Opression of the Masses

I was just listening to a self-righteous rant on the radio where a indignant voice was telling the world about how "rich Republicans" were putting non-functioning voting machines in poor districts, and that this is how evil people who clearly don't represent the people like the Satan incarnate currently in the White House.

Now, I agree that that that are big problems with voting machines in some districts.

The question really should start with who put the bad machines in poor districts.

My experience is that it is the people who are in control of the district that have the most control over which machines are in the district. I do agree that political parties are notorious for pulling shenanigans on the public. It is up to the voters to make sure their votes are being counted correctly.

As such, It seems to me that if there are broken voting machines in a Democratic majority district, the most likely cause of that problem is the political majority of the district -- the Democrats. Conversely, if there are well working machines in Republican districts, it is probably because the people in that district worked quite deligently to make sure every vote gets counted.

My experience tells me that the primary factor in the quality of a vote is the deligence of the people within that district.

If the talking head is correct, and there are more broken voting machines in Democratic majority districts than in Republican voting districts. The cause of this problem is more likely due to the Democrats than to the Republicans.

The conclusion of the talking head, of course, was that Republicans are putting broken voting machines in the districts that they don't control, and that the solution to the problems was to make a tax that would force rich Republicans to start putting working voting machines in the districts that they don't control.

This conclusion was even more puzzling. If the problem is that Republicans are somehow putting broken voting machines in Democratic majority districts, then the proper solution would be for the district to take over the decisions of what machines are in their district.

Personally, I think the primary reason that people in poor districts have a harder time getting the vote counted correctly is because the corrupt political machine in their district is not interested in their vote.

The existance of districts that do not correctly count the vote is quite troubling. Unfortunately the primary agent in getting the vote counted correctly is the people within the district. Yes, there should be watchdog efforts directed at these districts. Ultimately, the responsibility of making sure the vote is counted correctly is the people within a district.

If the problem is that evil Republicans are putting broken voting machines in Democratic controlled districts, the solution isn't to demand new machines from the Repulicans. Repuplicans have already proven that they are evil and corrupt (ne-est-ce-pas?). How could you trust that the new machines work? If the problem is that Republicans are putting broken machines in Democratic Districts, then the solution is for the Democrats to put working machines in their district.

Don't Get It

I was looking at the political cartoons on Cagle. A large number of Graduation cartoons are about how graduates are all going to be unemployed and miserable.

We have been in a long running hot job market. There's a ton of opportunities for this crop of graduates. There may be a lack of jobs for people getting a high school diploma and don't intend to go to college. College graduates, however, are not lacking in opportunities.

The problems faced by current grads are excessive student loans and a tight housing market. There is also a nasty gap between the work world and academic world. In a hot job market, most students should be able to jump that chasm. I feel sad for students who been deluded into following the Marxist ideology that most professors love. The business needs people with strong ethics willing to work, not people trained in using underhanded tricks to undermine companies.

The housing market and loans are the biggest challenges for students. While there is not a cure for the excessive debt, students can cure the housing blues by going a few years as a roommate before getting a house. As for getting a job. We are currently in a hot market for college grads.

Sugarhouse Park

Here are some pictures of Sugarhouse Park that I took last week.

My actual plans for Memorial Day were snowed out. The weather gods got messed up this week. It was supposed to be snowy and cold earlier this month ... not on Memorial Day weekend.

Darwinian Fairytales

I just wasted some time reading the work Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove. This work is a bit closer to the discussion that we should have about Darwinianism than the silly Intelligent Design debate that was the rage last year. The idea that humans should be classified as a primate, or that we descend from an ancestors that apparently branched off other species of primates is an elegant theory that fits in well with the fossil record and all the evidence we have in form of DNA and biology.

Noting that man has a common heritage with the rest of the critters on this little blue planet of ours is not a problem.

The problem with Darwinianism is all of the philosophical fluff that has been injected into the science of evolution. Darwinianism itself is largely a fusion of Kant / Schopenhauer transcendentalism with with select 19th century prejudices.

