November 2000

• Odd county, Palm Beach has an explanation of the anomalously large number of Buchanan votes. They're just goofballs there.
• New recount deadline is Sunday.
• Military upset over invalid ballots.
• Karl Jones has a page dedicated to Power Politics.
• 'Condo commandos' caused ballot snafu by handing out palm-cards (cheat sheets) with incorrect information. ''Historically, they [senior citizens] go by the numbers and don't look at the ballot,'' explained Gleason, suggesting that if retirees are instructed to ''punch number two,'' they troop into the voting booth and punch number 2 without even reading the ballot. As I pointed out on the 13th, the Florida Constitution assumes a voter's ability to read and his intelligence to indicate his choice with the degree of care commensurate with the solemnity of the occasion.
• The Onion | 15 November 2000 has more stories. It's an excellent paper, and I suggest you check it for more stories when it returns on 29 November (and we might even have a president-elect by then).
• All this leads me to think that I'm thankful for the gridlock that'll ensue, no matter which of these turkeys ends up being our president.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 23, 2000     November 23 in History

• Troopers were arrested at protests at the Republican National Convention. Were they busy entrapping protesters or just following along to keep from blowing their cover?
• The Myth of Fingerprints examines the credibility of fingerprints as forensic evidence. Are fingerprints really unique? No one has ever proven it. Can partial fingerprints be accurately matched? That's being decided in court, but if fingerprint practice were subject to the same scrutiny DNA typing was, it probably wouldn't hold up.
• Woman sues police who posed as census workers in St. Paul.
• Anti-Tax Businesses Refuse to withhold taxes from employees. The system simply cannot work if they get away with this.
• Mir to Be Deorbited Into the Pacific on February 27-28, just a week after its fifteenth birthday.
• Cell Phones Are the New Peacock Feathers says a study. No word on the effectiveness of this female-attracting ploy.
• Father's Crèche-mas - A woman can take her man shopping at the mall, and leave him safe in a crèche full of grown-up toys for up to an hour while she buys his presents. Or if he's just being crabby and needs some quiet time.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 22, 2000     November 22 in History

• Haven't we been here before? It's starting to look a lot like 1876.
• Amazing gridlock, how sweet the grind. I hope we'll be so lucky. The best thing going in politics is when nothing is going in politics.
• More random thoughts on the election. All together now, repeat after me: President Thurmond.
• Twists in crazy poll crisis have brain-softening effect.
• Bush Camp Alleges Distortion of Florida Vote Counts. The nice thing about this article is that it actually links to the rulings made by the various courts that affect the outcome in Florida.
• In the turnabout is fair play column, Serbia Deploys Peacekeeping Forces To U.S.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 20, 2000     November 20 in History

• Eleven reasons it's your fault that web-pages don't render correctly in browsers. It's not just the browser-developers who are at fault, but also the people writing crappy non-standards-compliant web-pages.
• On a related note, Give Me Pixels or Give Me Death! I actually spend quite a bit of time on my web-pages making sure they're both standards-compliant (which Manila totally precludes) and render acceptably in all the browsers I can test. I'm apparently pretty rare in that, given all the crap I see out there.
• Kuro5hin diaries have many of the features of weblogs. If I had more time, I'd check them out more thoroughly. Maybe someone else can do it and write up the experience? Oh, there is the small problem in that kuro5hin's HTML hangs IE 5.5b1 on the Mac. Oh that.
• In more frustration with the universe, Why is Apple treating it's current user base and OS Like a Redheaded Stepchild? John Holmes wonders why Apple's abandoning its user base and targeting Mac OS X at geeks. I find myself wondering the same thing. The rule of any business is never alienate your base and that's just what Apple is doing.
• Maybe the answer is blasphemous fusions of Cthulhu and ABBA?!? It makes sense, really, in a twisted, perverted kind of way.
• Wanna give someone a cow? Heifer Project International can help if the person is a random third-world resident. A friend of mine got their catalog, seemingly at random in the mail. It kinda worked, I guess, since they made this list.
• The ''Revel in Rivalry'' Essay Challenge could win you a new TiVo.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 17, 2000     November 17 in History

