially related to chocolate. One booth was staffed by an organization that was working to create some sort of clean-burning ovens in third-world countries. Another belonged to a local organization that teaches people how to do gardening and stuff in their backyard (or on their balcony—they don’t discriminate).

There was also the adult room. When I went in, someone was painting a woman’s body with what I guess was chocolate. There was also alcohol being served (I didn’t see if it was chocolate alcohol), and massages being offered (one at a time, unfortunately). Later, some person was telling an enraptured audience how to make use of food when flirting. I thought about getting a massage there at the seemingly reasonable rate of $1 per minute, but some old guy beat me to it. I still have never gotten a massage.

Next, I decided to go to CroatiaFest. My last name is Croatian, and I don’t really know a lot about my dad’s side of the family, even after going to Croatia and meeting some of my relatives. I don’t think I had even heard of Croatia until I found out some of my forebears came from there, and I doubt many other Americans have heard of it either. But given the history of the Balkans, that’s probably a good thing. Everyone knows about Kosovo, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was amazed. I had come across a massive gathering of Croatian-Americans in progress. The place was poppin’. There was a band playing what I assume were traditional Croatian tunes on traditional Croatian instruments. People were selling what I figured were Croatian groceries and were cooking what I surmised was Croatian food. I really don’t know anything about Croatia.

I became a bit emotional: these were my people. Sure, it’s a patriarchal notion and I’m mostly non-Croatian, but that’s just how I felt. And at the same time, I felt like adopted people probably do when, in adulthood, they finally meet their biological parents: that my curiosity was whetted but that I could never really fit in with this, one of my parent cultures. I could only go back to business as usual in the culture in which I was raised, in what’s normal.

I did eat some of the unreasonably expensive food, and I took a flier about Adriatic cruises (which seemed like a good idea until I looked at the prices). I would like to go back to Croatia, if only to say… well, I don’t know. I just want to go back and learn more.

Fun facts about the late Steve Jobs: He always drove a car without license plates, and he loved parking in handicapped spaces. Find out more!

“We the People” and separation of church and state

October 28, 2011

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Subject: “We the People” and separation of church and state

Dear Mr. President:

For the first time in my life, I am compelled to sit down and write a letter, by hand, to a government official. I am writing in response to today’s email by Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, to the signers of the “We the People” petitions, “Remove ‘In God We Trust’ from Currency” and “Edit the Pledge of Allegiance to Remove the Phrase ‘Under God’.”

Mr. DuBois wrote that you “strongly support” the separation of church and state but that “that does not mean there’s no role for religion in the public square.” Where do you draw the line? To me, the separation of church (religion) and state (government) means that our public officials, in their capacity as representatives chosen by the people, must not imply that our government favors some religions over others, or irreligion over religion; to do so is to hack away at the “wall of separation” that we hold so dear as Americans. Yet you and most other politicians do this all the time and then give non-answers when we demand change.

I am an atheist, but in order to pledge allegiance to the country of my birth, I must check my worldview at the door and take up someone else’s personal convictions. Is that freedom of religion?

Consider our previous motto and pledge: “of many, one”; “one nation indivisible.” Doesn’t the government’s favoritism toward particular religions pervert these ideals?

Respectfully,

Jordon Kalilich
Seattle, WA

I know that this will go straight into the trash and that the best reply I can hope for is a form letter saying, “Thanks for your letter, citizen. Vote for me,” but it would be worse if I had not written it at all.

The Oregon trail

After we graduated from high school, I stayed in Florida for college, and my friend Luke went to Oregon. Over the next three to four years, I hardly saw him, although we kept in touch. Now that I live in Washington, we’re a lot closer to each other, so recently he invited me down to visit. This past weekend, I took him up on his offer.

On Friday night, I went from Seattle to Eugene by bus, with an hour-long layover in Portland (where I was surprised by the pleasantly large and well-kept station). I arrived in Eugene at about 2:30 in the morning, and I called a cab company that Luke had given me the number for. It was taking a really long time for them to answer the phone, and I soon figured out why: it was 2:30 on a Friday night, prime taxi hours. But eventually, they picked up, and in a few minutes a taxi was there for me. So I made it to Luke’s place, and we chatted for about an hour. Then I went to bed. I was so tired that I almost wasn’t tired.

