the guy by the door …

Princeton University computer scientists have posted a report Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine to the Center for Information Technology Policy website. They conclude that these machines are definitely vulnerable to cybertampering.

I heard this episode of a program segment called the Bioneers last Sunday on KEXP Seattle [via internet]. It is about commoditization of water in Mesopotamia and the rather frightening prospect that water might come under the control of a few multinational corporations. It will stay on their stream archive server for another week. The Bioneers is a segment of the program called Mind over Matters. The episode I heard aired Sunday Sept. 17 at 6:00 AM.

It sounded reasonably well researched. There was one point that seems to be in error. They claimed that Sharia, the Arabic word for the body of Islamic law, means “sharing water.” Wikipedia, says that it means, “the well trodden path.” My co-worker* agreed with the later.

The Bioneer segment was based on a report by the same name authored by Maude Barlow Chairperson of the Canadian International Forum on Globalization (IFG). The text is online at Third World Traveler.

*A woman who belongs to the Harvard Islamic Society told me that the Saudi family has backed down on excluding women from Mecca. I don’t doubt her veracity, but I have not yet found a another source. And I apologize for forgetting her name. I hope I get another chance.

div align=”left” style=”text-align: center”

This came about because after entering centered text I wanted to return to left justified text. Here’s the thing. ‘align’ and ‘style=”text-align’ are both about text alignment. ‘align’ is an older version of html. ‘style’ is a newer Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) locution [my word of the day]. The top of the cascade is when ‘style’ information is provided as an attribute to a tag rather than separate sheet.So somebody used flavor one time and another the next and one does not undo the other. The result depends on precedence rules of locutions that should never happen. And of course, I can’t figure out how to get the html editor to display the tag brackets. So much for automatic generation of html.

Students of the College of Public and Community Service of UMass Boston on their way to the protest at the UMass President’s Office in downtown Boston.

*The Harbor Campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston is in the area in which community groups sought to secede from Boston and rename their community Mandela. This fact, correctly mentioned by a Wikipedia pilot fish site, no longer appears in Wikipedia.

On my way to campus today, I passed the campaign headquarters of incumbant State Representative Marie St. Fleur. She was shoulder to shoulder with the troops. I like that in a politician.

The guy who lives near the Strand is going to vote for her in the primary today. Their will be a write-in vote [for something] for Philip R. Fenstermacher in Ward 13 Precinct 6. The official role had better show it! Marie is also a blogger.

Some brief remarks by Eben Moglen, President of the Software Freedom Law Center followed by a panel together with Larry Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain.

Some remarks pro and con about Hyack an interesting arguably conservative economists who does not yet have a Wikipedia page.

For me, ‘unthinkable” usually means thermonuclear war, but for the Black Commentator it refers to the threat to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

————

The unpleasant truths of this political moment are:

1. Renewable portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) seem increasingly likely to die in the Congress this session.

2. Recent Supreme Court decisions indicate the court is inclined to “interpret” permanent provisions of the Voting Rights Act into meaninglessness.

3. Democrats in the US. House and Senate seem disinclined to fight very hard for the voting rights of blacks, and;

4. With no superpower rival on the international scene and the domestic mass movement disbanded and sent home a generation ago, the powers that be face little or no meaningful consequences at home or abroad for killing the VRA.

——-

The full article includes a brief and cogent history of voter disenfranchisement in the south. The Associated Press reports that the Senate passed renewal of the Act 98-0. Last week the House passed renewal 390-33. Bush vowed to sign it in his speech before the NAACP. I can’t tell exactly how intact the Act is and how significant it is. The AP report mentions that the “preclearance” by the Department of Justice of changes to voting procedures in specified southern states has survived challenge by sourthern lawmakers. But with the current DOJ [under Alberto ‘torture guy’ Gonzales], how much protection is this? On the other hand, the renewal has a life of 25 years and might mean more down the road.

Last Monday, cartoon voice actor [the Simpsons] Dudley R. Herschbach gave a most[ly – another post] excellent talk on “Einstein as a Student” Why have an actor talk about Einstein? Well it seems that in his troubled youth, Herschbach won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His Nobel Lecture, “Molecular Dynamics of Elementary Chemical Reactions,” is about the then young field of chemical kinetics that is, going beyong what combines with what – getting a “moving picture” of how molecule A interacts with molecule B. His work was both experimental – actually shooting A’s at B’s – and theoretical.This was part of a new summer program called PRISE. Well worth the price of admission [free] and well worth the time. I’ll keep you abreast of future editions.
Note to WordPressinados. This thing not only has bugs, but different bugs in different themes. 🙁

It was close to closing time at Tealuxe, the Harvard Square vessel of high tea adventures. Rachel was on the bridge doing the accounts while John was battaning down the galley. John served me Ti Quan Yin, “The Iron Goddess of Mercy”. It was my second trip of the day. I found the Goddess quite compelling. He had told me the tale of Quan Yin. I must defer retelling that tale for now.

