Well….Yes. But being an atheist doesn’t mean that I can’t conceive of a god that I COULD believe in!

Revelation after the break.

I’m occasionally asked by theists, especially Christians, if there is any way I will believe in their god. The short answer is: probably not. But there might be a god — and I repeat: MIGHT be a god — that could have my faith!

Imagine a series of universes, each a flyspeck contained in a larger one, and containing one – or many – flyspeck universes itself. (aka Men in Black movies and bus station lockers)

Now imagine that, in our parent universe, there is a research facility that has the ability to play with the laws of physics. Inside, researchers set up a new universes with variants on the laws of physics. One might vary from ours by setting e equal to MC cubed, instead of sqaured. Another change the rate of entropy. In any case, you get the idea.

In order for their experiments to be valid, two things must happen:

1. Once started, experiments must be allowed to run to completion – without interference of any kind! Although an experiment can be abandoned once it’s obvious it’s not going to work.
2. They have to be able to observe and measure the experiment. Thus while they might choose to impose the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle on us, it can’t apply to them when they are examining us!

Finally, imagine that they are trying to find the right mix of physical laws that causes a universe to arise where intelligent life both arises and is abundant within a certain period of their time. (Did I mention that time measured in their universe bears no relation to time as we measure it?). Repeated experiments at this facility use the results of previous experiments (completed and ongoing) to inform what they next tweak in the physical laws.

Thus our Creator is the researcher that picked the particular mix of the laws of physics that define our universe. To us, the moment of creation was the Big Bang, but to our Creator, it was the moment she flipped the switch! There are no miracles because she isn’t allowed to interfere once the experiments starts – it would pollute the results!

So I can conceive in this Creator. She doesn’t violate ANY of our science. Her Creation is consistent with things we know, and can observe. She might be able to do what we would perceive as miracles, but she doesn’t. She might hear our prayers, but she won’t act on ANY of them. She is amused when we give thanks, but it’s not necessary to bolster her self image.

But while I can conceive of Her, I actually can’t call her a God! Only a Creator! Why? Because my guess is that our universe is one of the failures! Intelligent life has arisen, yes, we are proof of that. But it is NOT abundant, nor does it look like there is much chance that it will become abundant. And even the intelligence we have is called into question by the percentage of people who continue to believe in ANY god without solid evidence.

So the God Creator I can conceive of is a scientist who adheres strictly to the scientific method. Experiment, observe (but don’t interfere with) the results, theorize, refine experiment, repeat, repeat and repeat.

So do I believe this? No, because such belief would serve no useful purpose! We’re I to believe this, NOTHING in my life would change. My belief wouldn’t inform my actions in any way, so why bother?

So what do you think?

Columbia, SC   21 Jan 2012   1901 EST
John H. Hudgens, III, Chairman of the South Carolina Election Commission stunned the nation when, seconds after polls closed, he announced Democrat Alvin Greene as the winner of today’s South Carolina Republican Presidential primary.

In a hastily called press conference in the lobby of the building housing the Election Commission, Hudgens reported that Greene received 57.2% of the vote. Herman Cain was a distant second with 17.2%, followed closely by Michelle Bachmann at 16.8%. All other candidates were “in the low single digits.” These numbers were, of course, reported by the 100% unverifiable  ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems used to record and tabulate votes across the entire Palmetto State in the all-important “First-in-the-South” primary.

When pressed for actual numbers, Hudgens said exact vote totals will never be released (much less tabulated), since “The environmentally friendly iVotronic machines decided to only produce percentages, thus saving paper and the wear and tear of computer printers. He added “The state of South Carolina has long maintained that we don’t think it’s all that important to know how voters actually voted, otherwise we would use a verifiable voting system. The important thing is who beat whom, and at 1 minute after polls closed in the great state of South Carolina we’re able to report as much. Anybody who says otherwise is either a liar, has sour grapes, is a conspiracy theorist or a supporter of Ron Paul’s.”

When asked how Greene, who wasn’t on the ballot, could possibly have won, Hudgens replied that he didn’t know, but that he has full faith in the tabulation contractor hired by South Carolina to gather precinct reports and tabulate the totals: “They’re good ole boys and I refuse to believe them capable of playing with the totals. It was probably through an aggressive, write-in campaign.”

