The Binary Circumstance

Fans of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (like me) and/or the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes will find this article by Galvin P. Chow of interest.

I’m in the middle of a trip now and so I haven’t been blogging much.

I’m currently in the Washington, DC area after spending a few days on the Outer Banks of North Carolina where they were having an unseasonably warm, sunny spell.  That was very beautiful there and a lot of fun.

Some of the articles that are posting while I’m away were pre-written and pre-posted before I left.  It was good thing, too, because in Hatteras I didn’t even have access to a phone line, much less a high-speed connection.

I’ve got a phone line available to me in the DC area and right now I’m using the high-speed wireless connection at the local public library.  It’s really great!

I’ve spend some good time with friend and family and gotten most of the Christmas shopping done.  I’ve even decided what I want for Christmas–a satellite radio receiver.

I recently purchased some stock in Sirius Satellite (SIRI) and it’s up about 40% since I bought it.  From the technical charts it looks like it’s going to fly.

My friends who drove with me to Hatteras had an XM Satellite (XMSR) receiver and that’s when I learned more about some of the advantages of satellite radio.

So I’ve been doing some research into both companies and it looks like the prospects for both of them are very good in the near future.

Here’s a brief article about satellite radio (and another).  For a comparison of SIRI and XM features, look here and here.

Between the two companies they having less than 2.5 million subscribers so I see a lot of room for growth in this market.

The really great thing is portability. 

For about $100, I can get the receiver which is about the size of a PDA.  Then with some additional accessories and the payment of the monthly fee, I can use that receiver in my cars, or in my house.  If I put it near an FM radio receiver (in the car, the house intercom, or stereo) I can tune the FM band to a particular station and the satellite signal will feed into that system and flow through its speakers.

With one recever I can get commercial-free radio anywhere. Since neither of my vehicles gets good radio reception where I live, I could use the satellite receiver for both cars.

I also love that the radio spectrum used by satellite radio is currently unregulated.  That’s why Howard Stern recently signed with Sirius.  I can’t stand Howard Stern so I certainly wouldn’t buy a Sirius receiver just to listen to him, but a lot of other people will.

I’ll provide more details about the trip and satellite radio later.  Pictures, too.

If anybody has any first-hand experience with Sirius or XM satellite radio, please feel free to leave a comment.

Since I voted for the Libertarian candidate for governor in the Washington State race, I didn’t really care whether Republican Dino Rossi or Democrat Christine Gregoire won.  I figured one would be as bad as the other.

I must admit, however, that when I read Gregoire’s statements about the need for more recounts, I’m starting to hope that Rossi wins. 

Number one, Gregoire just reminds me too much of Hillary Clinton in her physical appearance and her mannerisms.

But it’s totally misleading statements like this (from a Seattle Times article published on 11/26/04) that really make me nervous about having her as governor:

She and her Democratic allies said they would ask for another recount, this time with the ballots counted by hand instead of machine. But they had not decided whether to request a statewide recount or just in selected counties. If a partial recount changed the election outcome, state law mandates a hand recount in the rest of the state.

"Some people have suggested that Senator Rossi and I stage a duel or flip a coin to break this tie," Gregoire said. "But I prefer to count every vote."

Rossi, who was on a Caribbean cruise with his family, didn’t get the recount news until late in the day. But in a written statement, he urged Gregoire to concede.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said yesterday he and Gov. Gary Locke will certify Rossi’s victory Tuesday. Gregoire and the Democrats will then have three days to request a recount.

After that, the state will be in uncharted territory.[emphasis mine]

Why does she keep insisting that the race is a tie when Rossi has won on both the initial count and the automatic recount?

She claims that she prefers to "count every vote" as an alternative to a coin toss or duel. 

What if Rossi wins by just one vote on a manual recount?

Will that one vote count?

I think not.  The 261 votes that gave him his initial victory didn’t count.  The 42 votes that gave him a victory on the recount don’t seem to count.

She pretends they aren’t there and that the race is a tie.  It’s not a tie.  Even if one candidate won by only one vote, it would not be a tie.  But, while she claims that she wants every vote to count, as long as she refers to the race as a tie then votes that give her opponent the victory don’t matter at all.  She has completely rejected them as legitimate votes.

If the manual recount changes the outcome, then of course there will have to be another recount because Rossi would still have won on two out of three counts.

We could be at this until the spring of 2005.

She is also implying that there is something inherently flawed with the two automated counts that have been done so far.  To say that she prefers that every vote count after two counts is to suggest that all the votes where not counted.  What evidence does she have?  What is to assure that a manual recount will count all the votes better than a machine count?

So maybe all elections in the future should be counted by hand?

Today is the usually the biggest shopping day of the year as people rush out to the shopping centers to work off the extra pounds they put on by eating so much yesterday.

Stay home, eat all the leftovers, and do your shopping at Amazon.com by using this link.

Get all your shopping done in one day!