• Dates to watch for in election mess gives a good timeline.
• Russia offers election advice. It's interesting that the people who are getting so worked up about this are the same ones who want to interfere in other countries elections. Fidel Castro offered assistance, too. Heh!
• Sanity in the Election Process (or Sanity in the Election Process (alternate)) by Lauren Weinstein (of the Privacy Forum) and Peter G. Neumann (of the Risks Digest). Guess what, computers screw up. People screw up. Usually it doesn't matter too much.
• The Electoral College explained by Irish Times.
• Existing laws block ordering new vote The Constitution assumes a voter's ability to read and his intelligence to indicate his choice with the degree of care commensurate with the solemnity of the occasion.
• Harry Browne wins about 381,000 votes, and a lot of other third-party results that are hard to find elsewhere.
• Why Nader is NOT to Blame - only 47 percent of Nader voters would have voted for Gore in a two-way race. 21 percent would have voted for Bush. 30 percent would have stayed home. It should be obvious that when an incumbent Vice-President, in an administration that is generally given high marks for the state of the economy, and who serves in time of relative world peace, can't defeat a man who is probably the least qualified, weakest Republican nominee in the past 36 years, there is something amiss -- and it isn't the third party candidate.
• An Open Letter from Moore to Gore - It's Al Gore's fault that Bush looks like he'll be the President-Elect.
• Death Cycle of Presidents Elected in a Zero Year. It's Tecumseh's Curse.
• The irony is killing me. Many fun ironies, such as: Isn't it ironic that someone with the last name ''Daley'' is complaining about election fraud and uses an almost identical ballot to rig elections in Cook County?
• Rip Rense's Special election debacle edition! includes such fine quotes as Wouldn't it be great if there really was a presidential seal? I mean a barking one, with flippers?
• Finally, Virgin, UT Says Get a Gun or go to jail. Cool.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 13, 2000     November 13 in History

• The redesign moves a little further. Let me know if things look too goofy. As far as I can tell, the only browser I've broken is WebTV, and I'm working on making that usable again.
• Mafia Don Announces New Anti-Spam Venture. Heh. Heh. Heh.
• First man in Britain prosecuted for making crop circles. And guess what, he used just the method that's been described on the internet for a couple years.
• Want fewer cars? Recall Ralph Nader so they blow up more often. That'll solve problems with traffic congestion.
• Andrew Lipson's Lego Klein Bottle.
• Kasparov bows out as world chess champion.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 10, 2000     November 10 in History

• Time for a bit of a redesign. I realized that a month of links and commentary was getting big enough that the navigation links were way down at the bottom. Hopefully this is a little better. And it makes for a narrower column of text, which is easier to read. I hope.
• Jesse Ventura says to vote your heart, conscience. In the election in 1998, 61.4% of Minnesota's eligible voters went to the polls, compared to 36% in the rest of the country. 15.8% of Minnesotans registered on election day, and almost all of them voted for Jesse. That's why third parties have a chance.
• Why I'm 'wasting' my vote. I'm still waffling between Browne and Philips, but if it looks close in MN, I might end up voting for the Shrub. Then again, I keep remembering Jesse saying I wasted the Democrats and Republicans with wasted votes.
• R. U. Sirius of The Revolution wants you to write him in for President and MOCK THE VOTE! Not only do write-in votes gum up the system, it's a pretty good statement if you can't find anyone better to vote for. If you're planning on not voting, maybe this is the excuse you need to get to the polls.
• Huge menu for US voters is a pretty funny piece by a BBC reporter about the US elections.
• Ballot tampering in Arizona to make sure a voter initiative to phase out all personal and corporate income taxes in Arizona over the next four years didn't make it onto the ballot.
• Absentee Votes May Delay Result in California, which could (if things end up being really close) delay a result for the whole election, perhaps until December 5.

Weather in Minneapolis for November 6, 2000     November 6 in History

• Them Against Fire is a Suck article talking about terrorism and cowardice.
• Flutterby's Lane Splitting Discussion includes talk of urban bicycling. I'm sure Jim will empathise. And months ago, he pointed me to Critical Mass. Something to look at if you get about under your own power. Bicyclists ride again, minus mad motorists is the account of the local Critical Mass ride last Friday.
• RobbieConal's Art Attack is the source of some art-bombs that have gone off recently. Tastes Like Chicken!
• Online businesses trapping Web surfers by disabling the back button in their browser. Bastards. I try not to deal with any of 'em.
• HMO rules your doctor won't discuss talks about problems caused in the health-care business by a lack of competition in HMOs. This is some of the thorniest political ground for me. Government has created a problem by regulating an industry. I'm generally against regulation, but at this point, there isn't enough competition, so we need government regulation to keep the bastards in line. Sigh.
• Court To Hear Search, Seizure Case - Can police legally prevent someone from entering his own home until they have a search-warrant? The U.S. Supreme Court will be deciding.
• Deaths Raise Questions About SWAT Teams. As well they ought.
• The Original World Famous Home Appliance Shooting Page. Never found a good place to do that sort of thing this summer. But the pile of non- functional computer equipment continues to grow....

Weather in Minneapolis for November 3, 2000     November 3 in History