American Death Cult. Why has the Republican response to the pandemic been so mind-bogglingly disastrous?
People Who Survived Completely Unsurvivable Situations.
KFC will be 3D Printing Lab-Grown Chicken Nuggets. (via Boing Boing)
Three Surgeons Dissect the Board Game Operation.
A definitive case against the Electoral College.
Colleges Are Getting Ready to Blame Their Students. As campuses reopen without adequate testing, universities fault young people for a lack of personal responsibility. (via Digg)
1904: Lady Gray, The Mother Cat Who Adopted 5 Pedigree Orphan Puppies in Brooklyn.
Scientists Accidentally Create 'Impossible' Hybrid Fish. (via Metafilter)
A blast from the past (2012): Math Food for Pi Approximation Day.
5 comments:
That self-portrait one is hilarious! Quite the ego!
-chuckle- One of the biggest problems with American
democracy is that it’s not democratic.
Of course it's not. Never was. We're a Republic.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America. And to the Republic for which
it stands. . . .
Do they even say that in school anymore? Mostly not.
Does anyone know what it means? Mostly no.
Sorry, but the Electoral College ain't going nowhere.
Yes, we are a republic, but a DEMOCRATIC republic. We elect, on a one-person-one-vote policy, representatives to enact our laws, conduct government business, and so on rather than polling all 300 million of us to determine how each and every individual feels about each and every little thing that comes up - and that makes perfect sense. The idea, though, that we can't be trusted to elect a president in the same manner but must instead play a rigged game of political poker to select representatives (electors) who are then pledged to vote for someone by a ridiculous 'winner take all' system is, putting it simply, horseschidtt.
This process means that in any given state election for president, a simple majority of EVERYONE who votes could, in theory, decide WHO that state votes for in the Electoral College .... or to put it another way, the ballots cast for any candidate other than the eventual majority vote-getter are pretty much meaningless and those voters' voices go unheard. So much for the mantra that "every vote counts".
A better way would be for every vote to actually count (and be counted) and, if you persist in keeping the Electoral College, assign the electors on a percentage basis. If you have twenty electors and candidate 'A' get 5% of the vote, one elector is pledged to vote in the electoral college for that person. Candidate 'B' gets 25% – he gets 5 electors, and so on.
This means that a candidate cannot squeak out a 1,000 vote 'win' in a state like New York or California and end up with the ENTIRE elector count of the state. It also reflects the fact that a certain percentage of the people in that state did NOT vote for the 'winner' in terms of total vote count ... so even the votes of the minority who did NOT support candidate 'X' over candidate 'Y' are represented and considered.
We do it like that when we elect senators or representatives to Congress — the total vote over all counties/wards/precincts in the district are counted, a single total is reached, and the ultimate winner is determined; not a series of individual totals to select an 'elector' for each county/ward/precinct who then canvasses with other electors to cast a 'kangaroo court' vote for who our senator or representative is. We need to do it the same way to elect the president.
-"BB"-
Sounds good -"BB"- except it's not. The Tyranny of the Majority
You don't want to go there.
Up in Maine, the upcoming Presidential Election is
going to be decided by Rank Choice Voting. Some day
you may have to wrap your head around that. I
certainly hope not (It's actually Ranked Choice
Voting - whatever).
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