Greene, best known for his upset victory in the 2010 South Carolina Democratic Senatorial primary, was reached at his home and reacted “Huh?” but quickly recovered and said he intends to compete aggressively in Nevada and Florida using the secretive and hitherto unknown campaign staff and army of volunteers he first used in 2010. Recently, a few disgruntled volunteers have leaked that his army is primarily composed of hackers, and they insisted on anonymity in fear of identity theft.

Greene’s win today in South Carolina helps the state avoid the embarrassment GOP officials had in Iowa where voters were allowed to vote on paper ballots and watch those paper ballots counted before their very eyes, allowing for an accurate result where Rick Santorum was found to have been the winner by all accounts, even after the GOP establishment there did their best to inaccurately name Mitt Romney the winner.

“There will be no such confusion in South Carolina tonight!,” Hudgens said.

It was my 21st birthday. My father came to Providence so that I would have one family member with me on that day. At dinner with him and a few close friends, he related that he had three things that, from the time I was born, he wanted to instill in me:

1. Be Kind – I like to think I am
2. Be a Rebel – Only somewhat successful, but that’s another post!
3. Learn to Read Fast – Wildly successful!

Dear Steven :

This week, we’ll see Congress vote on three so-called “trade agreements.” Did you ever wonder why they call them “trade agreements”? So that they don’t have to call them what they actually are – treaties.

Under our Constitution, a “Bill” requires the approval of a majority of both Houses of Congress and the President’s assent, or an override of the President’s veto. But under Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, a “Treaty” requires “the Advice and Consent of the Senate . . . provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

The Powers That Be know that these “trade agreements” couldn’t get the support of two-thirds of the Senate. In fact, they probably couldn’t get past a filibuster. So they just renamed them. They’re not treaties, they’re just “trade agreements.”

But they sure look like treaties, don’t they? They are agreements between our government and a foreign government. That’s a treaty.

If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck . . . and it quacks . . . it’s a duck.

But they don’t care. They can’t get the two-thirds that they need in the Senate, so they’ll just pretend that they don’t need it.

And the “fast track” treatment of these “trade agreements,” which thankfully expired in 2007? Also unconstitutional. That’s one Congress (the 93rd Congress, for those who are keeping score) purporting to dictate procedures and rules to subsequent Congresses. You can’t do that, according to Article I, Section 5 of the aforesaid U.S. Constitution.

So here we are in this mad rush to serve Mammon, not only shoveling jobs overseas, but trampling on our Constitution while we do it.

I hope that when the Panama, Colombia and South Korea “trade agreements” come before the House and the Senate this week, at least one Member of Congress (Dennis Kucinich, maybe? Ron Paul, maybe?) has the guts to stand up and say, “point of order, for the Chair. These bills are not properly before the House, and they require they concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate. I REQUEST A RULING BY THE CHAIR.”

Let’s see what the Parliamentarians say. If they end the charade, then it’s over. And if they go along with the charade, then let’s have a vote.

I just hope that if such a vote does take place, that every Member of Congress remembers that he or she swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

But first, a mild disclaimer: Some of what I’m about to say might be biased by the fact that I’m comparing Android to iOs in 2 radically different form factors! My Android experience has been on smart phones, with the largest display belonging to my current phone, the Droid 3, while my iOs experience is with the vastly larger iPad2. With that being said, here we go:

Short take: iOs seems to me to be a great, at times almost Insanely Great, os for devices used by non-techies, but many of the decisions that lie behind its design are incredibly frustrating to techies. While a non-techie may love it, and it is certainly highly intuitive (I haven’t had to RTFM or Google a question yet), there are a few essential things lacking for techies, such as myself, who’ve grown accustomed to the Android way.

I see three glaring differences between them – all of which cause me to prefer the Android:

1. Lack of Flash on iOs.
2. The Android dedicated “Back” button
3. Integration between apps

I’ll take them in order:

Flash

Quite simply: Android supports it, iOs doesn’t. This decision by the late Steve Jobs (if we are to believe the media) has got to be one of the few bad decisions (that I’m aware of) that he ever made. I understand his desire to control the user experience, and Flash opens up a lot of things that Apple can’t control. But understanding does NOT mean agreement! This one decision causes major portions of the web to be unavailable to the iOs user.