Rachel called down from the bridge. She and John conferred over navigation. I had taken pictures of them but not yet posted here. Rachel offered a few poses. I have no experience with flash and picked the wrong mode, but despite my ineptitude, beauty will out. Even in good hands, on-camera flash is prone to red eyes. I will pursue her with my new Rebel.

A fermata is a note held longer than its normal value. It is denoted by the upside down smile above the note [below the word]. The bottom of the shirt says, “Hold Me”. Sadly, I’m probably older than her father and should understand this figuratively.

In the recent anti-immigrant frenzy, Mario Rodas, an honor student who graduated last year from Chelsea High School, was detained by immigration and is currently facing deportation. Mario moved to Chelsea with his family from Guatamala at age 12. He has no criminal record. Given the troubles the Chelsea Schools have had, tgbtd wonders if it’s good for Chelsea to let go of such a promising young man. The We Are Mario campaign thinks not. SLAM is joining them. Hop over and give a hand?

Thanks to j of the Thursday Bloggroup at the Berkman Center for pointing out the upcoming Grassroots Use of Technology 2006 right near my home at Umass Mandela*. The center of mass of the conference will probably be a quasi-liberal optimism about the possibility of reversing the ever greater concentration of wealth and power with it’s concomitant/enabling control of the mainstream media. Still I will go to see if as Marx once said to Friedrich Engels, “there is something we can use.”** Further, I will urge others to go. At the same time, I will urge folks to keep an eye on the “net neutrality” legislation in Congress. Verizon and cohorts may claim to own the pipes, but we’re letting them use our right of way. The grass roots have a right to water flowing through pipes on public land. Should you wish to add your voice, Save the Internet is a good site.

*I refer, of course, to the almost forgotten proposal that the poor and disenfranchised of Boston would be better served if they seceded and renamed Roxbury, Dorchester, and parts of the South End. after the Nobel Peace Prize winning South African leader Nelson Mandela. I was not sure if I remembered the geographical boundaries correctly and the current Wikipedia entry does not mention Dorchester, but Websters Online does.
**I greatly admire Marx and am informed by him, but his critique of science, while bold for his day, is, in the light of subsequent developments, naive. I will show that the notion of ‘Natural Law’ in and of itself has marketing/political component, but I need to elaborate the Greenberger Universe to do that. Also, I am significantly skeptical of Marx and his derivatives’ eschatology.

I stopped by OPML camp in Austin Hall today. It reminded me of my days at Intermetrics working on the Ada Integrated Environment. It was supposed to be a full suite of tools for writing software. Ada was conceived as a “broad spectrum” language – a kind of a Swiss Army knife approach to language design. While most compilers to that time had two ends – front and back – AIE had three with the included “middle end” so the translation from ‘high level language’ to naked bits passed through not one but two intermediate languages [IL’s]. The front end obeyed then current design principles – one did not write a parser, but rather a parser generator which then wrote the parser. But to be a little more than modern the two IL’s were written and read not by hand written modules, but by modules generated by programs. These latter were, unfortunately, of necessity touched by human hands.

The first $4,000,000 bought a compiler which could compile The Null Program. This is the program that loads into memory, does nothing, and achieves a normal [non-error] exit. And this feat was only possible because Seth Tucker Taft stayed up all night the night before the brass came, massaging each of the various intermediate forms by hand to get it to jump through the next hoop. [Tucker is a Harvard alum unlike most of his family which went to Yale.]

I’m trying to see that things are better now. I’m having a hard time.

AIE was paid for by the Air Force. I did not like the feeling, but the 60’s were clearly over and I didn’t think I could put off any longer figuring out how to survive in the ruling paradigm. Some people called the AIE a “baby burner.” That was unfair. Those of us who worked on it and still cared about such things called it a “baby burner generator.” That was fair. OPML is clearly not a BB and not clearly a BBG. Some good news. On the other hand, it seems like more and more abstraction layers with associated learning curves. More buttons and dials, less ideas holding it all together. In exchange for this the user gets benefits that are large in anticipation. BUT …

I’m trying to see that things are better now. I’m having a hard time.

Appearing on the sidewalks of downtown Boston, with a shopping cart full of keyboards [and vocals], live from Dorchester:

The SLA has not been in the news much since Patty Hearst
settled down to suburban life in Connecticut. Yet, I met with the newly
annointed leader of this organization just last week. The Special
Libraries Association has had a longer run than the Symbionese
Liberation Army.

… and here is the latest example. Young Professor Luboš had a student
fall ill and unable to take the final exam so he arranged for a
colleague [whom I know and respect] to supervise the exam at home in
Central New York.  Mr. President, this is precisely the kind of
flexibility we should be encouraging. But NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Pf. Luboš attributes this to recalcitrance of the unions. He is by his
own admission a reactionary and a theorist [I can’t decide which is
worse :)] Being an experimentalist and Union Representative [HUCTW] I
told him that I am not sure the blame lies with my colleagues in HUCTW.
By and large, union members don’t make policy. Unlike my fellow Union
Representative Geoff Karens, I’m sure you know what a “Management
Rights” clause is and how it defines the dividing line between policy
and implementation.

