On climbing
I climbed My Nemesis tonight. It’s rated 5.yellow, which I think is supposed to be 5.10. I rate it a 5.11c, but what the hell do I know? I also climbed two reds pretty well (5.11+) and two other yellows.
On reading
I read the first chapter of Catch-22 last night. It’s kind of witty. A lot of the text reminds me of Alice’s Restaurant. Specifically the line
This song is called Alice’s Restaurant, and it’s about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s Restaurant.
On electronic voting
In an electronic voting system, an audit paper trail is intended to allow a manual count of votes in the event of the loss or damage of the electronically stored votes. Why even bother with the electronic system? They SHOULD just have everyone vote again. But they don’t. Why? Because voting is cumbersome. I’m trying to point out that I think the audit paper trail is the wrong solution to the problem.
I think the way NCSU does voting is pretty good. It’s online through a web browser. You login with your user ID and vote. It’s easy and each user ID can only vote once.
The problem with using a system like that is that everyone needs some sort of user ID. You can’t use SSN–that’s just asking for trouble. There would have to be some kind of central repository. Like a world-wide electronic ID organization… but that also screams trouble.
Summary of my opinion: Electronic voting will probably continue to be pointless and silly because there will be an audit paper trail anyway. If the paper voting forms didn’t suck so much there would essentially be no advantage to electronic voting (as is).