atoms into suns

Yay Red Sox

Why couldn't you have been good when I lived in Boston? I suppose I should be thankful for the fact that you won every game I went to see, except when you played the Twins, but since I'm from North Dakota, where everyone cheers for the Twins, that's okay. You taught me that seeing a baseball game live is far cooler than watching one on TV and that Fenway Park is the best place on the planet to watch a baseball game. And I never paid more than $14 to do it (nine years ago). Now, if you could explain to me why anyone would pay $14,000 for one baseball game, I'd appreciate it.

Politics

It's probably a good thing that I took a break from posting in the month before the election. I found myself getting very caught up in politics. This is a) something I've never done before -- I normally avoid politics because I find it pointless, obnoxious, and frustrating; b) maddening due to its inherent divisiveness; and c) specifically forbidden in the Baha'i Faith. The overriding theme in the Baha'i Faith is unity -- the recognition that God created us all equal -- and politics as practiced today is divisive and contentious and therefore against the teachings of the Faith. This doesn't mean we're supposed to ignore politics. We're expected to vote for the best candidate for the office, regardless of party.

I found it rather stunning just how divisive it got; even our food choices were politicized. (You want Heinz ketchup on those freedom fries?) I'm glad it's all over, and even more glad that there weren't challenges that would cause the result to be dragged out even longer than last time.

GIMP

See that picture in the previous post? I cropped that all by myself, using The GIMP. I'm quite proud of myself, since my previous attempts at using gimp have resulted in stupendously horrendous results. And lest you think I'm simply technically incompetent, I present my proudest geekly achievement: Learning LaTeX and vi simultaneously in roughly a 24-hour period in order to post Polymer Physics problem set solutions online. Gimp just hates me.

Where'd Everybody Go?

In the space of a few weeks, several of the blogs on my sidebar have shut down or disappeared.

John Wiegley has quit blogging since a high school student plagiarized one of his entries, which led to him being accused of plagiarizing her paper. I'm too annoyed to even comment.

Sina Mossayeb's blog has disappeared.

HijabMan is still around, but has put out the (mostly-)blank white facade while undergoing a major renovation.

And most surprising and troubling of all, Laura has put up a "Closed" sign. I really hope this is only temporary, since her blog has become one of my favorites (and I'm not just saying that because she linked to the big news in my last post). Some of her posts in the past month or two have really gotten me thinking, even keeping me up at night. She has a way of writing simple posts that act as Pop Rocks in my brain, causing flashes here and there, leading to little epiphanies... and big ones. If you're really done, Laura, I figure you have a really good reason, but know that you'll be missed. I hope you come back soon.

Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.

This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.

--from blackboxvoting.org

That's right, a private corporation, the largest supplier of electronic touch-screen voting machines in the US, has a backdoor that lets people change the vote count. Of course, with touchscreen machines there is usually no paper trail, no auditability, no chance of a recount.

This from a company whose CEO has been buddying up to Republican bigwigs and is quoted as saying he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

There have been other issues with Diebold machines. In one election, someone was able to find election results from touch-screen machines, on the Diebold computer system -- for an election in which the polls were still open. She could have easily changed the results and no one would have known. And why did Diebold have the current, running, election results on their own FTP site?

California and other places are worried enough about all this that they've banned touch-screen machines and have suggested criminal prosecution of Diebold Election Systems. This was after Diebold machines turned away thousands of eligible voters on Super Tuesday. The Wikipedia has a list of more voting fiascos, and blackboxvoting.org is a good source of current info on electronic voting.

In addition to the whole electronic voting disaster, there is the old question of the Florida 2000 election. Those still angry about what happened there are frequently told to "get over it." But there are aspects beyond hanging chads that many people aren't aware of.

Did you know Florida's voter rolls were purged (bullet point starting with "57,746 voters were listed") of tens of thousands of eligible voters before the 2000 election -- mostly Democrat minorities? (Their names were similar to those of convicted felons who did not have voting rights.) They almost did a similar thing this year, but their list was found to be so flawed -- and people made enough noise -- that they scrapped it.

There is also the small matter of Katherine Harris, who in 2000 was simultaneously the Florida Secretary of State, Election Commissioner, head of Bush's campaign in Florida -- and responsible for the voter list purges.

If you can stomach it, I highly recommend this handy Flash presentation of the Florida 2000 voter roll purge. It's not exactly impartial, but as far as I've researched it's all accurate.

I wrote most of this (minus the opening quote, which just came to my attention last night, and one paragraph) in response to someone who told me she was embarrassed that the US is going to have international election monitors this November. I told her that if election monitors are what it takes to make sure we have a fair election, in the country that touts itself as the Guardian of Democracy, we should be embarrassed. Then maybe, hopefully, it'll get fixed.

An Angolan friend of mine remarked: "One candidate loses the popular vote by over 500,000 ballots, but his brother is governor of the one state where the outcome is too close to call. The effort to count the ballots is disrupted by the Washington staffs of elected representatives from the candidate's party, and the court that ultimately adjudicates the outcome is made up largely by people appointed by the candidate's father. Sounds a lot like an election in Africa."

     --Joseph Wilson, _The Politics of Truth_, page 281
     (Joseph Wilson is the husband of Valerie Plame)