Yes, HTML5 will likely obviate any need to develop for Flash – eventually. And Steve’s decision to design for this eventual world – and ONLY for this eventual world – may indeed prove prescient. But I doubt that, once HTLM5 browsers are widely deployed, that EXISTING Flash content will go away quickly. So it will be a long time before the lack of Flash no longer significantly degrades the web experience of the iOs user.

The Android Back Button

I use Twitter these days as my primary source of news. So the Twitter client on my smartphone or iPad is my most used app. And I follow a LOT of links from tweets. Following the link takes me to a web page – on Android, I use the DolphinHD browser – on iOs, it’s Safari (but I don’t have a choice here – again – more on that later!). The problem arises when I’m done with my browsing and want to return to my Twitter app. It’s incredibly easy on Android – just hit the back button until I’m back where I started! When I’m at the first page I viewed in DolphinHD and hit the back button, Presto! I’m right where I left off in my Twitter app.

Not so with iOs. Once I’m done browsing, I have to push the home button, then reactivate my Twitter app, or double push the home button, then select my Twitter app from the list of recent apps it shows.

I doubt this would bother me if I’d never been exposed to Android, but I’ve become so accustomed to this behavior that I grimace every time I want to do it in iOs, but can’t.

Integration Between Apps

Quite simply, this is fully fleshed out in Android and is almost completely absent in iOs. Yes, in any other iOs app, clicking a link opens a web browser. Actually, it opens Safari – and you can’t change that behavior! (And because of the lack of a back button noted above, some app developers include a built in web browser, that is far less capable than even the Flash deprived Safari.)

Contrast this with Android, where I can have my Twitter app designated to handle any other app’s call for a Twitter url. And I can have my Podcast App handle any other app’s call for a url that looks like an RSS feed. When I click on an image link – in ANY Android app – I’m given the choice of opening it in a browser, or a number of other apps I have for viewing/editing pictures. And when I choose, Android let’s me decide which app I want to use now – and gives me the option of designating this app for ANY time I would otherwise (in the future) be asked the same question. For Twitter urls, I’ve nailed it to my Twitter app, but I’ve left it open for images. Why? Sometimes I just want a larger view, other times I want to edit. And my viewing app loads far faster than my editing app.

Finally, if Android doesn’t recognize a url as capable of being handled by another app, there is still the option of a long press, then “Sharing” the link – and well written Android apps appear on the resulting link of ways to share!

In summary, Android allows the user to control the experience, while iOs presents the user with no choices. Once exposed to the joys of Android, there’s no going back!

Why I tried to avoid iOs

When the first iPad came out, I had 3 fundamental objections to it:

1. ATTQuite simply, I want to have as little to do with ATT as possible. Even before their severe network problems were reported, I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I believe them to be one of the nastiest of the large corporations whose tentacles I want to keep out of my life!This is no longer an issue as iPhones and iPads are now available on other networks. And in this case it’s moot because my iPad is WiFi only!
2. Lack of a replaceable batteryMost days, a single battery is less than 1/2 discharged by my routine use. But some days – particularly weekends and travel days, my use of a smart phone or tablet for media consumption skyrockets. And I NEED more than 1 battery available!
3. Closed EcosystemThis one is the big one for me. Apple’s sole control of it’s Apps store, along with the design decisions that prevent almost all app integration are the killer for  that will keep me from purchasing any iOs device (remember, I won my iPad in a contest, I didn’t buy it!) What right (other than my right NOT to purchase) does Apple have to decide how I customize my user experience.

Some (possibly) good things about iOs

Here’s where my not having similar sized devices has likely contributed to an unavoidable bias in this post!

Within any SINGLE App, in most cases, I find myself turning to iOs. Absent the Flash problem, I prefer browsing on my iPad. Typing is far easier anywhere. Reading my non A/V RSS feeds is a joy, as is editing pictures (getting the pictures OFF the iPad is a different story!).  And the smart cover I bought (yes, I DID give Apple my money for accessories – smart cover, dock, and lots of extra power supplies/cords) is genius.

An highly digressive Tangent into Atheism

Initially, when I first mentioned Steve Jobs, it read “… Steve Jobs (RIP)…”, but on proofreading, I changed it simply to  ”… the late Steve Jobs”. This edit was part of my less than 1 week old “coming out” as an Atheist.

