Voting: just do what Minnesota does

Schneier gives a good rundowns of the ongoing electronic ongoing electronic voting machine debacles. Then he reveals his residence in my home state:

...In Minnesota, we use paper ballots counted by optical scanners, and we have some of the most well-run elections in the country. To anyone reading this who needs to buy new election equipment, this is what to buy...

I've heard only five states use optical scanners. Must be an IQ thing. When Caltech and MIT joined up (rare event) to review the Gore/Bush voting debacle, they concluded optical scanning was by far the best choice. Every review I've read since has come to the same conclusion. Come on guys, let the frozen north lead the way ...

The gravest threat we know of ...

Years ago, the Economist pointed out that based on risk assessment asteroid impact warranted as much attention as airplane crashes. That was then ...

Did an Asteroid Impact Cause an Ancient Tsunami? - New York Times

... Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described “band of misfits” that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world’s shorelines and in the deep ocean.

Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to one million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.

If the hypothesis is accepted, then the risk to life of a meteor impact will have increased about 500 fold. That would move it very high up the risk index, perhaps above thermonuclear war.

If that happens, and if humans were logical creatures, we would put a significant share of the world's GDP to surveilance and diversion research. Alas, humans are far from logical ...

PS. The 2807 BC rock landed on, of course, Atlantis. :-)

Neandertal is us: the meaning of species

We all know how confusing the terms race and ethnicity are. It turns out that things are equally messy when one tries to define was a species is.

John Hawks sifts the narrative, and basically decides that species is a semi-useful term that can be largely ignored -- particularly in the fossil records. His read is that Neandertals are probably members of the same species as us, but that the distinction is pedantic and misleading. He does strongly feel that our genome contains evidence of Neandertal descent, but that the discussion is missing the point (emphases mine):

... I think that evidence of introgression reinforces the hypothesis that modern humans emerged in an adaptive context, making use of adaptive variation from a widespread (possibly pan-Old-World) population of archaic Homo. It's one of the two main patterns in the evolution of modern humans.

We're all waiting to learn what the other pattern is, Hawks won't tell us yet. The fundamental shift is to stop thinking of Neadertals mating with "us", and to instead think of modern humans as something that evolved from a large number of "archaic Homo" populations. We are Neandertal, but we are also one of many old populations.

When the cliche is real: falling on the grenade

It's an old cliche. Falling on the grenade. I assume there isn't time to think. Cpl Jason Dunham has been awarded the medal of honor.

The uncelebration: blinking in the light

Krugman feels (mostly) relieved, not giddy. Tom Tomorrow writes:

... It’s as if the biopsy results just came back and you don’t have cancer after all. You’re not giddy, exactly, but you can finally take a deep breath and maybe let some of the tension drain out of your shoulders...

...It’s time to have grownup conversations now. It goes without saying that the Democrats will to disappoint us, one way or another. So what? The test results came back, and it’s not terminal. We got a little breathing room, and isn’t that all you can really ever hope for in life?

I'm not hearing any Dem trash talk or braggadacio. My fellow commies aren't cackling with glea. We've been living in the shadow of Mordor for years, but now the smog is lifting. We find we're at the bottom of a deep pit surrounded by lions, tigers, and hyenas, but at least we've stopped sinking. The hard slog back may begin.

Conde Nast: An unusual spammer

CondeNast Publications puts out Gourmet, Wired, and many other periodicals. They are also a major league spam generator. This is rare with big vendors, SONY is the only other example that comes to mind. (SONY stopped spamming sometime around their rootkit fiasco, but even so no self-respecting geek will buy from SONY.)

Gourmet has been bad forever -- clicking on the 'remove me' link never did anything. Subscription solicitations kept rolling in. I blacklisted gourmet.com. That worked for a while, but now the spam is coming from gourmet@email.condenast.us. Recently, they started doing the same thing with Wired.

I guess it works for them, but it's really weird to have Wired be owned by a major spam producer. I get it for free somehow, but even if I really liked Wired I wouldn't pay for it. Their owner is too disreputable.

