i went to connecticut this weekend with skinny and the boy, and while we were out on the lake sunday we saw a pair of bald eagles. first time i've ever seen one - really amazing. one was so close, about 50 feet up in a tree eating a fish. beatiful birds. sorry alex, no photos.

hours of fun for tom and bill.

Fine whine

In retrospect, it seems that Parker was doing to wine what Bill James was doing to baseball in the same years, and in the same way. Both Parker and James began, in the late seventies, as unknown amateurs with privately printed newsletters, rapidly found a hungry and enthusiastic audience, and by the mid-eighties had become the reigning authorities among people impatient with the old wisdoms.

fmu audio link to F911 - right now

I know I'm a broken record, but I can't help it. We're screwed. Check out this new BlackBoxVoting.org report on the massive security hole in Diebold's GEMS central tabulator system. This isn't the touch screen voting machines - which have their own problems - these are the machines that total the statewide votes collected from each precinct. The Diebold GEMS central tabulator is responsible for tabulating 50% of the votes in this country.

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.

But this couldn't be the case, right? I mean, the guys at Diebold couldn't be outright criminals, right?

Black Box Voting has traced the implementation of the double set of books to Oct. 13, 2000, shortly after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became the senior programmer.....

Black Box Voting Associate Director Andy Stephenson has obtained the court and police records of Jeffrey Dean. It is clear that he was under severe financial stress, because the King County prosecutor was chasing him for over $500,000 in restitution.

During this time, while Jeffrey Dean was telling the prosecutor (who operated from the ninth floor of the King County Courthouse) that he was unemployed, he was in fact employed, with 24-hour access to the King County GEMS central tabulator -- and he was working on GEMS on the fifth floor of the King County Courthouse....

Jeffrey Dean, according to his own admissions, is subject to blackmail as well as financial pressure over his restitution obligation. Police records from his embezzlement arrest, which involved "sophisticated" manipulation of computer accounting records, report that Dean claimed he was embezzling in order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died.

So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer over the GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that the whole thing runs on a Microsoft Access database. (Hello?)

But okay, maybe this is wrong. Maybe Jeffrey Dean is a swell guy whose main desire in life is for a fair election. The problem is that whether or not fraud actually takes place, there is clearly going to be enough suspicion of fraud that the results of the election will not be trusted. But there won't be a paper trail (at least from all the touch screen machines,) so a full recount will not be possible, and we'll have to let the courts decide. Again.

black box voting

artists for act (against bush)

are those of us who live in Virginia planning to vote?

Joester says the comments on my page are loading slowly. Does anyone else experience this?

100 Critical Mass riders got busted during an unusually large pre-Convention ride. That's the group I rode with (with Joester and Kristin) on New Year's Eve.

New route map for United For Peace & Justice march on Sunday. The City at the 11th hour allowed the march to go past the Garden, turn right at 34th, and march down 5th to Union Square. Not Central Park exactly but that's a pretty substantial parade route.

"Caution: Angry Artists at Work"
(Thank you Roberta Smith)

soft radio from EE Times

fmu's rnc remix



"Tune in to Public Television's live coverage of the convention (on WNET Thirteen in NYC) and turn down the audio - the RNC stream will provide the alternative soundtrack to speeches by Mayor Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. With accompaniement of the dozens of 9/11 tribute CDs submitted to WFMU."

hey selma, anthems too :

"transpacific Sound Paradise unilaterally imposes a ban on all music except: Songs from around the world that are in some way associated with politics. These will include but may not be limited to: Anthems, political party songs, songs advocating policy, songs praising or lambasting political figures, and songs about famous political events or associated with political events or movements."

71 Clinton keeps it's 2 stars:

It has evolved since then, when William Grimes gave it two stars in The New York Times, and so has its setting. In that prettified picture, 71 Clinton now stands as a testament to how much a trailblazing restaurant can do for a neighborhood — and to a restaurant's ability to please and prosper on the far side of the initial hype.

tarrantino starts blog, or not.

Michael Brenson is coming out with a new book (September 2004). Table of content is here. I thought it might be relevant to some recent postings by tom moody and sally mckay (issues in criticism of voice, audience etc). But apologies if you have already posted(?).

all chaplin day on tcm

defense leaders faulted by panel in prison abuse

Barr the door.

scream and scream again

swiftboat accounts incomplete

munchs scream stolen again

seems appropriate that lizzie grubman would be representing fatburger on the east coast. first stop, jersey city.

famous curves index [via von bark]