Had I left in the “RIP”, or used something like “Steve, we’ll miss you”, or even “May God rest his soul”, I would have implied that I believe in an afterlife. Morever, that I can send a message to someone IN an afterlife. I don’t and I can’t. Believing that you can communicate with the dead is, IMHO, insane. Steve Jobs no longer exists. I’m glad he did, and I’m sorry he’s not around anymore, but he hasn’t “moved on to a better life.”

As far as “coming out” as an atheist goes, I’ve always been an atheist. And my close family and closest friends know it. Until recently, it was not a large part of my life. However, I’ve recently stumbled on to a lot of atheist writings, and I’ve become convinced that atheists are a longstanding persecuted group in US culture. And that’s not right.

I’m not going to detail how atheists are persecuted – that’s another very long post. But part of my coming out is a personal decision the be more open about my atheism, and caused the aforementioned edit. And caused me to want to explain it here!

Conclusion

I’ve written enough for now, and I have things to do and promises to keep for the rest of the day. All of it away from home, and a lot of it while travelling. So I’ll be bringing my Droid, but not my iPad (see battery, lack of).

I look forward to your comments. I’m especially interested in any of the following:

• Have you used both? If so, how do my thoughts coincide with yours?
• If you have only iOs experience, have I convinced you to at least TRY Android?
• If you are, like me, a long time, but reticent atheist, let me know in a comment. In this case please ALSO let me know if it’s OK to post! I do moderate comments, and if you don’t mind my knowing, but don’t want the world to know, say so! I’ll communicate privately and NOT approve your comment!

Conceptually this is very simple: Take ALL the money that subsidizes agriculture, both direct and indirect, and put it in one place: Instant rebates at grocery checkout for unprocessed food!

Granted: there are a whole host of details hidden by my simple statement that would need to be addressed. And granted: There would be severe problems during transition. And granted: There are a lot of moneyed interests who would scream squeal should this idea receive widespread dissemination. And granted: Those same moneyed interests have a lot of political power these days, making implementation unlikely.

But think about it.

Why do studies show that lower income people eat less wholesome food than people with more money available for food buying? Because highly refined and processed food, transported great distances is currently cheaper than unprocessed, locally grown food – and this counter intuitive fact is largely the result of our current policy as expressed by where we put our money: Agricultural, Transportation and Fossil Fuel subsidies.

By giving the same money directly to the consumer of food we want to promote, we turn the status quo on it’s head! We would be incentivizing producers who sell directly to grocers. The small farmer could afford to go organic, because organic is inherently unprocessed (or minimally processed), and those small farmers who would also be subsidized (indirectly) by putting their competitors – Agribusiness at a competitive disadvantage. Large, factory farms won’t do well if their product isn’t subsidized because they’re designed around a system that depends on a high amount of processing to distribute their output. Suddenly, the price of processed food would reflect the real costs.

There are a lot of assumptions I’ve made, along with first and second level details I can anticipate, that need more thought, but in search of brevity, I’ll only list them:

• Where do we draw the line between “Processed” and “Unprocessed”?
• Should the size of the subsidy be inversely related to the distance to market?
• Is unprocessed food better for us than processed food?
• Is our current level of subsidy, if redirected as described, enough to keep our poor fed while the system adjusts to the new paradigm? Growing small, local farms is a process measured in years. perhaps decades.
• How will grocers know how much rebate to give on each item? Especially for the smaller, non-chain, neighborhood grocers without the latest and greatest computerized checkout?
• How do we supervise things to prevent Big Ag from gaming the system?
• Feel free – in the comments – to add to this list!

I’m going to stop now. One criticism that friends, family and co-workers often make of me is that I beat things to death by overwhelming my audience with details. I end with one more quick thought, then a simple question:

Thought: I believe this would have significant (but hard to quantify) good effects on the overall health of the nation, including reduction of the obesity epidemic in the US.

Question: What do you think?

Subject:Democrats don’t deny that Social Security is in the red.

