Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Election results

So let's see how I did:

1) The Amendment passed. I offer my congratulations to all the dumbfucks in the State if Wiskonsin who voted "yes" yesterday. Are any of you idiots, perchance, actually living together without being married? Stupid shits, this amendment was aimed squarely at you. Anyway, looking at what I wrote yesterday, I see I kind of weasled out of making a call on this one. I tried to find some grounds to predict a "no" victory, but wasn't able to get quite that far. I guess that means I was anticipating a "yes" win, but didn't want to actually acknowledge it.

2) Wrong on this one. Green lost, big time. I guess if I'm going to be predicting election results, I should pay more attention to the actual political climate outside my office (which has been all pro-Green ever since Green announced his candidacy).

3) Right on this one, but this was a very easy call. Kohl gets his fourth term in the Senate.

4) Right on this one, except the Democratic candidate won by a much wider margin than I could have possibly anticipated. Surprising.

So that's that.

Oh yeah, we also have a death penalty in Wiskonsin now. Yay.

Not.

Isn't it interesting that the Democrats won big, but on the referenda everyone got all knee-jerk facist? My feeling about what this means is that the Dems are likely to lose big in 2008. I wonder if I'll remember this prediction two years from now?

Monday, November 06, 2006

Elections tomorrow

So, tomorrow is yet another election day.

I originally started this blog back in 2004, during the runup to that year's presidential election. That particular election didn't go very well.

This year looks like it will be at least as interesting. There are a number of hotly contested races that I'll be voting on tomorrow. I thought I'd try something entertaining, and see if I can predict the outcomes of any of these races. So here goes:

The biggest choice on the ballot tomorrow will be whether or not to amend the State Constitution thus: "Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state." Obviously, this is not only a ban on marriages between same-sex couples (which are already illegal, but I guess the nutjobs are so afraid of the gay menace that they felt the need to preemptively enact this amendment), it would also deny any sort of protection to domestic partnerships. It's interesting to speculate on why the 2nd part of the referendum was included: Was it included because the proponents of this amendment were such raving loonies that they actually want to make sure that "living in sin" remains illegal and unprotected, or was it included as a poison pill by opponents of the amendment? Or were the loonies doing a Santorum and trying to make sure bestiality remains illegal? I don't know the answer, honestly. As for predicting the outcome, this is a really tough call. If it were just gay marriage that was on the table, and if it were a normal election (so much as those can be said to exist), I would predict easy passage. But it's not just about gay marriage, and this is not a typical election year. Furthermore, I've seen a lot of evidence that this issue cuts across standard party lines. A couple of examples: Recently, the Madison Chamber of Commerce endorsed rejection of the amendment, on economic development grounds. It seems that the University down there has been losing millions of dollars in research grants as major researchers take their domestic partnerships elsewhere (a while back, a law was passed making it illegal for the University system to provide domestic partnership benefits). Madison has also been trying hard to recruit new high-tech manufacturers, and the Madison Chamber believes this process would become even more difficult if this amendment were to pass. Second example: Months ago, when this referendum was still being debated in the State Legislature, my own Assemblyman, a diehard Republican, voted against it on the grounds that the State Constitution should not be used as a means to discriminate against particular groups of people. What all this means, basically, is that the most important question on the ballot is a complete tossup. I have no idea how it'll go. Naturally, I am hoping like hell that the referendum/amendment fails to pass. (I'm also hoping like hell that people like my brother will have enough sense to vote against it. While he is a bit of a standard-issue midwestern homophobe, there is no escaping the fact that he lived with his current partner for three years, and even bought a home with her, prior to them getting married in 2004. If people like my brother recognize that this amendment is aimed squarely at them, and not just at gay people, this amendment hasn't got a chance. But that's a pretty big "if.")

