nightmare reading - Diebold was worse than you can possibly imagine...

Granted, there's still no actual evidence that any actual election-fixing happened in '02 or '04 with the Diebold and other "paperless" machines, but there's certainly FAR more funny business going on.  Separately, each of the Diebold stories doesn't seem like much, but as RFK Jr's article in Rolling Stone points out, all together, it adds up to a HUGE amount of uncertainty, and as Dispatches comments, uncertainty is the last thing we need in an election.

I remain convinced the machines are an abomination.  The fact that the same companies will make machines that can account for every single $20 bill in the country refuse to make a machine that's as reliable for votes as it is for a $20 says way too much about how little our government really cares about democracy...

A vote should be worth more to a person than a $20 bill.

yes, people really are this nuts...

The Questionable Authority : Where's instant karma where you need it?:

Apparently, some North Carolina residents were recently informed by the Fish and Wildlife Service that new regulations might be coming down to protect habitat for a rare woodpecker. This particular species of woodpecker will only make its home in living trees, building nests over a period of years, sometimes handing the nests down from generation to generation.

Many of the locals, alarmed at the possibility of losing some of their property value as a result of government actions to protect the woodpeckers, have found a fantastic way of protecting their economic bottom line. They're eliminating all of the potential woodpecker habitat from their property now, just in case they might not be allowed to do it later. Just so that we're clear, "eliminating" in this case means that they are clear-cutting the lots. They are cutting down every single tree so that they can make sure that they can do whatever they want with the property later.

update: i guess you all just don't get it, do you?

the birds are now already dead.  any that didn't get killed in the destruction of the trees will die without child next year when they have no nest to return to and no trees to build a new nest in.  the next year after that, there won't be any to return.

they are now dead.  as in extinct dead.  anybody with a sick twisted mind can just show up next spring and watch them die.

another species is to be made extinct in our lifetime because people only give a shit about money..

and i would also add that far more animals besides the protected woodpecker were killed (or will die) as a result of this action.

this isn't just one lot, this is entire zones adding up to an area the size of Reston, all completely flat and barren.  the evironmental impacts of this just from a weather-control standpoint are tremendous: it just turned a tornado-resistent forest into a tornado-prone plains-land, which will REALLY have an impact on property value when the first one hits next spring.

my jack sparrow count

saturday: 18
sunday: 10

note: others came up with numbers around 26 for saturday, but i dispute some of them as not being good enough.

one simple disqualification: used a black headband instead of red.

two were just too damn big (re: overweight) to pull it off.

one more complex one: the guy had it - hair, beads, beard, red headband, vest, all right...but then he added an eye patch, a parrot (fake), and a hook on his hand.

dude, stick to one, don't mix metaphores, ok?  sheesh.

at any rate, certainly a new record (my last record was 15 set in 2003).  i did end up making a "bit" by giving the record breaking #16 to a kid. :)

btw, nobody tried Davy Jones (lost THAT bet - and Mr. White Dragon doesn't count), and I heard there was a Barbosa on saturday hanging around the Royal stage area but I didn't see him.