Sent at 08:29 (GMT-08:00). Current time there: 8:29 AM. ✆ to Editor@factcheck.org date Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 08:29 subject Democrats don’t deny that Social Security is in the red. mailed-by gmail.com

This isn’t an easy one to explain, so I’m going to try to provide a brief synopsis, with links:

February 17:

Maddow leads her program with a report whose overall theme is that the Wisconsin Budget Fix bill is a Wolf in Sheep’s clothing. The Wolf is the Republican party going after Unions and other Progressive groups (like ACORN) because they all do a fantastic job of voter registration. The basic point – which I think is well demonstrated – is that the Republicans are doing anything they can defund the ONLY organizations that stand a chance of counteracting the influx of corporate money on the Republican side that has been building for many years and has recently exploded due to the SCOTUS Citizen’s United ruling. Breaking unions – including public unions – is just part of this effort. Other parts include demonizing ACORN (because they did so well registering voters from their core constituency which is overwhelmingly Democratic) and pushing Voter ID bills (because the poorer you are, the more likely you are to vote Democratic and the LESS likely you are to be able to afford the cost and time of getting an approved ID)

The dispute is over the first (roughly) 1 minute of her segment, and even more closely over the final clause of the opening paragraph:

…Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year.

And, as it turns out, I think the dispute is best explained by a single word that I bolded in the above quote: “is”. But I’ll have more on that later! In the meantime, here are your first links:

Video of the segment in dispute

Transcript of the segment in dispute.

Watch the video – it’s worth it. But don’t watch while you’re likely to be distracted. You should see the first 5-6 minutes – and try to grok the point Maddow is making – to fully understand the argument I’ll be making. After that, rather than sit through it multiple times, the transcript becomes the more useful reference.

February 16th through sometime February 18:

2 things happen off camera in this time period. The right wing echo chamber seizes on the line I quoted above and reports on it – alone and out of context – bloviating about how the left wing media lies.  Beginning 2/16, after the Madison Capital Times editorialized on the same subject, PolitiFact started receiving inquiries on the truth of the Times editorial, and after Maddow’s broadcast, PolitiFact was bombarded by even more inquiries. PolitiFact Wisconsin chose to respond to these requests with

February 18th at 5:56 PM (I assume the time is Central – as I assume they reside in Central – but they don’t say so explicitly):

PolitiFact Wisconsin rates Rachel as False

I first saw this on Twitter, and not wanting to believe it, I quickly looked at the full post – which to my eyes was (at the time) VERY convincing. Woe is me! Rachel -you’ve double crossed us! My faith in your reporting is destroyed! I had seen Rachel’s report live. I yelled, I cheered, I danced. I was elated that someone was actually shouting the truth! Now all that ecstasy, all that joy, all that adrenaline rush was revealed as a lie, a pipe dream. It’s a good thing I’m not clinically depressed, otherwise I’d have been in crisis all weekend!

Fast Forward to Rachel’s Thursday, 2/24 show, where her final segment rips PolitFact a new bodily orifice by convincingly proving that their 2/18 False conclusion is itself, totally bunk. It also details attempts made by her producers to contact PolitiFact soliciting a correction, which it publishes on the web here. Unfortunately (because I’d love to see it), the published emails refer to, but don’t show, the reply the producers received from PolitiFact to their first email. Now I’m on an emotional roller coaster (not really, more an intellectual roller coaster). I’m now convinced that it’s PolitiFact that’s completely in the wrong, not Rachel. But I’d trusted PolitiFact almost as much as I previously Rachel – who I now trust again. Lamentations!

But wait! The missing email was revealed by PolitiFact National (not PolitiFact Wisconsin) at 2:55 PM today, Friday, 2/25/2011. Click here for their full posting. I was alerted to the reply by PolitiFact’s Tweet announcing the post.

At this point I was very conflicted. Both sides were making important – and valid points, yet they seem to be 180 degrees apart. What gives? Then it hit me: TRMS is fundamentally different than the usual targets of PolitiFact investigations. And in that difference lies the explanation.

Imagine for a moment that Rachel had said:

Wisconsin was on track to have a budget surplus this year.

Notice I’ve only changed one word. Instead of “is”, I used “was”. What happens to the entire dispute? PolitiFact would likely still have investigated due to the probable distortion of the quote that would have echoed through the Right Wing Echo Chamber, with many within that chamber (or their audience) bombarding PolitiFact with requests to rate it, but after investigating it, PolitiFact would have rated it True, or perhaps Mostly True (they may well have quibbled with the numbers, but I don’t want to make this post about the numbers.) Had they returned a verdict of True the dispute ends (except within the Right Wing Echo Chamber – who would have ignored the verdict.) Had they gone with Mostly True, TRMS might have been a bit perturbed, but nowhere near enough to rise to the level of devoting a segment to debunking it, and the (now minor) dispute would never have erupted in public. <<on reviewing this before posting, I realize that, had Rachel used “was”, she would also have had to change other bits of the first 2 paragraphs>>

