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• main index page basically completed.

[This is what I can only guess was a book report I wrote for my senior Government class (that would be High School)]

In the United States, the problem of people not voting has become a large problem in recent elections. One that has troubled many people in the nation. The question as to why Americans do not vote is not a question with a simple answer. There are many possible answers that have causes that date back to the founding of our country. The authors of this book give a historical outlook to why Americans do not vote. One of the major blockades to people voting is the registration system in the United States. Although many restrictions have been lowered as a result of different amendments to the Constitution, there is still not an easy way to become registered. In many European countries, the registration process is mandatory and often pushed strongly by the government itself. This is process that the U.S. government leaves to local agencies. This opens up the avenue for political parties to selectively aid different groups to register in order to win a greater percentage of the actual voters.

This problem has a twofold solution. State and local authorities must make it even easier to register by offering the services in more places (as apparently happened in the 1992 election) and then Congress must enact laws that ensure more people are given the opportunity to vote.

Another problem that exists in the country is a largely disproportionate electorate. The demographics of the people who vote is vastly different than that of the overall population. For example, although about 11 percent of the population is african american only 7 percent of the total ballots were cast by african americans. In addition there is a gap in the ernings of the electorate. Nearly 40-45 percent of the vote is cast by people in the top economic third of the while only 20-25 percent of the vote comes from the bottom third.

This problem has its roots in the unfair voting and registration rules of the past. During the period between 1888 and 1924 many southern states and some northern states tried to create a selective electorate. In the south the goal was to disenfranchise the african americans and poor whites while in the north the idea was to “improve” the electorate. This caused a narrowing of views in the major parties which further disenfranchised more people.

Another propblem that has proliferated as the country grows is that the political parties have relied on large generalizations that have few specifics. This is so as to not turn off any specific group of voters. Unfortunately this policy lessens the competition between the two parties therefore creating a lessened interest in the political arena.

This problem is a very far reaching and complicated one that does not have a simple solution. It will require a major change in the political system in this nation. The first step in this process is to increase the voter registration. The easiest way to do this is to require registration when people renew drivers licenses or something of that nature.

Hopefully. if and when these changes are made, the voting population of this country will become more aware of the issues around them.

[Apparently, I wasn’t really happy with the book, so I attached a commentary directed at my Government teacher, Mr. Hollins]

Mr. Hollins,

After reading this book, I can not resist the urge to give you my own opinion on this matter. I resisted doing this in my paper because I did not agree with many of the philosophies that were given in the book. Nevertheless I needed to express my ideas somewhere.

This book contained many facts and figures describing the different political changes over the course of history and the many different changes that took place in the political system and the individual parties, but, to me, it failed to answer the simple question: “Why don’t Americans vote?” As I read I saw all these fancy theories filled with terminoligy that seems to indicate that a lot of knowledge is being conveyed but I saw no ideas that seem to explain why. The authors seemed to concentrate more on giving the facts than on giving an explination.

To me there is a very simple reason that people don’t vote. I agree with the Japanese dignitary that said americans are fat and lazy. I don’t meen it literally, but I do think that a large portion of the population lives on a day to day basis with little concern or care about the political system in general. They only vote when they feer that they are going to lose something or gain something personally. It shows purely an instinctual survival instinct.

I realize that this is a very pessimistic view of the nation but I see very litle evidence that the United States is made up of people who are motivated enough to care about politics. When we are rated thirteenth in terms of scholastic ability compared to other first world nations, I do not find it surprising to see the trends in voter turnout.

I see no point in trying to convince all of the people who don’t vote to vote. If someone doesn’t have enough concern to get themselves registered and then vote, I DON’T want them to vote. I don’t trust their judgement. I really do believe in an elitest theory. An oligarchy sounds very comforting to me if the group in power is made up of the highly educated. I may not always like their decisions, but at least I trust that they are making rational decisions and not voting on a whim.

