Chopsticks, cellphone, toilet, rice

I love information like this short list of tips for treating electronic gadgets the way you might treat your lawnmower. Yes, gadgets can actually be understood, not just treated as magic and used by incantation.

The ability to improvise with any tool shows a firm grasp of at least some aspect of how it works, not just of where to put in the gasoline. A person once cautioned me about using body wash on my face! That's not what it was meant for, she said! I tried to stay deadpan, but my third eye was bugging out.

Instruction manuals are for people who don't know what they're doing - and for lawyers mitigating risk. Figuring out a cool off-label use is sweet!

Improvisation is not always good, of course. Some people put their tools to really wrong-headed uses. A neighbor recently tried to grind down a stump with his chainsaw! So much for that chain. But he faced a problem, and he tried to solve it with the tools he had available, and I respect the attempt even if I question his judgement, much as I roll my eyes at the former owner of my house, who left behind a coffee can he had plastered into the ceiling as a wiring box.

So, improvise, but try to understand your own limitations.

Free market solves another problem

Text messaging is wildly overpriced relative to its negligible cost to providers. Nonetheless, their oligopolistic pricing goes up in lock-step. Why hasn't this so-called free market opened the door to a price-cutting entrepreneur?

The real problem that markets such as this intend to solve is how to remove money from your wallet and transfer it to the executives. (You thought the shareholders mattered? Ha.) And this market is vigorously solving that constant problem!

One reason that phone companies are against net neutrality is that they've been there before. It would be much easier for a provider like MCI from the early days (say, 1978) to piggyback on existing networks and undercut prices. As they say in economics, there would be much lower barriers to entry and thus to a return to competition, however briefly.

How to buy a vote

The Minnesota recount taught me about the prohibition of distinguishing marks on ballots. The actual relevant provision of statute is:

Subd. 13.Identifying ballot. If a ballot is marked by distinguishing characteristics in a manner making it evident that the voter intended to identify the ballot, the entire ballot is defective.

It's an outdated prohibition. Fortunately, the State Canvassing Board has been pretty liberal about marks, probably relying on voter intent, so that they have been able to count more votes that the voters clearly intended.

The prohibition itself will no longer perform its function, which is to prevent vote-buying. If a corrupt political machine wanted proof that its bought voters did their bidding on the otherwise secret ballot, they needed confirmation in the counting room, and an identifying mark for each voter would do the trick.

Here's an easy new way to buy votes:

• Require the suborned voter to take a cell phone snapshot of his driver's license in front of the bought ballot.

That should be easy enough to do. Doesn't everyone (except me) have a phone with at least a megapixel these days.

It is true that poll-workers might start to notice all the cell phones out and in use, but polling places are bound to become more like the mall or the roads anyway. The real hindrance to vote-buying is economic. These days, it would just cost too much. Come the next great depression, however, maybe not so much.

I still think it's time to repeal these ballot-spoiling clauses.

Evaluation of Coleman appeals still to come, but I had this in the can already, and I'm probably going to need to refer to it.

Update (9/3/2011): Clarified how identifying marks help vote-buying.

Cell phone tracking

For some reason, the AP can't get right how Tanya Rider's cell phone contributed to finding her. AP stories repeat variations of this:

Authorities found the Maple Valley woman after detecting the general location of her cell phone Thursday morning...

The authorities did not detect anything. They asked the cell phone company what cell her phone had been in last, and the company searched its records. I mean, really, otherwise you'd have to explain why her battery could last eight days. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer gets it right:

Tom Rider, who lives with his wife in Maple Valley, said Friday that a court order for records from his wife's cell phone provider to determine where she last used her phone could have pointed rescuers to her last Saturday...

Well, mostly right - used is a little misleading. Had turned on would be more accurate.

The technology had a good outcome in this case (so far), but don't miss the upshot: Anyone who has sufficient pull with cell providers can find out your approximate location for as long as you have your phone on. Who really needs a GPS ankle bracelet?