ATHOL DICKSON

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Design Is Like Riding a Bike

January 25, 2017 By Athol Dickson

Sante Fe Modern House
Design is like riding a bike.

Apparently doing architecture is like riding a bike. It’s been more than a decade since I retired from the practice of architecture. Sometimes I wonder if I can still do it, so recently when the opportunity to design a house in Santa Fe came along, I decided to give it a go. I was certainly rusty at first, but after a while things started coming together pretty nicely. At least I like to think so. Maybe I’m fooling myself. Check out the rendered elevations below and let me know what you think…

Here’s the front. Stone and stucco. A “Dutch” door recessed three feet into the facade and surrounded by porcelain and glass tiles.

Santa Fe Modern House Design
Front Elevation

Next, the right side. Not much to say about this except the garage doors are wood with an antiqued finish to match the front door, and the low wall in the middle screens the air conditioning compressors.

Santa Fe Modern House Design
Right Elevation

Now the rear. A deep covered porch, with a barbeque bar on the right and a stone fireplace on the left. The fireplace is “ventless” gas, which is why the chimney doesn’t extend above the roof. There are two other fireplaces which do have chimneys, one in the master bedroom on the left, and the other in the living room. That pedestal looking thing in front of the covered porch is a fountain standing in a concrete planter, with two more planters flanking steps on the left and right.

Santa Fe Modern House Design
Rear Elevation

Finally, the left side. The windows in the stone section on the left are 10 feet above the floor inside and they face north, because that room is an artist’s studio and high north light is best for painting.

Santa Fe Modern House Design
Left Elevation

So that’s what I’ve been doing lately. Any suggestions?

 

Why It’s Good We’re Not a Democracy

November 22, 2016 By Athol Dickson

Should we change the Constitution because of Donald Trump?
Should we change the Constitution because of Donald Trump?

Ever since the astonishing 2016 presidential election results began to sink in, the news media has been covering protests, riots, tearful interviews, and social media rants against both Donald Trump and the Electoral College. Meanwhile, it has been widely reported that Hillary Clinton won the “popular vote.” Trump is only the president-elect because the Founders chose a republic form of government, with Americans represented by a “college” of “electors” who are guided by our votes. Because of the way the number of electors are determined under this system, some states like California have fewer electors per capita than other states with lower populations. meaning sometimes a minority of Americans has more influence over the electoral college. Clinton supporters say this is fundamentally unfair and now, 229 years after the Founders signed the Constitution which established our nation as a republic, some want to change to system to a real democracy, by which they mean pure majority rule.

At first blush, this sounds okay. After all, only fascists, commies and dictators don’t like democracy. If more Americans voted for Clinton, why shouldn’t she be our next President? So let’s change the system. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a couple of things, actually, and they’re both pretty awful. For example, check out this pie chart:

Popular Vote, 2016
Popular Vote, 2016

There you have an accurately scaled depiction of the difference between the total votes cast for Trump (in red) and Clinton (in blue). See the difference? Look carefully or you’ll miss it.

As of today The New York Times reports 1,265,379 more people voted for Clinton. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the Times also reports there were 123,517,291 total ballots cast. So the difference is only 1.02% of the total votes. That is well within the statistical margin of error of virtually any system capable of counting so many individual decisions.

Also remember that only half of the 1,265,379 difference would need to move over to the Trump column to make the election a tie. In other words, Trump came within one half of one percent of getting exactly the same number of votes as Clinton. Put another way, only one American out of 200 would have to change their vote to make it a tie. It’s entirely possible for that many of us to cast a vote for the wrong candidate by accident.

As things stand now, even with an electoral college result that leaves the nation in no doubt about who won the election a fringe element has been rioting about the election. Imagine what might happen if the decision rested on a popular vote this close. Would anyone trust the results enough to accept them? Or would there be bitterly contested recounts dragging on for months, and battles in the streets from coast to coast? As ugly as things have been the last two weeks, I think it’s very possible we’d see anarchy without a clear cut winner. So this is the first reason why it’s good our country isn’t governed purely by majority rule: the current system allows us to avoid the chaos that could easily arise after elections where difference between the majority and minority is so small.

…let’s change the system. What could possibly go wrong?

Next, consider this: according to The Gallup Poll, in 1937, only a third of Americans indicated they were willing to vote for a woman for president. Since the population was divided roughly 50/50 between the genders, apparently even many females back then didn’t believe a woman was up to the job. In fact, it wasn’t until 1955 that the majority of Americans said they would seriously consider a female candidate.

Also, in 1938 only 38% of Americans would have voted for a black person for president. It wasn’t until 1964 that a majority of Americans said they would support a black candidate. And it’s safe to wonder if they really meant it even then, since no black person won a major party’s nomination for the job until 2008.

Perhaps you see where I’m going. These dismaying figures hint at a danger with a “pure” democracy that seldom gets discussed. In a country ruled strictly by majority rule, who will stand up for those in the minority?

John Adams referred to this problem as the “tyranny of the majority.” He wrote, “We may appeal to every page of history we have hitherto turned over, for proofs irrefragable, that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power…” (John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1815).

