The crown for corrupt elections may have been stolen by a County Clerk in Wisconsin.

Via Attaturk, the Wisconsin State Journal reports that the State [is now] investigating vote irregularities in Waukesha County going back 5 years

The results for the 2006 attorney general’s race, for example, show 174,047 votes for either Democrat Kathleen Falk, Republican J.B. Van Hollen or write-in candidates, a total that is 17,243 votes higher than the total ballots cast recorded elsewhere in the results.

In her note, [Waukesha County Clerk Kathy] Nickolaus said the reference to ballots cast “is the number of ballots that were fed through the election machines at the polling places and the results were collected using a modem in the office” but does not include “any hand-entered results.”

The State is rather interested what Ms Nickolaus means about “hand-entered results”.

While it is very normal for the totals for any individual contest to be less than the total number of ballots cast, there is no legal way for it to be higher. Whether you are faking financials or election results, it is rather basic to make sure that the column totals reflect what you are reporting. This tends to make me believe that Ms Nickolaus wasn’t actually telling a “big lie” about losing data from not saving an ACCESS data base, but that she was too stupid to know her answer was wrong.

The ABC reports that Scientists teleport Schrodinger’s cat

Researchers from Australia and Japan have successfully teleported wave packets of light, potentially revolutionising quantum communications and computing.

The team, led by researchers at the University of Tokyo, say this is the first-ever teleportation, or transfer, of a particular complex set of quantum information from one point to another.

They say it will make possible high-speed, high-fidelity transmission of large volumes of information, such as quantum encryption keys, via communications networks.

You have to really love it to understand what they are talking about, but this is great if they can replicate it on a reliable basis. Be warned that both “teleport” and “Schrödinger’s cat” are being used as jargon, so the meanings may not be what you thought they meant. [There is more than a little Alice in Wonderland in the world of quantum computing.]

Decades ago I started writing a science fiction novel that depended on instant communication across space. My solution was to have devices that all contained a flake from one large crystal that had the property of sympathetic vibration no matter how distant the individual pieces were. That is close what “entanglement” is all about.

CNN-Money has a gallery that they call the Meanest budget cuts. Their choices for the seven cruelest cuts in the bill just passed are:

• Community health centers $600M
• Land mine removal $14M
• WIC [Women, Infants, & Children] food program $500M
• Heating assistance $390M
• Housing assistance for Native Americans $50M
• US Institute of Peace $10M
• Administration on Aging $16M

There is nothing about reducing the travel budget of Congress, one of the first things cut in businesses, or for the other money that Congresscritters have stuffed into their budget, but it’s necessary to stop supporting the purchase of milk for poor children, or removing the land mines that kill them.

The BBC reports that at the insistence of the government Tepco to compensate Japan’s nuclear plant victims

The Japanese government has ordered the operator of the nuclear plant damaged by last month’s quake and tsunami to pay compensation to affected families.

About 48,000 families who lived within 30km (18 miles) of the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be eligible.

The compensation is described as provisional, with payouts – expected to be 1 million yen ($12,000, £7,331) per family – beginning on 28 April.
…

Announcing the compensation, Tepco President Masataka Shimizu offered “heartfelt apologies” to residents hit by events at the plant. He said the company would cut costs to finance the payments.

“We want to streamline operations with no exceptions in what we consider,” he said. “We are obviously thinking about pay cuts for our board and managers.”

Earlier TEPCO had offered ¥1,000 [$12] per person and was told to bugger off by the locals.

There is also news that they are finally admitting that the spent fuel rod pool in Reactor 4 that I have been complaining about for a month, might possibly be a “problem” as a result of a probable meltdown caused by the uncovered fuel rods.

[Read more →]

They’re Having A Birthday!

yaaaaaaawwwwwnnnnnnnnn

[Editor: April 15, 2007 they showed up.]

[Editor: Income [left], Property [top center], Excise [right] – the Tax Triplets.]

Keith Kisser at Invisible Library is having his eighth blogiversary™.

Oh, yes, there’s this .

Friday Ark