Cox Crow

Last night the Sisters spent the night in the same bed. They were bundled in as snug as bugs in a rug. After an initial 15 minutes of paging for water, tucking, and such things, they settled down, and talked until they fell asleep around 21:00. That was quick: only two hours.

Zimran Ahmed remarks on an article in Reason, by Nick Gillespie, that, in response to Pacific Research’s Economic Freedom Index, asserts that the cost of living in New York is a bargain. The way Gillespie puts it, economic freedom is boring. Zimran, on the other hand,

I think it makes more sense to turn the causality around and say that great places to live (New York, San Francisco) can bear the cost of lousy, expensive government because they are great places to live. People will put up with a more annoying and expensive life because the side benefits are worth it. The cities aren’t fun because they have costly, lousy government, instead they have accrued costly, lousy government because their fun makes it bearable.

The town of Carmel has begun a project to straighten an s-curve on Fair Street. This will involve the condemnation of some homes in order to make way for the road. The straightened road will not have the desired effect of making the road safer. The s-curve acts as a natural brake, forcing motorists to slow from 55 mph to a speed at which they can safely negotiate the turn. Straightening will cause motorists to hit the high traffic region of the road, between the Post Office and the High School, at a higher velocity, thus decreasing the relative safety of the roadway. At least one resident there is aware of this:

“This will have a bigger effect on some properties than others, and I’m afraid I’m in the bigger category,” he said of his 100-year-old home at Hill and Dale Road, where a 4-foot shoulder and sidewalk would take a large slice of his yard.

“I hope (the planners) come around and ask us first,” he said. “We could end up having more trouble with people speeding.”

To adjust for the safety decrease related to the straightening, the plan calls for installing turn lanes and stop lights, which will reduce throughput, leading to what is known in the vernacular as “traffic.”

Remarks of James Madison, in the House of Representatives, 8 June 1789.

It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.

That is,

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And, its obverse,

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

When will we see a politician say, “I’m sorry, that’s not within my authority.”

Over the past weekend we migrated the Ameritech.net personal web pages into the consolidated environment, and made changes to the Prodigy Internet pages for same. I’m not entirely satisfied with some of the implementation details, but it works well enough. Are we done yet?

Not yet.

Before Prodigy was prodigy.net it was prodigy.com. We call this Prodigy Classic, and we still have members with URIs in that namespace. So there’s work to be done there.

Later, during a growth spurt, Prodigy acquired Flash.net, a Texan ISP. We still maintain those namespaces in a separate environment, so there’s work there too.

But at least integrating those two environments won’t involve working around rsync‘s limits.

And after that?

When does Starbucks open? They close too early. The coffee at 7-11 isn’t as robust.

We’re in the middle of this, one of the side-effects of which will be this enhancement for Ameritech. We play a very small part in the Big Project. Unfortunately, we ran into differences between the test and production environments, which have caused us to miss our target 0230 finish.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that we have a blog portal and newsreader. Who knew?

The company in September quietly launched a Weblog portal located at www.projectdu.com and known as “Project D.U.” — the initials stand for “Digital Universe.” Surfers are greeted by links to such categories as “music” and “entertainment,” which in turn lead people to about 30 Weblogs, those quirky but burgeoning Web-based diaries of commentary and opinion, also known as blogs. Project D.U. carries a reminder that it is “presented by SBC.”

Also available: an invitation to download a free Weblog reader. The technology involved essentially ships blog content to individual computer users. People who accept the reader aren’t limited to SBC’s blog choices. In fact, they can customize the reader to get any type of downloadable information they might want, says Michael Grasso, SBC’s executive director of consumer marketing.

Sounds like it’s being run a bit like the Gawker media empire, but without all the porn.

c.f. feedster, technorati

Lest you think that electronic voting machines are the only devices subject to outside interference, the losing candidates for trustee of the Village of Brewster think someone prevented their election.

Jeffrey Rollins and John “Jack” Ciesielski lost to the incumbents by more than 100 votes each, including recently counted absentee ballots. But because the two voting machines used in the village were improperly assembled — voters were unable to select an incumbent and a challenger appearing in the same column, they are questioning whether the results would have been different. County election officials maintain that the outcome would have remained the same.

Ha! The Republican Party won’t have to worry about those damned Democratic coastlines much longer.

To all those who voted in the Democratic primaries, and who chose John Kerry because he was “electable,” a big Bronx cheer.

You may want to re-evaluate your decision-making process.

Votes lost in Carteret County, North Carolina.

Thinking about it, there are a number of different places that need to verified.

1. is the vote stored the same as the vote displayed?
2. is the vote printed the same as the vote displayed?
3. is the vote stored the same as the vote printed?
4. do the above match the vote entered?

The voter can verify that the vote printed and displayed match the vote entered, but only a count of both the printed output and the electronically stored vote can confirm that the voter is not being misled. The paper trail is not sufficient to ensure accuracy. Without it, accuracy is impossible.

UPDATE: Bruce Schneier on the problem of voting machines.

Remember in math class, where the teacher insisted that you show your work even though you knew the answer was correct? The problem with not having a paper trail, is that your figures are difficult to check.

John Robb notes the interesting little tidbit from the Asia Times that China has concluded a long-term deal with Iran for delivery of 10 million tons of LNG a year for the next 25 years.

They don’t think small, do they?

Which game are we playing?

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
I know of no reason
the gunpowder Treason
should ever be forgot.

In his acceptance of the Nation’s acclaim, President Bush listed some things he’d like to work on this term.

We’ll continue our economic progress. We’ll reform our outdated tax code. We’ll strengthen the Social Security for the next generation. We’ll make public schools all they can be. And we will uphold our deepest values of family and faith.

The Christian Science Monitor has some analysis on what this might entail.

We can agree on the topics under consideration, but the devil’s in the details.

volokh.blogspot.com != volokh.com. The former is now inhabited by the SEO Reviewer.

to President Bush and the Republican Party for winning a majority.

Polls opened at 0600 EST, and I cast my vote at 0830. Turn-out in Putnam County appears a lot higher than usual.

The Big Sister asked Deena,

Mom, when are you going to vote?

“I’ll probably go later, after you’re asleep.”

But, Mom, we should be with you on this important day.

Tomorrow, as in 2000, a bunch of people will get their knickers in a twist over not having certain results from the exit polls. These impatient fools will whine that the Nation needs closure, that we need to know who won right away.

Well, folks, we don’t.

The votes we’ll cast tomorrow will be counted, perhaps several times over. Then the States will certify their Electors, and the Electors will cast their votes, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The Congress will count the Electoral votes on January 6th. And, then, in the event of a tie, we’ll wait while the House resolves the situation. It’s an extended process.

We should expect instant gratification?

Apple was first to market the personal digital assistant, the Newton in 1993, and was somewhat ahead of its time. After Palm shipped one at the right size and price, the market for handheld general-purpose computers has done fairly well. And other devices, particularly phones, have become general-purpose computers. These general-purpose computers are often sold as special-purpose devices, but since they are general-purpose, their uses are limited only by the imagination.

Take the iPod for example. It’s a music player, right? But soon after its release, users were running Linux on it. And in the iPod’s second iteration, users could sync contact and calendar data with the device. It’s still a music player, but it has a great deal of the functionality of the typical personal digital assistant.

IDC reports that handheld sales are slipping, with only 2.1 million units shipped. Meanwhile, Apple shipped 2,016,000 iPods in the third quarter.

What’s the difference? The one is sold as a small computer; the other, to play my tunes.