kengr

How Panic-Buying Revealed the Problem With the Modern World

The false "efficiency" they talk about is due to misuse of statics. they are planning for "average" usage.

Trouble with that is that it means half the time they have enough to cover usage. and half the time they *don't*.

What they need to do is use z scores. Using those you can take the data and determine what levels will cover 50%, 80%, 90% etc.

For stores 80-90% ought to be ok. for medical and other ctritical services, 99% or higher would be better.

Incidentally, this is the kind out stuff that's done to come up with "10-year", "100-year" etc values for storms and floods.

Which brings up another factor. You have to *keep collecting* data and revise values as usage changes. That's why the estimates for storms and floods aren't doing so good these days.

I think a good first step would be *requiring* the software and hardware designs to be publicly available for criticism. anything less is "security by obscurity" which rarely ends well.

This would require companies to copyright their stuff rather than play the trade secret game. But *because* of the public availability of the software and hardware designs, piracy would be trivial to prove.

I'd like to see voting machines treated the way control systems for nuclear reactors and other "must not have bugs" systems are treated.

There are CPU designs that have been mathematically analyzed to make sure they only do what they are supposed to do. And the masks for the ICs and the actual ICs are gone over with similar care, including testing to make sure they match the design.

Next the assemblers and compilers for them are likewise analyzed and tested. That's to avoid things like "built-in" back doors can be implemented in such software (shown as a possibility decades ago).

Yeah, that's expensive. Thing is *it's already been done*, so the only new bit is writing the software for voting. Which should o through similar "provably correct" analysis.

Designing the hardware (and drivers for it) would need similar care.

All of this takes lots of extra time and effort. But the results would be as bombproof as it's possible to be.

They *would* meet the specifications. Period.

Getting the specs right, that's why you make them available for public analysis. and BTW, failures in the specifications rather than failure in implementing them is the most common source of *bad* bugs.

Now, mind you, the CPus involved decades behind "state of the art". So what. Voting machines don't have to do anything that complicated. The user interface is the most complicated part.

I favor voting machines that will show the voter their choices, then create a human readable hard copy that the voter will place in the ballot box. And there should be a procedure to invoke if the hard copy doesn't match the screen.

The hard copy should be machine readable for speedy processing. And the machines that do that will require the same sort of design and manufacturing processes s the voting machines.

Also, there should be a dual key setup for accessing the inside of the machines. That is it'd require two different people using different keys turned at the same time to open them. That makes messing with insides a lot harder.

Have some sort of data module in the machines that also records the votes cast. Write once media would be a good choice for that. Serialize the media so you can go "disk XXX was in machine YYY"

Those get removed at the end of the night using the dual keys, plus witnesses. They'll be transported to election headquarters via a different courier and route than the ballot boxes.

So you can get really fast results (from the disks). verify them by scanning the actual ballots, and if there are questions, you can hand count the ballots.

Oh yeah. The "ballot info" (ie what candidates and the text/layout that go with them) should be in ROMs or the like. Something that gets done at a central location, with witnesses, then secured and transported to the machines, where you again have witnesses verifying what they got was what was sent, and that it was placed in the machine it was for.

Yeah, there are still ways to mess with things. But it'd be orders of magnitude harder than it is currently.

Vote by mail like we have here in Oregon would "only" need the secured scanning machines.

I'll note that vote by mail has several aspects which make it hard to disenfranchise people.

First off, if you don't get a ballot when you are supposed to, you can go down to the county elections office and get a new one.

If there's an issue with your registration, you still have time to clear it up and get a ballot and vote (and if you are at the elections office anyway, you can just vote in a booth there and drop it in a locked ballot box to be counted on election night).

So voter suppression gets a lot harder without getting dangerously overt about it.

That makes it a lot hard to play switcheroo games with either.

Reading an article

conuly linked to:
The future of sex ed has arrived. Is America ready?

Several bits got me thinking about the many problems with people and the concept of religious freedom. the quote below will do.

