Daily grind

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The legalization of marijuana - a stillborn movement?

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

I just got back wet and depressed from the preamble to the Medical Marijuana March in Seattle. I really believe in the mission to legalize medical marijuana (and legalize marijuana in general), but unfortunately neither case is likely to happen any time soon thanks to the general strategy and constituency of the legalization movement.

Admittedly due to the rain the parades attendance was down from what the organizers would have hoped for, but worse was the cross section of society that showed up. A good half of the attendees had the stereotypical stoner look - not what you want showing up on the evening news though. When people see the B roll footage that is likely to make the media what will they see? Certainly not sickly looking patients desperately needing marijuana to survive. Certainly not professional and trustworthy looking people - just stoners through and through. It presents the public with a rough image composed of stoned hippies drenched in patchouli eating chips rather than doctors and businessmen giving credibility and weight in the public eye.

What the marijuana legalization campaign really needs is a true spokesperson. Someone professional and educated with a sharp tongue and an even sharper suit. A spokesperson to show up on TV and talk to the American public - not show up at a hemp rally and talk to stoners. The kind of people who attend rallies marches, and events are already swayed - the movement needs to broaden its focus and broaden it’s message to the other 99% of the public.

As Abraham Lincoln once said “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” To enact the same kind of broad social change that Lincoln once did the movement needs to sway public sentiment, not stoner sentiment.

Update: My friend Shae just pointed me at this article. It would seem Rick Steves has stepped up to the plate to hopefully be just the spokesperson I’m looking for here. Go Rick!

Metaspark

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Or: Further experimentation with personal aggregation services

After my initial experimentations with personal aggregation basically failed I’ve decided to take another stab at it, but this time with a DIY bent. I registered metaspark.net and am working a complicated series of Wordpress plugins to attempt to create the functionality I want.

Unfortunately it’s not entirely baked yet, but keep your eye on that domain - once I get a few RSS aggregation, twitter update, and posting date issues sorted out it should be ready to go fully live, and with style no less.

Stay tuned!

101 in 1001

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

I just put up a new page for a new project: 101 in 1001 - check it out. I won’t write anything else about it here as I’ve detailed everything there, but keep an eye on the blog for updates as they come.

Aside from spending my day prepping the 101 in 1001 list and designing the page for it I’ve been resting - I was sick the last couple of days and it’s really nice not to be knocked on my ass any more.

Side thought - the older I get the more sick I get when I become ill. Trend, inevitability, or side effect of a desk-job lifestyle?

And it was good

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Today marked my first day on the new product management job and man was it excellent. I’ve never done a transition like this where I already knew my co-workers and I have to say it makes a big difference. I hit the ground running, like the people I work with, and in general feel like I’m ready to start kicking some serious butt already.

High entropy living

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

The last two weeks have been interesting and full of change. First off today is my last day working for MSCOM. I’m leaving after two years with the team as a Project Manager to go join the business organization which owns the Volume Licensing Service Center to pursue a career in Product Management. Moving from the implementation to the requirements side of the house is a good move for me and really has me excited about the opportunity to effect change and really challenge the space I’m in to continue to innovate.

Next off I met David, one of the sweetest men on the planet. I’ve spent practically the entire last week and a half with him and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s one of those intense whirlwind relationships that seems to go at a million miles an hour - fun stuff while it lasts and heres hoping that it will last a very long time!

Finally Skype got to meet David’s roommates 12 week old pit bull puppy Porter. The two of them have been beating up on each other every other day or so and having a blast at it. David is a really active guy and thanks to his influence Skype’s activity level has roughly doubled. He seems happier for it and I hope to keep him active like this as long as he can keep up.

Experimenting with aggregation

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

In an effort to bring together the wonderful wide world of Sparky* I’m experimenting with Tumblr as an aggregation service. The hopes of my experimentation is to create a single point of contact for all my personal web content. Currently to get every last drop of Sparky goodness (and who doesn’t want that) visits to my blog, Flickr stream, Facebook profile, and Twitter are necessary. By providing this aggregate source of Sparky - henceforth referred to as Meta-Sparky - a single website can be visited to consume Sparky, Sparky, Sparky, and more Sparky.

Without further ado: http://sparktography.tumblr.com/

Update: Tumblr ended up being close to what I want, but not quite it. Tumblr will only allow short form content and won’t import long format blog posts. I also noticed it copies Flickr photos locally and re-compresses them which adds a slight color cast and loses the tack-sharpness that so much effort goes into on the front end.

Anyone know of a better aggregation service with similar features that I could check out? Leave a note in the comments with a link to it. If I don’t find anything readymade I guess I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and make something.

*wonder, wonderment, and wonderfulness not guaranteed. All Sparky all the time has been known to cause health complications in certain situations. If you experience a Sparky lasting more than 4 hours consult with a physician immediately.

