Longer than expected hiatus

It has been some 6-ish months since my last post. I've turned 40, voted, and I decided perhaps that it is time to share this blog with others - one of my new year's resolutions for 2019 is to push the submit button more. I like to take photos and upload them to the internet to share with family and friends, and every so often that is interrupted, and I don't share. The photos pile up locally until our laptop has no space for new photos, and eventually I am forced to declare photo bankruptcy and delete some number of old, possibly unposted photographs to make room for new photographs that might or might not get posted... What a terrible system! Today, something of that sort happened when I spilled a coffee drink all over my backpack and almost sent 2 memory cards that happened to be in the backpack into the laundry... The laptop drive is close to full, and we're at sea in the middle of a long-needed vacation.

I am a technically savvy person, and still, I haven't quite devised a system to figure out how to manage the balance between the joy of taking photos with the work of processing (usually 1-5 minutes per photo) and then uploading and sharing said photos with my friends on social media. Why on earth might you want to vote for someone like that? Beats me. I just haven't posted in what feels like forever. Mind you, dear reader, this is not a promise to resume posting at a regular rate, but instead a return for the moment in the light of the new year's season. The blogging software carefully tracks these posts, so I have no excuses. No excuses. That sounds like a decent campaign slogan / new year's resolution.

Wishing you and your families a safe and happy new year.

Make the world great again!

We are living in an existential crisis. Population growth unchecked and recent technological inventions spell the end of comfortable human life on this planet as we know it. From the industries that have been rapidly (in Geologic time) changing the chemical makeup of our air and water and soil - sacrificing long term stability for short-term profits to the politicians failing to curb the proliferation of Nuclear warheads, we have lost our grip on the future. Only 100 years ago, at the birth of flight and the assembly line, was the last great attempt at conquest - world war I and then world war II.

Today, due to many stabilization treaties and trade treaties, "our world" has mostly been at peace for 50 years. All facets of our peace have become shaken or unraveled in recent times due to the mis-information age president. We are now at a time when the musings of one man on twitter can cause terrible damage. Speech has become a weapon that is tearing apart our country.

When hundreds of millions of people are denied the truth that we are irreparably harming our planet and fail to take action, we suffer. Our children suffer. Our future suffers. Already we have suffering. People are marching in the streets each week. Greater suffering is in our future if we do not find a solution to our rapidly deteriorating environment. This is just as true of our political environment as it is of our natural environment.

I don't have a solution for this. Nobody does. A politician would lie and say something akin to "X is the solution, and if you elect me, I will do X". The solution to this scale of problem requires each and every human in this world to be united against the continued destruction of our planet. It requires science. It requires faith. I can't make this happen. Not even close. But I'm not out of ideas. One of the many people that I admire is Elon Musk - he does have some kooky solutions to some problems (torpedo tube submarine made of rocket parts to rescue children in a cave), but he is creative and resourceful and dedicated to using his resources to further advance humanity's goals.

Powers, Morals, Great America

I have a hard time with watching the news lately. Watching breast-feeding babies separated from their mothers under the guise of the bible and put into cages. This is what America has become. This is disturbing because our nation was founded on the basis that we should be free to practice whatever religion we want. Our ancestors came here in waves, persecuted by bible wielding preachers. We have become that from which our ancestors fled.

I don't know how people can claim this is God's will. I'm waiting for my country's leadership to step up and do something. First to act like a leader wins. So far all I see is blame towards the other party.

What makes America great was an idea whose time needs to come again. In an ideal world, we would try and convict those people who take bribes and sell out their constituents of treason against the people of America. We would throw them in prison or worse, but that's not what will happen because we do not live in a just world; we live in the real world, where ideals are dreams. The American Dream is alive and well if you are rich. Otherwise, you are a beggar and scum to our government. There are people actively working to disenfranchise you. They are afraid of the kind of vindictive person who might take away what they have and distribute it.

Socialists, Communists they would call you. Maybe. Those words lost meaning decades ago. "This is all hyperbole." I hear people living under a rock cry out. "We have agents of our government to look after our poor, right?" I hear you say that we have these institutions for equality in Housing and Urban Development and equality in Education. Once upon a time we did. We knew how to stand up for what is right. Now these institutions are crumbling under an administration working actively to screw the American poor.

Why do I deserve to go to fancy restaurants and live in comfort? Because I won the birth lottery. I was born to parents who lived the American dream - starting their company and making money. Employing people, and providing value. In better words, I don't deserve my lot in life. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to give it up. My point is that we are all deserving of good food and clean water and air. We all need shelter. We all need someone to stand up to the bullies. Today the bullies are the ones with the money. The only way to prove you're standing up is to not accept campaign finance. That's not how the game is played, I'm afraid. No money means no voice. No voice means no organization. No chance. All we have are those mired in the donorship trough, voicing poll-tested lines and ducking questions, placing blame, and doing what their owners pay them to do.

Happy father's day. We are camping with our religious community this weekend, and I'm on vacation from blogging for a few weeks.

Online identity and policy; won't somebody think of the children?!?!

Every so often, you hear a politician try and come up with a solution to the duopoly that is our childlike anonymous online self. I read an article today about one such politician. The proposal is that you must provably identify yourself online so that you can be punished if you misbehave. The article suggests that billionaire tech founders have control over the vast usage of their platform and should be willing to impose draconian measures to prevent harm from befalling on their end users.

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Pardon me while I go off hunting for memes about people being mean on the internet.

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To anyone implementing these crazy notions, I warn you: watch your Daily Active Users go crashing. My children are 9 and 12 years old... They will use social networks poorly, and there are many, many millions of other pre-teenage children on the internet with brand new internet IDs. Ask them for proof, and they'll use your competitor. Facebook has 1.45B DAU (source), but website Reddit recently surpassed (source) Facebook as the number 3 website on the internet - behind Google and YouTube. As much as the UK PM is right that what is illegal offline is also illegal online, violence is something which has an offline presence. There is no easy button, and your citizens won't stand for putting microphones in their homes -- I use a Google Home, but that's only because I'm foolishly trusting in big G as a target with too much to lose if they should violate enough end user trust. As an American, I don't trust the government (of any country) to set the rules. The internet is some kind of virtual world, where not all the inhabitants are human, and not all humans are who they pretend to be, nor are they connecting from where you think they are.

So what can be done, and what is being done in this space? Well, I don't want to be a pessimist and say that nothing can be done - there is some extent to which we are talking about whac-a-mole (an arcade game which represents a futile effort at making a lasting change). There are interesting efforts - one that I've recently been made aware of is named Perspective - part of Google's Jigsaw - which attempts to discern harassment from conversations. The ultimate problem is that no one country can control its people online. Online is a big place. It is the wild west, but that's also part of the draw.

Balances of powers, scales of justice, and cake

The 7-2 gay wedding cake supreme court decision that came out this week (full text - 59 pages) was a disappointment for many people who are anxious that we are returning toward a religious state that our founders were desperate to avoid. To me, and reading much of the 59 pages this week, it falls into one of those many situations where it's complicated, and it's also a personal matter: My grandparents started a quite famous bakery by the name of Freed's in Las Vegas in 1959. I'll refrain from regailing you with many stories of all the chores and jobs my dad and his four siblings did some 50 years ago to help their struggling parents make that coffee stand with donuts into thriving a bakery.

I don't quite understand how we live in a society where our highest court justices don't understand the difference between participating in a "gay wedding" due to "not condoning it" vs discriminating baking a cake for a celebration involving 150 guests on the basis of the buyer. In my mind, the test case isn't the central case. I wonder what happens if a gay couple wants a wedding cake, and so they go shopping with a lesbian couple... Tricking the business and buying two wedding cakes... That people would have to resort to this is wrong. Then after the ceremonies send the store pictures of the newlyweds and thanking them for their wedding cakes, what happens?

