October, 2016: US Supreme Court associate justice Anthony Kennedy collapses and dies of a heart attack, on the day after justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announces her decision to retire immediately. US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly tells US president Barack Obama not to bother announcing nominees to the two positions, as he will delay any confirmation hearings/votes until after the January, 2017 inauguration of the next president.
November 8, 2016: US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is elected to serve as the 45th president of the United States. In his victory speech, he repeats a promise he's made over the course of his campaign: He intends to nominate "conservative" Supreme Court justices who will overturn precedents on abortion (Roe v. Wade) and same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges).
November 15, 2016: Governors Jerry Brown (D-CA), Kate Brown (D-OR) and Jay Inslee (D-WA) appear at a press conference with the Democratic leaders of their state legislatures and announce their intention to bring ordinances of secession to a vote in their respective states. Said ordinances, if passed, will constitute the three states as the new, independent nation of Pacifica, with the three governors serving as, respectively, interim president, vice president and secretary of state pending elections in November of 2017. Pacifica's Constitution will, from the start, explicitly protect abortion and same-sex marriage (as well as possibly suppressing gun rights and other Democratic Party type things).
December 20, 2016: On the day after the Electoral College confirms Cruz as president-elect, the three state legislatures pass the ordinances of secession, to take effect on January 1, 2017.
December 21, 2016: Jay Inslee, the secretary-of-state-to-be of the new-nation-to-be, arrives in Washington to present US president Barack Obama and US president-elect Ted Cruz with an offer of military port/basing rights (naval ports remain US property, land bases have a long time-line for relocation) and zero trade barriers between the two nations in return for a peaceful separation and recognition of Pacifica.
Should Obama and/or Cruz, or perhaps the outgoing/incoming US secretaries of state, meet with Inslee or beg off on the claim that he lacks standing as his alleged country does not and cannot legally exist?
Should Obama take any executive action with respect to the Pacifica secession, or should he leave it to Cruz to handle (as James Buchanan did with/to the Confederacy and Abraham Lincoln)?
Should Cruz accept the secession and the proposed terms of relationship?
If not, should he move immediately to military/police action -- blockade, invasion, attempts to arrest the ringleaders, etc. -- to suppress it, or do like Lincoln and play things down while trying to bluff Pacifica into firing the first shot?
Monday, February 01, 2016
My Iowa Caucus Predictions
I should have trotted these out earlier, if for no other reason than that if I'm right, being right well ahead of things burnishes my predictive credentials more than being right at the last minute. But I only just now got around to it. So, I predict:
On the Republican side:
On the Republican side:
- Ted Cruz comes in first, ahead of Donald Trump by a nose;
- Rand Paul tops 10%;
- Within 72 hours, Mike Huckabee drops out and starts campaigning for Trump.
- Bernie Sanders comes in first, beating Hillary Clinton by at least 5%; and
- "Uncommitted" and/or Joe Biden (if that's allowed as a choice -- I don't know the rules regarding "draft" candidates who have not declared) tops 10%.
Still Puzzling Out the Chromebox vs. Macbook Pro Conundrum
The situation:
I've been thinking about (and occasionally mentioning) abandoning the Googleverse since last March. A recent mention of the steps I've taken toward doing so brought about a "Thanks For Asking!" question last week and a bit of an answer on last night's podcast.
A situation report and a request for opinions:
On the one hand, I think there are various good reasons for abandoning ChromeOS, the Chrome browser, Gmail, Blogger, etc. Apart from the snit linked in the first sentence, it mostly comes down to the fact that Google packages the user as product and that doing so entails various losses of privacy, of both the outright (Google scans everything I do when logged in to their services so that they can sell me as a viewer to advertisers) and incidental (to really use a Chromebox/Chromebook very effectively I have to be logged in to Google's services -- it's possible to not be, but a pain in the keister) varieties.
On the other hand, switching to the Macbook Pro I got "for Christmas" also entails certain sacrifices.
My Chromebox uses a lot less power than the Mac, and the differential seems to have been reflected in a January electric bill that I thought was pretty ugly. Oddly, one of the reasons I fell back in love with Mac a few years ago was that it seemed to save me electricity versus previous Windoze and Linux machines. But that was because I was going from "tower" style machines to a Mac Mini. The Chromebox is even easier on the kilowatt hours than the Mini. The Macbook doesn't match the Mini on that front.
