uhhhh, last I checked males were the determinate factor on the sex of the baby.
As Bill Cosby put it:
My wife said, "It's the male who has the X and Y chromosomes that determine the sex of the baby." I said "Bull! I always say, it's the fault of the person who had it last. Camille, you had it last, what happened?"
You *can* deep-link directly to a post. One of the links in the header of each post in the thread listing is "Individual Message", which takes you to a page with only that post.
As a matter of fact, if you don't live in Iowa or New Hampshire, your voice is limited.
Once those first two states have made their choices, candidates start dropping like flies.
The justification for the current state of affairs seems to be that it gives a candidate of limited means a chance to make an impact in the race for the nomination, so that he can get the money and publicity to carry him through the entire primary process. Clearly, if such a candidate has to announce his presence in every state at once, he's doomed.
But you know what? That's just what he has to do anyway, if he can't win in Iowa or New Hampshire. So those of us in the states with the later primaries need to do what we'd have to do if all the primaries were held at the same time -- examine the candidates as they make their IA and NH pitches, choose the one we want to back, and start pushing him right away back home. Write letters to the papers, volunteer for his campaign, get the word out, so that when the time comes for him to decide whether he wants to stay in the race or not, he can see he's got enough name recognition and support to make it worth his while.
Who knows, it might even give him an early advantage over his better-heeled competitors, who won't have the same incentive to hit those states right away.
One caveat: it will not work well in US Presidential elections as long as the Electoral College in place.
Why not? The current Electoral College system simply requires that the presidency be decided on a state-by-state basis. Nothing prevents any state from using approval voting to choose its electors.
Would you say that approval voting can't work in an election for a congressman? Choosing presidential electors is no different.
I'm not an American but I can imagine that this process would be humiliating.
Not at all -- or at least, no more so than being scanned for active RFID tags when I leave a store. I know that the scanner won't find anything, and I'm quite confident that this process won't either. Still, if it does, I'd rather have such problems found and fixed.
The Constitution specifies that a state's Electors are to be appointed "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct", so yes, it is entirely up to the state to specify the method that will used to count votes. The Constitution, however, imposes no requirement that anyone need actually vote!
Well, yes, the point of the speech is to sway voters. But it's not meant to sway the people in the stands -- it's meant to sway the people watching TV and listening to radio who will hear just the sound bites crafted into the speech and the roaring, undivided crowd in the background. That's much more cost-effective.
It doesn't matter whether the Electoral College is fair or not. The EC, of course, was based on the same compromise that populated the Senate with an equal number of senators from each state. That same Senate has the power to defeat any attempt to reform the EC -- quite easily, in fact, as a two-thirds majority is required to amend the Constitution. Therefore, any reform of the presidential electoral process will have to take place at the state level.
There is one reform that the courts could institute, I suppose; they could rule that each member of the House of Representatives must represent something much closer to the 30,000 people the Constitution established as a lower bound. That would bump the number of representatives by as much as a factor of 20 and effectively eliminate the effect of the extra two electors per state. If the states all then switched to choosing electors at the congressional district level, the electoral college would pretty much be guaranteed to match the popular vote.
If you want TV without ads, move to the UK and pay your -L-116 a year for it
That's the color license isn't it? I seem to recall that the B&W license is more like 48 quid. And then there are those like one lady I know, who steadfastly refuses to own any TV and so pays nothing, even though she does have a nice little laptop and could presumably watch online.
(I'd happily pay that B&W license for access to all the audio the BBC streams.)
I'm sorry to hear about your wife's visa problems, but I don't think insanely restrictive immigration policies are their cause. After all, she became eligible for a visa the moment she married you, under the conditions only that the marriage be valid and that she not be ineligible for some other reason.
No, the cause of your wife's visa problems is that she's not the only one, not by a long shot, and her visa has to wait in line behind all the others that were already waiting when she married you.
What can the INS do in the interim, other than put more people on processing that class of visa? One other thing they could do, I suppose, is to allow people waiting for a visa to be processed to come into the country on any other visa they might be eligible for, but that wouldn't help everyone.
As for the "insanely loose policies" you cited, those are precisely the policies you institute when you want to integrate new immigrants into your society as quickly as possible. The reason other countries don't have those policies is presumably the same reason no other country has Emma Lazarus's "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" inscribed on the national welcome mat.
