Erik Emery Hanberg

Wherein Erik Defends the Electoral College

2008-10-15T09:27:00.001-07:00

The electoral college is much maligned. No one seems to like it (including my friend Joe) and yet I'm always defending it. Way back in 2003-ish it was a hot button topic on the Carleton alumni listserv, and I was pretty much the only one sticking up for it there, too.

Here's the thing: the electoral college is safe. It protects a minority (in this case, voters in states with a small population) from the tyranny of a majority (voters in populous states, like me). Giving the minority a disproportionate say in national affairs might feel antithetical to our democracy, but in truth it is part of our foundation (our bicameral Congress gives a disproportionate representation to rural states, as well, but we never hear of people trying to change Senate proportioning).

The electoral college not only protects rural states, but it functionally protects all states. For example, without an electoral college a candidate who runs on the "Only Tax the Western States" platform has a slim majority of voters on the East Coast and could in theory win on that platform.

But, you say, he could win on that platform using the electoral college, too. Possibly. But unlikely. The net effect of the electoral college encourages candidates to compete for 51% of the vote in a state. This affects how the candidate outlays campaigning and resources, but most importantly affects their positions and platform as well.

To win the Presidency, a candidate needs a series of small majorities. 51% here, 51% there. This drives both parties to the middle. And that gets me back to the electoral college being safe. It keeps the parties fighting toward the middle, and that's a very good way to protect the country from extremes at either end of the political spectrum.

As a Gore '00 supporter, I realize that I'm advocating for a system that screwed over my candidate. But I seriously believe that the electoral college is a net positive for the country.

I am seriously seriously distrustful of the changed laws in Maryland and other states to give their electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote, no matter how their state votes. Wait till the state votes one way, but their electoral college votes go another way, and see how the voters there feel.

That said, I think that the electoral college does need some reform. It was a really bad idea to set the electoral college at 538 voters, because things can end in a 269-269 tie. I think the proposal to give the winner of the popular vote 11 extra electoral college votes is sound. It removes any threat of a tie, since it changes the total to 549 electoral college votes, and it preserves the current structure without too much meddling. The less populous states are still protected, it still encourages building many small majorities, and it's enough so that in the 3 elections where the popular vote and the electoral college vote diverged it would put them back in sync (the 1876, 1888, and 2000 elections).

Keep the electoral college. Just add 11 more votes.

Where we get our power

2008-10-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

While I'm on the subject of the Tacoma power grid, I thought I'd share some info I found while browsing their website:

Only about 1% of Tacoma's power comes from non-renewable energy sources. With just over 90% coming from hydro-power. TPU has dams on the Cowlitz and Nisqually rivers fed by the Cascades, and dams on the Skykomish and Wynoochee rivers fed by the Olympics.

We can go round and round on whether hydro power is "green" power because of what it does to rivers and salmon, etc. But if the goal is to harnass energy that will keep giving and giving, hydro power is a good one.

That said, it's not foolproof. The Nisqually River is fed by the Nisqually Glacier. And if Al Gore has taught us anything, it's that we can't always rely on glaciers to stick around. I'm a little glib, but still ... the Nisqually Glacier has been retreating substantially. (a couple links if you're interested). Though it hasn't been retreating like those in Montana, I should note. There, the USGS thinks that by 2030 Glacier National Park will have lost all its glaciers.

No glacier = no river = no power for dams. That's a little simplistic, but not much. 90% of our power comes from glaciers and snowmelt. It's best if it sticks around.

A New Grid

2008-10-13T21:24:00.001-07:00

I can't recommend enough Thomas Friedman's vision of a new power grid that he spells out late in his recent book Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

He makes you care about power grids the way Michael Pollan makes you care about corn.

It was kind of funny to read the section after my post yesterday about burying poles. I think I've already changed my mind. Rather than spend all the time burying the power, I would choose to work on reforming the local power grid along the lines of what Friedman's proposing, with burying power lines possibly as a side benefit rather than an end goal.