In the end, I saw this book as a great source of information; but, to me, it did not answer the question that I expected it to do by its title. “Why Americans Don’t Vote?”

[So, there you have it, Jeremy in high school, uncut, unedited, and uncensored. Feel free to rip into it below.]

Computers have been a part of my life for a surprising number of years. I believe I got my first computer in around the sixth grade (that would be an Apple II+). As my handwriting left something to be desired, I started doing much of my schoolwork on the computer. One advantage of the digital nature of my work is that theoretically I can still access it. The reality is that getting data off of decade old 5 1/2 inch disks is quite difficult, but I have finally succeeded. But, tThrough my first eBay purchase, I was able to get a serial card for my IIe which will allow me to transfer the disks to my Mac. And a few other programs that help me convert the old file formats.

So as I find interesting things I will post them here for your enjoyment and amusement.

• wake up early to go to dentist
• try to check email. Mail server dead.
• go to dentist. Get fussed at. need prescription.
• can’t contact colocation site.
• go and pick up server. likely hardware problem
• load up server at work
• go to meeting
• come back, server dead again. reboot.
• go home
• get mail. have bill from College for course I am supposed to get for free
• go and get chinese food and movie
• eat food.
• start watching movie. DVD scratched. movie can’t be played
• ::sigh::

As some of you know, I have this odd habit of keeping all the spam I get; I don’t know why. But it does let me generate some neat graphs showing the sheer quantity of spam I get. The graph linked at left will show the number of spams received per day for the year 2003.

Enjoy.

This morning we had a problem at W&M. We run a piece of software called Blackboard. It is used by professors to post assignments, have discussion boards, give online tests and many other class functions. It is very widely used. We started this semester automatically enrolling students in their Blackboard classes during active semesters. Well, according to our student system, the semester ended yesterday (by semester ending they mean classes being taught, and the School of Ed had their last classes yesterday).

So everyone got un-enrolled from their courses at 12:01 am this morning.

Oops.

I got a call from a student at about 7:30am. She was a little panicky but very polite. I told her I would handle the issue and call her back as I made progress. I had the issue resolved by 8:15. Annoying, but not that big a deal.

As the morning progressed, we found in the Blackboard support email account about 5 reports of the problem. We let them know that the situation was fixed. I assumed that was all we would hear about the situation.

Then this got forwarded to me:

  From:  [name removed]
  To: <pmvolp@wm.edu>, <wssadl@wm.edu>, <tjsull@wm.edu>
  Subject: Regarding Blackboard
  Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 01:42:12 -0500
  X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2627
  Importance: Normal

  I address this message to those parties I feel might be most
concerned.

  Students access to the blackboard information for classes, which we
may have yet to complete, has been removed. I put it bluntly when I
say that this is absurd. I cannot understand how such an issue would
have been regarded with so little forethought. I do not suspect that I
will suffer as a result of this, but I must deplore this action on
behalf of those students who might. Please forgive any rudeness on my
part, I am not one to generally express displeasure with such angry
words, but a very dear friend of mine, already stressed to her limits
after several consecutive exams, cried from sheer frustration when she
found this to be the case, and I cannot bear to watch others suffer.

   At best, this was an innocent mistake, perhaps one of the many
consequences of Isabel. I cannot help but think, though, that such a
thing does not happen accidentally. Perhaps the more severe
consequences of removal of access may not have been considered, in
which case, I remain curious as to how such an issue could be ignored.
However, if the consequences were considered and this was decided to
be a rational course of action, then I am shocked. Though it may be
too late, all steps to correct this should be taken. I must say, that
be it by choice or by accident, I am disappointed in this esteemed
institution.