There was another rather egregious case that occurred in your absense.
We had a homeless alumna living in the gates for more than a year [i.e.
two winters] while an army of administrators passed the buck. It was
Harvard Labor [Union and contract] that kept her from freezing to
death.

But detailed blame aside,  I agree with Pf. Luboš that the response of administration, makes no sense whatsoever. May
I suggest that as a  re-entry excercise, you get the student
h(is|er) grade. I will help you. Hopefully by the time you reach the
parties involved they will already be aware of the public interest in
this problem.

Sincerely yours,

the guy by the door

P.S.

Unless quantoken has a unique ability to measure tachyonic states, h(er|is) comment is totally wrong.

In Baghdad it’s 3:00 AM Sunday February 26, the day Jill Carroll’s kidnappers have set as a deadline for their demands. There was reasonable press about Jill on Tuesday February 21, but the bombing of the Askawira Mosque on Wednesday February 22 caused Iraq to erupt and pushed Jill to the back pages. Those wanting to negotiate her release would have found it quite hard. Three hours ago Agence France Press posted “Iraq’s Sunnis and Sadr’s movement make peace“. Hopefully, this will make negotiation for her release possible. Since we are going to take more time on the Dubai Ports World deal, we could focus on Jill for a bit. I have yet to find a good e-mail address that might be timely. It is only hours to sunrise.

Three Arab TV Jounralists Die in Iraq

“>	“>
Atwar Bahjat [inset]. Remains of her and her crew. [Al Arabiya.]	Atwar in Western dress. [Al Jazeera]

Three journalists reporting for the Arab satellite TV
network Al Arabiya died covering the bombing of the Askariya Shrine [also
known as the Golden Mosque] in Samarra. Anthony Loyd of the Times leads
his article “Half Sunni, half Shia — a target for everyone” with:
 
There were so many reasons not to kill Atwar Bahjat. She was half
Sunni, half Shia, a woman, an Iraqi, 30 years old, a native of Samarra
and a renowned journalist for the Dubai-based al-Arabiya news channel.

Yet kill her they did.  …

Reporters sans fronti

“>

Jill has already joined Marla Ruzicka and Margaret Hassan
in the ranks of monumentally brave women. But Jill, as far as we know
is still alive.  Threatened with execution unless the U.S.
Government releases women prisoners held in Iraq, Jill has so far
gotten two stays of execution despite chest beating by the
administration.Gareth Porter reports in Inter Press Service, that the release of  six women previously cleared of suspicion was delayed.
He also points out the 98.6% of all detainess have ultimately been
cleared. The claim that the U.S. doesn’t negotiate with terrorists was
questioned when 66 American hostages held in Tehran were released twenty minutes after Ronald Reagan’s Inaugural address.
Wikipedia, citing an impressive array of sources, finds these
suspicions unproved. Still the timing of the hostage release is
worrisome. Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton,
publishing an op-ed in the Los Angelos Times, points out that the Israeli government has successfully negotiated the release of hostages from Hezbollah. 
And given the 98.6% clearance rateof detainess, what fraction of one of the five
remaining women detainees is a big enough security threat to be worth
Jill’s life?

I heard mention of a rally today for Jill sponsored by students of the
UMass student paper where Jill once worked. However, I could not find a
time and place. Jill graduated from UMass Amherst so it might 
have been out there. The Mass Media news room at Umass Boston did not
answer the phone.
I’ll try to get to the Vietnam Memorial by sundown.

Let’s honor the memory of Marla and Margaret. Bring Jill home.

Woman photographer at TeaLuxe – wide shot.

“>I saw the top of the laptop and knowing that the table tops are made of copper, I wondered if the laptop was simply reflecting that. Not so, the laptop is itself copper colored. I was taken with the panoply of color. I asked to take a picture. She asked about publication. I gave her my blog card and she agreed. In fact, what she said about print rights sounded generous. She is herself a photographer. So I hope she will advise me on technique. With a simple point and shoot camera, about the only thing you have to remember is that you are interacting with the camera’s program. Mostly I shoot action. People doing stuff. What they are doing is more important that the settings. But in this case I probably should have [and she would have tolerated ] taken time to experiment with settings.

The thing I need most help with is the “people” parts. How do you approach people as subjects. More importantly, how do sell stuff? At age 58, I really could use a marketable skill. Despite 15 years at Harvard, I have about 2 years worth of retirement benefits.

One lesson I’ve alreadly learned:

I should have taken this shot instead of cropping it out of the other. I’m old. I’m afraid I may be too old to flirt with dignity. [Flirtation is by nature ambiguous.] But I am quite single if that helps any.

“>
Public Library in Pearland, Brazoria County, Texas.

I’ll have more to say ’bout Pearland. Just wanted to say howdy. Y’all come back now, hear?

And for those that think I’m a senile reactionary, riddle me this: Where did Karl Marx spend all his time?