Not Quite a Blog 2.0

Ron Asheton of the Stooges has died. We had just seen them on 8/8/8 in NYC.

White rice.

It's an important and yummy food. Contrary to what most people seem to think, it is exceedingly easy to make and only takes 30 minutes (from when rice hits boiling water). Plus, it's cheap and can enhance boring foods like leftovers.

Here's how easy it is to make:

(serves 2-4)

Ingredients:

• 1 c. white rice
• 2.5 c. water

Directions:

1. Put water in a medium saucepot (keep lid handy), bring to boil over high heat.
2. Add rice, stir well, and meanwhile drop heat to the barest it needs to be to keep it at a lazy simmer. Cover and let cook for 15 minutes.
3. Remove from heat (without disturbing cover!) and let sit for 15 minutes to steam.
4. Remove lid, fluff or stir the rice and serve.

(This is unsalted, so you'll want to add a yummy topping or add soy sauce or salt. You can keep the lid on for an extra 5-10 minutes if other food isn't ready. If you increase this recipe, you need to decrease the proportion of water.)

It's just that simple folks. Go buy a large bag of rice and cook it often.

I am the proud user of a Kinesis Advantage Pro (Mac) keyboard. I credit it with making sure my hands didn't fall off while writing my thesis. Anyway, I had a bit of trouble with it today and found a solution that isn't listed on Kinesis' troubleshooting page. Here's what happened and the solution (in the form of a letter to Kinesis tech support):

Hi, you might want to add this piece of advice to your list at:

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/tech_support/trouble.htm

I came back from winter break to Princeton with one of the new MacBook Pros. When I plugged in my Kinesis Advantage Pro (Mac) keyboard, all four of the lights on the keyboard lit up at once (caps lock, num lock, and the other two). No keystrokes or signals from the mouse attached to the keyboard would go through to the Mac.

I unplugged it a few times with mostly the same results (a few times the lights did not light up) and finally the Mac displayed an error message (paraphrased) "The device you plugged in requires a powered USB slot. ..." I thought that was weird because the keyboard was plugged directly into one of the two USB slots on the Mac.

Anyway, in tinker mode, I unplugged the keyboard and the mouse from the keyboard and plugged the keyboard back in. No luck, same result (but without the error message).

I then, with the keyboard still plugged in, opened the Keyboard and Mouse preference pane in system preferences. I clicked "Change Keyboard Type" and went through the process of pushing the buttons they asked me to. When it was finished, it recognized my keyboard and even recognized the mouse when I plugged that in. Yay!

About a year and a half ago, I thought I had the perfect roast potatoes recipe, and I blogged it ("Perfect Roast Potatoes"). After some critical feedback, I've improved the recipe considerably:

These are amazing roast potatoes and very easy to make... they have a creamy texture inside and slightly crispy shells with a robust, but not overpowering, garlic flavor, with whole roast garlic cloves and a hint of citrus. The cornstarch is the secret; it traps water and promotes crispiness, but we only use a little so these aren't hard as rocks. (Leave out the garlic powder at the beginning if you don't want garlic to be as central to the dish.)

Perfect Roast Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 2 lb. red or russet potatoes, washed, dried and then cut into largish chunks (1/2" - 1" on the side)
• 1 tsp. cornstarch (optional, a whole tbsp. makes them unbearably crunchy)
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder (optional)
• 3/4 tsp. table salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 3 tbsp. vegetable oil (peanut is good)
• 1 tbsp. butter (don't add salt at the end if using salted butter)
• 1 head garlic, cloves separated but unpeeled (optional)
• 1 tsp. minced fresh parsley (optional, you can use a smaller amount of dried basil, etc.)
• 1/8 tsp. grated lemon zest (optional, be careful here, lest you have overly lemony potatoes)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven and a large, rimmed sheetpan (cookie sheet) or roasting pan at 425° F.
2. In a large bowl, combine potatoes, cornstarch, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Make sure that the spices and cornstarch are well-distributed.
3. Take pan out of oven, add the oil and evenly coat the pan.
4. Evenly distribute the potatoes on the pan, carefully toss in the oil and roast for 25 minutes or until potatoes are browned on bottom. (Now is a good time to wash and dry the bowl in which you mixed the potatoes, you'll need it later.)
5. After 20 minutes, throw the garlic cloves into roasting pan (do it quickly as we don't care much about their distribution and don't want to let too much heat out of the oven).
6. Take potatoes out of oven five minutes later, flip potatoes over, distribute garlic evenly and roast for an additional 15 minutes (if you have time, you can individually flip the potato pieces, but that's not essential).
7. Add the pat of butter, parsley and lemon zest to the bottom of the large bowl and let sit until potatoes are done.
8. When done, add potatoes to the large bowl and toss until evenly coated with butter mixture . Adjust seasonings as desired. Serve hot.

