Day After Yesterday

I like the green party. I would like them to win someday, although I am not sure they have their act together yet. And as I was reading Rodney’s post about the candidates that are in the running for the green party nomination, I went to all their sites.

As you may know, I am a web developer by trade, so I am often more critical of sites than the average bear. That being said, the Green Party will never get ANYWHERE at this rate.

Number one, Jesse Johnson. Not sure about his logo from a design point of view, but I AM sure that it should not be that pixelated. Header and footer design are a bit lacking in terms of style. Not liking the font either. But I REALLY don’t like how the navigation is present only on the home page, and is gone on every other page (although there is a ‘back to the home page’ link). Seriously, dead end every click? And needless to say, it doesn’t pass validation.

Number two, Kent Mesplay. Not sure what year it is, but is isn’t 2008. Those buttons are nice and smooth. The header takes up the entire ‘above the scroll’ area. Awesome. Table layout. No doctype? You can imagine how validation went.

Number three, Kat Swift. oooookkkkkk really? This is your bid for the president of the united states? Really? Your index page doesn’t even have your full name on it. Perfect for SEO. The blog link is first and foremost, but it is off site. And written by someone else. Design wise, I won’t even start. Again, tables (surprised?). And Doctype is also missing. Serisouly. It is tabbed nicely, so that is a plus. White and yellow text on a black box with a green background is not a plus. My eyes are still adjusting. I’ll stop here.

Number four, Cynthia McKinney. This one actually looks like they used photoshop, so that is cool. Not sure on the middle hump top shadow thing, not sure what light source could actually create that. I guess I am supposed to think the green box is coming TOWARDS me. But the other buttons on the page have lighting effects that don’t support that. Glowing text is a good use of a filter in the aforementioned photoshop. ALMOST had the heavy header thing working, but for some reason stopped shy of full width. The even have a gradient in the background. Would have been cooler if the background and the content box worked better together. They are the only one with an RSS feed, which is good. Not updated too often, but hey, they have one. Table layout. And this is the ONLY site I have ever seen were w3c couldn’t complete the validation. Oddly enough, this seems to be due to a comment in some script. The calendar link takes you to another site, with a totally different look and feel. I wish they had done some more styling of the text in the site. But really, this is the best (?) site of the bunch.

So this is the current state of the Green Party’s candidates.

Thanks to josh for this link…

Scary Voting Facts in the US

I saw the clip last week, but this commentary is awesome and provides more awesome links. God I hate religion (intentional).

Read Rodney’s Post.

It covers religious bigots who claim to be religious (Surely jesus would side with them, he was big on denying things to those that didn’t agree with him. He also loved rich people, and I am sure he would love the media today). It touches on the media’s inability to report on things that matter, which could imply that the average american is an idiot. Awesome.

I saw the clip last week, but this commentary is awesome and provides more awesome links. God I hate religion (intentional).

Read Rodney’s Post.

It covers religious bigots who claim to be religious (Surely jesus would side with them, he was big on denying things to those that didn’t agree with him. He also loved rich people, and I am sure he would love the media today). It touches on the media’s inability to report on things that matter, which could imply that the average american is an idiot. Awesome.

I swear I will go kick each and every one of you that don’t vote.

Seriously. Vote.

And PLEASE, vote for the candidate you WANT TO WIN, NOT AGAINST THE ONE YOU DON’T WANT!

The more I think about it, the more I hate the 2 party system, as it forces people to only vote for 2 candidates. I mean SURE you can write in, but that is not a good alternative. And yes, the green party made the ballot in IL this year, and that is awesome.

But the idea of ‘throwing your vote away’ or voting for the ‘lesser of 2 evils’ is not actually going to CHANGE anything really. It won’t ever break our 2 party system. It won’t ever really bring about any change.

So go out. Vote for the candidates YOU want. The candidates that best align with YOUR beliefs.

For IL governor…

Rod, topinka… or consider the green party candidate, Rich Whitney… or the libertarian candidate, Mark McCoy … or the Constitution candidate, Randy Stufflebeam.

There are options. Your candidate might not win. But if you ever want to see any change, why not vote for the person you WANT? If enough people actually paid attention to the issues and voted for the person they liked the best, imagine what could happen. Oh, and you are going to need to review the candidates EACH ELECTION! Party lines DO change over time.

So go vote.

So as a slightly more than casual observer to the auto industry… I see a number of things happening that don’t sound awesome… to me.

