All posts by Jack

Politics

A change to the Senate

I was thinking about my idea of setting up the House of Representatives to have one representative per 100 000 citizens. While that would increase the House from 435 to ~3100  right now, it would leave the Senate at 100, 2 Senators per State.

Let’s also increase the Senate to have 6 Senators per state. The Senators continue to serve 6 year terms and they continue to be elected on their current schedule. But three Senators would be elected in each election and the three top vote-getters would get the office. So the result will end up with each state probably having a Republican, a Democrat and a Third Party type – or a second Rep. or Dem. depending on the vote totals.   I think this would give popular 3rd party candidates a chance to be heard on the national stage as well as providing a moderating influence on the two-party duocracy we have today.

Geek Stuff, General

Graham Hill: Less stuff, more happiness

Graham Hill: Less stuff, more happiness | Video on TED.com.

An intriguing talk. If I lived in a dense urban area I might consider the editing he talks about. My main problem is that I don’t want to put my books into digital format.The second problem is that you can’t fit two people into his space. That will need some extreme editing.

I wonder how he gets that coffee table to seat 10 for dining? I think I found the link. Its not a coffee table.

Geek Stuff, General, Politics

Rights vs Responsibilities

In my previous Post I remarked that I didn’t consider FDR’s Second Bill of Rights to be rights. Rather, I consider them to be responsibilities a society owes its members.

Just to clarify the matter, I believe Rights are what individuals holds within themselves. To say someone has a right to health care immediately implies that the health care giver is obligated and does not have the right to refuse. This violates the rights of the health care giver.The same may be said for housing, employment, education, etc.

But a Society does have the Responsibility to provide to its members health care access (even basic health care), basic housing, basic education, competitive opportunities in business,  equal employment opportunities, and a social assurance to the elderly, disabled, unemployed and young. I think FDR’s Bill of Rights baselines a good deal of society’s responsibilities to its members.

General, Politics

Second Bill of Rights

1 Comment

Second Bill of Rights – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I have just been watching Michael Moore’s Capitalism –A Love Storyand he ends with a recap of FDR 2nd Bill Of Rights.

Roosevelt’s remedy was to declare an “economic bill of rights” which would guarantee:

I don’t believe these qualify as rights, but they are definitely components of the directive to promote the general welfare and we should incorporate them into our way of life.

This reminds me of a Love Story much as Romeo and Juliet does.

Moore ends the film with his wrapping of Wall Street with a Crime Scene tape and saying he can’t do this anymore. Do we want to join him? I think he has his answer two years later.

( He interviewed Wallace Shawn early in the film and I kept expecting an ‘inconceivable ‘.)

 

 

 

Geek Stuff, General

Followup on l(a

I did find a copy of l(a in my copy of The Norton Introduction to Literature – Poetry – edited by J.Paul Hunter. My edition goes back to 1973. And the layout in this edition is different from the on-line layouts. The ‘ll’ line has a space between the line above and the line below.

Geek Stuff, General

Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it.

Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it. – Slate Magazine.

The author makes a very good point that two spaces after a period is unnecessary in a proportional font world. Very useful in a in a mono-spaced world. I also thought the author spent too much time disparaging the double spacers of the world (probably needed to fill in all the space he had left).

One point for continuing the double space method is to make it easier to parse e-text by computer. Although with computing getting much more capable of figuring out what people intend, this may be a moot point.

And, of course, this does not apply to writers that are using the spaces on a page to complete their work.

I was trying to find a link, using E E Cummings as an example. I found l(a as a candidate and then went on to find at least three different versions on the web, laid out differently and spelled differently. And I don’t have a printed copy in hand to determine which version is closest to the author’s vision. But if you go to Collected Poems 1922-1938  you will see that a number of his poems depend on the actual layout of the letters and the empty spaces,  as well as the content of the words.