The Judiciary, including the Supreme Court, other federal courts, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, and the Federal Judicial Center, received a total appropriation in fiscal year 2008 of $6.2 billion. That represents a mere two-tenths of 1% of the United States’ total $3 trillion budget. Two-tenths of 1%! That is all we ask for one of the three branches of government—the one charged “to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals.” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78. (C.J. John Roberts, 2008 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary)

Fred got me into earphones... when I say "into" I mean that I stopped looking for simply decent ones and started looking for good ones. A year or so ago, after spending way too much time with headphone.com, I bought a pair of V-Moda Vibes. I love those headphones with two reservations: the plastic-coated cord began to crack in various places near the IEMs and the plug didn't fit the 2G iPhone (which I purchased many months after the Vibes).

So, I have been eying the V-Moda Vibe Duo for some months now. It is the same (although improved) set of IEMs with nylon-wrapped cords, an iPhone compatible 1/8" plug and a nifty inline microphone with a call control button. Due to a wonderful Amazon gift certificate, I was able to get the Gunmetal Rouge Vibe Duo for about $92. Sweet!

When I first started playing with it, I had a few reservations. First, I like to wear the cord wrapped around the back of my ear to minimize microphonics. However, if one does this, the microphone slug sits very high, too high, maybe, for good call quality. Second, at first the call control button didn't seem to be working. Third, there's no cord wrapper! (V-Moda used to include a V-shaped wedge of silicon that you could wrap the cord around to avoid tangles) Sigh.

However, after a bit of testing and fiddling, I like these as much, if not more, as my original Vibes. The button malfunction was a false alarm: I figured out that the jack wasn't plugged all the way in. After properly seating it, the call control button worked like a charm (one click pauses or starts a song, two clicks skips the song; one click answers the phone, another click hangs the phone up).

As for call quality, it's pretty damn good. Of course, the great earphones make incoming calls sound great. To boot, the microphone in the cord is very good so outgoing sound quality from the microphone is high (for an inline microphone). I tested it as a headset on my computer using Amadeus Pro and left a message on a Maxemail account we have; both WAV files sound great. I will have to flip the cord off of my right ear when I get a call, but that's not much of a bother.

You'd be surprised how many people I talk to who refuse to register to vote do so because they think (correctly or incorrectly) that this will lead to them being called less for jury duty. Well, I usually say, not everyone votes; that is, the judicial machinery typically has to use other sources of data on local residents to fill out their jury pools, such as motor vehicle records. By saying this, I'm trying to make the case---although I must admit I cannot know for sure---that it's more valuable to play a regular part in representative democracy than to fear the occasional jury duty call (and, besides, you'll probably get those anyway if you drive, etc.).

Now, from the San Mateo County Elections Blog, we learn that the case can be even worse: if your DMV and voter registration records don't match, you might get called for jury duty much more often ("Jury Duty pool comes from DMV and Voter Registration"). The take-away seems to be that it's in your best interests to make sure that your DMV and voter registration records agree such that the powers that be think there's only one human out there at your physical, mailing, etc. addresses with various permutations on your name.

Unfortunately, this only increases the relevance of the arguments from the people I describe at the beginning of this post. Sigh.

One thing I think everyone should take a moment to consider is standardizing their own name. What the hell, you say? Well, about ten years ago I settled on always writing my name down the same way, "Joseph Lorenzo Hall" (this was right after I had decided not to change my name due to my name being "Joseph L. Hall" in the drafts of my first real paper). People can call me whatever they want, but when they write a name down---or use a name in an official capacity---that refers to me, it should be the full thing, "Joseph Lorenzo Hall". I think, but cannot prove, that this has lead to some real benefit to me.

This is a shortening-based gingersnaps recipe... for ALV.

Cherry's Gingersnaps

(makes about 4 dozen)

Ingredients:

• 3/4 c. shortening
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c. molasses
• 2 c. AP flour
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. minced fresh ginger (you can up the ground ginger to a tbsp. if you have no fresh ginger)
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. table salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°. Beat shortening and sugar until smooth, add egg & molasses
2. Mix in dry ingredients.
3. Roll balls of dough in hand, roll in sugar, place on parchment lined cookie sheet and press twice with fork at 90° angles to make a cross-hatch design.
4. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes (try 9 at first), they should be puffed up, soft but with the slightest hints of browning.
5. Let cool on cookie sheet before transferring to wax paper placed on newsprint. Store in tupperware for softness.

If you have an iPhone and a WiFi router at home, please do the following:

1. Go to: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php
2. Submit your address and then enter the MAC address (?) of your router and your email address. Submit this information to Skyhook.

