ZCoil is 'z best...

It may surprise some of you who have known me for a long time to learn that I have become an avid runner. 5-6 miles 2-3 times a week has helped me lose and keep pounds off. But last year I suffered an ilio-tibial band injury... very painful. I couldn't walk without pain for days and for months I had trouble running. Since recovery I have been very cautious about not running on pavement and not running for too long.

Then I heard about ZCoil Shoes.

OK, they look strange. And the look may be enough to stop you from trying them. BUT, if you can get past the look you will be amazed by the ride. I can run again for long distances with no pain. The spring built into the heel absorbs most of the shock of impact. I even like to wear them when I go for a walk in the morning with my daughter -- it is a half mile downhill to the Peet's Coffee and I can really feel the difference when I am wearing my ZCoils.

If you enjoy running but experience knee, hip, or back pain -- give the ZCoil a try. I continue to be amazed after almost a month.

Famous for 15 Seconds

Its funny how things you do early in your life follow you around as you grow older and more mature. Bill Clinton didn't enhale. I didn't play D&D... ok not all of the time... But someone has tracked me down anyway and written this mini-biography of me as an RPG author for work I did 20 years ago on the first supplement to Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role playing game. Strange that anyone cares!

Speaking at Mobile Monday

Please come to the February 7th meeting of Mobile Monday -- details here -- where I will be speaking about Orb Networks and providing a demonstration.

Orb Networks

Things have been quiet lately around the blog as I have been working on starting a new job, which I am happy to announce today: EVP of Operations for Orb Networks. You may recognize the Orb Networks name from their launch at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- they were one of the show leaders, winning countless awards for their breakthrough media streaming technology.

I'll be writing more about Orb in the weeks and months to come here on my Blog. Here is the brief writeup that Orb provides about themselves:

About Orb Networks, Inc.
Orb Networks delivers powerful mobile services for the fast growing wireless industry. Orb Networks is the first developer of streaming media software and services giving people spontaneous access to digital home media -- any kind, at any time, from any location in the world. The groundbreaking Orb Architecture allows users to access music, live television, videos, photos and other digital content from any device that can connect to the Internet, such as a cell phone, PDA, or notebook. Orb Networks develops, licenses and markets its services in partnership with leading content providers/creators, wireless carriers, electronic distributors and consumer electronic companies. As an active participant in the issues affecting digital media, Orb Networks is a member of both the Digital Media Association (DiMA) and the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). Orb Networks is a privately held company located in Union City, Calif. For more information about Orb Networks, please visit http://www.orb.com.

If you have XP on your home computer, you have no excuse not to try Orb today -- 2 months free to try the software if you signup before the end of the month (that's just one more week...) Ignore the fact that it says you need a media center and give it a try. Without the Media Center you won't be able to watch TV, but your videos, photos, and MP3s will all be available. And I can't wait to hear back from you about what you like, don't like, and want us to fix.

Wikipedia

I have just contributed to the world's knowledge!

I have used the Wikipedia on a number of occasions but have never felt an urge to edit anything. But I broke the ice this morning and edited the entry for By the Pricking of my Thumbs.

I was working on a column (for VoIP Magazine) and had an inspiration to title the column "Something Wicked This Way Comes." I knew the line was from Shakespeare but couldn't remember the context. I checked the Wikipedia which had a great entry on the subject and it reminded me that the line is from Macbeth. The whole line reads

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes

It is uttered by a witch as Macbeth enters. But reading this entry made me wonder what "by the pricking of my thumbs" meant. Wikipedia had a link to this other phrase and I happily clicked on it (continuing to procrastinate from writing the column... as I am continuing to do...)

But horrors! The Wikipedia entry merely mentioned some Agatha Christie novel! I still wanted to know what the phrase meant, so I went to Google and ended up reading a couple of different sites to uncover the etymology. But then it struck me -- I should go back and update the Wikipedia so that the next person doesn't have to repeat my search!

