Political spectrum

As much as this isn't a blog about politics, politics seems to be something about which I should use the opportunity to write. While I've found that doing some actual on-paper freewriting has helped with my politically-motivated anger, the blog is convenient for its speed and link-ability.

The first time I voted was in 2000, soon after graduating from college. The only thing I guessed right on was some county-wide funding for health services, or the like. Those were the days when everyone was rich, I suppose, and could stomach pitching in a bit for their fellow man.

Less so in 02 and 04, when, yes, every single thing on the ballot for which I voted failed. Incredible. The 2004 election results were actually mentally distracting to me, almost to the point of physical illness. I'm not even particularly politically active; I read enough to understand how the system works and figure out who's mostly likely to set it in the right direction, then I show up and vote. Occasionally I share my views with others, if there's beer involved.

My misery in 2004 had two results. First, I almost entirely blocked out mainstream domestic media. The Economist covers much of what's important in the world, includes details and analysis to a non-insulting level, and makes clear their bias and sources. Occasionally I catch a few minutes of NPR or BBC news on the radio, but I switch off NPR when they're playing the "this is good reporting because we're letting two opposing idiots spew nonsense in opposite directions" game.

The second is that I tried to put some rules around my own political orientation. Certainly, a one-dimensional left versus right axis is bothersomely naive. A 2D version with social freedom on one access and economic freedom on the other is a moderate improvement:

Small Government
^
|
Soc. Liberal <---+---> Soc. Conservative
|
v
Big Government

In this case, one might think of the Democrats being in the lower left and Republicans being in the upper right, but there's no good reason why a given voter wouldn't combine socially conservative views with a desire for strong, centralized government, et cetera. In fact, as I read the "use of force" clause in the DMCA correctly, we very much have that leaning today.

The Nolan chart takes a similar approach, but clearly aims to promote Libertarianism in its nomenclature.

Even within the 2D spectrum, I have a few key views that put me at odds with easy characterization.

Fiscal conservatism making for a predictable system is good
Americans are not inherently better than anyone else
Local regulation and experimentation is better than centralized control
Capitalism is efficient because it solves many problems organically
Unchecked capitalism is both unfair and unstable
Rules based on religion are a scam
Life is better when we help each other
Life is better when we are free to live as we choose

Thus, I'm clearly at odds with government at late. Maybe it's not as clear that I would be an Obama supporter, but if you consider my demographic (young, non-hispanic, moderately affluent, well-educated) then I suppose I'm predictable.

Hmmm...

Redesign

I've repainted my main page (still without any significant content); but, I'm partway toward my goal of having a basic personal webpage with a semi-integrated blog. In lieu of integrated blog/page co-publishing (like Wordpress or Movable type would offer), I hacked together similar styles in Blogger and my main.css.

A simple gradient-filled png (underlying my blog title at the top of the page) is 336k. Ouch! I can turn on compression when I save it in Gimp, but it compresses some of the gradient levels to some visual effect. Maybe each of the small number of people who view the page will cache it, or maybe everyone has so much bandwidth these days that it doesn't matter... and, after all that effort to remove the little round-corner gifs present in the default blogger template.

The new scheme is light-on-dark (looks better on 3/4 of my regular monitors; the Dell Ultrasharp renders dark-on-light competently):
text light (#ceebeb)
highlights light blue (#1e90ff)
text background very dark blue-green (#222d2d)
page bg slightly-lighter blue-green (#293838)

about this page

I've called my page the augmented fourth since its maculate inception ca. 1996; it was once a playground for me to explore HTML and page design, which is why it was previously done using HTML+CSS and had miniature gifs for navigation and spacing. Writing html is a dying art, though, replaced by the web two-point-oh. This matches my needs well, since what I actually use my site for includes:

• reference-from-anywhere, such as a start page
• photo albums, although I'm migrating to lower-overhead online services for Julian
• accounting jibberish that's handy to show off, such as lists of movies or beers

I'm hoping blogger's tagging features will serve to circumvent its unnecessary but imposed chronological display. This page is part of the site's base layer and is about webpaging. So many words to make up, so little time.