Well, I was going to write about last weekend at Veloswap, but my buddy Steve beat me to it. Check out his entry (with pics) here.
I scored some Speedplay pedals for $60 (retail $180), Time shoes for $10 (retail $120), a saddle, seatpost, jersey, socks, SPD cleats, water bottle cage, and a $10 Ultegra front deraileur. Veloswap is da bomb.
David at Mind Poison wants bluetooth on the iPod. The two killer apps he mentions are wirelessly transferring photos from a digicam onto the iPod and a built-in cell phone. Personally, I think those apps would be great, but probably not possible (well, at least not the photo transferring part; a cell phone I could believe).
Here’s one analyst’s opinion on Bluetooth and iPod:
Built-in Bluetooth is also not expected due to its slow transfer speeds. “Apple management does not see where Bluetooth would be used other than possible for wireless headphones, but then the headphones would need batteries.” While Wi-Fi is also not seen as a viable feature due to its power requirements and relatively limited speed.
I tend to agree.
Let’s do some of our own math. According to the Bluetooth faq, the throughput is 720 Kbps. A 4 MB photo is 33554432 bits. It would take about 45 seconds to transfer a single picture.
Given that the iPod uses the most of its limited battery capacity while the hard drive is spinning, 45 seconds per picture is probably just too slow, even ignoring the fact that a user would be annoyed at the slow speed.
The Belkin Media Reader can transfer data around 300 KBps, so the same 4 MB photo would take 13.7 seconds to copy.
Just for grins, the firewire spec claims a 400 Mbps theoretical max throughput, making a transfer of that 4 MB photo take a mere 0.08 seconds. Looks like Belkin has some room for improvement.
Amendment 37 proposes to amend the Colorado Revised Statutes such that certain Colorado utilities must generate or purchase a percentage of their electricity from renewable resources. The schedule is: 3% from 2007 to 2010, 6% from 2011 to 2014, and 10% by 2015 and afterwards.
I’m quite torn on this amendment. It’s not a constitutional amendment, so I can’t immediately discount it. It does appeal to my sense of environmental conservation. And one of the problems with renewable energy today is the chicken and egg problem. Renewable energy hasn’t seen the amount of investment that fossil fuels have because the returns aren’t as great because the demand isn’t there. But if there’s no demand, then there’s no incentive to invest. So forcing the utilities to use renewable energy would artificially boost demand and encourage greater investment in more efficient renewable energy technology.
Therein lieth the rub, however. The operative word there is “artificially”. As someone who believes in the free market, I have a hard time believing that increased legislation is the proper solution to a cleaner planet. Personally, I already purchase 100% of my power as wind energy (my house is entirely electric, no natural gas), paying a premium of approximately $0.01 per kwh. I’ve put my money where my mouth is, since I believe it’s worth paying the extra money for a cleaner planet. My problem is that I don’t think it’s right for me to force my values on others.
So it’s with some measure of reluctance that I will vote “no” for Amendment 37. My belief in the purpose and role of the government just won’t allow me to do so. To those out there who think this amendment is a good idea, I respectfully challenge you to examine your own habits first before trying force your fellow citizens to pay for changes in theirs.
Purchase only energy generated from renewable resources, like wind or biomass or solar. Ride your bike to work (I ride mine 3x a week, 20 miles roundtrip). Make the effort to recycle more of your waste (most garbage companies in Ft. Collins won’t recycle cardboard, but the town dump will). Bla bla bla, you’ve heard it all a million times before, but we don’t need bigger, more intrusive government to save this planet.
Amendment 36 is perhaps the most interesting issue raised for Colorado this election year, and unfortunately, I think it will be defeated. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The amendment proposes to change the way that Colorado’s electoral college votes are allocated. Instead of the traditional winner takes all, the votes would instead be allocated proportionally. So, for instance, if Bush gets 51% of the vote in Colorado and Kerry gets 49% (and we ignore the 3rd party candidates for now), Colorado’s 9 electoral college votes would be allocated 5 for Bush and 4 for Kerry. The consitution is definitely the place for this sort of rule, since it attempts to redefine how our state works and not what it should do.
Most of the editorials I’ve been reading have been advocating that we vote this amendment down. The common argument goes:
Colorado will likely become the least influential state in presidential elections because our current nine electoral votes will almost always be split 5-4. By awarding nine electoral votes to the winner, the current system encourages candidates to campaign in the state on issues of importance to Coloradoans.
