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Society & Politics

Resolving Conflicts

After a very long time of trying to become better at workplace communication and conflict resolution I finally have a basic outline that seems to work. The focus is very much on avoiding personality conflicts and egos and getting everyone what they want.

What is a City

Recent election, a lot of issues on the ballot regarding city services. I wondered what it is that a city provides. Here is a list that I think is fairly complete:

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

I had a funny thought yesterday on the way home from work. I was thinking about a quote that went something like "politicians follow the money, not the idea". And I thought no, there is always an idea behind the money. It's just that wealthy groups get their way, get their ideology into law because they have the money. In other words they are represented but the vast majority of Americans are not. I do agree it is unfair that the distribution of representation in government matches the wealth distribution and not the population distribution. So if that is the case, how do you fix it?

What Will Obama's New Oil Regulations Do To Our Trade Imbalance?

According to various sources across the internet, Americans consume approximately 3.7 billion barrels of oil per year. With a little math we see that's around 10.1 million everyday. If oil were at $40 per barrel, this comes out to $148 billion oil consumed every year. Obama's new regulations were designed to, 'save 2 million barrels of oil per day'. This works out to 8.1 million barrels per day, or about 3.0 billion barrels consumed per year. If oil is at $40 per barrel this is about $120 billion per year.

Economic Reports Reference

A Novel Approach To Solving The Housing Crisis

The economy and the housing crash is on everybody's mind these days and it's getting plenty of media coverage. I couple of weeks ago Bush published his draft FY2009 budget and I had a question. Is it possible for the government to provide free housing for all of its citizens?

Green Living

Just some notes I made on green living. Not particularly interesting, but I wanted to keep them so I might as well publish.

Goal: No impact living, which means living in an environment without having any impact, positive or negative. This also means energy and oil independence and foreign independence. This has the benefit of reducing pollution and smog, mitigating global warming, reducing habitat destruction and creating a more robust economy.

Solution: Reduce energy usage, waste, consumption, be a selective consumer, and use only renewable resources.

A Better U.S. Constitution

Our Constitution is a pretty good one. It helped form the first (modern) free nation on earth and set an example for the rest of the world. It rewrote the book on government and put free men on the map. But, our Constitution could use an update. Why you say? It turns out that 200 years of this democratic republic has revealed a few flaws unforeseeable by our founding fathers. Many countries in Europe and Latin America have learned from our mistakes and have implemented changes in their own democracies.

Game Theory and Why Nobody Does Their Job

I have a very specific problem at work: the power engineers refuse to assist me. Well I can't say refuse, more like "only help me begrudgingly and only if they absolutely have to and even then very little." Why? It's their task to work on the power circuits of my boards. And why not? The problems on my board are relatively small compared to other problems (e.g. bugs and such). Well, part of the problem is management, and the other part is time.


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