Imported From Livejournal

Just a rambling of thoughts going through my head:

So, this being a presidential election year, there’s inevitably talk about this archaic Electoral College system, especially in a race this close. But I would think that changing it to general-popular-vote would just shift campaigning from states-that-are-close to states-with-many-people, since campaigning in a state with lots of people will get you many more votes than campaigning in a state with few people. But I agree that it’s kinda weird that my vote for president essentially doesn’t count.

So, since I’ve been using my journal here as a forum for my controversial opinions, why stop now?

Top 5 ways I fear Gay Marriage will affect my life

1. The State recognizing homosexual marriage takes away from the meaning of marriage. Marriage will be seen as a mere partnership, which just provides financial benefits. Since kids can now have multiple moms and/or dads (and in fact do, due to no-fault divorce now), there would be no legal justification for stopping polygamy and other “alternative” forms of marriage. Anything that one might be able to remotely classify as a “civil right” will have to be acceptable. As our society grows in this direction, the children that Jessi and I intend to have will grow up in this society, and that thought scares me.

So, I’ve been getting myself edjumacated on the Gay Marriage issue, and I’m a bit confused on how the government system works in our state. So, I’d appreciate someone helping me figure out how the process of legalizing Gay Marriage in Massachusetts worked.

• The Massachusetts SJC decided that the Marriage laws in Massachusetts were unconstitutional. How do they manage to tell the Legislature to change it? Had they not changed the laws, what would the consequences have been? If Gov. Romney had vetoed the change, would he have been held in contempt of court?
• It’s my understanding that government branches are set up as a system of checks and balances, to keep any one branch from having too much power. In this case, the courts were changing what the Legislature was doing. What’s the system in place to keep the courts from having too much power? That is, since I’ve been disagreeing with the decisions that the courts have been making, what actions can I as a citizen do to try to keep the courts in check? (I understand that this may be indirect. I think I’m looking for an answer of the form “Vote for candidates for office X that support doing Y.”, but I’m not sure.)

I’m primarily focusing on the state level of government here, but input on the federal level is also appreciated.

A long time ago, when I was first exploring this LiveJournal thing, I once asked why nobody commented on my posts. It was apparently because my posts were boring. Well, I’ve discovered that if I post more about things I think and my religious and political beliefs, I tend to get oodles and oodles of comments.

Well, I don’t know if that’s good or not. But I’ve got a hunch I’m about to do it again. Please don’t follow the following links if you’re unwilling to be offended by my beliefs.

So, I went to Card Stop in Dudley today to try to run a Standard Constructed Magic tournament for them. At our peak, we had 4 willing participants:

• My wife, whom I brought
• The store owner
• Random Person #1, who freely admitted currently being banned from DCI tournaments for a year for Unsportsmanlike Conduct.
• Random Person #2, who showed up about 45 minutes after we were hoping to start

Since we need an 8 player minimum to really have a tournament, it was a bit disappointing. Hopefully we’ll have a slightly better turnout to the draft I want to run at the beginning of November.

Another thing I noticed about the VP debate: They spent half of it on “foreign policy issues”, which basically meant Iraq. The media seems to spend a lot of time on it, which may be part of the reason it seems that many people care about it. However, the war just isn’t that big an issue to me. Perhaps it’s a little naïve of me, but I have faith that our government and military is doing the best they can. I think that they know what they’re doing.

So, I saw the VP debate last night… I unfortunately missed the presidential debate last week due to forgetfulness. I’ve got a few random comments on things that I found interesting, which you’re free to comment on or ignore.

• The candidates spoke mostly about what their running-mates would do, and not a whole lot about themselves. I didn’t feel like I got enough information about these candidates to decide between them specifically, although I suppose that that’s not how I’d be making a decision.
• The media tries to make things controversial.
  • The moderator tried a question to the effect of “Do you think that your opponent is personally responsible for the increased cost of health care?”, as well as other questions trying to get them to butt heads with and insult each other specifically. Luckily, the candidates didn’t really go for it and mostly stuck to the issues.
  • The media has polls and encourages questions like “Who do you think won the debate?”, as opposed to what I think would be the point, “Do you think that the candidates did a good job describing their views and where they differ?”.
• Cheney made a good point that I don’t think most Americans understand. He stated why tax cuts for the rich were a good idea. People tend to want “tax cuts for the middle class”, which affect them and make their paychecks bigger immediately. However, I think the better long-term plan is what he proposed, giving tax breaks to richer people. If the owner of the company where I work (who would qualify under “rich” for most definitions, I think (although of course, I don’t know for certain as I am not his accountant)) gets a tax break, then he has more money to grow his company. This means that he can hire more people and give me more raises. It really seems like a better long-term plan to me. And even with the cut, the rich people would still continue to carry the largest portion of the tax burden.

On a whim, I headed over to the Worcester Registry of Deeds site today and searched to see if the land transfer from my parents had become official. Amazingly enough, it had, as of yesterday. I downloaded the Official Registered Plans marking the lot as well as the Official Deed saying that the land has become ours. It’s kinda neat—Jessi and I are landowners now.

Rather than put you though needing to use their horrible searching interface, I put the Official Images up on my computer for people who are interested (and so I have a copy). Warning: they’re in TIFF format.

Digging through ‘s code is fun! (I’m assuming he won’t have a problem with me posting this; I’ll be happy to take it down if he does.)

• Dim X As Integer 'OH MY! A Single-letter Variable name!

• 'Should Earth's gravitational acceleration change, please modify this value accordingly.<br /> Private Const cKilosPerPound As Double = 2.2046226

• 'So far as I can tell, this code is obsolete. It is kept on the off chance<br /> 'something will break if we delete it. If you get bored, try<br /> 'removing it and see if anything blows up.

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