Question One

How can an organization send election-related materials without any identification or meaningful information?

Some local group has sent me a piece asking me to "Vote YES on Question One."

Who? I don't know. The piece is entirely silent on the question of its origin. What is "Question One?"

Our local municipal government website, indygov.org, has nothing about the election on its front page. Neither does the state website, in.gov. (That's an entirely separate rant.)

Who's in charge of this chump operation, anyway?

ACORN

Yes, I've worked with ACORN. They perform a vital role in our democracy: encouraging citizens to participate by registering them to vote.

I regret that members of that organization have been involved with fraud, and I call on everyone to respect the integrity of the voting process. Nothing is more dangerous to our future than a loss of faith that system.

Why won't Barack Obama say something like that, rather than trying to distance himself? I would respect him so much more, and I can't believe that anyone who was undecided would vote for McCain solely due to such an admission.

Politics has all but extinguished straight talk.

How many must die?

If the only evidence that convicted him was not physical evidence – it was the evidence of witnesses. Seven of the nine recanted. How can you say that's enough to take a life? –Reverend Al Sharpton

How to recognize when the news is grim? When you find yourself agreeing with Al Sharpton.

I don't know whether Troy Davis is innocent, and neither do any of the others who are speaking out against his execution.

But I do know that executing an innocent man achieves nothing. Next time someone says "I'd rather execute an innocent man than let a guilty one walk free," point out that every time we execute an innocent person the guilty party does walk free! Three crimes are perpetrated: the original crime, the murder of the innocent by the government, and the abdication of the responsibility of finding the real criminal.

How many must die before we recognize the obvious: that the death penalty is flawed, and if we're going to use it, it should only be in the most egregious, glaringly obvious cases. Troy Davis is going to be executed with no physical evidence and shaky eyewitness testimony.

If that doesn't appall you, then ask yourself this: what is preventing you, or someone you love, from being put to death for someone else's crime?

Photography as Beauty

I admit it: I'm a sucker for beauty. I need to find a way to recapture the beauty I originally found through my own photography, but in the meantime, occasionally I'll be fortunate enough to be deeply moved by others' work.

The Online Photographer has linked to two YouTube videos that are beautiful on many levels. Highly recommended.

I finally get Polaroid.

iPhone development: first steps

Now that Apple has effectively lifted the NDA (seems like this would officially happen next week, but everyone seems to be acting as though it's gone now), it's time to begin my explorations into software development for the iPhone.

Some links I've started accumulating:

• ars technica: A touch of Cocoa: inside the iPhone SDK
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf: iPhone SDK Development
• iPhone Development Central
• O'Reilly's Inside iPhone Blog
• MacRumors iPhone Programming Forum
• iPhoneMinds
  

I have some ideas about developing a utility to assist with my volunteer work at the local library, and I'd certainly like to see some tools to interface with Request Tracker and Nagios.

First, though, there's this brand new programming language to learn...

And so it begins

From the Economist, in a story about a new $25 billion bailout for Detroit:

The logic of bailing out Wall Street is that finance underpins everything. Detroit cannot begin to make that claim. But, given its successful lobbying, can it be long before ailing airlines and failing retailers join the queue?

From the Washington Independent, reviewing the newly-added pork in the bailout bill:

This includes: billions in renewable fuel tax credits; billions in relief for families who would otherwise have to pay the alternative minimum tax next April; a tax credit for companies that promote bike commuting; a provision expanding insurance coverage for mental health services, and the list goes on. (Indeed, the original bailout bill was three pages long; the latest version is 451.)

I fear Glenn Beck has it right, in a mock commentary from the future:

The airlines came first -- we just couldn't live without them. Then it was the automakers (Detroit would've died), health care (they said they could manage it better), and eventually, the oil companies (I'm not sure where all of those "windfall profits" have gone).
...
It didn't take long before so many of our tax dollars were going toward interest payments that we couldn't fund even the most basic of government programs without massive tax increases on everyone. People now work most of the year just to pay Uncle Sam (or, as we now call him, "Comrade Sam").

I was terribly excited when we had a budget surplus, and we thought we could pay off the national debt in a decade. Remember that? Just one presidency ago. Our future was finally much less gloomy.

Pride goeth before a fall. And this one has been a doozy.