Arguably, many philosophers have tried to use new sciences to construct new religions with the scientist as priest and the gene as the new diety (the causal agent that manipulates our existence).

The work has a few insightful essays on the excesses of Darwinian philosophies. The work does a good job showing that metaphors like the selfish genes or the struggle for survival provide an incomplete view of the reality of evolution. The article evens takes a few jabs at scientific determinism and the inanity of sociobiology (Unfortunately, the book was written before evolutionary psychology became the craze.)

The real value of evolution is the increased understanding it gives of the make up of the universe. Unfortunately, the beautiful science of evolution is often used as the basis for garbage philosophies. The science of evolution shows us how the life on this world came to be, but it does not completely explain why man is here.

We appear to be sitting on a very old planet in a very large universe. The real science of evolution is expanding our understanding our this situation. Philosophies such as scientific determinisms, Darwinism, and attempts to raise science to a religion have detracted from this understanding.

Xmission Site

As xMission customers, my folks have a small amount of web real estate. So, I made them a small feeder web site (Joe Delaney's Site. This is just a one page bopper with links to other projects.

To make the site visually interesting, I put small bars with images across the tops and bottoms of the pages. Now that I have a little bit more bandwidth at my disposal, I might add image bars to my Community Directories. Of course, I will need to check this site on a few different browsers before I make that step.

Since bandwith prices have dropped, I have wondered about making the thumbnails larger. Right now, I make the leading edge of the thumbnail 100px. My temptation is to up the thumbnail size to 120px.

False Solomon Seal

To the left is an image of a Maianthemum racemosa (False Solomon Seal) that was growing in Neff Canyon. It used to be called a Smilacina racemosa. A Google Search on "Smilacina racemosa" turns up 64,000 hits, a search on "Maianthemum racemosum" returns 51,000.

We are a silly species. People by the tens of thousands are taking images of native flowers and posting them online.

While it would be fun to start on online plant identification program, I doubt that such an effort would contribute anything in such a crowded field.

This would be a good plant to grow in a native (Mountain West) plant garden.

Rush to Nuclear

A year or so ago, I had a post about the need to expand basic research into nuclear energy. This is something that I have advocated for several decades.

Yesterday, I watched the CNN broadcast of a Congressional hearing trying to rush the approval of new nuclear plants. Ideas being thrown down on the table included limiting liablity of nuclear power plants, big tax incentives and grants. Many of the financial incentives had political time tables. For example you would get X break if your reactor was running before a specific date.

The hearing made me sick to the stomache.

Doesn't anyone else see how our political process is destroying fundamental scientific research?

Our political system all but guarantees the worst possible outcome.

We start in the 50s with big public works projects to put nuclear plants everywhere. We do this before we really know the technology. The result was a great deal of toxic nuclear waste, environmental destruction and unnecessary risk.

The politics of action/reaction turned the the US 100% against nuclear development and research. Waving their little Red Books, radical greens managed to drive the best minds from studying nuclear physics and we lose an opportunity to gradually improve the technology.

In 2006, a little tiny blip in fuel prices suddenly triggers insanity.

Politicians like Bush and Cheney understand the dynamics of nuclear research even less than they understand the dynamics of Iraqi politics. The primary reason I supported nuclear when it wasn't cool to support nuclear is because I knew with certainty that the first blip in fuel prices would lead to the insanity that we are seeing today.

Politically driven scientific research leads to the worst possible outcome. The Green movement had successfully sabotaged the development of nuclear energy. That means that we are a good decade behind where we should be in scientific research.

We cannot change that fact any more than we can change the fact that Bush invaded Iraq. There should be no politically set time tables for the research and development of the next generation of nuclear plants. While we need to find a way to shield nuclear development from nuisance lawsuits, limiting their liability is silly.

Above all, we have to find a way to break out of the politically motivated action/reaction approach to scientific research.

BTW, the world is currently in the same situation that we were in during the early 80s. Gas prices were high ... people began investing in conservation while companies invested in increased capacity. Energy prices dropped several years later.

Along the way, the little political things done by the drones in Congress only made the peaks and valleys more severe.

