Electoral Map

One of the things that really bugs me about our current governmental system is the Electoral College. When I was growing up, democracy (and, thus, the U.S. Government) was always explained to me as one vote per citizen, majority rule. This makes sense to me.

What I’ve never understood is the Electoral College (and, therefore, I may have the following summary somewhat incorrect — please correct me if so). Rather than tallying the votes cast by the American public in a presidential election, the EC votes are used to elect the President. The number of possible EC votes is finite, determined by assigning a certain number of EC votes to each state, based roughly on its population. Furthermore, when it comes to actually casting the votes, each state puts all of its votes behind one candidate, depending on what the majority of voters in that state voted for.

For instance, Alaska has a population of roughly 500,000, and gets three electoral votes. If just over half of Alaska’s voting population votes Republican, then as far as the Electoral College is concerned, all of Alaska votes Republican, as all three EC ballots are cast for the Republican candidate.

US map weighted by electoral votes

To the right you can see a map of the United States, with each state distorted as to how many EC votes it gets. (The graphic was taken from an excellent interactive electoral map that allows you to click on each state, seeing how many EC votes it gets and switching them from Democrat to Republican to play with election possibilities.)

I have never understood why the Electoral College system was considered a good idea when it was implemented, nor why it continues to be used. The Bush/Gore upset of 2000, when Gore won the popular vote but Bush took the Electoral College (and therefore the presidency), just made it more clear to me that this is a highly imperfect system for a “democracy” to use as its voting system. My grumbling isn’t going to get the system changed, but I’d sure like to see it changed — preferably to the very simple, easy to figure out, doesn’t cause problems, one voice equals one vote.

Internet Explorer .pdf files?

IE .pdf's?

It’s the little things that get to me about Windows most of the time. Things like this — today, for absolutely no reason that I can think of, Windows has decided that Adobe Acrobat .pdf files should have Internet Explorer’s icon.

Why? Only Windows knows. I haven’t installed anything, changed any system settings, or done anything differently than the same basic things I do every day (opening, saving, printing documents). But it looks like this is what’s meant to be. At least until Windows changes its mind and either sets .pdf’s back to their original icon, or chooses something entirely different.

Butterfly alphabets, and much more

Prepare to get lost for hours in all sorts of linky goodness! Start with Kjell Sandved’s butterfly alphabet, then spend some time in his of natural images, including all sorts of funny faces, and even penguins!

: http://www.butterflyalphabet.com/NatureImage/index.htm “Butterfly Alphabet Gallery”
From there, it’s well worth spending some time at iconomy’s weblog, filled with all sorts of interesting linky bits, from a gorgeous vintage mermaid gallery to the critters that live on our face, tiny chocolate handbags, and — one that I think Kirsten might really like — Jimmy McGrath’s photo portfolio, where mousing over the images switches between the photos and artistic renderings of the photos.

Have fun!

(via MeFi)

iTunes/www.applemusic.com

Just some initial thoughts after playing around with iTunes 4.0 and the iTunes Music Store for a bit.

  • AAC: I’m sold. Through some very non-scientific, non-mathematical experimenting, I seem to be getting about a 40% reduction in file size with 128kbps AAC .m4a’s as opposed to 160kbps VBR .mp3’s. With a \~14,000 song, 75GB music collection, a 40% reduction in size is beautiful. Plus, they do sound at least the same, if not better.
  • iTunes 4.0: Basic functionality is still the same as previous versions of iTunes, which I was already quite happy with. They’ve obviously done some under-the-hood work, though — where I used to get “spinning beach balls” almost anytime I clicked around in iTunes, now the only time I get a wait cursor is when I’m getting info on multiple tracks at once. Much snappier performance — and on an aging 350Mhz blue-and-white G3, that’s pretty impressive.
  • iTunes Music Store: Again, I’m sold. Very nicely and simply integrated directly into iTunes, finding stuff in the store is a breeze. I’ve already purchased one track to replace a corrupted .mp3 file created from a scratched CD, and once the iTMS is tied to my .mac account, single-click purchasing works flawlessly. Could be dangerous, though — talk about instant gratification! The selection of music available could use a little work, though I suffer a bit in having more esoteric music tastes — the majority of the “big artists” seem to be pretty well represented, and Apple says that they’re constantly working on expanding their library. Can’t complain too much, though — I’ve even found some pleasant surprises that I’m thinking about picking up (lots of Bill Cosby, and even a fair chunk of Spike Jones albums!).

