Blather and books
It’s been a good day, mostly – work was a bit rough, because I’m dealing with a new product on new hardware and my primary contact hordes information and is not helpful (and not interested, it seems, in camaraderie with his coworkers), leaving me feeling clueless and like an idiot. But this will pass … and since i’m currently a hired gun brought in to help some other team, I can put on my mercenary hat and, beyond not liking feeling like an idiot, not care.
My first final was tonight – election law. Functionally five questions – one dealing with preclearance under VRA section 5, one dealing with a challenge to at-large districts under VRA section 2, one dealing with the constitutionality of a measure to ban (local) campaign contributions by foreign corporations, one dealing with the single-subject rule for initiatives, and one dealing with the substantial compliance rule for minor technical errors in initiatives. Just over 5k words written in two hours (I finished early. so did half the class.)
I got the “polished draft” on my paper (finished in the immediate post-coachella no-sleep zombie mood; I think the last 5 pages of the 32 are crap, and I ran out of time for an entire section about how the ninth circuit handles the issue under discussion). The prof’s comments boiled down to: this was really well written, you could probably just paginate it and turn it back in as the final. (Thanks, I think. I hate it when I’m harsher than the reviewer is, because it makes me think the reviewer isn’t doing their job or being honest. Still, nice to get that kind of feedback from an authority figure, it will reduce my nervousness as I finalize it in a week).
I’m finding it unusually hard to care about politics and the news. (FFS. the news is still going on about OBL.) I had a moment of obsessing over election results Monday night, because obsessing over election results is an independently fun thing to do, and because I care about Canada more than I care about any country other than my own. But otherwise … I can make it through the newspaper, maybe. But I have no desire to listen to NPR (and am listening to the local corporate modern rock station instead, when not to headphones), and my reading has shifted almost entirely to fiction and not history.
It’s even so bad that I didn’t vote in an election this week. It was a minor election – a local, mail-ballot only election, to elect a new county supervisor; the old one had resigned to become the county clerk. The issue with this is that because the county is sandwiched between two large cities, the county really doesn’t have its own media market – no tv, radio, or newspapers really local to the county, so there’s very little coverage of local issues. To really understand county supervisor stuff, I need to do a lot of research on the net, and go to candidate debates, etc … which is hard to factor in while working and going to school, particularly hard in a month where i’m away for a week at a music festival, and somewhat pointless when i’m moving out of the county in four months and so really just don’t give a shit. So … I didn’t vote. I didn’t even bother to send in the unvoted ballot as an undervote (which would cause my voter record to show me as having voted). I just … couldn’t be bothered to care.
Which … is the first time in my adult life that’s been true. It feels wierd. It feels wrong, as if I’ve somehow betrayed myself. And yet. I really don’t give a shit who the new county supervisor is. It’s been more than 24 hours since the election, and I haven’t even checked the results.
—-Feb/Mar/Apr books
I haven’t been reading much new. I’ve been rereading a lot of stuff I’ve read before – the robots & empire series, some of the stephen king stuff i liked, the four lords of the diamond series (nowhere near as good as i remember), the first dozen anita blake novels (trash, but fun), the Foundation novels, Battle Circle …
But I’ve read some:
The Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
I loved the Name of the Wind, so it was only natural that as soon as I knew about the Wise Man’s Fear, I ordered it, and it arrived, a giant hardback, the day it was published. (I’d ordered it before I bought my kindle).
It was good. Perhaps not as good as the Name of the Wind, but it held up well, far better than many second books I could name. IT was entertaining, and kept my attention throughout.
And yet.
The underlying presumption of the story is that something *big* must have happened to Kvothe, to drive him into hiding and to set the great sense of despair which looms over him. And yet, at the end of book two, there is nothing that looks like it might be setting the stage for that. It’s not clear that there is room in book three to set that up … and worse yet, the structure of the series suggests that book three has to end with something which resolves the problem, which causes Kvothe to snap back into the world. Some realization which cures the despair. It’s even harder to see how there’s room for that.
