Reaching out on marriage

Maybe progressives should reach out to Mormons and propose a Religious Freedom in Marriage Act legalizing both same-sex and plural marriage. Would some of them get behind it? It seems they've largely distanced themselves from that part of their faith, in an effort to be more accepted by the rest of americans and the world, but I'm sure some number of them would love to be open about their families or expand the ones they have. And there are other faiths and sects that could get behind it as well.

Does anyone know of a list of faiths, sects, denominations, congregations, etc. that welcome same-sex and/or plural marriages? I think such a list could help make the case that this is in fact an issue of religious freedom.

In the case of plural marriage, I think it would be a reasonable restriction to require the consent of all current spouses for someone to marry another. Maybe require all current spouses to sign the license. (Would other witnesses be required? I'm inclined to say yes, but I suppose all the licensing details would be left to the states.)

Follow up: It would be tempting to try to get an endorsement for this from Clint Eastwood, since with his support for same-sex marriage and work in Paint Your Wagon he'd be a natural, but in light of recent events I think he's a bit too risky.

Birth Control Coverage - Missing The Point on Religious Freedom

There is a very important point about the controversial decision to require that employees, even working for religious organizations, receive coverage for birth control.

Many opponents criticize it as trampling on religious freedom, when it actually does nothing of the sort. What it does is prioritize the religious freedom of the individual over that of the organization. To do the opposite would actually endanger the freedom of religion we hold so dear in this country.

Voting & Legislative Reform Ideas: Weighted Ballots & Conditional Automatic Repeal

Weighted Ballots
First let me say this: this idea will never work.

Second let me say this: I'd like to be proven wrong.

Here's the idea...

1. Somehow track what and who a voter has voted for in the past.
2. Objectively measure how well the winners that voter has voted for have worked out.
3. Weight the value of that voter's current vote accordingly.

Ideally, the weighting would reflect the voter's votes on similar issues and in similar circumstances more than dissimilar.

The difficulties are fairly obvious. There's the privacy issue of tracking votes, and the big hairy problem of coming up with sufficient agreement on an objective measure of past winning votes' outcomes. Vote tracking is the big issue. It would be simple to do, but the secret ballot is an important institution, its primary and critical-to-freedom purpose being to prevent people from being coerced into voting one way or another. As for the performance measuring, I may have another idea that could maybe possibly serve as a partial/proxy measure well enough for some cases.

Anyway, if someone can solve the privacy issue, that would be swell.


Conditional Automatic Repeal
Okay, now this one may never happen, but it could maybe work.

Here's the idea...

Pass a constitutional amendment (it would have to be, I think) to the effect that...

1. Any act (or referendum, hereafter referred to as an "act") must include measurable intended goals for the act, to be reached within a stated time frame, possibly including negative effects to be avoided.
2. If the goals are not met or unwanted effects occur within the time given, the act is automatically repealed.
3. The legislative body may then override the automatic repeal as it might for an executive veto, with the same vote margin requirement.
4. The legislative body is, of course, free to repeal the act at any time as normal, so if it becomes obvious that an act is not working they don't have to wait for the auto-repeal.

I think this would maybe help reduce the hyperbole surrounding much of the big legislation that gets passed, by forcing a bill's proponents to make clear enforceable claims about what it will actually accomplish. If the act doesn't do what they say it will do, it's out, unless a supermajority then agrees that we're still better off with the legislation than without. I think it could help reduce bundling of unrelated issues in single bills. I think it could also give voters a tool for measuring the candidates in an election.

It could also serve as a measure for the weighted ballot scheme mentioned above. It would only apply to referendums and such, with the voter's weighting determined by the auto-repeal track record of their winning votes. (I suppose it could also serve as a measure for votes for office as well, with the weight flowing from the legislative votes of the people the voter has gotten into office.) That still leaves the vote-tracking privacy issue, of course.
Again, this one would be difficult to get passed. Too many legislators know too well that there are things they vote for that, while helping a few folks, don't otherwise work as advertised. I'd still like to see this debated.

On Instructional Videos

There seems to be a trend these days in instructions on the web: videos.

Videos? Really? Ugh!

I don't know about you, but usually when I look for instructions on how to do something I either just need to find out what tools or utilities I need to use to do it, or to refer to the instructions as I go through the task. Videos are good for neither; you can't effectively skim a video for the important parts, or go through it at your own pace as your task progresses.

Seriously, people, I really don't have the time, and in any case don't want, to slog through your introductions or sit through your "um"s and "uh"s just to find out what to use to get my blog fed to a facebook page. Save the videos for tasks, or parts of tasks, where that kind of demonstration of technique or effect is useful. And add good old text and graphics to your toolbox along with that video hammer; it ain't all nails out there.

Ambulance Chasers

When I heard about the crash ("water landing", I'd say) of US Airways flight 1549 I did a google for it to see what other news was available. I'm as curious as the next guy and it sounded like it landed about as safely as one could expect - I was hoping someone had posted pictures, or even videos of the plane landing in the water.

There wasn't really anything new yet, so I went about my business. Later, A bit less than two hours after the crash/water landing/epic save, I refreshed the search results. This is what came up...


Click on it for a clearer view if you want, but it's pretty clear to me. This is what they call an ambulance chaser. Nice job guys. Real tasteful.

Thoughts On Iron Man, Spiderman, And ILM

I saw the trailer for Iron Man recently, and I have to say it reminds me of the recent Spiderman movies. By that I mean I'm seeing the same stilted motions in the CGI characters. ILM did the work on all the films, from what I gather, but they also did the work in the Star Wars prequils. The stormtroopers were completely convincing, even with so many of them on screen at once. If I hadn't heard otherwise I would have thought at least some were live actors. But both Spiderman and now Iron Man look like they're computer generated. There is never a moment's doubt watching them. Why is this?

I can think of three possible explanations...

A: ILM is perfectly capable of producing convincing animation of human characters, but only does so for Lucas.

B: ILM is perfectly capable of producing convincing animation of human characters, but will only give their clients what they're willing to pay for, and Sony and Marvel were only willing to pay so much.

C: ILM is perfectly capable of producing convincing animation of human characters, but only if basing them on the movements of a living model. They had live actor stormtroopers from the original Star Wars trilogy to work from, but for the Marvel superheroes only had still images from comic books. And let's face it: those comic book drawings evoke some very dramatic motion, but they are not realistic poses by any stretch of the imagination.

So what do you think? Is it A, B, C, or something else?