Recently in Politics & Policy Category

So basically, I create websites for a living.

Not just any websites though, I build websites that are essentially computer programs behind the scenes. People have to be able to use my websites to get their work done.

So I never, ever use Flash, and I’ve always found websites made with Flash to fall in the following categories.

First, there’s what I call the “Vanity” website. Those are for companies that don’t really need a website. There’s nothing wrong with that sort of website, as long as you realize that’s what you’re building. Pepsi isn’t going to pour colored sugar water into a glass for you over the internet. So building a sexy Flash site makes perfect sense for pepsi.com. Anyone going to pepsi.com is bored. So dazzle ‘em with bullshit. If you’re building a website for a local veterinarian though, that’s not a vanity site. Don’t use Flash, and put the phone number and address on every single page.

Second, there’s what I call the CEO site. Those are sites that you know were bought by a non-technical CEO from a laptop demo. No one in the real world ever goes to their website, because not only is it Flash, but its 20 minutes-to-download Flash. I once had a gig working for a music company and one of their subsidiaries had a flash site and a low-bandwith version of their site. The “low-bandwidth” version of their site had been broken for 4 months and no one at that company had noticed. Their “web guy” who knew nothing about the web always used the “high-bandwidth” version.

Then there are all the poseurs who who don’t know what they’re doing. Making HTML, CSS and all those other lovely acronyms sit up and beg is hard, and Flash ofters what seems like a solution. Some of these poseurs even have thriving companies. Again, at the record label, I went and visited the “web design firm” that was doing Metallica’s new website. They did everything in Flash, and not a single person at their 30-person company could write a basic anchor tag. They created beautiful, but ultimately unusable websites.

All I can say is: Skip Intro.

Anyways, that brings us to today’s topic. The Flagstaff Unified School District.

Currently, we have an election going on in Flagstaff about whether or not to raise property taxes in order to fund our schools. This is the second election on the same issue in the last few months, because the school district has already lost once and didn’t like the answer. They’re threatening to lay off teachers and close schools.

The reason the taxpayers keep voting no, is because our schools are badly mismanaged. We have one of the most top-heavy school districts in Arizona. So for many taxpayers in town, this initiative seems to be a case of the last straw. Even though the average increase in property taxes is going to be $250/household, many people in town are looking at not just this increase, but the other ones being threatened by other local governments and saying NO!

Given that the increase will be $1,000/year on local businesses, some of which are already marginal and failing in Flagstaff, and I suspect this tax increase could actually decrease revenues.

Oh, and did I mention that this whole override thing is pre-emptive? Its based on the theory that the state probably will implement cuts, but it hasn’t yet. So does that mean that our taxes won’t go up if the state doesn’t cut the funding? Do we get our money back, especially if the state raised taxes in order to prevent the funding cut? Nope!

Oh, and this particular election is illegal after losing the first time, but the district got a bye from the attorney general.

Meanwhile, I’m frankly of the opinion that the real solution for our schools is to fire everyone in the administration but the janitors, use the money to buy gift cards for Amazon, and hand those directly to the teachers. I even created a website for this project last year, The Amazon Project.

So with all this going on, I decided to go to the website for the school district at fusd1.org. Supposedly, they have their budget up there, and the challenge is that if you think you can do better, they’re willing to listen. So I went there.

And you know what happened? Flash.

That’s why our school district is in trouble. We’re spending money on a Flash website. I mean seriously. You’ve got to be kidding. Every single teacher in the Flagstaff School District tells me that the textbooks they’re forced to use are universally awful, and what do I see but a Flash website? There’s money flushed down the toilet right there. It’s just typical. Money spent badly by bureaucrats on nonsense, so they don’t have money for the right things.

So instead of decent textbooks, we have Flash. Flash is for rock bands, not school districts.

Oh, and they don’t really have their budget up there. At least not that I could find.

I’ll be voting no.

KARL ROVE, MacHead:

NB: All right, I've got just one more quick question for you. Last time I saw you, you'd just gotten an iPhone. How's that working out for you?

ROVE: I love it. My life has changed. I have a shred of coolness. I've got my 3,500 people in my addressbook on the phone, I can sync my calendar. I keep track of my modest little stock investments. I can check the weather of my house in Washington, my house in Florida, my boy at school, my hunt-lease in south Texas. I can surf the web, I'm just--I get part of my email there.

I mean it is just shocking how much better, how much more productive I am. I no longer carry around a giant address book, if I don't have my calendar close at hand, I can quickly check it out of my-- I don't have to carry, I used to carry several notecards, now it's just as easy to scribble on my little notepad, I can take photographs and forward them on immediately, it's just remarkable.

NB: All right. Well it sounds like Steve Jobs should call you up as a spokesman.

ROVE: There we go, there we go. And not only that, I also have the Mac Book Air which is really cool. Even my wife is jealous of my MacBook Air.

Perhaps a lucrative spokesperson gig is in his future.

[From KARL ROVE, MacHead: NB: All right, I've got...]

While its true that Americans don't study other languages besides English, we are fascinated by other cultures.

Could he go back to obscurity already? Geesh.

Just felt like a Rant. I’m in California on a business trip, and I’m in the worst part of California, the North Bay in San Francisco, so I’m surrounded by elitist-yuppie-scum who think they are so enlightened and liberal, when really they are the worst sort of snobs, Mercedes-driving-hippies. I got stuck behind this car on the freeway that was belching black smoke as it proudly proclaimed that it ran on “free used vegetable oil”. No doubt that was why it smelled like burnt french fries.

It’s only been 2 days of gritting my teeth while listening to this claptrap about how the US has killed 100,000 Iraqis (27,000, and that’s about 1/12th of what Saddam would have killed in a year), how our soldiers are nazis, how Iraq is Vietnam, how their free speech is being oppressed, all the same tired rhetoric I became a blogger to escape, and already I’m about to explode.

So here goes.

Technorati Tags: 2000 Election, 2004 Election, Bush, Gore, Iraq, Kerry, Vietnam

I figured I'd better post this today, so that in a week or so I can claim I knew it all along and get Glenn Reynolds to Instalanche me.

The whole Valarie Plame thing is going to turn out to be nothing. What's going to happen is that “everyone” knew Wilson had a wife that used to do something at the CIA, but no one had quite put it together that meant she was a spy, they all thought she was an analyst including whoever Novak talked to in the administration. (Given that the CA employes like 100 analysts for every spy, normally its a safe bet.)

So Novak publishes, then David Corn at the Nation puts it together that she wasn't publicly a spy given that “CIA” appeared nowhere on her resume. He publishes, suddenly she is “outed” which isn't a big deal given that she was married to a high-profile State Department guy, she wasn't exactly Jennifer Garner. But her co-workers get outed too which is a big deal.

Sure, its a colossal fuckup. But its not treason. Everything Wilson said is going to turn out to just be paranoia.

I always say never put down to evil what can more easily be subscribed to stupidity. Lots of people were stupid in this affair. Novak, the CIA, the Adminstration guy, Wilson.

But no one was treasonous. If being stupid was illegal, half of Congress would be in jail, and the other half would be on trial.

I myself was stupid just yesterday, and later today, I plan on being stupid some more. Its my god-given right as an American, a citizen of the world, and a blogger.