Handy Resources

Understanding the 2012 Election

My Sister's Blog New!

The Desktop Dyno

Salem Gravity Gran Prix

Jordan's Eagle Project.

Duke Boys Car Chase

LoL Cartoons

Logic Primer

Gymkhana Practice

Compass Course Spreadsheet

Complete Orienteering Course Files

Things you may not know about Sarah Palin

Amazing Grace on the Sax

Obama's Magic 8 Ball

Oh, wait . . . that's from an alternate universe

Refresh to get latest blog entry

This article starts out with:

The greatest failures of the past generation concern men, women and sex -- and there could not be two more awful representatives of what has gone wrong than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

It's a pretty good read. I'd recommend you read it. Or, as a guy at work says "I behoove you to read it."

---

And then there's The Incredible Shrinking Ann Coulter. It says what I said, that she's pretty much rendered herself irrelevant. I guess habit is a powerful thing. I sought out and read her column last week. For me it had the flavor of . . . there's a hundred ways to describe it, none of which make any sense . . . but it seems like all the passion of the primary is forgotten. "Hey, I know I called you all idiots and morons and said your guy was a lying sack of crap, but now we'll just pick right up where we left off before I went crazy." Except leave off the "Hey, I know . . . " part. That was the odd thing. Like, just no realization.

It really did. It was like she doesn't realize that those bridges have been burnt. I guess to succeed in her business you have to not care what people think to a certain extent. If you're going to serve the Lord you can't be worried about pissing off the devil. So she makes her passionate points and . . . whatever.

I own the dumbest horse on the planet. He seems gentle enough, comes up to you for food, lets you scratch him under the chin. Once you get the saddle on him he tries to kill you. Like you are his sworn enemy and nothing is as important as taking your life. Then you take the saddle off and he sidles up to you "Got any apple treats for me?"

That's kinda' what it reminded me of. "Ted Cruz is a lying sack of crap and anyone who isn't actively trying to have Trump's baby isn't worthy of being called an American!" Then the primary is over and it's back to "Hey, we're all in this together. We all hate Hillary."

Whatever.

---

And, finally, you should read Electoral Dysfunction: Why Democracy is Always Unfair. It gets into the mathematics of elections and how hard it is for the results of voting to accurately reflect the will of the People.

Back in 2004 I started a soap box derby in my town. I really threw myself into organizing it and making it a success. I had three basic principles that I organized around.

1. Accessiblity. I wanted it to be within the means of everyone to be able to build and race a car. It's no fun to be excluded.
2. Safety. It's no fun to get hurt.
3. Fairness. It's no fun to feel like you've been cheated.

I spent a lot of time working out the brackets to make it as fair as I possibly could. I wrote and modified and optimized and tweaked a spreadsheet, doing the best I knew how to make it fair for everyone.

Well, you know the deal. Someone didn't win, and his dad pitched a fit. He wrote me a scathing e-mail about how poorly it was managed . . . hang on, I'll see if I kept the e-mail, 'cause it was classic. Okay, yeah, he had a degree in Recreation Management, so he knows these things, and the brackets were the worst possible for that kind of event.

Actually, in spite of the guy being a hot water bottle, he did have a point. I told you I did the best I knew how, but I didn't know jack. I'm just a regular schmo, and I don't have a degree in Recreation Management, so I didn't know what everybody else on the planet knows about seeding and all that good stuff.

End of the story is we do electronic timing now. It doesn't matter who you race and we have no brackets and you get to race more and it's more fair. And I honest to God felt bad that his kid didn't have a good time. What am I busting my unappreciated ass for if the kids don't have a good time?

Point is, it's not as simple as you (or at least I) might think to pick a system that lets the best man win.

Perfect example: Republican primary 2016. We had 17 people start out that race. A dozen of them were very good choices for the Republican nominee. At the end of the race the last man standing was the absolute worst of all seventeen of them. Absolute worst. Horrible, I can tell you that right now. (See what I did there?)

You don't need a degree in Recreation Management to know that the system is broken. System like that you get Stephen Hawking bringing home Olympic gold medals.

---

You remember, faithful imaginary reader, how certain I was Trump was a brief flash in the pan. I made fun of people who were putting their energies into warning people about Trump. I said that was like devoting your energy to making sure we didn't have flying cars in 2015. Was not going to happen. Just chill.

Yeah.

Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for President. Wow. You either understand how horrific that is or you never will.

The point is the early warning.

I told you about the most dangerous cliff in the forest. Look it up on my search dealie if you don't remember (imaginarily) reading it. It's not the cliff that drops off abruptly. Everybody knows where the edge of that cliff is. It's the one that gradually slopes more and more and by the time it seems dangerous it's too late.