All of which is to say: book 2 was good, but I’m really, really worried that book 3 won’t be able to pull off the conclusion in a way that makes the entire trilogy satisfying as a whole.
The Land of Painted Caves, by Jean M Auel
This book is, I think, the paradigm example of why I’m worried about Rothfuss. The Clan of the Cave Bear was awesome, the immediate two sequels were pretty good, and the last three books have all sucked. Painted Caves sucks for two completely unrelated reasons. For one thing, the writing quality has deteriorated, and it almost feels as though Auel is going through the motions rather than writing stories she finds compelling about characters she loves. For another … there’s an overpowering sense of ennui and disappointment; the earlier books suggested that Ayla has a grand destiny, which just doesn’t pan out in a way which justifies the fanfare. :{
Immortality, by Kevin Bohacz
I’m embarassed to admit that I remember virtually nothing about this book. I read it in a blaze (a day or two, if I recall correct – it was back in February). I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it, but it left no lasting impression, which can’t possibly be a good recommendation.
The Enterprise of Death, by Jesse Bullington
This was a highly entertaining light fantasy involving a lesbian necromancer placed under a horrible curse, and the friends she met along the way of trying to free herself from it. A deep, compelling, moving novel it wasn’t; it was, instead, a fantastic, amusing romp. 
Hounded, by Kevin Hearne
Technically a May book – I just read it yesterday, based on a recommendation from Scalzi’s site. It was another fun romp; a fun romp involving an ancient druid living in Arizona. It was everything I wanted Norse Code to be and more. (Plus, the picture on the front is cute.)
The Half-Made World, by Felix Gilman
The best novel I’ve read so far this year. It’s a travesty that it wasn’t nominated for a Hugo. (Particularly since Blackout/All Clear was). It’s a fascinating, fantastic mystery set in a peculiar world with well-drafted magical elements. Somewhat bizarrely given the title and the fact that the world in question is, well, half-made, it’s the worldbuilding which truly made the novel. (I’d tried Gilman before and disliked him – Thunderer seemed like a failed attempt to imitate China Mieville – but in this book, Gilman has really hit his stride, and the novel was simply awesome).
The Native Star, by MK Hobson
Steampunk is in this season. Steampunk zombies are particularly in this season. Dreadnought was the epitomy of this a year or two ago, although the sequel failed to hold my attention. The Native Star is a fine implementation of that this year – better than Dreadnought in my mind, because the world is more interesting and complex, the view of America more detailed, and the story more deeply layered. I loved this book enough that I ordered the sequel on spec, as soon as I knew it existed.
The Hidden Goddess, by MK Hobson
This wasn’t as good as The Native Star, but that’s not unusual. It took a bit to get into, to fall back into the rhythm of the story, and the complexity of the story seemed periodically overwhelming. And yet, by mid book, the story was engaging, and the ending was well thought-out and well executed.
The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, and The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan
These were entertaining light (juvenile) fantasy. The first book was particularly good, and as normal the second and fifth were less compelling (books 3 and 4 were unreadable due to formatting issues).
Breakthrough! How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions, by Jon Queijo
Meh. The stories were interesting pop history-of-science. But the book was .. how shall I say it? A combination of too light, with some nasty internal contradictions, and it left me with a general sense of wondering how well sourced it was. Not a good trait in a history book. But what can I expect, really, for free kindle books?
I haven’t finished a single history book in this time (other than Breakthrough); I haven’t even really gotten more than a fifth of the way through one. History requires too much concentration for what I have to spare right now.
It’s all the fault of the miners
Part of the reading for class this week involves the historical evolution of western water law, from communal-equitable roots to the appropriation system.
It seems the prior appropriation system originally evolved among mid-nineteenth-century western miners: typically they were working under conditions where there was no effective government and no lawyers to tell them what the common law rules were, drafting rules which would work amongst themselves and prevent dispute settling at gunpoint. Riparian rights didn’t work because (a) nobody cared about the land adjoining the river, what they wanted was the ability to divert water and silt and then scour the silt; and (b) they were all squatters anyway, so could have no riparian rights.