It also dovetails well with the Google Clean Energy 2030 plan I mentioned last week. Both that plan and Thomas Friedman lay the case pretty well: it's not about adding more renewable energy, it's about transmission. How we get the power is as important as where it comes from in many ways. Not just how we get it, but how we save it.

One of the ideas (among many) would be the creation of a smart grid that interacts with our home. The PUD would give us a smart box the same way the cable company gives us a box. That box would virtually participate in the fluctuating electricity market. Right now we pay for all electricity on a flat fee per kilowatt hour. But why not transform that so that we can choose to run our appliances when electricity is cheap? What if I could load the dishwasher and have it set to start only when power's cheap and not overloading the grid (ie--late at night)? Or what if a parking garage could cover its roof with solar panels and sell the power back into the grid? What if the electric cars parked and plugged in at the garage could sell the cheap power they purchased at night back into the grid when power is needed?

I'm extremely simplifying some of the ideas, but suffice to say they are new this blogger's eyes. Very interesting stuff.

I'll get into more of his book once Ive finished it. But for now, I highly recommend it.

(image by flickr user jesse and used under the Creative Commons license)

Another stimulus check? Nope.

2008-10-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Apparently Congress is weighing another stimulus package to pump money into the economy.

I was all set to post here that I was skeptical. While I would be happy to get a check, I would probably put it into savings or something not very consumer-y, as the check writers would prefer.

So I liked the idea put out today. From Reuters:

The United States needs a new economic stimulus plan that pumps billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and budget relief for cash-strapped state and local governments, Democratic lawmakers said on Sunday.

I thought Matthew Yglesias had some good thoughts on the plan:

What’s happening to states is that when the economy slides into recession, tax revenues fall. At the same time, the demand for Medicaid and other safety net services rises. This creates budget deficits. Deficits that states are not allowed to run. So state government responds to downturns by cutting back spending, which makes the downturns worse.

The focus on infrastructure projects is welcome, too. It puts people to work, it gets bridges repaired and levies shored up. Writing another check seemed like a bad idea, but I like this one a lot better.

More on Tacoma power poles

2008-10-12T22:24:00.000-07:00

So if we're not allowed to post signs on power poles ... why not just bury them? (the poles, not the signs)

Houston is having the debate right now. After Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike last month, that city is seriously questioning whether they need to upgrade their power grid and burying most of their power lines. After Tacoma's storms--1996's ice storm and some of our recent wind storms--should we think about burying our power?

Buried power lines would mean massive power failures would become much less frequent. (I'm of course also in favor of making the streets much better looking.)

Of course, there are some big problems with burying the power lines. Like ... oh, lots and lots of money. Installation is more expensive. Possibly 2 to 4 times more expensive. And maintenance is more expensive, too. But that might be offset by the money we currently spend recovering from storms and the productivity lost during long power outages. I also don't know how buried power lines would differ from overhead lines when it comes to earthquakes (the most likely disaster we're going to see in Tacoma).

So I'm not saying I think it's worthwhile to spend crazy millions to bury Tacoma's power lines. But if they are safe--or safer--during earthquakes and would prevent debilitating power problems during winter storms, then it's a conversation worth having.

(image by flickr user metropolitician and used under the Creative Commons license)

UPDATE: Morgan e-mails a happy note:

You spoke too soon! It's already happening. Under-grounding has been a city "priority" for decades. Some of the new developments are under-grounded. To the best of my knowledge, the city has only started to actually underground our older neighborhoods. Since the focus is on views, they are under-grounding over near the Proctor District if you want to go see. The city probably has info online- I'm not sure of the exact area.

Red Sumac

2008-10-12T18:55:00.001-07:00

One of the things I noticed about our long trips to and from Madison is the red sumac along the side of the highways.

I don't think I'd ever noticed it in the Twin Cities before but the beautiful read stood out very brightly against the grass and the trees.

Here's an example of the sumac taken from another blog. It is apparently green throughout the summer but in the fall turns this brilliant red.