See, this to me is the contrapositive. The business would have not sold the cakes. Can they then sue the couples under this ruling? This is where government laws and mathematics diverge. In reality, I don't want this supreme court decision tested again and again. For starters, I can't find a test for this decision that doesn't start with some people being terrible to others and then bringing in lawyers. Really, though, the test would be if people refuse to sell other goods and services to Gay, Black, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, and Jewish people - that's the test. That's the slippery slope.

The bottom line is that all fundamental laws and religion and in fact the civil code of our society begins with the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Syncopated terms

I think we should do some experimenting with our system of government. I think perhaps that we should change the terms of president and vice president and how they get elected. I think we should hold presidential elections at the same time we do the mid-term elections and VP elections when we previously did. So it works something like this: 2018 - presidential election for 2021-2024 term. 2020 - VP election for 2021-2024 term. 2022 - presidential election for 2025-2028 term. 2024 - VP election for 2025-2028 term.

Why? Well, if you're running for a new term, it gives you 2 years lead time to prepare for the actual job. Our president elect normally has about a quarter year to transition to the new administration. After your 2 years of preparation, you have 2 years of administration to accomplish your goals and win the trust of the public, if you do well enough to earn the public's trust for a 2nd term, you have more time left at that point to finish your work and transition the responsibilities to the next leader. Also, I think that during those 2 years, at the president's discretion, they may chose the president elect to be acting president for relief rather than the vice president. The only way the VP succeeds the president in an untimely death is during the first two years of a term, when the successor is not yet elected.

Having the president and vice president elections separated by two years allows people who ran for one office unsuccessfully to run for the other office - it also separates the process of running and gives the public an opportunity to vote separately and evenly. You get the most qualified candidates for both offices and you get candidates from both parties knowing who they will be working with. I believe the beneficiary of this approach will be the American public. You also can have a situation where both office-holders can run for president at the same time for the next term. I like the cooperation coupled with competition. I like the notion that you have less than a full term before you have to prove yourself to the public and the more even duty cycle of preparation and growth.

I'm not a big fan of the electoral college. In a Republic like ours, I feel it is disingenuous to give some people a weighted vote for president based on the relative lack of representation in number of house members their state produces. Not only do states with lesser populations get more per-person votes, but they also get more senate representation per voter. I have lived in 6 states (only 4 of them when old enough to vote). It seems ridiculous to me that in some states my vote counted for more than when I lived in others. I'm also of the opinion that you shouldn't disenfranchise Americans who live in our unincorporated federal territories. As someone born in one of the original 13 colonies, I feel it is my duty to bring up the "no taxation without representation" slogan out of the 1700's.

We have a peculiar, perverted, partisan, gerrymandered, rigged, corrupt, and unfair election system. It's time we re-imagined how we choose the people who steer our government in a responsible and forward-looking fashion. I'm somewhat inspired by the 6 / 2 year terms for senators and house members.

Volunteerism

I'm a believer in volunteering to do things. Volunteering is one way that you learn and grow at things for which you aren't necessarily known to be competent. Volunteering is as much about self growth as it is about giving back. It's about forming a connection with other people and about doing good for the benefit of others. You can give money, or you can give of your time. Sometimes both are required. Today, I volunteered a few hours to be a judge in an 8th grade class which has designed phone apps. At my work, I "volunteer" as a technical interviewer - the process involves a significant amount of time commitment and judgement - I always try to leave a candidate with a positive experience even if my recommendation is that they are not suited for the position. Now, you might call a part of my job work, but I consider that specific part volunteering -- I'm not paid any better for that time spent, and in some sense it costs my productivity towards what I am being paid for. People skills - "soft" skills are hard for software engineers. Emotional intelligence - that intuitive nature where you can read people and ascertain their intents from body or facial language - I'm not so good at that. But I'm good at asking a technical question, working with someone to find a solution to a problem, and evaluating how well they did at the problem compared with others to whom I have given the same challenge.

