Fascinating list of things that scientists (New Scientist magazine) have come up with to do before the inevitable - dying!. Turn yourself into a diamond: tips from science on a good life, and death.

For the first time I am seeing an article comparing the Indian EVM compared with the Diebold machine used in the recent elections in the US.

It is telling that the Indian EVM is simplicity itself in terms of design - while the Diebold machine is prime fodder for hackers.

My faith in the Indian electoral system just increased one hundred fold!

Another fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and other delicate inside tales about the failed presidential bid by John F Kerry. What makes this interesting is the length of time covered by the article and the inside analysis. The most important failing of the campaign, early on, was the lack of focus.

Excerpts:

During this period, Kerry himself expressed concern that his campaign message lacked spark. He called Paul Begala, the consultant who had helped steer Bill Clinton to victory and now cohosted the CNN show "Crossfire."

...

So in mid-June, Begala met with campaign manager Cahill at Kerry's campaign headquarters in Washington and said he had changed his mind; he would quit CNN and join Kerry.

The reaction was not what he anticipated. What are you talking about? Cahill asked, according to Begala.

"It seems obvious you don't have a message or strategy-driven campaign," Begala said he replied.

Again, Cahill asked what Begala was talking about. Begala remembers that she looked "like I was going to perform open-heart surgery on her. She said: 'I need to think about this. Give me a couple of days to set that up.' From that day to now, I never heard another word from her. And you know, I was pretty angry. I'm still pretty angry."

Sounds like powerful stuff!

An excellent first-hand report of the
Technology problems with voting in USA. It astounds me that in this, the country that claims it is the world's harbinger of freedom, that wishes to establish democratic processes all over the world (what hogwash), we could have such sloppy procedures. The descriptions are really fascinating.

e.g.,
At 8:00 p.m., I watched one of two precincts at a polling place stumble through the inefficient shutdown procedure, which had many steps and required intricate handling of small bits of paper. The longer workers struggled at it, the more dubious were the results they calculated. In the meantime, the other precinct at that polling place had kept its lists of who checked-in and who deposited ballots together, and accidentally muddled them up. Poll workers still toiled to sort out the mess, which was done by scribbling notes and erasing other marks—certainly, not a vouchsafe election technique. Erasers have no place in the preparation of election records. All marks should be made in pen.

It would be interesting to see if Indian voting procedures and the rest of the setup has been independently audited by someone other than the Election Commission. I suspect that things would be, at best, only marginally better in places like the metropolises, similarly bad at the villages and significantly worse in places like Bihar - the triumph of goondaism over democracy.

Appropos this proposal on 'shal's blog regarding taxing the richer farmer:

It might be easier and more palatable for all and sundry to stop the subsidy on the most important stape of the richer farmers - get rid of the diesel subsidy. This will equal the playing field - at least somewhat. The richer farmers with their borewells and tractors will be forced to pay the market rate (plus duty) of the fuel. The more margina; farmers using oxen to plough their land will escape this tax. It won't make their lives easy - but at least they will not be harassed by tax collectors who will suddenly see a new avenue to profit from.

This will have the added benefit of removing the stupid subsidy that has created the weird, new and artificial market for diesel fuelled cars.

Secondly, farmers that use water should be taxed for their use of the supply. I am not sure that anyone in India pays anything for water. This is a commodity that is as necessary as food, and yet is taken for granted.

This may be vastly more difficult to inculcate - but a start could be made. And, again, richer farmers, with their larger lands, will be forced to fork up more.

These would be two simpler ways to tax the richer farmers.

I am sure most people outside of the US are sick and tired of hearing about the US Presidential election. As part and parcel of the election coverage, we have had this overdose of the RED and BLUE coloured maps of the US showing how much of the popular mandate Bush has received. And what you see are the the huge swath of red with small slivers of blue on the two coasts and some blu on the top part. This is the geographical map of the US. It does little (if any) justice to the actual population representation of the US. If you were to distort the map of the US such that it was proportional to the number of people in the state, you would get something like this population proportional map. It makes for a more factual representation of the current election. Thanks to the TPM posting for showing me the light.

Interesting article (sort of a kiss and tell) on how John Kerry behaved during the campaign to get elected.

I had always wondered why Mary Beth Cahill had stopped sending e-mails! This probably explains some of the intrigue surrounding what appeared to be a solid campaign.

MIT's technology Review has an interesting article on Wrist Radio Tags which can be used in hospitals and amusement parks. They are raising the bogeyman of loss of privacy - but "what loss?" is my question!

As someone said recently, 'get over it already'. You have no privacy in the first place. So what are you fighting against? The advent and popularity of the cell phone already tells central phone servers the approximate location of each cell phone carrier. This is available on a nation wide basis - so what loss of privacy is there? Also, if people are willing to click on certain advertisements in order to get better deals, and divulge some of their personal data to get personally tailored deals/messages etc. then where is the problem?

we might get an answer that the unknowing could get fleeced or cheated because of their lack of knowledge on how this data is going to be used. Pshaw! That is precisely the target market that ANY such deals will be attracting in the first place!

Here's something that I found extremely interesting and inspiring. The defeat of John kerry should NOT spell the end of the Democratic effort to reorganise themselves and prepare for the 2008 elections. This effort should start NOW.

We need to look at the way the media has been influenced, the grass-roots level establishment that helped the Democrats go door-to-door in Ohio (bussing people from places as far away as New York City for weekend trips to swing states), the Internet initiative that has raised unprecedented amounts of money from people - INDIVIDUALS like me - instead of corporations etc.

We should also examine what is the single issue where, had Democrats shown a more neutral view point, they would have prevailed.

One of the things might be that we should ignore people that are radically inclined (like Dean) as well as people that are middle of left - like Kerry. We need someone like *gasp* Clinton to come to our rescue.

If there is a genesis on how Clinton became all that he was, that should be the playbook to be used in selecting the next candidate.

The preparation for the 2008 elections begin NOW - November 3rd, 2004.

Any takers?

Electronic voting - how legal and how safe? This is the gist of an article on MIT's Technology Review web site. It makes for some fascinating reading - especially if you are interested in elections and ballot boxes, the ways to make them safe and, conversely, ways to commit fraud.

I know that in India we have electronic voting possible. How concerned are the people in India - or at least the people that are AWARE - regarding fraud? How concerned should Indians be that when they vote for Cong-I, the vote is registered correctly in the nanoparticles of magnetised Iron on the hard drive and counted as such?

These are serious questions that are being asked in the US - primarily because the people of the US seem to value their freedom (to express themselves - whether by burning flags or publishing porn - or using a soap box to air their views to all that will hear them) a heckuva lot more than Indians do.

Stumbled upon this FAQ - US Elections at BBC. This is the most concise explanation I have seen to help introduce non-US people (and there are more than a few of them despite what Americans say) to the vagaries and antiquities of the American Elections.

Enjoy! And may Kerry win!