Hunting The Muse

Lakoff's Article

TAP: Vol 14, Iss. 8. Framing the Dems. George Lakoff.

This is an article by Lakoff that is related to the interview below.

There's also two critiques, one by Digby, which I've read an like, and another by Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul. I haven't read this one yet, but was pointed there by Melanie, one of the authors over at Daily Kos, who has plenty of good things to say about it.

Update: - I read Jeanne's thoughts and it really makes me laugh. Republicans as the little boys who obviously don't like sex. Go ahead, ask a Republican if they like sex. Watch him squirm. :-)

And even as I write that I guess I have a bit of a twinge, about insulting all Republicans everywhere. I probably wouldn't have had as much of a problem with Eisenhower, or Ford, or even some of Nixon (for one thing, he had a much different view on how to deal with drug addition). It's just that this latest batch of Republicans is completely loony.

Conservative Language

George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics

An interesting article on political rhetoric. The part about Frank Luntz's manual creeps me out.

Same-Day Registration

H.R. 3153 is a bill that would require states to allow their citizens to register to vote on the same day that the vote is held.

Bob Ney's Objections

Salon.com | Joe Conason's Journal

More press about black box voting. This one again makes the point of how Bob Ney is standing in the way of Holt's legislation to require a paper trail for electronic voting.

Florida 2000 and Diebold

Scoop: Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud

Very nice in-depth look at how electronic ballot flaws were a much bigger impact on the Florida 2000 elections than hanging chads ever were.

MSNBC Covers Voting Fraud

Black Box Voting Blues

Critics of verifiable voting do have a point when they note that the printouts are susceptible to some of the same kinds of tricks once played with paper ballots.

Good article, but he does have to make reference to this point that I've never seen explained anywhere. The point I've always seen made is about the flaws that come up for voter receipts that voters take with them. I don't know of a flaw for the kind of paper trail where the printout is turned in at the ballot station.

Seeing Lies As Truth

The New Yorker

This article is really making the rounds among bloggers. A story tracing the intelligence strategy used by the current administration, regarding the Niger yellowcake allegations.

Inside, Outside

The Clark Sphere: Republicrat Reactionaries

This is a great essay about insiders versus outsiders in politics. I like the part where he makes the point that pandering is essentially home-field advantage for Republicans, so when Democrats try to pander for issues that most Americans agree with, the Republicans still often win.

This guy believes that Dean and Clark are the two candidates that are doing the most to break the "insider" mold, and believes that Clark is the best hope for restoring a positive vision after breaking the mold. I'm currently concerned about Clark having a lot of insiders running his campaign, but beyond that I'm intrigued about both of them.

Iraq War

I have to think about this more, but I'm coming to the conclusion that focusing on the Iraq war might be a political loser for opponents. Because when it comes right down to it, I think the political/media/message burden of proof is going to be to prove that 1) Iraq was never any threat to us at all, and 2) the administration knew this ahead of time. #1 might be provable, but #2 is going to be a really tall order. To actually prove it.

What would be better is to focus on Bush as an incompetent and a phony.

Lies and Lies

Salon.com Books | Big whoppers

A brief excerpt:

What is the worst lie a president can tell?

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Or ...

"He has weapons of mass destruction -- the world's deadliest weapons -- which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies."

What's interesting is that many people would say the first lie is worse. And I don't mean the people that are just making a big deal out of it for political gain. Many of these people aren't being disingenuous. The thinking is that these people believe Bush's heart is in the right place, and that he lies like this out of conviction and a desire to do what he believes is best for the country, which is ultimately honorable. Whereas Clinton lied out of lustful self-interest. So clearly Clinton's lie was worse.

It focuses on (perceived) motivation rather than end result. Whereas the end result of Bush's lie is bad for the country, while the end result of Clinton's lie is bad for... Hillary, I guess. So again it's a clash of two contradictory ideologies. I think the real challenge is to find what to accept in the opposing ideology, and then figure out how to translate in a way that can be communicated to both sides. Comparing Bush to Clinton isn't going to do anything to convince a Bush supporter.

Stock Investing

I've been reading Motley Fool on and off for a few years now. They say that almost all mutual funds underperform the S&P 500 in the long term. I just did an analysis on my retirement finances and found it that if I had taken all of my retirement contributions that I've ever done and immediately invested them in an S&P 500 Index Fund, then so far I would have lost 8%. If this sounds bad, you should know that the majority of my retirement contributions were in '99 and '00. Anyway, that performance is a lot better than my actual performance has been, given the other "bubble" investments I was making, and the mutual funds I invested in that ended up just lousy.

But right now, I'm looking seriously at a variant that seems like it could be a lot better than just blindly going for the S&P 500. Basically what you do is you put all your money in the S&P 500 when the price is above its 200-day moving average, and you take it all out and convert to cash when the price falls below its 200-day moving average.