The only scary part of this was how easy it was to update the article. I didn't have to register, there was no review process, no waiting period... How is it that the Wikipedia has not been attacked by spammers, by people with a grudge, or on a mission from god?

OK, now I should really stop procrastinating and finish that column...

Meeting Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown's people responded and I will be meeting with the mayor the week of the 17th. I plan on giving him a presentation on using the Internet as a way to create a dialog with voters in California. It's time to go beyond what the Dean campaign did and really use all of the community building tools to support a political campaign. I hope Jerry is up to the challenge.

Oryx and Crake

I have just finished reading Margaret Atwood's excellent book Oryx and Crake, what the New Yorker called "Towering and intrepid....Atwood does Orwell one better." I have to agree. I was much more scared about the future of our planet and human life after reading this book than I was after reading Huxley's' Brave New World or Orwell's 1984. The other book I might lump into this list is Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos which bears a stronger similarity to Atwood's book than the other two. In both Atwood's and Vonnegut's future world the human race is wiped out.

Vonnegut's book, however, left me feeling angry when I read it 20 years ago. I should reread it today and see if my reaction is different. Atwood's book scared me. Sure, we all know that we are destroying the environment, that there are too many of us, that modern biotech is breeding all sorts of strange new creatures. But Atwood paints a realistic picture of where that could all take us in the not-too-distant future. And a description of the sudden collapse of civilization that is chilling.

I highly recommend reading this book. In addition to being an important set of ideas about where the human race may be headed, it is also beautifully written. And to the person who recommended that I read this book -- thanks a lot, I'll get you back :-)

Jerry Brown

I have been meaning to post a follow-up here on my attempt to contact Jerry Brown. We did finally connect on the phone for a brief call. His answers to my questions weren't entirely satisfactory, but he was driving and I was driving so the connection was bad and our time was limited. I spent some time thinking about things over the holidays, though, and sent him this email yesterday:

Jerry:

Hope you had a good new year.

I have been thinking about our conversation and I have two suggestions.

(1) I think your strongest argument for the attorney general position is to talk from your recent two terms as Mayor of Oakland. Talk about being tough on crime and dealing with the problems of California's cities. Talk about how you think that the State can do more for our cities and that, having seen up close what cities need, you want to serve as California's attorney general to help get that help to local governments. Get your political consultants to research this approach anyway and see how it does with target voters. It seems to me that running on your time as mayor is much more pertinent than your time as governor and that local issues will appeal much more to voters than ethereal issues such as civil rights. Sorry. You'll get me and other people that are your natural supporters behind you on the Ashcroft-is-evil messaging but that won't help you with the broader base.

(2) You need to grab the high ground with the Internet. Put a working group together to give you a list of suggestions - I volunteer to serve and to help you get people on board to help. The Internet is NOT an electronic pamphlet. The Internet is a communications medium. Use it to communicate with your voters. There are a bunch of great tools out there -- Blogs, Wikis, discussion group tools like ezBoard -- reinvent yourself using the Internet to reach out to your constituency. Voters have Internet access.

Start now. Don't call me back. Email me back.

best,

Ted Shelton

I'll let you know if/when he replies!

IP Inferno Seeking Sponsorship

Throughout most of 2004 I have been posting thoughts about the IP industry (VoIP, wireless, mobility, networking, etc) to a blog I call IP Inferno. After having been named as one of Jeff Pulver's Top VoIP Bloggers of 2004 I have been thinking about how I will take IP Inferno to the next level. The answer that I have come up with is to add additional bloggers and begin promotion of the site. To do this requires money, so I have started a search for a sponsor for IP Inferno. If you know someone at an appropriate company, please send them my way! Sponsorships proposals can be sent to me at tshelton@ipinferno.com

How Governments Can Help

I will never be a pure libertarian. Smaller government, sure. Maybe smarter government instead of less government though. Too often corporate powers need to be checked by a strong counter-balance. The latest for me is a run in with Allstate Insurance.

