It is as if our leaders have not been educated in orbital space colonization

Raymond Chen

Yesterday were held the primary elections in the state of Washington. Most of the partisan positions were uncontested, so there wasn’t much to research. The one with the most candidates was for one of the state’s Senate seats, and among those candidates were some who might be considered “a bit unorthodox”.

• Michael Goodspaceguy Nelson. Since election law requires that candidates file under their legal names, Mr. Nelson’s middle name must really be Goodspaceguy. (I will assume that he was not born with that name.) Mr. Nelson’s position appears to be that we should focus our efforts on constructing orbital space colonies around the earth, the moon, and Mars. In his statement, he bemoans the lack of progress made along these lines:

  Unfortunately, much of our space money has been wasted. It is as if our leaders have not been educated in orbital space colonization. The waste and destruction of taxpayers space property show a lack of understanding of space colonization.

  Mr. Nelson has not one but two blogs. I’m not sure what the difference is, but you can check them out yourself. Blog the first. Blog the second.

• Mike The Mover. Mr. Mover’s position statement is incoherent, but that’s okay, because there’s a method to his madness. You see, Mr. Mover pays the $1360 filing fee so that he can get his face and name in front of every registered voter in the state. The result of this name recognition is about $150,000 in extra business for his moving company.

• William Edward Chovil. Mr. Chovil looks like the cranky old man who lives down the street, and his statement does nothing to dispel this perception. His fixation on communism (oops, sorry, Communism with a capital C) and the New World Order conspiracy seems quaintly out of place in today’s political climate. Sort of a throwback to the Cold War years.

• Gordon Allen Pross. Mr. Pross’s statement reads like one of those convoluted math problems you got in school, but with an added obsession with “red headed Lincoln pennies” and Congress apparently legislating pennies to people. I think. His argument is hard to follow, but when he starts doing percentages, that’s when he loses me completely.

  USA splits the one Taxed Lincoln cent equally three ways Federal, State and Local Governments receive a third, 33.3% times 3 equals 99.99%. With 00.01% left over for campaign finance reform.

  It’s so simple it just might work: Funding the government through rounding errors.

None of these candidates appears to have won their respective election, so we won’t be seeing much more of them this election season. But that’s okay. All four of these candidates are “regulars” on the ballot, so they’ll almost certainly be back in two years if not sooner.

Raymond Chen

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