The system they developed worked well as between them; it only became problematic when extended outside the mining context.
In most of the west, the primary push for that extension came from second- and third- wave settlers who homesteaded non-riparian parcels and saw no reason that the abundant waters in rivers shouldn’t be be available to help them put their new (free!) land to productive use.
The way we lived then.
I’ve never really understood the historic WASP disdain for non-WASPs, epitomized by the pictures from the 1920s of signs saying “no Irish need apply” and the like, and it’s particularly hard for me to believe that this was an issue in the Bay Area, where many of the local fishing villages were run by Portuguese and Italians, and where San Francisco had a huge Italian population. So I was surprised to encounter this quote in Last Call, last year’s extensive history of prohibition:
“Stanford Chancellor David Starr Jordan darkly noted that although San Mateo County was ’9/10 Anglo-Saxon’, he had determined that ‘about one-half the arrests for speeding, hit-and-run driving, or worse, are all men with Italian names, mostly from Naples and Sicily.”
I guess the moral of the story is that anglo-American racism truly has known few bounds, historically.
Intermittent trivium
According to this report, “an estimated 10 million pounds of pesticides are used in the Bay Area annually, with the highest use in Sonoma and Napa counties.”
Just … wow.
OK, this is astonishing.
According to the prof of my tiny 6-person water law class, 90% of the biomass in the delta today is exotic.
According to an article in this morning’s Chronicle (which I read on my Kindle and so can’t link directly to), the Golden Gate Bridge District is considering abolishing toll-takers and replacing them with a system which takes a picture of every license plate which crosses the bridge, queries the DMV database, and then sends the registered owner of the car a monthly bill. This is expected to save on the order of $3 million a year.
This is a good thing; the technology to do this has existed for some time – even the bridges with RFID toll-taking technology have this built in to bill (and fine) people who drive through the toll-tag lanes without the appropriate RFID chip sitting on their dashboard. In that case it’s obnoxious – because the imposition of a fine which vastly (eg, on the close order of 50x) overcompensates the toll district for the marginal cost of sending the bill is deliberately punitive, an example of the state using an excuse to fleece the citizenry (a gambit which I admit it has been forced to by the budget, but still an obnoxious one). In the case of a system which just bills you, it’s not obnoxious; it’s a plan which lowers transaction costs, allows you to drive across the bridge without worrying about having $6 at the ready and without having an RFID tag in your car constantly broadcasting your identity to anyone with the wits to read it, while allowing the state to not pay an army of people to do really mindnumbingly boring jobs. This is how all tolls should work.
And yet: this also means that it would be impossible to drive across the bridge anonymously. Oh, sure, you could cross it anonymously as a passenger; that kind of anyonymity remains. But … this convenience, this money-saving device, brings us one step closer to the world in which the state regularly tracks everyone’s move, and it is only the sheer mountain of data which prevents officers of the state from paying too much attention to any one individual.
Some days I fear fascism is the inevitable future, not because anyone will deliberately choose it, but because our love of convenience and our desire to save money will cause us to simply slide into it, blithely unaware of what is happening.
It can be mitigated in this case, somewhat, by the bridge authority agreeing that:
(a) records of who has crossed over the bridge will not be made available to police or other government agencies absent a court order or warrant;
(b) there will be a regular program of destroying records of people who have paid within 30 days of receipt of payment;
(c) there will be a regular program of isolating records for which there has not been payment from the rest of the system.
These are really essential if the information the bridge authority collects is not to be misused. (I assume there are similar safeguards already in place for the use of FastTrack).
Voting
Voting:
A quick rundown of how I’m planning to vote on Tuesday, with (brief) explanations instead of the usual 1000 word tomes.
Governor: Dale Ogden (L). Meg Whitman has spent a fortune failing to convince me that she can succeed at doing what Arnie promised to do. Jerry Brown is more responsible than any single other living politician for helping construct the state of California’s current framework of ungovernability. I reject them both, and am slightly more sympathetic to the Libertarians than to the Greens when I look for third party candidates.