Excuse me, but this is not a compelling argument. What they are really saying here is that we won’t get our fair share of Congressional pork. So be it, says I. Relevance in the fight for pork isn’t exactly my idea of an ideal democratic society. We should be striving for something better than that.
Taking a look at how Colorado has voted since 1980, only once did it go to a Democratic candidate (Clinton in 1992 vs. Bush the elder). And yet, after the Regan years, the biggest margin was in 2000, when Bush the younger won the state, 51% to 42% over Gore, for an 9% difference. The other margins were 2% victory, 4% victory, and 8% victory. Suffice to say, although Colorado has gone to the Republicans in most recent elections, there is a sizable population of Democrats (and independents).
With the current system, almost half of the constituency in this state does not get represented in the national vote. Were we to pass Amendment 36, that constituency gets a voice all of a sudden. Please explain to me how that is worse than the current situation?
The other compelling aspect about Amendment 36 is that it gives the 3rd party candidates a reason to campaign here, as they would stand a chance to pick up an electoral vote or two. The benefit of this is not so much that a 3rd party candidate would actually win the Presidency, but more that he or she would bring a 3rd opinion to the national race, and help break up the hegemony of our two-party system today. A 3rd party candidate can raise issues that aren’t important enough for the major parties to base their campaigns on, but are important issues nonetheless. This would force the major party candidates to do more than just pay some lip service to the issue.
I know of few people in this election who are actually happy with either Bush or Kerry as candidates. Rather, the attitude seems to be “pick the lesser of two evils.” Again, this is not what I think of when I think of the society we should be aiming for. As citizens, we ought to be voting for a candidate rather than against a candidate.
Unfortunately, I predict people are scared of changing a system they don’t even understand in the first place. I’m still going to vote “yes” for Amendment 36 though.
Colorado Amendment 35 seeks to increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes from $0.20 to $0.84, and doubles the tax on other tobacco products from 20 percent to 40 percent of the price. You can read about the current law here: FYI on Excise 15.
At first glance, I thought this amendment looked like a good idea, mostly because I’m not a smoker and wouldn’t be affected. What the hell, I thought — tax the hell out of the smokers.
However, after a quick glance at Article 10 of the Colorado constitution, which is the article that Amendment 35 proposes to change, nowhere is an actual tax rate specified for property taxes, income taxes, and the like. Article 10 follows the rule of thumb of “tell us how to make the laws, not what laws to make”. Amendment 35 fails this rule of thumb and actually specifies a specific tax rate for tobacco products in our state constitution.
This sort of thing belongs in the tax code, not the state constitution. After some intense googling, I was unable to determine how the tax code gets modified, but I’m pretty sure that our elected officials do it for us. That is, the critters in the state legislature are the ones who should (and normally do) make the tax laws. In other words, it is not normal for the people of Colorado to vote on a statewide tax.
So that’s one philosophical reason to oppose this amendment. The other principle I have in opposing this amendment is that it is a perfect example of the tyranny of the majority. While I hate smoking, I don’t think it’s right to single out a class of people and enact a special tax on them.
Perhaps this is an odd parallel to make, but many of our public lands require a usage fee. Larimer County parks are a notorious example of this — it costs $7 for a day pass to visit Horsetooth Mountain Park. That is an outrageous fee to be charging for what should be “free”. (I pay property tax to the county, so I claim I’ve already paid to use what belongs to me.) This practice is colloquially known as “pay for play”. That is, people who don’t use the park don’t have to pay for it, and a special tax (usage fee) has been enacted on the class of people who wish to recreate on lands they already own. In any case, I’m starting to rant now, as this is a pet peeve of mine, so I’ll cut it short.
The Denver Post supports Amendment 35, although they are annoyed that it must be a constitutional amendment. The reason they support it is related to TABOR, which is the Colorado Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights. TABOR is supposedly the reason why many local governments are having fiscal trouble, as it continually decreases the taxes that they can collect. I don’t understand TABOR well enough to have a real opinion on it, but the reason the Post gives is that only by making the cigarette tax a consitutional amendment will it have equal footing with TABOR. Perhaps so, but isn’t the real fix to amend TABOR rather than introduce more cruft into the constitution?
Given my principles above, I’m voting no for Amendment 35.
