Author: SpaceLogic

I spent several hours today comparing the number of voters in a given US state with the number of electoral votes that state gets.  I then compiled a table of what I found out, with data from 2000 to show how it actually works as well as how it works in theory.

It was educational.  So much so, in fact, that I want to share it with all of you.
Notes: Voting-age population accurate in year 2000.

Base vote value is the precise percentage of an electoral vote each person in the state would get if each voting-age individual voted and they all voted for the same person.  It is also the value of the contribution each person would make to the electoral vote if everyone in the state voted and they did not all vote for the same person — the amount of “say” each person has in which way the state goes.

The 2000 vote values show how much influence each vote had on the state’s final position in that year’s election.  These numbers reflect the actual voter turnout, which is why they’re included.

The rank is the amount of influence a given voter has compared to voters in other states, with 1 being best and 51 being worse (51 because D. C. has 3 electoral votes — I know there are only 50 states, no worries.)

There may be some typos here — I had to correct the rankings twice, and I’m still not sure they’re all down correctly.  If you spot anything, let me know.

My HTML’s too complicated — follow the link.

At this point I would point out the basic unfairness of the system, rant about how the winner of an election is not ever actually going to have the majority of votes (nearly half the people who can vote don’t anyway!) and finish up by organizing a group to move to Wyoming and balance things out.  As it’s 11:30 PM, though, I will leave those as exercises for the reader.

Edit to add: backup link.

This post was originally written in response to some people’s concern that their children weren’t interested in the opposite sex.  I have edited it for this location.

For background, it should be noted that I am almost seventeen years old.  I have never dated anyone.  I have never had a boyfriend.  I have never wanted to change this.  I have, however, taken a keen interest in the experiences of others.

(continued)
I’ve spent a good deal of time brooding about why my friends, the ones who date, spend so much time angsting about the whole business, and I’ve reached a conclusion: They’re doing something they know they aren’t ready for because they feel specific societal pressures.

What are these pressures?  I sense a pressure to pair off, as though being single is a badge of shame. Once paired, there is a pressure to maintain that pairing, probably because breaking up is painful.  (I believe this may bite at both ends — assuming that your relationships will last for a long time and be very deep leads to more pain when they don’t fill those criteria.)  I sense a pressure to start practicing mate attraction and retention as young as possible.

I also see a lot of mistaken assumptions.  I see kids thinking that there will be one, and just one, person for them who will be immediately apparent.  I see kids thinking that their partner will just know what they expect from relationships.  I see a lot of assumptions of telepathy.

I think a major problem is the standard fairy tale.  “And they were married and lived happily ever after.”  Anyone applying logical thought to that sentence will conclude that of course “happily” is a relative term, and the marriage is probably nothing like the only cause of that happiness anyway.  But words have power. They change the way people think.  Whether we actually believe it consciously or not, those words have burrowed their way into a lot of minds.  They confuse the heck out of teenagers who haven’t actually had personal experience of it not working that way yet and who have only observation and the media as guides.

So what I am suggesting is that your average teenager does not get into relationships because they are prepared for romance, but because they have some mistaken concepts of the way the world works.  These concepts cause things that are harmless, like break-ups, and things that are not so harmless, like STDs and unwanted babies (from such mistaken assumptions as “sex will fix the problems in my relationship” and “you can’t get pregnant your first time,” but that’s another can of worms.)

Enough of such doom and gloom, though; let’s talk about how we can fix this.  I suggest a simple five-step program.

Step one: Clarify in your own mind that relationships require work and communication.  Shake off any shards of the “true love works no matter what” philosophy that may be clogging your head — you might not even realise they’re there, but I’ll bet they are.

Step two: Clarify in your own mind that sex does not fix the problems in a relationship.  I’m not so sure that everyone needs this step, but I put it in just in case.

Step three: Real life is not a Shakespeare play, in which love is immediate and permanent.  Be sure you fully grasp this.

Step four: Remind yourself that “single” is a normal, natural, and usually healthy state.  It is not a misfortune, shameful disease, or sign of failure.  This should be easily grasped, but it’s still worth clarifying.

Now that you’re sure that you’ve got your mind clear, move on to

Step five: Pass it on.  Tell your kids, if you’ve got them.  Tell your friends.  Tell whoever you think needs to be told.  Write to your local paper.  Try to sell the notion to a movie studio.  Write a children’s book.  Sure, it’ll get you laughed at and you’ll be able to paper every room in your house with the rejection slips, but won’t it be worth it?

Comments?  Flames?  Am I crazy, confused, or onto something?  Let me know.

Or so James C. Dobson says.

