Reckoning

Time to Move (Forward)

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 ~ The problem is only partly the candidate.

This isn't the right response:

This is.

The Election's True Colors

Mandate for Real Change

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 ~ There are several interesting variations on the standard electoral map, but best of the bunch is this one:

It is a cartogram, a map of the US distorted so that each state is sized according to the data, which in this case is the number of electoral votes each state has. The colors are done on a county-by-county basis and are shaded from red to blue based on the popular vote within a county.

There's a lot of purplish shades, but overall the map is plainly more blue-hued than red.

Where's It Wednesday—CVI

An easier one... Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Four More Years

But of What, Exactly?

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 ~ "Four more years!" is a popular chant by the supporters of an incumbent president's re-election, but what changes in four more years? My prediction: very little. I expect the GOP to draw mostly the wrong lessons and double down on most of their current policies, strategies, and candidate choices. It will be after 2016 that we see real change.

Here's why:

We Need Election Reform

Voting Should Not be Partisan

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 ~ The "two-party system" is destroying American democracy.

David Frum, Republican apostate, points out that virtually every other democracy has a standardized system of voting that is fast, fair, accurate, and free of partisan abuses. Not so in the US, again. In other countries:

Politicians of one party do not set voting schedules to favor their side and harm the other. Politicians do not move around voting places to gain advantages for themselves or to disadvantage their opponents. In fact, in almost no other country do politicians have any say in the administration of elections at all.

Here in Washington State, we have gone to an all-mail ballot, so we will not see the brazenly partisan shenanigans in states such as Florida that seek to make voting so painful and time-consuming that people give up trying. Nor are we likely to see the strange vote tabulations of past elections in states like Ohio or the legal jockeying Frum describes in Missouri.

If we are truly to be the exemplar of democracy we need to conduct our elections at a higher level—one where voting is fair, consistent, easy and transparent.

In every other democracy, the vote is the means by which the people choose between the competing political parties -- not one more weapon by which the parties compete.

If you haven't already (and you'd be wise if you have) get out tomorrow and vote. If you can.

Climate Change Ocean Rise

Interactive Global Map

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 ~ What would Puget Sound look like if it were 5m higher? Among other changes:

• The Ports of Tacoma and Seattle are under water
• So is most of Sodo, Georgetown and several neighborhoods all the way to Tukwila
• A much smaller Everett is a narrow penisula jutting north from Mukilteo
• Mount Vernon is on the coast
• Tsawwassen is an island
• In British Columbia, all of Delta and Richmond, including Vancouver Airport, and most of Highway 99, is under the Strait of Georgia

How much will the oceans rise? No one knows for sure, but careful estimates over the next century are for 5m or more. Climate change also brings more frequent and ferocious storms. Storm surges can raise ocean levels 5m or more on their own.

Check out the interactive map to see the effect of rising ocean levels of 1 to 60m anywhere in the world.

Etch-a-Sketchy

Shake Me Baby One More Time

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 ~ Who are you voting for?



No, really. Do you even know who it is that you're voting for?

Stop and Go

Traffic Light Art

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 ~ I think I'll just take the bus, thanks.

Executive TimeSlice

Joining Forces

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 ~ Fingo Consulting has joined forces with Executive TimeSlice, the Seattle area's go-to source for interim and part-time C-level executives, IT expertise and strategic business consulting.

I will be working to expand the early stage company practice; meanwhile my current clients will have available the additional resources and expertise where needed. Contact me for details, or if you'd like to explore how we can help you solve your business challenges.

Where's It Wednesday—CV

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

When the Wind Dies Down

Sandy

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 ~ In the breathless coverage of hurricane post-tropical storm storm Sandy, our warming climate gets the cold shoulder.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
-- Shakespeare

What is the next tide?

The Invisibility of Knowledge

Ignorance Abounds

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 ~ My first philosophy teacher insisted humankind was growing more ignorant. Quite apart from us dim-witted students in front of him, he had a simple explanation.

