Pete's Ancient and rarely updated
D-land Journal

Been a while, now vote!

Journal Entry entered: 2006-10-03 - 2:42 p.m.

Hi.

Been a while. My bad, but things are busy busy. I'll try to be better about this as time goes forward and update more and more. the only major news in my life is Lily and I post images of her as i can on her site. If you don't know where it is, ask.

Anyway, I will be updating a few times in the next few weeks. There is an election coming up and I think it's important to discuss it a bit and get people thinking about it. Please don't immediately tune me out when i talk about this... I won't be telling you HOW to vote, but why it's important to vote. I will outline my own particular stance and intention to vote if i feel that it's appropriate, but I won't tell you how to vote.

These will be aimed mostly at people living in Wisconsin... we have a number of important elections coming up as well as several referendum questions, including one that has the potential to amend the constitution of the state.

With this entry I wanted to warn you of my intentions and to make an initial plea... I've talked to a few of the people here at UWM and elsewhere. They often tell me that they don't know enough about the various races to want to go and vote and that they'd feel dumb if they didn't vote for each race on the ballot.

On the first point, with the advent of the internet, virtually every race will have websites dedicated to the different candidates/sides of the questions at issue. If you're reading this, you're at least savvy enough to go to Google and type in a few search terms. To give you a starting point, here is a listing from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal of all of the races that will be decided upon on November 7. If you don't know your district (for all the local races), that shouldn't be too hard to look up online, either.

There are a couple of minor referendum questions (referendum questions in Wisconsin are only advisory). There is also a question on the ballot about an amendment to the state constitution with respect to the definition of marriage. thie link takes you to a couple Journal Sentinal articles about the topic and also has a link to an acrobat file containing the actual language of the proposed amendment.

On the second topic of "I don't really know enough to vote on all the issues" or "I would feel funny only filling out part of the ballot." It's a secret ballot, no one will know but you what races or items you placed your vote on. And really, who cares? It's no one's business but your own. If you feel strongly about even one single issue, you should go and vote, make your opinion and voice heard. You only have to cast your opinion with regard to that one item and no other, if you wish. But at least you have contributed your opinion to the mix...

"But so many people vote, my one vote won't make a difference!" Maybe, but with enough people with that opinion, it can become a difference. A look at the last couple elections should suggest to you how important your vote can be... in 2000 Gore won the popular vote by slim enough a margin that the votes from the electoral college favored Bush. In 2004 Bush won by an incredibly narrow margin. I'm not trying to pick on Bush here... but you can see that if only 100 people from each county in Wisconsin had the same view and did not vote... that's 7800 people... more than the margin by which Kerry won Wisconsin in 2004.

Your vote can make a difference... I encourage you to get informed and to vote...

Next time, the Marriage Amendment to the Wisconsin State Constitution.

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Three years! - 2010-04-27
School choices... - 2007-10-03
Virginia Johnson - 2007-09-05
Tau Trivia update! - 2006-12-15
Been a while, now vote! - 2006-10-03

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Warren's list of words that monkeys use to annoy him by misspelling, misusing, or mispronouncing them (the list will most assuredly grow)

Misspellings

COMING (typically mispelled "comming")
TONGUE (typically mispelled "tounge")

Confused spellings

HERE vs. HEAR (the former is a place word; the latter is what you do when a sound hits your ear)
IT'S vs. ITS (the former is a contracted form of IT IS; the latter is a possessive form of the impersonal pronoun IT)
LOSING vs. LOOSING (the former is what you are doing if you are not winning; the latter is what you are doing when you let the lions out of the lion pen at the zoo, you are "loosing them" or "setting them loose").
POUR vs. PORE vs. POOR (the first is what you do to get milk from the carton into the glass; the second is a small opening in a surface, such as those in your skin that sweat comes out of (... don't write poetry if you don't know your English, you just look sad). The third, a state of having little or no money, is rarely confused with the other two).
ROGUE vs. ROUGE (The former is a person who might also be described as a rascal, scoundrel or cad; the latter is make-up that one uses to add a bit of a blush to one's cheeks.)
THEY'RE vs. THEIR vs. THERE (the first is a contraction of THEY ARE; the next is a possessive form of THEY; the last denotes place or location)
TO vs. TOO vs. TWO (the first is a function word indicating movement, direction, proximity, intention, addition: "I'm going to the store" or "Add this to the pile" or "How close is the house to the road"; the second one sort of adds quantity, often of the excessive sort, to a concept: "Too many reptiles" or "I'm coming, too"; the last represents the number 2.)
WHERE vs. WEAR vs. -WARE vs. WERE- (the first references place or location; the second is either a verb, noun, or suffix relating to clothing or other adornments [example: wearing footwear] OR a noun or verb relating to the effect of exposure or useage or corrosion [wear and tear]; the third is a suffix that indicates that something is a class of some sort [hardware, software, flatware, wetware]; the fourth is a prefix used to attach the disease of Lycanthropy to a person or animal, i.e: werewolf, wererat, weretiger. Finally, although pronounced differently, "WERE" is also a past tense of are or to be.)
YOU'RE vs. YOUR vs. YORE (the former is a contraction of YOU ARE, the middle is a possessive form of YOU, and the latter is a reference to another, undefined era in the past: "Days of yore.)

Mispronunciations

ASK [ask'] ("axe" is something used for chopping wood or the action of chopping something with an axe).
CAN [kahn] (it should not be pronounced as [kehn]). Thanks, Ken.
CAVALRY [kah'-val-ree] ("Calvary" is a mountain that is prominant {pun intended} in the Bible, not a military unit that rides on horses... or these days on tanks and Hum-Vees).
DONDER [don'-der] ("Donner" was the name of a party of travellers that got stuck in the mountains and ate each other, not the name of one of Santa's eight little reindeer).
ESCAPE [es-kayp'] ("excape" simply sounds dumb).
ESPRESSO [es-pres'-oh] (it is NOT "eXpresso," pinheads. Thanks, Mischief.
HUNDRED [hun'-dred] (it's not "hun'-erd" nor "hun'-red"). Thanks, Rachel.
INSURANCE [in-sure'-ense] (it is NOT "in'-sure-ense"! In English, the second to last syllable is the one that gets the emphasis except when asking a question, when the LAST syllable is accented... never the third to last!!!)
JEWELRY [jew'-el-ree] (it's not "joo-lah-ree" or "joo-luh-ree", stoner!) Thanks, again Rachel.
LIBRARY [lie-brayr'-ee] (there's no such thing as a "lie-berry", people!)
NUCLEAR [new-klee'-er] ("nuke-yuh-ler" is incorrect, Homer! Same goes for you, Dubya!!!)
OFTEN [aw'-fen] (the pretentious will insist on saying "awf'-Ten" but that is an archaic form and no more appropriate than saying "thee" and "thou" in colloquial English)
RIPON [rih'-pin] (so very many people pronounce this "rih-pon' " or "ripe'-on" that it gets on the nerves of anyone who has ever lived or gone to school there! Thanks Rachel K.
VIOLA [vi-o'-la] (the musical instrument is pronounced "vee-ola" but the flower and the woman's name is pronounced with an "eye", not an "ee")Thanks, Viola.

Pete's Ancient and rarely updatedD-land Journal

Pete's Ancient and rarely updated
D-land Journal