[christianity] life in the fast lane

H/T Verlin Martin [Lord Nazh]:

[adelaide] colin's backwater

Adelaide - is Jocko's home really as bad as Sleepy Hollow, Geelong?

More than half of voters in an Adelaide newspaper's online opinion poll agree with Victorian Premier John Brumby - the city is a "backwater".

The poll had attracted more 2090 votes before 10am today, in response to the question: "Is Adelaide a backwater?"

Forty-eight per cent said Adelaide lagged behind the eastern capitals and another 15% agreed it was a backwater but said that was part of the appeal. Twenty-eight per cent said Mr Brumby was "just a jerk", and 6% based their defence on the number of major events on in Adelaide at this time of year.

The remaining 3% were unaccounted for by the News Limited poll.

Mr Brumby sparked a verbal joust yesterday when he said that unless Victoria pushes ahead with channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne will end up a "backwater", like Adelaide.

[stupidity] some people never learn

How's this for stupidity?

A guy breaks a glass in his kitchen and the bits go under the table. He doesn't pick any of the bits up because he's in the middle of some project and then he just forgets until late evening. Barefooted, he then goes to the kitchen for a coffee.

He's still extracting bits next morning.

Just before he goes to work, the jug containing the bit of Christmas tree the love of his life brought him and which was adorned with metal plasticky type baubles - the whole thing decides to fall from the window sill to the kitchen floor and bits of metally plastic go everywhere.

No time, he has to go to work.

Comes home, kicks off shoes and takes off socks - yes, you've got it - goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on. He's still extracting bits this morning.

Yes - it is me. This guy needs training wheels and a nanny!

[u.s. presidential elections] how they work

Honest to G-d truth - overslept this morning and woke up at 9:11 a.m.!

Yesterday, I was explaining the U.S. presidential election system to my Min, as best I could, using yesterday's post but it was woefully inadequate when he started asking curly ones like:

1. Who are these electors? Are they the senators? Who chooses them?

2. What's the difference between a primary and a caucus?

3. Are these primaries and caucuses to select delegates for the Electoral College?

4. Why do they need an Electoral College? Why don't the people elect the President?

He's particularly interested in this because he has his own little election coming up over here and they're thinking of different systems in the future - Westminster, American, French and so on. Hope he doesn't ask me about the French.

So, if you're American, don't laugh at this piece, still in draft form, prepared for the Min and my students but please check it for accuracy. If you're non-American and were as much in the dark as I was, it might be useful. Of course you could look it up yourself but this is more summarized:

As everyone knows, the U.S. system is a series of checks and balances - hence the Constitution, hence the three way split of power - legislative, executive and judicial, hence the presidential election system.

The second thread running throughout is the traditional rivalry between constituent states and the desire to preserve states' rights.

As far as I can see, the presidential election goes through this procedure [reducing it to basics]:

1. Certain candidates emerge through the party system by wheeling and dealing and through attracting cash for the coming process - this happens in the year before the election;

2. The primaries and caucuses are used by the different parties, the two most important being the Democratic and Republican. within the 50 states, plus DC, to select delegates who will go to the party conventions later. Delegates are selected according to the methods the party decides it wants to adopt within that individual state - it's party business, not the state's [see below] - this happens from December onwards and the most important is Super Tuesday in February through March in the election year, when [currently] 22 states will select their delegates to the convention;

3. Conventions are held to formally select a party's candidate for the presidential election later that year but in recent years, they've largely been razamataz and everyone already knows the state of play. Not always though - there've been some surprises over the years. Each delegate attending that convention has basically "pledged" his or her vote to one candidate but only on the first ballot, after which they are "free".

4. Out of this come the various parties' choices for president and vice-president and these are voted for on election day in November by the people of the U.S., who are not voting for the candidate directly but from the people's votes, members of the Electoral College are elected and they vote 41 days later for president. It is therefore their vote and not the people's which elects the president and vp.

5. The whole thing is confirmed later.

Primaries, caucuses and conventions

The two methods for choosing delegates to the national convention are the caucus and the primary.

The Caucus

Caucuses were the original method for selecting candidates but have decreased in number since the primary was introduced in the early 1900's. In states that hold caucuses a political party announces the date, time, and location of the meeting. Generally any voter registered with the party may attend.

At the caucus, delegates are chosen to represent the state's interests at the national party convention. Prospective delegates are identified as favorable to a specific candidate or uncommitted. After discussion and debate an informal vote is taken to determine which delegates should be chosen.