IMHO, the US is now behind on the nuclear development curb. We should increase research in this area, but are not ready toss up dozens of new plants.

Bowman Fork Trail

Here is a pile of photos from the Bowman Fork Trail in the Wasatch Mountains. The hike was cut short by a rain shower. My new camera takes decent pictures of wildflowers. I will start filling up Protophoto.com with flowers.

I admit it would be tempting to start making a guide to flowers (that is including Genus and species info with the pictures). The problem here is that I am pretty much clueless on botany. I haven't a clue about the little flower to the right. The clueless shouldn't make guides.

Kick the Oil Habit

Robert Redford is lending his star power to an initiative called Kick the Oil Habit which takes it cue from President Bush's 2006 confession that the US has an Oil Addiction. The site promotes alternative energy.

The site promotes the use of E85, windpower and other alternative fuels. NOTE, the site fails to mention that biodeisel and E85 have the negative effects of making our fuel supply compete directly with our food supply. A massive switch to bio fuels will probably result in mass starvations. Wind Power litters the environment with windmills that our children are likely to find are costly to maintain. Solar Cells run the risk of covering large sections of land with rather toxic pieces of litter.

This is all worth pursuing and promoting. There is no perfect energy source (The bicycle gets close, but it is hard to ride a bike during a snow storm).

Robert Redford appeared on Larry King last night. I think it would be great to have Redford taking a leading role in promoting alternative fuels. Unfortunately, instead of promoting fuel, he kept falling into partisan attacks. Here are a few quotes:

"the planet has already been trashed enough, particularly with the policies of this administration. Excuse me but it's a fact."

I agree that Bush has been a horrible president (especially in regards to energy). This is an opinion, however, and not a fact. The real problem here is that Redford leads directly off Bush's admitting that his policies were wrong into a partisan attack. I don't think that making that making energy policy more partisan will end up making sound energy policy.

Several times in the interview attacked Bush for secretly setting policy objectives behind the scene without public input. That is fair criticism. However, Robert Redford has been playing the exact same game for decades. The Sundance Summit is a case in point. In this and other initiatives, Redford would have closed meetings with town mayors (hypnotized by star power). In the closed meetings, Redford would set objectives for the town ... completely skirting the step of pulic input on important local projects.

My guess is that, in progressive fashion, Redford defines himself as "the public". Therefore public input is achieved when a movie star has a closed door session with politicians to set political agendas for a town. Yeah. Right!

I started writing this blog post hoping to praise the Kick the Habit site. Unfortunately, both the web site and the Kick the Oil Habit site are vacuous political hack jobs. The site was designed by The American Progressive Action Committee. The effort seems aimed primarily at making the development of alternative fuels more politically charged than it already is.

All of these alternative fuel sources have problems. They should all be developed, but there is no free lunch.

Kick the Oil Habit puts forward E85 as the free lunch (E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% oil). Yes, the fuel should be developed. However, this product will put fuel consumption in direct competition with food. It will increase demands on farmland, etc.. Corn is a good source for fuel, but it is not perfect.

In the end I have to pan Redford's initiative. Kick The Oil Habit appears to be more about creating partisan division than in working on the most difficult problem faced by our generation.

If you want real information on alternative fuels, the National Renewal Energy Laborator (NREL) is a better source.

Wild Flowers

My new Nikon D10 digital SLR takes better flower pictures than my old Kodak DC240 autofocus zoom. The main advantage of the digital SLR is the ability to focus! With the autofocus cameras, the quality of an image is just a shot in the dark. I am using a standard 28-90mm lens. If I were super rich, I could get an expense micro lens and really control the image.

The image to the right shows a Spring Beauty that was growing on the Neff Creek Canyon trail. (This image is compressed for internet display. The camera is picking up some good detail.

Of course, now that I have a decent camera, I have fess up to the world that the lack of quality in the images is due to the photographer and not the camera. Maybe some more practice with the camera will make better images. Anyway, I will expand the protophoto - wildflower page. Although I am not a botanist, I will try to include the family and genus of the plants. I don't feel comfortable differientiating species