Sherpa for Android

• Trying out Sherpa. It thinks I’m still in San Diego. And local search turns up several places that have been closed for years. #
• Sherpa also has lots of miscategorized stuff. It’s a Grind as groceries instead of coffee? #
• Wow…Sherpa lists the “Irvine Meadows Amphitheater.” Where are they getting their data? #

Now, some thoughts:

1. If this was intentional, on anyone’s part, it was both wrong (as discrimination) and stupid (as bad PR and as throwing away potential sales). If it was unintentional, it was still stupid.

2. Amazon really dropped the ball on PR. They should have responded much sooner (yes, it was a holiday weekend), and with something more detailed than “It was a glitch.” Something like, “We’re sorry, it was an unintentional error and we’re trying to fix it” would have gone a long way toward preventing the outrage from spiraling out of control. And we still don’t have anything more detailed than “ham-fisted cataloging error,” or (as has been pointed out) an apology to the authors and communities affected.

2a. And seriously, you’re an internet pioneer: use the Internet. You have email, you have official Twitter accounts, you have a space to put messages on your home page. Use them.

3. Twitter demonstrates that the internet is now fast enough and ubiquitous enough that people can develop a mob mentality without actually being in close proximity to one another. This includes not just people whipping each other into a frenzy, but people taking more permanent actions (deleting accounts) based on incomplete information.

4. No matter how many times something has been debunked (i.e. the “hacker” who claimed to have hacked the site), someone will see it who hasn’t seen the response and repost it as true. (You’d think I would have learned this from comics discussion forums by now.)

5. Canned responses from customer service are not authoritative statements of company policy. Half the time they’re not even answering the question you asked.

6. There are really two issues: (A) Adults-only books are being hidden from search results. (B) Books were being misclassified as adults-only.

7. Combining #5 and #6, when a CSR monkey answers A, that’s not an official statement of policy on B.

8. Removing adults-only books from sales rankings is a dumb way to hide them from search results. Add a flag and let the user choose whether or not to include them like Google, Flickr, etc.

It’s an interesting idea, but a weird one. For one thing, global warming seems an odd fit. Yeah, there’s a connection, but it seems more directly tied to pollution and simple conservation of finite resources. For another, it really reminds me of those campaigns to protest gasoline prices by not buying gas on a particular day, without changing your driving habits.

Then there’s the fact that it’s presented as a “global election between Earth and global warming.” Not only is this silly, it’s also the kind of black-and-white with-us-or-against us thinking that just polarizes people — and indeed there are a bunch of jackasses running around shouting about how they’re going to turn on every single light in their house during that hour just to piss off the “treehuggers.” (Apparently these people have money to burn even in this economy, and enjoy breathing smog.)

And of course, there’s the question of what to do with that hour.

Does it count if you leave the house? Chances are you’d be turning the lights off anyway.

How about non-electric lighting? A candlelit dinner, perhaps? You’re still consuming resources to produce light. A flashlight would have the same problem: you’re using power that was put into a battery.

So that cuts out things like reading, or playing cards, or board games.

TVs and computer monitors produce light. Music players use electricity. A stove uses either electricity or gas. If you turn off the lights and turn on the TV, that’s not really much of a savings, is it?

So really, you have one hour at home in the dark, at an hour earlier than you’re likely to sleep, and you can’t use anything with light or electricity. That really cuts back on available activities. You’re pretty much down to conversation. Maybe stargazing. A few other things that don’t require light.

Actually, I guess it would be an interesting experiment/reminder of what night is like without artificial lighting — sort of a voluntary power outage without candles and flashlights.

The more lasting impact will be to simply not waste energy. Turn off lights when you’re not using them. Turn off your computer when you’re not using it (or at least put it to sleep). Unplug appliances that have standby modes when you’re out of town. Don’t run your heater or air conditioner when you’re not home, unless you’ve got it on a timer to get the place ready for when you arrive.

You’ll save money on your electric bill. The power company will use less fuel. They’ll pump out less pollution, and reserves will last longer. Everyone wins.

(Found while surfing Blogexplosion.)

Political geekery; saw a bumper sticker reading </bush>. Only prob: tag should be <president name="bush">. Did I mention geekery? #

Cross-posted at LiveJournal.

Yesterday, I read that as many as 3 million mail-in and provisional ballots might remain to be counted in California. This morning, that estimate’s been refined revised to 1.6 million [edit: the official count is coming in at at least 2.3 million; see below]. There are a number of races, including Proposition 11, that are too close to call with that many votes still in play. It’s at least 3 times the current margin of victory for Prop 8 or margin of defeat for Prop 4. If those voters lean heavily one way or the other, it could flip the results once the final score is tallied. (It’s not likely, but it’s certainly possible.)

One thing that hasn’t been clear from the various articles I’ve read is which ballots are left, and when are they counted. Fortunately, the CA Secretary of State has a page that explains exactly that.