There are no lines on that cliff because everyone who went out there with a bucket of paint to lay down a warning line said "Here? Nah, not dangerous. Here? No, no danger. Here? No. Heeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiyyyyyyy!"

It makes no sense to give a warning when it's too late. So you catch a lot of flak for giving a warning when people don't see a danger. "Chill out, dude. I don't see any problem with biological men in girls' bathrooms." You don't?

Too lazy to add the bold heading and blockquote crap for a new heading so you just get a new paragraph (you imaginary reader, you). As long as we're talking about the stupid bathroom deal, I see that other great minds (really? How great does a mind have to be to figure that one out?) are talking about what I said.

Fine, don't make it about gender. Let's say gender is fluid and up to what you think. That's fine. Just change the sign to . . . names of body parts. That's not a function of your brain or feelings or "identity." It's a biological fact and it is the one thing that is in play (so to speak) in that situation.

Really, people? Is this the sort of society you want to live in?

---

Listening to a podcast on eugenics at the gym this morning. Wow. Who ever thought that was a good idea?

But . . . not me or you, of course, but everyone has a friend who can think of people who should not be in the gene pool.

There are certain people that I don't care for being on my planet.

Read that sentence again. It's one of those where the question itself is the answer. The whole fundamental problem with that is the "I" and the "me." Who makes those decisions? Well, it should be the smartest and most capable in society. Oh, okay. And then who decides who those people are?

This kind of relates to the Electoral Dysfunction deal. And don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with the whole topic. The more substantial and important the topic, the more boring it is. And this is pretty important.

You hear about democracy being "mob rule." We're not a democracy, we're a republic. Okay, great, what does that mean? Well, it's better. And how is it better? Well, because democracy is rule of the majority and that's mob rule, and a republic is rule of the law. Oh, and how is that? Shut up! You probably love the 17th Amendment!

A Republic is better, but the most ardent advocates of it seem to have a hard time defending it with substance. They go to lofty phrases that are supposed to end the conversation. In the end you have a dichotomy; you're running a dual system. Majority rule is fair—don't expect me to state this well, as I said it's a very important and very boring topic. And! No matter what I say, you're going to hear what you think. You either decided you agree and everything I say is just right, or you don't and everything I say makes me a card carrying communist and probably a closet Lakers fan.

Anyway . . . doing your business by the "voice of the People" has the advantage that 1) the most people will choose right the most of the time (and if they don't you're screwed anyway), and 2) if you can't please everybody, it makes sense to please the most number you can. But there are certain things that are so sacred that it doesn't matter what the majority thinks. That's what the Bill of Rights are. Even if most people thinks guns aren't a good thing, you can't take them away. Even if most people aren't Mormon, you can't pass laws against me for being Mormon.

Great. And who decides what those things that surpass majority rule are?

Done.

---

Rush didn't invent this. And he didn't get the idea from me. But great minds reach similar conclusions.

Slap me if I ever talk about the "democratic party." "Democratic" is an adjective that means in a way such that the business is done by the voice of the people. Majority rule. The democrats are the furthest going you'll ever find from that. The majority of the people didn't want Obamacare. Got it anyway. The majority . . . well, pick your issue. Can you imagine Hillary ever deferring to what the majority wants? She's way too smart to need our opinion.

Okay, so Rush and I call it the democrat party (I call them demorats when I can). It sounds awkward maybe, but it avoids the linguistic error of attaching to them an attribute they do not possess.

But in Rush's brain the Ctrl-F feature replaced all instances of "democratic" with the word "democrat." So whenever his pre-brain is going to say 'democratic' his mouth filters it to 'democrat.'

So he was talking about Trump complaining that the process wasn't fair. It wasn't a "democrat" way of doing business. He said it multiple times. I thought that after the first time in the heat of the monologue he'd realize his error and correct it, but he didn't. In his mind "democratic" is a dirty word.

Which undermines the whole point of saying "democrat party."

When you take the word you use to dissociate them from that process and apply it to the process you've wrecked everything. You've ruined everything, Rush!

You see this all the time. "Me and Pat are going to the store."
No, Pat and I.
"Oh. Okay. Mom gave Pat and I a dollar to go to the store."
Really? Mom gave I a dollar?
Well, sure, every time you want to say "me" it's more proper to say "I."

The best one I heard was a gal talking in church about her brother who was going on a mission. She said she knew he was going to be a "Well missionary."

Geez, I hope so, you don't want him giving the natives any diseases or anything.

---

This is the last time I'm going to add this button. If it's too much bother for you to click the button it's too much bother for me to code it in (dear imaginary reader)