The next day was a typical Oregon day: the sky was solid white. Luke and I walked to the city center. At the Saturday Market, he introduced me to a guy called Frog, who showed me the array of joke books he had for sale. I bought one as a souvenir. And then, since it was already early afternoon and we hadn’t eaten anything, we went to a place called Bagel Sphere for a meal. I had a chicken salad sandwich with a bagel as the bread. It hit the spot.

After that, Luke took me for a brief hike up Skinner Butte, which overlooks Eugene. From there I got my first glimpse of the University of Oregon campus, and it was in that direction that we decided to mosey next. It was game day, so there were lots of people wearing the school colors, green and yellow. Later, off campus, Luke introduced me to a couple of his friends, and together we had dinner at a restaurant called Cornucopia. Then Luke and I headed back to his place for the night.

The following day, I got to meet Luke’s girlfriend, Carmela. Though it was already the afternoon when we went out, we felt like something breakfasty, so we went to this breakfast-type restaurant that’s supposed to have the best hangover food in town. I’ve never had a hangover, but I believe it. I had eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast, and it was all delicious. Next, we went to a fancy but empty bar on a quiet street and drank mostly breakfast-type drinks at a table outside. Unlike the day before, it was perfectly clear and sunny, and by then, the sun was low in the sky. It was beautiful.

After that, as we approached the bus station, Luke was hungry again (maybe he didn’t eat a lot at the first restaurant, I don’t know), so we each had a slice of pizza at this pizza place. At that point, I had to get going. I thanked Luke for his hospitality and Carmela for her acquaintance. And then I got on another bus and was off.

I arrived back in Seattle after 1 AM. It was very cold, and the streets were completely empty. Everything seemed slightly alien to me, even my own apartment. But I went to sleep soon enough.

I’m glad that Luke and I aren’t so far apart anymore. Hopefully he’ll visit me in less than three to four years!

Want to pay more taxes? Uncle Sam accepts donations! The BBC has more info about “gifts to the United States Government” in case you’re interested.

Letting go of Google

For a long time, I’ve been concerned that Google knows more about me than any company should. I’ve never used many of their services—I’ve never used Gmail, for example (gasp, shock, etc.)—but I’ve used their web search a heck of a lot over the years, and I’m sure that they could build a pretty cohesive profile of me just from that.

To protect my privacy from Google, I figured GoogleSharing (a proxy for Google services) was the way to go, and I actually used it for a while. But then, one day, it hit me: No one’s putting a gun to my head and telling me to use Google. A long time ago (before I read an article about Google in USA Weekend, which is like Parade for uncool newspapers), I used AltaVista and sometimes Dogpile. There are and have always been other search engines out there.

So I heard about a search engine called DuckDuckGo. It doesn’t keep records of your searches, and, having used it for a few months, I find the quality of the results to be about the same as Google’s. It’s more customizable than Google, too: There are various privacy-related settings, and you can customize the look and behavior of the search results. DuckDuckGo relies on various third-party services, including Bing and Yahoo for some web search results (although it does have its own crawler), Wikipedia and similar sites for definitions, Wolfram Alpha for calculations a la Google.

Unlike Google, with DuckDuckGo you can’t specifically search among images, blogs, maps, patents, recipes, and things like that. I’ve found that MapQuest Open replaces Google Maps pretty nicely, and it uses data from OpenStreetMap, which gives me warm fuzzies. The only thing I really miss about Google Maps is the public transportation data; OpenStreetMap only has it for a few cities. (If you lived in the Internet, you’d assume San Francisco was the capital of the world.)

Unrelated: The next time I’m in the market for a camera, I’m using Snapsort. You can compare just about any two cameras feature by feature and see which one is better in which category. I got my current camera last year and the previous one seven years ago; here’s how they stack up.

Larger than life

One of the few surviving Cinerama movie theaters is in my neighborhood. It shows new releases most of the time, but right now they’re having a film festival consisting of classic Cinerama and 70mm films.

