This is an interesting look at a specific point in history as seen from both sides of the issue. Part of the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative, this information really points out how history is really all about perspective.

[ Fascinating... I wish i wasn't at work so i could read more of it... -k ]

Black Ships & Samurai

Decius wrote:
] Security isn't about technology so much as its about how that
] technology is used. We're not even talking about addressing
] that.
]
] This is a product of the fact that elections administrators
] have been almost totally unwilling to engage in a constructive
] dialog about these problems, preferring instead to play
] political spin zone with it and thereby eliminating any
] credibility they might have had.
]
] While this is a political victory for those who are concerned
] about this problem, if you think its an ideal solution you've
] drunk the koolaid.

Ryan: While that may be the case, the sitation is this: the election is in November. There is not enough time to put another system in effect. Our only hope is to get some kind of backup accountability (which we DO NOT have right now) or to scrap the system altogether. I think that for now, this is the only solution we have. We continue to fight the fight for accountability in the system itself once the election is over.

[ Agreed. It's a stopgap measure. There are some who've always thought printed reciepts would solve the problem... i'm not one of them. I agree w/ Decius insofar as i think the real solution is transparency and easy auditability. A paper reciept doesn't really do that. But it's something. I feel like I'd rather have that than the existing shenanigans.

Although, maybe signifigant shenanigans in a national election is what it's gonna take to convince people what a bad idea this whole thing is. I dunno. -k]

RE: Blog for Democracy: SB-500 Update

] I read about Melissa Ann Rowland in the Dallas paper this
] morning By now, most of you probably have read or heard
] that she has been charged with murder for refusing to
] have a C-section which doctors had told her was the only
] way to ensure that both of the twins she was pregnant
] with would survive. One was stillborn. If convicted, Ms.
] Rowland could be sentenced to five years to life in
] prison. She is being held at the Salt Lake City jail.
]
]
] Ever since legislatures started enacting statutes that
] make it a crime to kill a fetus, events have conspired to
] get us to this point - a woman didn't want surgery, and
] is being charged as a murderer for refusing. Think about
] that for a minute - she didn't want to have surgery.
] She's charged with a crime.

[ Total and complete bullshit. If she agrees to the surgery and she dies as a result, did she commit suicide? What if something goes wrong with the surgery and both fetuses die? Double homicide? Absurd. -k]

Eschaton - The War on Women

"Imagine doing a Google search for a phone number, weather report or sports score. The results page would be filled with links to various sources of information. But what if someone typed in keywords and no results came back?

That's the scenario critics are painting of a new bill wending its way through Congress that would let certain companies own facts, and exact a fee to access them."

"The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill and the commerce committee is expected to review it on Thursday."

[ Jesus. I don't even know what to say to this. I don't see how existing copyright law fails to address this. My understanding is that a verbatim copy of large sections of a published work, even one which is essentially a collection of facts, is already a violation of copyright. If you aren't publishing your database as a work, then you aren't really in danger of infringement, right?

I want more details. If i write a really clever program that scrapes and aggregates court decisions and relevant case law straight from all the thousands of courts in the nation, indexes it and crosslinks it, and then i publish the result, does LexisNexis get to sue me? Under current law, i *think* the answer is no... would this change that? How can i be liable for creating my own independent collection of publicly available information? -k]

Wired News: Hands Off! That Fact Is Mine

] Senate bill 500, sponsored by conservative Republicans
] and members of the Green Party and libertarians, would
] add printers to Georgia’s 26,000 computerized voting
] booths so that officials have the ability to review any
] election.
]
] "What Senate bill 500 does is say there ought to be a
] paper trail. There ought to be a ballot like we did
] before that is cast for every single individual, so that
] if there's a problem or a question there's a check," said
] state Senator Tom Price (R-Roswell).

Ryan -- we should find a way to support this...

Atlanta,Georgia,11Alive,ATLANTA,News,Weather,Doppler,sports,events

] From a former professor:
]
] At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George
] Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him.
] In my class, he declared that "people are poor because
] they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social
] security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public
] schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal
] Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission
] were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition."
] To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism."
] Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee,
] California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated
] the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that
] her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl
] Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain,
] Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying
] all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and
] economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate
] Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New
] Deal.

[ Yeah... as a Vanderbilt grad, i've had my own exposure to the "people are poor because they don't want to work hard". And as much as i try to be fair to people, it's usually the most intellectually lazy sons and daughters of priviledge that have this opinion. It's a bullshit argument from people who lack any perspective on what a normal human being is like. Bush is a rich kid. He's never been poor, and he's never been close enough to it to have a clue what it means. I don't think he's interested in discovering what it really means to be poor, or what it takes to help people. His policies are transparent, like every so-called fiscal conservative i've ever met. I'm convinced most fiscal conservatives are like most fundamentalist christians... going through the motions, preaching self righteously about beliefs and ideals they don't actually live by, when their true motivating factors are power and greed. You want to support a candidate because he'll hook you up with more money, and fuck the rest? Fine, say so outright. But i'm pretty sick of hearing the "i'm fiscally conservative, but socially liberal" line. Bullshit. 9 times out of 10 you're greedy and want more money... quit sugar coating it. Bush is bad for the average american. Period. -k]

The Bush Social Policy

Decius wrote:
] Most leftist don't understand that the right is poor.