So now I’m left with wondering why Rachel chose “is” instead of “was”? It may well have been accidental, but I doubt that. Despite the seeming casualness of her show, she is reading from a script. And she is someone who chooses her words with great care. And I’ve eaten dinner with her (Hey Rachel! Steve the Electrical Distributor from the Salon Cruise here!). This sort of mistake is not in her nature, nor in the nature of her producers and other staff. Thus her word choice was intentional, and thus viewed through a certain lens, demonstrably false. So why did she do it?

I’m venturing into even more speculation here, but I think her word choice, indeed the first two paragraphs following the hand off from Lawrence were, in essence, a tease. TRMS intentionally said what they did in order to convince viewers to keep watching! Whichever word is chosen, the first two paragraphs set up a straw man (Wisconsin is fine) which she proceeds to both debunk and use to transition to the real point of the segment.

Folks, were looking at a fundamental clash between “long form” journalism and “sound bite” journalism! Rachel is the only practitioner of long form journalism appearing daily in prime time on ANY network (ok, any US network with significant, national distribution). PolitiFact is used to investigating sound bite journalism.  While PolitiFact often looks at the close context of a sound bite they’re researching, in this case, the close context wasn’t enough.

Rachel’s introduction was an attempt to get the attention of people who haven’t been exposed to long form journalism for years – perhaps even in their entire lifetime! She stubbornly clings to her belief that we need to look at all the nuances of a story, and fully explore them (a belief I share). But she feels forced to tease with things she wouldn’t otherwise say in order to grab the attention of the people who most need to hear what she has to say – the people weaned on sound bite journalism.

So to Rachel I say this:

• You Go Girl!
• Would it have been that much different had you used “was” instead of “is”?
• PolitiFact isn’t a monster, they just responded in a completely different context than yours

And to PolitiFact I say:

• Keep up the good work! But…
• Realize that you’re so used to investigating sound bite journalism that you will occasionally have to step back and look at far more context than you normally do. And finally:
• I recommend that you add one more reading to your Truth Meter: Cloudy!

The Cloudy reading would mean that the truth in this case is so dependent on the life experiences and point of view  of the people reacting it that the simple Truth – if there is one – can’t be seen objectively.

That’s all! Thanks for your patience, and I’m eagerly awaiting your comments.

–Steve

If you’re seeing this, then it’s likely that you’ve either:

• Subscribed to my Blog (Unlikely, WordPress shows few subscribers)
• Followed another link to my blog and got curious
• been DIRECTED to this post via a Twitter direct message that I sent you recently.

It’s the people in the last category for whom this post will be most informative, but it’s available to all!

Over the past 18 months, Twitter has become my primary news source. It’s become this by my carefully selecting who to follow. What it comes down to is Signal/Noise ratio (SNR) – i.e. what percentage of YOUR tweets cause me to think, follow an embedded link, check out another Twitter user, or cause me to follow up in some form I haven’t already listed.

To a point, the higher the SNR, the more likely I am to follow you. This is combined with how frequently you tweet. My SNR threshold is far lower for people who tweet less than once or twice a day than it is for people who are almost continually tweeting – I’m already reviewing 800+ tweets/day!

So here are the various specific reasons that I may have chosen to NOT follow you, even though you’ve followed me:

1. A look at your recent tweets, combined with your count of followers and people you follow, fits the pattern of someone who is trying to up both counts – simply for the “prestige” of having high counts. I didn’t follow you because you don’t appear to have much to say, or much other content that you refer to that I’m actually interested in!
2. You appear to be on Twitter solely (or at least substantially) to sell some product or service.
3. It appears that your interests and mine have nothing in common. In this case, I frankly wonder why you’ve followed me! If you’re in this category, it’s possible that I might have actually followed you as part of my short list of people I follow as part of my “opposition research” – but you won’t know that because I haven’t sent you a direct message referring to this reason!
4. Although I have found some of your tweets worthwhile when I checked your Twitter timeline, you just tweet too much for my taste! I’ve got an ongoing time management problem (which I described in THIS blog post), and it looks to me like I’d have to review too many of your tweets to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you think I’ve categorized you incorrectly, please feel free to tweet beginning “@sjdorst” and ask me to revisit your timeline. I’ve been wrong before, and I expect I will be wrong again, and you may have changed your pattern. Note you won’t be able to “D” message me because those only go through to me IF I follow you!