I've added condenast.us to my blacklist, so that should do it for now -- until they come up with a new email address.

Thank you, Howard Dean

Many democrats have been praised in the past few days, but perhaps the most important one has not been mentioned at all. Until now ...

Howard Dean, vindicated | Salon.com

...Despite all the complaints and demands directed at him over the past 18 months, Dean stuck to his principles. He and his supporters in the netroots movement believed that their party needed to rebuild from the ground up in every state, including many where the party existed in name only. These Democrats prefer to think of their party as one of inclusion and unity. They openly disdain the divisive strategies of the Republicans who have so often used racial, regional and cultural differences to polarize voters.

And they believe that relying on opportunistic attempts to grab a few selected states or districts as usual -- rather than establishing a real presence across the country -- conceded a permanent structural advantage to the Republicans that would only grow more durable with each election cycle.

Breaking that advantage would be costly and difficult, as Dean well realized, but it had to be done someday, or the Democrats would fulfill Karl Rove's dream of becoming a permanent minority party -- or fading away altogether. Against the counsel of party professionals, whose long losing streak has done little to diminish their influence, the new chairman began the process of re-creating the Democratic Party in 2005. And contrary to the gossip and subsequent press reports, he succeeded in raising $51 million last year, about 20 percent more than in 2003 and a party record for an off year...

Humanity owes a debt to Howard Dean.

Election 2006: how pathetic are American newspapers?

Every newspaper in the nation and state is full of the same news, but to find out that my home state passed a silly constitutional amendment I have to personally track down the results on the Secretary of State web sitee. A friend may complain about the absurd lack of coverage of the Ohio voting machine debacle, but this is what I'll remember.

Journalism is really in crisis. We desperately need journalists, so I hope they come up with a new business model. Heck, if the Dems can win the Senate, anything can happen.

Are we neandertal?

John Hawks has numerous posts on a recent paper suggesting that a key gene regulating human brain development might have originated in neandertals living in what is now europe. John Hawks Anthropology Weblog : 2006 11 is one example.

Hawks says to expect quite a bit of Neandertal news this week. I think most laypersons, like myself, had come to believe there was no sapiens-neandertal interbreeding. Surprises indeed.

I'll be reading Hawks' blog closely this week.

Can it be?

I still do not believe the senate will go Democrat. That is so far outside the envelope of the possible. Could I have been that wrong in my pre-election expecations?

On the other hand, I was right about the October surprise. Sure, it wasn't Bush with an executive order impacting Roe v. Wade, but surely Mark Foley was a surprise? What, that doesn't count?

DeLong has pointed out that the Dems appear to have won by an enormous percentage of the popular vote (by modern standards). Now Bob Harris puts the results in a different context:

This Modern World: An historic blow-out

An historic blow-out

The good guys’ win is even more one-sided than it looks at first glance.

If the numbers stay as they are, here’s the final scoreboard, assuming I haven’t missed something:

• Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the Senate.
• Not one Democratic incumbent lost in the House of Representatives.
• Not one Democratic incumbent lost in any state Governorship.

All told, 504 major offices were at stake tonight.

Not one changed hands going Democrat to Republican.

I’ve looked, and while several past elections saw a greater number of seats changing hands, I can’t find a more one-sided repudiation of a ruling party in U.S. history. (Although I fully expect someone out there reading this will, about five seconds after I hit the “publish” button.)

I still think something will happen to take the Senate away. In fact, even to have written this has probably ensured that the GOP will pull out an upset in Virginia ...

It is too early to say that bleeding has stopped. Wait, Rumsfeld is gone?! Next you'll tell me Bush voted Democrat ...

Update 11/8: Still don't believe it ...

Udell recommends: Seminars on Longterm Thinking

Jon Udell likes the SALT talks. Sigh. Between 'In Our Time' and all the management podcasts Andrew wants me to listen to, not to mention all my audio CME, I need a way to fork my audio inputs. Poor NPR, it's being crushed. I hardly ever listen to the radio any more.