Meanwhile, many parents say CHYA violates their parental rights. “This law doesn’t respect our beliefs and rights as parents to teach our children how they should behave and live,” one mom, Ofelia Garcia, tells me.

No, law doesn't do a *thing* to that right. What it *does* do, and the state has every right to do is teach their children that their parents beliefs aren't the only ones out there

So what they are *actually* complaining about is that the state won't let them keep their kids ignorant of different beliefs.

IMHSHO, the way freedom of religion *should* be taken is this:

You can have any religious beliefs you care to. You can *not* impose those beliefs on others. Nor may you require them to act in accordance with your beliefs.

And that's where almost the protests of "religious freedom" from Christians and conservatives come from. They want other people to live their lives in accordance with the *protester's* beliefs.

It doesn't help that many of those folks not only think that you have to follow their "moral code", but in fact believe that it's not possible to be against things like murder, rape and theft *without* invoking a moral code set by some higher power.

Sorry folks, it's possible to derive all the necessary laws from first principles. Things like personal autonomy, preventing harm to others, and the idea of personal property.

I'm watching something that has a witchfinder doing the typical trial by ordeal. In this case, a dunking stool.

they actual got it right in that the witchfinder proclaimed that if they died, they were innocent, but if they survived, they were guilty and would be hung. (far too many shows have the guilty being burned. That wasn't they way it was done in England and the colonies, nor in many other places).

But a thought occurred to me...

"Excuse me, but if an innocent person is put to death, isn't that *murder under the law? And wouldn't that make her accusers guilty of at the very least perjury, if not something worse?"

"Seems to me even if the trial by ordeal is legal, those folks need to be punished for their false accusations..."

Cooking some eggs for breakfast I was reminded of the things that "everybody knows" and the many things that are never expressly defined to us but are rather picked up thru context.

An example is fried eggs. "Sunny side up" is pretty obvious. But a lot of people have only ever heard "over easy" as "the" alternative. Turns out there are *several* alternatives:
over easy
over medium
over hard

The "over" part *is* obvious. But the easy, medium and hard are not. Doesn't help that you never hear the second two in movies or on TV.

Easy, medium and hard refer to the state of the yolk.

So it's easy to grow up thinking that "over easy" means "cook the egg on both sides" and wonder why you always get a too-runny yolk. Finding out that it's because that's what you *asked* for is a bit of a shock.

Now consider how much else in your life you've assumed meanings for, based on context. And how much you have wrong, or at least very slanted because of the lack of explicit definitions.

Kids suffer from this a *lot* when adults jump on them for not knowing things that are supposedly "obvious". So do folks with limited experience or whose first language isn't English.

Politicians abuse this sort of thing to the max. If they word things the right way, they can leave different groups thinking very different things about the same statement.

The two are essentially the same, it's just that "white nationalism" is an attempt to sound better.

But both are spurred by the same thing: the idea (fact!) that in a few decades, whites will no longer be the majority in America.

That's why they are anti-immigrant. And anti-non-white.

What they avoid thinking about is that short of mass sterilization or pogroms, it *is* going to happen. at best they could delay it a few years.

BTW, it might be fun arguing with them that they should *want* free birth control for minorities. It'd slow down the demographic shift. :-)

What they very carefully don't think about much less *talk* about is that the reason they are afraid is that they don't want to be treated the way *they* treat minorities. This includes giving up "white privilege".

Which makes the *real* solution almost *literally* unthinkable. Change the laws so that minorities get equal rights. That way, when (no *if*) they become a minority, they won't get discriminated against.

Of course, either way, they will no longer have white privilege so that makes it a harder sell.

But realistically, there's no way that's not going to happen eventually. And the more drastic the measures they take to try to prevent it, the worse the backlash will be.

I *hope* we can avoid a second civil war. But I'm not that optimistic.

There are problems with the way asylum seekers are being treated and how they are being held. There are problems with conditions in jails, prisons, and many other place.

There's a solution. It'd fix all these and more. Alas, it's likely impossible to implement.

First step. To avoid all the games that get played about jurisdiction and what things are called set the rules up to cover *any* facility (may need a more general term) where people are not free to leave when they want to.