I have been an Allstate customer for over a decade (gosh, its a lot longer than that... but I'd date myself). I have a lot of policies with them -- home, auto, etc. And I have never had a claim. So I am part of their profit portfolio.

One of the policies I have with Allstate covers my vacation home -- a 1200 foot dwelling in the Sierra foothills. Its just a little get away for the family in the summer and a base camp for ski trips in the winter.

Last year there was a brush fire down the road from my house. Within a few months I received a letter from Allstate cancelling my policy. The reason stated was that they were "unable to locate the insured property." Now, this is not off in the boondocks. My street address is a major state highway. There are four houses other than mine on the same driveway off of the highway.

So I just assumed the inspector was incompetent and called my agent to arrange an inspection. I gave them directions to one of my neighbor's houses, who had agreed to be present when the inspector came (he lives there year round). The inspector came, filed his report and I got a call from my agent. Apparently Allstate's policy was to require 100 feet of brush clearance around dwellings. Still no policy.

Now the county requires 30 feet, the same as the mandatory setback from a property line. If my house had been built closer to the property line, I would not have been able to comply with this requirement. Fortunately, however, I had the space and more brush clearance is always a good idea in the foothills. So I agreed to pay to have this work down, Allstate inspected, and my policy was reinstated.


1 Year Later

This year I received a cancellation notice from Allstate again. The reason stated? They claimed again that they could not find the property. Twice seemed a little much for incompetence, especially since they had found the house and inspected in order to inform me of the need for additional clearance and to confirm that the clearance had been done. But I called my agent again and made arrangements for a new inspection.

Imagine my surprise when the inspection report came back stating that I had only 50 feet of clearance and that 200 feet are required. This time I decided to fight.

First I tried to work through my Allstate office. How could this inspector have gotten this so wrong? Don't you have the report from last year showing 100 feet of clearance? And why has the minimum clearance changed? I pointed out to my agent that I was beginning to feel like Allstate just didn't want to insure my building.

Around and around in circles I went with Allstate and finally got the cut and dry answer -- there is nothing we can do for you unless you clear 200 feet around your structure.

So I complained to the California State Insurance Office.

Guess what? Allstate now informs me that it was "all just a big mistake." And my policy has been reinstated. The investigator from Allstate informs me that the drawings the inspector made were misinterpreted and that they agree that there is 100 feet of clearance around the house. And she tells me that the information that I needed 200 feet of clearance "was just wrong."

I would not have gotten this issue resolved had it not been for a government office standing as an ally of the consumer. Too often large powerful entities take advantage of their size to mistreat small entities - smaller businesses or individuals. Government should be a resource to help counterbalance these interactions and put the smaller entity on a more equal footing. For that, I am happy to be sending my tax dollars to Washington and Sacramento.

Brown is a Phone Person

I wish there was an easy way to take a phone message off of the TMobile voice mail system as an electronic file -- if there was, I would post the message I received Friday morning from Jerry Brown:

Hi Ted, this is Jerry Brown. Could you call me? My number is 510...

Its just fun to hear Jerry's voice on my cell phone. Of course trying to use the phone as a medium for the two of us to connect is very... last century :-) As Mayor of Oakland he is busy. And I have a few things I need to do every day as well. So accidentally finding each other on the other end of a telephone line has a low probability of success.

I did call back -- today as I was out of town with my family this weekend. The phone number he left has a woman's voice on the answering machine "Hi, you've reached the Brown for Attorney General..." That was at 10:00 AM so I guess they don't have regular office hours yet. I dutifully left my phone number but I also encouraged Jerry to send email...

Update on Brown for Attorney...

Well, its been a couple of days and there has been no response from Mayor Jerry Brown. So I decided to try calling the phone number on his fundraising letter... He had ended his letter with "Feel free to contact me directly at (phone number) or (email address) and I had sent my letter to his email address first... But some people are really phone people so I thought I'd just call him for a quick chat.