Something good: the Ramsey County Precinct Finder

I doubt I'll be happy with the election results (the Senate will stay Republican), but despite the grim political landscape there is a bright spot. I am very impressed with my home county's Ramsey County Elections Precinct Finder. All in one spot - sample ballot, the number of my city council representative, county commissioner, etc.

Now if I can only figure out who the soil and water commissioners are (no way should this be an elected office ...). I guess I'll vote for the ones who can put together a plausible web site.

Also, how the heck did a constitutional amendment to build highways get on the ballot? A constitutional amendment?!! This state is going downhill ...

Update: I found my instructions from the Kremli.... errr the DFL. Renstorf and Carlile for Soil and Water. There, that was easy ...

Judges are more problematic (another post that probably should not be elected), but this MN Bar Association plebiscite is very helpful.

I do have to vote for the school levy. A Republican governor means that public schools are increasingly funded through local taxes (aka, them that has gets), a criminal practice that, in a decent world, would be grounds for public pillory.

Amazon: ominous problems

I was one of Amazon's earliest customers -- back when they gave out coffee mugs to every customer. I've tracked their ups and downs, including when their customer service was in the basement (now it's excellent). I can smell when they're in trouble.

They're in trouble.

They're increasingly trying to be a broker for other vendors, a kind of meta-catalog. This gets them out of the nasty business of stocking inventory and managing customers and lets them cover the entire net. That would be fine - if there were a search option to limit all views and searches to only items Amazon stocks and distributes. There isn't.

Nowadays, when I search for things there, I'm weeding through junk from no-name vendors. I might as well be on eBay.

I don't have the time to mess with no-name vendors. I want a vendor I trust. I trust Amazon, I don't trust these guys. I don't want to deal with all the oddball shipping charges.

Amazon is making a bad strategic move. They need to pull out of this dive before then make ground contact.

Yellow Dog III: The Economist says "throw the bums out"

Shortly I diss the deteriorating Economist, I find they show signs of lingering intelligence. Like the NYTs they announce a blanket pox on the GOP:

Down with the Republicans | Democracy in America | Economist.com

... The Economist’s advice for the mid-term elections is this: throw the Republicans out. The Democrats may be “incoherent”, it says, but they can scarcely do worse than the Republicans have done already. A few “independent-minded” Republicans deserve to keep their seats, it says, but in general, “sometimes ruling parties become so addled and incompetent that they need to be punished”.

Yellow Dog II: The NYT has no GOP endorsements

It's like I wrote yesterday, the Yellow Dog is barking (emphases mine):

The Difference Two Years Made - New York Times

On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

That is why things are different this year.

To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House — and for the most part, the Senate — during President Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on the basics. Its tax-cutting-above-all-else has wrecked the budget, hobbled the middle class and endangered the long-term economy. It has refused to face up to global warming and done pathetically little about the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republican leaders, particularly in the House, have developed toxic symptoms of an overconfident majority that has been too long in power. They methodically shut the opposition — and even the more moderate members of their own party — out of any role in the legislative process. Their only mission seems to be self-perpetuation.

The current Republican majority managed to achieve that burned-out, brain-dead status in record time, and with a shocking disregard for the most minimal ethical standards. It was bad enough that a party that used to believe in fiscal austerity blew billions on pork-barrel projects. It is worse that many of the most expensive boondoggles were not even directed at their constituents, but at lobbyists who financed their campaigns and high-end lifestyles.

That was already the situation in 2004, and even then this page endorsed Republicans who had shown a high commitment to ethics reform and a willingness to buck their party on important issues like the environment, civil liberties and women’s rights.

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution. But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.

An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even though many of them were clearly sent there in error.

In the Senate, the path for this bill was cleared by a handful of Republicans who used their personal prestige and reputation for moderation to paper over the fact that the bill violates the Constitution in fundamental ways. Having acquiesced in the president’s campaign to dilute their own authority, lawmakers used this bill to further Mr. Bush’s goal of stripping the powers of the only remaining independent branch, the judiciary.

This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.