Excellent work, all around. As far as I’m concerned, all of the whiners at MeFi and /. can jump off a cliff — Apple’s got a good thing going here. The only downside I can see is that to take advantage of AAC’s smaller file sizes, I’ve got about 1500 CD’s to rip all over again…

Apple turns up the volume

Well, today was the day that Apple finally made the announcments that rumor sites had been salivating over for the past few months. Lots of cool goodies…

  • QuickTime upgraded to v6.2, which includes support for AAC (more info on AAC here).
  • An iPod software update to v1.3, adding support for AAC, and longer battery life.
  • Redesigned and updated iPods, now in 10Gb, 15Gb, and 30Gb models, a slimmer design, software updates, and a price drop.
  • iTunes goes to v4.0, adding AAC support, Rendevouz local streaming (so you can stream audio from one Mac to others on the same local network), and support for the new…
  • …the long-rumored iTunes Music Store! Featuring 200,000 songs (and growing) from all the major music lables, previews of songs, one-click downloading, a 99 cent-per-song purchase price, and very reasonable DRM (unlimited listening time, unlimited CD burns, unlimited iPod support, purchased tracks can be copied to up to 3 other Macs), Apple looks to be making a good solid attempt to do the online-music experience well.

The new software just made it to my Mac — time to install and play!

Teach backwards!

CalPundit made a proposal over the weekend that I absolutely love: teach history backwards.

[History] is a subject that I talk about frequently with my mother (an actual teacher, mind you), trying to figure out why it’s such a disliked subject. After all, we like history, but surveys routinely show that it’s the least liked subject, ranking even below obvious suspects like math and spelling.

Why is it so disliked? Who knows, really, but it’s probably because it seems so remote from normal life. It’s pretty hard, after all, for most teenagers to get very enthused about a long-ago debate over the Missouri Compromise that has only the most tenuous connection to the present day.

So in the true spirit of blogging (especially weekend blogging!), here’s my dumb amateur idea about how to teach history: do it backward.

It’s hard for kids to get interested in century old debates without knowing all the context around them, but they might very well be interested in current day events. So why not start now and explain the events that got us here? War on terrorism? Sure, let’s teach it, and that leads us backward to a discussion of how the current state of affairs is the successor to the bipolar world that came apart in 1989. And that leads back to the Cold War, and that leads back to World War II, etc.

In other words, invert cause and effect. Try to get them wondering about the causes of things they already know about, and then use this curiosity to lead them inexorably backward through history.

I have to say, I think this would be such a good approach. History never really caught my attention in high school — in the words of a tongue-in-cheek quote I found somewhere, “You meet all these interesting people, but they’re all dead.” I’m not sure I could have pinned down exactly why at the time, but the perceived lack of relevancy to anything I dealt with on a day to day basis, or expected to deal with in the future, certainly makes sense. Math, much as I hated it, I knew I’d have to deal with throughout my life, and the same with much of the sciences — they were obviously useful subjects. History, at least the way it was presented to me then, wasn’t.

Of course, that mindset has changed drastically over the intervening years, and now I find historical subjects fascinating — enough so that one of the many ideas I sometimes turn over in my head for when I can finagle the time and money to get into school again is exploring becoming a history teacher.

If I ever travel down that particular road, you can bet I’ll see what I can do with this approach. Start with the recent history that ties into current events, then explore the underlying causes of those. From there, work backwards — create that obvious, active link between today’s events and those of the past. While many history teachers have the quote, “Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it,” somewhere in their classrooms, I think that an approach like this would actually do more to prove that quote than the current approach does.

