a little unexpected perspective

Perspective One
An appeals court may delay the California gubernatorial recall vote until March because of outdated voting equipment that could compromise the quality of the count and disenfranchise some voters. Funny, that's the same damn equipment I've been using here in Cook County since I bloody well registered to vote.

I wrote to the Illinois Board of Elections with a WTF? and was informed that they plan to obsolete our manual punch-cards in 2006. Baby steps, I guess. But it kills me with laughter that they're postponing a frikkin' ELECTION because they don't want to use the wretched equipment we're still using here.


Perspective Two
Trying to figure out how to get a house next year, knowing that even 5% down might not be possible, I began to feel fairly wretched (there's that word again) about my financial prospects.

Then I found this page.

Here's what it says about my income:

You are in the top 0.815% richest people in the world.
There are 5,951,068,435 people poorer than you.

Now there's some perspective. The site has a direct link for donations to Care. Tally-ho.