Made the highways absolutely beautiful.

Weekend in Madison

2008-10-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

We've had a great time exploring Madison for the weekend, but we must start the 6 hour drive back to St. Louis.

This is my first time to the city. Mary's been raving about it for a long time and after a couple days here I would agree that it is a very cool place. Much of downtown is alive and bustling in an incredible way. Of course, it helps that they have a University with 50,000 undergrad and grad students. Also, Saturday was game day for the Badgers and their 80,000 seat stadium was sold to capacity, which created incredible crowds downtown before the game (a 48-7 blowout by Penn State, by the way. Ouch).

Still, we found great bars and places to hang out Friday night and walked through much of downtown Saturday. We saw a couple Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, the beautiful Wisconsin capitol building, and the awesome State Street.

I'll post some picturs when I get them off the camera. Very fun weekend!

Thinking about Dvorak (the keyboard, not the composer)

2008-10-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

Logistically speaking, QWERTY keyboards are not set up for fast typing. The most common letters are E T A O N R I S H (although that can change depending on topic/writer/style/etc). But on a QWERTY keyboard, only two of those letters are under your eight fingers in the "home" position, the A and the S.

Studies have shown that rearranging the keyboard to put the most common letters in the most easily accessed position, and alternating common letters between hands based on the most common letter arrangements, can significantly speed up typing.

Witness the "Dvorak" keyboard:

(image taken from Wikipedia article on Dvorak)

The creator, August Dvorak, invented this layout at the University of Washington in the 1930s. It was using this layout that the fastest typist set her world records (Barbara Blackburn, who typed 150 words per minute for 50 minutes, and has typed as fast as 212 wpm over short bursts).

For about 5 minutes this weekend I toyed with the idea of undertaking the grueling task of trying to learn the Dvorak keyboard. All computers now have the ability to accept Dvorak input and there are skins that can be put over keyboards to match the keys up. So the technology wasn't going to be the problem.

Here was my thinking:

In any given year, I figure I type more than a couple hundred thousand words (between my blog, articles, my novel last year, and work-related writing). I tested my typing speed online and I'm currently clocking in at 90 wpm when I'm transcribing text. But of course I don't actually write anywhere near that fast. So let's say that I write at an average 70 wpm. At that rate, it takes 2857 minutes to write 200,000 words, or 47 hours.

If learning the Dvorak keyboard made me 50% faster--probably unlikely, considering that it would put me at 112.5 wpm which seems pretty high--then I could write the same amount of words in 29 hours, a savings of 18 hours in an average year.

And that's when I gave up on learning Dvorak. Because I've been typing with QWERTY since I sat down in 7th grade and decided I wanted to write a novel. I have no idea how long re-learning how to type would take, but my hunch is that it would take many many many hours and would thus take years and years for me to recoup the time.

Plus, I get the feeling that what's really slowing down my writing is not my typing but my brain, trying to come up with what to write.

Anyone out there using Dvorak? I'd be interested to hear how you learned it, or why you decided to give it a go.

How to lose friends and alienate people

2008-10-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

We saw this movie this week with Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst. It was good ... in spite of itself.

Some of the gags just fell absolutely flat, were unnecessary, or just awkward (and not in the good Ricky Gervais / The Office sort of way).

But as a whole the movie had a lot to offer. There were some very funny scenes to offset the bad ones. The characters were engaging, even Kirsten Dunst who can frequently bug me. And it even had something to say about celebrity and the worship of it.

It actually made me want to check out the book the movie was based on by Toby Young.

If you (like Mary's dad when he agreed to see the movie) have no idea what movie I'm talking about ... here's the preview.

What gives with St. Louis coffee shops?

2008-10-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned yesterday, we've been working out of coffee shops in St. Louis.

But on Tuesday we struck out 2 for 2. One had no wifi, the other's wifi was broken. So yesterday we called around before we went out. Turns out that wireless internet is not a standard for coffee shops here in St. Louis. Even those near universities and colleges.