For those who don’t wish to click the link, here’s the important bit:

DOBSON: You know, the thing that means so much to me here on this this issue [embryonic stem cell research] is that people talk about the potential for good that can come from destroying these little embryos and how we might be able to solve the problem of juvenile diabetes.  There’s no indication yet that they’re gonna do that, but people say that, or spinal cord injuries or such things.  But I have to ask this question: In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind.  You know, if you take a utilitarian approach, that if something results in good, then it is good.  But that’s obviously not true.  We condemn what the Nazis did because there are some things that we always could do but we haven’t done, because science always has to be guided by ethics and by morality.  And you remove ethics and morality, and you get what happened in Nazi Germany.  That’s why to Senator [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist [R-TN] and the others who are saying, “Look what may be accomplished.”  Yeah, but there’s another issue, there’s a higher order of ethics here.

There’s a rule used wherever people debate on the internet called “Godwin’s Law.”  It states that the longer a debate becomes, the greater the probability of someone comparing the other side to Nazis or Hitler.  At this point, it is generally held, the person who made the comparison has lost.

Now, sometimes the comparison may be valid, but I do not feel that this is one of them.  Let’s compare a few things:

–The Nazis’ basic goal was to kill people.  They used some inventive methods to do this, but the fundamental goal was death.

–The goal of embryonic stem cell research is to save lives.

–The Nazis deliberately hurt and frightened people before and while killing them.

–Embryos as young as those stem cell research uses cannot feel pain or fear, even if there were a desire to inflict these things upon them.

–The Nazis murdered people who otherwise might have lived long and full lives.

–The embryos used in stem cell research would be destroyed anyway.

Why did I never notice the resemblance between the two before?

This is my first post here, so just a quick intro: I’m the daughter of the user known as madrone on this site, and I use British spelling. Hi.

I was born in 1988, and grew up in the liberal area of Santa Cruz, California.  It never occurred to me that other places were any different.  Though I read about the injustices of the past, I assumed that they had been defeated long ago.  I believed that we had achieved the ideals of freedom and equality for all.

I ignored even the obvious things that were wrong.  I was so convinced that people were all as enlightened as the ones I knew, and that the struggles were over, that I didn’t notice the warning signs telling me that this was not true.  One of my blind spots was when I fell for the propaganda declaring modern feminists to be anti-male extremists who wanted supremacy and not equality.  I reasoned that men and women must be equal, because that issue looked settled in the history books.

My mother tried to prepare me for life in the outside world, but I admit that I didn’t take her seriously.  Her stories about marching against the school board on a weekly basis were interesting, but not important.  Her warnings about rape, sexual harassment, and sex discrimination I dismissed as carried over from an unenlightened past.
Imagine, then, my shock when I first saw Star Trek.  It shows some amusing ideas about scientific progress and contains some dated behaviour, but despite these failings it is progressive even by modern standards.  I had believed that forty-year-old TV shows would be far behind modern media, but to my astonishment I saw the reverse.

In the original pilot for the series, the second-in-command on the starship was a woman known as Number One.  The studio rejected her as too progressive, and the character was replaced by Mr. Spock, but this is nevertheless a clear sign of Gene Roddenberry’s efforts to break down cultural barriers.

This effort continues in later episodes. In the first season, for example, the character of Janice Rand plays a significant role.  She is curvy, pretty, and wears a beehive on her head, but what struck me immediately about her was that she is a strong and independent character.  She defines her boundaries and keeps them: coolly slapping a supernatural being who refuses to take “no” for an answer and fighting off a rape attempt by an evil clone of Captain Kirk.  Also, despite the mutual attraction between Kirk and herself, she avoids being solely or primarily a romantic interest for him.  She is a person first and a woman second.

When I first saw this, I admired Rand for her independence without actually being able to determine why I found her so remarkable.  Later, though, when I discovered that her disappearance upset me, I realised what made her special: In my experience with modern media, I had never seen a young, attractive, female character who was equal in every way to the male characters.

There are strong female characters in modern films, but most ultimately exist for some man.  Whether she saves the world or merely refuses to tolerate Mr. Generic Creep, the modern female character ends up surrendering her power to some nice-looking guy.  A modern female lead must have a male.

This may be because, after the first strong, independent female characters were accepted, there was no apparent need to keep them single.  Without the strong push for independence, romance and strength could co-exist.  I am glad of this; however, I am troubled by my generation’s lack of single female role models.  I worry that this gives girls the impression that they cannot be complete without boyfriends.

Watching more Trek now, I see a number of women as token love interests, but I also see a lot of positive things.  I see a black woman playing a role that the studio wanted given to a white man.  I see Dr. McCoy re-educating a woman on a backwards planet to believe that the child she’s pregnant with is as much hers as her husband’s.  I see Captain Kirk using his sexual appeal for selfish reasons while still respecting the women involved.  It’s mind-bogglingly alien.

Perhaps my view of the modern media is skewed because I don’t watch as much television or as many movies as others my age.  If so, this entry may be overly pessimistic.  If not… I wonder how many other kids think the way I did?