Here's a chart that shows how it would have worked since 1996. That's pretty amazing. Almost all of the boom, almost none of the bust, and a good portion of this last year's recovery. I wonder how it works long term, like over the past thirty years?

Bad Breath Article

Dog beats man in breath test

This article is a gem, a pearl among sand for most articles we find. In six short paragraphs I found seven or eight small descriptions and concepts that lent life to my day. What a glorious string of ideas, what a wonderful stockpile of ammunition.

What the Republicans Could Do

There's a bunch of stuff they could do that could really mess things up if the media gives them a free pass:

• Bush could send financial assistance to California now that they have a Republican in office, and spin it so that Schwarzenegger saved California in a way that only a Republican can
• The administration could ride the Israel/Syria conflict and/or escalate the Iran conflict so that 2004's election becomes about a war drumbeat again
• They could invent/produce a major WMD find
• They could produce Saddam Hussein
• They could produce Osama bin Laden (I bring both of these up implying the possibility they know exactly where they both are and are just waiting for good timing)

What else?

DMCA Stupidity

Student faces suit on key to CD locks

Oh, this one is going to be beautiful to watch.

Huge corporation spends millions developing an anti-copy technology for cds.

Princeton student demonstrates that it can be bypassed by holding down the Shift key.

DMCA makes it illegal to communicate circumvention techniques.

Company will probably sue student.

If this won't show how ridiculous the DMCA is, nothing will.

It could be beautiful, it could be the thing that sends every US geek to Canada... we'll see.

Schwarzenegger

I gotta say, it looks like the right result happened in the recall. I'm on record saying that people should vote No on the recall and Yes on Bustamente, but that was assuming that most people thought the recall was a sham, and that democracy wouldn't be served. You see, there was a very good chance that the percentage voting to keep Davis would exceed the percentage of anyone voting for another candidate, and that's what I felt would be incredibly wrong about it.

However, it looks like the Schwarzenegger votes have exceeded the No votes, which I didn't expect.

Now, I doubt that the Yes->Schwarzenegger votes have exceeded the No votes, so people can make an issue out of that if they really want to.

Update: - Hmm, I'm going to moderate this entry a bit. According to the exit polls, there's some aggravating results:

41% voted Yes->Schwarzenegger
44% voted No on the recall (aka Yes for Davis).

Meanwhile, here's some stupidity for everyone:

2.7% strongly or somewhat approved of Davis, but voted Yes on the recall!

8.5% have an unfavorable opinion of Schwarzenegger but voted Yes on the recall anyway.

Most corrupt country

Which country is most corrupt?

You know what I think is funny about this article? Well, a few days ago I found an article that ranked countries by how happy their citizens were. You know who the winner was? Nigeria. So, this study ranks which countries are most corrupt. Where did Nigeria rank? Second. What could that mean?

(I think it was Denmark that scored high in both studies.

Clinton's Forests

My Way News

Remember how Clinton protected these two million acres of forests in the closing days of his adminsitration, and the Republicans screeched about his abuse of power? Real tiny footnote about that today. The Supreme Court refused to consider overturning his orders. You won't find that mentioned anywhere unless you look really hard, I'm sure of it. There's the media for you, again with no perspective - reporting the screeching, ignoring the news. I think that anytime the media grants a certain news placement to a controversy, they should grant the same placement to that controversy's resolution. Then this would be on the front page (sure, maybe below the fold) of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and in screaming headlines of all the conservative rags across the land.

Current Events

I am very bored with the Presidential candidates right now. Vaguely aware that I am intrigued by Dean, Clark, and Edwards, potentially idealistic about them in that order, but worried Dean will crash and vaguely distrustful about Clark. I've got a sinking feeling about CA's governor election and what it will mean for the presidential election.

I'm disappointed that the Broncos lost today and even more disappointed that I turned off the television just before the big punt return that led to them losing. I'm happy that the Cubs are advancing. I'm happy that the Red Sox are still in it. I'm disappointed the women lost in World Cup soccer, although I didn't know they were playing a game today.

I'm having trouble caring a lot about Israel and Syria. I'm very partial to big conspiracy theories right now, like this Syria attack was an opportunistic thing to serve the aims of the neocons in power in the US right now.

I'm sorta bored with current events in general. Need a new hobby.

Match.com Personality Test

Match.com has a personality test that I decided to take. The verdict was that it said that only 1% of women were very attracted to my personality type. And I'm about as far away from a creep as you can get. That's discouraging that 99% of women are stupid.

Schwarzenegger And Enron?

Daily Kos: Political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation

I've thought a lot of this recent brouhaha about Schwarzenegger was kind of creepy and silly (people should have taken these flaws of him seriously BEFORE a week before the election), but if this disclosure is true, this is the one I think should be the big one. The story of the manipulated California Energy Markets is still the most shamefully under-reported story of the last few years - it should be plastered across front pages everywhere, and the government should be forcing some of these energy companies out of business and awarding massive grants to California. If Schwarzenegger had a hand in the fraud, then there's no way he should be elected.