The Chromebox also powers two little flat screen monitors direct from its built-in ports, where to get that functionality from the Macbook will require an expenditure in the $75-$100 range for an "MST hub." In fact, to really get the setup I'd like for the Mac (MST hub plus cradle or "docking station"), I'm guessing more in the $200-$250 range. Right now I am using the laptop screen and one external monitor and ergonomically it's just unsatisfying (no matter how I arrange things, I have to do some physical leaning to read the Mac screen).
Then there's CPU temperature. I keep the bottom of the Mac nicely open to minimize overheating, but my little extension that starts a sound effect when the CPU approaches 100 degrees celsius goes off frequently when I have even a few browser tabs open, saying "cut back a little if you don't want to fry this machine."
And for all that, frankly I can't tell that the Macbook, even with a faster CPU and four times the RAM, really performs any better than the Chromebox. Sure, I can do things on it that I can't do on the Chromebox, but those things aren't really important when it comes to work. They boil down to being able to play Starcraft II (if I can stand listening to the "CPU is hot" noise, which goes off about every five seconds) and Java games at Pogo. Both of which tend to make me get less, not more, work done.
When it comes to services, I'm down with abandoning Gmail and am slowly moving my comms over to Unseen. Other Google services -- especially Blogger, where KN@PPSTER has lived for nearly 12 years, I'm less inclined to give up.
So anyway, after a month of this experiment, I'm strongly considering putting the Mac away and treating it as a backup machine (maybe as a travel machine, too, although I do have a Chromebook) in favor of my beloved little Asus Chromebox.
What do you guys think?
I've been thinking about (and occasionally mentioning) abandoning the Googleverse since last March. A recent mention of the steps I've taken toward doing so brought about a "Thanks For Asking!" question last week and a bit of an answer on last night's podcast.
A situation report and a request for opinions:
On the one hand, I think there are various good reasons for abandoning ChromeOS, the Chrome browser, Gmail, Blogger, etc. Apart from the snit linked in the first sentence, it mostly comes down to the fact that Google packages the user as product and that doing so entails various losses of privacy, of both the outright (Google scans everything I do when logged in to their services so that they can sell me as a viewer to advertisers) and incidental (to really use a Chromebox/Chromebook very effectively I have to be logged in to Google's services -- it's possible to not be, but a pain in the keister) varieties.
On the other hand, switching to the Macbook Pro I got "for Christmas" also entails certain sacrifices.
My Chromebox uses a lot less power than the Mac, and the differential seems to have been reflected in a January electric bill that I thought was pretty ugly. Oddly, one of the reasons I fell back in love with Mac a few years ago was that it seemed to save me electricity versus previous Windoze and Linux machines. But that was because I was going from "tower" style machines to a Mac Mini. The Chromebox is even easier on the kilowatt hours than the Mini. The Macbook doesn't match the Mini on that front.
The Chromebox also powers two little flat screen monitors direct from its built-in ports, where to get that functionality from the Macbook will require an expenditure in the $75-$100 range for an "MST hub." In fact, to really get the setup I'd like for the Mac (MST hub plus cradle or "docking station"), I'm guessing more in the $200-$250 range. Right now I am using the laptop screen and one external monitor and ergonomically it's just unsatisfying (no matter how I arrange things, I have to do some physical leaning to read the Mac screen).
Then there's CPU temperature. I keep the bottom of the Mac nicely open to minimize overheating, but my little extension that starts a sound effect when the CPU approaches 100 degrees celsius goes off frequently when I have even a few browser tabs open, saying "cut back a little if you don't want to fry this machine."
And for all that, frankly I can't tell that the Macbook, even with a faster CPU and four times the RAM, really performs any better than the Chromebox. Sure, I can do things on it that I can't do on the Chromebox, but those things aren't really important when it comes to work. They boil down to being able to play Starcraft II (if I can stand listening to the "CPU is hot" noise, which goes off about every five seconds) and Java games at Pogo. Both of which tend to make me get less, not more, work done.
When it comes to services, I'm down with abandoning Gmail and am slowly moving my comms over to Unseen. Other Google services -- especially Blogger, where KN@PPSTER has lived for nearly 12 years, I'm less inclined to give up.
So anyway, after a month of this experiment, I'm strongly considering putting the Mac away and treating it as a backup machine (maybe as a travel machine, too, although I do have a Chromebook) in favor of my beloved little Asus Chromebox.
What do you guys think?
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