This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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An interesting thing is going on in Washington State right now. Due to court orders invalidating the system they have used in the past, they are redesigning the process used to pick candidates for various state elections.
Third option pitched for new state primary system
(David Ammons, Associated Press on Seattle PI)
The latter approach, strongly backed by Secretary of State Sam Reed, has been dubbed the “Top Two” plan, or a modified blanket primary. It would allow the top two vote-getters for each office to advance to the November runoff.
I really like this system. Basically, anybody of any party (or no party) who meets a minimum criterea that is the same for everybody appears on an initial primary ballot. Then the top two vote getters (and only the top two) appear in the general election, which effectively becomes a run off. The top two could be of the same party, or of different parties. Doesn’t matter. Some see this as a downside, I see it as a positive. It makes the process completely independant of the parties. It takes them away from the priveledged position they have occupied, and puts them back into the position of being private organizations that happen to push candidates, rather than semi-official governmentally recognized units. All the better.
Now, it still isn’t as good as a proper preferencial voting system whereby when people vote they don’t just pick one person, but instead rank all the candidates in order by preference, and then sequential runoffs are held automatically knocking off one candidate at a time until the winner is choosen… That would give much better results, but is typically considered too complicated for the average voter and will never happen.
The kind of setup being proposed in Washington (and already used in some places I believe) is the next best thing. I hope it happens!
The silly calandars we use would have the anniverary being yesterday. But that doesn’t properly take into account of how leap years affect things, or the non-integer number of days in a year. So according to my calculations, it was ACTUALLY this morning at 05:51:45 UTC (12:51:45 AM Eastern Time) that Brandy was an even number of years old. I shall refrain from mentioning the exact number of years.
In any case, Brandy just passed a birthday milestone TODAY, and she is kind of bummed because she is under doctors orders to stay in bed for four days straight because her back is acting up. So we were not able to go out or do anything fun for her birthday. And I messed it up more by running out with Amy to buy presents… which took way longer than I thought it would… so therefore she was home alone stuck in bed for longer than she should have been. My fault, my bad.
Anyway, since she is all stuck in bed and bored out of her mind and such, email Brandy and wish her happy birthday and keep her entertained and stuff.
[Edit: Fixed a typo in Brandy’s email address as per Al’s comment. Thanks Al!]
At long last, another day of the 2003 Q3 vacation is complete and posted. I know a lot of you had almost given up and stopped asking, but here it is. Enjoy!
2003 Q3 Random Vacation – Day 4
Right about then, I was looking up and saw a HUGE fireball go by over head. Not just a shooting star, but a big blazing fireball.
I got excited and tried to point it out to Chad and my arm darted out to point…
And I slapped Chad hard on the back of his head.
Oops.
OK, for those wondering what the hold up is, here is the current status:
Days @, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4: Posted
Days 5, 6, 7, 8: Waiting for Marilyn’s Comments
Day 9: Done, just waiting for the other days to be done first
So, everybody, please feel free to bug Marilyn to tell her to just spend a few minutes a day and get her part done, so this thing can be posted and we can get on to picking the next random vacation!!!
My dad recently initiated a voluntary donation / subscription for his African issues related mailing list. He is doing it out of pocket right now, not supported by any grants or foundations or anything, so donations would be useful! I sent in a donation as soon as his email about it went out.
From his email to his subscribers:
I am writing to announce a new subscription policy and to request your support. After three months of publishing AfricaFocus Bulletin, I find your messages of encouragement convincing evidence of the continuing need for such a publication. But continuing and expanding AfricaFocus Bulletin and the companion AfricaFocus website also require more tangible support.
Therefore I am asking all readers who are able to afford it, particularly those living in North America and Europe, to make a voluntary subscription payment to support the publication. The payment is not required – in this sense the information you receive will remain free. This is essential to meet the objective of wide availability, including continued service to the estimated 15 percent or more of subscribers who are in Africa, and outreach to students and others outside Africa just beginning to seek out information about African issues.
However, those of you who regularly rely on the Bulletin will be asked at intervals to pay for your subscription. As an independent publication AfricaFocus Bulletin is not subsidized by any government, foundation, or organization. Instead, I am seeking your support as readers to make this service sustainable. The business model is similar to computer shareware for which the creator seeks voluntary payments from those who appreciate the product.
The minimum payment suggested ($10/year) comes out to less than 10 cents an issue. I hope that those of you who have told me you find the information particularly valuable will consider sending a larger amount.
I know most of those who read the stuff I put out are not into following African issues, but if you are even curious, check out his site AfricaFocus, and visit the Support Page.