In modern times there is perhaps no better illustration of Adams’s concern than this one:

1933 German Election Results
1933 German Election Results

The brown bar at the top is the clear winner in terms of the German popular vote in 1933 (their last free election prior to WWII). NSDAP stand for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, also known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or the Nazis.

So much for the fairness of majority rule.

There have been several calls for the electoral college to vote against the election results and put Clinton in office. If those on the extreme left wing were correct about Donald Trump, if he truly was Hitler as some of them claim to believe, I would also be calling for the electors to go rogue. Fortunately, Trump is not Hitler. But it’s good to know our republic has a safety valve to keep people out of the Oval Office who really are like Hitler, even if someday the majority of Americans decide to express their inner Nazi at the polling place.

 

Road Trip!

November 18, 2016 By Athol Dickson

Road trip!
The USA is gorgeous!

The Lovely Sue and I just returned from a little road trip, 2252 miles not counting the occasional detour. She has family in Kansas, so we headed that way first, then over to Colorado, and down to New Mexico. We were half way through on election day. It was an excellent reminder that no matter who won, the world would go on spinning. And what a beautiful world it is! Just look at a few of the photos we took along the way…

Sangre de Cristo Mountains
Sangre de Cristo Mountains
Mesa Verde Kiva
Mesa Verde Kiva
New Mexico Canyon
New Mexico Canyon
Taos Sunset
Taos Landscape
Santa Fe Sunset
Santa Fe Sunset

The Top 100 Most Damaging Wikileaks (so far)

October 31, 2016 By Athol Dickson

The Top 100 Most Damaging Wikileaks (so far)
Something’s rotten in Washington.

There are just too many Wikileaks emails. Because the volume is overwhelming, many of us have chosen to ignore them. And because the corrupt news media is directly implicated by so many of the emails, you won’t see much coverage on television or in the papers. Fortunately, over on Reddit they’ve been working hard to organize the emails released by Wikileaks into format we can internalize pretty easily. Now someone who calls himself (or herself) “LegendaryAmerican” has published the top 100 most damning emails so you can read them for yourself and see for yourself what we’re dealing with. If you’re an American, and you believe no one should be above the law, you owe it to yourself and to your country to click here and do some reading before you vote.

If you don’t have time for that, here are just 25 of the topics discussed by Clinton staffers, and you can read their emails for yourself at that link above:

  1. Hillary Clinton dreams of completely “open borders”
  2. Hillary Clinton received money from and supported nations that she KNEW funded ISIS and terrorists
  3. Admitting they pay people to incite violence and unrest at Trump rallies
  4. Hillary’s campaign wants “unaware” and “compliant” citizens
  5. Top Hillary aides mock Catholics for their faith
  6. Hillary deleted her incriminating emails. State covered it up. Asked about using White House executive privilege to hide from Congress.
  7. Bribery: King of Morocco gave Clinton Foundation $12 million for a meeting with Hillary, 6 months later Morocco gets weapons
  8. State Department tried to bribe FBI to un-classify Clinton emails (FBI docs)
  9. Hillary caught on tape talking about rigging the Palestine election (audio)
  10. Latinos are “needy”. Latino outreach is “taco bowl engagement”
  11. Clinton campaign was in direct communication with DOJ regarding Hillary’s investigation
  12. Bill Clinton receives $1 million “birthday gift” from ISIS-funding Qatar while Hillary was SoS, Qatar receives arms flow increases of  1,482%
  13. Hillary campaign wishes shooters in news stories were white
  14. Rigging the primaries against Bernie Sanders (DNC favored Hillary)
  15. Clinton Foundation schemed with Big Pharma: keep the price of  AIDS drugs high in America and NO to cheaper generic versions
  16. Democrats created fake Trump “grope under the meeting table” Craigslist employment ad in May 2016
  17. Hillary’s camp excited about a black teen’s murder (to help her agenda)
  18. Rigging media polls through oversampling
  19. “Bill Clinton Inc.” How millions of dollars were raised for the Clintons. Blurred lines between personal and Foundation money
  20. Admitting terrorists will infiltrate the Syrian refugee program
  21. List of reporters that Hillary wined and dined, including biggest journalists and pundits of CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, NY Times, and a lot more. Off the record.
  22. Democrats using American lobbyists to money launder foreign donations illegally
  23. Racist remarks about Blacks and Muslims
  24. Hillary’s poor health (collapsing, memory loss, drug research)
  25. Hillary’s staff admitting she is “tainted” and “really vulnerable” on corruption and bribery

 

 

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With regard to what I’ve written here, I know a little about a lot, a lot about a little, more than some when it comes to some things, less than others about others, and everything there is to know except for what I don’t.

Older Posts

  • Letter to a Disappointed Friend
  • American Success Story
  • Slave Labor Here and Now
  • When Motives Don’t Matter
  • Lies and the Lying Liars Who Publish Them
  • Design Is Like Riding a Bike
  • Right of Way
  • Give Like a Smarty
  • How to Conduct Due Diligence For A Crowdfunded Hard Money Loan
  • Why It’s Good We’re Not a Democracy

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