Sunday, November 07, 2004

JEFFERSON. "A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. "It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. "If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have atience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter of 1798, after the passage of the Sedition Act. [Gibson Blog] Smart fellow, that Tom. 8:51:55 PM    comment []

Iran Jails More Journalists and Blocks Web Sites. Iran has moved against pro-democracy Web sites, blocking hundreds of sites in recent months and making several arrests. By By NAZILA FATHI. [NYT > Technology] 8:44:55 PM    comment []

Massive Vote Fraud?. This article makes the case that there was substantial vote fraud in Florida, benefitting (needless to say) the Republicans.  (Thanks to Ben Love for the pointer.)  Here is the crux of the argument: "While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies. "In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. "In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush. "The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush." What is not clear is what percentage of the voters in these counties were registered with either party.  If, for example, most registered voters in these counties were independents, then the results may be less incredible.  If anyone has more information, or knows of other analyses of this data, please let me know. UPDATE:  And voting irregularities in Ohio too, according to this article.  (Thanks to Bill Edmundson for the pointer.)  It would be nice to believe that a majority of American voters did not, in fact, support Bush & co.  It would be even nicer if Bush were not likely to be sworn in for a new term come January.  But perhaps we need to face up to the country we're living in; as Katha Pollitt sharply puts it: "Maybe this time the voters chose what they actually want: Nationalism, pre-emptive [actually, "preventive"] war, order not justice, 'safety' through torture, backlash against women and gays, a gulf between haves and have-nots, government largesse for their churches and a my-way-or-the-highway President. Where, I wonder, does that leave us?" [Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates] 8:43:32 PM    comment []

Oliver Byrne's edition of Euclid. I just came across this gem of a site, Oliver Byrne's edition of Euclid... From the site's introduction: 'An unusual and attractive edition of Euclid was published in 1847 in England, edited by an otherwise unknown mathematician named Oliver Byrne. It covers the first 6 books of Euclid, which range through most of elementary plane geometry and the theory of... [GalaxyGoo Blog] 2:34:41 PM    comment []

Bartle: We're d00med by n00bs!. In a provocative new paper, Richard Bartle argues that game development is constrained in large part by the need to make games newbie friendly.... [The Second Life Herald] 2:34:41 PM    comment []

BTD SUNDAY COMICS. BTD would like to congratulate Dave Johnson for successfully obtaining a syndication deal from Universal Press. Thanks to all the BTD readers who took the time to vote for Dog Complex over at the Comics Sherpa. Unfortunately, this probably means... [Begging To Differ] 2:33:18 PM    comment []

The Flu Hunters. What keeps these scientists up at night is the idea that global politics may prevent them from knowing until it's too late that a flu pandemic is brewing. By By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS. [NYT > Science] 2:33:09 PM    comment []

Barlow on Magnanimous Defeat, that it sucks, may suck for awhile, would really suck if sometime in late 2012, as the Mayans seem to think, time and space collapse and everything sucks everything into everything else, and on stages of grief, and on a conversation with a Middle American: It became obvious right away that we were not in substantial disagreement over many policies. Dale was hoping that Bush in his second term would push for reduced dependence on oil and would come around on the environment. He wasn't crazy about the war. Our differences were over culture and style. Dale doesn't like Europe, though he's never been there. He's met Europeans and he resents their supercilious attitude towards us. He figures it for jealousy. "America," he said, "is like the captain of the football team, the most popular kid in school." He was describing his recent self, I expect. "The Europeans are like the chess club and they resent this guy cause he's the one who gets all the girls, even though he's not an intellectual like they are." I eyed him carefully, while secretly inspecting myself for similar resentments. It was lucky for both of us that he doesn't actually get all the girls. "Really," he said, "it's about character. It's about morality." "Wait," I said, "What about the morality of killing a hundred thousand Iraqis for no good reason?" "Saddam was killing them too." I doubted that even Saddam has ever killed as many Iraqis in a year and a half as we've just polished off, but I let that pass. "Besides, when Bush attacked, he thought he had a good reason. I can't believe he didn't think America was in danger." I could, but I let that pass too. This young man had been trained to respect authority just as surely as I had learned to suspect it. Whatever our agreements, we would always be separate in that regard. It was something that had grown into him in his lower middle class Christian home in central Illinois, along with a good pitching arm, in the same way that Bohemianism had taken root in me during the 60's. Morality and character are words that have subtly different meanings to each of us. And a lot of the divide has to do with the degree to which we are willing to admit the feminine into our natures. I think he suspects I'm a little too sensitive. It's less about character and morality than it is about masculinity. We have different notions about what it is to be a man, and they are important to us. But they don't necessarily make a bad fella out of either one of us. We both represent aspects of the American psyche that need each other, the jock and the intellectual, the Boy Scout and the renegade, the guardian and the wild card. We both love this great and terrible country, even as we fear one another's excessive influence on it, and part of what we love is the creative fever that arises from our division. As we need each other, however unwillingly, so America needs us both. Perhaps it's just the bargaining phase of grief, but I can see that one of the things I must do to feel less a stranger in my own... [BarlowFriendz] 2:28:49 PM    comment []

From BoingBoing: Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan, an Iranian-born blogger who lives in Canada, says: U.S. election aside, hot topic of the last couple of weeks in Persian blogosphere has been a blog called "Islamic Army" in which its anonymous author has threaten a big list of Iranian blogger for their "insults" to Allah, Prophet Mohammad and other Shia Imams. The blog was first being hosted on Persianblog, but they shut it down after a while, probably due to complains. Now they've moved to BlogSpot and have made another blog with the same name with a more precise content to backup their claims. They now have picked particular posts from my Persian blog, in which they think I've insulted the God, and other sacred concepts of Islam and therefore, quoting from a Quranic verse, I deserve to be killed. On their links section there isa link to another persian blog called "Islamic resistance" in which the author, Amir, has written in detail about weapons used by Iraqi insurgence, Iranian airforce, and other things with a theme of military resistane. There is also a link to the official website of "Doctrinal Analysis Center for Securtiy without Borders" which is run by Hassan Abbasi, a controversial Revolutionary Guard (former, maybe) official who advises pre-emptive action by Iran to US and Israili interests, who happens to be Michael Ledeen's favorite Iranian strategist of terror. I never took them seriously before, but this time I'm a bit concerned, because they seem to be a different group who have possibly liked the original blog and have tried to adopt their message and to prepare enough evidence for the original claims, at least about me. (Although I'm the first place in their the original list, there are many other names.) Link 2:21:44 PM    comment []