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Friday, January 30 2004

Eat our chicken, damnit

Mark Morford on Ukraine banning imports of U.S. chicken:

"U.S. officials sneer and pout and stamp their feet and say eat our stupid noxious chicken parts goddammit. Ukrainian officials note how most of the U.S. officials are pale and sickly and obese and diabetic and precancerous and impotent and prematurely balding and sort of homely and piggish, and how seven of them just dropped dead on the spot from heart attacks just from stomping their angry little feet like that because they've eaten so many toxic chicken parts and now their bodies are saying, you know, screw you, I'm outta here."

The Party Car

Read the NY Times article on the San Francisco Party Car? See video from TechTV here, the indie rap video that served as partial inspiration for the event, and a recap from Romance the Love Pirate Clown.

Sunday, January 25 2004

Democratic Reaction to Judiciary Committee Hacking

Recent DNC mailing:

"Sometimes we come across a news story so shocking that it serves to remind us that Bush's Republicans will cross any line in their pursuit of full control over the government.

...

"This week, the Boston Globe reported that Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee repeatedly accessed computer files belonging to Democratic members over the course of the year, stealing strategic memos and leaking them to conservative media outlets."

Friday, January 23 2004

CBS Censors (non-White House) Advocacy Ads

The Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest ended earlier this month; and the winner turned out to be a pretty calm, thoughtful piece focusing on the impact that our skyrocketing deficit will have on our children's futures. No name-calling, no Bush-hate (or even anger).

But CBS News won't take MoveOn's money to run the ad during the Super Bowl, and it won't take PETA's ad, either. But it will take the White House's.

Take a look at the ads yourself, decide if they're so beyond the pale that they can't be shown on national TV.

Monday, January 19 2004

2 Members of the 9/11 Commission Questioned in Investigation by 9/11 Commission

Hmmm:

"The panel set up to investigate why the United States failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was rocked Thursday by the bizarre revelation that two of its senior officials were so closely involved in the events they are investigating that they have had to be interviewed as part of the inquiry."

Friday, January 16 2004

Writing to your Congressman is useless (if he's Republican Dennis Hastert)

According to Jonathan McLeod, former intern for House Speaker Hastert, writing to your congressman (or calling, or emailing, or faxing) is useless:

"Everyone inside the Beltway knows that for the average citizen to write or call his or her U.S. representative is a waste of time. Period....J. Dennis Hastert, in theory the most powerful legislator of all, is just one portly man. He spends his jam-packed days meeting with leaders from the most powerful organizations and corporations in the country. He can't afford to take an interest in your opinion, though his staff is hard at work to provide you with the illusion of precisely the opposite."

Monday, January 12 2004

Deliberation Day: interesting proposal for increasing the public's political knowledge, engagement

Bruce Ackerman & James Fishkin suggest replacing President's Day with a national Deliberation Day, at which citizens would come together in groups of 15 or 500, just before national elections, to discuss the issues relevant to the election, and get paid to do so:

"In our soon-to-be-released book, we offer a new way of thinking about democratic reform, proposing a new national holiday—Deliberation Day. It would replace Presidents' Day, which does no service to the memories of Washington and Lincoln, and would be held two weeks before major national elections.
Registered voters would be called together in neighborhood meeting places, in small groups of 15 and larger groups of 500, to discuss the central issues raised by the campaign. Each deliberator would be paid $150 for the day's work of citizenship. To allow the business of the world to carry on and as many as possible to participate, the holiday would be a two-day affair."

"In preparation for the event, the participants receive briefing materials to lay the groundwork for the discussion. These materials are typically supervised for balance and accuracy by an advisory board of relevant experts and stakeholders. On arrival, the participants are randomly assigned to small groups with trained moderators. When they meet, they not only discuss the general issue but try to identify key questions that merit further exploration. They then bring these questions to balanced panels of competing experts or policymakers in larger plenary sessions. The small groups and plenary sessions alternate throughout the weekend. At the end of the process, the respondents take the same questionnaire they were given on first contact.
"What have we learned from our study of DPs that might be relevant to the viability of Deliberation Day?
"First, deliberation makes a difference. When one compares the attitudes and opinions that respondents had at the end of the process with those they had on first contact, there are many large and statistically significant differences. As in the first deliberative poll on crime (broadcast on Britain's Channel Four in 1994), it is not unusual for deliberation to significantly change the balance of opinion on two-thirds of the policy questions. And more than half of the respondents typically change their positions on particular policy items after sustained conversation."

Learn something new every weekend

That weird bald big-headed kid-like alien (Balok) in The Corbomite Maneuver was Clint Howard. (Information revealed at Writers With Drinks.)

Saturday, January 10 2004

Networking for Shy People

Buncha links for those of you (us) who are introverted and/or don't do the networking thing well.

Touch-screen voting problems in South Florida

In an election in which the winner won by 12 votes, 134 voters' ballots indicated that they had not voted for anyone. But nobody really knows if the touch-screen voting systems screwed up, or those 134 people didn't vote, because - there's no user-verifiable audit trail on these things. Slashdot discussion, full of sound and fury.

Wednesday, January 7 2004

Star much like our own...

Astronomers have found a star, 18 Scorpii, which is a lot like our own. Only 47.5 light years away; 50 years on a light-speed spaceship...

Sunday, January 4 2004

Mad Cows? No Reason to Stop Eating Beef...

SFGate article on consumer reaction to California receiving some meat from the slaughterhouse where the lone mad cow was identified:

"'The news is just trying to scare us, I told her,' said Huong, 47... 'If the food isn't safe, they wouldn't be sold so easily.'"

"The California Department of Health Services is notifying counties that meat from a recalled lot of 10,410 pounds of Washington state beef had been tracked to retailers, but is warning counties not to identify which stores or restaurants purchased it. Officials say they are prohibited from releasing information that companies would consider proprietary."

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...