Politics

I first saw a demonstration of Microsoft’s photo-merging capabilities a couple of years ago – it’s pretty cool stuff.

CNN has used the latest version of Microsoft’s software (now called Photosynth) to capture ‘the moment’ that President Obama was sworn in as 44.

The controls are still a little clunky – it’s a bit hard to navigate around the scene – but try it out.  It’s definitely worth it.  And after you check out the inauguration, look at some of the other exampmles at the Photosynth site.

There were several reports coming out today about shootings in Mumbai, India.  It appears that this was a series of coordinated attacks throughout the city.

I haven’t been following the story in real time, or even that closely – the truth of the matter is, this is far away from my consciousness – and as such, I can wait for a news summary to gather all of the information and present it to me in a more traditional way.

For others, this is much more time- or proximity- sensitive.  And for those people, I found this story to be interesting.  It shows how internet tools like Twitter and Flickr allow a distributed user base to quickly broadcast information to the world, events litteraly unfolding right before their eyes.  Add in a smartphone and you’ve got mobile reporting like never before.

This is just one great example of ‘web 2.0′ capabilities – taking advantage of the public to generate content.  In some cases it means you can get cumulative data to give you an idea of how good a movie is or whether a restaurant is worth trying.  In this case it means you can get live unfiltered information much quicker than any news agency can get shoes on the ground and cameras on the air.

According to The New York Times, the 2008 Presidential election could have seen the highest percentage of Americans coming out to vote.

Based on early figures, about 62.5 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots, just shy of the 62.6 percent figure that was recorded in the 1964 election. But that figure will climb and almost certainly set a new record as the remaining votes are counted..

I for one am really excited to see that more and more Americans are getting out to voice their opinions on important matters facing the country.  I am hopeful that we will see significant changes in the coming years that will increase political involvement even more.

In my mind, there are three issues that really need to be addressed with American politics:

1. This is the no-brainer: Get a more accurate vote counting mechanism in place.  If you go electric, make sure the system can’t be manipulated and insist that the company that develops the machines are willing to stand up to critical – and open – testing.
2. Get money out of the system.  Now that we’ve seen the longest and most expensive presidential election, let’s make it the last of its kind.  Mandate that elections get funded by a general pool of money rather than donations.  Mandate that TV and Radio stations (easy for those over broadcast) donate a certain amount of time for political advertisements so that candidates can get their messages out and not have to raise money to do so.
3. Get rid of the current electoral college.  At the very least, have each electorate vote represent its own district’s popular vote, rather than a blanket state-by-state system.  It’s no fair that Texas and California get ignored because their outcome is a given.  There are electoral votes in Texas that would go Democratic and California votes that would go republican – and they should go that way.  There are too many disenfranchised voters in the current system.

Whether these issues will be addressed in the next few years is to be seen.  Somehow I suspect not; especially with everything else (ahem.. economy) that will need to be addressed.  But I hope that somewhere in the near future we’ll see some of these issues finally getting the attention they deserve.

I received this email today from the Sierra Club, sugesting some voting positions.  I use several sources when it comes to deciding on elections – and I find the Sierra Club to be one of those valuable resource when it comes to voting on the environment.  I don’t always agree with them but they provide a viewpoint from which one can base their decision.  I thought I’d share the email for those looking for some information on some of the issues facing us in the upcoming ballots:

Dear Christian:

I don’t have to tell you how important this election is. This year, we decide how our nation will address global warming, our energy future and find out whether we can build up a green economy from the news of financial ruin.

We’re also making a lot of important decisions here in California, many of them centered around the same concerns. We have a chance to turn back bad energy, alternative fuels and family planning policies, to make a real difference in the amount of greenhouse gases we produce, and to protect our waterways from factory farm pollution.

Please consider these five recommendations this Election Day:

1. “Yes” on Proposition 1A. It’s time to get high-speed rail on track! It’s our best way of quickly moving people around our great state without producing any pollution. Powered by zero-emission energy, high-speed rail could remove 12 billion tons of global warming pollution from our atmosphere!
2. “No” on Proposition 7. A poorly drafted, poorly vetted measure that actually weakens California’s existing renewable power laws and could stall the growth of renewable power in our state. The goals contained within this measure are ambitious, but the proposition lacks the necessary provisions to achieve its target.
3. “No” on Proposition 10. Asks taxpayers to fund $5 billion in bonds for a scheme disguised as an effort to benefit the environment. Instead, the measure will benefit a select group of natural gas producers and manufacturers, wasting money and time on technologies that won’t address global warming or promote clean air.
4. “Yes” on Proposition 2. Not only will this pro-animal initiative make conditions better for farm animals, it will also reduce the concentration of harmful animal-waste pollution from factory farms.
5. “No” on Proposition 4. Let’s turn back this bad family planning idea, and send a strong message against this dangerous amateur-abortion-promoting measure.

