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Shorts and ballot questions
Sep. 27th, 2006 11:32 amI've had a houseguest since Labor Day who's leaving tonight. It's going to be strange not having someone else around the house.
With the switch from tokens to Charlie cards, I assume the T has a plan for what to do with all the tokens (melt them down? sell them as souvenirs in the Boston city store?). It would be cool to make a mosaic map of the T using tokens (colored appropriately, of course), perhaps with a bit of a background map and/or labels (or icons) for the stations.
Happy 8th birthday to Google. It's hard to remember what life was like before it :-)
New magazine for Harvard alumni: 02138. Harvard alumni who go on to fame, power, and money, of course.
There are going to be three ballot questions in MA in November. I've read about the issues around Question 2, which would allow a candidate to be nominated by more than one party (which would lead to multiple listings on the ballot). I can see how this could make smaller parties much more viable, especially since the proportion of votes that came through each party would be given, though part of me would rather have each name listed only once, with all their nominations after. It also changes the minimum for small parties to get official recognition to having gotten 3% of the vote for any statewide office in the two most recent elections, rather than just the most recent. Those opposed say that the ballots will be confusing and more difficult to count, ending with a reference to Florida's 2000 presidential elections and the confusing ballots, which I thought a rather cheap shot.
Question 1 would allow supermarkets to sell wine. I'm confused by this, because a lot of supermarkets around Boston already sell wine (and other liquor). I'm not sure why there should be a change to the system, really, though I wasn't surprised to see the arguments for and against ("we should be up to date like other states, rather than having package stores" v. "more places selling alcohol means more drunk driving and youth drunkenness").
And Question 3 is about home child-care providers to bargain collectively with the state. I can imagine it would be easier for the child-care providers, not having to deal with a layer of bureaucracy, but if there were a need for individual accommodation, it might be more difficult. I'm not sure whether the one outweighs the other.
With the switch from tokens to Charlie cards, I assume the T has a plan for what to do with all the tokens (melt them down? sell them as souvenirs in the Boston city store?). It would be cool to make a mosaic map of the T using tokens (colored appropriately, of course), perhaps with a bit of a background map and/or labels (or icons) for the stations.
Happy 8th birthday to Google. It's hard to remember what life was like before it :-)
New magazine for Harvard alumni: 02138. Harvard alumni who go on to fame, power, and money, of course.
There are going to be three ballot questions in MA in November. I've read about the issues around Question 2, which would allow a candidate to be nominated by more than one party (which would lead to multiple listings on the ballot). I can see how this could make smaller parties much more viable, especially since the proportion of votes that came through each party would be given, though part of me would rather have each name listed only once, with all their nominations after. It also changes the minimum for small parties to get official recognition to having gotten 3% of the vote for any statewide office in the two most recent elections, rather than just the most recent. Those opposed say that the ballots will be confusing and more difficult to count, ending with a reference to Florida's 2000 presidential elections and the confusing ballots, which I thought a rather cheap shot.
Question 1 would allow supermarkets to sell wine. I'm confused by this, because a lot of supermarkets around Boston already sell wine (and other liquor). I'm not sure why there should be a change to the system, really, though I wasn't surprised to see the arguments for and against ("we should be up to date like other states, rather than having package stores" v. "more places selling alcohol means more drunk driving and youth drunkenness").
And Question 3 is about home child-care providers to bargain collectively with the state. I can imagine it would be easier for the child-care providers, not having to deal with a layer of bureaucracy, but if there were a need for individual accommodation, it might be more difficult. I'm not sure whether the one outweighs the other.