Category: Politics 2013
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Decking the secular halls
So an atheist, a Buddhist, a Unitarian Universalist (me), his un-churched sister, her sarcastic college age son and the cynical brother who says he only worships Baal get together for dinner. The occasion: Christmas, of course. That’s right, our Christmas tree is festooned with lights and bulbs. An angel adorns its top proclaiming the good…
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Bitcoin is libertarian bit nonsense
Are you intrigued by Bitcoin? It’s a digital currency much in the news these days. It even got a hearing on Capitol Hill last month. Surprisingly the foundation overseeing Bitcoin came out relatively unscathed. Some places are accepting Bitcoins as payment for actual goods and services. They do so on the assumption the currency has…
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The power and profitability of treating workers with dignity
It’s taken a few years but striking fast food and Walmart workers are slowly getting some national attention. This Black Friday there was a continuation of strikes and protests that happened on Black Friday 2012, only bigger, with at least 111 protestors arrested around Walmart stores nationwide. Organizers at Our Walmart, a group organizing Walmart…
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Gun control is inevitable
Americans are obsessed with guns, but appearances can be deceiving. Certainly there is a very vocal crowd of gun rights people in this country, so vocal in fact that it seems to be more important than any other issue. Many of these gun rights advocates horde guns and ammunition for the apocalypse, or at least…
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How healthcare.gov failed: the technical aspects
(Also read parts 1, 2 and 3.) A lot of how healthcare.gov works is opaque. This makes it hard to say authoritatively where all the problems lie and even harder to say how they can be solved. Clearly my knowledge is imperfect and thus my critiques are not perfect either. I am left to critique…
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How healthcare.gov failed: the architectural aspects
(Read parts 1, 2 and 4.) If you were building a house that you didn’t quite know how it would turn out when you started, one strategy would be to build a house made of Lego. Okay, not literally as it would not be very livable. But you might borrow the idea of Lego. Each Lego…
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How healthcare.gov failed: the programmatic aspects
(Also read parts 1, 3 and 4.) I am getting some feedback: healthcare.gov isn’t really a failure. People are using the website to get health insurance, albeit not without considerable hassle at times. I’ll grant you that. I’ll also grant you that this was a heck of a technical challenge, the sort I would have gladly taken…
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How healthcare.gov failed: the political aspects
(Also read parts 2, 3 and 4.) You know a federal IT manager has a problem when the President of the United States is dissing the very web site he was paid to manage. That’s what President Obama was doing today with the healthcare.gov site, the rollout of which was botched by any standard. Also botched was the…
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The interview
This blog is principally a written work, but today you can hear my voice if you want. Simply click on the audio player and listen to the MP3 recording. The interview is 24:09 and is 34.8MB in size. (Download) I was interviewed by NetRoots Radio as a voice in the federal shutdown. The interview was…
Occam's Razor 