First is the increase in ‘collaboration’ and purchasing of one brand by another, or even just minority shares or controlling shares… and I am not sure I am thrilled with that. I feel we are leading up to a situation where there are only 3 or so brands on the planet… and with the current amount of rules, etc, it becomes increasingly more difficult for a new car company to come about. I do however, when compared to other industries, feel the auto industry DOES respond to consumers demands, where as I don’t feel that is true elsewhere. But I don’t want to digress… Sometimes the collaborations produce interesting products that are good for both brands. I would prefer to see those are mutually amicable (think VW/Porsche) and less purchase of another company…

Second is the dramatic increase in the weight of cars lately. It is insane. I look at the quest for MPG and the money that is being spent on increasing technology to support 40+mpg, etc, but it is done on cars that are getting fatter with each generation (like americans!). Look at the first gen US civic. That thing got 40+mpg, but it was much lighter weight. Think of how awesome the new toyota 4 cylinder would be in a car that weighed in at 2100lbs. It would rule. I am sure they need to increase the weight to maintain their claims of structural rigidity and safety… and not that I am against those things by any means, but man, can’t they be done and keep the car under 3,000lbs? I mean shit, we look at at 3100lb car and call it ‘tossable’. Reallly?

Third… car makers continue to overproduce, then have to have huge incentives to move cars. Hello big 3. It is dumb. But whatever, I am not too worried about the big three. Sure they are a major employer in the US, and I would love to see more US companies survive, but man, they continue to turn out shitty cars that they can’t sell. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some that are doing well, but as a whole, all of the domestics are looking at ‘employee pricing’ again this year.

But good news… it APPEARS that there is finally being progress made on the MPG and lets conserve front… we are finally moving to low sulphur diesel… and more and more manufacturers are promising diesel cars, which rules. Ethanol is getting hype again, as is biodiesel. Once they get a diesel electric hybrid on the market, it is going to be awesome. The only problem is the US consumer-they still insist on purchasing vehicles they don’t need. As much as I hate the higher gas prices, if it forces consumers to use mass transit and/or more fuel efficient vehicles, it would be worth it. I would love to see us be more like europe in vehicle choices and mass transit usage. If only there were more mass transit alternatives….
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This article talks about how Libertyville HS is holding kids responsible for what they say on myspace. WTF?

How dumb is that? What authority does the school have? Why do THEY get to parent these kids? And why do kids not get to say what they want?

Screw that, I would almost WANT to intentionally post things in an attempt to mess with them. In fact, lets do that. I am thinking I may set up a fake myspace account that says I am a student and make up all this crap…

sounds like fun, but I doubt I will do it.

I was reading this and I can’t figure out how that is legal? Basically, if a cop hears a car’s radio from more than 75 feet, he can have the car towed on the spot. No trial will be held, although the owner of the car can request a city employee hear a response, if requested within 24 hours. Hearsay evidence is admissible.

So, basically, if the officer said you were too loud, you were too loud. And there is nothing that you can do about it.

WTF? I am sure this was prompted by some random people. And I am sure it is something that will be overturned by a higher court, EVENTUALLY. Meanwhile…

this is getting out of hand really. Seriously. WAY out of hand. People are protesting and burning and rioting over some cartoons. Seriously. Get a grip.

It is nice to see though that all organized religions have giant hypocrisies in certain circles. Catholic churches and child molestation, Islam and the recent violence. Cheating, lying, whatever I guess.

Good to see people still can pick and choose what parts of their ‘religion’ that they choose to follow.

by no means I am stating that all people do this or that or anything, so relax. It is more a comment that people claim strong beliefs, and will allow that to dictate SOME of their behavior, but not all of it. How people can claim one aspect as law, but not others. Catholics think gay is bad, but shell fish was just a fad. Ok. Commandments say do not lie, but it is ok on taxes. Don’t covent your neighbors stuff, but it is ok to ‘keep up with the joneses’ in our materialistic US culture. Ok. Whatever.

So as I follow the whole cartoon->fire thing… I learn more.

But let me interrupt myself and talk about newsvine. A friend of mine got me on it. Premise is 2 fold. One, it has a whole bunch of AP wire stories. They all have tags. People can vote up a story. You can see what stories are voted up the most. You can comment on them, etc. Cool. The second (cooler) part is people like me or you can find a story online, be it a blog entry, press release, other news outlet whatever… and ’seed’ it on the newsvine site. You basically can bring a no name story into the limelight so to speak. So that is what I did with here. You can click “read the article” to see the article I am referring to.

So the article basically talks about the issue at hand, but with a much different perspective and answers a number of questions that I didn’t even know enough to ask. Well worth the read, as it is a much better perspective than many of the other news sources.

It also is a great example of the newsvine idea in action. If you want an invite, let me know, I think I have a couple.

It also brings up the point that although we have a free press, we are limited to what the mainstream press presents to us, what ‘facts’ they bring up, and what they deem important, as that all controls what we determine to be true in the world. Sure we don’t have a government controlled press, but sometimes I am not sure I like those that do control it….