Election 2012

Tomorrow is the first day of 2012, a presidential election year, and the beginning of the presidential race.  I’m looking forward to seeing who is going to run this time around.  This is always the most exciting part of the cycle, when the field is wide open and anything could happen.

When’s the first debate?

My Wife’s New Travel Blog

MackTheWife has started a travel blog for our upcoming trip to Korea: http://blog.travelpod.com/members/stacimcg.  I’ve added it to the blogroll to the right.

Zombie Update

Zombie ladybugs:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/07/parasitic-wasp-employs-zombie-ladybug-to-guard-cocoon

Census Data

Someone named Eric Fischer has taken the Census data for various cities and plotted the population color-coded by ethnicity.  The results provide an easy way to see how segregated different cities are.  Here are the plots for Dallas, Austin, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City.

Take The Obamacare Repeal Pledge

This morning I took the Obamacare Repeal Pledge.  The pledge has three forms.  Congressional incumbents can take a pledge “to vote for all bills which seek to REPEAL the health care bill, HR 3590, signed into law on March 23, 2010.”  Challengers can pledge “if elected, to vote for all bills which seek to REPEAL the health care bill, HR 3590, signed into law on March 23, 2010.”  Concerned citizens can pledge “that I shall not vote for any candidate who has not signed and lived up to The Repeal Pledge.”

I encourage anyone who cares about American healthcare to do three things:

1. Sign the pledge.
2. Look up whether the incumbents in your House and Senate races have taken the pledge and then send an email or letter to them either urging them to sign the pledge or thanking them for having done so.
3. Check the list of signers on election day and don’t vote for any candidate who hasn’t signed.

An Open Letter to Angela Hunt

As reported in the Dallas Morning News my City Council member, Angela Hunt, cast the deciding vote in a divided 8 to 7 City Council in favor of proposing a 6.5% property tax increase in the midst of a recession.  You can let Councilmember Hunt know what you think of the wisdom of raising taxes during a recession on her City Council web page by clicking the “Email” link in the upper right-hand corner box.  I note that Councilmember Hunt’s current post describes her recent trip to Italy and other EU countries to evaluate their “best practices.”  Italy is of course one of the EU PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) whose addiction to unsustainable spending is threatening the survival of the EU monetary union.  Let us hope she doesn’t implement those practices here.

Here is the message that I sent to Ms Hunt:

Labor Day Weekend 2010

My wife and I (MackTheWife?) spend Labor Day weekend with some friends in a cabin in the Texas Hill Country.  It was very relaxing.

How People Evaluate Court Descisions

On days, like yesterday, when controversial court decisions come out I sometimes watch my Twitter and Facebook feeds and observe as various friends, bloggers, pundits, and celebrities react to the news.  One trend I’ve observed is that in the vast majority of cases, people’s opinion of the court decision align with each individual’s policy preferences on the underlying issue.

Ebay

My wife has inherited a rather large collection of DVDs.  We considered selling them all at the Movie Trading Comapny, but I’m going to try to sell them on EBay instead.  I have a friend who buys things at garage sales and estate sales and re-sells them on EBay and makes a nice little side income at it.  I’m curious how much I’ll be able to make.  I’m a little concerned that some of the DVDs won’t sell at all.  I’m charging $3 shipping and handling and the minimum bid is $0.99, so the customer has to be willing to spend at least $3.99 to buy a movie from me.  I’m not sure that, say, “Unlikely Angel” starring Dolly Parton will be worth 4 bucks to anyone, even if it does include two original Dolly Parton songs.

Of course, the DVDs that don’t sell can always go to the Movie Trading Company.

Fractals

I’m learning visual basic .net and decided the best way to learn is to have a specific application in mind as I read the book, so I decided to write a fractal drawing program. Here a few of my favorite fractals so far.