Stonekite

I just read Gaming the Vote by best selling author William Poundstone, who gives an account of different voting systems.

In conclusion, Range Voting sounds like the best solution for single seat candidacies, in almost all circumstances.

Is that all?

Well, there was a lot more in there. He started by describing recent votes that were obviously wrong for some reason or another, like Nader acting as a spoiler in the 2000 presidential elections, or the Louisiana race between Duke, Edwards and Roemer. Then he talks about historical figures, and how these things originated. He uses the contemporary races as examples of how these voting systems work or do not work. Finally he ends by reviewing the modern day debate over which one is best, with Range Voting apparently being a just rediscovered excellent choice.

So… one way to look at this is that all I really needed to know was that Range Voting was probably the best solution for most cases. Because, really, all the talk about modern elections was filler: human faces to make the reading easier. Certainly the entire historical section could have been erased.

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I just read the critically acclaimed Blankets by Craig Thompson. It’s a graphic novel about love.

My personal take on it is that people gave it awards and stuff because it shows that a graphic novel can be “literature”, by which I mean that it doesn’t have a happy ending, therefore it’s the getting there or gestalt of it that matters. I didn’t think it was great. It was good, but not as good as the crystals of plot that Watchmen was, or as entertaining and memorable as Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: a family tragicomic.

I would describe what happens in it, but that wouldn’t describe it. As it is literature, and as it is a graphic novel, it is about choices of wording and unexpected juxtapositions of word and text, and the intelligible results thereof.

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So…

I mentioned to my parents the other day that I’ve grown tired of the books that journalists write (especially Pulitzer Prize winning journalists).

A writing style grows very differently in a newspaper. It’s intended to hook and impress and (at best) elicit emotion. In books I find that annoying. Who cares about the people, what car he drives… Who cares about the “human interest”. Tell me what the idea is, and why I should care.

I also told my parents that that might be the result in part of having a very slow computer for the past few years, so that I was frustrated at inconsequential news because it wasted my time with stupidity & with slow load times. Or it could be my personality. I’ve often thought that I am a conservative person, in things besides my politics.

But maybe it’s just the sign of the times. People today are inundated with so much information that it seems inevitable that we will somehow find ways to slim down our intake to make it easier to digest.

What if we took all our educational materials, and taught the issues instead of the history? I think that’s because we need history to make us remember that there’s been right and wrong answers before. Entire societies based on other ways of belief.

I don’t at all feel sorry that Gaming the Vote had all this extraneous information, because I feel like it contributed to my universal framework of information.

In case you got to this point, I’m leaving this message: no, there is no conclusion to this. I am on the phone and need to get up early tomorrow. Dinner must be made.

I had my old computer for seven years. It served me well, far longer than I had any right to expect.

The new computer arrived unexpectedly today. Everything is faster, nicer, more precise. It’s nice.

I need a name for her though. So far people on facebook and elsewhere have suggested:

• U.S.S. Nostromo
  
• Aïcha
  
• Wintermute
  
• Adar Llwch Gwin
  
• Hamingja
  

Leave suggestions in the comments.

This is what I looked like about six months ago:

When I was a kid I liked the haircut that my older brother asked. He told me to tell my mom that I wanted a “bald” haircut, like a bald eagle. She caught on though.

Later, he was into rat-tails, so I decided to get one too.

Recently—to celebrate my autonomy from my brother—I decided to style my hair as different from his as I could (this makes sense). To put it another way, I have hair on my head. Hah! Oh, sweet revolution is in the air, sir!

Then I was a boy, but now I am a man and must have a man’s haircut. So I decided to grow my hair out.

My lips do not usually look like that. I mean, they do usually look large, but they don’t usually look like I’m prepping my lips to sneer at you. But maybe that’s what I’m thinking.

Pretty scraggly beard, no? Well, that’s why I’m shaving it off.

I’ve taken rough stabs at growing my hair long before, but always chickened out at the “Huh, it’s long, and looks different than I’m used to!” stage. That’s where I chicken out and grab the shears again. What makes this time different? Well, this time I don’t have to go outside and meet people for college or whatever.

So the other day I shaved my beard (the hair stays, for now).

I have no idea what this cut is.

I should will mention at this point that the most sexy I have ever looked was in the mens room of the Prague airport. I looked at myself in the mirror at 3am, while staying up in order to catch an early $20 flight to Paris, and thought to myself:

Whoah, who is that attractive man? Fuck heterosexuality, I would totally do myself right now.

And that was my sexiest moment.

These sideburns probably needed to be trimmed in the back too to make this really pop, but I use a single or double bladed analog razor. that makes it hard to get a clean edge in hard to reach places. I might slip and cut off, I don’t know, a jugular or something.

Mmm. That’s right, I’ve got something under my lip. It looks like it’s a little to far to my right (our left), but it isn’t. My lips are really prominent, and the recess under them is thus larger than you’d expect. My face is an optical illusion.

That is a picture of me a few minutes ago, after waking up at 6am.

So… what’s next? Grow more hair. For a while at least.

So I guess now that I’ve made post, I have reference material next time I shave. And maybe my readers can use this as a guide, and send in tips for others.

Maybe in a while I’ll have a series where I shave my chest, stomach or leg hair into patterns. I can’t wait!

So, work is coming along.

Today was the Fremont Fair, with the Solstice parade. There’s some pics of the painted naked bikers from the Stranger here. Search Flickr for “Fremont Solstice“ for more. I just found out a friend of mine helped make and operate Clement VII with the puppeteer Brian Kooser. A pic from someone’s flickr account here.

I didn’t go there, but my friend joined me for a journey through the Moore Theater. The Free Sheep Foundation got ahold of the Moore Theater, and turned it into a one night arts event of art about the theater. As usual for arts events, the Stranger tells it best.

Apparently organizers were expecting somewhere around 1500 people maybe. By the time we got there there were 3000 people. Performances by various people, including Orkestar Zirconium (who led a mini-parade to the after party in Belltown).

The best part of the whole thing was how topsy-turvy and open to exploration it was. With no backdrop the audience for musicians and art stood around the backstage as well as in the seats. Art was among the seats, above them, projected on the walls to the sides and backstage. Lead Pencil Studio’s “Exit Ramp” connecting the backstage to the balcony was my favorite individual piece because it cemented and symbolized the open and participatory self reflectiveness of the event.