I came across an article in the local paper that might interest some here:

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Diana Felber brought her groceries to the checkout and counted out her cash — purple, blue and green bills that are good only at businesses in western Massachusetts.

Promoted for discussion by Brendan

Nuclear power has some very good and vey bad aspects and partisans on both sides argue passionately about these issues.  Ultimately though it is the pedestrian issue of fuel availability that should preclude us from embarking upon the type of massive scale nuclear power plant building that some have advocated.

Take a look at this diary from Redstate.

Today is the first day of his polling track that includes all polling after the VP debate. 70 million people watched that debate, and the results are that Obama's lead increased to 8 points? How does that make any sense in a sane universe? Giving the MSM spin, at best it can be called "Biden held his own", which should have resulted in the tracking poll holding steady.

So yesterday while I'm at work my wife is taking care of my kids. They're at the apartment and they hear this really loud yowling from outside that goes on long enough that she gets concerned and goes to see what's going on. She finds a very young kitten- in the dumpster. Now this kitten can actually climb pretty good but isn't much of a walker. It's possible that he ended up in the garbage by accident, but my anti-faith in humanity isn't leading me to consider that a high likelyhood.

Kids these days. It's like they don't even bother with the classics.

Do You Support Habeas Corpus Rights for Osama bin Laden?

This from Redstate, who of course tear into the obscenity of trying to determine guilt before punishment with all the belly shaking gusto of true fanatics.

Well, alright. If they want to foist the mantle of Sir Thomas More on me, who am I to argue?

An interesting window into the present, and coming, difficulty faced by the GOP is provided by a quick analysis of the Redstate Slatecard.

Slatecard is a right version of ActBlue, a website that facilitates money donations to political candidates. Redstate's slatecard then is a list of candidates to whom they recommend donating cash.

this is the first installment of a science based weekly post intended to complement Brendan's weekend Art threads. While the topics are not intended to be strictly partisan, I hope to choose topics that have broader implications beyond mere knowledge of the physical action of the universe. Feel free to delve into the politics in comments. :)

Human Chimera

There are a number of metrics which are associated with the concept of identity. Your birthday (and consequently your age), dental records, fingerprints, retinal patterns, and so on, are considered part of a biometric signature that helps distinguish you from everyone else. Indeed they can be said to be the source of your identity, from a legal standpoint.

Promoted by Brendan

After a minor disagreement with Brendan I thought I would dig into Obama's campaign website a bit to see if I was being unfair. I decided to take the first subject on the list of issues and delve into it (assuming it was representative). If it had been some trivial issue I might have moved on to the second, but as it was the first matter he has listed is Civil Rights. That's certainly a hefty topic in recent years.

In case anybody has any interest in how a real materials analysis laboratory works I thought I might write a short primer.

In TV and movies labs often have mystic special tools that can look at anything and tell you everything. If only life worked that way. In real life you have to use a variety of different techniques to look at different materials, different phases of matter, and to determine different kinds of information.

Both my parents worked in biofeedback in different ways. My father was a clinical psychologist at the Menninger Clinic (retired now). My mother works as an occupational therapist (similar to a physical therapist although a somewhat different focus). Since an early age I've been taught simple biofeedback techniques and the underlying psycho-physiological mechanisms. This diary is an explanation of the hows and whys on the topic.

As of this morning I am Oh-ficially a guinea pig in the name of science. Yesterday was the last of the baseline data collection and when I left the doctor's office I was toting my experimental meds, the first of which I took about an hour ago.

Promoted for discussion by Brendan

I know, believe me I know...

but if they were I think they could make a withdrawl from Iraq a winning national security issue. Right now our ability to react to any world events in a military manner is severely constrained by having our resources tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've known no small number of people for whom technology and technological innovation has, essentially, a religious element. Actually it is sort of surprising that I'm not that way myself. My first computer was a TRS-80 (the "trash-80"). In elementary school I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I love sci-fi. I work for a company whose work is based on Moore's Law. I'm trying to teach myself programming right now because I love the capabilities it brings. If anyone should be an adherent to the church of technology ascendant, it should be me.

But I'm not.

Promoted by Brendan

I think this story helps to illustrate what's wrong with the medical insurance industry in this country, and why/how we should change it.

One of Oregon's two Senators, Gordon Smith, is up for re-election this year. I have to admit I'm a bit torn about how to vote on the matter.

Recent conversations on here sparked this diary- that's right, I blame you.

Many many moons ago I discovered a card game called magic. You may have heard of it.

I'd like to say that I find the connecticut state quarter to probably be my favorite:

It wins on all the criteria I can think of. First, the design is unified and attractive. A number of states chose extremely busy designs where they throw various unrelated objects together

Louisiana is an example:

And probably the wors offender for the shotgun school of sybolism:

So Bush has signed an exemption order overriding court ruling that prevented the Navy from conducting exercises involving "medium" frequency sonar near aquatic mammal population.

What does it all mean?

There is a significant amount of evidence that use of certain sonar systems is associated with whales and dolphins losing sense of direction and beaching themselves, often fatally.

So now that we know what the Electoral College is, what do we think about it?

Position

The Electoral College in its current state has two major flaws, which may be ameliorated by changing the system but we are probably better off scrapping it entirely and going to a straight popular vote for president.

flaws in the EC

As it happens I can excerpt one sentence from the article I linked to above which demonstrates both flaws:

In preparation for Debate Night I'm going to be writing two diaries. This one covers what the Electoral College is exactly, while the other is a statement of position.

ORIGINS

The original source of the EC is the Constitution, specifically Article 2 section 1 subsection 3: