It seems that whenever Bush or the Republicans trot out the phrase "playing politics", they really mean "thinking critically". Just visit the following links, and replace the phrase "playing politics" with "thinking critically" to see what I mean."But here's the question. The question is, how do you respond to [the intelligence failures]? Do you respond… Continue reading “Playing politics” is Bush-speak for “thinking critically”
Category: Wonk
Politics
Electowidget
For the past couple of months, I've been working on Electowidget. Electowidget is a plugin for MediaWiki designed to make it possible to conduct Internet polls and elections using many different voting systems, including the Schulze method, Instant Runoff Voting, Approval voting, and even plain old Plurality.
IRS file format for tax stats: .exe files
If you want to get IRS tax statistics, looks like you better have a computer that supports .exe files (Microsoft Windows executable). SOI Tax Stats - Filing Season Statistics / Taxpayer Usage Study There are so many things wrong with this, I'm not sure where to start...
Barack Obama posting on Daily Kos
It looks like Barack Obama has decided to start posting on Daily Kos Of course, his first dispatch was "first p0st! LOL!", but he'll get the hang of it.
The New York Times: CBS News Makeover, by Four Kibitzers
Metafilter pointed out a really good article: CBS News Makeover, by Four Kibitzers. Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show", pointed out a bunch of really cool things that CBS could do, but that they won't do, such as media commentary and podcasting. However, I'm not sure that we need to wait for CBS to… Continue reading The New York Times: CBS News Makeover, by Four Kibitzers
The Slow Crash
Much more imaginative than your typical doomsday prophecy
Hearing set for splitting Washington into two states
Puget Sound Business Journal is reporting that there's a hearing set for splitting Washington into two states. Even though it has a snowball's chance in hell, I've always thought this would be a great way of highlighting just how much Western WA subsidizes Eastern WA.
Instant Runoff on KUOW (NPR Seattle)
(update: 9/20/2006 - This is an old post I made to the blog on electorama.com, which I'm shutting down) There was a great show about Instant Runoff on KUOW, the NPR affiliate in Seattle today. The guests were Steven Hill from the Center for Voting and Democracy as well as the Republican Party official who… Continue reading Instant Runoff on KUOW (NPR Seattle)
If Debian used Instant Runoff…
The last Debian Project Leader election was a very close one. Martin Michlmayr won a Condorcet-tallied election in a very close race between him, Bdale Garbee (the incumbent), and Branden Robinson. Doing analysis on these result yields some interesting observations. Among the most surprising is that Branden Robinson would have won had San Francisco's rules… Continue reading If Debian used Instant Runoff…