a crank’s progress

Quiz - Alabama Literacy Test circa 1965 ():
Take this quiz to see whether you would have been able to vote
before 1965 if you were not white. The Federal Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, made tests such as this one illegal.
I didn’t know some of this and some of the questions confused me. See how [...]

This is who CNN feels is acceptable to host programs:
Think Progress » AUDIO: Laura Ingraham Tells Listeners To Jam Voter Protection Hotline:
Laura Ingraham today urged her listeners to obstruct efforts to protect voting rights by jamming a free voter protection hotline.
After playing a recording of DNC Chairman Howard Dean promoting the line to voters, [...]

Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side:
In this movie, Sauron lasers Sam and Frodo before they get to Mount Doom. Darth Vader doesn’t help Luke out in the end. Megatron wins. Wile E. catches the Roadrunner. Elizabeth Bennet learns that Darcy is a loser. Etc. Etc.

How would you change the OLPC XO? - Engadget
Interesting, if wildly off-topic at times, thread about the One Laptop Per Child units. at this point, I would wait and see how they work in the hands of their “market” before doing anything.
(tags: olpc economics technology)

“I am an anal impressionist”
The life and times of Le Petomane, [...]

Cory Doctorow:
If you don’t publish your findings, you’re not doing science, you’re doing alchemy, and every alchemist had to discover for himself, the hard way, that drinking mercury was a bad idea.

Web contracts can’t be changed without notice
Is anyone else surprised the 9th Circuit is the one cited?
(tags: law business values)

There is a total lunar eclipse in about a month. It seems that this would be a good place to go see it.
There are other options, but that might be interesting.

Iraq News
File under: this is what happens when people who hate government, the public sector, public service, try to run one.
(tags: government worstpresidentever Iraq corruption values)

DRM for Chargers: Possibly Good for Users
Not sure DRM is the right term for this, as heavily freighted as it is, but the “reading the patent, it looks to [Ed [...]

Talking Points Memo | Data Mining:
But, again, it doesn’t fit. The intensity of the covering up doesn’t match the alleged secret.
The old adage about unraveling a scandal by following the money might need an update: in the new way of thinking, you need to follow the lies and try to work out what the lies [...]

Orcinus:
[I]n the darkest depths of their minds, almost all [fundamentalists] harbor deep, unspoken doubts about their belief system. In fact, for all their protestations about truth and certainty, doubt is perhaps the main wellspring of their zeal: only people who live in a perpetual state of guilty unbelief can be strung along for a lifetime [...]