The original Cinerama films were shot with three cameras side-by-side and played back with three projectors onto a huge, curved screen. It’s supposed to create the illusion that you’re in the picture. Unfortunately, very few movies were produced this way. Most of them were documentaries and other proof-of-concept films. One of the very, very few that wasn’t was How the West Was Won.

I had never been to the local Cinerama, even for a regular movie, so I figured I’d go there on Friday for the kickoff of the film festival, a screening of How the West Was Won in its original format. All I can say is wow. This film was a massive undertaking all around. Big stars, an epic story, and to see it in Cinerama is really engaging experience, even 49 years later. (Besides the lifelike picture, the film had surround sound. Not bad for a time when most records were in mono.)

Last night was a showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and yes, I totally went to it. I thought I would beat everyone out by showing up 40 minutes early, but there was already a huge line. I had pre-ordered a ticket, so it wasn’t a big deal, but I was still surprised by the sheer number of people who wanted to get there early.

I had only ever seen the movie from the comfort of my own home, so watching it on the big screen was different. For one thing, the hugeness of the picture and loudness of the sound made everything more dramatic. I found myself getting tense at certain moments even though I knew what was going to happen. Also, it was interesting to hear a whole audience’s reaction to the movie blow-by-blow. For example, people tend to think HAL’s dialog is funny.

The film festival continues with more showings of those and other movies, so I have some time to decide if I want to see them again. Here’s the whole schedule if you’re interested. Please tell me what amazing movie I should see and then hate me when I tell you I’ve never seen it.

Test Your Vocab in a matter of moments. Mine is estimated at 25,000 words.

Laughing all the way to the credit union

One big step of my college orientation that I didn’t originally mention was the bank tie-in. UF and Wachovia had a deal where Wachovia was the “official bank” of UF, with a branch and ATMs on campus, and together they pushed students at orientation to open accounts there. I went for it; I’d be living on campus, after all, and the checking was free. A few years later, Wachovia got gobbled up by Wells Fargo, leaving me with Wells Fargo checking and savings accounts.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Bank of America is planning on charging its customers $5 every month they make purchases with their debit cards. Wells Fargo is already implementing a similar fee against some of its customers, so it’s probably a matter of time before they roll it out to everyone. The news has provoked an exodus to credit unions, and I, too, figured it was time to make the switch.

Credit unions offer the same services as banks but with a few key differences. The goal of a bank is to make a profit for its shareholders at the expense of its customers; a credit union is a not-for-profit organization focused on helping its members, who are also its owners, so they tend to have lower fees and better interest rates. Credit unions have specific criteria for membership, usually things like living in a particular area and/or working for a particular company.

A typical credit union usually doesn’t have as many branches or ATMs as a huge bank, but most credit unions across the US offer services and free ATM access to each other’s members. And they’re insured by the NCUA, a federal agency that offers the same protection that the FDIC does for bank accounts, or by equivalent agencies at the state level.

These things I learned as I was doing my homework. Find a Credit Union was also a big help; it lists the closest credit unions to your address and the membership criteria for each. Of the eight credit unions that have branches within a mile of me, I’m eligible to join six of them, mostly by virtue of being a Washington resident. So, you see, the criteria for membership can be pretty broad.

I narrowed it down to a couple of credit unions I had heard a lot of great things about: First Tech and BECU. Their offerings were both pretty attractive, but I chose BECU since their interest rates are better for me and they’re based in the Seattle area—gotta help the local economy, right? Today, I went to the nearest BECU branch and deposited the minimum amount they require for membership: $5. In unceremoniously producing a $5 bill from my wallet, I declared my independence from thieving banks.

Well, sort of. Although I’m going to close my accounts with Wells Fargo, I have a credit card with Bank of America, and I like it. There’s no annual fee, and I get 1% cash back. So I’ll probably keep that until they screw me over personally or until I can get a better deal with my new credit union or somewhere else. (Actually, now that I look at it, BECU’s credit card seems pretty good, but I’d have to research some more.)

Moral: You should probably join a credit union if you haven’t already.

Irrelevant link: Snapshots from the set of Back to the Future.