Condorcet Details

I've been doing a little more research on Condorcet methods, and found a couple more items of interest.

First, I've written before about the Smith sets and the Schwartz sets. As I said before, the Condorcet winner is that candidate that would beat every single other candidate in a one-on-one matchup. However sometimes there isn't a Condorcet winner.

An example is college football. If Colorado beats Oklahoma, and Oklahoma beats Nebraska, then you'd expect Colorado to be better than Nebraska. But then Nebraska blows into town and stomps on Colorado. Well, that sucks since I'm a Buffalo. But, who's better? The polls deal with this by bring in all sorts of tiebreakers.

It's the same with Condorcet voting. There can be cycles where a voting population collectively prefers A>B, B>C, and then C>A.

Well, they deal with this in a few ways. First, they can isolate a group of candidates that as a group beats every candidate outside of that group. Like, A, B, and C *all* would beat D in a one-on-one matchup. That's called the Smith set. Sometimes with a really large Smith set there's a smaller group within that Smith set that would beat everyone else in that Smith set. It's kind of a silly distinction, but the *smallest* possible group of candidates that would beat every single other candidate in a race is called the Schwartz Set.

So here's the interesting part. Every single Condorcet winner is perfect^* right up until the identification of the Schwartz Set. But in cases where there is a multi-member Schwartz Set, things start to break down.

There are various tie-breaking techniques to determine how to pare down the Schwartz set. They can be lazily compared, again, to football. Some methods seek to deliberately keep or lock in the candidate with the most overall votes, or the biggest win differential. Others seek to exclude the candidate with the least votes, or the biggest loss differential. Some recalculate after every lock or exclusion, some don't.

They've all got different flaws, though, and some of them are kind of strange. Like if a ballot changed the respective ranking of two candidates, it could mean that the candidate that is then ranked lower has a higher chance of winning. And in a proof I just found out about, *all* of these tiebreaker techniques suffer from a bizarre flaw where if some voters hadn't voted in the first place, their favorite candidate might have had a better chance of winning. A spinny way of putting that is that their candidate was penalized for having support expressed for them.

So this just keeps on leaving me at one conclusion. Implement Condorcet voting for elections, but only up until the Schwartz set. Then at that point, use our legislative procedures to break ties, much like how our Congress would decide an election if there is an electoral tie. Or, go for another round of education among the Schwartz set candidates, and have a runoff.

^* Now for that pesky asterisk. In a group election, find the candidate that would beat all other candidates in a one-on-one matchup. Is that really what we want? It sounds great at first, but sometimes there's something that bugs me about that. Maybe it's not irrational to want a different winner out of a group than you'd want out of a series of one-on-one matchups. For one thing, the one-on-one matchups are closed votes. They frame the question. For a group of candidates, it communicates more about the overview of the race - gives parameters, and perhaps communicates to the voters about what is important to consider in the race. There's something inherently educational about it to the voters. If I saw a group of candidates to vote among, I might rank them differently as a group than I might vote for them in a series of one-on-one matchups. So in that sense only, maybe the Condorcet winner is not the appropriate winner.

Condorcet Explanation

Shortest, sweetest explanation of Condorcet voting I've been able to come up with:

Condorcet voting is when you find the candidate that would beat every single other candidate in a one-on-one matchup. You can figure that out by having the voters rank the candidates.

Free State Project Chooses State

Libertarians aim to set N.H. free

I've written about the Free State Project before - it's a project to recruit 20,000 people to all move to a state together, so as to change the political makeup of the state (they are Libertarian). Also notable is that they used Condorcet voting to pick the state. This was a perfect choice for what they wanted - finding the broadest consensus for a state.

Dean Musings

I donated $100 to the Dean campaign today, mostly triggered by his Internet Initiatives. I had to encourage that.

But I gotta say, I'm getting a teensy bit turned off by the comments on his blog. Lots of blind rah-rah going on there. I watched him on Leno tonight, and I don't know what show those people were watching, but it wasn't exactly a stunning appearance. I guess it wasn't horrible, but I had more than a couple of winces.

Eventually Dean is just going to have to stop pretending that he's a smooth guy. Play the lowered expectations game. Bush didn't try to pretend he was smart, and half the nation ended up loving his goofy stupidity. Maybe Dean should go back to his rumpled suit.

I don't know if Dean will reach his $15 million or not, by the way. But he came damn close and it was really impressive. Plus, last quarter they ended up finding another few thousand from the envelopes that came in, so I'm pretty sure they'll exceed it comfortably. Right now they're slightly over 14.8 million.

Voting Standards

Salon.com Technology | Another case of electronic vote-tampering?

Controversy about setting voting standards from with the IEEE. What makes this interesting is that the article implies a "call-to-arms" for all computer scientists interested in voting standards to join the working group, so as to force the industry insiders to make room for their concerns.