Missouri’s Gerrymandering

I just heard on my local TV news that the Misouri Supreme Court has thrown out the Trump-requested electorial maps which changed the 5th Congressional District (around Kansas City) from leans-Democratic into two leans-Republican districts, the effect being to likely change Missouri’s representation in the U.S. House to 7-1 from the current 6-2.

This is “interesting” because the districts that were in effect for the primary election a month ago will be different from the districts in effect for the general election; and some Republicans are complaining that the candidates that they voted for in the primary won’t appear on their ballots in the general.

It was speculated that the matter might go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and it’s not hard to imagine that SCOTUS’ gang of six could invent some apologetic to the effect that states don’t really have control of elections; but the ballots have to be printed in five or six days.  Stay tuned…

More Civil Time Geekiness

The was a message today in a C++-related e-mail list saying that the October meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) will consider getting rid of leap seconds and adding a leap hour every few thousand years.

At present, because of the Earth’s variable rotation around its axis, atomic clocks (which UTC is based on) are getting ahead of astronomical observations.  To keep the two more or less in sync, one second is added to or subtracted from UTC every so often.  In principle, this can happen to the last minute of June or December in any given year; but in practice, it happens much less often.  Twenty-eight leap seconds have been added since December of 1971; but there hasn’t been one since December of 2016; and so far, there has never been a negative leap second.

Unfortunately, there’s lots of software out there that pays no attention to this; and leap seconds (23:59:60 should be considered a valid time) have caused outages even though it’s been happening for over fifty years; and it looks like we might have a negative leap second before long (23:59:58 should jump directly to 00:00:00 on some date known in advance) which could cause even more craziness.

We’ll see what CGPM decide to do …

My Next Votes

The Missouri primaries are coming up two weeks from Tuesday*, and there will be a couple of state constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Amendment 4 changes what it takes for future citizen-initiated amendments to pass.  At present, if there are enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot at all, passing the amendment takes only a simple majority state-wide.  Amendment 4 would require separate majorities in each of the U.S. congressional districts.  This would make it virtually impossible for citizen-initiated amendments to ever pass again.  (Republicans are still upset about an amendment passed in 2024 that protected the right to reproductive freedom.)  Of course, there are no changes in the requirements for amendments initiated by the Republican-controlled state House and Senate.

Amendment 5 phases out the state income and property taxes and replaces them with sales taxes.  The goal is to have a tax cut for rich people and a tax hike for poor people.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m against both of them.

We have open primaries in Missouri:  when you get to the polling place, you tell the official whether you want a Democratic or a Republican ballot—it’s that simple; and there’s a cogent argument that, in a heavily gerrymandered district, the only election that actually matters is the favored party’s primary.

I’ll probably get a sample ballot in the mail in a week or so, at which time I’ll know who all the candidates are.  I doubt that I’ll have a good reason to vote in the Republican primary because I live in Missouri’s Second Congressional District which is gerrymandered safe-Republican, and I can’t imagine that my U.S. Rep., Ann Wagner, will have any serious competition.  I’ll probably vote in the Democratic primary for the most progressive candidates in the hope of sending a signal, in my small way, to professional Democrats.

*Two days after my 80th birthday.  I’m looking forward to the election, but not to being an old fart (although that ship has already sailed).

More Time Zone Silliness

I’ve been a civil time geek for a while, and I follow an e-mail list relating to IANA’s tz database.  It looks like the tz-art.html file in the next release will contain a link to Wednesday’s xkcd. 😎

There’s been a lot of discussion on the list about the proposed “permanent daylight saving time” law that just passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.  It sounds simple:  the proposed law doesn’t change the time zone names; it just changes the offsets from UTC and makes them permanent.  For example, “eastern standard time” would become UTC−4:00 year-round.  But states would be allowed to opt out, so for example, Hawaii could keep its UTC−10:00.

So what if Arizona decides to keep its UTC−7:00 year-round but doesn’t call it Pacific standard time?  Mountain standard time would mean different things in tz’s time zones, America/Phoenix (Arizona except Navajo Nation) and America/Denver (generic mountain time).