So I volunteer. I interview potential colleagues at work. I interview potential students as an alumni interviewer for my university. I volunteered to be a leader of a Cub Scouts pack (for a year). I have even served on a jury. The most precious gift you can give of yourself is your time. My wife is an inspiration to me. She gives so much to her students. Today we voted, went to the gym, and then she signed up to be the VP of Events for our children's PTA next year while I drove her Prius through a Chick-fil-A drive through with the kids. That's not volunteering - parenting is my 2nd job.

Oh, and one of the things we voted on was a historic and unusual ballot measure that I was in the right place and right time to sign to put it on the ballot... I might crow about this later if the measure passes. [Edit: it passed.]

Pardon me?

Today, our president, Donald Trump, tweeted that he thought he could pardon himself. "As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!"

He thought that in the event that he were tried and convicted of a federal crime, that he could simply say, "No biggie. On behalf of the American people, I hereby pardon myself."

I can't even. That logic is unimpeachable, sir. You win. 22 weeks from now, on midterm election day, we'll see if what you win is a landslide for the opposition.

[Update: the opposition "won back" the house but not the senate.]

Inspirational video

For some reason, I stumbled upon this video, and it gave me pause, delighted me, made me cry a little, and I'm sharing it. Should I ever run into Richard Pimental, one thing I would like to say is thank you for your service and your words of wisdom.

Growing up in a digital age

One of the lessons I learned growing up is that you become your parents. They leave their mark on you from day one. Well, I haven't always been the best example to my children. My son comes home after spending the afternoon at a friend's house, and using mommy's iPad Pro to play Fortnite he communicates online, and I get to hear about it while driving home how he unlocked the chat feature and told some "friends" online about him and daddy. So we have a talk, and I am stern and tell him all about the evil people who snatch children and that he must never ever tell people enough to identify himself or his family to those potentially untrustworthy strangers online... perfectly channeling my mom. Then I feel guilty that I have gone too far, and backpedal and give him all the good examples of coming together with groups of strangers at a local safe place for a meetup for games like we used to do. There's a difference between online and reality.

Online, you use pseudonyms and protections to shelter your reality from the digital existence front that you put up. That wasn't always the case. Back in the 1980s, phones weren't mobile. You had to physically exert effort to find someone, but the information was usually published in the white pages, and so long as you had a unique enough name and were polite and friendly, it wasn't hard to get information from people. Online, people are crude replicas of ourselves. We react through limited digital interfaces - links to videos or messages walled behind some account-based ecosystem paid for by advertising. I don't think the ads have caused me to buy anything or really to be aware of anything that I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, but regardless, they keep the access free.

I grew up, hang out in nerdy social circles, and found my wife before the age of online match making and social networks. Our culture has blended what I call the digital convergence devices - telephone, audio recorder, video camera, fax machine, email, text, even video communicator - into every screen. We are never more than 2 feet from 3 of these devices. The level of tracking we can do today if you know how is scary. I have worked for multiple companies that track millions of devices with GPS and network signals and gather somewhat of a mapping from your IP address to a real-world physical coordinate. This mapping is both non-exclusive to one company, and accessible to developers like myself. I'm not coming to get your children, and I hope you're not coming to get mine. The truth is far more complicated that we're all vulnerable to smart people with knowledge and skill that can navigate the technology stack and do what we fear.

You have to trust someone.

What have you got to lose?

I was having a conversation with a friend about this blog and my intentions, and this friend asks me: "What have you got to lose?" ... Maybe I don't have anything to lose. Maybe I do. A candidate for President who is taken seriously gets a secret service detail. I think that is because being a candidate makes you a target. Being a celebrity certainly does, but they have money to pay guards and live behind iron gates. I don't have the kind of money or assets that those people who typically run for president do. I live in an apartment with my wife and two children. She teaches middle school science, and I program computers for some company. Let me just add that I do not speak publicly for my employer. Being an employee is how I provide for my family. Sharing my dream of running for president is like opening up my diary and letting you peek at my soul. Don't confuse the aspect of wanting to make the world a better place and using my talents of programming with representing anyone other than myself. The only way you get to conflate my representing anyone else is if some Tuesday in November, some crazy high number of American voters actually vote for me.