He would first draw a circle on the board. (He had a remarkable ability, much enjoyed by his students, to stand with his back to the board and whirl his arm about to create a perfect circle without once looking at what he was drawing.) The inside of the circle represents all that we know. Outside is all that we do not. The boundary represents our awareness of what we don't know. As the circle expands in the course of growing human knowledge, so does that boundary. The more we learn, the greater the realization of our own ignorance.

Perhaps we're not getting more ignorant, but just more aware of how little we know. Ignorance certainly abounds these days, and especially during our election season, but that's a subject for another post.

Instead, here is a great TED talk on what we don't know; it's a bit sprawling, but amusing and thought-provoking:

Protection Racket

The Allocation of Social and Financial Risk

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 ~ What they don't tell you about capitalism (as currently practiced):

Gore Vidal, the recently demised American writer, once famously quipped that the US economic system is "free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich".

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, not only has the US lived up to Vidal's caricature but the whole of the rich capitalist world has become more "American". The poor are increasingly exposed to market forces, with tougher conditions on the diminishing state protection they get, while the rich have unprecedented levels of protection from the state, with virtually no strings attached.

Vidal had it right, but it is more pernicious, since the rich don't just get to socialize their losses, they are actively protected from the corrective market forces that make capitalism theoretically efficient. As one wag put it:

Free-market capitalism is for the poor. Job creators prefer market-free capitalism.

Liberté, Égalité, Gratuité

Free Public Transit Works

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 ~ Atlantic Cities reports on a mid-size French town that has had free public transit for more than a decade. Châteauroux has seen its ridership double. Meanwhile in only 3 years a metro area west of Paris has seen use go up 170% even as private vehicle traffic volumes fell 10%.

Like many transit systems, the fare box makes up only a small percentage of system revenue. Eliminating the infrastructure and logistics of fare collection, with minor adjustments to other funding sources, can allow transit systems to be profitable as well as more usable.

The motivations for making a transit system free are obvious. Increased ridership can relieve traffic, improve the environment, boost the system’s efficiency, give residents more spending money, help the poor, and rejuvenate central business districts.

Shared transportation is a public good and a desirable and necessary part of civic infrastructure. Like sidewalks, parks, trails and other similar public space amenities, it should be free, easy to use and widely available. Most cities in the US still have quite a ways to go.

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Also posted to the Fare-Free Northwest blog.

Come to the Nightmare

Only 5 Nights Left

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 ~ The Puget Sound's premier haunted attraction, The Nightmare at Beaver Lake runs through Halloween night. Bring your fiends.

It's less scary than the elections, but much more fun.

More. Yet more.

A Broader Tax Base

The Camel's Nose Under the Tent

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 ~ Do we really want to broaden the tax base? Will it solve our fiscal problems?

The concept of a broader tax base is quite simple—it means getting more people to pay taxes who are not paying them today. In the case of income taxes (to which this term is almost exclusively applied) it means to change the tax code to make the 47% who currently pay nothing to start paying something.

Many, including Mitt Romney, are trying to have it both ways on this, suggesting that the broadening of the base would both solve the deficit and not result in any tax increases. This is not plausible arithmetic; the 47% will have their taxes raised—period. If you carve out some kinds of floors or exemptions to prevent that then you arrive back where you started—a byzantine tax code without any broader a base.

But there's more to this.

Where's It Wednesday—CIV

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Amazing Endeavour

The Last Mission

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 ~ The retired space shuttle traveled across Los Angeles on its way to the California Science Center. The 12-mile journey took 3 days, and enchanted a community.

A stop-motion video (2:41) of its journey, well-worth watching, is here.

Silence of the Lambs

(D)riven by Embarrassment

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 ~ The hover text:

There are so many well-meaning conservatives around here who just assume global warming is only presented as a moral issue for political reasons.

In the unlikely case that climate change arises in tonight's presidential debate, expect embarrassment from every quarter. It will be even more embarrassing for us as a country, however, should it not arise at all.

With Friends Like These...

A Messy Relationship

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 ~ At the Alberta Tar Sands, how committed are they really?

A spokesman for government department Natural Resources Canada said: "The oil sands are an important strategic resource that we are committed to developing in a socially and environmentally friendly manner." [Emphasis added]