I've released XBLinJS 0.2, which includes some example widgets and much better documentation.

OK, forget my last post about what the Democrats need to do. After a few more hours both online and on TV, I can't help but think that those actions are a little too mature for too many Democrats. Let's start more simply. Speaking as a Bush voter, here's a short list of things various Democrats need to stop doing, lest they continue to marginalize themselves.

• Stop explaining to us why we're stupid.
• Stop explaining why it isn't our fault, we're just victims of Karl Rove. It is patronizing. That will win you neither votes nor friends. You have neither a lock on truth nor intelligence. I don't like to wave my credentials or ego around, but I'll happily take any of you on in the intelligence department, and I'm still "red". If your theories can't account for that, you need new theories.
• Stop explaining our actions in terms of "-isms". Rejecting gay marriage is hardly homophobia. (There's actually a danger here if you try to insist that it is; munging the difference between not wanting to grant marriages to gay couples and murdering them may cause certain borderline personalities to munge the difference too. That's bad for everybody.)
• America is a special nation, the only hyperpower. Consider the possibility that part of the reason for this also lies in its special demographic makeup. "Blue" folk keep tossing out the observation that "red" America is out of step with the rest of the world. Consider the possibility that it is exactly this "out of step"-ness that is also the reason we are strong. I know you love Europe, but I don't think I'm going to want to live there when their Social Security bills come due. (In fact, if you factor in their SS commitments, I'd bet money they are more in the hole than we are, and less able to crawl out!)

By now, the election results for the US are well known: The Republicans keep the Presidency, they get more seats in the House, they get more seats in the Senate, and they will almost certainly be placing some people on the Supreme Court. Basically, while it isn't quite enough to be considered a blank check, especially as party loyalty isn't what it used to be, it is rather close; the Senate control is only a few seats short of being able to unilaterally break a filibuster.

I think what this argument typically indicates is an individual who is using the following logic, more or less consciously:

1. My vote isn't going to be the vote that changes the outcome.
2. Therefore, my vote is of exactly zero value.

Ultimately, this is a very selfish line of reasoning, because it implicitly is claiming that only their vote should count. Well, I got news. There are about three hundred million other people in the good ole' US of A, many of them able to vote, and their votes count too.

(This is actually true of all voting systems, not just the US Government.)

It seems like common sense that the purpose of voting is to determine the winner. But like much common sense, it is wrong.

The purpose of voting is to satisfy the loser that they lost. Determining a winner is easy, it is the guy with the most guys and guns who is still alive. A voting-based system depends on the acquiescence of the losers, so that they don't just grab guys and guns and take over.

This is a test post. This is almost, but not quite, only a test post.

I got suspend-to-disk working, for suitably small values of working, on my Linux laptop a couple of weeks ago. Since it boots up so much more quickly from a suspend, I was using it instead of a conventional power-down. Last Saturday, I took my machine down to a family re-union for a family file exchange.

So why then does the US have two meta-coalitions instead of a multiplicity of little parties? I can eliminate one popular misconception right off the bat: There are no formal provisions for two parties in the US political system. (At least, none to speak of.)

The proof is simple: There are more than two parties in the US, something I daresay even most residents are only vaguely aware of. There's Reform, Green, Libertarian, and a handful of others. Clearly they are not banned from existing.

Many democracies run, with varying degrees of formality, on a coalition system. Many parties via for seats in a legislative chamber, representing many distinct interests. Generally, there is something that can only be done with a strict majority, often things like passing bills or electing a Prime Minister. Since the interest groups are so fragmented, for a given bill, many of the groups may have weak or even no opinions about it; for instance, a labor party may have no strong opinions either way about a gun control bill. (I'm not saying that everybody who calls themselves "labor" parties, and I think there are a lot of them, won't have an opinion, just that they may not.)

This post is an introduction and will serve as an index to a series of posts I am doing on myths about the United States Govermental system. It was one post but it grew too long.

It is an important series because the myths I will be addressing are very widespread, and many of them are quite damaging.

Myths:

1. The US Is A Two Party System, Not A Coalition System
2. The US is Formally A Two-Party System
3. The Purpose Of Voting Is To Determine A Winner
4. My Vote Doesn't Count

   Interlude: Making Sense Of The 2004 Election

I was reading somebody talk about the distribution of people who "agree global warming is an issue" and how it has changed over time, and it made me wonder where I would fit in.

• I agree that the evidence is that the global average temperature is rising.
• I agree that there are certain economic issues this causes, and recall that when I use the word "economic" I automatically mean "potentially costing lives" (as opportunity costs come home to roost).
• I do not agree that it is proven that human influence has had an impact. I agree that this is a plausible hypothesis, but I think that it is far from proven. Evidence that the Sun has heated up a little strikes me as far more likely to account for it; at the very least this demands a factors analysis and I pretty much a priori discard any claimed analysis that says humans are 100% responsible, on the grounds that climate change has happened in the past, indeed, climate stasis never has. (No reasonable environmentalist claims 100%, of course, but unreasonable ones are talking, too.)
• I do not agree that warming is automatically a disaster. I think it is plausible that it may even be a net gain (more useful land), but there's only one real way to find out and that is to see it happen. Analysis that we loose X feet of coastland invariably fail to take into account other lands we gain; Siberia could become more hospitable, for instance, and that's a huge chunk of land.
• I don't agree that we should drastically cut back on pollution for global warming's sake. In fact, this argument really boggles my mind when there are invariably better arguments for reducing pollution. We could reduce the emissions of our coal plants to reduce global warming... which many people still do not accept and no one is qualified to say whether the coal emissions are affecting it, or in which direction... or we can reduce coal plant emissions because people die (sooner) when they breathe them. Pollution should be rationally minimized for many reasons, and global warming, even if we grant the most catastrophic versions, is still rather far down on the list of reasons, swamped by many other more immediate and pressing ones like killing people, animals, or plants for no good reason.