If you don't already read jducoeur, you should take a look. But especially after this election post and the first post in a series on fighting fascism, I think a lot of my readers will be interested. Justin writes thoughtful, nuanced commentary and avoids pigeon-holing people. I'll be watching this new series with interest.

With all the drives to get people registered to vote in time for the November election, and at least one state reportedly headed to court over deadlines (caused, apparently, by Columbus Day being a holiday), I've been wondering... why do we even need voter registration today? (Aside from preserving some government jobs, I mean.) What's wrong with ( Read more... )

Tonight outside the grocery store a man holding a clipboard approached me ( Read more... )

I interrupt preparations for the class I'm teaching next week at the music and dance collegium (gosh, I hope I have this calibrated right...) to pass along some random short bits.
Dear Netflix: I appreciate the convenience of your recent change to ( Read more... )

Voting reforms I would like to see (unlikely as they may be):
1. No "vote straight party" options. The right to vote is important and was hard-won; it is not too much to require that you actually vote for candidates.
2. All voting is write-in. If you can't bother to learn, or write down ( Read more... )

Having completed the first pass at digitizing or replacing our folk music on old media (we still need to do some proof-listening), Dani and I are merging our iTunes libraries so this might be easier going forward. Oof. We're up to "S" so far. "T" is big because it includes all the "The"s. Tracking changes (e.g. to tagging) going forward is ( Read more... )

A coworker pointed me to these cartograms illustrating election results geographically. Nifty!

My voting place is a school gym that hosts four precincts. This morning ( Read more... )

It looks like Congress is on the verge of passing the bailout bill. Sigh. I feel like I want to say more about that, but it's not coming. In the meantime, this background explanation from David Director Friedman seems sound to me.

To maybe bring some cheer in the wake of that, it's clean-out-the-browser-tabs day:

The sanctuary in the desert, ( Read more... )