A885A/S657, the Elections Database & Institute Bill

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A885A/S657, the Elections Database & Institute Bill

New York is infamous for its election administration failures and lack of publicly available information. This bill, A885A/S657, would move New York from worst to first, creating the New York Voting and Elections Database and Institute housed within the State University of New York and the City University of New York to maintain and regulate public election data.

The Database and Institute would provide data including election results, district maps, poll sites, and more, and provide information useful not only to the public, but for election administrators and lawmakers to use as they continue the important work of improving elections in New York.

This sounds like an interesting concept that the State Senate has passed. While I have no opinion on it, I think it would be useful to take advantage for analysis should it become law, especially as it could make crunching state-wide numbers easy. Already, things have made a big step forward now that County Boards of Elections are required to post Shapefiles of Election Districts, although already that was coming the norm with most counties now having publicly-accessiable MapServers.

Costco 🛒

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The other day I was on a work conference call – actually a Zoom meeting and there were people praising Costcos and saying how they traveled to Massachusetts the past week to shop there. Honestly, I can’t imagine traveling to shop at a Big Box grocery store during a pandemic but I guess different people have different values.

I had to puke in my mouth a little bit, off camera, as I’ve been opposed to the Rapp Road development which includes a Costco and a large apartment and townhouse complex in undeveloped woods right next to the butterfly corridor. Honestly I don’t care much about the Costco part of the proposal – it’s mostly in an abandoned residential neighborhood – but I do like many of my fellow environmentalists worry about the apartment complex. The Costcos is still a bit problematic in the sense their building a gas station over a sandy sole source acquifer so all gas leaks and spills will almost immediately mix into ground water and the proposal still demolishes some remaining pitch pine and dunes, that are easily restored to Pine Bush.

So it probably shouldn’t move forward or we should at least demand a tough mitigation to protect as much of the remaining Pine Bush as possible. So much had been lost in fifty years, even more is disappointing a few acres at a time – becoming harder and harder to sustain especially as climate change makes the Pine Bush with less late winter snow even harder to breed butterflies and other native species.

I’ve heard Costco in other parts of the nation are perpetually crowded. You have to think yuck during the pandemic. I can’t imagine shopping at any big box in the near future. A few times during the pandemic I’ve been to Walmart to get things not at Aldi’s, but I’ve finally drawn a line in the sand and said no more. It’s not worth getting Coronavirus to get something I can order online and get in a few days. I dont mind discount groceries and stores that have a limited selection but do we need such massive temples of consumerism?

Waking up in the wilderness

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Waking up in the wilderness is truly a blessing. ⛺Listening to the sound of the birds chirping and the rivers flowing, the sun flowing into the truck cap.😎 Watching the coffee in the percolator heat up breakfast cook up.☕ Listening to the news from a transistor radio talking about the horrors of a distant land. 📻And knowing it is so far from the quiet of the wilderness. 🔕

Saran Wrap

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For the longest time I resisted using saran wrap as it seemed wasteful to wrap food in plastic for a day or two only to throw it away. But since I’ve gotten into eating healthier foods my mind has changed. Saran wrap is an excellent material for wrapping off fresh fruits and vegetables to protect them getting dried out or moldy.

Modern saran wrap is polyethelene, which is a string of carbon and hydrogen atoms. It burns completely with just water vapor and carbon dioxide. It is easy to use, it saves food. It’s inexpensive — a $5 or $6 roll can last for a year or longer. I think the roll I bought is at least 10 years old, though I hadn’t been using it regularly until now.

I don’t use it for wrapping lunches or anything besides storing fresh, cut food in the refrigerator for multiple days. Or defrosting meat or fish that I bought in bulk in the refrigerator without getting dried out. It works well for that. And when I’m done, I toss it in the bin with the other burnables, it gets burnt so none of it goes to the landfill. It makes an excellent fire starter, and is a small part of overall trash. It saves food — I’ve spent my hard earned dollars on — from being compost.

In the grand scheme of things, saran wrap is a tiny portion of waste, compared to all the ordinary grocery packaging — which has been greatly reduced since I’ve been eating healthier. There aren’t the plastic milk and apple juice bottles, pasta cans or even as many wrappers hitting my waste basket these days. Instead, most of my waste food is composted, and that is even further reduced by using a little bit of non-toxic plastic. I think it’s great.