It seems to me that the Nazis of 5 decades ago were judged by the morals/ethics of 5 decades ago at Nuremberg, and the conclusions reached then were no different than those we arrive at today....
I don't know anything about KEdit's "more" and "less" commands, but the "all" command to which he referred allows you to hide all the lines in a file that don't match a given expression. His 'all "if"' example tells the editor to show only the lines with "if" in them. The user can work with those lines, just as he always does, but without the distraction of the lines he's not currently interested in. It's one of the most popular features of the XEdit family of editors.
Modern IDEs typically just provide a more productive way to get the day-to-day work done.
Once upon a time, a PC guru came to our department to tell us we needed to use a PC editor to edit our mainframe source, as well as a PC front-end to our debugger, because that was the only way we could get an IDE. We showed him our complete compile-debug-edit environment based on the mainframe editor that inspired KEdit, and he departed, taking his PC software with him. Basically, XEdit/Rexx was Emacs/eLisp, only years ahead of it.
I send mansfield an e-mail every so often requesting a Linux version or ask to open source the code but they just ignore me. Kedit would be a good replacement for vi on linux.
If the poll workers won't give you a paper ballot, use the one in the machine. Just enter a write-in vote for every office up for election. It will take a little longer, and you'll want to bring your best handwriting, but it'll get you a paper trail.
I've always wanted an audio cassette player that worked like a VCR so I could listen to more radio talk shows.
You mean like a... VCR? It's been 20 years since I first hooked my shortwave radio up to the audio input on my VCR so that I could record BBC World Service programs overnight. Alas, I fear I am not as serious as you; the need to listen to dramatisations of P.G. Wodehouse stories was the mother of invention for me.
Voting is NEVER a waste of time...and the fact that you see who's on the ballot means nothing in the end if no one caters to your beliefs...
Obviously, I did not make myself clear.
It is precisely because voting is never a waste of time that seeing who's on the ballot means everything. I know exactly which button I am going to push -- or not push -- before I enter the booth. My vote may prove to be misguided, but it's never because I have to make an election-day snap judgement, which is the problem the post I was responding to mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Bollix?
Isn't that Microsoft's Linux distribution?
As Bill Cosby put it: My wife said, "It's the male who has the X and Y chromosomes that determine the sex of the baby." I said "Bull! I always say, it's the fault of the person who had it last. Camille, you had it last, what happened?"
The place to check this out is the BoardGameGeek Doom: The Boardgame page, which has reviews, scenarios, and other good stuff.
You *can* deep-link directly to a post. One of the links in the header of each post in the thread listing is "Individual Message", which takes you to a page with only that post.
Just to nitpick: the 1992 results were
Clinton: 43%
Bush: 38%
Perot: 19%
So, in fact, Clinton defeated Bush by 5%, not
15% (6% if you normalize Perot out).
Well, before I had a connection to the Internet, I used to dial in to local BBSes...
The justification for the current state of affairs seems to be that it gives a candidate of limited means a chance to make an impact in the race for the nomination, so that he can get the money and publicity to carry him through the entire primary process. Clearly, if such a candidate has to announce his presence in every state at once, he's doomed.
But you know what? That's just what he has to do anyway, if he can't win in Iowa or New Hampshire. So those of us in the states with the later primaries need to do what we'd have to do if all the primaries were held at the same time -- examine the candidates as they make their IA and NH pitches, choose the one we want to back, and start pushing him right away back home. Write letters to the papers, volunteer for his campaign, get the word out, so that when the time comes for him to decide whether he wants to stay in the race or not, he can see he's got enough name recognition and support to make it worth his while.
Who knows, it might even give him an early advantage over his better-heeled competitors, who won't have the same incentive to hit those states right away.
Why not? The current Electoral College system simply requires that the presidency be decided on a state-by-state basis. Nothing prevents any state from using approval voting to choose its electors.
Would you say that approval voting can't work in an election for a congressman? Choosing presidential electors is no different.
Not at all -- or at least, no more so than being scanned for active RFID tags when I leave a store. I know that the scanner won't find anything, and I'm quite confident that this process won't either. Still, if it does, I'd rather have such problems found and fixed.
The Constitution specifies that a state's Electors are to be appointed "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct", so yes, it is entirely up to the state to specify the method that will used to count votes. The Constitution, however, imposes no requirement that anyone need actually vote!
