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  • 2 min read

Election Meltdown

I was a volunteer for the Democratic Committee in Arlington Mass. They have an impressive operation, just like what you've heard. For example, the systems they used to deploy us volunteers.

I walked in the campaign office, untrained and unschooled. Within minutes I was assigned my very own 'turf'. What is a turf? A turf is a neighborhood of about two to four streets assigned to me and only me.

I was handed a clipboard with a sheaf of sheets describing my turf. The clipboard included:

  • A map of a nearby neighborhood, with a series of dots on certain, but not all houses
  • A list of addresses in street order, first one side and then the other
  • With each address a list of names of people, and an area for notes
  • And a short script explaining what I was expected to do once I knocked on the door

Note that not all houses on the streets are marked. Only those that that their database said were kind of on the fence and with a little nudge might decide to go and vote for Obama and Warren. Supposedly, no definite Republicans nor committed Democrats were on the list. The list had about 50 houses, probably they had figured out that that was the approximate tolerance of a volunteer.

I could tell you similarly impressive stories about their dial-a-voter tool that would allow me to make one or 100 calls from my home computer, specifically targeted at undecided voters or those who might forget to vote, tell me who they were, what to tell them, remind them where to vote and so on. All from a web browser.

Very cool.

Now, in contrast. Here's an article about how Romney's system was developed (Microsoft,) deployed (centralized in Boston) and basically crashed on election day. Here's a nice quote:

"…The end result," Ekdahl wrote, "was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of [get out the vote] efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that…." (from Arstechnica)

  • 2 min read

There’s more to life than Kickstarter (revised)

Everyone (almost) has heard of Kickstarter, right? It's the best known (I think) of the so-called Crowd Funding services. Let's say you have a project - it can be anything - a record, a book, some kind of invention - and you need funding. The crowd funding sites give you a tool to propose your project to everyone on the web and it makes it easy for you to motivate them to donate or fund, and it makes it easy for them to do so. Cool idea.

And like any cool idea, there are lots of variations. I don't want to say that their knockoffs because they all have different flavors, focuses, types of users, size of funding and so on. Here's a helpful list that I came across. The editorial comments are mine.

The following seem to be for smaller and more creative or DIY projects

  • Kickstarter - "Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects"
  • Indiegogo - "People all over the world use our industry-leading platform to raise millions of dollars for all types of campaigns. No matter what you are raising money for, you can start right now with no fee or application process."
  • Fundable - " Fundable is the premier platform to promote and manage your fundraise."

The following ones are more focused on mini-real investments for startups, by accredited investors:

  • CircleUp - "Investing in private consumer products companies"
  • Crowdfunder - "Business Crowdfunding for U.S. startups and small businesses to raise funds through equity, debt, and revenue-based investment."
  • MicroVentures - "MicroVentures is an investment bank for startups. We conduct due diligence on startups and then if approved we help them raise capital from angel investors."
  • Wefunder - "Wefunder highlights some of the best new companies that are tackling important problems, and gives you the opportunity to help them with your time, advice, and investment."
  • EquityNet - "Use EquityNet's equity crowdfunding platform, angel investor network, and business plan software to produce a winning business plan and get funding quickly."

And this last one is more about lending and borrowing, not investing:

  • SoMoLend - "SoMoLend exists to help entrepreneurs and business owners by matching businesses who want to borrow money with investors who want to lend. "

And this one is focused on non-profits and charities and other do-gooder projects:

  • Crowdtilt - "We Want To Rid The World of the Phrase, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we"
  • 1 min read

Check out WriteThatName

I've been using a app called "WriteThatName" which very helpfully scans the emails I receive for signature blocks with people's name. It takes that info and correctly parses it and adds it to my google contacts. Super nice. I recommend it!

  • 2 min read

What happened to Americans Elect?

Over the last year I mentioned "Americans Elect" several times: Americans Elect: Another Opinion, Field Of Dreams: Americans Elect, and Americans Elect - A viable third party?. Without rehashing or rereading my previous posts, basically, AE promised to get their candidate on the ballot in all 50 states by beginning the legal work really early, while driving an online process to select a candidate. This was their promise (from their own site)

Screen Shot 2012 11 05 at 10 30 51 AM

Their web site was very credible and well done. (I looked at it now, and it's still nice, but they essentially concede that they failed without coming out and saying it.) They had Thomas Friedman talking about them, and I was kind of excited about it. But I became a little nervous about it when I saw a distinct conservative lean in the candidates that they were putting up, and very few names I had ever heard about. I wondered whether this was actually a highly sophisticated operation that wasn't really what they were trying to appear to be.

Well it's been a while since I had heard of Americans Elect but I fully expected them to carry through on their mission and promised. But I just looked at the 'sample ballot" for my town, and Americans Elect actually are nowhere to be found.

NewImage

I wonder what happened to them!

  • 3 min read

I was rather proud of the art I designed for a t-shirt this summer. It's cool but of course it's a direct ripoff, um, no, I mean, it was inspired by a well known piece. If I show you my design, below:

JBSlogoonly

You will immediately see the resemblance. You might say, oh that was on a postage stamp:

220px Lovestamp

Or you might say, oh, that was a New York City thing. But you would be remembering wrong:

I Love New York svg

Actually, the stamp was based on an design and sculpture by Robert Indiana. Yes, it was a sculpture first:

200px LOVE Indiana

But you can see another copy of the same sculpture in New York City. I saw it just a few days ago:

LOVE sculpture NY

Actually I didn't take that picture, because if you see it on foot, there is always a line of kids waiting to pose for pictures with it.

Anyway, you can see that my idea for a T-Shirt design was clever but hardly original. I admit to having some guilt about appropriating the design, but also I have been keenly attuned to see who else and where else folks might have borrowed the design.

In Chicago, I saw this:

LI sculp hope 001b

On TV I saw this:

Go On intertitle

In a promotional email from the Institute of Contemporary art I saw this:

GeneralIdea AIDSwallpaper for mc

So, what do you say? How badly did I infringe the copyright of Robert Indiana? Will I be asked to take it down (and destroy the 16 one-of-a-kind t-shirts.) And will I win the case in court, because, "everyone else is copying it"?

  • 2 min read

Epistemological Modesty… What?

I was listening to an interview with David Brooks the other day. The interview was conducted by, of all people, Alec Baldwin on "Here's the Thing", a show I discovered on public radio.

Alec Baldwin is a good actor for a certain kind of role, and can be quite funny, but we have learned things about him which are not very likable at all, right? But who knew that he was very intelligent and quite a good interviewer?

The David Brooks interview is very interesting and enlightening and I recommend it. But this post is mostly to point you to a highfalutin term for something that makes a lot of sense to me:

"The correct position is the one held by self-loathing intellectuals, like Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott and others. These were pointy heads who understood the limits of what pointy heads can know. The phrase for this outlook is epistemological modesty, which would make a fine vanity license plate.

The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance." (from "The American Scene", a blog I stumbled across when googling the phrase "Epistemological Modesty")

Here is the David Brooks quote where I first encountered the phrase:

"David Brooks: Yeah, so I was a lefty and I was assigned a book called "The Reflections of the Revolution in France" by Edmund Burke. And here is a guy saying you really shouldn't think for yourself. The power of reason is weak. What you should do is rely on the just prejudices that have survived the test of time. And I just loathed that book, that idea -- because I thought 'I want to think for myself. I want to come up with my own ideas.'

But as I got older, and especially I became a police reporter covering crime, murders and rapes in the south side of Chicago, I began to see that he's right. Our power of reason is weak. And part of the core of my conservatism is the phrase 'epistemological modesty;' the world is incredibly complicated; we can’t know much about it. We should be very suspicious that we can plan." (from Here's the Thing: David Brooks Transcript)

Anyway, it's kind of dangerous to be linking to blogs I never heard of or references to books that I might loathe, references to intellectuals like Isaiah Berlin, and so on: but who has the time to check all this stuff? I think the underlying concept of Epistemological Modesty is right on. (Now I got to go to look of the definition of epistemological. See u!)

  • 1 min read

History is made

The first personal computer actually made by Microsoft! That's history. They've made mice, and X-boxes, but never desktops, laptops, or tablets.

What impressive me about this computer is that it's not a me-too. Unlike Android , you can't pigeonhole it as just another iPhone knock off. It's fundamentally different user interface is stunning and unique.

Here's the venerable (yeah) Walt Mossberg's review:

"But the tablet I'm using is very different—historic, actually. It's the first personal computer made by Microsoft, a company determined for decades to make only the software driving others' computers." (from Wall Street Journal)

In addition to the computer and the new version of Windows, these computers have a unique keyboard built into soft screen protector. Very cool! Secondly, the tablets have a built in 'kick-stand' for standing it upright. Cool again! Well done Microsoft!

  • 1 min read

Does Mitt Romney control it all?

Another conspiracy story claiming that Romney through several levels of company, controls a company that makes a type of voting machine that is used in many parts of the country:

"Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States. (from "Does the Romney Family Own Your e-Vote?"

I haven 't checked into this to determine if it's true.

And even if it is, it's a bit of a stretch to believe that this indirect corporate 'control' leads to high odds that the vote would be manipulated.