Joe Levi presents Greener Living through Technology

It’s a day of irony in the 9th “Circus” Court of Appeals today. In a move that shows just how hipocritical this Court is the California Recall Election has been blocked (see story).

Their reasoning? Six counties would be using the “outmoded punch card system” which are “prone to error” to track and tally the votes.

So, the same system that elected Governor Davis is “too prone to error” to remove him?

I have an idea, why don’t we make a form that has all the candidates names, parties, and offices listed on it with a nice-sized check box next to it. If you want this person or that initiative, check the box. If you don’t, then leave it blank. Of course this system would entail more time to count the votes, but you don’t have to worry about hanging chads, pregnant chads, racially descriminated chads, age descriminated chads, or any of the countless problems with “digital voting kiosks.”

Why won’t that work? Maybe it’s too simple a solution. Maybe it’d remove too much confusion. Maybe it would greatly reduce the opportunity for “Circus Courts” to legislate from the bench. Then again, maybe I should run for office.

When I was a very young boy I had the opportunity of listening to the music that my father would play almost every night (for the whole house to hear). As a teenager I grew, shall we say, “unimpressed” with his taste in music (and he with mine). (Ironically, this has now come full circle and I enjoy the nostalia that’s become associated with those songs.)

Of all of his music, that which I remember with most fondness is Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. This song was so appealing to me as a child, after all, what red-blooded American boy wouldn’t like a song all about fire? That’s what the song was to me when I was 5 years old. As I got older and started learning about geography and earth sciences, the Ring of Fire was a ring of volcanic activty surrounding the Pacific Ocean. As a teenager with raging hormones, the true meaning of the song began to become clear. (In later years I’ve been collecting variations of The Ring of Fire, I’ve got Johnny’s and versions by Stan Ridgeway (Wall of Voodoo), Billy Bob Thornton, the Texas Tornadoes, and more. (If you have any other remakes, I’d love to have a copy!)

But Johnny didn’t stop there. He had dozens of other songs that spoke to the generations to which he intended. He’s even remade songs by U2 (One) and Nine Inch Nails (Hurt) .

Johnny, we’ll miss you.

September 11th, 2001 will live in infamy. Sound familiar? Franklin D. Roosevelt said something very similar on December 7, 1941 regarding Pearl Harbor¹. “In the Japanese air raid, 2,403 Americans were killed; 1,178 were injured; and 18 U.S. warships and 188 planes were destroyed. The attack propelled the United States into World War II”².

On September 11th, 2001, America lost approximately 3,000 people (at the World Trade Center, firefighters, police, paramedics, airline passengers, Pentagon workers, bystanders).

At the time I was unemployed, a casualty of the “dot com collapse.” I was home with my toddler son and infant daughter when the horrific events of September 11th took place.

You know, that doesn’t sound right, those events didn’t just “take place,” they were an attack launched upon us. Saying that they simply “took place” is an insult to the memory of those who died representing our freedoms, and those that are still in harms way fighting to protect those freedoms.

On this day, I solemnly remember and observe what’s been known as “Patriot Day” and hope that this “day of infamy” doesn’t take us into the next World War, although something deep inside of me fears that the “small” flames of WWIII may have already been lit.