I was very surprised. Every coffee shop I can think of in Tacoma has wireless Internet from Tully's to Starbucks to every independent place I can think of: One Heart, Metro Coffee, Black Water, Mandolin, Bertolino's, Commencement Bay Coffee, all the Forzas ...

Is there a coffee shop I'm missing that doesn't have wifi (free or otherwise).

Speaking of signs on posts ...

2008-10-09T17:31:00.001-07:00

Kevin's post on advertising on Tacoma posts earlier today touched on a subject I've been thinking about for a while. In Tacoma, it's against code to post fliers and ads on publicly-owned signs and poles. Why is this the case? Is it really a good idea?

I've been on Capitol Hill a few times in the last few months and every time I notice how covered their sign posts are:

Why is this such a bad thing? When I see this, it looks like I'm in a city where there are a bunch of things happening. Why not allow people to use power poles in downtown Tacoma or the neighborhood districts to advertise events and program?

Everyone loves when Beautiful Angle posters show up on poles (which is technically a code violation). Why not just drop the pretense and open up the poles?

There aren't enough "what's happening" boards to be as helpful as advertising on the poles. I really don't see what's so bad about having poles like this on the street. They don't look bad to me. And they'd actually convey useful information to the pedestrian and help event-promoters get even more people on the street.

Tribune tackles Vampirism

2008-10-09T13:13:00.001-07:00

A paragraph I never expected to read on the Tribune's website (and yet, there it is):

The easiest way to sum up the modern day vampire is by saying that, broadly speaking, they are incapable of producing enough energy of their own and so have to "steal" it from others. Now this is an extremely simplistic statement and many would disagree with it on many angles, but it's a starting point for trying to understand the vampyric condition. There are varying types of vampires but these we will deal with elsewhere, for now a brief overview is all that is required.

Unknown to most readers--and from my experience, many Tribune staffers as well--there is a sprawling, wild "community" section of the Tribune's site. Anyone can sign up and start blogging on the Tribune's website in the section. And the vast majority of posts I see in the section are like the one above.

What is this section doing on the Tribune? I've alluded to it before and I'm going to say it again: "Heaven help the reader that stumbles in to this area." And if heaven doesn't help you, you may want to load up on this:

(image by flickr user foxypar4 and used under the Creative Commons license)

casual face starburst

2008-10-09T11:51:00.001-07:00

Yes, those would appear to be three nonsensically-combined words. But everytime I hear the name "Calvin Goings" (as I did on Exit133 today) those are the three words that come to mind.

Why? Because in my Gmail preview, those are first three words I see whenever I get a campaign email from Goings.

Here's the screenshot from my inbox (with other emails blurred out):

Perhaps you are wondering why every e-mail begins with those words? As a security measure, Gmail sometimes doesn't show all the images in an e-mail, it will just show the "alt" name of the file. This is the email Goings wants me to see:

But because he has--hilariously--named his picture "casual face" Gmail picks it up and displays it to me.

I've been thinking that my vote will go to Pat McCarthy (here's her interview on Exit133 if you're interested) so I was tempted to unsubscribe from his emails. But every time they show I smile because I find them so funny. I think it's something about the nonsensical combination that gets me. Plus I always hope that he'll switch it up, and maybe someday I'll receive "professional face starburst" in the mail.

Lots of laughs

2008-10-09T09:01:00.001-07:00

I love Google Reader for many reasons, but one of them is that it assembles a bunch of sites for me that make me laugh. I get my comics through Reader (Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine), sleeveface (where people put record covers in front of their faces (here's a good example) and of course--my absolute favorite ... FailBlog.org.

Nothing gets me going like three or four good "Fails" in a row. It's like the Far Side that way. They build on each other.

Although this one stands pretty well on its own:

Cracks. Me. Up.

No coworking in St. Louis

2008-10-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Since we have no Suite133 here in St. Louis, Mary and I have been traversing all over as we work out of coffee shops. So far we've sampled three shops in three different neighborhoods.