Isn’t one of the very first things one learns about doing research involving human sources, even the normal non-classified, non-sensitive kind, that one needs to know the motives of your sources and what their agendas might be in order to evaluate the information coming from them?? This holds for evaluating the information you hear on television news, that you read in the newspaper, and when you are looking things up in old books at the library. Who woulda thunk it also applies when you are the administration of the world’s most powerful country and you are talking to people whose whole lives have been dedicated to trying to arrange the resources to go back to their country and overthrow Saddam? They exaggerated and told them what they wanted to hear to justify an invasion? Oh my gosh!!! I never would have guessed that was even possible!!!!
Exiles’ prewar data assailed
(Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, Philadelphia Inquirer)
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that almost all of the Iraqi defectors whose information helped make the Bush administration’s case against Saddam Hussein exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales, or were “coached” by others on what to say.
I didn’t watch Angel from the beginning, and haven’t been completely religous about making sure to watch all the episodes, but it is one of the shows I’ve watched the last couple years, and I even have some of the DVDs. Goodbye Angel!
It’s Over in Five for ‘Angel’
(Kate O’Hare, Zap2it.com)
Early Friday (Feb. 13) an announcement was made to the cast and crew at The WB’s “Angel” that this season, the show’s fifth, will be its last. “It’s official enough to know it’s real,” David Greenwalt, who co-created the series with Joss Whedon, tells Zap2it.com, “but I haven’t talked to anybody at the network or the studio. I can tell you that it’s real, that it makes Mr. Whedon and myself very sad, that we wish it had kept going and we thought it was only getting better.
(via TivoCommunity)
The menagerie is now complete. I’ve had Nacho the budgie for years. I got Nala the anole for Christmas. In early January I got Zuri the ringneck.
But Nacho still needed a friend her own size. Last week when I was at a petstore getting crickets for Nala to eat, I was looking in the budgie cage, and saw one spunky little budgy pulling a sprig of millet across the floor, and fighting off all comers tug of war style to keep his millet. I almost got him right there, but was not quite ready. I remembered what he looked like, and decided that if he was still there next time I got to that petstore, he would be coming with me.
So, of course, today I was at the petstore with Brandy and Amy, and sure enough, that budgie was still there! He had a little yellow spot on the back of his head, and a pretty bright green tail, and was smaller than most of the rest, so he was pretty easy to recognize. But there was also a pretty blue guy there too this time.
So I got both.
The green one I had seen initially, is now named Cheese, because he looks very similar to Nacho (except younger and thinner) and so together they will be Nacho Cheese.
The blue one is now named Skittles, because on the way home in the car, he was skittering around in his box the whole way.
Cheese was one of the smaller budgies at the petstore. Skittles is almost a head smaller than cheese! He is a little guy! And they are both really babies. Skittles walked on my hand as soon as we got him out of his box back home though. He seems like a friendly little guy. And cheese is all feisty.
Anyway, this is *IT* for pets. Really!
Well, maybe a glofish or two later.
I know a lot of people have been asking for pictures. I’ll try to post some photos of the whole bunch before too much longer.
Al has a blog now! Go Al! I am looking forward to all the fun posts. I’ll be adding this to my blogroll on the left shortly.
Phatback
Is this thing on?
# posted by Albert : 7:11 PM
As many of you know, for the last 100 months I have held a monthly email contest. I kind of can’t believe I’ve been doing this silly thing for a whole 100 months. That is eight years and four months! Wow!
In any case, to celebrate the 100th month of the contest, I took a suggestion made by Rebecca, and created a retrospective on all the winners of the contest during those 100 months. Check it out!
First 100 Months Retrospective
Below is some information on each of the 16 people who over the last 100 months have found themselves at the #1 spot on the monthly email top ten lists. It is in order by the month the person first made the #1 spot. Thank you to each and every one of these people for sending email and making my computing life fun over the years. You guys are all great. Looking forward to the next 100 months…
If you are reading this, and have not yet won, perhaps now is the time to start sending me more email!
A little bit ago I annouced the results to the winners, but they are now public. Here are the results of the January 2004 email top ten contest. (Which was, by the way, the 100th month of the contest!)
January 2004 Top Ten
January was the month that Erica Livingston decided that she really wanted to win the month. She started out the month sending around 30 messages a day. Sometimes less, sometimes more. As the month progressed she started increasing her pace. Then on the 24th of the month she went into overdrive and sent 321 emails in a single day. This compares to the 246 emails she send in ALL of 2003. After that, she started putting the brakes on again as the end of the month approached.
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