Well, I have several things to rant about, but I’m feeling too relaxed and at peace to go off on a tear. Instead, I give you this website.

I have a feeling this is what we call in America – a scam. But who knows, maybe I’m not with it these days! I find the site amusing.

And check out the kids and cars website. Kind of scary if you ask me. Makes you think twice before you hit that car window button.

OK, maybe one rant. When people move to this country from the third world, or lower, let’s do two things right away, before we hand them an automobile driver’s license, OK?

1) Teach them how to speak and read English. You know, these stop signs, directional signs, rail road warnings, might be good if these people could read them, you know?

2.) Teach these people to drive the American Way! Which means stay between the lines, drive on the right side of the road, and go at least 10 MPH above the posted speed limit.

Oh, yeah, this will greatly help in Miami – Let’s not give driver’s license to amuone unless they can prove that they can drive above 11 MPH if they really had to.

No, you idiot, I am NOT a racist or prejudice! I just don’t like the way some people drive! I am not tolerant of their driving!

Show me a law that says I gotta like everybody!

Peace out people.

Only about 60% of otherwise eligible voters in American voted in the 2000 presidential election. And presidential contests generate the most voters. Many are calling for mandatory voting. Forcing citizens to do their civic duty rubs me the wrong way. I saw look deeper into the reasons people do not vote.

1. No one to vote for!
2. Elections on a work day/school day – Tuesday!

Redesigning our voting system would help. See previous post about instant runoff voting.
And toss out this Tuesday crap! Let voting occur over a weekend. Give people Saturday and Sunday to vote!
And go back to paper ballots. Safe. Reliable. Countable. Traceable.

My two cents for today.

There has got to be a better way. And there is. Voting that is, and getting rid of these two polarizing political parties. (Republicans and Democrats.) Look at the 2000 election. Of those who voted, and that’s another rant later on in the week, the nation was split right down the center. Look at the polls for the upcoming election – again, split. How is it that someone can be elected to the office of President of the United States with less than 50% of the vote?

The current system is geared to keep out any new voices. Just look at the Democrats suing to keep Nader off the ballot. (I thought every vote, and thus every candidate counted???) .

Take me for instance. I’ve rarely, if ever, voted for someone. I’ve usually voted for the lesser of two evils. Or I voted “against” someone. This presidential election I am very disappointed with the Democratic Party. Where the hell are the strong competent good Democrats? (I know my conservative friends are screaming now, but there really are some!) How the hell did they let Kerry crawl out from under his rock and get the nod? Compare Kerry to Lieberman. No comparison in my book. So, despite having serious problems with Bush, the chances are that I will vote against Kerry. But not really for Bush. As a vote for Bush is a vote against the common man, against the environment, against worker rights, for huge business, for huge government, for poor immigration policy and so forth. Yet, how could I vote for the Senator who during those rare moments when he happened to be in the neighborhood to actually vote, voted along the farthest left lines possible! ?

If there were other good candidates running for office, voting for them would be throwing your vote away. Unless you deluded yourself into thinking that it was “making a statement”.

But, what if you could vote for someone you really liked? It can happen, if America switches to the Instant Runoff voting system, sometimes called the Condorcet’s method. Here is how it works. Let’s say there are five people running for office. Two major parties, and three other candidates. You vote for all of them, by ranking them 1 to 5. Your favorite candidate you vote with a 1 next to his/her name. Your next favorite gets a 2, and so on.

Here is the cool thing. When votes are being counted, one candidate must achieve above 50% of the vote to win. If they don’t, then there is an instant runoff. They take whoever received the least votes, and toss that loser out of the race. Then, all those votes for him get recounted, using the #2 candidate on those ballots. They keep doing this until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.

This system allows more candidates and parties, and thus more ideas and more voter choice.

There are lots of places to read about this, but John Anderson (remember him? I actually voted for him back in my liberal days….) explained it pretty well in this article.

Go read it.. Unless you are way out there to the left with the socialists and communists, or way out there to the right, this current system leaves much of America without a candidate. Which is probably what they want.

About two months ago I got a song stuck in my head. I’m not even going to allow myself to attempt to remember what song, for fear it will lodge its fat ass in my brain again. I did some research then on the issue.
A BBC report describes it somewhat well. Here is another site, webmd that talks about it.

It is also referred to as “Stuck Song Syndrome”. You can get a song stuck in your head for days and days, even weeks. People try all kinds of things to get it out, like replacing the tune with a different one. Often this gets that song stuck in your head. Sometimes people listen to the song from start to finish, and swear that works.

Here is a great paper written by a student at Bryn Mawr College. Does a great job, and gives good references.

How did I get rid of the earworm I had? I tried to replace it with other songs. That worked, but then I had a different song in my head. But the original earworm was a song I hated! So, at least I was able to replace it with a song I enjoyed. But, it eventually came back. After awhile I tried just ignoring it, and relaxing my brain. After a day, it was gone. It wasn’t really horrible, just nagging. And the fact I could not control it was what made it worse. You ever have a song stuck in your head?