Thanks,

Steve

I was almost randomly surfing the California Secretary of State Election Returns when I ran across something that surprised – and heartened me! It appears that Californians rejected the idea of their state legislators drawing their own district lines – by a margin that I would call a landslide!

Background:

In November 2008, California voters barely passed Proposition 11 (50.9% for) which established a Citizens Redistricting Commission taking redistricting for STATE offices out of the hands of the legislature and put responsibility into the hands of a 14 member Citizen’s commission. Currently, a convoluted selection process has reduced the applicant pool to 20 Republicans, 20 Democrats and 20 applicants not affiliated with either of the 2 major parties. Selection of the final 14 members should be complete by the end of the year.

On the November 2, 2010 General Election ballot were 2 competing propositions that addressed redistricting:

Proposition 20 EXTENDED the authority of the commission to include drawing the lines for Congressional districts.

Proposition 27 (had it passed) would have eliminated the commission and returned redistricting to the hands of the state legislature.

As there were competing and diametrically opposed propositions, had BOTH won a majority of California Voters, the one with the larger majority would have prevailed.

This commission has yet to act. (That’s not a criticism!) They HAVE no work to do before the Census Bureau releases the results of the 2010 census.

Possible Votes:

No on both would have been, essentially, a vote for the Status Quo: State office boundaries to be drawn by the commission, and congressional boundaries to be drawn by the state legislature.

Yes on 20, No on 27 was a vote to remove all redistricting responsibility from the legislature.

No on 20, Yes on 27 was a vote to give all redistricting back to the legislature.

Yes on both isn’t a logical possibility for someone who understands the above, since that person would be simultaneously voting both ways. However, given the ignorance prevalent in our politics, I’m sure some people cast exactly this vote. As individual votes are secret, we can’t refer these people for mental examination.

Result

Statewide, 61.2% voted FOR Proposition 20, and  59.5% voted AGAINST Proposition 27. So we now have taken away all redistricting from our legislators and placed the responsibility in the hands of an as yet unselected (much less untried!) Citizens commission.

I’ve transcribed the county by county results from the state website and summarized them for you. To see them in a downloadable Excel file (2007 and later), click HERE, to view them online through Google Docs, click HERE.

I encourage you to take a look now. Scroll down through the counties, and see if you see the same pattern that jumped out at me:

<<<lots of blank space to encourage you to look at the data FIRST!!>>>

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OK, now that I’ve given you your chance to draw your own conclusions, here’s the data point that leapt out at me:

San Francisco was the ONLY county that voted No on 20 and Yes on 27!!! A couple of others were close (Alameda close to No/Yes and Humboldt No/No), but – by and large – the state voted consistently – across political persuasions – to not allow the legislature to gerrymander safe districts.

Will this work? There’s no way to know because the commission is brand new, and their forthcoming drawing of district lines will be the first time ever (that I’m aware of) that non-politicians are drawing the districts. I wish them well in their endeavors. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Crazy (or ignorant) People

I’m not going to go into the derivation here (as it’s still a bit fuzzy in my mind!), but I think that any result (Statewide or County by County) where fewer people voted AGAINST 27 than voted FOR 20 implies that SOME people voted for both! Actually, I think this relies on the assumption that very few people voted NO on both. So my earlier statement that there must be people who voted “Yes” on both seems to be supported by some evidence!

Analysis

Personally, I am heartened that the people of our state share what I interpret as a healthy distrust in ANY politician drawing district boundaries. I did apply for a position on the commission, but I didn’t make it past the first round.

However, I’m frankly puzzled by the San Francisco result. Do they trust their legislators that much? Or did they vote that way in the expectation that the Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature would redraw the boundaries to cement a Democratic majority for the next 10 years (as the Republicans did in in Texas)? And I’d really like to hear YOUR opinions! So…

Plea

Please PLEASE PLEASE chime in by making a comment! Do you share my opinion on why the statewide totals were so lopsided? How do you interpret the case of San Francisco? Want to go through and prove (or disprove)  and document my “Crazy People” thesis? Please do!

Inquiring minds want to know!