MegaAwesome

I’m late to the party, and Elizabeth Britt said just about everything that I would want to in a far nicer way than I would have anyway:

There is no bright line rule about what constitutes a personal attack as opposed to constructive discussion, but some types of comments are never acceptable:

1. Racial, sexual, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, or other epithets (such as comments against people with disabilities). Disagreement over what constitutes a religion, race, sexual preference, or ethnicity is not an excuse to indulge in bad behavior.
2. Using someone’s affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views - regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream or not.
3. Linking to external attacks, harassment, or other material, for the purpose of attacking another person -

These examples are not exclusive. Insults or disparaging remarks against another person is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done.

Councilwoman Laurie Caskey-Schreiber shouldn’t have called Gwen Hunter an idiot in a public forum, that was just rude. She should have called her an idiot to her face. Civility is important but it isn’t a free pass to act like, well, an idiot whenever the mood strikes. I wonder if the prominent role whisper campaigns have achieved in our local politics hasn’t simply grown out of an understanding that no-one will challenge the people who spread them publicly.

Over at Sam’s blog a commenter said something about holding our elected officials to a higher standard and I agree completely. Our elected officials, and candidates, should be expected to shut down any idiot who tries to spread such garbage. This isn’t junior high anymore, and the blind repetition of petty lies and ham-fisted intrigues are turning local politics into a joke. I wish that the Councilwoman had done it another way, but she did exactly what I think we should expect her to do.

Next time I hope that she will be more direct and address them personally. Everyone has to learn at some point in their life that if you’re going to be an idiot, you shouldn’t get surprised when people call you on it.

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Over at MHCBUYP Bruce Carlson’s latest podcast is a history of the Iowa caucuses. He explains why the caucus is so important and lays out some very good arguments against a National Primary system. I’m not big on podcasts, but his are always excellent so check him out if you haven’t before.

And remember that here in Washington it’s the caucuses that determine delegates to the conventions, at least for Democrats. The state Republicans split up their delegates between their caucuses and the primary results, or something. For D’s however, you must show up to your caucus in order to make a difference.

In fact, if you’re a Democrat you should go ahead and fill this out for updates on your local caucus. And go and make sure you’ve got February 9th free so that you can participate. It is sort of important.

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I’m still catching up after a radical schedule shift at work last week kept me from my usual morning ritual of poking around online for an hour and drinking six cups of coffee. Finally things are settling down enough that I’ve got some ‘me’ time (drinking beer and watching the worst martial arts movies that EveryDay Music has to offer). I think it helps that my cell phone is now completely broken and people can’t get in touch with me.

Criticism of the Herald’s comment policy is making the rounds again (such as here, here, and here). I don’t want to just wind up repeating what I’ve said before, so I’ll just add this:

The current commenting system, both the use of Haloscan and whatever moderation policy may exist, is a complete teardown. The whole thing needs to be rebuilt from scratch (if at all). There is no shortage of ways to participate in discussion online, I think it’s time to let this one die.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Freedom 101 by rx (starring JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Malcolm X):

Back in 2004 when I was seriously burnt out on the campaign I clicked a little ad link from a political blog that said something along the lines of “Join the Party Party!” and I was renewed. There was a collection mp3s of President Bush Jr remixed into hilarious new songs, my favorite being “Dick is a Killer” which has very explicit lyrics and is amazingly funny.

And then I pretty much forgot about The Party Party, until now. The video of the President singing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” was passed around over the last week and I’ve fallen in love all over again.

You can see all of his videos here.

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Kotaku posted the new Johnny Lee video explaining how he made a head tracking system for a 3D display using a Nintendo Wii controller, and it is astounding. For the non-incredibly nerdy it might seem a little dry but you really have to get all the way through it to appreciate just how mind-bendingly awesome it is:

If you don’t care how it’s done, skip ahead to the 2:30 mark, that’s where things get crazy. Lee and others have done some really amazing things with the Wii hardware, but this is the first one that made me say ‘Wow!’ out loud.

Likewise, there are a number of 3D display developers out there and the technology is certainly maturing, but this is something else entirely. It’s all of the cutting edge tech in a $250 machine (that millions of people already own) and a pair of safety goggles, not a hyper-expensive setup that isn’t much past prototype.

Wow!

via DQ

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..for the local reporter that has everything:

For a new art project, the designer Martin Postler has investigated the history, the aesthetics and the lethal seductiveness of the Kalashnikov. He has freed the AK-47 from its terrible capacity to injure and kill by deconstructing it into a paper model construction set. When putting the detailed model together, the builder is automatically confronted with the Kalashnikov and its significance – both historical and personal. At the end of the construction process each person can decide if they would like to hang their own AK-47 on the wall, paint it, customize it with stickers or simply burn it. Then ultimately this AK-47 thankfully remains a piece of paper.
[…]
If you’re gonna play with guns, use paper ones!