Furthermore, it turns out that there’s lots of legacy code out there that hard-codes offsets to abbreviations like “MST”.  All that code happens to work at present; but it’s been wrong for decades and so will likely stay wrong.

I’ll bring the popcorn. 😎

Cancer Update (if anybody actually cares)

I’ve passed the two-year mark with no evidence of cancer.  The half-hour immunotherapy drips will now come just every four weeks; CT scans of the torso will happen every four months; and MRIs of the brain will be six months apart.  Both of my oncologists (the chemo guy and the radiation guy) are pleased, so I am too.

So far, I’d say that I’ve been tremendously fortunate.  (I’m not sure that I deserve it, but I’ll take it. 😎 )

I Joined the DSA

I just joined the Democratic Socialists of America because I’m curious.

I charged the “introductory” fee of $10/month to my credit card.  We’ll see whether they send me a bill each month or automatically charge the card.  Even if it’s the latter, I’ll probably be willing to support them for that small amount, or maybe even more.

So far, I’ve gotten one automated e-mail message welcoming me.  It turns out that there’ll be a new member orientation Zoom call on the 26th of next month.  I’ll let y’all know how it goes.  In the mean time, I’ll check out my local St. Louis chapter’s website to see what’ll be happening between now and the midterms.

2026-08-15:  I’m not sure what’s so special about this post, but it seems to have drawn tons of spam comments lately including three or four that made it through the filters.  This post is kind of old news, so I’m turning off comments.

A Blast from the Past

The final story on today’s PBS News Hour was about the comedian, Dave Chappelle; and much of the story was about his living in a small town, Yellow Springs, Ohio, and how he had helped the local NPR affiliate, WYSO, build a new facility.

I worked for WYSO briefly in the mid 1960s while it was still owned and operated by Antioch College.  This was way before NPR and PBS; and WYSO was still a little 10W station with a studio and a control room in a second floor corner of one of Antioch’s administrative buildings.  I had a show in which I played classical music because I could pronounce the composers’ names.  (Yes, I was a geek before that was cool.)

I can still remember the control room…the board with all the knobs and switches, a couple of turntables to the left, a couple of Ampex 350 tape machines to the right…it was all broadcast quality equipment.  My only memory of the town is a bar and restaurant a short walk from the college that had really good pizza and where an 18 year old could buy 3.2 beer.

No Kings

I haven’t posted anything in ages.  I’ve been too depressed given the oligarchs’ current attempt, too nearly successful so far, to destroy democracy.

But I did get a bit of a pickup yesterday morning.  I showed up at my local No Kings rally around 10:30, about half an hour before the scheduled start; and already there were maybe a couple hundred folks on the sidewalk in a line that extended probably the equivalent of five or six city blocks; and cars were lined up trying to get into nearby shopping center parking lots.  There were thirteen rallies in the St. Louis area, and this was one of the smaller ones.

We were lined up along Lindbergh Blvd., a major four-lane north-south street in St. Louis County; and there was lots of traffic.  About every third or fourth car that went by would honk in support.

I stayed for only about an hour.  The temperature was around 45°F, 7°C; and this old fart was getting chilled.  (Also, the only covering I have for my bald head that wouldn’t blow away in a gust of wind is a St. Louis Cardinals cap; and I was concerned that, if folks didn’t see the Cardinals logo on the front, if all they saw was a red baseball cap, they might think I want to make America hate again. 😎 )

I wish I had some photos to show you; but I didn’t bring my real camera.  I thought I’d try to take pictures with my phone (for the first time), and did a really bad job of it.

My next civic duty will be voting in a municipal election a week from Tuesday.  There are four candidates for three positions on my local school board; and school board elections are important.  Only one of the four has made statements that sound a bit MAGA, so this’ll be an easy choice for me.  There’s also “Proposition F,” an attempt by Republicans to turn a property tax into a sales tax.  I’m against it.

Missouri’s primary elections will happen on August 4th, two days after my 80th birthday.  I’m looking forward to that (the election, not the birthday).