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* I slept decently despite the canine chorus of the damned.
* It occurred to me recently that the bemoaned low turnout of US elections might be connected to the voting system; often, it seems rational to stay home, since one's vote is surplus or pointless. True, if all the supporters of one side suddenly turned out, they could turn California red or Alabama blue, but given the real world... one is raised to be a habitual voter or not, and just increasing the overall turnout doesn't do much good. OTOH, in PR systems one's vote always has concrete marginal value, not just probabilistic marginal value, and this might keep turnout high. I don't know Canadian and UK turnout though; they'd be the main control group for Craptacular Voting (tm).
* I finally left the house yesterday (Friday), going for a walk toward downtown La Serena. Of note:
** I don't care what Chileans like to think about their ethnicity, what I saw was at least 95% strong Indian heritage.
** I saw a public library, open. Lots of book collections in their own rooms off a narrow central corridor, at the end of which was the main collection in Dewey Decimal, under an awesome skylight.
** I saw a couple of "INFERNET" internet signs. Not a typo, given the flames on the signs.
** Some downtown streets are paved in little square-inch tiles.
** I saw a sign for a college anime club, and for something commercial and anime related. The club is watching Death Note and Macross Frontier, among others. World culture is world.
* Went to the farmer's market today. Great peaches. A cantaloupe slide had superior texture but inferior flavor to US ones, or at least I wasn't used to it.
* Rooting out RNC racism: Barack, the Magic Negro
* People worry about storing radioactive waste. How about coal waste?
* Peter Watts playfully suggests parents aren't rational enough to vote. But then, who is?
* It occurred to me recently that the bemoaned low turnout of US elections might be connected to the voting system; often, it seems rational to stay home, since one's vote is surplus or pointless. True, if all the supporters of one side suddenly turned out, they could turn California red or Alabama blue, but given the real world... one is raised to be a habitual voter or not, and just increasing the overall turnout doesn't do much good. OTOH, in PR systems one's vote always has concrete marginal value, not just probabilistic marginal value, and this might keep turnout high. I don't know Canadian and UK turnout though; they'd be the main control group for Craptacular Voting (tm).
* I finally left the house yesterday (Friday), going for a walk toward downtown La Serena. Of note:
** I don't care what Chileans like to think about their ethnicity, what I saw was at least 95% strong Indian heritage.
** I saw a public library, open. Lots of book collections in their own rooms off a narrow central corridor, at the end of which was the main collection in Dewey Decimal, under an awesome skylight.
** I saw a couple of "INFERNET" internet signs. Not a typo, given the flames on the signs.
** Some downtown streets are paved in little square-inch tiles.
** I saw a sign for a college anime club, and for something commercial and anime related. The club is watching Death Note and Macross Frontier, among others. World culture is world.
* Went to the farmer's market today. Great peaches. A cantaloupe slide had superior texture but inferior flavor to US ones, or at least I wasn't used to it.
* Rooting out RNC racism: Barack, the Magic Negro
* People worry about storing radioactive waste. How about coal waste?
* Peter Watts playfully suggests parents aren't rational enough to vote. But then, who is?