Handcrafted Burgers

Another in the long list of annoying advertising slogans is Ruby Tuesday’s claim that they make “handcrafted burgers”. Now, I have no doubt that this is a true statement, but of course, they’d like you to believe that those other restaurants don’t make their burgers by hand, or if those other places do make their burgers by hand, they’re still not “handcrafted”. Utter nonsense!

Work Begins on Arctic Seed Vault

BBC:

Norway is starting construction on a “doomsday vault” in the Arctic which is designed to house all known varieties of the world’s crops. Dug into a frozen mountainside on the island of Svalbard, it is hoped the project will safeguard crop diversity in the event of a global catastrophe. More than 100 countries have backed the vault, which will store seeds, packaged in foil, at sub-zero temperatures.
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Fenced in and guarded, with steel airlock doors, motion detectors and polar bears roaming outside — the concrete facility will, its backers say, be the most secure building of its type in the world.
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The vault’s purpose is to ensure survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change; and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

Smelly Man Kicked Off Flight

Man sues for damages.

Noah’s Ark Found — Again!

Ed Brayton examines the story that Noah’s Ark was found in Iran, and finds the story suspiciously lacking in any basic knowledge of geology, and the team that found it suspiciouly lacking in relevant credentials. Somehow, I am not surprised.

Help Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus (Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30–33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water. (via)

Do-It-Yourself Bush Impeachment

Do-It-Yourself Bush Impeachment

This appears to be a serious method by which private individuals can initiate impeachment procedings, based upon the rules of United States House of Representatives. Can it work? It couldn’t hurt!

Don’t Trust Electronic Voting, Part 2

BradBlog points us to a situation in Arkansas, where eight counties have refused to use electronic voting equipment.

Here’s they key piece of information: “Pulaski County Elections Director Susan Inman said that county decided not to use the machines after reviewing the programming code from voting machine vendor Election Systems & Software and discovering errors. ‘In its entirety, it was wrong,’ Inman said.”

Since electronic voting is not a new idea, you would think by now a software vendor could get it right. But, apparently the code wasn’t even close to being correct. Perhaps other states and legislators will take notice.

Don’t Trust Electronic Voting

How many more reasons do we need to get rid of electronic voting, or at least mandate paper trails? In a recent Iowa election (via), the computer counted the absentee ballots so badly, compared to a manual count of those same ballots, that the election commissioners decided to stop using the computer count in all races. Read it for yourself — the computer counted 99 votes for the challenger and 79 for the incumbent, while a hand count found the incumbent had 153 while the challenger had 25.

The Brad Blog also casts doubt on the recent California election.

To be clear, at this hour, we have no evidence to show that Democrat Francine Busby — running in yesterday’s special run-off election in San Diego against Republican Brian Bilbray to replace the disgraced Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham for the U.S. House (CA-50) race — actually won it.

Neither do we have evidence to believe that Bilbray actually won it.

We do, however, have copious and documented evidence to suggest there is no reason in the world to have any faith that Bilbray won the race.

Brad Blog also points out that the voting machines were sent home with all volunteer election workers the night before the election — after the memory cards used in those machines were found to have been extremely vulnerable to tampering.

Georgia10 discusses her feelings about the current state of voting in America. I agree heartily:

At what point do we take a nonpartisan step back, survey the mangled landscape before us littered with butterfly ballots and pregnant chads and glitching computer machines and say that this is not — should not — be part of the democratic process of our nation?

This isn’t just about unsecure voting machines, which seem to dominate any discussion about election reform. It’s about requiring a photo ID to vote. It’s about voting machine shortages, whether they exist intentionally or because of incompetence. It’s about limiting the availability of absentee ballots. It’s about requiring that voting papers be filed only on 80 lb paper. It’s about purging names from voter rolls without notice. It’s about allowing partisans to control what is supposed to be a nonpartisan election process.

At some point, the right to vote morphs into a privilege to vote, granted to those lucky enough to live in a county with enough machines, or lucky enough to live in a state that seeks to enhance, rather than suppress voter turnout. It’s a privilege that can be exercised only by those citizens who can afford to take a whole day off of work to sit in a line until midnight in Ohio, or by those who can afford to pay the fee for a state ID, or by those who are fortunate enough to even know of these requirements.