• Mail-in ballots that arrive before election day are verified against the voter rolls ahead of time, then counted along with the in-person votes once the polls close.
• Mail-in ballots that arrive on election day, or are dropped off at a polling place, are set aside until the rest are done, and are verified and counted along with provisional ballots.

This is all handled at the county level, which is why the state office doesn’t have solid numbers yet (there’s a PDF report they’ll be updating as data comes in, but all the numbers are still blank [Edit: as of Thursday evening, numbers for about 2/3 of counties are in, and they total about 2.3 million]), and they have 28 days to finish the task. I’m sure that’s a holdover from the days when it would really take that long to count everything. I imagine it won’t take nearly that long to sign off on the results.

So the lesson is this: If you want your vote counted in the first wave of votes that everyone sees, you must either:

• Send in your mail-in ballot early enough that it arrives before election day.
• Vote in person.

*I never did find out what caused it, but my best guess is that after I moved, my registration got lost in the mail and I was left on the rolls at my old precinct.

Second, John McCain gave an astonishingly gracious concession speech. Where was this guy during the campaign? Or during the last two years? This was more like the McCain I voted for in the 2000 primary.

Believe it or not, I think it’s a good thing that the Democrats didn’t pick up that filibuster-proof 60th Senate seat. One of the worst problems with the current administration is the way that a single party just rammed their policies through over all opposition during the time that both houses of Congress and the Presidency were controlled by the same party — and it cost them in the 2006 mid-term elections and in this election. With luck, Obama’s victory speech [edit: linked to the wrong article*.] will set the tone for a somewhat more cooperative government. At the very least, it was a nice change from the sort of “We won, now f— off” attitude that I remember from Bush, Cheney, and Republican supporters in 2004. (Personally I think 53% to 46% in the popular vote is still relatively close, but 4 years ago we were told that 51% to 49% was a “mandate” to do whatever the hell they wanted with the office.)

I’m disappointed to see that California voted to ban same-sex marriage. Gee, too bad about the 18,000 marriages you just invalidated in the name of “protecting” marriage. On the plus side, the margin for Proposition 8 was a lot smaller (52% to 48%) than the last time (Proposition 22 in 2001, which won 61% to 38%) the state voted on the issue, and younger voters polled as overwhelmingly rejecting it. This implies that CA society is, over time, coming to the conclusion that maybe it isn’t such a threat after all.

Also worth noting: Prop 4, the parental-notification requirement for abortion, is trailing 52% to 48%, the same spread as Prop 8. Since I’m sure proponents will try again in a few years, these numbers should forestall any grousing about how the people have already made their will clear when someone floats the idea of amending the state constitution to remove a discriminatory clause a few years from now.

*When I first posted this, I accidentally linked to the article on the transition team instead of the speech transcript. The URLs were very similar: 11/04/obama.transcript vs. 11/05/obama.transition.

Cross-posted at LiveJournal.

If California’s Proposition 8 does not pass, no marriages will be ended. If it does pass, all those same-sex marriages will be wiped out. If you’re really serious about “protecting marriage,” the clear choice is to vote against the proposition.

Some other things to consider:

This is not about “activist judges.” A bunch of judges didn’t say, “Hey, let’s make it legal for same-sex couples to get married!” They heard a case, looked at the law, and determined that the only thing preventing gay marriage was a law that conflicted with a higher law: the state constitution. That’s what judges are supposed to do. At least Prop. 8 is going through proper channels by amending the constitution instead of just trying to pass another unconstitutional law. Of course, I think it’s a bad idea to inject discrimination into the state constitution.

(While we’re at it, the whole concept of “activist judges” is a smokescreen. It basically means “judges who strike down laws that I would rather stayed in place.” I imagine that most people railing against this decision would be perfectly happy if a group of judges overturned Roe vs. Wade.)

As for children: Let’s not forget that there are plenty of straight couples who can’t have children either, whether for age or medical reasons. Should they not be allowed to marry? How about straight couples who choose not to have children? Should they not be allowed to marry?

And teaching marriage in schools? Shouldn’t a child know something about marriage by the time they start school? Neither of us remembers being “taught” about marriage when we were children, it was something learned through observing and asking parents. And we both went to public school. In different districts. Katie spoke to a fifth-grade teacher recently who remarked that the only time she even talked about marriage in class was when students asked about it, and then district policy prevented her from answering most of their questions. I can only assume that the objection is that children might find out that same-sex marriage exists.

Oh, and that “classroom trip” mentioned in the latest pro-8 ad? It was their teacher’s wedding, it was a creative arts charter school, it was organized by the students’ parents (note the headline that they surprised the teacher), and it was optional. The school approved the trip because, whatever happened, it was a notable event from a civil rights perspective.

To anyone who thinks that civil unions or domestic partnerships should be enough: would you be satisfied with the state saying you could only have something that’s almost, but not quite a marriage?