Senator: Barbara Boxer (D). Carly Fiorina came into HP, failed to understand its corporate culture, the motivations of its employees, or what made it a great company, then proceded to change the company in ways which destroyed all three. There’s no good reason to believe she’d be any better in the Senate.
Lt. Governor: Abel Maldanado (R). Gavin Newsom is a spotlight-seeking political hack who managed to make the gay community in San Francisco love him while scoring a massive own goal for their side; then he proceeded to betray his closest friend (and prominent political aide) and his wife, simultaneously. Abel Maldanado is a socially moderate, pro-environment Republican who is willing to vote for compromise budgets. Given this choice, the answer is obvious.
Secretary of State: Debra Bowen (D). She came to office four years ago promising to restrict the use of unverifiable (and unsafe) electronic voting machines. She did so. She deserves re-election for the simple reason that she kept her primary campaign promise, with the result that elections in California are now more secure than they are in much of the country.
Attorney General: Steve Cooley (R). He’s a relatively nonpartisan conservative who supports modifying three strikes; his opponent ran a DA’s office which has been embroiled in a scandal involving the DA’s office not turning over impeachment evidence about cops with disciplinary records involving dishonesty. That was a fundamental failure of a basic job duty, and blaming it on the SFPD should not earn her a promotion.
Insurance Commissioner: why is this an elected office, again?
Superintendent of Public Education: all I know about this is that it’s shaped up to be a race between the candidate backed by the administration and the candidate backed by the teachers. Since I have no children in the public schools, I don’t follow public school politics enough to know more, so I’m inclined to not vote on it.
Assembly: Ray Bell (L). I voted against the Democrat in the primary for reasons involving local county politics (and because one of his opponents was one of the best candidates i’ve seen anywhere in a long time). He’s guaranteed a win in the general election, so I’m voting for a third party candidate to increase their visibility and numbers.
Congress: Anna Eshoo (D). I’m reasonably happy with her as a representative and don’t think any of her opponents will do a better job.
Proposition 19: Yes. It’s far from a perfect bill, but legalizing possession and growth of marijuana, and allowing some legalization of sale, is a step in the right direction. Aside from the (uncertain) situation with respect to corporate drug-free workplace policies, where I’m somewhat sympathetic to the danger that companies may be unable to comply with both this law and federal contracting regulations, my objections to Prop. 19 are that it doesn’t go far enough, not that it goes too fa.r
Proposition 20: No. I voted for the independent redistricting commission for the state legislature, two years ago; how about we give it a chance, and see how it works, before extending its power?
Proposition 21: No. This is tough: more money for parks (many of which were almost closed last year), tied to a minor increase in the vehicle license fee, balanced by free park admission – it’s a reasonable policy choice which I would vote for as a legislator. But I don’t like ballot-box budgeting; it makes the overall state budget problem worse.
Proposition 22: No. More ballot box budgeting. In a good cause, sure … but aren’t they always in a good cause?
Proposition 23: No. A temporary suspension might be in order (although even then, if we really believe that global warming is a problem that must be addressed, don’t we need to address it regardless of whether we’re in good economic times or not?). But this isn’t temporary: the trigger is a condition of extremely low unemployment … meaning the suspension may be indefinite.
Proposition 24: No. (1) Complicated tax policy is why we have a legislature. (2) I like some of the changes the measure would repeal while disliking others. (3) More ballot-box budgeting.
Proposition 25: Yes If a majority of the legislature can put together a budget which is balanced and which doesn’t require tax increases, they should be able to do so.
Proposition 26: No. Increasing the number of things which require a 2/3 majority vote, and simultaneously incresing the number of things which must be sent to the voters for a 2/3 majority vote, is a recipe for gridlock and further structural inflexibility, making it even harder for government to function than it already is.
Proposition 27: No. We voted to create this redistricting commission two years ago. Nothing has changed. How about we give it a try before repealing it?