That'll cover everything from jails to internment camps, andf many other places as well (including a lot of the so-called "summer camps' and "rehab centers" that kids and teens get sent to to brainwash them into being what their parents want. these are usually based on "religion" btw.

Incidentally, to cover those *and* to deal with some other tricks various agencies have used to get around Us law, we should make it illegal to send people out of the US to such facilities in other countries unless said facilities are subject to the same inspections and rules as the ones in the US.

Now about those rules and inspections. The inspectors need to be something like the International Red Cross/Red Crescent inspectors for POW camps in various wars.

They may *not* be denied access to facilities or inmates.

Permanent video records should be maintained by some group independent of those running the facility. They will be used to investigate incidents of violence against staff *or* inmates. Likewise they will be used to investigate complaints of abuse.

They will *not* be available to those running the facilities (otherwise they'd use them to tighten their grip[ op the inmates).

There will be standards for food quality and quantity, sanitation, and other living conditions. This includes but is not limited to crowding, medical care and staffing.

Failure to abide by the rules will result in anything from fines to shutdown of the facility. Criminal charges *will* be filed against staff responsible *and* their superiors (the superiors, all the way up the chain are responsible for hiring and failing to properly supervise the folks under them).

Lets see how fast the possibility of jail time affects the people higher up the food chain.

Facilities will not be permitted to get overcrowded. (ie if they can't handle more people under the rules they either have to release enough to allow the new ones in, or they have to find someplace else for the new ones to go).

To prevent funding games, an adequate budget must be drawn up and the funds put in escrow. If one is not provided, one will be drawn up by outside experts.

The budgets are to prevent cutting costs by scrimping on food (quality or quantity), staffing, health care, etc.

Something will need to be done to avoid the problems of "unfunded mandates",

One would hope that setting things out as "if you want this many people in jail/prison/whatever you'll have to spend this much money" would get the politicians and public to make their expectations more realistic, but we all know better.

Private facilties (which, interestingly enough would include some schools and rehab centers) would also be affected rather strongly by this stuff.

I trust I don't have to explain *why* the odds of anything like this being implemnted are essentially nil, do I?

Would Autism Speaks be considered a hate group?

Also, what would "commune" or maybe a small town set up by and for folks on the AS spectrum be like? What sort of problems might neurotypicals have if they visited?

A few weeks ago, *all* the Republican state senators in Oregon walked out and stayed away to prevent the state senate from being able to vote on a bill. Without them, there wasn't a quorum, so nothing could be done by the senate.

Eventually a deal was reached and they came back. Part of the deal was that they wouldn't do that again.

This week they did it again. The governor being understandably upset, has ordered state troopers to bring them in to do the jobs they were elected to do.

One of the senators has said that they better send bachelors and be heavily armed. He's saying he won't be a "political prisoner". In other words, rather than submit to legal authority and do his *job* he's saying that he will resist with deadly force.

I'm sorry, they were elected to *be* in the senate when their is business to conduct. Deliberately avoiding it because they don't have enough votes to stop a bill is pretty much extortion.

I'll also note that this has happened before in other states. To the best of my knowledge, the governor has the law on her side. Legally, the state senators are in the wrong and can be compelled to be present.

It's been reported that they've left the state so the state troopers can't go after them.

Oh yeah, they are being fined $500/day. Like that's going to bother most of them.

And an online poll by a local TV station currently has votes 2 to 1 in *favor* of the Republicans doing this. I'm appalled at the people who don't "get" the idea that what these politicians are doing is wrong. They are *sabotaging* the system rather than working within it.

There are a number of majorly screwed up things that could be "fixed" by what amount to simple changes in accounting rules/practices.

First, deferred maintenance on anything should not by considered as a cost saving measure. Instead it should be treated like what it *is*, namely a liability. It should be carried on the books as a liability amounting to the *actual* cost of needed maintenance (ie not what they'd like to spend, but what *needs* to be spent) plus 10% or the actual st plus the actual cost of the extra maintenance that will be needed because of the postponement, whichever is *greater*.

