gdobbe's blog
Electronic voting is so very hackable...
If you want to do electronic voting, you need reciepts -- one for the voter, and one for the precinct officials. Otherwise, this sort of thing happens.
From the article:
A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election.
Textbook Boycott: Let's do this thing
Happy new year! Let's make the Man squirm!
Here's the plan:
- It was suggested that it would be easier to boycott all new editions instead of just one, and would be easier to get people to jump on the bandwagon. Therefore, instead of targeting one publisher, we're going to target them all.
- We'll start as soon as people's semesters start. Some schools are doing their interim/J-term right now, which we're unfortunately too late for, but second semester is still just over the horizon for many peoples. Therefore, we still have time to hunt down used textbooks.
- We need a basic form letter that we can send to professors expressing our intent. I'm willing to write one, but it'd be nice to have a few of them to work with. Anyone willing to write a few paragraphs?
I'm going to set up a project page here for us to coordinate information. Let's go make some old people with printing presses nervous!
Textbook Boycott: Who published my textbook?
Some of you might be willing to participate, but leery of spending hours researching how much your books cost. Here's an easy way to cut that time to seconds. Seconds!
- Think back to standing in the bookstore, when you picked up that certain textbook and exclaimed "Holy crap! They want a bajillion dollars for this thing???"
Textbook Boycott: The Saga Continues
Alright, the poll goes live tomorrow morning. If you don't have your original textbook reciepts, you can get a ballpark idea of what a book costs new by going to Amazon or Half.com and plugging in either the title or the ISBN number.
Textbook Boycott Roundup
Ok, so here's a roundup of the discussion so far:
People seem game to do this so long as it doesn't jeopardize their academic standing (i.e., they fail the course for not having the textbook). It has been suggested that professors need to be invited to be a part of this, and ways of distributing course materials amongst students need to be devised.
Here's my idea for figuring out which publisher to go after:
- Between now and Christmas, take a look at who published your first semester textbooks, especially the new editions.
- Figure out what each book cost you, and make a note somewhere
- Come back here starting next Monday, where I will have a poll up for you to mark which publishers cost you the most money. There'll also be a discussion thread so that we can figure out if a particular publisher partakes in price gouging or other unfriendly practices.
- Whoever has the most votes and/or gripes by Christmas is the target of our boycott.
Does this make sense to everyone? Is there anything painfully obvious that I'm missing?
Boycott Idea - Textbooks
Textbook prices are ridiculous. I remember paying well over $500 a semester for maybe five or six books, all in new editions which had maybe 10 pages of text changed from the old edition. There were several books that cost me well over $100 that I never even opened. And it pissed me off, but I bent over and took it because I didn't see any better option. Hell, I'm still paying off credit card debt accrued by purchasing textbooks.
Well, it seems to me that nobody's done anything effective about it, and I'm about to start buying textbooks again. Or not.
Here's my idea:
1. Pick one textbook publisher. The big ones seem to be Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, and Cengage (formerly Thomson Learning). Ideally, this would be done by looking at syllabi for the upcoming semester and marking a tally on a poll hosted here.
2. Boycott that publisher all semester. If the textbook isn't a first edition (such as for a new course), don't buy it new. If you can, buy the textbook second hand or share with a friend.
3. (this step is optional, but would probably help to get our point across) Email/write/call that publisher and tell them that you're boycotting their product because the price makes it almost unaffordable.
It's a big problem, boycotting is easy (what's easier than not doing something?) and it's something that any student can do. Anybody willing to work on this with me?
Staying Motivated
We espouse a belief that the world needs changing, we build a site to do that, we make promises, and then we do... nothing.
Why? How? Is our way of life really not worth saving? Is a low gas price really worth irreversible climate change? We should be out screaming and yelling at the top of our lungs and throwing wrenches into the works left and right until things begin to change.
Instead, we sit around and wait, and join Facebook groups. Because the truth of the matter is, all of this -- whether it be trying to convince our parents to recycle, or refusing to replace a burnt-out bulb with one that isn't a compact fluorescent, or calling our congressional representatives to tell them how we feel on an issue -- is really, unbelievably fucking difficult.
It's time-consuming, it requires patience, perseverance, willpower, and an endgoal. And at the end of the day, when you get back to your dorm or your apartment and all you want to do is open a beer and watch some TV, being patient and keeping your eye on the prize are far from the top of your priority list.
Things You Should Know
It is a well-known fact that the liberal establishment of this country is responsible for the sub-prime housing crisis and ensuing economic instability.