Photo credit: 2013 Paul Wilkinson I've been debating the value of "primary elections" versus "general elections" with many people (mainly in the United States) over the years. Some electoral reform advocates believe that we should do away with "expensive" primary elections, and use a system that eliminates the need. Some even believe that political parties… Continue reading Down with party poopers (and primary poopers)
Scientific American and the “Perfect Electoral System”
I wrote a letter to the editor(s) of Scientific American last night in response to an article that was recently published on their website. I've included my letter in response later in this blog post. I was probably harsher than what was deserved, because the article makes a valiant attempt to explain electoral reform beyond most of the options that have been tried in recent years. Delightfully, they explain Condorcet methods, and explain the problematic results in the Burlington mayoral election of 2009, when an unpopular incumbent remained in power despite clear majorities preferring the Democratic Party candidate. ( read more: https://robla.blog/2023/11/06/scientific-american-and-the-perfect-electoral-system/#articlebody )
25th Birthday
Happy 25th birthday to the election methods mailing list!!!! This mailing list is also known as "the EM-list": Now car rentals will be SO MUCH easier! Continue reading: https://robla.blog/2021/02/15/25th-birthday/
Doo Doo Radio
The old poster from the show on KUOI-FM, 89.3 FM! This is a late Saturday/early Sunday (January 24) update on Doo Doo Radio! There is now several pages on social media about this old show: Facebook: facebook.com/Doo-Doo-Radio-104944454930013/Twitter: twitter.com/DooDooRadio (hashtag #doodooradio)Youtube: many playlists; will update with more info when I get the chance. More to come!
Trump and P.T. Barnum
Carnival barkers have a certain "reputation" for truth and honesty. One famous carnival barker: the alleged source of the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute". Because of this, I've grown more curious about P.T. Barnum over the past four years. It seems many folks have been fond of making comparisons between Donald Trump and other historic figures (including me). Did Barnum share a lot in common with Donald Trump? Read more: https://robla.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/trump-and-p-t-barnum/
Trump and the f-word
UPDATE: 2020-09-03 - I'm trying to force myself to use the visual editing tools for WordPress to edit this blog post. Please bear with me.
We’re getting down to the final stretch. There are only eleven TEN more weekends before the November 3rd election day. There are many elections that matter, but Biden vs Trump is the one that many of my Facebook friends are posting about. And the “f-word” keeps coming up. (EDIT: 2020-08-30 at 5:30pm – I’ve been cleaning this post up quite a bit based on the Facebook discussion)
To my friends and family who are registered members of the Democratic-party….
Battle of the DMs
This is the "first IRC server", according to Wikipedia[1]. Back in my day, a "server" was a physical machine. The picture is from much later, but the machine is probably from 1987 or 1988. (robla updated this 2020-07-31 1:40am PDT... yes, robla really should go to bed) Who is going to win the battle of… Continue reading Battle of the DMs
Mastodon kinda kicks ass
It really does. It really does. Click "more…." to learn more…. (more)
Blogging is dead; long live journaling!
I have accounts on Quora, Twitter, Medium, reddit, Mastodon, myndmess, Electorama, Miraheze, GitHub, GitLab, and robla.net, among other. Blogging is so aughts. I'm going to cover just a few of the sites that I journal on here: Website(s): robla.net/RobLaWikiJournal: https://robla.mirahze.org/wiki/RobLa_journalMicroblog: https://mastodon.social/@robla (see also: https://twitter.com/robla)Website(s): Electorama/electowikiJournal: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/JournalMicroblog: https://twitter.com/electowikiWebsite(s): myndmess.orgJournal: https://myndmess.org/wiki/User:RobLa/JournalWebsite(s): Wikipedia (en)/Wikidata/WikimediaJournal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RobLa/JournalWebsite(s): MediaWikiJournal: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Journal Those… Continue reading Blogging is dead; long live journaling!
Thinking about “flyover country”
Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA / File:Glacial_features_near_Beaver_Dam_Lake,_Wisconsin.jpg / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) UPDATE: 2020-04-24 - I posted most of what I was working on a few days ago over at Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-dont-most-liberals-realize/answer/Rob-Lanphier I still have some content for Daily Kos as well, but I'm still working out how to present it for the Daily Kos… Continue reading Thinking about “flyover country”
RoBlaBlog 