The absentee ballot's all marked and ready to be mailed back to the local board of elections. It appears that the local board of elections is going with an optical scan ballot for its absentees, and checking the state's website, it appears several optical scan systems are being looked at to replace the older voting machines in the state for regular voters. Personally, I think that's a good system to go with, since it's already used very widely in education, and it has a relatively easy error-correction mechanism - hand-checking the ballot.

Anyway, back to the ballot. There are 11 registered parties in the state, Republican, Democrat, Independence, Conservative, Working Families, Green, Families First, Libertarian, Rent is too High, Socialist Equality, and Socialist Workers. Since the removal of the Right to Life party from the state ballot in 2002 (which coincided with the removal of the Liberal party), the guide I follow is to vote down the Conservative ticket, since trusting New York Republicans on social issues is a dicey issue at best (see George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani).

Voting a straight Conservative ticket in this election means, ironically, voting for 5 Republicans and 4 Democrats in the 9 races in which the party has endorsed a candidate. In the other race, for Congressman, I opted for the Republican, making a total of 6 Republicans and 4 Democrats. The Republican candidates are for Governor, Senator, Representative, Attorney General, Comptroller, and State Assemblyman. The Democratic candidates are for State Senator, State Supreme Court, County Judge, and County Clerk.

As a sidenote, this is where I get to make a mathematical plug to go out and vote. Although for every office, the public at large can favor only one candidate, the only sampling of the public that matters are the ones who actually choose to express those preferences. Assuming voter turnout of approximately 50%, that usually means the winning candidate has the votes of somewhere between 25-30% of the public as a whole. In a 2-party system, usually both candidates, no matter how horrible, register at least 30% support in polls.

What I'm getting at is that the losing candidate in elections often could have won had all of their supporters gone out and voted if the opposition's vote count remained the same, particularly when the election is close (in New York, this rule of thumb does not apply, since a genuinely close election only happens about once every decade or two in any given office).

There is of course the side remark that those who don't vote have no business griping about whatever idiots they get in office for the next 2 years. My personal thought is that whether the Democrats win or lose next Tuesday, the runup to 2008 is going to be filled either with their getting too caught up in paying Bush back or their bitterness and internal feuds over having lost. A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of thing, since I don't think they can handle either winning or losing in a dignified manner this cycle.

Posted by Justice at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Third semester, third try at exegesis. This time, the passage must be from the book of Ezekiel, which ought to provide for a very interesting time, seeing as this book has had an interesting history. The professor says that at one point, Jewish men had to reach a certain age to reach this book, and given some of the bizarre behavior some exhibited while reading it, it could not be read alone.

As it turns out, I've put my foot into the muck again in choosing to focus on some part of Ezekiel 16, which is the famous chapter about the harlot Jerusalem, the longest single allegory in the Bible. Naturally, the feminists don't particularly like this chapter, as a scan through the scholarly articles revealed a delightfully titled one called "The B---- had it Coming to Her"

Currently, I am debating whether to choose some part of 16:35-52, 53-58, or 59-63. Right now, my choice is leaning toward 35-43, not only because scholars have more to say about this part, but because it tends to fit into a theme for the semester:

"Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, Because your shame was laid bare and your nakedness uncovered in your harlotries with your lovers, and because of all your idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers, with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you loathed; I will gather them against you from every side, and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. And I will judge you as women who break wedlock and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy. And I will give you into the hand of your lovers, and they shall throw down your vaulted chamber and break down your lofty places; they shall strip you of your clothes and take your fair jewels, and leave you naked and bare. They shall bring up a host against you, and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords. And they shall burn your houses and execute judgments upon you in the sight of many women; I will make you stop playing the harlot, and you shall also give hire no more. So will I satisfy my fury on you, and my jealousy shall depart from you; I will be calm, and will no more be angry. Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me with all these things; therefore, behold, I will requite your deeds upon your head, says the Lord GOD.

Posted by Justice at 1:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All archives should now be restored and comments and trackbacks should be working. If there are any technical difficulties, please e-mail me at the address listed on the right side bar.

Posted by Justice at 5:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The silence of late has had to do with issues connected with my old host, Fuitadnet, and the incompetence of their technical support staff. For a long story kept short, Movable Type has been inoperable for about 2 weeks due to its inability to locate key Perl modules on my server. Others have lately been complaining about hacks and downed sites, so it's probably just as well I left.

The blog is now hosted by Netfirms, due to a friend's generous offer of excess space and bandwidth, and coincidentally, they have a Buffalo office. There are still kinks to be worked out, and not everything in the system is working yet - particularly the archives - but it should be ironed out in the next few days.

Posted by Justice at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Haven't posted here in a few weeks, probably because time has been short of late, though as is usual, much of that lack of time is my own fault for not spending it as wisely as it should be.

Anyway, this last weekend, I had a most enjoyable time at the medieval festival at the University, participating in both a living chess match and a mock "Fight the Knight" venue to raise money for the GNT retreat. For the event, I decided to upgrade to a decent costume this time around, which was generally thought to be pretty cool by passerby at the festival. Even though I'm sure I looked ridiculous, I also went to dinner at Damon's in the getup, and later to a party because I didn't feel like spending the time to get out of the stuff.

The living chess match featured a rather interesting cast of characters, Narnia against Lord of the Rings, with Lewis and Tolkien as the chessmasters. The quality of the play was rather humorous, especially after an error was made at some point, leaving the chessmasters to wing the rest of the moves on the fly. Although Lord of the Rings was scripted to win, in the fudged combination of moves that followed, Narnia pulled off the surprise upset. Yours truly was playing Eomer as a pawn, and in the process took out Reepicheep (a knight) and Peter (oddly a pawn), while being struck down by Lucy (a bishop).

The "Fight the Knight" event was very fun, as we offered kids the chance to fight either among themselves, or with one of us. In total, we had 6 fighters during the course of the day, myself, a fair lady and her son, another gentleman, and two nuns. If you've never seen a nun in a habit fighting with a duct-tape covered fake sword against a kid with the same weapon, in the rain, on a slightly muddy field, you're missing out. I ended up being the personal favorite of one kid, who convinced his parents to give him about $5 or $6 in $1 increments to fight me repeatedly throughout the afternoon. The local paper immortalized the scene by splashing a picture of us on the front page of the Sunday paper, where it appears that I am making a leaping blow to the head. Thankfully my name has been thoroughly misspelled in the caption. Nothing quite like making a complete fool of yourself, enjoying it, and finding yourself as front page news, only to have the cloak of anonymity provided by a reporter who cannot read his own notes.

Posted by Justice at 5:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack