It Ended with a Whimper

The 2004 election is over.

On Wednsday, the North Carolina General Assembly finally did its job and settled the election for the Superintendent of Public Instruction - essentially, the person who runs the NC public schools. With that vote, the Democrat June Atkinson won the office with 93 votes. Bill Fletcher, the Republican candidate, got 21 votes. 26 others could not decide, and the rest didn't vote.

With this, Atkinson was sworn in as the new Superintendent. However, may feelings remain the same as they did when I posted about the topic earlier. The General Assembly did its job properly. If we had used Mr. Fletcher's solution - a sort of "fuzzy math" if you will - the state would have been thrust into a sort of trivia that would have forced the state to play voter and decide if a ballot was a "pure" ballot or a "dirty" ballot. We've seen how Florida fared with this and it resulted in this.

I don't want to see it - again.

Not the Way for a laptop

Yesterday the school district in Henrico County, Virginia decided to sell some used iBooks for $50. You would think they would have had a raffle for the iBooks, held a lottery, or issued invites to folks who wanted to buy, or placed the things on eBay. Instead, the locality advertised far and wide. The end result was a riot over the machines. They only had 1000 iBooks for sale and over 12000 folks attended.

Besides the fact that the school district totally dropped the ball on this sale. For a iBook that has been put though the ringer by your average student, I would have priced them for 200 to 250 dollars. I would also had decent security and crowd control.

Sadly, both of these things weren't done and it shows.

Futhermore, this is further proof that society is getting more and more greedy. Also, this is the 'out for myself, everyone else be dammed' mindset at its worst. No wonder why the whole world thinks the things they think about us.

Sad, very sad.

Now What?

Last week the PIRA has decided to end the use of violence in reaching it's goals.

I am glad they finally realized violence is not to way to advance their ideals. However, in saying this, this attuide does not mean people should roll over and accept the PIRA at it's word. For all the hell they unleashed on Ulster for the past 30 years, they don't deserve a get out of jail free card. *Deeds* matter more than idle words.

When it's all said and done, I still hope for peace in Ulster.