What to do in retirement? Part 2: Hobbies?

I've never really had a hobby as an adult. When I was young I used to collect stamps, mostly European and many of them pre-World War II, and I used to camp and hike (I was a Boy Scout for a while) and play pickup games of baseball and football, go swimming in the summer and sledding in the winter. And of course, I was a pretty voracious reader - but I don't count reading as a hobby, it's just something one must do.

But ever since I got to grad school and then went out into the working world, I've never really had a hobby. Life tended to keep me busy enough. It's not that I haven't tried. I took a class in woodcarving once and enjoyed it. I learned about different types of knives and chisels, I learned how to sharpen blades. But after carving a few small things (including a couple of very strange looking Santa Claus') I just kind of fell away from it.

Another time I bought a couple of books on furniture making and proceeded to make a couple of tables and bookcases. I enjoyed the mental and physical effort, the design problem, and had quite a bit of satisfaction when the pieces were done, however imperfectly. But again, after a few starts I kind of let things lapse.

Part of my problem, I think, is that in order to become good at a hobby that involves actually making something you've got to be very persistent. You've got to keep working at it, making new things and learning from each of your mistakes. It takes a long time to become good at your hobby. And I've never been that interested in the things I've taken up. Like a dilettante, I've always wanted to learn a little about a lot of things, but most of the time a little is quite enough. Also, I have a number of things that keep me busy around the house, yard work, small maintenance jobs, reading, movies I've put off watching.

So maybe taking up a new hobby isn't in the cards.

Or, maybe I already have a hobby.

If one thinks of a hobby as "an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure" then I've already got one - writing. (This isn't my idea, BTW. My wife said this very thing when I was whining about not having a hobby.)

I do research for my books, which I find enjoyable. Lots of times the research is done at my computer, but I occasionally have to travel to find materials. I get to correspond with others who do the same kind of research (these days it's in the history of cryptology). I like the process of organizing my research and turning it into prose that others might read. I even like the process of laying out and editing my work in preparation for sending it off to a publisher (or publishing it myself as I've done once). Because I don't depend on my writing as a steady source of income, nearly all of my projects can proceed at whatever pace I find comfortable. And I can put them down for a while to do something else, or go on a trip, or whatever, and then pick them up again when I want to. If that's not a definition of a hobby, I'm not sure what is.

So I think I already have a hobby, one that will provide many, many hours of pleasure over the coming years. So now I can stop worrying about finding a new one.

What to do in retirement? Part 1.

I retired from Knox College last September. I'd worked in the computer software industry for a couple of decades, and for the last 16 years I'd been a professor of computer science.  I'd also done research in computer science education, software development, computer security, and the history of cryptology. I'd written 4 books and had lots of great students and colleagues (and some not so great, but that happens).

Since I've retired I've finished two more books, one on software development and one on the history of cryptology. I'd been working on them for quite a while and the book contracts just happened to be nailed down during my last year of teaching. When I was a full-time faculty member I could never get much research or writing done during the school year because at a small college you've got a ton of things to do during the year, none of which involve your own agenda. Realistically the only time I could do research and writing was during winter break and during the summer. Knox didn't have summer school so I had a leisurely (!) three months to work on my stuff.

As of last June, I'm not teaching and so I've got lots more time to work on research and writing. For the last 9 months I've been mostly head down finishing the two books. They are both now in the can; one has been published (see here) and I expect the galleys of the second in another week or so (see here).

So now I am looking at the prospect of doing....what? At the moment I've got no real deadlines. I have a book review to do and an abstract for a book chapter, but they are both sufficiently far in the future that I have no problem procrastinating. I have several other longer-term research projects I've planned to work on, but they can also safely be put off for a while. So I'm discovering that I'm a really good procrastinator. Without a real daily schedule, I find myself wandering around the house, doing chores, but not engaging intellectually. I've got a long, long list of books to read, and I really should post to this blog more often, but for some reason that all seems so hard to do at present.

Sorry for the whine. I'm actually in a really lucky position. Lots of potential projects. I still have lots of research and writing ideas. I have lots of chores and projects to do around the house. My wife and I have lots of travel plans and we love spending more time together. I'm healthy. It's just that I've realized that I need to be much more intentional about working to a new schedule, figuring out what each day will be like. I also need to learn to relax. It turns out I'm really bad at that. No time like the present. I think I'll go read a book.

Bruce Schneier on Securing Elections

Great Article by Bruce Schneier on Securing our Elections in the U.S. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/18/american-elections-hack-bruce-scheier

Lets Fix the Electoral College and Gerrymandering, shall we?

Ideally, because they are supposed to represent all the people in the country and not the states, the President and Vice President should be elected by the entire country using direct election by popular vote. That's not going to happen anytime soon because the smaller states have too much clout in the current Electoral College setup to vote in favor of repealing it and replacing it with direct election.