Be my guest

For the past couple of years, whenever I’ve traveled by myself or with my friends, I’ve used hospitality networks—namely, Passport Service and CouchSurfing—to score free lodging while meeting interesting people. And from the very beginning, I believed that opening your home to strangers was such a nice thing to do that I wanted to host others as soon as possible.

It turned out to be not very soon. While I was in college, I had a lot of roommates, usually several at the same time. A lot of them I didn’t know very well or at all, so I didn’t feel comfortable asking them if I could have a stranger come and sleep on the couch. So I figured I would be a host when I got my own place. But then I got my own place, and I didn’t feel ready because I didn’t know the area well enough. Finally, I decided I should stop making excuses, and I updated my CouchSurfing profile, setting my couch availability to “Yes.” I had bought a sofa bed for a reason, after all.

I got three requests in the first 24 hours. I accepted one from a German guy about my age who was living in Canada and would be coming down to Seattle for a few days. He arrived on Wednesday and left on Friday, so I couldn’t show him around during the day, but I suggested things for him to do that were only possible during working hours, and at night, my friends and I showed him the neighborhood and had dinner with him at some local restaurants. I don’t have much else to report other than that he was a great guest.

By having a guest over, I was able to think of some things I could get so that future guests would have a better experience. A few examples: pillows (I only had two, so we had to have one each) and towels (I had some thin ones that had seen better days). So this weekend, I went to the local Bed Bath & Beyond and got the fluffiest pillows and towels I could find. The new pillows are for me, but at least future guests can have two. And the towels are different colors, so it’ll be easier to tell mine and my guests’ apart.

I have another guest coming soon. This one’s just coming for a night, but maybe then I’ll see what else I might need so that other guests—including my friends, maybe?—can have a more comfortable stay.

Taking old photographs back to where they were taken: Dear Photograph.

Rude awakening

And welcome back. Today on The World of Stuff, we’re talking about alarm clocks.

I’m a light sleeper. It often takes me a long time to get to sleep, and I wake up easily. When I was in high school, I didn’t need an alarm clock; my mom would wake me up. Usually, it was as simple as opening my door.

For college, I got a cool-looking alarm clock without worrying about how it might sound. It turned out to be loud. Over the course of four years, this started to get annoying. I would naturally wake up way before my alarm was due to go off, presumably because I subconsciously (and consciously) didn’t want to be scared awake. I also always had to peek at the clock to make sure I hadn’t overslept—the power could have gone out—but, of course, that was never actually the case. So I’d be left trying to get back to sleep, which was usually futile. That’s a bad way to start the day.

It probably sounds kind of dumb, but it was only last week that I finally got fed up with this and figured out how to keep it from happening. I remembered that when I was a kid, I had a clock radio. I rarely needed an alarm clock back then (as far as I can remember), but when I did, I woke up pretty pleasantly because the radio would come on instead of some horrific digital squawking. So, I went on Amazon, did some research, and bought a Sony ICF-C318 clock radio. I’ll review it here in case anyone is interested.

Pros:

• Battery backup. No need to wonder if the power went out!
• The time and date are set at the factory; I only had to adjust the time by a few minutes.
• Daylight Saving Time adjustments are made automatically (or manually if necessary).
• When you turn off the alarm, it will automatically come on at the same time the next day. (My old alarm clock wasn’t like that; you always had to remember to set the alarm before going to bed. With this one, you only need to disable the alarm on Friday morning and re-enable it on Sunday night (or whenever.)
• When you do enable the alarm, the alarm time is shown briefly on the display. (With my old clock, I can’t remember how many times I had to double-check this. I can be pretty paranoid.)
• Controls are intuitive, and the whole thing seems well-built.

There are a few cons:

• It won’t show the day of the week. I will miss that about my old clock (again, paranoia: “It’s not Saturday, right?”)
• The display is dim, even at its brightest setting. Not a problem in the dark, but during the day, it’s hard to read.

Overall, I like it, and I believe I made a good choice. Now that I have soft classical music to wake me up and no fear of power outages, I really have no reason to wake up before it’s necessary. So when I do, I try my hardest to keep my eyes closed and go back to sleep. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to sleep a little more soundly.

Generate hipster-flavored dummy text: Hipster Ipsum.

Fantasy holidays

Recently, I asked readers to redesign US currency and got an overwhelming response. Now I pose the question: What to do about our holidays?

I’ve been thinking about this because today is Constitution Day (actually, according to Wikipedia, it falls on the weekday closest to September 17, so it was yesterday). Nobody really gives a rip about Constitution Day, which is a shame because maybe if they did, they would give a rip about the Constitution. It’s transitive!

For reference, here’s the list of federal holidays, i.e., the ones that pertain to federal employees. Schools and state offices follow state holidays, which are based on these but may have some differences, and your work may not give a rip about most of them at all. (What is it with people not giving a rip?? They are acting as if they have but one rip to give.)

• January 1: New Year’s Day
• Third Monday in January: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
• January 20th every four years: Inauguration Day
• Third Monday in February: Washington’s Birthday (“Presidents’ Day”)
• Last Monday in May: Memorial Day
• July 4: Independence Day
• First Monday in September: Labor Day
• Second Monday in October: Columbus Day
• November 11: Veterans Day
• Fourth Thursday in November: Thanksgiving Day
• December 25: Christmas

For starters, I guess I would keep Inauguration Day in, if we’re going by the strict definition that federal holidays are only for federal employees. I would crack down on calling Washington’s Birthday “Presidents’ Day” because, according to my crazy logic, celebrating one branch of government over the others is not good (Supreme Court Day, anyone? I didn’t think so), but celebrating one dude over all the others is okay. I might have to mull this over a little further.

Having been exposed to Russian culture, I’ve noticed that they celebrate some international holidays that are ignored in the United States. One is International Women’s Day, March 8. I would make Women’s Day a national holiday until women and men are treated equally, whenever that may be. In Russia and many other countries, labor is celebrated on May 1. I would move Labor Day to that date and call it, I don’t know, May Day. (Congress designated May 1 as “Loyalty Day” in 1958. What a coincidence…)

The gay rights movement needs a holiday, so I would make Harvey Milk Day (May 22) a national holiday. That puts it close to Memorial Day, which doesn’t seem to be when it is for any particular reason, so I would move it to where Columbus Day is now. Everyone knows Columbus Day is racist. We should be ashamed of the fact that we’re here. (Joking, sort of…) So, Memorial Day would be in October, and heck, I’d combine Veterans Day with it too.

So, after acknowledging Constitution Day on September 17, that brings us to November. Election Day (the Tuesday after the first Monday in November) is not a holiday, and this needs to be fixed so people can actually make it to the polls. I would also move it to the middle of the week (the first Wednesday of November; election season is too long) to discourage people from using it to take a long weekend and not vote. And while I’m at it, I’d move Thanksgiving to the last Friday of November, shortening the Christmas season (which is also too long).

And then, Christmas. Supposedly, Christmas is a federal holiday for the sake of convenience since the majority of people wouldn’t show up for work anyway. Okay. Just as the date of Christmas was chosen so that it would supersede various pre-Christian winter festivals, I’d declare Science Day to be December 25. Oh yeah, and I’d also throw in Earth Day, April 22.

For the sake of completeness:

• January 1: New Year’s Day
• Third Monday in January: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
• January 20th every four years: Inauguration Day
• Third Monday in February: Washington’s Birthday (not Presidents’ Day!)
• March 8: Women’s Day
• April 22: Earth Day
• May 1: May Day
• May 22: Harvey Milk Day
• July 4: Independence Day
• September 17: Constitution Day
• Second Monday in October: Veterans’/Memorial Day
• First Wednesday in November: Election Day
• Last Friday in November: Thanksgiving Day
• December 25: Science Day or something like that

So that’s my ideal calendar of holidays, and I bet it reveals a lot about me. I’m looking forward to what you have to say.

If you’ve ever gotten mad at a stranger online, watch this cartoon, which should remind you that the people on the other side of your computer are real and have feelings just like you. This would probably be especially good to show to kids who are using the Internet for the first time. (Via waxy.org)