So what do I have to lose? Well, this can go viral, and then instead of doing what I love to do for a living - solve challenging technical problems, something I might have said, or written or not could come out about me, and suddenly, I could be out, without a job, and nobody willing to take in my resume for what I'm most qualified. That's the biggest fear. There are other fears - that someone is triggered by my honest sharing of ideas and acts to harm me. There are fears of too much success - maybe this goes viral slowly, and I get a following, but now it takes over my life, and I lose my friends to people trying to get closer. The presidency is a lonely job. The internet is a strange place. I'm not naive to the dangers of putting yourself out on the internet. Fears are real. Some people are right to be paranoid!

So why do it? Because maybe this might get a following. Maybe this might convince people that we have an alternative to the two party system. Maybe we can spark discussion. I'm treating this blog as an Art project. It's self-reflective of the things I value. At this point, it's a couple paragraphs a night. You get to hear directly from me on whatever I want to write about. I'll be almost 42 the next time a presidential election is held. I sat out the last one thinking that it wasn't my time. This time, I worry maybe I don't have too much time left to sit on the sidelines. Even if I do nothing but comment on the goings on, perhaps that commentary might change the course of history. In any event, it's a more active way to spend my time than watching TV every night! Of all the things I fear, maybe fearing that my contribution to society is empty is the biggest fear of all. It's a certainty if I do nothing.

Revolving Doors and Intellectual Property

This Hacker News article points to this article regarding the rather unsurprising revolving door between patent examiners and organizations which patent lots of inventions. I have to say that I'm not a fan of the patent system, nor am I a fan of the copyright system. I feel that both of these systems need a bit of balancing out for the public good. My general feeling is that you should gain copyright protection and patent protection for about the same limited amount of time to reap the benefit of the new thing that you create and in an effort to best enable the next generation to remix and explore the space. My general feeling is that this should be up to Congress to decide, but given how corruption runs in our system, I'm willing to put down my thoughts in a round number: 15 years. Can you remember today fifteen years ago? Why should movies, television programs, software programs, books, audio recordings, etc, etc be restricted from being reproduced and rebroadcast that were published before 2003? What public value are we saving for "the lifetime of the author" when the authors are long dead and gone. Copyrights are a way of preserving monopoly power - they are a way of concentrating wealth among those who already have too much over those new artists and creatives that deserve their time on the stage. Instead of having new remixes and a renaissance - a rebirth - of art, we have lawyers arguing over ownership and money. This may not be the most popular logical vein among my kind - professional software engineers - but the very notion that my work won't be unlocked until well past my death so someone else can extort the maximum value from it means that my impact on our shared future is lessened to a degree. My name is currently on 2 patents. In both cases I was the employee of the many other employees listed on the filing who initially pushed for that *limited* protection to cover work that I contributed to large and complicated systems (though others listed did much of the patent-related documentation). These are team efforts. I bring this up because I have skin in this game as an inventor. I want others to be free to use my inventions early, so that my work is not just re-implemented but rather re-imagined.

[edit on 6/5 to add]: The system itself is vastly more complicated, and a newer article referred by HN is worth reading. It can be found here. These are complicated works.

