Briefly noted

Henry Edward Hardy points to a report from Simon Tisdall in the Guardian today,

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

That’s only one Friedman Unit away. All snark aside, it’s not good for American soldiers to be put in this situation, which could rapidly turn into a meat grinder if their supply lines get cut, especially with the British now withdrawing from the south of Iraq. I’d give some credit to the administration if they’d withdraw under the pretense of a surge, but I don’t rate it as being very likely.

Whip smart and sexy too

TBM experiment

Hat-tip Radley Balko.

Rough sketch of Chromosphere

If you don’t know what this is about, see the related post below. This design is published under the Imaginary Public License version 1.0, as described therein.

Artistic help is always welcome.

Related post:

• Musical language project

For GenX, this is Woodstock.

I just cried, listening.

Short warning

Public safety be damned, Lubbock would rather have revenue. Radley Balko has the story.

Democracy in California

Debra Bowen,

“As Secretary of State, I intend to begin a thorough review of all voting systems currently certified for use in the State of California.”

Hat-tip Brad Friedman, and if I haven’t written about the voting machine issue in awhile, BradBlog has remained on top of it and I know they could use your support.

The problem with current voting machines is they are proprietary and inherently untrustworthy. There is a strong political incentive to cheat, so there must be every protection against cheating. The consequences of a stolen election are dire indeed, as most people may realize. This is a matter of not merely life and death for one person, but potentially for the whole world, all of humanity. So if machines are used, they cannot be a black box that “does something” which cannot be audited publicly. No count which is stored in electronic form should ever be trusted if it cannot be checked against paper ballots, and such checks should be performable without cost to a candidate. It should never be the case that democracy is held hostage by the lack of financial resources on the part of outsider candidates to get a fair counting.

I’m pleased that Debra Bowen is doing her job, she is an exceptional human being in politics.

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