So, instead, lets fix the Electoral College AND Gerrymandering

Here's an idea on how to at least partially fix the Electoral College (to help insure that the person who does win the popular vote does indeed also win the EC). And to make things better, I'll propose a second idea on how to fix gerrymandering.

(BTW, there's another proposal to fix the Electoral College problem without a constitutional amendment. It's called the National Popular Vote (https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/) and it requires states to pledge all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. Great idea.)

SIZE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

First, the idea for the Electoral College. First of all, forget about ever amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College and going for the direct election of the President. A Constitutional amendment needs a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, AND 3/4 of the states must approve of it. The smaller population states, particularly in the West, will NEVER go along with eliminating the EC. Along with the Senate, it's the thing that gives them clout far beyond what you'd expect from their population. Just forget about it.

Instead, what we need to do is to INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. The number of representatives in the House is NOT mandated by the Constitution, except to say in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment:
"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."

and in Article 1, Section 2, clause 3:
"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative..."

The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929) clarified when and how the size of the House of Representatives will be set. It set the number of representatives at 435 (which is where it had been since after the 1913 reapportionment as a result of the 1910 Census). (See also, Kromkowski & Kromkowski, "Why 435? A Question of Political Arithmetic", Polity, vol. 24, #1, Fall, 1991. http://www.thirty-thousand.org/documents/Kromkowski_Fall1991.pdf)

So it's been OVER 100 years since the size of the House of Representatives has changed. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment)

This has lead to some anomolies in how many people are represented by a single representative in each of the states. Wyoming, with the smallest state population of just over 585,000 gets a single representative. Montana, with just over 1 million people, also gets just one representative. The most populous state, California, with nearly 36 million people, has 53 representatives, or one for about every 742,000 people. So the number of people each representative actually represents varies wildly across state boundaries.

If we increase the number of members of the House, then these anomolies can be evened out. This has been tried before (see Clemons vs Department of Commerce, 2009, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemons_v._Department_of_Commerce), but not by trying an act of Congress.

If Congress enacts the so-called Wyoming rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule) whereby each representative will represent a population roughly equal to the population of the smallest state, then the number of representatives will be increased from 435 to 537. California, Texas, and Florida will see the largest increases in representation (12, 10, and 7 seats respectively). Wyoming will still have a single representative.

This reapportionment will have the effect of giving voters in urban areas the clout that they do not have under the current numbers. It will also increase the number of Electoral votes to 637, with 319 needed to win the presidency.

(Another way to do this is to fix the number of people that a representative must represent, say at 600,000. Depending on how you count the remainders of state populations after you divide by 600,000 you'll get either 527 members of the House (if you use the floor function) or 576 (if you use the ceiling function). The effect will be the same as the current idea.)

GERRYMANDERING

Second, fixing gerrymandering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States). Gerrymandering occurs because in nearly all the states, the party that holds the majority of seats in the state legislature is the party that draws the boundaries for re-districting Congressional districts after each decennial census. This practice has gotten worse and worse over the decades, to the point where in several states, Wisconsin, Maryland, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania being the worst examples, the party that wins the majority of votes in the general election wins less than one-third of the seats in the legislature or in Congress. Here's a way to fix that.

Proposal: After each census, each state creates a committee with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats (sorry independents, you're out of luck here; if you want to play, declare a party affiliation; or how about a party gets to play if it polls more than 25% of the vote in the last general election?). If this is a state that only gets one Congressional representative, then we're done. For all other states, the party that won the most votes in the last general election goes first. That party draws one (1) Congressional district. Naturally, they'll draw one that favors their party. Then the other party gets a turn and they also draw one (1) Congressional district. The parties then alternate until all the districts for that state are drawn. All districts must be of approximately the same population (if the Wyoming rule is being used, then that population is the size of the smallest U.S. state) and they must be compact and contiguous - no snakes, or anchors, etc. The chief justice of the state's supreme court is the arbiter of whether the district is compact. It's likely that the last district will have either more or less population than the smallest state. There can be simple rules that will take care of this case.

In the end, there will be some safe Democratic districts and some safe Republican districts, but because of the alternation, there should be a number of competitive districts as well, almost certainly more competitive districts than there are today. Because these districts will be in place for at least a decade, it will be to both party's advantage to try to create a large number of closely divided districts.

With these two rules in place, the House of Representatives will more closely represent the majority of voters in their respective states and overall the majority of voters in the country. The Electoral College will also more closely represent the will of the majority of voters in a state; and in particular, the larger states will not have their votes in the Electoral College diluted by smaller states.

For other proposals to eliminate gerrymandering see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Our_Democracy_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Changes_to_achieve_competitive_elections
http://www.rangevoting.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/magazine/the-new-front-in-the-gerrymandering-wars-democracy-vs-math.html?mcubz=3

See also this article that illustrates how hard this will be to change:
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/01/us/supreme-court-upholds-method-used-in-apportionment-of-house.html