Uneasy Rhetoric

In a recent post on Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin talks about the fact that the military is using blimps to help pinpoint targets on the ground. Apparently, these aerostats, “worked so well at detecting and identifying enemy forces and objects that Defense Department officials want to buy more of them” (from a Federal Computer Week [...]

Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law two important bills. One requires paper trails for electronic voting and the other resets California’s primary election back to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. California becomes one of 17 states requiring a paper trail, but is too late for this election, which, at least for the [...]

Kevin Drum is a brave soul. In a post that is one part regret and three parts common sense, he indicates that he is probably voting against Proposition 71, the stem-cell research measure. This is not an easy position for a progressive to take. His reason is straightforward: …it’s lousy public policy for the electorate [...]

I don’t always like his style, but Michael Moore is on to something.

A lot has been made lately of the problems inherent in polling during this election. First, there is the controversy over how pollsters are building their samples. Most polls are relatively small — under a thousand people — so a random sample just won’t do. There is too much noise. To get a “representative” sample, [...]