Imagine my surprise when a company called VentureSpark answered the phone. I guess Jerry has hired these folks to handle his media relations. I spoke to a nice woman at VentureSpark who assured me that the Mayor does read his email but offered to make sure he saw the letter if I would send it again and copy her. I did and received a quick note back:

I will be sure the Mayor sees this. Thanks for your feedback.

I hope the Mayor decides to reply once he reads the letter...

Brown For Attorney General

Ex-California governor Jerry Brown is running for attorney general in 2006. Today I received a letter in the mail, a form letter solicitation from his campaign, asking for a contribution to his election fund. The fundraising letter ended with the sentence "Feel free to contact me directly..." and offered an email address, so I sent the following:

Jerry:

Thank you for the recent letter soliciting a donation for your campaign. I am considering a contribution but have a few thoughts and questions that I hope you will take the time to consider.

Free advice is often worth what you pay for it, and I will be the first to admit that I don't know anything about politics or political campaigning. But as a financially successful registered Democrat in the middle of my wealth producing years, I suspect that I am the kind of person you would like to appeal to as a supporter. So perhaps you will find these thoughts useful in your bid to become California's next Attorney General.

First, and foremost, I am struggling to understand why you want the job. Your letter mentions the erosion of our civil liberties and points out that "our former U.S. attorney general declared whole classes of people outside the protection of the law." So I can infer that you feel that there is an important role to play, and opportunity for you to contribute, in protecting California's citizens from the perils of a federal government that seems to be infringing upon our civil liberties. But you never come out and make this statement clearly. In fact, your letter starts out that "...the job of attorney general is viewed as the most important post in California..." This leaves me wondering if you want this office in order to be important, not because you have a mission to serve the people of our state.

Civil rights is an issue very important to me and well worth the attention of our electorate. A clear statement from you that this is a reason for you to run for office at this time would help quiet cynics that see your run for this office as purely political -- merely another stepping stone in your "reincarnation" as Jonathan Curiel put it in his 4th of July article. I'd also like to understand what a state attorney general CAN do to protect our state's citizens from federal legislation and enforcement. Perhaps you can be more specific about what you intend to do.

Secondly, I'd like to believe that you are in touch with the world of 2004 (or 2006 for that matter). I wonder, for example, why you mention Earl Warren in your letter? Earl Warren passed away thirty years ago in 1974. I was 8 years old at the time, so I can't say I have any personal memories of the man. I appreciate that you are pointing out two great figures in our history who served both as attorney general and as governor of California (albeit in the opposite order to the one you propose for yourself). But how many people do you expect to know this? Or even know who Earl Warren was? Is this a sign that you are out of touch? Perhaps we should all know who Earl Warren is, but unfortunately most voters don't even know the name of the CURRENT chief justice...

On the subject of showing that you are in touch, one thing that you need to do much more effectively is use the Internet to communicate with voters. In fact, I'd like to believe that, as attorney general, you will make the Internet a much more important part of the way California government serves our citizens. It was nice to see that you had created a website, but it looks like more of a slapped-together place-holder than an effective communication tool. As one example of something you ought to fix right away: the latest article that your staff posted, "Mayor: Revisit Retrofit," used the same page template as the previous article, "The woman in Jerry Brown's life." Besides the template being unattractive, the page name "Woman in Jerry's Life," wasn't changed in the new article. The page name is used by PC browsers as the headline appearing at the top of the web browser window, announcing what the content of the page is supposed to be about. Thus the article "Mayor:Revisit Retrofit" article also appears to be about the "Woman in Jerry's Life"...