Technology

I love tech. My parents gave me my first computer in 1983, and my dad taught me how to program it. I turned that into a profession that I'm still loving 35 years later. Some day soon, we can marry humans with circuitry and we'll have computer peripherals that will interface directly with our brains. We will be able to communicate wordlessly, present images and diagrams just by thinking. Maybe we will some day be able to remove our brains from our diseased bodies and keep them alive while retaining machine inputs and outputs. We will be Cyber Men! Most likely, the zombie-apocalypse-like technology envisioned by at least one episode of Doctor Who won't be upon us, but certainly there will be technological improvements such as self-driving cars and the dawn of robot soldiers (like those at Boston Dynamics) and the ethical dilemmas about how young or old or under what circumstances is someone able to have their brain modified by circuitry, and for what purpose. Personally, I'd love to be able to command a robot dog with a chip in my brain over Bluetooth or WiFi, or maybe post blogs in my sleep. We won't all agree, but we'll likely think in competition with the great nations of the world that at some point we lose out if we don't get there first, so we will invest and build a little bit out of the public eye... Similarly, we'll deal with people in Congress who don't understand the basics of the foundation of the technology for which modern life depends, nor will they be willing to embrace future potential that redefines what it is to be human.

Great medical advancements will be made by genetic engineering our genes to produce new organs grown inside our own bodies via stem cells... The kind my father would have benefited from rather than requiring my donation of a kidney. Advancements such as Cancer-fighting medications and cures will be the goal of many medical science and research institutions, but so will be fighting degenerate illnesses that will spring up as medical enemy number one after Cancer. Maybe even some of the research from those efforts will make a difference against Cancer. Science is one of those things you can't predict.

My hope is that the future isn't set back by a lack of vision or by some of the competitors (be they nations of companies) in the space reflecting poorly on others. I want my children to grow up in a world with self-driving, fusion-powered cars.

Patriotism

I want to wish you a thoughtful Memorial Day. Take a moment to remember your family and friends who fought to make this a better world. Think about what you will do to keep their memories alive and uphold that sacrifice. Today I want to honor my grandfather, Fred "Siggy" Greenbaum. He was an immigrant serving in World War II over 70 years ago, and if it weren't for him and his bravery, I would not be here. He was an amateur radio operator, and he loved clocks. His house was full of them. Always ticking away.

On this memorial day, I'd like to talk about patriotism, remembering this great nation that took in my ancestors fleeing religious persecution from Europe and Asia. This is a place where freedom to believe is sacrosanct. Today we come to a time where a sports league is giving players an ultimatum: you will stand for the national anthem or be penalized. I find the notion offensive. While I stand and place my hand on my heart and sing the national anthem, perhaps with a little too much flair... I find it unconscionable that we tolerate a corporation which forces people to feign patriotism. It goes against the very freedom for which my grandfather fought.

There's more I want to say on this subject, but that is all I will write for now.

Fake News

This blog is not news. It's commentary. It is opinion dressed as a notion that maybe someone in America's professional working class (whatever the @#$% that means) can run a political campaign for the highest office in the land, without any money. I won't be perfect, but I'll be honest. You're reading my diary as much as my resume. I'll be wrong. I might not read the comments, but I feel like it's a blog, so feel free to comment, share, like, print, whatever. I reserve the right to change my mind, update posts without advertising what I've edited, and whatever. Finally, I'll use the 1st person. A lot. What I'm not going to do is really, attempt to police the comments. You can form a community around my blog in comments or not. That's entirely up to you.

The only difference between these blog posts and an opinion column is that there's no organization attached to my opinions, and I don't care to make money off of these opinions. Maybe that means you can trust what I write. Maybe it means I can afford to be wrong some times (cue the someone's wrong on the internet meme). No lawyers are looking over my shoulder. I'll just trust that if you trip on my digital lawn, that you'll sue someone else.