With the discussion of the purpose of a constitution in mind, the first amendment being posed this year is Amendment 34. In short, it proposes to remove the current limit of $250,000 that a property owner may sue for if construction on that property is defective.
I don’t really need to think much about this proposed amendment, since it completely fails my rule of thumb of “tell us how to make laws, not what laws to make”. The Colorado constitution is the wrong place to talk about construction liability laws. If the current law needs changing, let the state legislature make the change.
That aside, the proposed amendment also makes it easier for a property owner to sue a construction professional. Today, if you have a problem with the construction, the other party is allowed to try and fix it (within 75 days for personal property and 90 days for commercial property). Amendment 34 says that you are allowed to sue immediately rather than giving the construction professional a chance to try and remedy the problem. I am opposed to any laws that make it easier, rather than tougher, to sue. This country is already litigous enough, thanks.
The 2004 elections are soon upon us, and in the state of Colorado, we are being asked to consider four new amendments: numbers 34 — 37, along with two referendums, A and B. I want to spend some time exploring these amendments in the next few days, but rather than just diving into the guts of the amendments, it will be helpful to take a step back and think about the constitution itself first so that we will be able to view the proposed amendments with the proper perspective.
What is the purpose of a constitution? In my mind, it is to describe the structure and layout of a government along with the processes necessary to change the government. It may also include an enumeration of rights granted to the people subject to its law. From usconsitution.net:
The beauty of the Constitution is its brevity. It does not attempt to mandate too much, like some constitutions which are hundreds of pages long. Any power it does not grant the federal government, and which is not otherwise expressly forbidden, is left to the states. Think about how much you don’t have to write down if you say “these are the rules, and anything not in the rules is OK.”
The key phrase there is “does not attempt to mandate too much”. Reading between the lines, we see that a constitution is not the place to make policy. A constitution should give the outlines on how to make policies (or laws) but shouldn’t actually make the policies themselves.
For example, it is proper for a constitution to say, “The government shall receive revenue via an income tax.” It is improper for it to say, “The government shall receive revenue via an income tax, which is 4.7%.” Hopefully the difference there is obvious. In the first case, we are giving the government a general right to tax the populace. In the second case, we are telling the government exactly how it should exercise that right.
How rights are exercised belong to the body of laws created by the legislative branch of the government, not in the constitution itself. Think of it this way: the constitution tells you how to make laws, not what laws to make.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Colorado Constitution. Most of it is what you would expect out of a constitution. It describes the structure of the Colorado government, and specifies how counties work. This is good.
Unfortunately, there is also some crap that doesn’t belong, and really should be part of the Colorado state laws. Article XVIII — Miscellaneous is the worst offender. It talks about lotteries and other gambling, preserving forests, and permissible methods of hunting. These amendments do not fit our rule of “tell us how to make laws, not what laws to make”.
Ok, that’s enough for now. I think we have enough background to better understand the framework of the proposed amendments.
Further reading:
Being a professional software developer, I don’t write much code for fun anymore. But, I wanted to learn a new programming language (python) and was looking for a way to discover some new music to listen to.
The Live Music Archive has a ton of shows on their site, and a lot of them are in mp3 format, so you can just listen to them off the net. Problem is, there are just plain too many bands to choose from — it’s pretty overwhelming to load up their page and see a ton of unfamiliar band names.
So I threw together a quick and dirty script to go and redirect you to a random show from a random band in the archive. Once you are redirected, there is a link on the page that says “Stream Show” and you have your choice of hi-fi or lo-fi. Choose one of those and you’re good to go.
LaMAR — Live Music Archive Randomizer
(yeah, I know the acronym doesn’t quite fit, but I don’t care)
Today, we have guest blogger Jules who provides some witty commentary.
hey, why don’t you write an entry in your blog about how i beat the pants off you in scrabble? that seems like an event worth more press. be sure to include the part where you kept feeding me more wine, thinking i might eventually get too wasted to make words, thinking you might get a leg up on the competition that way… ha, that’s laughable. nobody steps to jules in scrabble, NOBODY. and the way you were whining about not getting good letters, niggah, PLEASE. you get what you get and you have to make it work for you. i mean, you had the “j” and the “x”, quit complaining.
(the final score was 308 — 165. The editorial staff at chizang.net supposes that we should improve our game a bit. –ed.)