But this is a minor point, merely emphasizing the sloppiness of the site. More important is that the site is an empty monument rather than a living, breathing contribution to the dialog you could be having with California's voters. The front page is consumed with a set of links to old articles, none of which are particularly complimentary to you. The letter below is merely a duplicate of the same form letter that you mailed to me. The photos emphasize an image of you over 30 years out of date. The site does not offer a call to action, does not explain why you want this job, does not explore how the events of the last several years as mayor of Oakland may have contributed to your vision for California or for the role of attorney general, and most importantly -- does not create a dialog with me as a voter and potential financial supporter.

I enjoyed hearing you speak, on October 19th, at the Silicon Forum regarding the work you have done as Mayor of Oakland. I was impressed with the difference in the man from the myth -- the well-grounded, serious citizen interested in improving the community I and my family live in... as opposed to the image far too commonly associated with you based on your history as governor. I was, however, disappointed in the answer to my question -- you might recall that I asked as you were leaving whether there was a part of your administration focused on long term planning -- that is, what does Oakland look like in 10 years? Or in 20 years? Your short response was something along the lines of "it is hard enough to think about the Oakland of tomorrow..."

I want to elect, and support, politicians that are in step with the world of today and are ready to build the world of tomorrow -- and make it a better place for my three children. Prove to me that you are such a person and you will have my support.

best,

Edward (Ted) Shelton



p.s. let's start with a simple one -- do you read and reply to your own email or have it printed out by an assistant?

2000 Year Old Man

In 1982 Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks classic comedy skit The 2000 Year Old Man was made into an animated made-for-TV movie. I remember watching it and laughing as Reiner, posing as an interviewer, chatted with Brooks, the 2000 year old man. Reiner asks Brooks about the people he has known over the years:

Joan of Arc? "Know her? I went with her!" Robin Hood? "Lovely Man. Ran around the forest. Took from everybody and kept it. But he had a good press agent." Jesus? "A quiet lad, used to come into the store with these twelve other guys. Never bought anything. Asked me for some water once."

Now Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge suggests that we might all live that long... though he doesn't promise we'll be as funny as Brooks.

de Grey stats that he believes that "...the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already," suggesting that the rapid advances currently being made in his field could have a real impact on those alive today. de Grey claims to have "...a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular deamage that happen to us over time," and that "since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of damage."

Boy won't that throw a wrinkle into plans to reform social security. "Yep, I retired at 62 and have been drawing social security benefits for the past 900 years!" And our overpopulation problems are liable to get a lot worse as well...

But all kidding aside, I wonder if the biggest problem with this whole scheme is that only the very rich are likely to be able to afford to live for thousands of years. Imagine my great-great-great-great grandchildren still having to hear about Warren Buffet's investing ideas. Live, from Warren himself.

This could create the greatest "haves" and "have-nots" problem that the human race has ever seen. Already the rich tend to live longer than the poor, but thousands of years longer? If de Grey is right, and this is a real possibility, I predict that the very wealthy will actually evolve to become a quite different species from the rest of humanity. One's entire perspective on the world is likely to shift radically when one has hundreds of years of experience and when one can look forward to a future of hundreds of years of life. Now there is a generation gap.

Blogging Resources

I was just visiting with a friend, Ed Dua of QuadCarver, and talking about how to use blogs in a business. I started doing a little tutorial on blogging and then started showering him with different tools that I use for my blogs and to keep up on others blogs... When I got back home I realized that I had given him too much information too fast :-) So I wrote an email listing all of the things I had told him about. Then I realized that others might benefit as well from such a list... so here it is:

That Buzznet photo thing:

http://www.buzznet.com


Basic blogging tool:

http://www.blogger.com


The "better" blogging tool:

http://www.typepad.com


The FEED set up tool:

http://www.feedburner.com


The PING site to let everyone know when your blog is updated

http://pingomatic.com/


The Feed reader:

http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/


Places to go to search blogs:

http://www.technorati.com

http://www.bloglines.com

http://www.feedster.com


How to PROMOTE your blog:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Berkeley Blogger Dinner

Thanks!! Especially to Mary Hodder for organizing tonight's blogger dinner. But Mary, we should do this more often, so I am counting on you to organize... But the excuse was good, Doc Searls being in town. It was great to catch up with Doc who in addition to being an icon of blogging is a truly great human being and a friend. Doc was in town to visit and speak at the Berkeley class that Mary blogs, Language of Politics taught by the incredible George Lakoff who I remember reading when I was in College...