Second race: The Governor is up for reelection tomorrow. Democratic Governor Jim Doyle was easily elected four years ago over Tommy Thompson's Lt. Governor, Scott McCallum. McCallum's problem was that, when Governor Tommy Thompson was appointed HHS Secretary in 2001, he left the State in a bit of a mess, and McCallum got blamed for it. Plus, McCallum was kind of a nobody. Having run for various offices back in the 1980's and losing all those races, he found himself inheriting the Governor's post, without ever winning a major election. Incumbent Jim Doyle, on the other hand, is a DLC-style Democrat, an attorney who worked as a prosecutor for most of his career. In other words, he's about the only kind of Democrat who had a hope of getting elected in the political climate of four years ago, even given how weak McCallum was as a candidate. Ironically, though, what worked so well for Doyle then may be his undoing today. His opponent, Republican Congressman Mark Green, is running a solid and well-backed campaign, and Doyle has, quite honestly, seemed to be on some shakey ground. So, in an election year where the Democrats are looking at big gains in the national sphere, I'm thinking it may go the other way with this race. I have to call this one for Green, unfortunately.

Third race: U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat, is up for reelection for what I believe will be his fourth term. I see little chance that he'll be defeated. Easy call, here.

The other race of interest to me is my local Assembly race. The aforementioned Republican who voted against the constitutional amendment referendum is retiring at the end of his current term. The race between the two frontrunners (Democrat and Republican, of course), has been pretty hot and a bit nasty of late. The Democrat actually ran against the retiring incumbent last time around, but lost due to a good showing by a Green Party candidate. The Green Party doesn't have a viable candidate this time, so the Democrat actually has a fair chance of winning, in an Assembly district that's been Republican for as long as I can remember. If the student population turns out in big numbers (and they might, based on the gay marriage referendum), I'm thinking he'll win. If not, his female Republican opponent will take this race. Either way, I'm thinking it'll be close. I'll call it marginally for the Democrat. I do hope he wins, because I think he'll make a pretty good legislator, once all this campaign mess is behind him.

There are quite a few other, smaller questions on the ballot, such as a garbage tax referendum, a Coroner's election, and so on. I'm not even sure what all. I'm primarily concerned with the big four I described above. I hope I'm wrong on the Governor's race.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Whistler, Sp3ccylad & David Pogue

I must link this here, because it is interesting:

Sorry, David.

I also must comment, because this is something I genuinely give a shit about.

Yes, I have heard of David Pogue. In fact, I own several of his "Missing Manual" books, including the one for GarageBand 2 (I was really hoping to see "GarageBand 3: The Missing Manual," but, based on Pogue's comments there, I'm no longer holding my breath).

The main problem with GarageBand's supposed lack of popularity is not the application itself, which is quite wonderful (especially versions 2 and 3), but rather the environment into which it was born. Think of it--there's only so much music that one person can listen to in a day. Most people seem to prefer to have music playing dimly in the background through virtually every waking minute of their lives (except when they're watching television). Of all those hours of daily music, virtually all of it comes from the commercial music industry. This means that, not only was all that music produced according to some pretty specific and slick-sounding standards, but that it's all owned by those companies as well. In essence, the music industry is meeting virtually 100% of the daily demand for music that people have, and they're doing it with material that they own, and that sounds at least halfway decent. They also have control over virtually all the primary promotional avenues. In other words, the entire musical landscape, from the musicians all the way to the brains of listeners, is almost wholly controlled by the recording instustry.

Juxtapose this situation with the needs of the beginning GarageBand artist, who may not even know how to play an instrument. How is a person like that supposed to compete with the pros? There's also the problem of getting the word out, if (like Sp3ccylad or Maggie O., for instance) the artist happens to be skilled enough that people might actually want to listen (I can attest that both Maggie and Sp3ccylad damn well can play their instruments). There's also the fact that smaller artists are much more vulnerable to piracy than big companies are--even though copyright laws are supposedly intended to protect the proverbial Starving Genius, it's a fact that Sony can afford to get ripped off many times, while the Starving Genius most definitely cannot (not to mention the fact that the Starving Genius can never afford a lawyer, due to being starving).