(via Atrios)

Ran away for a bit

Had a very pleasant weekend visiting Prairie’s friend Beth in Vancouver, WA, and Prairie’s mom in Woodland. It rained a lot Saturday, but Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous early summer day, and I got a few decent pictures — one of which is the newest entry to WüdiVisions.

I was planning on getting a bit more up here tonight, but I ended up spending about two hours on the phone doing pesudo-tech support helping a friend get MovableType installed on their Mac. Not what I’d planned for the evening, but we got it running in the end, so all’s good.

More when I’m not about to pass out in my chair…

All about me!

Prompted by Kasia (via Robert), I realized that I don’t have any sort of “about me” info here. Guess it’s time to rectify that, huh?

The basics

Michael David Hanscom, nicknamed “Woody” (or “Wüdi”, or many variations of either of those). Resident of Seattle, Washington, USA, since June of 2001, after living the majority of my life prior to that in Anchorage, Alaska.

A long-time Mac fanatic, I’ve been through seven or eight different types of Macintosh computer over the years, and currently have four lying around my apartment in various states (only two of which are actually mine, and only one of those is actually functional).

Off-work time is spent either here at my computers, or wandering around Seattle. I can often be found at the goth/industrial club The Vogue on Saturday nights. I’ll be easy to find if you stop by — I’m the one dressed in black.

There’s the basics, at least. Still curious? Anxious for more? Glutton for punishment?

More details

Born May 3^rd^, 1973, at 5:01pm in Indianapolis, Indiana (just in case anyone wants to do a star chart). The first two years of my life were spent bouncing around the Lower 48, until the Air Force decided to exile my father to the frozen wasteland of Fairbanks, Alaska. My brother Kevin was born three years and one day after I was, on May 4^th^, 1976, and not too long after that the military took some small amount of pity on us and relocated us to the not-quite-as-frozen wasteland of Anchorage, Alaska.

While I’m sure my parents would find plenty of quite valid reasons to disagree with me on this, I find most of my life prior to graduation from High School rather unworthy of recounting. Being of above-average intelligence, and correspondingly below-average in social skills, I spent many of my early years as the sterotypical “geek”. Constantly losing myself either in books, computers, or my own too-vivid imagination, the day-to-day perils of the real world intruded into my private little bubble far too infrequently. Friends were few and far between, though the friendships I did form in those years have been lasting — for example, exhibit A: Royce Williams.

Some time after I graduated high school, I had something of a moment of clarity and realized that not only did I have a personality, but it was actually a fairly personable one! The next decade was something of a rollercoaster, as I came out of my shell and attempted to pack all the social experiences and experimenting that I had missed in the prior years into as little time as possible. Some of those experiments worked better than others, but overall, I think I came out fairly healthy in the long run.

Much of my social experimenting came about, initially, thanks to my little brother. Having come from an extremely musical family, I was somewhat fascinated with DJ’ing. My brother’s alternative high school was in need of a DJ for a school dance, and with a recommendation from him, they gave me a chance. I packed up my home stereo, hauled it into their cafeteria, and spent a highly enjoyable evening “ghetto DJing” — no mixing, nothing fancy, not even able to fade between tracks, just switching from “input A” to “input B” when it was time to switch songs.

I loved every minute of it. Apparently they did too, as they asked me back, not only the next time, but for the majority of the dances for the next two years, until Kevin graduated.

From there, I talked my way into a gig at one dance club, then another, then another, eventually spending roughly eight years as something of a “personality” in Anchorage (more details can be found on my DJ Wüdi page).

Along with DJ’ing, my circles of friends and acquaintences grew nearly exponentially. Close friends were still fairly rare, but I stopped being afraid to meet and talk to new people. I moved out of my parent’s house when I was 18, have been on my own since then, and until I moved to Seattle, always had anywhere from one to three official roommates — unofficial roommates sometimes hit the double digits, especially during the height of my DJ days!