A jury of my peers my ass

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

In the spirit of civic duty I’ve spent the last two days serving for the King County jurors pool. So far I’ve been a potential juror on two separate trials but have been excused from both. Once both of those trials are over I’ll write up more of my experiences in the jury selection process, but until that point it would be against the law for me to post details. For now my reading public will have to be satisfied with these thoughts from my days in the Halls of Ultimate Justice:

Overall I’m coming away from the experience disenchanted. I love the concept of trial by jury and think that in a perfect world it’s the most ideal way to try people - until of course artificial intelligence becomes advanced enough to be able to lend its services as a truly impartial and objective judge. However in the real world the United States implementation is more than slightly flawed.

The key problem comes from the legal promise of “a jury of peers”. Back when the United States was founded this was possible to provide given that society in general in the colonies was more or less equal. Unfortunately in the intervening centuries our society has been ripped asunder with the creation of four classes: lower, middle, upper, and the ultra-rich ‘ruling class’. As much as some would like to deny that this would effect the judicial system it does - the ultra-rich almost never go to trial thanks to the fleet of lawyers they employ, and the other three classes are unlikely to get a true jury of their peers.

As the social divide increases the concept of a jury of peers becomes more and more diluted. For instance if I was ever erroneously accused of a crime and sent to trial my experiences here have taught me that I would likely not get a true jury of my peers for the trial. I would be far more likely to get a jury of people either too disenchanted to want to serve their civic duty yet unable to get out of it, or too listless and unmotivated to have a good case for undue hardship to get out of the jury pool. Most of the people I see getting selected for juries are unemployed, retired, or from jobs where they are one of many people on a constantly changing team of replaceable people.

Now don’t get me wrong - I’m all for civic duty and want to fully support the legal system, but my experiences here have shown me that change is needed to make for a system that is fair for all that end up trudging through it - guilty or innocent, rich or poor alike.

As far as I can see there are two potential fixes to this flawed implementation of the trial by jury system:

  1. Change the term “a jury of your peers” to “a jury of citizens”. To do this properly the rules for jury selection would have to change significantly. Currently a computer selects potential jurors who are then vetted by the judge and lawyers which by definition results in a slanted jury. To fix this the computer should instead pick 12 random people who would be required to serve on the jury - no exceptions, no exclusions. This would result in a reasonable cross section of society with (in a purely theoretical statistical sense) no bias
  2. Actually implement “a jury of peers” for the accused. To do this a computer could still be involved in the selection process, but it could by definition not be random. To truly select a group of someones peers their profession, neighborhood, intelligence, financial information race, and general social position. Again once suitable jurors are selected the lawyers likely should not be allowed to reject potential jurors except in extreme cases when a juror could be proven to be overly-biased. Unfortunately this second approach would likely increase bias in the jury panel to acquit or find a verdict of not guilty, but at least that verdict would truly come from a selection of the accused peers.

In either of these cases one key element must also be changed: the compensation. Currently jury duty in Washington State pays a $10 per day stipend. This is unfortunately a valid reason for people to resent their civic duty - anyone making from minimum wage all the way up to the ultra rich has a reason to be insulted by this token gesture.

A more fair approach would be to either pay a percentage of the jurors normal salary (100% is not necessary, but perhaps 50% or 70% would be a fair approach), or require employers to pay for jury duty at a normal rate while removing the state compensation entirely. Both of these would cause financial burden (either to the state, or to employers) but would significantly reduce the bias introduced to juries by financial hardship.

A shiny new PS3

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

In the wake of the crushing demise of the HD-DVD format I’ve been ‘forced’ to get myself a Blu-ray player to keep myself comfortably on the cutting edge of media technologies. I decided to opt for a PS3 as it’s the only upgradeable Blu-ray player so far, and plays games to boot.

My first impressions are mostly positive. The PS3 obviously has a bit more horsepower under the hood than the Xbox 360 and sports a cleaner and more modern UI to boot. Unfortunately Sony seems to have made a few odd user experience choices, but overall I’m highly impressed. I have yet to toy with the PSP Remote Play functionality but I plan to dive deep into that in the coming weeks to see just what my new toy is capable of.

As far as games go I’ll likely still do the majority of my gaming on the Xbox 360 platform, but the Sony Store has a few interesting downloadable games - most notably is PixelJunk Monsters. Monsters is based on Element Tower Defense (which I’ve been addicted to before) but sports high def graphics, open gameplay levels, and even more addictive-like-crack gameplay. I lost a good 3 hours to it this afternoon and will likely spend much of the next few weeks trying to master each of its 20 levels - not too shabby for an under $10 purchase (console not included obviously).

You know it’s Monday when…

Monday, March 10th, 2008

I wake up at 6:30, shower, shave and get out the door to get to work by 7:30 - only to discover that I left my laptop at home on the couch. Thanks to the later time (and so many time-confused bozos that can’t handle DST) my round trip battle-royal commute back home to get it took well over an hour.

It’s Monday morning at 9am, I’ve already spent over 2 hours in my car, and I’m right off pissed off at the way my week is starting off. Hopefully the rest of the week will improve upon my currently dismal mood.

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