Well Put, Sir!

The Electoral College Sucks!

Or does it?

This just occured to me:

In a country founded (supposedly) on religious freedom but with no notion of racial equality, a black man is going to be president a long time before a non-Christian.

That's kind of funny.

Of course, it wasn't founded with gender equality in mind, either, and a woman almost made it.

This is eye-opening.

Faith in Humanity ++

So I managed to leave my phone behind today; it must have fallen out of my pocket. I realized it about 45 minutes later when I went check it to see where my midterm was. I retraced my steps to where I remembered getting a text (45 minutes before) and it was nowhere to be seen. I cursed my luck and went to my midterm, correctly guessing the room.

I managed to put the phone out of my mind long enough to do pretty well on the midterm (I think), then went to work (an hour early) to borrow friend(and coworker)'s phone. Lo and behold, there was mine!

Turns out someone picked it up and sent a text (at almost exactly the time I realized it was missing) to my last called number, which happened to be a friend who was on campus then. Apparently they met and my friend dropped off the phone at work.

And here I thought it was stolen.

Best Drinking Fountains on the UCSD Campus

Pepper Canyon Hall, by the bathrooms.

Hands down.

S.N.A.F.U.

So people are actually, seriously talking about letting the Michigan and Florida delegates vote at the Democratic National Convention. Michigan and Florida, where the candidates said they would not campaign. Michigan, where Obama took his name off the ballot. Florida, to which Clinton flew just before the election. (Yes, I know Obama's national TV ads ran in Florida, too.)

The point is, both primaries were decidedly unfair, and do not represent the opinions of the voters or their best interests in any kind of democratic way. Thus, the only reasonable solutions are to hold new elections, with all the candidates on the ballot and campaigning, or to nullify all the votes of the two states. Logistical nightmare or voter disenfranchisement? That's a harder decision than for whom to vote, but unfair representation is worse than either. It would be a disservice to voters and a perversion of what semblance of democracy we have.

Yes, that's the other, bigger point: why can't we have a plain and simple, democratic election? In a day and age when the votes of twenty-four states can be counted and announced nationwide in under a day, I see no reason for any sort of representative election system. It obfuscates and confuses, and more significantly, misrepresents the will of the electorate.

The superdelegate system was put in place in the eighties to correct for the problems of proportional representation by district (see here for explanation), and hasn't caused huge problems yet, but it's a fundamentally flawed concept,¹ as we are seeing in the very close Obama/Clinton race, in which the superdelegates may decide the election. The real solution is to abolish the compartmentalization of the electorate that caused the problem in the first place. No "winner takes all," no "proportional by district" or "by state;" just count up the votes of all of the nation's democrats and award the nomination to the candidate who gets the most votes.

Whoa! That was pretty crazy. Whoever gets the most votes wins? It's a revolutionary concept! Why has nobody thought of this before?

¹I suppose from the view of the party as an organization unto itself, the idea of the group's leadership having a say in who the party's candidate is is defensible, but I, as a voter, still find it unfair. Maybe later I'll rant about how stupid the party system is in general....

Whoa!

Someone recently reminded me of something about which I hadn't thought in a long while: Koosh balls. Just think about them for a second. Or even a minute - I'll wait.

They're pretty dang sweet, huh?

Frickin' papers! *grumblegrumblegrumble*

Can I just say (of course I can; that's why it's my blog) that I hate writing papers!(?) I thoroughly enjoy thinking about things, analyzing and connecting them, even organizing and expressing my thoughts. But there is something about writing a paper that turns my enthusiasm for cognition and expression into pure loathing.

Can you tell I'm working on one now?

Nothing to C'est

So I kind of feel like writing at the moment (I was inspired, for some reason, by this) but I've got nothing that makes for good subject matter, so I'll ramble (on). Well, I suppose it's false to say that I have nothing that makes good subject matter, as the breadth of my knowledge must contain something interesting, but nothing comes to mind. That, I suppose, is the real issue.

I start Muir 50, the research paper class, tomorrow, so I may soon be very sick of writing. Of course, you, gently theoretical reader, wouldn't notice, as it's been ten months since my last post. On the other hand, that post (and indeed, the genesis of this blog) was during the last time I took Muir 50 (before dropping). So hopefully, (1) I'll be inspired to write for the class and (2) I'll feel like writing in general, and post here more. I did promise to write about certain things.

Last night I started thinking on a short-lyric, beat-ish poem about how comfy and warm my bed was, but I fell asleep before it got anywhere. I have to write a Christmas card - I keep forgetting that. I should also write an MQ article, but if I can't even think of anything interesting about which to write, how am I going to write something funny? Anyway, that's a little stream of consciousness. Incidentally, that reminded me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip - one of my favorites. Anyone know how to find images of print comics online? No, of course you don't; you're not there. ("You're never there." -Cake)

So I've got a topic now - I call it Physical Analogues of the Abstract or How my Brain Works - but I'm fresh out of inspiration. Look for a new post soon.

In other news, this is me. Except Ron Paul is stupid.
Also, I really need to stop using "in other news" and "also."

Update 9/20/08: Changed broken link to Wayback Machine archived page.