[ I disagree. The Right *is* poor (although it may be more accurate to say that the poor are *Right* given that the policy makers tend to have money)... leftists know that, but too many still think, like M. Villepin, that the unwashed masses, so to speak, respect education, erudition, fine talk and logical argument. They don't. They simply don't. They act with instinct, based on Image, and generally dismiss anyone who *appears* pedantic or superior. I've just demolished my ability to ever run for office because the previous statement is so elitist that any leak of it would convince people that i don't respect "regular people". In fact, if "regular" means "willfully ignorant" then they'd be correct, i don't respect them, but the Right doesn't either, at least no further than the rancher respects his cattle -- they're just devious enough not to say so out loud. The Right has managed to put forward a commoners face, while the bastards get rich off the populace they consistently hoodwink. The left gets all huffed about the illogic and hypocracy, but manage to convince no one because they can't control the image.

There's a lot to be said about framing the issues too, as someone said on NPR the other evening -- the right is quite good at making it sound as if your (leftist) position is atrocious (see, for example, "Death Tax", "Pro-Life" and "War on Drugs"). This is another major battle we need to start winning. -k]

RE: The America will vote for Bush

] There is a grain of truth in the backlash stereotype of
] liberalism. Certain kinds of leftists really do vacation
] in Europe and drive Volvos and drink lattes. (Hell,
] almost everyone drinks lattes now.) And there is a small
] but very vocal part of the left that has nothing but
] contempt for the working class. Should you ever attend a
] meeting of a local animal rights organisation, or wander
] through the campus of an elite university, you will
] notice that certain kinds of left politics are indeed
] activities reserved for members of the educated upper-
] middle-class, for people who regard politics more as a
] personal therapeutic exercise than an effort to build a
] movement. For them, the left is a form of mildly soothing
] spirituality, a way of getting in touch with the deep
] authenticity of the downtrodden and of showing you care.
] Buttons and stickers desperately announce the liberal’s
] goodness to the world, as do his or her choice in
] consumer products. Leftist magazines treat protesting as
] a glamour activity, running photos of last month’s demo
] the way society magazines print pictures from the charity
] ball. There is even a brand of cologne called Activist.

[ This is a really good look at some major failings among the liberal left... the more i read and see, the more obvious it is to me just how much the left has fallen down on the job in this country. It's like we'd prefer to be martyrs, the righteous paragons of Truth, tormented by the variform demons of our movement -- the uneducated blue collar, the vicious and sneaky republican, the unjust and unethical Media. We'd prefer to beat our breasts and make a show than to modify our tactics, tone down the righteousness, and convince people to see things our way. Clearly the rebpublicans are good at this -- as this article indicates, they've managed to make the richest, most priviledged people on earth *appear* to be populist, the friendly guy-next-door who has your interests at heart, Mr and Mrs MiddleAmerica. As many liberal commentators have noted recently, it's time to steal that page of the republican book, as much as it may offend our sense of self-righteousness, and begin to reverse course. I don't have the answer, but i'm damn sure gonna keep looking. -k]

The America will vote for Bush

] The Department of State has notified elections
] supervisors that touchscreen ballots don't have to be
] included during manual recounts because there is no
] question about how voters intended to vote.

[ WHAT THE FUCK! Hang on, vision blurring, i think there's a hemorrage in my brain.

What an excellent idea... maybe even a SUPER-EXCELLENT idea: Let's give the NEW systems, already SHOWN to be error prone, if not outright FAULTY, even LESS accountability.

Holy mother of monkeys, if there's another voting fiasco this year, i swear to god there will be rioting in the streets. People are gonna lose it. End of story... minds, lost. Gone.

What a total and complete outrage. Even without the conspiracy theorist inside me thinking about how conveniently this sets up Diebold's promise to deliver a Bush victory, it's an outrage.

Some truly outstanding, unprececedented bullshit right here.

[edit: from the article
] "We're working very hard to educate the voters,
] to build the comfort level and to get rid of
] some of the myths out there," Hood said. "I think
] these things are raised for political purposes
] and distractions. Any effort to undermine that
] public confidence is a tactic that is wrong and
] I believe it weakens our democracy by causing
] voters to doubt if their vote has been counted."

The very instant that citizens start believing everything politicians say without a hint of doubt is the very instant that democracy disappears. Period.

] "Technology is going to continue to develop and
] if we can find ways to improve Florida's
] elections and process with new equipment, then
] we're going to do that," she said.

How about improving Florida's "elections and process" with oversight, transparency and proven technology. And it wouldn't hurt to put some serious pressure on anyone who appears to be engaged in disenfranchising substantial segments of the population.

-k]

Herald.com: Miami & Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Dolphins & More

Elonka wrote:
] I have my own thoughts on the efficacy of the statement, but
] I'll leave it to you to make up your own minds.

[ Unless his *goal* was to get expelled, in order to draw attention to the issue or force his parents into bringing legal action, i'd say the statement was *ineffective*.

Whether it was correct is a more complex question. That high school is an often oppressive environment for certain types of intelligent and progressive students is inarguable. There are millions of stories like this one - thoughtful but impulsive kids whose idealism subjugates their survival instinct. In the grand scheme, the things he did were trivial, but they were also kinda foolish. It seems like by the time he was telling a friend how to circumvent school policy (and facilitating the circumvention via HIS proxy), his two prior infractions should've indicated that the school administrators are not reasonable in this area, which should've invoked a degree of caution.

Is the school being a bit draconian? Hell yeah, and most are. Lots and lots of schools refuse to keep "radical" literature in the library and probably all of them censor their web access. Some, such as this one, it seems, go as far as to limit your ability to read certain things even on your "free" time. Unfortunately, flaunting your refusal to comply does not effect positive results. Alas, at some point, you have to learn to play the game, even if your goal is to change the rules... not something i've been particularly good at accepting, but nonetheless a fact of life.

As Decius wrote, the key is to convince people that you're not a threat, and that you'll be more politic in the future. Idealism must be tempered by perspective. -k]

RE: Statement from Student Expelled for Recommending Web Proxy at School