Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

A closer look at the smoking gun memos. I think that Bev Harris does a good job pointing out the issues from a business perspective—and Salon plays up the possibility of tampering probably more than is supported by the data, though it makes for a fun conspiracy theory.
But the real story is the state of [...]

Why would a manufacturer of voting machines claim that the ability to easily tamper with votes recorded in them is no big deal? Oh, there are reasons, according to this Salon article about flaws in Diebold’s system, not least of which is the stated commitment of the CEO to deliver his state up to Bush [...]

Doc Searls responds to Dave Winer’s piece on the dynamics of distortion in journalism with an interesting discussion of the “Opposing View” format and the etymology of “piracy” as applied to sharing content. Great read.
Of course, there are plenty of “opposing views” and arguments in weblogs too. But most of the time we really [...]

A ton of Library of Congress, Rounder Records, and Alan Lomax recordings have arrived in the iTunes Music Store, including Lomax’s Southern Journey series, the LOC recordings of LeadBelly and Jelly Roll Morton, Lomax’s recordings of world music from Italian peasant songs to Irish reels to Caribbean songs, Rounder collections of zydeco and Cajun and [...]

Thanks to Jake and Jessamyn, I was reminded that this is Banned Books Week. During this week the American Library Association publishes its list of the books to receive the most “challenges” (attempts to remove or restrict access to books in a library) in the previous year. So go out and read a challenged book. [...]

It’s 7:30 am, just the right time for Kirkland’s Department of Public Works to start ripping up the pavement in front of our house. Again. This is getting to be an annual thing.