Some of the less sucessful social experiments included a two-year stint experimenting with illegal hallucinogens. The three “big” drugs in Alaska have traditionally been pot, mushrooms, and acid (though I understand that’s recently been supplanted by ecstacy). Every time I tried pot it bored me (I got hungry, stupid, and wanted to take a nap), two of the three times I tried mushrooms I just got snippy and went to sleep it off — but for one reason or another, I found a friend in acid. I spent about two years dropping acid on a semi-regular basis, until I eventually got tired of it and, after a weekend that included one day of acid and one day of mushrooms, I quit, and have now been clean for, oh, I’m not even sure — five years? Six?

In retrospect, while much of that period was a lot of fun, and I can’t say that I regret doing it, I am glad that it’s over and done with. The real world is quite entertaining and bizarre enough on its own, without anything else in my system making it even wierder.

As the years in Anchorage wore on, I became more and more dissatisfied. The drive to get out and live somewhere else got stronger and stronger, until I finally decided that I’d had more than enough, and in the spring of 2001 finally started making arrangements to leave state. I trashed, gave away, or sold off most of my belongings, bought my ticket, said my goodbyes, and moved down here to Seattle. Since then, I’ve been working on establishing myself here — first making sure I was settled and wasn’t going to have to slink back to Anchorage with my tail between my legs, then starting to explore more of the town and see what I could find. Coming up on my 2-year anniversary of having escaped Alaska, I’m quite happy I did. It’s a very different world out here — but I’m glad this is where I am.

And now? Life goes on…

Remember when we had rights?

An excellent rumination of the state of our country and our rights as individuals today, from Amy at Spiffariffic:

I hated my 8th grade Social Studies teacher with a passion, but she certainly did make one point very well: we are all supposed to be ‘Constitutional watchdogs’ (her exact choice of words). I wonder what she’s telling her mortified students now, about enemy combatants, the refusal to grant a marching permit for the peace protests in NYC, the Supreme Court upholding the ridiculous extension on copyright terms, the searching of cars at airports and the delivery of sensitive passenger data, roaming wiretaps and Carnivore, secret military tribunals for so-called ‘enemy combatants,’ the FBI investigation of people who ask for “something other than the flag” stamps at the post office and college kids who have anti-Bush posters in their dorms. Certainly the Constitution has never been followed to the letter, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating much when I say that our Constitutional rights are being removed or reduced, drastically, at an unprecended pace even, every time we turn around.

Last weekend, when Miranda was visiting, she asked me, “what’s up with all the political stuff on your site lately?” Well, Amy sums it up quite well — when this is the situation, I find it reprehensible for people not to care. To shrug their shoulders and turn away. To deem it “somebody else’s problem.” It’s in times like these that we must pay attention, and do what we can to prevent things from getting any worse, and to right the wrongs already in practice.

This may be somewhat new in my life — but it’s hardly a new idea

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

(via Damien Barrett)

ERA still in limbo

You know, until just a few minutes ago, I had no idea that the ERA, giving constitutionally-protected equal rights to women, was never ratified. This completely blew my mind. Passed by the House of Representatives and by Congress in 1972, there was then a seven year deadline to get 38 states to ratify the amendment. Unfortunately, only 35 states ever did, even after Congress extended the deadline for an additional five years, until 1982.

After the deadline passed, the ERA was re-introduced to Congress in 1982, and has languished there ever since.

Currently there is a move to keep the original 35 states that ratified the amendment legally attached to the current bill, should it ever make it though Congress and the House of Representatives and go back into the state ratification phase, thanks to the “Madison Amendment” becoming the 27^th^ amendment to the Constitution, 202 years after being passed by Congress. Should that happen, though, we still need at least three more states to admit that women are equal members of society, and should be legally protected from discrimination.

So — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia — what do you say we move into the 21^st^ century and get the ERA passed?

(via Bob Harris, mentioning the death of Martha Griffiths, who spent most of her life championing equal rights for women)