Last Tuesday, I voted in the midterm elections. I did it by filling out an absentee ballot in front of a computer at the library. I thought many of my votes were well informed, but frankly, my votes for the less prominent positions were not very well informed at all (I briefly consulted a few web pages), and for some votes I didn't feel informed enough to make any decision at all. This state of affairs is just unacceptable for this country in this age.
Today I got an idea from this post by Scott Adams. Scott says he doesn't vote because he doesn't know enough to make an informed decision. In the future, he thinks there will be a website where people can go to get informed to a sufficient degree, and when that time comes, he looks forward to voting.
I would like to develop a website with a very specific goal. For each election ballot item, there should be a single dynamic page that gives people the info they need to make a decision. It should allow people to quickly pinpoint the differences between the candidates that are relevant to their values. I don't know what that will look like yet, and I will appreciate any ideas other people suggest.
The site should be informative, smart, and unbiased the same way that Wikipedia is -- by fairly presenting input from lots of users. Maybe each voter can enter what their values are, and then the page will be modified to point out differences in stances that similar voters thought were important. One idea for ballot proposition issues is to have polls whose results are weighted by voters' scores on a short knowledge test (basic facts about the propositions).
By the way, I made my first web application last year -- a proof of concept for a new type of social networking site. A demo of RelationCraft is currently online. But I hope my politics site, or a future idea, will be a more practical candidate for wide release.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Saturday, November 04, 2006
AIM Profile Dump
I didn't want to make this blog into a link blog, but I come across a lot of interesting stuff on the web, and I usually just post it to my AIM profile. So my AIM profile is becoming a link blog with no archive. Here is today's AIM profile dump.
Grey's Anatomy is a great show. It had to be said.
"Don't inter-fucking-rupt!"
Expletive infixation
"By making misogynistic, racist statements in the friendliest way and asking people to high-five over them, [Borat] gets folks to say things they wouldn't if they knew the film was going to be shown in their own country." --Borat Makes Funny Joke On Idiot Americans
"They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now." --Bob Monkhouse
Great pickup lines from Weird Al:
You must have fallen from heaven -- that would explain how you messed up your face.
Girl, you'd look like the Venus de Milo if I just cut off your arms.
HOST: I'm curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?
BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps.
Bush Says He Uses The Google
"If you came from the future, wouldn't you do exactly what Bill Gates did???"
"The criterion by which we cherry-pick morals from the bible is available to all of us -- religious or not." --Richard Dawkins
Hey baby,
If I were an endoplasmic reticulum, how would you want me?
Smooth... or ROUGH??
"I wish I were your problem set, because then I'd be really hard and you'd be doing me on the desk."
While arresting a speeding driver, a police man asked this question: "Do you know how fast you were going?!"
The driver replied, "No, because I knew exactly where I was."
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -- and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Grey's Anatomy is a great show. It had to be said.
"Don't inter-fucking-rupt!"
Expletive infixation
"By making misogynistic, racist statements in the friendliest way and asking people to high-five over them, [Borat] gets folks to say things they wouldn't if they knew the film was going to be shown in their own country." --Borat Makes Funny Joke On Idiot Americans
"They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now." --Bob Monkhouse
Great pickup lines from Weird Al:
You must have fallen from heaven -- that would explain how you messed up your face.
Girl, you'd look like the Venus de Milo if I just cut off your arms.
HOST: I'm curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?
BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps.
Bush Says He Uses The Google
"If you came from the future, wouldn't you do exactly what Bill Gates did???"
"The criterion by which we cherry-pick morals from the bible is available to all of us -- religious or not." --Richard Dawkins
Hey baby,
If I were an endoplasmic reticulum, how would you want me?
Smooth... or ROUGH??
"I wish I were your problem set, because then I'd be really hard and you'd be doing me on the desk."
While arresting a speeding driver, a police man asked this question: "Do you know how fast you were going?!"
The driver replied, "No, because I knew exactly where I was."
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -- and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
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