Life in the Third Layer

Whether you liked or did not like the Super Bowl halftime show, there is one good effect of it, at least for me. I have yet to meet a single person who believed for an instant that Janet Jackson’s break-away (rip away?) wardrobe was a bona fide accident. What this means to me that Americans are awake and able to see and understand what is before them. I have more faith now that we will not have to suffer another four years of George W. Bush.

The art department at University of Massachusetts has an illustrated Aesop’s Fables web page.

Technically, this is my last vacation day, and on Monday (after the weekend) I will be back at work. The holidays have been great, with family visiting and lots of cards from friends. I have a newer (faster) computer, and one thing I hope to do in the coming months is to begin to keep up this web log with some content and a little design work. That is not exactly a new years resolution, just an intention.

I am saying goodbye to the work desk until January 5th!

If you are wondering what the discussion around electronic voting is about, go to Open Source Politics, where John has
set up a demonstration of what can be done (easily and invisibly) with a computer voting system. It is particularly scary when you also follow the story far enough to notice that the CEO of the company that makes the voting machines being considered for use in Ohio has promised to deliver Ohio to George W. Bush.
Sometimes it’s best to hang on to old technology until you can insure that the new one will do the job at least as dependably as the old one. And there is a certain comfort in knowing that there is a piece of countable paper out there with my mark on it.
It would be easy to program computers to print out your ballot after you mark it so you could drop it into a box to be counted if the outcome was questioned. After all, when we go through the supermarket checkout, don’t they give us a list of what we selected? What possible reason could there be for not providing for a possible re-count in a democratic election?

I took time from my NANOWRIMO project today to cancel my membership in AARP in response to their support of the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill.
See http://www.moveon.org/medicare.html for a list of both liberal and conservative groups that oppose this bill.
Here is the letter that I sent to the CEO and the President of AARP.

Dear Mr. Novelli and Mr. Parkel:

I joined AARP the first minute that I could, because I believed that you represented the interests of older Americans, including those of us who are not millionaires.

Please cancel my membership. With your endorsement of the medicare prescription drug bill, you have abandoned those who need you most. You have allowed your own interest to cloud your sense of responsibility to your members, since you must be aware that the bill that you are sponsoring will be a windfall for your own insurance company. You will be wealthier because of the bill that you are endorsing, and the people who trusted you will have less money and fewer options.

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