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A model of culture and human relations based on hierarchy, ranking, power, and control. Masculinity is equated with control, conquest, and violence: men dominating women and children.
Opposite to Partnership Culture.
In a domination system...
Humans are flawed and dangerous.
Difference is equated with superiority or inferiority.
Power is used to control and destroy through hierarchies of domination.
Competition means "dog eat dog"; "every man for himself".
People cooperate to dominate others.
Huge gaps between haves and have-nots
Nature is a resource to be dominated, depleted and polluted.
Morality of insensitivity, control, and coercion.
(Based on the Center for Partnership Studies' summary of points from Riane Eisler's _The Power of Partnership_ and David Korten's _The Great Turning_)
Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others. We are taught that this will to dominate is more biologically hardwired in males than in females. In actuality, dominator culture teaches us that we are all natural-born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role. In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
(bell hooks)
110π 10π
A device that records the choices of voters in an election. It can take several forms:
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1. (Becoming less and less common in the U.S.)
A mechanical device, where the voter flips small levers next to the candidates' names to indicate their choices, then pulls a big lever to record the votes. Very difficult to tamper with.
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2. (Very common in the U.S.)
A direct-recording electronic (DRE) machine. May print vote totals on paper, but there is no way for a voter to verify that his/her votes were accurately recorded.
Unlike mechanical voting machines, DRE machines are EXTREMELY VULNERABLE TO FRAUD. In addition to outright tampering with the records, malware can be used to steal a percentage of votes, reassigning them to the rigged candidate. The purported verification mechanisms -- logs, audit trails, "snapshots" of individual voters' choices -- can be manipulated to leave no evidence, corresponding perfectly to the rigged results.
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3. (The way to use technology for elections we can have confidence in)
An electronic machine that lets the voter make choices (preventing overvotes and highlighting undervotes), then PRINTS AN ACTUAL FILLED-OUT PAPER BALLOT, which the voter can review and either discard (and start over) or cast.
THE PAPER BALLOT IS THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE VOTE. (Voters could also choose to fill in a blank ballot by hand.)
Ballots can be quickly counted by optical scanning technology. Importantly, ballots can be RECOUNTED, by hand if necessary.
Counts from the voting machines need not be trusted as anything more than quick estimates or "exit polls". This system makes it difficult to commit the large-scale fraud so easy to do invisibly with paperless DRE machines.
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A number of Diebold electronic voting machines have been in the news, first for criminally incompetent software and database design, leaving vote records wide open to undetectable tampering, more recently for vulnerability to "computer virus" style malware that can spread from machine to machine through the data cards used to collect voting data.
Making such electronic voting machines widespread is the perfect way to lay the groundwork for large-scale, invisible voter fraud.
There's plenty of information on this on the Web. A good place to start: the Coalition for Voting Integrity, www.coalitionforvotingintegrity.org .
30π 5π
A device that records the choices of voters in an election. It can take several forms:
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1. A mechanical device, where the voter flips small levers next to the candidates' names to indicate their choices, then pulls a big lever to record the votes. Considered very difficult to hack.
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2. A direct-recording electronic (DRE) machine. May print vote totals on paper, but there is no way for a voter to verify that his/her votes were accurately recorded. Unlike mechanical voting machines, DRE machines are extremely vulnerable to fraud and malware that can steal a percentage of votes, reassigning them to the rigged candidate.
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3. An electronic machine that lets the voter make choices, then PRINTS AN ACTUAL FILLED-OUT PAPER BALLOT, which the voter can review and either discard (and start over) or cast. THE PAPER BALLOT IS THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE VOTE.
Ballots can be quickly counted by optical scanning technology. (Voters could also choose to fill in a blank ballot by hand.) Importantly, ballots can be RECOUNTED, by hand if necessary.
Counts from the voting machines need not be trusted as anything more than quick estimates or "exit polls". This scheme makes it difficult to commit the large-scale fraud so easy to do invisibly with paperless DRE machines.
---
A number of Diebold electronic voting machines have been in the news, first for criminally incompetent software and database design, leaving vote records wide open to undetectable tampering, more recently for vulnerability to "computer virus" style malware that can spread from machine to machine through the data cards used to collect voting data.
Making such electronic voting machines widespread is the perfect way to lay the groundwork for large-scale, invisible voter fraud.
There's plenty of information on this on the Web. A good place to start: the Coalition for Voting Integrity, www.coalitionforvotingintegrity.org .
18π 4π
Voting for more candidates than open seats. For example, voting for 4 council members where the ballot specifies "Vote for not more than 3."
An overvote may disqualify an entire paper ballot, even if the rest of it is filled out correctly. Electronic voting machines prevent people from casting overvotes, but they are shockingly vulnerable to voter fraud.
Hey! Even if you WANT to elect both Clinton and Obama as 2008 Democratic nominees for co-president, the voting machine won't let you; it's an overvote.
15π 2π
The proportion of irrelevant, off-topic, inflammatory, nonsensical, spammy, screaming, content-free, trolling, or otherwise useless statements to actual useful, worthwhile communication.
From the informal sense of signal to noise ratio, but inverted to emphasize the "noise".
"That discussion board used to be a great place to talk about politics, but now the noise-to-signal ratio is through the roof!"
"Typically, a demagogue actually benefits from nonsensical, contradictory and inflammatory statements and agendas. Ironically, the higher the noise-to-signal ratio, the more effective they become since any useful information would actually rein them in."
(adapted from Raul and JonG)
83π 13π
Getting down on one knee, curling one's wrist to one's chin, and looking up, mimicking the pose of Auguste Rodin's classic sculpture "The Thinker".
(Created by Dave Silverman, reported by Staks Rosch, "Thinkering: The atheist answer to Tebowing", Dec. 30, 2011, examiner.com)
In response to the fundamentalist craze of Tebowing, American Atheists President Dave Silverman has come up with an atheist version called "Thinkering."
Someone commented that the pose looked too similar to Tebowing, to which Silverman responded: "That's the point. The difference is we don't bow our heads in blind submission, rather we consider and conclude for ourselves."
84π 20π
A slip, mistake, or unintentional move, followed through with confidence and panache as if it were intended all along. Cats are masters of this: a cat might leap and miss, then calmly look at you as if to say "Yeah, I meant to do that."
"What's the band doing? That's weird... and interesting!"
"I've never heard them play it that way before; maybe it's a feline maneuver."
"Think they'll do it that way on the CD?"
46π 4π