Election response #3
From Dave Winer:
“Arrived in Palo Alto. Listened to Kerry’s concession speech about a dozen times on the radio. It was great. Next time, be careful about nominating a guy who gives a great concession speech. The best concession speech is an overdose of sleeping pills, or a self-inflicted bullet wound in the head. You want a guy who can’t conceive of losing. The Democrats have had too many great losers. I want a great winner in 2008.”
Election response #2
Pete pointed me at a moody, guitar-backed song, “Look at Miss Ohio” by Gillian Welch. Opening lyrics read:
Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-running around with her rag-top down
She says I wanna do right but not right now
Gonna drive to Atlanta and live out this fantasy
Running around with the rag-top down
Yeah I wanna do right but not right now
It’s over, let it go
This is the headling on the best comment on the election result, so far — from Larry Lessig’s Blog:
“Wrong, wrong, yet again, I was, we are, wrong. I was on an airplane last night, from SFO to London, so at least I didn’t suffer the minute by minute awfulness of this result. But it’s 5am PST, and we should remember some principles: When Bush ‘lost’ in 2000, we said it was because (1) he had lost the popular vote, and (2) he had short circuited the count in one state to win in the College.
Bush has won the popular vote. And it would take a freak of nature to imagine the 220,000 provisional ballots would fall strongly enough to shift Ohio. He will win the College. He is our President — legitimately, and credibly.
Our criticism of this administration must now focus narrowly and sharply: on the policies, not on the credibility of the man.”
The best US election site…
… is Electoral-Vote.com. The big surprise is that it is the creation of one man — Andrew Tanenbaum. Who he? Well, in geekdom, he’s a real celeb — an expert on operating systems who created Minix, a miniature Unix-like OS developed for teaching purposes. Why is that interesting? Well, Minix was the catalyst which stimulated Linus Torvalds to embark on the creation of Linux. The story has often been told — e.g. here. I had no idea Andrew was interested in politics. His site is terrific. Wish I’d known about it earlier.
Bush photoshopped
This from Salon. Photoshop is usually used to conceal things (like wrinkles). But it can also be revealing.
Bin Laden losing his marbles?
According to the Washington Times, “the complete transcript of Osama bin Laden’s most recent videotape reveals his intention to attempt to bankrupt the United States”. Hmmm… he’ll have to hurry if he’s going to beat Bill Gates to it.
Forebodings…
If the US election turns out to be as close as the polls predict, then there’s really serious trouble ahead because the e-voting technology used in many states is riddled with flaws and security vulnerabilities. See this Blog by e-voting specialists if you’d like chapter and verse. And of course in many cases, the technology makes it impossible to have a recount or even an independent audit because the machines don’t provide a paper trail.
The Prius of progress
One of the nice discoveries since buying a Toyota Prius last July is that my fuel bills have gone down dramatically (by over 40 per cent) at a time when petrol costs have been going up.
Now I discover (from the Daily Telegraph, no less) that I may have another pleasant surprise in store. The personal tax and NIC incurred in running my previous company car (a Saab) came to over £5,000 a year. The bill for the Prius looks like being closer to £1,600. There must be a catch here somewhere. The Telegraph also reveals that the late lamented John Peel was a Prius owner.
My colleague Dale (who drives a Prius) has a theory that there is a correlation between using Apple Macs and owning a Toyota hybrid. A better way of looking at it might be that the Prius is the iMac of the automobile world — tiny market share, but smug and satisfied owners!
Sparklines
Edward Tufte, who has written a series of lovely books about presenting graphical information (and an elegant pamphlet on The Congnitive Style of Powerpoint), has come up with another neat idea: sparklines — data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphic images. Like this (conveying information about glucose levels).
The New Yorker‘s view
Terrific long editorial outlining the case for voting Dubya out. Nice contrast with the tired cynicism of the Economist. Quote:
“The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.”