Our favorite so far has been The Grind near SLU. That has a lot to do with the fact it was the only place we've gone so far with working Internet. Although we also like the old-farmhouse feel and the multiple stories of tables.

Tomorrow we'll be back there for the afternoon, I think, but we'll be trying something new in the morning.

My other favorite stop so far: Subterranean Books in the Loop. A great bookstore!

Modern conveniences

2008-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I still marvel at what technology can do. Usually when it involves doing things over distances.

Like wireless printing. Even though I've had my computer set up to wireless print for years, I still love hearing the sound of the printer whirring up in the other room.

Or remote desktop. Like today. From St. Louis I logged on to my mom's laptop in Tacoma and got her SMTP settings fixed on her mail program. Now she can send e-mails! How awesome was that? I know that using remote desktops has been around about as long as wireless printing. But sometimes it still catches me off guard.

And it makes me wonder what crazy things are coming next.

Tribune thoughts

2008-10-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

Andrew Fry has some very good thoughts about what's going on with the Tribune and newspapers in general in a post yesterday.

He also links to a flash video about "Googlezon" the hypothetical merging of Googlezon and Amazon and the "news wars" of 2010 produced a few years ago. Some of it is very relevant. Some points they get wrong (I think the producers of the video are very wrong on the New York Times, which has shown a remarkable understanding of the web and how it works since they unlocked their archives.)

But the threat of Googlezon is one that newspapers need to seriously consider.

"That one" or "Yes/No"

2008-10-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

I really do think that "the moment" that will last will be McCain's use of "that one." But, if I had to pick a runner up "moment," it would be McCain's very good response to the yes/no on Russia.

I think that illustrates how much the debate was about McCain instead of Obama, just like last week's VP debate was about Palin not Biden.

Please sign in

2008-10-07T15:17:00.000-07:00

A quick housekeeping note. Commenters may notice that the anonymous option is no longer active. I would prefer the system that allows for just an e-mail address, a URL, and a handle, but Blogger doesn't allow for that.

Plus, too many people were having trouble getting comments up with the image captchas and after taking that off, I started noticing some spam coming through. And also I'm tired of anonymous commenters. Use your name or use your online handle, people!

Commenting now requires having a profile with either Google, Livejournal, Wordpress, Typepad, AIM, or OpenID. Most people have one of these, but if you would like to comment and don't have one of these profiles, I would recommend creating a Google account or using OpenID.

Thanks!

(image by flickr user aliciayeah and used under the Creative Commons license)

Google says: Clean Energy 2030

2008-10-07T14:52:00.001-07:00

It's quite a plan.

Google has put together a proposal to cut fossil fuel-based electricity generation by 88% and vehicle oil consumption by 38% by 2030 (among many other goals).

They summarize:

The financial bottom line: Although the cost of the Clean Energy 2030 proposal is significant (about $4.4 trillion in undiscounted 2008 dollars), savings are even greater ($5.4 trillion), returning a net savings of $1.0 trillion over the 22-year life of the plan.

That works out to roughly $45 billion saved/year. The proposal is striking in it's lack of audacity.

For example, they want to have hybrids make up 90% of new car sales by 2030 so that they make up 42% of the cars on the road. In 22 years that seems relatively easy, especially since hybrids are in demand right now.

They want wind energy to grow from 20 Gigawatts to 380 GW by 2030, an increase of about 14.25% a year (which is actually slower than wind is currently growing). Not only that, but the Department of Energy estimates that growth would create another 476,000 US jobs.

The more you get into the numbers of their proposal, the most feasible it looks. It's a dense read, but there's a summary at the top if you want to glance at it.

The benefits are immense--from savings to job creation to reducing energy needs, it's pretty dang awesome.

Yay for Google! ... I say as I write using a Google blogging template about a post I found using a Google feed reader with my Google email in a cafe I found using Google maps ... All hail the Google.

