An Underrepresented America

After the election last month, I was asked by a friend of mine why we have 538 electoral votes. I answered by saying that of the 538 votes, there is 1 for each senator, 3 for the District of Columbia, and the remaining 435 are for each of the US Congressional Districts. She then asked what is the significance of 435. Why are there 435 districts? I could not give her an answer.

I decided to do some research, and the results were surprising. It turns out that since 1913, the number of districts has for the most part remained fixed. In 1913, the US population was around 100 million. 95 years later there are still 435 congressional districts, but the US population has more than tripled to over 300 million. Am I the only one who thinks this is alarming?

I am going to find out why they decided to cut off the growth of the congress. I can think of a few good reasons for this, but they are not for the common good. I also want to see how they determine the arrangement of districts, called apportionment. Different algorithms will greatly affect which states get more votes, and could sway national elections and politics.

Cleaning Up Blogger

After looking at the blogger html template code, all I can say is really guys?

I understand that most people will not be editing the html and css for their blog. The provided templates are nice, but they should provide a very basic starter template. This is your 'post widget' and here is the code to a few other 'widgets' you may want to use. It is going to take me some time to cut out the junk and to add my own code. Maybe I should just get some hosting and use WordPress.

Oh, and even though the provided code said that it is XHTML 1.0 Strict, the w3c markup validator came up with over 100 errors.

Building my Soapbox

This blog is my digital soapbox. For you youngsters who buy pheromone-infused liquid soap in bph plastic bottles, a soapbox is a wooden crate that was used for storing soap. It also made a good platform to stand on, get people's attention, and say crazy things.

This is my soapbox.

I am going to do the whole Blogger custom domain and custom theme thing, so give it some time before the layout is polished. This is no guarantee that the content will ever be polished.