The Primary

In the early twentieth century there was a movement to give more power to citizens in the selection of candidates for the party's nomination. The primary election developed from this reform movement. In a primary election, registered voters may participate in choosing the candidate for the party's nomination by voting through secret ballot, as in a general election.

There are two main types of primaries, closed or open, that determine who is eligible to vote in the primary. In a closed primary, only a registered voter may vote. For example a voter registered as Democratic can vote only in the Democratic primary and a Republican can vote only in the Republican primary.

In an open primary, on the other hand, a registered voter can vote in either primary regardless of party membership. The voter cannot, however, participate in more than one primary. A third less common type of primary, the blanket primary, allows registered voters to participate in all primaries.

In addition to these differences, there are differences in whether the ballot lists candidate or delegate names. The presidential preference primary is a direct vote for a specific candidate. The voter chooses the candidate by name. The second method is more indirect, giving the voter a choice among delegate names rather than candidate names. As in the caucus, delegates voice support for a particular candidate or remain uncommitted.

In some states a combination of the primary and caucus systems are used. The primary serves as a measure of public opinion but is not necessarily binding in choosing delegates. Sometimes the Party does not recognize open primaries because members of other parties are permitted to vote.

Further notes on primaries and caucuses

Each state is given a number of delegates by the party machines, proportional to the state's population and each state has its own method of choosing delegates.

The Democrats use a higher ratio than the Republicans, which means they have more delegates overall. So from Colorado, the Democrats selected 61 delegates and the Republicans selected 40.

Some give all their delegates to the winner, some break them down by districts, and others dole them out depending on the percentage of the total vote each candidate receives.

Nowadays, all delegates are "pledged" to a candidate before they are elected to go to the convention. However, these pledges don't last past the first round and, after that, delegates are free agents. Prior to this, delegates elected on behalf of one candidate often went to the convention and made deals with one of the other candidates, essentially making the primaries meaningless.

Now, with pledged delegates, it is the conventions that are probably out of date as it has been a long time since there was even a second ballot at either major convention. (Compare this to the 19th century where at one point the Whig convention went through over 250 ballots to elect a majority candidate).

So when Bush won Colorado, what that means is that he got most of CO's delegates to the GOP convention to represent him.

The conventions are effectively over when one candidate gets over half of the total national delegates, which gives him a majority at the convention. That happened in March for both Bush & Gore, so the primaries after March didn't matter very much.

The delegates from each state meet at the convention to vote for the candidate they represent. They have a big party, wear silly hats, and hold up signs saying things like "Colorado for McCain".

Remember, the delegates determined in the primaries are committed to vote for their candidate only on the first ballot at the convention. After that, they can vote for anyone. McCain "released" his delegates to vote for Bush so that Bush could have a unanimous vote.

At the convention, the party delegates also write the official party platform.

The whole delegate system was intended to replace the "smoke-filled rooms" where powerful members of the party secretly chose a candidate. The Constitution doesn't talk about how party nominees are chosen, so every party can decide for itself. Smoke-filled rooms and secret processes are perfectly legal; we just use this primary process because people like it better.

A caucus, on the other hand, is a bunch of people of a political party who show up at a party meeting and decide, by whatever system they want to use, who their choice is.

The Republican Party uses a winner-take-all system in which the delegate or candidate with the most votes in a state's primary or caucus wins the right to be represented by ALL of the party's delegates at the national convention.

Federal law doesn't dictate how states choose their delegates.

The term caucus apparently comes from an Algonquin word meaning "gathering of tribal chiefs," and the main crux of the caucus system today is indeed a series of meetings.

In Iowa, the caucuses themselves are local party precinct meetings where registered Republicans and Democrats gather, discuss the candidates and vote for their candidate of choice for their party's nomination.

The Republican caucus voting system in Iowa is relatively straightforward: You come in, you vote, typically through secret ballot, and the percentages of the group supporting each candidate decides what delegates will go on to the county convention.

The Democrats have a more complex system -- in fact, it's one of the most complex pieces of the entire presidential election. In a typical caucus, registered democrats gather at the precinct meeting places (there are close to 2,000 precincts statewide), supporters for each candidate have a chance to make their case, and then the participants gather into groups supporting particular candidates (undecided voters also cluster into a group).

Again - the whole business is entirely according to how the party wants it to be - the government doesn't come into it officially.

The Electoral College

It may surprise you to know that Russia has a more direct presidential election process than the United States. In the United States, a system called the Electoral College periodically allows a candidate who receives fewer popular votes to win an election.

In fact, there have been several presidential candidates who won the popular vote, but lost the election because they received fewer electoral votes. In Russia, where no such system exists, the candidate who receives a majority of popular votes wins the election.

Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go to local voting booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and vice president of their country. But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote and what the people actually voted for was not the president and vp but for the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism that was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise, some politicians believing a purely popular election was too reckless, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.

Each state has a number of electors equal to [but not actually comprising] the number of its U.S. senators plus the number of its U.S. representatives. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538 electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and three who represent Washington, D.C., as allowed by the 23rd Amendment.

On the Monday following the second Wednesday in December, the electors of each state meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate, who on January 6th opens and reads the votes in the presence of both houses of Congress. The winner is sworn into office at noon on January 20th.

Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in that particular state. Some states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote, while other electors are bound by pledges to a specific political party. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, and there is no federal law or Constitutional provision against it.

In most presidential elections, a candidate who wins the popular vote will also receive the majority of the electoral votes, but this is not always the case. There have been four presidents who have won an election with fewer popular votes than their opponent but more electoral votes.

In 2000, for example, Al Gore had over half a million votes more than George W. Bush but after recount controversy in Florida and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bush was awarded the state by 537 popular votes. Like most states, Florida has a "winner takes all" rule. This means that the candidate who wins the state by popular vote also gets all of the state's electoral votes. Bush became president with 271 electoral votes.

Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win the election, so George W. Bush won the 2000 election by one electoral vote. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of Representatives by virtue of the 12th Amendment. The House then selects the president by majority vote with each state delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates who received the most electoral votes.

Here are the two elections that were decided by the House of Representatives:

1801: Thomas Jefferson

1825: John Quincy Adams.

The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her the 270 electoral votes plus. It's a numbers game.

Nomination of electors

If you're wondering how someone becomes an elector, it turns out it's not the exact same process across the board. It can actually differ from state to state. In general, though, the two most common ways are:

• The elector is nominated by his or her state party committee (perhaps to reward many years of service to the party).
• The elector "campaigns" for a spot and the decision is made during a vote held at the state's party convention.

Qualifications to be an Elector

• He or she cannot be a Representative or Senator;
• He or she cannot be a high-ranking U.S. official in a position of "trust or profit";
• He or she cannot be someone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the U.S.

Usually, electors are people who are highly politically active in their party (be it Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Republican ...) or connected somehow to the political arena, such as: activists, party leaders, elected officials of the state and even people who have ties (political and/or personal) to the Presidential candidates, themselves. Potential elector candidates are nominated by their state political parties in the summer before the Election Day. The U.S. Constitution allows each state to choose its own means for the nomination of electors.

In some states, the Electors are nominated in primaries the same way that other candidates are nominated. Other states nominate electors in party conventions. All states require the names of all Electors to be filed with the Secretary of State (or equivalent) at least a month prior to election day.

Hope that clears it up.

[suddenly] the one word it's best not to hear

I like this one. Would you do it?

Something to cheer us all up on this snowbound evening. :)

Donne should have written: "No man is an island, especially in Russia." Perhaps he would have, if he'd lived here.

Networks mean survival here and the strongest network is family. I'm just astounded that I have to actually argue with western blogfriends that the family is the best available unit when such a question is not even a question in Russia.

Tragedy can hit suddenly - completely life-altering tragedy - this is so the world over - but in the west, despite even the NHS debacle, there is an infrastructure which kicks in, a safety net. Here there is none. The derelict, the streetkid, he's not picked up by a hospice outreach programme, there is no lifeline to call.

He simply dies.

Or she goes into prostitution. The real westerner simply cannot get his mind round this. But surely, in these days of improved medicine, mobile phones and so on? No. We are, all of us, living on the edge each day and that is why, when I don't hear from my friend for two days or he from me, fear kicks in. Not anger, not resentment - it's far worse - fear. Especially in winter.

An aspect of this is that the melodramatic and unnecessary drama then becomes the living reality - and it does do this, it really does.

The Russians are blunt because they must be to survive and any westerner living here must also be so, otherwise he goes down. There is no planning and speculation is a pointless exercise because tomorrow might be your last. It's in every aspect of life. More spuriously, if you see a pair of shoes you like and you wait till tomorrow to decide, they won't be there.

Faith takes on a meaning all its own, the longer you live here close to the streets and markets.

The exhortation of Christ that he will come like a thief in the night, at a time no one expects, is immediately applicable to this country. Make sure you've taken care of all the details before you go out each day. At this moment, the trouble is with my friend and his family. Tomorrow it might be me. There are always two or three issues with everyone - I have mine - but they usually stay relatively benign, dormant.

