tingilinde

paying to cage children

The Trump administration needed money to pay for the detention of children, so they had money transferred between agencies.  This is legal if you get the people responsible for the appropriations to sign off if the amount exceeds five million dollars.  With a Republican controlled Congress it was no big deal to transfer $10 million from FEMA at the start of hurricane season to ICE to help cover detention expenses.

 

fellow travelers

Sherriffs who applaud Trump's attacks on the press have had some issues of their own.

 

hurricane florence form the international space station

September 10^th

in the shadow of a giant

Malaysian and Chinese interests are at odds within Malaysia

nothing new ..  just another chapter in the ongoing story of imperialism

a tip of the hat to Bjarne

 

voting recommendations

White hat and security guru Steve Bellovin on The National Academies report the Future of Voting.

snip

...

but a few of the recommendations are worth highlighting:

° Protect voter registration databases and electronic poll books
° Votes should be cast only by human-readable paper ballots, though machine-marking is acceptable.
° Recounts should be done by human inspection of these ballots
° Risk-limiting audits should be implemented as soon as possible, in all jurisdictions

Implicit in all of this: voting is a systems problem. The registration systems, the pollbooks, the actual ballot-casting and tallying, the workers, the vendors, and more are all part of the system. This means that all of these areas need to be addressed. I'm glad the committee recognized this.
Also: though it isn't a major part of the report, the committee did briefly address those who suggest that the blockchain should be employed to secure elections. Again, they were unambiguous:

While the notion of using a blockchain as an immutable ballot box may seem promising, blockchain technology does little to solve the fundamental security issues of elections, and indeed, blockchains introduce additional security vulnerabilities.

...

 

a more balanced supreme court

A change.org petition for a more balanced Supreme Court.

Short term change won't happen, but it's important to get people thinking about the possibilities as there may be great opportunities in a few years.

 

 

 

parametric fun

(from a Mathematica mailing list.)

 

The parametric equation below gives this Totoro-like curve:-)

 

(click for the full equation..  it was presented as an image so I wasn't able to verify it by plugging it into Mathematica:-)

 

 

seen today

 

 

the country is changing

Nike knows it.  The NFL and Republicans are in denial.

 

 

 

 

o see can you say

A fascinating episode of WNYC's On The Media..  lots of interesting points on freedom of speech in the First Amendment ..  It never became important until after 1925 and that was largely from the labor movement with the ACLU spearheading the effort.  I knew that, but I didn't realize why the American Bar Association - a pro business right wing property rights organization at the time - ended up supporting freedom of speech.  (50 minutes audio)