Avedon Carol of Sideshow highlights an excerpt from the novel Thud by Terry Pratchett. Like a lot of Pratchett’s novels about the fantasy Discworld, it might seem to ring true of problems that exist in this world.

It is fantasy, so you have to remember that Small Gods is not about religious fundamentalism and Jingo isn’t about neocon nutcases. They are humorous fantasy novels not satiric social commentary.

As long as we are taking about fantasy in the UK you might want read the interview with General the Lord Guthrie, who was Chief of the Defence Staff [US = Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] five years ago, that is in the Guardian: Afghanistan war is ‘cuckoo’, says Blair’s favourite general

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Update: Mea culpa. I forgot the link to Lisa English at Ruminate This who brought up the investigation into Smartmatic’s Venezuelan ties.

As Anya mentioned in comments, we are having early voting in Florida and things are not running smoothly according to the Miami Herald: Glitches cited in early voting.

This is the calibration problem I was talking about. These machines have a grid of sensors around the screen to determine where you are pressing and they can become misaligned over time. They should be calibrated at a minimum, every day, and the more they are used, the more often they are going to need calibration.

Just being moved can cause them to “lose their place.” It’s a great concept that isn’t ready for the real world.

CNN’s Political Ticker reports on the Venezuela connection:

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First off, you should know that communism was the new “great threat to the American way of life” when New Jersey adopted its latest constitution in 1947. To prove that the state of New Jersey has nothing in common with the godless Commies there are more instances of “Almighty G-d” in this constitution than your average Baptist sermon.

New Jersey State Constitution 1947
Article I – Rights And Privileges:

3. No person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; nor under any pretense whatever be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his faith and judgment; nor shall any person be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for building or repairing any church or churches, place or places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right or has deliberately and voluntarily engaged to perform.

4. There shall be no establishment of one religious sect in preference to another; no religious or racial test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust.

5. No person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil or military right, nor be discriminated against in the exercise of any civil or military right, nor be segregated in the militia or in the public schools, because of religious principles, race, color, ancestry or national origin.

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Blogger is still having problems. They are the worse kind in computing – intermittent. It’s easy to find outright failures, but when faced with occasional “anomalies,” debugging is an order of magnitude more difficult.

Monday, October 30, 2006

We have been working through a series of publishing issues since Saturday morning. The problems have been transient: for some users they were more frequent than for others. We are still working to resolve this completely and will post updates. Blogger beta has not been affected.

Posted by Pal at 09:25 PDT