Why would anyone think the Fillmore was a blight on the neighborhood?
I mean, maybe if it were the Regency Ballroom …
Says the New York Times, in an obituary for Mr. Coblentz:
They met when local complaints threatened to keep Mr. Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium from opening.
To show the Fillmore was not a blight on a fine neighborhood, Mr. Coblentz had a friend stake out a hotel across the street known to be a house of ill repute. The friend photographed policemen entering. After Mr. Coblentz shared the photos with the Board of Permit Appeals, the Fillmore was approved.
I wonder if that would work today.
I had intended to write up full-scale analyses of each of the propositions prior to the election, but my morale got shattered, and my willingness to devote energy to anything other than rank avoidance dwindled away.
But someone expressed interest, so even though it’s too late to sway anyone’s votes, here are the short versions:
Proposition 13:
As I explained here, Prop. 13 is a minor technical revision to the Constitution which I have a hard time caring about in any way. It’s almost certainly harmless. It’s probably pointless – I just don’t believe there are a substantial number of unreinforced masonry buildings owned by people who aren’t retrofitting them but would if they were given a reassessment exclusion which lasted until their next sale instead of fifteen years. It’s on the ballot because the only way to change it is via a ballot measure, and the people I think should be deciding this unanimously placed it on the ballot, so I voted yes … but I would have preferred not to have to care about it.
Proposition 14:
This measure would change the way elections are conducted in California. Currently we have partisan primaries (run by the state and paid for by the state) to select partisan nominees who automatically qualify for the general election. The new system would be to have jungle primaries in which all candidates of all parties are on the same ballot; the top two vote getters would advance to the general election but would not be the nominees of their parties. (Presidential elections would be handled differently).
Activists of all parties hate it.
I like it: I think the single biggest problem with California politics is that the election structure requires candidates to appeal to the most extreme members of their respective parties. To win the primary, Democrats must appeal to Democratic activists, and Republicans must appeal to Republican activists … resulting in candidates who are forced to the extreme and then are punished for comprmising, and resulting in the 30% of the state who are nonpartisan (plus the liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats) being frozen out of the legislative process.
Part of the fix to this is to fix redistricting, which is why I voted for Prop. 11 in 2008. (DISCLAIMER: I am currently an applicant to be a member of the state redistricting commission). Another part of the solution is to change the incentive structure for elections. Proposition 14 should do that: it should encourage candidates to run to the middle in all races, and in lopsided districts it should allow the centrist members of the dominant party to combine with the other party’s members to elect a centrist partisan rather than a radical partisan.
It’s not a cure-all. But it’s worth trying.
Proposition 15:
I really like the idea: take one race and see if public financing works. It’s great to have an experiment limited to one race rather than experimenting with the entire system; and it’s particularly appropriate to use the Secretary of State as a test bed for this kind of reform.
I really dislike the fact that the implementation discriminates between candidates based on the party in which they are registered.
So did Prop. 11, but in that case the initiative was fixing a critical problem. In this case, it isn’t. So I’d rather wait for a measure which doesn’t have this flaw.
Proposition 16:
Proposition 16 is a measure to change the state constitution to require a particular type of government action – and only that particular type of government action – be approved by a 2/3 majority vote of the voters.
I don’t like supermajority requirements unless there’s a compelling public policy reason for them.
I don’t like singling out particular kinds of action unless there’s some compelling public policy reason for it.
There isn’t in this case. Public provision of electric power is no different than public provision of garbage collection (or of sewage collection) or, to be honest, of water. Why should the state constitution carve out a particular hurdle for this type of public provision of utility service and not for others?
It shouldn’t.
The measure is being advertised as a way to protect the taxpayers’ money and allow people to vote on how their money is spent. But the advertising ignores what I think of as the key questions: what makes public power provision different, so that it should be subject to a public vote when other things aren’t; and what makes public power provision so special as to require a 2/3 majority vote?
