Edward Jensen

Goddard v. Brewer - Arizona Gubernatorial Debate

This video is required viewing for everyone that will vote in the November elections in Arizona. Yes, it's an hour long, but it's still required viewing.

If you cannot see the video, go here: http://www.azpbs.org/video/vidlink.php?vidId=2349

Thank you, Eight/Arizona PBS, for making this video available!

-EJ

Why we need open primaries

A couple of days back, the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU, Arizona's biggest non-partisan think tank, released their findings that more and more Arizonans want non-partisan, open, primaries.

Some excerpts [emphasis added]:

A recent survey conducted on behalf of Morrison Institute for Public Policy by Knowledge Networks measured how voters felt about a number of issues, including Arizona’s primary system. Results showed that three-quarters of Arizona voters favor a primary election in which the two candidates – regardless of party affiliation – who receive the largest number of votes face off in the general election. This change is favored across party lines and among all age groups.

“This survey shows there is significant dissatisfaction with at least some parts of Arizona’s current primary election process,” said David Daugherty, director of research at Morrison Institute.

More than six in 10 Arizona voters prefer open primaries with all candidates listed on the ballot but without party designation. Independents were most likely to prefer such a primary (71%), with Democrats the least favorable to the change (54%).

Many independents find Arizona’s primary rules confusing and opt to miss the primary even though most of Arizona’s legislative districts are considered “safe districts,” meaning the primary often essentially determines the winner since the districts are either heavily Republican or heavily Democratic in voter registration.

According to the Arizona Indicators Panel survey, 86% of voters said Arizona should have an outright open primary, where anyone can vote for any candidate, regardless of political party. This change is favored by large majorities of all age groups and all political affiliations.

This is big. This is good! As the article said, a lot of the primary elections are the de facto general election as the district is predominantly Republican or predominantly Democrat.  And whilst I have no data to support my claims, this forces candidates to build consensus to attract people from all political affiliations and be more consistent in their message.

For instance, the primary forces candidates to show off that they have more conservative or liberal credentials. In the general election, to appeal to a greater base of voters, they have to change message. This also forces candidates to work across party lines to appeal to more people. If anything big will happen, it has to come through consensus and collaboration. Not repudiation of one person or one party.

It's time for this to happen. It's time for a new way of thinking.

-EJ

Light Rail 101 (from Tony Arranaga, the Light Rail Blogger)

Tony Arranaga, the guy behind Light Rail Blogger, wrote this guide for new students to ASU and the Downtown Phoenix campus. With this guide, you have absolutely no reason to get out and explore your community!

Light Rail 101 for New ASU Students
by Tony Arranaga, the Light Rail Blogger

Phoenix is gearing up for an influx of new residents as students arrive for the first week of school at the downtown campus of Arizona State University. In an effort to get more people using light rail, Barrett, the Honors College at the Downtown Phoenix campus asked me to list some information for incoming freshman on how to use our public transportation system. Specifically, the organizers of the Barrett Urban Experience are looking to show points of interest along the light rail, instead of how to use the light rail in this part of the Valley. Below is a list of some popular destinations north of the downtown campus. The information should be helpful to those who are new to our urban core.

[...]

McDowell and Central Station The restaurant My Florist Cafe (five blocks west of the station) is a good place for a date, Giant Coffee is a great place to read while enjoying a cup of coffee, and next door is Bunky Boutique (both are one block east of the station) where you can find stylish fashion for him and her . Also, with Hallooween around the corner, you’ll want to look for Easley’s Costumes which is directly across the street from My Florist. Easley’s has one of the largest selections of costumes and accessories in the city.

Thomas and Central Station St Joseph’s Hospital is three blocks west of the station on Thomas, in addition to Park Central Mall (north end of platform) which is home to popular breakfast joint The Good Egg (here).

Campbell and Central Station Central High School is located here, but you’ll be more interested in hot spots Lux Coffee Bar, Pane Bianco for killer italian gourmet sandwhiches, and Slippery Pig Bikes.

Camelback and Central Station is directly across the street from popular record store Stinkweeds, the old school candy store Smeeks, in addition to Frances and Red Hot Robot, which are great locally owned stores where you can buy gifts for all ages.