This is to make it *painfully* clear that deferring maintenance is a really *bad* idea.

Second, pensions are to be "fully funded". That is to say, they get treated like you are setting up an annuity. So if the company goes bankrupt, the pensions will still get paid. Likewise,the company does *not* get to change the rules for existing employees without their permission. So suddenly rolling back pensions to save money.

Pensions should be treated like a contract. No unilateral changes. And no borrowing from the pension funds by the company (or government! I'm looking at you Congress)

Third, waste disposal costs not merely for manufacturing products, but for disposing of them after the wear out or are obsolete are to be born by the company, *not* the consumer.

This won't end "planned obsolesence" and the "new model every year" BS, but it'll at least reduce it. And help deal with disposing or the resulting "trash".

Dec 14, 1972. At 2:54 pm PST, the last humans departed from the lunar surface.

https://www.newsweek.com/kansas-official-tells-black-woman-hes-member-master-race-dont-ever-forget-1216506?fbclid=IwAR24Iis7I1UErVf_6mkjassGpz0ygdf7MYpyTzxEmUdM_pU7FQeQnYh5FIs

I guess he's too young to remember that Washington and Lincoln *both* had federal holidays. When they started moving holidays to Mondays, it was felt that February was too short to have two in it. So they combined the two to make "Presidents Day".

I filled out the ballot a couple days ago. since it was too late to mail it, I took it to the drop box at a local library branch this afternoon (it doesn't open until noon)

Due to the way the buses ran, I stopped by a Papa Murphy's on the way home and got a pizza. Hadn't recalled it was $12 Tuesday, so an X-large (family size) cost less than a largbe normally would.

I'll have food for tonight & tomorrow.

And I may need comfort food while I'm listening to the election results.

It's bad enough here.

But consider that on another timeline this is the 6th anniversary of the election of Nemiah Scudder as President.

Was an important historical figure in Heinlein's "Revolt in 2100".

Robert Heinlein wrote about this in 1952, in a Postscript in Revolt in 2100:

"Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not – but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck. Throw in a depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington."

He was referring to how Scudder got elected President in Heinlein's "Future History". But this sounds a lot like someone we are dealing with currentl, doesn't it.

Oh yeah, for those not familiar with the politics of the 1920 & 1930s, you might want to look up William Jennings Bryan, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Father Coughlin.

There are a lot of others, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Forty-nine years ago (June 28, 1969 at 1:20 am EDT) New York Police conducted a raid on the Stonewall Inn.

For a few months now they've been arguing about requiring seismic upgrade to "unreinforced masonry" (basically brick) buildings.

The owners (which include a lot of churches) have been complaining about the cost, saying they can't afford it.

I wish *somebody* would stand up there and point out that if they *don't* do it, when (not *if*) the Big One comes, they'll be paying a lot more in wrongful death suits based on "you knew it wasn't safe in a quake, but you kept letting people use it".

Today they passed something, but it's got a lot of exceptions, allowing up to 20 years to get the upgrades done. :-(

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/05/11/the-protect-and-serve-act-is-political-grandstanding-over-a-nonexistent-problem-and-it-could-cause-real-harm/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.07478d976c93

Muslims Recoil at a French Proposal to Change the Quran

Gee, the Bible and various other Christian writings have been used to justify racism, anti-Semitism and many other things. As well as to justify countless wars and terrorist acts.

Yet we don't hear calls to revise these things but rather to go after the folks who misuse them.

Can't have it both ways folks

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Entries tagged with politics

This is why statistics are important

how to do voting machines right

What religious freedom isn't

Witchfinders

"Everybody knows"

White supremacy & "white nationalism"

A solution that won't happen :-(

Terramagne question

Republicans not doing their jobs

Ableds are weird

How accounting might save us

It's been 46 years

Yes, people actually say this stuff..

Voted

Vote!

Nemiah Scudder

Stonewall

Seismic upgrades

Dangerous legislation

Outrageous