Life and Times

I feel outdone, Nick and Ben have done huge amounts of commentary on this issue. So to quickly restate, I agree with Ben that the senate is outdated in today’s globalized world. Possibly even the concept of states as we have them.

Nick heralds from Texas currently, which is exempt from any comment on states not considering themselves sovereign. And interestingly, I was having a discussion on this (don’t remember what led to it) over lunch on Thursday as I attempted to explain why Texas was unlike any other state. In general, the western states are defined as large land areas encompassing different regions, often split by large mountain ranges. Examples, Western Washington, a democraticly voting population heavy tech savvy region v. Eastern Washington which votes republican and is a heavily irrigated desert known for apples, hops, and other farming activities. Similar is seen between western and eastern Oregon, and southern and northern California.

Because of this, I move that not only do we abolish the senate, we work on a long term plan to remap the country into differently cohesive divisions. This has multiple benefits, we can create more of a province unity and solidary built not so much on arbitrary lines drawn in the sand but real cohesive groups built on similarities in values, industries, and environments.

As we come up to the presidential election, we can see another benefit. Votes make a bigger difference, right now a republican’s vote in Washington matters little if any in the presidential election, but if it was split in two (and possibly joined to Oregon, and Eastern to Idaho), Inland West State would have a good chance of swinging toward the republican candidate and we would have a whole new playing field for elections.

So I’ll just conclude here and follow up when Nick tries to flay me for this. The concept of the senate is outdated because the concept of the states as we have them now are outdated.

“They are like 45 now, they’ve been together longer than Elvis” — Ben (in response to a comment that U2 is starting to look old)

a bit later

“I’ve never seen so many kids running around the streets in my life, except like after an earthquake” — Ben (on phone)

“No, Adrian does not smell like cat litter” — Ben (on phone)

“Oh, it’s friday, it doesn’t feel like friday” — Ben
“It’s saturday” — JM
“Yeah, but it’s friday” — Ben

Ben’s comments on the senate I agree with them.

Got my car washed yesterday which revealed (under the coating of mud) some red paint and a good sized ding on my driver’s side rear door. NOT happy about that as the red intrepid next to me has been parked in my spot before, parked so I couldn’t get out of my spot, and parked with 2 wheels in my spot so I couldn’t get out of my car. I think Ben has now earned the covered parking =)

Other things have happened.

I really should be out acquiring things like oh, bread, that I’ve been out of for several days now, but I’m still not feeling well.

As such, I’m redoing the rating system of my mp3s, and including it on my now playing on the lower left corner of my website.

I can’t stand really to delete songs, so my ratings from 1-5 stars will be thus:

* I don’t like this song, I won’t listen to it, it will be excluded from all playlists.

** This song isn’t good, but it’s one I tolerate.

*** This is an OK song that I somewhat like.

**** I like this song.

***** For some reason this song is great, not necissarily that I like it better, or that it is a better song. This is a 4 star song that got my attention.

I have deleted a bunch of stuff, so I only have 2500 or so songs (7 days) of music to review for this new scale, but I’ve got Party Shuffle playing and I am going to make an attempt to rate every song that comes on so in a few weeks I think I’ll have most of them done.

it’s been an interesting week.

Gave speech, 73/75, took midterm (not graded yet) in communications.

Sociology is still a mess, but the professor agreed or acknowledged or whatever some of my arguments and has adjusted our term paper. Class however yesterday dissolved into a yelling match between a number of students over something or other (can’t even remember what), insults were traded, even one in my direction. We top Andy’s class so he can feel good about that I suppose.

Ben left sometime this morning, and I slept in. Very little homework this weekend so I can get other junk done I suppose.

Ben will likely post stories of his trip (from dial-up) on his blog

My sociology professor is a dyed in the wool democrat, and I’ve always considered myself a right leaning independent. But lately classes have really taught me something I guarantee she didn’t intend, which is that without a doubt the right-wing if taken to the extreme could solve the world’s problems.

Here’s how:

Right now trillions of dollars go to pay for old people. Social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. We should cut this immediately.

Here is where the right has to meet left though, because we still need that money. We invest it directly into research. All kinds of research. What’s the biggest problem in the US right now? Foreign oil? Well, combined these two programs cost nearly $1 trillion per year. Now, we immediately invest this in the most serious problems, problems would be selected by popular vote by nobel prize winners and (at first) limited solely to problems facing the US itself.

Why just the US? The benefits would trickle down, and once the US government becomes a private corporation the income from the patents on such technologies as cold fusion, energy->matter conversion, teleportation, etc would easily finance the world changing programs, of course we would start out simpler. The world though runs on energy, so for the first 10 years we would have to invest it completely in discovering new forms of energy. The bureaucracy would be cut because enough money would be available to attempt almost every idea on some scale, no matter how stupid, and results would be evaluated by peer review.

Once a cheap energy source is discovered, other plans will cost less to implement and eventually we can do away with humans and have a utopian society.

for the record, my laptop runs at 78C, which is far short of the boiling point of water, and tends only to catch fire and electrocute itself, no users have suffered yet. =)

But yeah, congrats go out to Ben and Megan. Live long and prosper.

[edit 10/22/2004: Oh... I forgot to link this to anything Ben's post is here]

I’ve got spare invites as they aren’t in short supply at the moment, so if anyone wants a gmail account just e-mail me about it.

For the uninitiated gmail is google’s rather advanced webmail, providing an integrated search, excellent interface, and 1GB (1000MB) of storage.

First come first serve on my invites.

Yeah, I’ve taken to commenting on other people’s blog entries… fear me.

I was reading a blog entitled Corrupted Sanity today, and came across an article “Do not eat the iPod” and was intrigued.

I can only sight my own experience, but of people I talk with on a regular basis, only a single one of them does not use a cell phone. And I realized that as a general rule this means I have no clue how to get in contact with them at any moment day or night. It only took me a moment to understand how this could be a good thing. Of course it removes the ability to make outgoing calls while traveling as easily… but wait, there are pay phones and calling cards.

Before MP3 players I used a CD player, and before that a portable cassette player, the radio stations here don’t play my favorite music reliably. I own a PDA (old Palm III) but don’t use it, in general I remember my appointments, and to keep other information my bag which is with me 99% of the time contains a number of legal pads of multiple sizes, the small ones being for my own notes, shopping lists, to-do lists, quotes I want to remember, etc. Of course, this bag also contains my laptop so if I did need to consult a calendar or the like I could do so… but my cell phone has that data too.

As for a society of lonely people, I’m not sure. We interact with more people I think now, such as those of you reading this are in a way interacting with me, you can comment and/or trackback to me. We make more communications, but they are at a shallower level in general.