Then a conjunction of circumstances suddenly renders two of the three malignant and that's your life blighted. It's in this context that I approach cyber-issues as less than life and death, given that I'm due for a fall of my own in 2010. Like wars, it's already been arranged and you just take it as it comes.

So the only thing is to utilize the remaining time, to get your novels, your small legacy, up and running, take care of property matters and then, like any batsman in cricket, just keep stroke making until they finally get you.

After all, everyone has to go sometime.

I like this one too but it requires patience. That's about the amount of snow we have but not the enemy shooting at us. At this point. :)

What´s the Difference Between Us and Them?

Warning: Politically incorrect post ahead. All who may be offended best not to read!

That was the question posed by one of my professors during the intensive January mini-course. We were talking about fish. In Spanish, there are two words for fish: pez (when the fish is in the sea) y pescado (when it´s on your plate). In my seven (soon to be eight) years of speaking the language, I always have messed up things like this. There are also words for chicken when it´s in the barnyard and on your plate, well, you get the idea.

So, I messed up pez y pescado. My teacher looked at me and laughed, ¨Matt, you know the difference between us (Spaniards) and the Japanese?¨
¨What is it?¨ I aksed.
¨We eat pescado, they eat pez.¨

One of the things I truly love about Spain, they are brutally honest and very politically incorrect. They say what they think. If you aren´t warned about it beforehand, it can be quite offending. For instance, two Saturdays ago, I was going to a nightclub with a Spaniard friend of mine. Before leaving, my landlady suggested I change my jacket.

Another thing I love about Spain are the TV ads. Here are three of my favorites:




Renault´s Twingo Ad put to classical music




Seat (a Spanish car company) ad for the Altea XL put to the great Civil War song ¨When Johnny Comes Marching Home.¨ I asked my landlady about all the English language songs used in the ads. Her response was, ¨Well, we´re quite Americanized.¨



Finally, my personal favorite, a Vicks Nasal Spray ad. Notice at the end the part that says ¨Read the instructions of this medicine and consult the pharmicist." That is one part of Spain´s TV ads I don´t like. Every, and I mean every (without exception), medicine ad has to have that at the end of the ad, as required by law. It gets quite old when three or four medicine ads happen in a row (sadly, that has happened several times in the past few days). I mentioned to my landlady´s son, if I were to go to Hell, that would be my punishment, seeing that screen over and over again. Not a second after I said that came another ad. He looked at me and I said, with a solemn face, ¨Why??????¨

Alright, that´s all for now. I might not be able to post again for a while because the computer I use right now has weak net capabilities and Internet cafés, while cheap, aren´t high on my list. Until next time!

[report card] enter name here

Report Card

Opportunities: Excellent

Arrogance: Overweening

Sense of responsibility: Nil

Charisma: Outstanding

Gift of the gab: Professional

Talent: Low

Trades on: Greed of the gullible

Result: Disaster

[cry inequality] or else do something about it

Dave J quotes M.N.Marger:

The power of a dominant class or ethnic group is not simply the power of force but also the power to propound and sustain an ideology that legitimizes the system of inequality.

In reality, however, the opportunity structure is hardly equal, and the dominant values of individualism, competition, and achievement favor those who are wealthy and can easily avail themselves of the opportunities for success.

This simplistic analysis is very much that of my student days when, at 20, I looked around, saw inequality everywhere and wanted it all swept away and a new utopia put in its place. We were young, we could do whatever we wanted if we all banded together. The analysis suited a mind susceptible to simple solutions but considered itself to be sophisticated and all-seeing - that was me at 20.

A detractor the other day called me "adolescent" and he might have been close to the truth because I do still think we can change some things. Some, in a limited way and for some time.

My initial comment at Dave's was:

There's an element of truth on both sides. The inequality is so ancient that the central decision makers are better educated, housed, clothed and fed and operate at a higher level in all ways except spiritually. This is wrong but intergenerationally perpetuated.

Also:

The spiritual nature of much of the leadership, itself a subset of the old and new money, is atrophied - there is no need to exercise the spirit when the primary purpose is to protect wealth - and pragmatic people tend to be the most unspiritual and therefore tend, by degrees, to the level of the beast.

Beautiful example here in our town is of a porcine wheeler-dealer, [so he projects himself], living in my friend's housing block, who parks his car in the middle of the lane and conducts aggressive deals by mobile phone, blocking everyone around, before going up to his flat for a vodka. Zero concern for anyone else whatsoever - voice harsh, cruel piggy eyes and so on.

On the other hand there are most certainly groups and ethnicities that when they do have the opportunity, do not grasp it with open arms and work their butts off to escape their plight but instead adopt a lazy, handout mentality, a carping "everyone discriminates against me so I'll sit on my butt and watch TV, then go out later and mug someone because nobody give's a rat's a-s- about me" approach to life.