(image by flickr user dannysullivan and used under the Creative Commons license)

Snow Falling on Ski Hills

2008-10-07T14:16:00.001-07:00

I haven't been on a pair of skis since January 2007.

That said, I still get some chills when I read about the first snowfall. This was taken at Crystal Mountain today and posted at the Tribune:

More pictures of snow at Crystal on the Adventure Guys blog on the Trib.

Sometimes it's easy to forget, but I really like winter.

Faith-Based Affordable Housing Proposal

2008-10-07T11:15:00.001-07:00

I would like to recommend the article in today's Tribune about building more affordable housing.

At first glance, I think most of the proposals to increase the supply of affordable housing downtown and in Tacoma neighborhoods are sound. As our city gets denser and our neighborhoods gentrify it's important to not push low income families out to the edges and away from services they need.

The "faith-based" component of the proposals deserves the most scrutiny. I am very wary of "faith-based" government initiatives whether it's George W. Bush or Barack Obama pitching them. That said, I do think that religious organizations have a solid history of reaching out to homeless and low-income. Many of the food banks and shelters are run by local churches. Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organization. That the city may get a benefit out of linking Habitat or a local church with a developer seems reasonable.

I think it's a measure that may prove to be beneficial to our neighborhoods and low-income residents.

The one thing that I'm not wild about is increasing the length of the multi-family tax abatement beyond 12 years. Do we need to give even longer exemptions to developers building condos that start at 400K and go to a million (assuming the market picks up sometime). I would be in favor of this if the longer extension only when the developer builds market/luxury housing with affordable housing. Possibly with a streetscape retail requirement as well.

(Actually does anyone know why the article mentions 12 year cap on the abatement? I thought it was 10. Or is the 12 year number the cap for affordable housing only? Anyone know?)

Definitely worth a read.

Canvassing for Obama in Shrewsbury, MO

2008-10-06T18:11:00.001-07:00

Mary and I are in the suburbs of St. Louis for the next couple weeks both working and hanging out with Mary's parents.

But, as luck would have it, that also means we've found ourselves in the middle of a battleground state of a Presidential election.

We volunteered to do a little work for the Obama campaign yesterday ... and today we were on the street canvassing. It was the first time my political involvement has included doorbelling. But this year's election has marked a lot of firsts for me, including first presidential political donation ... first political fundraiser (last December in Seattle) ... first Presidential gag website ...

Canvassing was interesting. I was surprised how many of the people we talked to were truly undecided about which candidate to vote for. That's not something I'm used to. Most of the people I've talked to previously have already decided. But the majority of people we talked to in the small neighborhood we were in were still trying to decide.

Now keep in mind that as we canvassed we skipped between many houses--the campaign had identified the most fruitful places to go. Out of the many houses we hit only three or four very committed Obama supporters and one committed McCain supporter. Of course a lot of people weren't home or ignored us. The rest were undecided or leaning one way or another, but were still willing to be persuaded.

Maybe that's why things are so close here. Here's the poll of polls for Missouri:

And here's 538's map which shows Missouri as a toss-up.

Very interesting night.

Grant's Farm

2008-10-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

Grant's Farm in St. Louis is run by Anheuser-Busch. Since it has the backing of a mega-company it was totally free place ... with free beer, too! Plus zebras! And kangaroos! And elephants! And Clydesdales And a tram ride! It's like Universal Studios ... crossed with a Zoo ... crossed with a brewery ... what's not to like?

Good stuff here in Missouri.

Post #MDCCCII

2008-10-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that two posts ago I hit 1800 posts on my fair blog. This is #1802.

I have been tempted many times to jump ship from blogger, but at other times I am so happy that I have a record of all my posts. Although other times they are cringe-inducing. "I wrote what!?" is not an uncommon thought when reading over old posts.

Ah well. For the last three years I've averaged more than a post a day. There have been so many blogs that start up and die out after 10 posts, that I feel pretty proud of my 1800.

Thanks to all those who have read along!