Each USA citizen votes for one representative in the House of Representatives and two Senators. Each representative represents slightly less than 1,000,000 people. Given voting rates, a US Representative can get elected with as few as 200,000 supporters.

Residents in Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Delaware, and Montana can elect senators with as few as 200,000 supporters.

Small interest groups in large states like California and New York are unlikely to get any representation unless they happen to be concentrated within one or two congressional districts. Of course, that's the case in places like New York City and San Francisco where individual neighborhoods are almost sufficient to elect their own representatives to congress. Barney Frank of Massachusetts's 4th congressional district is a stirling example of a congressman with a vary narrow and special interest constituency. See also Charles Rangel who represents the Harlem portions of Manhattan.

In a proportional representation system, would Harlem have any representation? Would anyone in North Dakota be represented?

Instead of CITIES I should have said metropolitan areas. For example, Dallas TX contains 1,223,229 people and Fort Worth TX contains 758,738 people and the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area contains 6,526,548 people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas–Fort_Worth_metroplex

5% in the USA is between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 people! You want to exclude people who can find 15,000,000 people who support their platform? Under your standard, the following 45 European states would have zero representation in a theoretical European political union: (FYI, The USA contains more that 20 CITIES with greater population than the nation, Norway)

Population density, area and population of countries and dependencies in Europe (2002-07-01 est.)
Country Population
  Vatican City 900
  Gibraltar (UK) 27,714
  San Marino 27,730
  Monaco 31,987
  Liechtenstein 32,842
  Faroe Islands (Denmark) 46,011
  Guernsey (UK) 64,587
  Andorra 68,403
  Isle of Man (UK) 73,873
  Jersey (UK) 89,775
  Iceland 312,384
  Malta 397,499
  Luxembourg 512,000
  Montenegro 626,000
  Cyprus 803,147
  Estonia 1,294,236
  Slovenia 2,048,847
  Macedonia 2,054,800
  Latvia 2,366,515
  Armenia 3,262,200
  Albania 3,544,841
  Lithuania 3,601,138
  Bosnia and Herzegovina 3,964,388
  Ireland 4,234,925
  Moldova 4,434,547
  Croatia 4,490,751
  Norway 4,942,700
  Georgia 4,960,951
  Finland 5,302,545
  Denmark 5,368,854
  Slovakia 5,422,366
  Switzerland 7,301,994
  Serbia 7,498,001
  Bulgaria 7,621,337
  Austria 8,169,929
  Sweden 9,076,744
  Azerbaijan 9,493,600
  Hungary 10,075,034
  Belarus 10,335,382
  Portugal 10,617,192
  Czech Republic 10,674,947
  Belgium 11,007,020
  Greece 11,606,813

Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correlate with student achievement. I believe him. I don't agree with his assertions that schools are underfunded and couldn't educate poor students even with more funding.

There is even less correlation between cost per student and student performance than between teacher and student performance.http://www.npri.org/blog/does-more-spending-increase-student-performancehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/24/us-usa-education-spending-idUSN2438214220070524http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/03/02/opinion/doc4f51a55f28207547363660.txthttp://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Little-correlation-found-between-per-pupil-823833.php

It is common for urban poor school districts to cost much more per student than the surrounding suburbs. Look at Kansas City or Washington DC for stark examples.

Seriously, spending more than $10,000 per year per student is a travesty. A class with 30 students should not cost $300,000 and the money is not going to the teacher!

I agree, end the war on drugs and greatly reduce parent incarceration rates.
I agree, find employment for everybody that raises them above poverty.
I agree, support family planning, pre-natal care, nutrition, and free pre-school or head start.

But, it isn't poverty exactly or school financial resources that predict student performance. It's culture. There is an urban poor culture that doesn't exist among poor rural students, and the outcomes differ. How can we change the culture that devalues education? How can we change the violence and street power culture? How can we convince people not to have children that are later neglected and abused?

We have a larger navy than the next 11 countries combined, and 9 of those are our allies.
Step 1) Reduce navy to the save of the next 5 countries combined.

We have more agriculture department employees than there are farmers.
Step 2) Eliminate all farm subsidies and cut the agriculture department to the bone.

We fight too many wars
Step 3) Stop fighting wars and eliminate supplemental war expenditures.

Stop fighting the "war on drugs" and every other "war on..." that we have been loosing since the 1960s. Get over it already.
Step 4) Stop prosecuting and start taxing vices and victimless crimes.

I currently work as a defense contractor, and I know first that the government is incompetent and defense spending is largely wasteful.

http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Design-Patterns-Erik-Buck/dp/0321535022/

Saying you don't have time to learn Objective-C is ridiculous. If you know Java, It takes half a day to learn Objective-C. The time consuming part of learning any new technology/platform is learning the frameworks. Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are huge and use design patterns that many coders do not already know. Fortunately, the design patterns are used everywhere, and they are used consistently. Once you understand and recognize the patterns, there is no more productive and flexible framework on the planet.

Frankly, learning the design patterns will make you a better programmer no matter what platform you choose. It's worth it just to advance your computer science knowledge.

Philosopher's Egg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aludel
Philosophical furnace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanor
Cupellation

Linotype machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine
Paige Compositor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paige_Compositor

The Antikythera mechanism is a 'tool; that is no longer in use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

How about Henges ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henge

Thanks. I have read much the same in the documentation. I suspect I just have to gain experience with the framework to get a feeling for which class to use when. For example, I don't see any reason why I can't draw in any old View rather than using a Widget, and Drawables don't seem to need Views at all; is that correct? I can have a Canvas and a Paint for a Drawable and see it on screen without a View?

I guess I'll just have to learn the intended roles of the classes. That is the nature of learning any framework and not necessarily better or worse with Android - just different.

The enhancements including new/improved GUI controls and built-in animation support will make re-hosting features from iOS easier. There seems to be some confusion (possibly only in my mind) or overlap between Views, Widgets, Fragments, and Drawables as well as between Canvas and Paint. The whole framework seems disorganized or lacking consistent application of patterns, but I admit that I may just not see the forest for the trees.

the ACLU has joined several court cases against government funding of organizations that discriminate against homosexuals and atheists, prominently including the Boy Scouts of America. They have defended Neo-Nazi organizations and the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). The ACLU also defended Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North,[60] whose conviction was tainted by coerced testimony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union#Controversial_stances

I grew up hearing stories about ACLU abuse of the courts in the 70s and 80s. Now that government inflicted injustice is rampant among ordinary citizens, where is the ACLU? Where are the federal lawsuits to stop the TSA goons? Where are the calls to impeach the president for abuse of power (like the ACLU advocated for Nixon, Regan, and Bush 2)?