As far as I can tell the answer is: nothing except the fact that the primary sponsor wants the state to write into the constitution an effective way to prevent competition.
In short: the proposition is a scam perpetrated by PG&E. It deserves defeat.
Proposition 17:
I don’t understand this initiative.
I know it has something to do with changes to the rules for auto insurance to allow a particular type of discount to be portable when you change insurance providers, and that the trade-off for it is a barrier to entry to the insurance market for people who don’t already have insurance.
I see no particular reason to prefer that trade-off.
Moreover, I don’t understand the ramifications – which consumers win by this? Which don’t? What are the long-term second-order effects on the industry?
I don’t have the time, skills, or interest to figure this out. Figuring this out is why we have an Insurance Commissioner.
so I resent being asked, I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, and I don’t want to spend the time figuring it out.
I feel somewhat bad for reflexively voting ‘no’ without taking the time to understand it. But … unless someone can make a case that it’s worth my time, why should I?
Measure G:
This is a San Mateo County measure involving a short-term (4 years) parcel tax whose revenue would be used to plug a hole in the local community college district’s budget caused by state budget cutbacks.
To start with: community colleges are a fantastic resource which are, I think, more important to the well-being of the state’s working class population than CSU and UC, and are a vital service which should not be cut back. I would support cuts to CSU and UC before I’d support cuts to the community colleges.
And yet … a temporary tax to plug a long-term budget hole?
This might make sense if there were any reason to believe the state’s budget crisis would end in the next four years.
There isn’t.
And so it doesn’t.
The measure calls out for another election in four years to plug the exact same hole we’re plugging now.
So … we should buckle down and either pass a permanent tax now or figure out how to balance the books without the increase now. But we shouldn’t be trying to use a short-term temporary fix to the problem.
That way lies continuing crisis.
And wouldn’t it be better not to renew the crisis?
An open letter to all members of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors
The agenda for today’s Board of Supervisors meeting contains a resolution urging the state legislature to enact legislation limiting the ability of the Cow Palace to permit the use of its facility for “Rave” events.
I am writing to you to ask you to vote against this resolution.
I was in the crowd at the Cow Palace on May 29, 2010. I was completely sober. I had come, as had sixteen thousand other people, to enjoy the experience of dancing in a large crowd full of people who love the music being performed.
This is an experience which, for those who enjoy it, is almost magical; the crowd comes together as a group, filled with the joy that comes from intense physical exertion and the love of music. The crowd at such events is almost never violent, because that would not fit with the mood; it’s the kind of crowd where you can trip over trash on the ground and everyone around you will rush to help you get back on your feet. It is the kind of crowd where total strangers share water because, well, that’s what you do: you help each other out, and you share in the joy of the experience.
Some of the people in the crowd were on drugs. By far, the majority were not.
Some of the people in the crowd were not careful and failed to keep themselves hydrated in an environment which involved them sweating due to physical exertion while in a room made warm by the heat of sixteen thousand people dancing. The overwhelming majority did not.
Two people died. They died having done something risky – taking ecstacy and dancing in a hot environment – and then failing to exert the care and caution needed to remain well in such an environment.
Fifteen thousand nine hundred and ninety eight people did not – because they were careful and responsible enough to enjoy the experience without harming themselves.
The resolution you are voting on today is a resolution asking the state to ask the overwhelming majority of responsible electronic dance music fans the ability to have an experience which they treasure – an experience which they plan for for months in advance and, in some cases, travel as far as six hundred miles for – because fewer than a dozen people were not careful.
The resolution is manifestly unfair: in essence, it seeks to punish the responsible for the failures of the irresponsible.
Were the activity in question something more mainstream than dancing in a large crowd to electronic dance music, the measure would never even have come up for a vote. But because electronic dance music is an ‘underground’ activity pursued by a tiny minority of the state, it has come up.
I ask you to be the voice of reason who stands for those who love electronic dance music, and for those who believe that the responsible should not be punished for the activities of the irresponsible.
Please vote no on this resolution when it comes up for a vote today.
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