So yes, it does quite often come down to individuals but also to a mentality which feels sorry for itself without actively seeking solutions, a mentality which leans on the state as the provider without understanding how that state sustains itself in the first place - by taking earnings from people who work for those earnings, give or take a few hundred thousand criminals.

Moving tangentially into the world of sport, there is a piece in Cricinfo which sums it up:

"What they needed was a solid innings from Lara. What they got was someone who seemed not to care."

By way of explanation, this was offered:

A story broke in India's Outlook magazine claiming that immediately after the game Lara had told the Kenyans that losing to them was not as bad as losing to a team like South Africa. An unnamed source was quoted as hearing him say: "You know, this white thing comes into the picture. We can't stand losing to them."

From the Koori to the PAC, it's the same story. Utilize the fashionable catchcry "racism" [others use feminism, ageism, every -ism under the sun] to justify your own failure when the truth is that there are people who are simply lackadaisical and expect handouts, on one hand and there are people with a Calvinistic work ethic who actually succeed, on the other.

It is possible to succeed in western societies like Britain and the U.S.

We had Ugandans and Kenyans at our London school and they were not sons of rich princes - they grew up in New Cross and Brixton but their parents and ultimately themselves, wanted to be lifted out of the mire and into a mentality of hard-working success. It's rubbish that, in these societies, a person can't succeed.

Admittedly, most will never grasp the reins of power but that's our plight too because power is all tied up by cabalists like Common Purpose, the CFR, the Bilderbergers and so on but that's hardly the issue mooted in the first quote in this post.

In the end, it comes down to another simplistic rule:

The moment you start moaning is the moment you stop succeeding.

[encryption] thou shalt have nothing private

The documents on my computer are encrypted but:

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was changed last autumn to allow police to force people to hand over passwords or keys to encrypted data. Refusal to do so is a criminal offence carrying a penalty of two years in jail, or up to five years if the issue concerns national security.

And yet there is still a slim hope:

The government's new powers to force the handover of encryption keys could be vulnerable to a legal challenge under the Human Rights Act's guarantee to a fair trial. People who refuse keys or passwords face up to five years in jail.

The problem with this iniquitous act is that it allows the government, e.g. the ODPM, to decide whom they consider undesirables and can then break in and arrest the ordinary citizen along with the genuine terrorist threat - all swept into a waterboarding prison under the charge of sedition.

Section 22 says:

It is necessary on grounds falling within this subsection to obtain communications data if it is necessary-

(a) in the interests of national security;
(b) for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder;
(c) in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom;
(d) in the interests of public safety;
(e) for the purpose of protecting public health;
(f) for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition, contribution or charge payable to a government department;
(g) for the purpose, in an emergency, of preventing death or injury or any damage to a person's physical or mental health, or of mitigating any injury or damage to a person's physical or mental health; or
(h) for any purpose (not falling within paragraphs (a) to (g)) which is specified for the purposes of this subsection by an order made by the Secretary of State.

[super tuesday] february 5th

The theory

In the United States, Super Tuesday commonly refers to the Tuesday in early February or March of a presidential election year when the greatest number of states hold primary elections to select delegates to national conventions at which each party's presidential candidates are officially nominated. More delegates can be won on Super Tuesday than on any other single day of the primary calendar, and accordingly, candidates seeking the presidency traditionally must do well on this day to secure their party's nomination.

What to watch for

Although the results are reported by state, district results are quite important:

Each district typically has three to five delegates to award. A candidate needs at least 15% of the vote in the district to get any delegates. So in a race where only Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama meet that threshold, they are likely to divide the delegates evenly if there are an even number of delegates available. That makes the districts with an odd number of delegates the most valuable, because the winner will automatically get an extra.

The 2008 race

But Mr. Obama heads into the 22-state showdown as the underdog. The Illinois senator trails Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by large margins in polls in most of the big states voting Feb. 5. And he lacks the time or resources to campaign intensively in many of those far-flung races to close the gaps.

"Clinton is harvesting her long-term campaign investment," says Cole Blease Graham Jr., a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. "The Democratic establishment seems to be more behind her."

So, despite Obama's successes, the Lizard Queen appears to have done the number crunching and is likely to emerge the victor. This would surely be a result favoured by the Republicans as her divisiveness might just tip the balance their way.

On the other hand, the allegedly most corrupt machine politician of modern times might just have the numbers to head the U.S.A., come 2009. Lord have mercy on America and the world.