It was also good to see Marc Brown of Buzznet fame who also captured some great photos of the evening.

Met a few people for the first time including Jeff Clavier who is one of the few people on the planet (so far) to have a LinkedIn Case Study written about him because he knows so many people... and Renee Blodgett who has recently moved to the west coast from Boston and with whom I had a long conversation about mixing personal stuff and business in the same blog... by the way this is the post that Renee is most proud of on her blog.... And finally (but not least) JD Lasica who seems to know everyone and who is working on a very cool project called ourmedia which I will let you explore on your own.

Sorry to all of you who attended the dinner (20 or 30) who I didn't collect cards from and thus failed to get mentioned...

UPDATE: The link for finding out about ourmedia, until the official site launch is HERE

Target : Entertainment : Marijuana

Note to Target -- don't provide product listings without any additional meta-data! For starters, how about what kind of a product is it anyway? Movie? Music? Book? Or controlled substance? Thanks to Steve Rubel for this pointer to Inside Google's link to Target selling Marijuana...

The Amazon version of Target's online store already has 8 customer reviews...

Yo, this be the most dopest chit I've ever had. I got this book from my peeps just the other dizzle. After I learned how to roll one phat doob, I got so wasted I was flyin like handi-man. Then I got the munchies and ate the book. Now I need another. (five stars)

But at least the Amazon entry had a little more information on the product... Perhaps this really is a book published in 1993 for young adults?

Indeed: Marijuana by Sandra Lee Smith

Given that Amazon reports that the Shipping Weight for this product is 12 ounces, the Target price of $25.25 was a little hard to believe... and the Amazon "used" price of $8.95 was downright worrisome. Used pot?

Ohio Controversy

Thanks to Ed Felten for pointing out this article in the Boston Phoenix by David Bernstein. Entitled Questioning Ohio: No controversy this time? Think again. Mr. Bernstein has some scary statistics about the voting in Ohio --

Of Ohio’s 88 counties, 20 suffered a significant reduction — shutting at least 20 percent (or at least 30) of their precincts. Most of those counties have Republicans serving as Board of Elections director, including the four biggest: Cuyahoga, Montgomery, Summit, and Lucas.

Those 20 counties went heavily to Gore in 2000, 53 to 42 percent. The other 68 counties, which underwent little-to-no precinct consolidation, went exactly the opposite way in 2000: 53 to 42 percent to Bush.

In the 68 counties that kept their precinct count at or near 2000 levels, Kerry benefited more than Bush from the high turnout, getting 24 percent more votes than Gore did in 2000, while Bush increased his vote total by only 17 percent.

But in the 20 squeezed counties, the opposite happened. Bush increased his vote total by 22 percent, and Kerry won just 19 percent more than Gore in 2000.

The entire article is worth reading.

NY Times Op-Ed "The Bush Revolution"

I should be nicer to the New York Times. Nicholas D. Kristof, writing for the Op-Ed page had a very worthwhile article today entitled The Bush Revolution. It covers much of the same ideas that I tried to address in my post yesterday but he so much more concisely puts the matter:

The central question of President Bush's second term is this: Will he shaft his Christian-right supporters, since he doesn't need them any more, and try to secure his legacy with moderate policies that might unite the country? Or, with no re-election to worry about, will he pursue revolutionary changes on the right? To me, it looks increasingly like the latter.