Thoughts on issues

Net neutrality is to some an issue about equal access to the internet for the rural and the poor, and to others it's about legalizing monopoly practices that hurt competition. Encryption is about privacy, but it is also about security. Some people think of the 2nd amendment as the right to bear arms to defend your country and overthrow tyranny. Others think of it as a means to regulate, and feel that the government isn't regulating enough. Encryption is an arm that defends your right to private communications, and some believe that it is a violation of fundamental rights if and when the government accesses your devices. Others believe that it's a slippery slope - if our government can do it, then so can a hostile government, and so can a hacker who wants to extort you. Single payer healthcare is about not punishing people who get sick because they make less money. When I lived a couple years abroad, there was a single payer system, but private insurance means more access to care. Single payer means not bankrupting people who can't afford the insurance. It has nothing to do with Obama. Social Security is a savings account / insurance scheme that only works out for our generation if the population grows and more people put in more money. I paid my social security taxes, but I might not live long enough to take a benefit. Why can't we roll it all up and let everyone take out a universal basic income - something which ensures that our children and parents and siblings get resources for food and shelter and that people don't die homeless on the streets in the "wealthiest nation" on the planet.

My wife taught in one of the most bizarre middle schools in all of America - one of the poorest schools in a super rich metropolitan suburb - within miles of some of the wealthiest companies on the planet. From her stories, I learned that the children of the poorest workers in the same town where $300,000 was a down payment on a shack were going hungry and had family issues. The school had a crisis on Thanksgiving when the kitchen staff didn't properly plan the amount of food assuming that many of the families would take their children out of town, and the children that were there that week ran out of their only food source. We expect our next generation to pay for our social security, but we are neglecting them. How do starving children learn to be future leaders?

Liberty. Freedom. Choice. Money. You have many choices in your life if you are rich. That's universally true, not just in America, but worldwide. It's how you treat the portion of your people who have no money that defines a nation. Americans are obsessed with the rich -- what the best and boldest and most successful in terms of money do. The poor buy lottery tickets, hoping one day to strike it rich. These symptoms are indicative of a larger problem that needs to change from the top down and the bottom up.

Doing the right thing

Sometimes it's obvious when something is right or wrong. Our political campaigns are littered with tomfoolery, shenanigans, hypocrisy, and negativity not worthy of our great nation. One of the things I find somewhat ridiculous and offensive to the American public is the lies that the rich make to the rest of us to get elected. Our system is stacked with heavily invested people buying access and power in our government. It has become the price of progress. Our freedoms are sold to the highest bidder. It appears that there are only two choices - you either belong to a party or you have no influence, so each party can claim to its members that the other one is the bad one - look, one is liberal, one is conservative. Those words are used to the point of meaningless. The truth is far more nuanced and complicated. We get something like Hotelling's Law - these houses actually have broad bases across the 50 states willing to band together along the messages that the party media directors decide to attract the voters in the respective media markets. The messages are carefully polled and tested. A presidential campaign costs upwards of a billion dollars. But you're not voting for a person. You're voting for a ticket. Not even that. You're voting for a circus. I want to end the process of buying elections. I'd like for campaigns to not have more than, say, $50,000 of budget. Ideally, not any budget. I'd like for campaigns to be about ideas about how you would steward the country and how one would listen to advisers and navigate the divide rather than about hard and fast positions on complicated subjects that have far more nuances and deserve careful thought.

But we won't get a candidate like that. Maybe. I'm not really the conventional candidate. I'm more of an internet candidate - I'm never going to raise enough money to fly all over America and shake hands. That's not really what I think being president should be about. Fundraising and selling out is the reason we are in the worst mess we've ever been in. I think being president should be about planning and executing. It's exactly the way software is built. Why can't the government run that way?

First Post

Once a year, or so, I start a blog related to my foolish dream to one day be president. Once a day, or so, I give myself a pep talk about all the things I would do, and all the reasons why I, a person of absolutely no influence and possibly fading health as I turn 40 would want to spend the remaining good years of my life at the helm of one of the most fractured governments in the world. Well, for your entertainment or perhaps just to simply write what I have been thinking and saying aloud, these pages will be filled with my thoughts about the future - both America's future and the future of the world in general. I ask that you share, comment, critique, and journey with me over time, as we process together the goings on in our world.

I have lots of thoughts, and I'll put them here, one paragraph at a time. One post at a time.