In addition to all that is the amount of work it takes just to be a musician. When I was younger, and didn't have to work for a living, I used to be a fairly accomplished saxophone player. That involved a substantial amount of practice time, as well as years and years to reach an advanced level of skill. There was very little slacking off allowed, either, because playing an instrument is a physical activity, which means you need to do it regularly if you want to stay in shape. Musical instruments themselves are also very expensive, if you want one that's worth a damn. These are all practical considerations that would exist even if the music industry went "poof" overnight. Similarly, musical composition turns out to be a surprisingly involved endeavor, unlike, say, quickly snapping a digital photo and importing it into iPhoto. One can spend literally hours twiddling away in Garageband, just to achieve a reasonable sound for a few measures of music. Composing an entire album, then, becomes something akin to putting together a masters thesis.

And on and on and on. A thorough analysis of the steep uphill battle that GarageBand and its faithful adherants face would be quite a lot of work, but I think I've managed to convey at least some of it here: It's not that GarageBand has been a failure, it's that everyone's expectations for it have proved to be wildly optimistic. This is unfortunate because, in the long run, I believe that simple, consumer-friendly music programs like GarageBand actually will change the musical landscape for the better. But it's not going to be a revolution, it's not going to happen in only a few years, and it's not going to simply occur without any resistance from the entrenched music industry (which has steadfastly opposed any type of progress which might infringe on its cozy little monopoly).

The original topic on Sp3ccylad's blog concerned something that might at least help alleviate the practical difficulties of musicianship. The Whistler: a piece of software that listens to you whistle (or sing, drum your fingers, whatever), and transcribes that into, if I understand correctly, actual useable MIDI information. At this point, it's just dreamware, and doesn't actually exist--in fact, it's a candidate for My Dream App, where the winning idea will supposedly be developed into a working piece of software. If it could be made to work (which is a pretty big "if", in my opinion--my very first question would be how it would deal with the fact that 90% of the population seems to be virtually tone-deaf), it would go a long way towards making up for the "I can't play an instrument" problem.

[edit] Correction: Whistler was a contestant for My Dream App--since then it appears to have been eliminated from the competition.

Oh well.

Paypal blown up

LOL - in other news, some dweeb tried to blow up Paypal's headquarters building:
An explosive left outside the headquarters of eBay-owned PayPal blew out a window Tuesday evening but caused no injuries, according to eBay.

San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal, an online payment system, closed the building on Wednesday as FBI agents and local police investigated, said eBay spokesman Hani Durzi. The blast occurred at about 7:25 p.m., and at that time about 45 employees occupied the building, said Durzi.

The explosion triggered the security alarm and officials from the San Jose Fire department later ordered the building, which is typically occupied by about 1,900, to be evacuated. Employees are scheduled to return to work tomorrow, Durzi said. He added that PayPal's operations were never interrupted....

Capt. Jose Guerrero, of the San Jose Fire Department, said it's believed that the device "was not highly sophisticated."
Nutjobs on the loose, I tell ya. Sure, I have no love for Paypal (I cancelled my account with them a long time ago), but this is just ridiculous.

Kerry update

Alas, I see I spoke too soon the other day, when I stated that John Kerry had apparently grown a pair:
Kerry apologizes for Iraq remark

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Thrust into the midst of the midterm election campaign, Sen. John Kerry apologized Wednesday to "any service member, family member or American" offended by remarks deemed by Republicans and Democrats alike to be insulting to U.S. forces in Iraq.

Six days before the election, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee said he sincerely regretted his words were "misinterpreted to imply anything negative about those in uniform."

In a brief statement, Kerry attacked President Bush for a "failed security policy." Yet his apology, issued after prominent Democrats had urged him to cancel public appearances, was designed to quell a controversy that party leaders feared would stall their drive for big gains on Nov. 7.
Pigeons on the grass...