  [name removed]

Now, let us examine who this dipshit sent the email to:

pmvolp@wm.edu - Patricia M Volp, Dean of Students

wssadl@wm.edu - Samuel Sadler, Vice President for Student Affairs

tjsull@wm.edu - Timothy J Sullivan, President

And before getting to me, it was forwarded through:

krcott@wm.edu - Karen R Cottrell, Associate Provost for Enrollment

csbogg@wm.edu - Carolyn S Boggs, University Registrar

pgfeis@wm.edu - Geoff Feiss, Provost

Now, the person you may not notice in that list is the Associate Provost for Information technology. You would think he would be the person this irate student should have contacted, or maybe even the Technology Support Center to see about getting the problem actually fixed. But no.

Let’s not forget that the message was sent at 1:42am. I’m sure President Sullivan is sitting at his computer 24 hours a day to deal with things like this. And he uses Outlook. No comment. Probably a business major; or Political Science

::sigh::

Maybe 6 months back, one of my coworkers, Roger, asked me if I wanted two NeXT Cubes he had been given several years back that were just taking up space. I of course said yes and became the owner of 2 Cube chassises, 4 system boards, two monitors, and a NeXT laser printer. I played with them a little when I first got them, but didn’t do much.

This morning I finally got to work on them.

I started with one working bootable system. Openstep has an interesting property that you can install the OS onto another hard drive as long as you have a working system, you do not need install media (although I do have the install CD). I pulled out an external 4GB SCSI drive I had and after much noodling was able to get it attached and recognized by the Cube.

Why use a new drive? Good question; I wish I had a tape recorder. The drive that is in the Cube is the newest of the three drives I got with the machines. It is a 3.5 inch half height 1GB drive (as opposed to the other 2 non-functional 300MB full height 5.25 inch drives). But even though it is “newer” it is still old and the bearings sound like they have sand in them and can be heard half the house away. I doubt that drive has much life left in it.

Once I had the system installed on the new drive, I detached the old drive and began to play. So far I am attached to my network, and am able to browse the web.

Pretty cool for a computer nearly 14 years old.

During my nighttime contemplation time (2-4am), a realization occurred to me. My neighbors must be afraid of the dark. Or maybe bizarre initiates in the church of illuminating the night. A strange sect that embraces the modern technology of 200 watt halogen lamps to drive away the heathen demons of the night.

I on the other hand am being persecuted for my belief that it should be dark at night. Lighting the dark when performing task is perfectly acceptable, but I seriously doubt the 5 houses around ours all had people performing yard-work at 3am. So I sat in bed and looked angrily at the shadows that are being cast all through the room from my dark-fearing neighbors contemplating how likely I would be to hit the bulbs if I owned a bb gun.

Bah.

I read Slashdot, as do most of you, but the comments on the system rarely rise above the general 13 year old geek “my blip is bigger than your blip.”

But Occasionally you come accross a great comment. This is from an article on Apple selling a million songs from the iTunes Music Store in 3.5 days.

The good publicity Apple’s sure to get from this would almost make it worth their while to buy those songs themselves…

…hmm… wait a minute…

No, sorry, my bad. It wasn’t Apple. It was me. I admit it. I was the one who bought those songs. I just wanted to see if their servers could withstand a vicious one-man slashdotting…

It can - apparently the iTunes server’s not running Windows. But I’ll try again tonight, this time with my friend Chris buying the same songs simultaneously. Then I’ll get Greg and Dave to help me buy whole albums at a time, and pretty soon, Steve Jobs will crumble in terror and BEG us to stop our vicious assault on their site!

Steve Jobs, I warned you - I’ve got my VISA, and I’m ready to take. you. down.

You didn’t care when I started buying iPod after iPod in an attempt to exhaust your assembly line workers in a one-man iPod Slashdotting. Well this is different. This time, I’m serious and I’ve upped my VISA limits. Your site is toast. Get ready to rumble!

I am now on the train somewhere above Ashland. I am connected to the internet at a blazing 14.4K. I am posting to my blog. I love technology. I have not been ablr to connect to any wireless networks yet, but I am trying. Why? because I can.