Get out there and enjoy Phoenix! All these places are off the light rail, so with your $80 yearly U-Pass, you have absolutely NO reason not to go places!

-E

Too much of a good thing?

I'm a huge proponent of technology. But I think that we've become too accustomed to letting technology facilitate our day-to-day lives. No longer do we call--let alone visit--people, we send text messages or emails. We've gone way too asynchronous in our communication; yet, we want everything in real time.

So, it was much to my joy when I saw this on tonight's PBS NewsHour:

I write this all to say that technology should never replace people. Yes, an email or text might suffice, but visit that person. (Or at least call them!) Talk to someone. Be in, and not a part of, society.

-EJ

 

Monday Music - Duruflé's Requiem

A semi-regular feature I'm going to have on this blog is "Monday Music," wherein I find a concert that's been posted online and share it here. Today, we have a concert of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chorale in concert earlier this year performing Maurice Duruflé's Requiem, op.9, composed in 1947.

Duruflé's Requiem is most popularly performed with organ and chorus. This performance features an orchestra (the SPCO), organ, chorus, and soloists.  I will say that it's different to hear an orchestra accompanying this piece instead of the usual organ accompaniment. The orchestral musician in me likes this better; however, the purist musician in me admires the simple elegance of just organ and choir better.

if you cannot see the embedded audio clip, click here

Enjoy the music!

-E

My Linux experiment is over

My Linux experiment is over.

I thought those were words you'd never hear me say, no? But they're the truth, at least until Desktop Linux gets their act together.

The basis of my Linux experiment was to have, on all my computers, Linux as their primary operating system. In the course of that, the objective was to have as much free/open-source software as possible. I had a virtualized installation of Windows XP for the few programs that needed a native Windows environment to run.

Maybe I need to back up and explain why I embarked on this experiment: My passion lies in helping nonprofits build their capacity and help in their development strategies through thoughtful and comprehensive information technology resources and social media campaigns.  On the surface, Linux is perfect for them. One can say, "Here's a complete operating system that's free, safe, and user-friendly; can interact with Windows quite well, and is always being supported from the community."

So, in other words, I would practice what I preach.

That is, until I just got fed up with it. Simply inserting or removing a flash drive caused the machine to "hang" (freeze) for a minute. The window manager frequently freaked out, causing the programs I had running to do the same as well. Thunderbird, my email client, had its own problems. While these might seem like a small assortment of problems, these things happened frequently. How many times a day do we use flash drives? Email? Applications?

That all came to an end on Saturday (7 August). I relegated Linux to a small 150GB partition on my hard drive and installed, on its own disk partition, Windows 7. So far, I'm loving it. No crashes. No hangs. It just works (so far).

Still, the philosophy behind the major Linux distributions is rather sound. Yet, for the average nonprofit without a designated IT support staff, it's just too much. Whilst installing the operating system itself might be easy, installing the things that make an operating system useful and keeping that operating system safe, secure, and up-to-date is not. The trend in Linux seems to focus on the bleeding-edge and not stability. Bloggers across the Linux community have noted this. Companies prefer stability over not-thoroughly-tested cutting-/bleeding-edge technologies. They want something that just works.

If we're all moving things to the cloud, then maybe we need to shift our attention to creating a stable thin client that focuses its attention to rich Internet applications and has little to do with the software on the client itself.

Farewell, Linux. It was good whilst it lasted.

-EJ

Hey, something looks different!

Do not adjust your set. Something looks different on my blog, right?

Because it is different!

Over the past week, I've begun migrating my blog from a self-hosted WordPress installation to TypePad. I've decided that even though I really liked the flexibility that WordPress provides, I want to move my blog into the cloud.

And so I did.

I did a bit of snooping around my blog's traffic and I've found that few people go directly to a post. Unfortunately, if you are one of those, then everything's different. In addition, since I've found I like to link to my own work, I need to change a lot of internal links! So far, I've got all posts made this year (2010) updated.

The old blog is in a semi-permanent state of archive at wp-old.edwardjensen.net. I'll probably dismantle that when 2010 is out.

RSS subscribers: you have nothing with which to be concerned! The RSS transition was actually the first thing that I did. (What's that? You want to subscribe to my blog? Well, click here!)

Everything here is still in a state of flux but at least we have the ball rolling.

Cheers! -E