Well, yes, the point of the speech is to sway voters. But it's not meant to sway the people in the stands -- it's meant to sway the people watching TV and listening to radio who will hear just the sound bites crafted into the speech and the roaring, undivided crowd in the background. That's much more cost-effective.
It doesn't matter whether the Electoral College is fair or not. The EC, of course, was based on the same compromise that populated the Senate with an equal number of senators from each state. That same Senate has the power to defeat any attempt to reform the EC -- quite easily, in fact, as a two-thirds majority is required to amend the Constitution. Therefore, any reform of the presidential electoral process will have to take place at the state level.
There is one reform that the courts could institute, I suppose; they could rule that each member of the House of Representatives must represent something much closer to the 30,000 people the Constitution established as a lower bound. That would bump the number of representatives by as much as a factor of 20 and effectively eliminate the effect of the extra two electors per state. If the states all then switched to choosing electors at the congressional district level, the electoral college would pretty much be guaranteed to match the popular vote.
(to be sung to the tune of "Jack and Jill")
George and John,
See how they run,
Not knowing what they oughta.
George smacked down
Iraq's chief clown,
And tag-team John ran after.
June to June,
Rich backers' tunes
Command their every caper.
"End, fiscal year"
Is what's most clear
On both their calendars' papers.
To turn an eye
To the common guy,
Some need a motivator.
Kerry and Bush
Still need the push
Found in a vote for Nader!
That's the color license isn't it? I seem to recall that the B&W license is more like 48 quid. And then there are those like one lady I know, who steadfastly refuses to own any TV and so pays nothing, even though she does have a nice little laptop and could presumably watch online.
(I'd happily pay that B&W license for access to all the audio the BBC streams.)
Even though frogs are not.
No, the cause of your wife's visa problems is that she's not the only one, not by a long shot, and her visa has to wait in line behind all the others that were already waiting when she married you.
What can the INS do in the interim, other than put more people on processing that class of visa? One other thing they could do, I suppose, is to allow people waiting for a visa to be processed to come into the country on any other visa they might be eligible for, but that wouldn't help everyone.
As for the "insanely loose policies" you cited, those are precisely the policies you institute when you want to integrate new immigrants into your society as quickly as possible. The reason other countries don't have those policies is presumably the same reason no other country has Emma Lazarus's "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" inscribed on the national welcome mat.
It seems to me that the Nazis of 5 decades ago were judged by the morals/ethics of 5 decades ago at Nuremberg, and the conclusions reached then were no different than those we arrive at today....
"Arab, I'm gonna make nice with him. I'm only gonna challenge 'em."
"Cool, Daddy-o."
I don't know anything about KEdit's "more" and "less" commands, but the "all" command to which he referred allows you to hide all the lines in a file that don't match a given expression. His 'all "if"' example tells the editor to show only the lines with "if" in them. The user can work with those lines, just as he always does, but without the distraction of the lines he's not currently interested in. It's one of the most popular features of the XEdit family of editors.
Once upon a time, a PC guru came to our department to tell us we needed to use a PC editor to edit our mainframe source, as well as a PC front-end to our debugger, because that was the only way we could get an IDE. We showed him our complete compile-debug-edit environment based on the mainframe editor that inspired KEdit, and he departed, taking his PC software with him. Basically, XEdit/Rexx was Emacs/eLisp, only years ahead of it.
You are looking for The Hessling Editor.
Why, yes, the parties can just run primaries for themselves. But then, you see, they'd have to pay for them...
If the poll workers won't give you a paper ballot, use the one in the machine. Just enter a write-in vote for every office up for election. It will take a little longer, and you'll want to bring your best handwriting, but it'll get you a paper trail.
You mean like a... VCR? It's been 20 years since I first hooked my shortwave radio up to the audio input on my VCR so that I could record BBC World Service programs overnight. Alas, I fear I am not as serious as you; the need to listen to dramatisations of P.G. Wodehouse stories was the mother of invention for me.
Obviously, I did not make myself clear.
It is precisely because voting is never a waste of time that seeing who's on the ballot means everything. I know exactly which button I am going to push -- or not push -- before I enter the booth. My vote may prove to be misguided, but it's never because I have to make an election-day snap judgement, which is the problem the post I was responding to mentioned.