The piece is also worth reading for his predictions on various international issues during the second Bush term and ends with the frightening "litmus test" for deciding to leave the country -- "A litmus test of foreign policy prospects will be whether John Bolton, a genial raptor among the doves at State, is promoted to be its deputy secretary. For liberals who have been wavering on whether to move to New Zealand, that would be a sign to head for the airport."

Christian Theocracy

For me, the most worrying aspect of the recent Presidential election is the idea that Karl Rove's four million evangelical Christians (Pat Buchanan on the subject) missing from the 2000 election came out to vote in 2004, helped Bush win the election, and now will have a greater voice in our country's politics and policies. Before Dan points out that the four million may be a myth let me quickly point out that it is more important that the Bush Presidency believes that evangelical Christians made the difference in this election than whether or not they actually did make the difference.

I was raised to believe in an America that is tolerant of differences in religious, social, and cultural belief and practice. I was raised to believe that "tolerance" means "embrace diversity" not "put up with differences." And as a result I have friends that are from every religion (or none) and from many cultural backgrounds and who have made many different choices in their social behaviors.

MSNBC reports that the "electorate (is) deeply divided...", citing exit polls that show that "moral values" became a critical issue for voters in reelecting President Bush -- "...white evangelicals — a crucial voting bloc for the president — represented about a fifth of all voters. Their top issue was moral values." The Arizona Daily Star reports that:

"Moral values" is a catchphrase for conservative, religious voters who oppose abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage, said Steven Waldman, editor and CEO of BeliefNet, a multifaith Web site for religious and spiritual issues.

The problem I have with this definition of the issue is that it inaccurately places the locus of the voter's interest on the values instead of on a desire to IMPOSE those values on the rest of the nation's citizens. Many people, on both sides of the election, hold the same beliefs on these three issues. John Kerry expressed his personal belief that marriage is between a man and a woman and his personal belief that abortion is immoral. But he did so while saying that it was not the job of government to impose the personal religious beliefs of a President on the citizens of the nation. So when we talk about Bush winning on "moral values" we should be clear -- he won based on an electorate determined to impose their moral values onto others.

I heard Pat Buchanan on the radio a few weeks ago (on NPR - archive here) making the seemingly reasonable suggestion that local electorates should be able to make decisions on behalf of themselves when it comes to public resources -- for example, if a local school district wants to have prayer in their schools, why shouldn't there be a democratic process to decide? Why not let the citizens of that district simply vote on the matter?

One of the other things that I was raised to believe about our democracy is that there is an important balance that must be struck in protecting minorities. The problem with allowing a majority vote to provide the only guidepost for our civic decisions is the risk of a "tyranny of democracy" in which a majority imposes its views on a minority.

While still a vast majority, the percentage of Americans calling themselves Christian has declined from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2001 (American Religious Identification Survey at The Graduate Center, City University of New York) Almost 1/4 of our population is Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnositic, atheist (or one of a handful of others). This trend is expected to continue. Another interesting statistic from this study,

"In 1990, ninety percent of the adult population identified with one or another religion group. In 2001, such identification has dropped to eighty-one percent."

"No religion" is a staggering 13.1% of the total US adult population - staggering because it is the second largest category. Evangelical Christians might look at these statistics and see 27 million people that used to be Christians that could be brought back into the fold. And voting for public money to be spent on Christian schools might help with that agenda...

But should a democracy impose the will of the majority on that 13% of its citizens who chose to be "areligious" (no religion but not agnostic or atheist) much less on the 11% that are Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Wiccan... ?? How can a great nation like ours decide on belief-based issue like gay marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, prayer in school based on one groups beliefs?

The right has often cited that the phrase "separation of church and state" cannot be found in the constitution. Instead it is contained in a letter by Thomas Jefferson. But perhaps it is time in this great nation to suggest a 28th Constitutional Amendment, certainly more important to the nation's well being than the 27th in which we formally introduce these words and protect the minorities of our country now and in the future from the imposition of the majority's views. After all, in the future Christians may become the minority.