Thank you for all you do to protect the environment,

Bill Magavern
Sierra Club California Director

I’m a big fan of the New York Times online.  I’ve grown up with the New York Times always on the kitchen table – that is until I went off to school – and I’ve really enjoyed being able to read the paper online, as I find it much more consumable while at a computer, or more recently on my iPhone.

This last week they had an excellent article in the Magazine section written by Michael Pollan about the current state of our nation’s food system and what the next president should take into consideration about the challenges that will most likely face us in the coming decade.

I can’t recommend the article enough, though this is one instance where the paper version might be more digestible as the online article is 9 pages long (impossible on an iPhone, manageable on a computer over a few sittings).

One of the things that Pollan does is suggest a few White House specific activities that I think make a ton of sense and could help spread a message to the rest of the country (assuming people still pay attention to what the president actually does and not just what the news agencies report on what he says).

“..there is the power of the example you set in the White House. If what’s needed is a change of culture in America’s thinking about food, then how America’s first household organizes its eating will set the national tone..

“..You should make a point of the fact that every night you’re in town, you join your family for dinner in the Executive Residence — at a table… And you should also let it be known that the White House observes one meatless day a week — a step that, if all Americans followed suit, would be the equivalent, in carbon saved, of taking 20 million midsize sedans off the road for a year.

“..Let the White House chef post daily menus on the Web, listing the farmers who supplied the food, as well as recipes.

“.. tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden. When Eleanor Roosevelt did something similar in 1943, she <started a> movement that ended up making a substantial contribution to feeding the nation in wartime.  By the end of the war, more than 20 million home gardens were supplying 40 percent of the produce consumed in America.

The article gives a lot of detail about the current state of the American food system – a system I feel is quite broken – and he provides some great recommendations for how to make changes for the better.

This is one area that should be of interest to everyone and whether you agree with Pollan or not, the article provides an excellent platform for a real discussion.

I’ve seen several of the T. Boone Pickens ads on television – the ones that talk about “bridging the gap” in our energy needs – and I’ve wondered, from afar, who the heck this T. Boone Pickens is and what his plan calls for.

After the presidential debates this evening, I decided to take a gander at his web site, at http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

Watching the ads, I was definitely skeptical about the Pickens Plan – it just smacks of one of those friendly, good-for-all issues that ends up in reality as a confusing, misleadingly named stab in the back that the problem it pretends to support.

The website has the same feel to it.

And T. Boone Pickens is an oil man through and through.  But, he claims he’s done making money and he’s interested in what gets left behind for future generations.

Reading through the plan it doesn’t have any gotcha backdoors to it – at least as far as one can tell by the limited information available.  The basic tenants are to support massive infrastructure in wind power and at the same time, invest in natural gas vehicles (mostly for fleet vehicles, not so much for personal vehicles) as an alternative to gasoline vehicles.  This would act more to reduce dependence on foreign oil by transferring that need to natural gas but help less on global climate issues.

For ‘energy independence’ it would help reduce the amount of oil we need to import, and if we could convince other nations to do the same we could reduce the power other nations have gained (Iran, Russia, Venezuela) from the rising price of oil.

From an environmental perspective, it’s somewhat better to burn natural gas than oil and the support of wind power is great.  It’s not a long-term solution, but it doesn’t claim to be.  In the long term we clearly need to figure out hot to get away from fossil fuel engines.  But is this the bridge that’s needed to get us there? Does the cost/time/effort of transitioning fleets to natural gas buy us enough environmental benefit for this to be a really suitable bridge?

For more information about energy and how it impacts the environment and global policies, I highly, highly recommend a couple of podcasts:

The first is a Fresh Air interview with Thomas Friedman who makes a strong case for how our oil dependence has really empowered nations that we’d really prefer not to empower.

The second is a Commonwealth Club of California discussion with Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (search for her name on the linked page).  She speaks very eloquently about the importance of a comprehensive energy plan and all of the ways in which we are impacted without one.