Unfortunately, they only ship to Europe.

via Boing Boing

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Calls to action come in many different forms. For some, it is a mystical/spiritual ‘call’ that gets them off their feet, I challenge people’s badness (which only seems to work on Republicans), and Ty over at KVOS tells it like it is. His latest posts is in response to complaints about the lack of local television, and includes full instructions on how to go about getting on NorthWest Notebook if you’re looking for exposure.

Now, I’m not going to do anything foolish like promise to stop whining about how I wished KVOS was all local news 24/7 because complaining is kind of ‘my thing.’ But Ty does a very good job with NorthWest Notebook and I think that we all owe it to him, as a community, to acknowledge that and call him every time something comes up.

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Blogger, webcomic author, and personality-test maker SaintGasoline put up his endorsement of Mike Gravel a few days ago:

For anyone participating in the Democratic primaries, I strongly urge you to vote for Mike Gravel (or possibly Dennis Kucinich as an alternative). Gravel is a man who genuinely cares about this country, and I have no doubt that he would be a great, effective, and innovative leader. After researching his stance on the issues, I see that his policies almost perfectly reflect my own political stances. But then again, so do Kucinich’s. The clinching factor for Gravel, though, was the fact that he is a man who knows how to get things done. Unlike the Democratic congress we elected, from whom we expected some sort of pressure put on the President to resolve the mess in Iraq and from whom we actually received complacency and inactivity, Mike Gravel would quickly and decisively put an end to this unjust war

It’s well written and passionate, and I haven’t seen too much from Gravel supporters lately so it’s certainly worth a quick read. I have my policy disagreements with Gravel, and if you haven’t noticed the sidebar I’m cheering for someone else, but I don’t dislike him. I wish that he had stuck with his record instead of doing things like this:

…because seven minutes is a very long time to wait for nothing.

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In the comments to the last post I said that Charter Amendment 1 had passed with 61% of the vote, but I was wrong. It actually passed with 67%, and I apologise. This is a screenshot of the PDF the Audiors office put out for that year (click for the bigger version):

I had divided the ‘Yes’ votes circled by the total votes cast (also circled). The actual number of votes cast for or against that amendment was a bit lower:

Sorry about that.

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I went in to last night’s county council without having made up my mind on the idea, and came out of it less convinced than before. Passions are running high, but I’m really not all that certain that it’s warranted at this stage of the game.

As you’ve no doubt heard, the Council decided 6-Sam Crawford to send the issue back to voters next year. There were two primary reasons given for doing so:

• The ballot statement last time was confusing
• There was no real debate prior to the vote

Of the two, I find the first one particularly compelling. As a fan of martial arts movies a poorly written or misleading title is in the top five of things that make me especially crazy. Have you ever seen Bionic Ninja? There were lots of ninjas but if any of them were bionic then they didn’t bother to mention it. Don’t get me started on Thunder Ninja Kids 3: The Hunt for the Devil Boxer.

The second proposition, though it has more emotional appeal, is also interesting. I’m one of those people who like big drawn out debates on policy things like this (see every third post on this blog) and I’m eager to see what comes out of this.

There’s an interesting debate to be had here. At the meeting it was brought up that many representatives on the national and statewide levels won’t give you the time of day if you’re not in that district. Whenever I get an automated response from a member of the US House Leadership that says, essentially, “Thanks, but as a courtesy to our colleagues we don’t respond to people outside our Congressional District” I want to call up their office and say bad words to the poor intern who answers the phone. I understand their reasoning, but I don’t agree with it.

There were other arguments in favor of county-wide voting, such as the idea that since the Council represents the whole county then they should be accountable to the whole county. I don’t disagree with that, but I’m not yet sold.

On the other side, I like the idea of having my representative who represents my area who I can call and say bad words to whenever they do something that I think is dumb. I know that’s not a very persuasive, but it’s the sort of thing I worry about.

It has been suggested that the switch will help Democrats and I think that’s true just not as dramatically as people seem to think. Looking at the map, Democrats should do just fine on the Council under district-only voting. Their chances aren’t too great in District 2, but the results of Ken Mann’s campaign seem to indicate that it’s not forever out of reach. For that matter I’m not sure that the Council should even be 100% Democrat, but I’ll leave it at that for now before I get myself in too much trouble.

I haven’t made up my mind on this yet, but the discussion so far has been interesting and hopefully the passions will stay hot long enough to get people organised on both sides. The Council, most of it anyway, has thrown down the gauntlet and since it’s going to go to the ballot anyway now lets make sure that no one can ever say that there wasn’t robust, and at least mostly civil, public debate from both sides.

Clearly many people feel strongly about this, but are they bad enough dudes to put a campaign together and see it through to the end?

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