Why? Because the iPhone also uses WiFi router signals to improve the quality of its location-based services. By submitting your router's information, you are helping to make the iPhone's services more accurate.

The high-point of last weeks' Pew/JEHT conference, "Voting in America", was seeing the Dean of Berkeley Law, Chris Edley, give a keynote during dinner on Tuesday. With his permission, I am making available audio from his address. Find it here (30 minutes long and 18MB in size):

http://groups.ischool.berkeley.edu/podcast/audio/edley-pew-2008.mp3

Chris starts by talking from the perspective of being part of the Obama transition team and to what extent election reform will be a focus. He then goes on to describe his views on federalism vs. localism in election administration, building a consensus vision for election reform and how we need to spark desire for election reform by arguing in terms of fundamental values.

Read on for my summary of his talk...

Disclaimer: any errors in the summary below are my own, and apologies for the few instances of side-talk in the audio.

In terms of the transition, he comes out the gate saying that there are, undoubtedly, more pressing matters demanding the incoming Presidents attention (i.e., the economy, national security, energy & climate change, health care, education and immigration):

I don't expect weekly meetings with the President to talk about election administration. Frankly, we probably don't want him to be having weekly meetings about election administration given [this list of priorities].

He then went on to the meat of his remarks, describing a few areas where he thinks reform should go forward.

He first talked about the divided philosophies at work in election administration. He was surprised in previous work, with the US Commission on Civil Rights and the Carter-Ford Commission, that many people involved with elections "think of the franchise as this precious jewel box that they have to guard carefully... and be very careful about who can hold it, open it and polish it." This is in contrast with people who consider voting as "something that should be shared widely so that democracy can flourish." Bridging this divide is one important assignment for election reformers... in his words: "The distinction between election administration and voting rights should disappear, and we should be united on an agenda of election rights."

Chris then went on to describe the complexity of the politics surrounding elections: "Our governance strategy for election administration [...] puts us in a situation where the infrastructure of our democracy is competing with potholes... and parks... and prisons... and health care... and pensions... and education." Federalism, often ends up protecting election officials when they make wacky, disparate decisions about the administration of elections. In Edley's view:

I would suggest to you that our aspirations for democracy in the 21st century are not the same as they were in the latter part of the 18th century. The strategy for bringing about the quality of democracy we want, I think is going to require some compromises on our commitments to localism in this arena. [...] I think we passed a milestone [in Florida 2000] in which localism is going to be increasingly forced to deal with the demands of a national sense of what is fair, what is efficient and what is truly democratic.

Edley then described how the real problems we have are in terms of inequality: the huge disparities in spoiled ballots, purged voters, waits in lines, etc.:

The question is whether the quality of the democratic infrastructure is coded to your ZIP code or your color. The next great challenge is to think of Bush v. Gore, not in the technical sense but in the aspirational sense, that everyone in the polity deserves the same quality of support for their effort to engage in the political process.

Edley does recognize that "fairness" is a large gray area, but that there are real problems in how "fair" our election experience actually is. Referencing the Governor of Virginia's comments that people wait in lines for other things---why not voting?---and the Secretary of State of Florida's similar comments that day about waiting in line at Disney World:

This is not Zimbabwe. We should not create a new poll tax in the form of a 2, 3, 4 hour wait to cast a vote.

That is, for example, large disparities in wait times within a jurisdiction are patently unfair. We need to work to address these sources of unfairness.

So, what are the next steps in Edley's mind? He made the point that national voter ID is not seen as an anathema in other countries. This is to say, by example, we need to use technologies to give us leverage to improve the process and promote fairness where we can:

[On the Carter-Ford Commission,] the reason were were enthusiastic about touchscreens is that we sensed the potential for assisting language minorities and people with disabilities. We sensed the potential of making voting as flexible as getting money out of an ATM; the possibility that the technology, wherever you were in the country, could flash on the screen the ballot appropriate for the jurisdiction in which we reside.

We should decide collectively what is that vision---5, 10, 15 years from now---so that we're moving in the same direction on multiple paths. That consensus-building effort is the single most important thing we can do in the next two years.

Edley then talked briefly about voter fraud. From his perspective, he sees largely unfounded claims about the extent of voter fraud. So he called for a substantial research investment in understand the characteristics of vote fraud.

He wraps his talk up about talking about fomenting reform via attention to nuts and bolts versus focusing change in terms of values:

What we have to do is not to improve the quality of election administration, what we have to do is be advocates for, be warriors for election rights. It's making people believe that they have a right to world-class infrastructure for this democracy. To let people believe they have a right to be able vote with ease and have their vote counted and have their officials be accountable. It's not just about public administration: it's about our freedoms, it's about our character and it's about our hopes. Now, that's sex.... and it's a hell of a lot more important than potholes.