Skeptic's Circle #36

Some fine examples of logical arguments over at the 36th Skeptic’s Circle, hosted by Dr. Charles.

Start Wearing Purple

Three weekends ago, I “adopted” the Northwestern University Wildcats women’s softball team. Why? I suppose because my daughter’s school, Greece (NY) Odyssey, wore purple, and so did Northwestern. That weekend, I watched on the internet, on my computer screen, a single camera broadcast of Northwestern’s doubleheader on Sunday. That weekend was the Super Regional against the unheralded University of Massachusetts. Northwestern trailed UMass with five outs left, and a loss would end their season. The Wildcats pulled off an amazing comeback, then won the second game as well, and advanced to the next round. And I found myself rooting, screaming and cheering for young women that I had never met, and whom I had never heard of the day before.

The wins against UMass sent the Wildcats to the Women’s College World Series. And if the wins against UMass were dramatic, there was even higher drama to come. In the first game of the WCWS, after trading leads with Alabama, Northwestern found themselves down to their last strike, when freshman Erin Dyer launched a fly ball to center field. When she hit it, I didn’t think she hit it well, but the ball cleared the centerfield fence to tie the game and send the game into extra innings. Northwestern loaded the bases in the ninth inning, failed to score, and then in the tenth, the Wildcats’ ninth place hitter Darcy Sengewald walked and was sacrificed to second. Another freshman, Tammy Williams, grounded the ball up the middle. The centerfielder charged, and should have had a good chance to throw Sengewald out at home from shallow center field, but she over-ran the ball. Northwestern won a heart-pounding, scream your lungs out ballgame.

Next, against Tennessee, Northwestern pitcher Eileen Canney held the country’s best hitting team to just one hit. The game also featured Tennessee’s Monica Abbott, who led the nation in wins. And the pitcher’s duel went scoreless into the sixth inning, when Northwestern pounded out a hit by Katie Logan, a walk and Kristen Amegin knocked in the games first run. Sengewald added a homerun in the seventh inning, and Northwestern advanced again.

The third game, against top-ranked (and 16 time national champion) UCLA, once again was heart-pounding drama. The winner would advance to the championship series, beginning tonight. Northwestern opened up a 1–0 lead as catcher Jamie Dotson homered, and the lead held up until the seventh. The crowd had picked up Northwestern’s cinderella vibe, and was rooting purple. UCLA was down to their last strike, with a pinch hitter up, and Kristen Deadmon blooped a single into left (after the preceeding pitch appeared to be strike three), sucking the life out of the crowd and sending the game into extra innings. In the top of the eighth, freshman Williams homered (I’m screaming at the top of my lungs) and then Big Ten Player of the Year Garland Cooper hit another home run. Canney held UCLA of the bases in the bottom of the eighth, and for the first time Northwestern advanced to the championship round. The crowd, now almost all rooting for Northwestern, roared.

The next game for my adopted team is tonight on ESPN2. I hope my heart can take the excitement.

Update (6/6/06): Apparently JT’s heart can’t take much more either.

Anatomy of a Political Head Fake

Hartford Courant columnist Paul Bass (via):

The Bush administration values Joe Lieberman because he has been a crucial ally in efforts to free Enron-style corporate crooks from regulation, transfer wealth to the wealthy, hound gays, trample on the rights of government critics and sacrifice the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis to dishonest, dangerous military adventurism.

Lieberman understands how, in campaigns, you can make people forget all that. You can change the subject by making fun of your opponent for being rich. Then, with millions of dollars from wealthy donors, you can reinvent your record.

Bass goes on to examine Lieberman’s record in great detail, and it is filled with examples where Lieberman either failed to support his Democratic colleagues, or actively worked with his Republican colleagues. The result is a history of positions taken by Lieberman that should make any Democratic voter vomit.

So what does Lieberman do? One thing he does is advertise on American Idol. And the viewers see the head fake, and they don’t know they are being hoodwinked, they don’t read the in-depth articles, and they think that they just saw a good guy advertising on American Idol, and that’s all they need when they enter the voting booth.

The system is broken. American voters need facts, not American Idol commercials.