West Nile Vaccine Candidate

West Nile Kin a Potential West Nile Vaccine -- A mild relative of the West Nile virus may be a vaccine for its more dangerous cousin.

CDC::West Nile

He's Tapping in Heaven, Now

On the wooden floors of Valhalla, no doubt cracking a joke about Mjollnir in the process. No one should make Odin spew mead, but Greg Hines would do it with a flourish.

Gegory Hines, 57, Dies

More Recall 'Circus'

Prominent Democrat drops out of California recall race just before filing deadline

"I know firsthand that this recall election has become a circus," Garamendi said. "I have concluded I will not engage in this election as a candidate."

And, how much money is my state going to spend on all this? Gobs. Maybe 30 million, maybe 70 million.

In the two-part ballot, voters will first vote on whether Davis should be removed from office, then pick someone to succeed him if he is ousted. The list of potential candidates includes a number of longshots, from Hustler publisher [Larry] Flynt to a Sacramento bail bondsman and the owner of a discount cigarette chain.

Just everybody go home and shut up, all right, already?

Details of Recall Effort

Score One For Common Sense

What do you do when your loved one's flat tire leaves her in a situation where she winds up abducted and murdered?

Try to sue Ford and Firestone.

What the Nebraska Supreme Court said in response:

if Ford and...Firestone had no reason to expect intentional tortious or criminal acts by a third person, they are not liable under Nebraska law for the harm caused thereby, even though their negligence afforded the opportunity for such conduct to occur.

[the negligence in question has to do with a specific type of Firestone tire in use on the Ford Explorer said victim was driving]

We have found no authority recognizing a duty on the part of the manufacturer of a product to protect a consumer from criminal activity at the scene of a product failure where no physical harm is caused by the failure itself...

The [plaintiffs] have not and could not allege any special relationship between Ford and Firestone and the criminal actor or the victim of his crime, which would extend their duty, as manufacturers and sellers of products, to protect a consumer from harm caused by a criminal act perpetrated at the scene of a product failure.

the ruling (PDF, 17 pages)

CA Recall Election

Point the first: The dip who started this all has caved -- Issa dropped out. I think the whole idea should be dropped.

Point the second: After reading an article on Ahnuld the Candidate, I'm somewhat pleased. Anytime the Republican Right bitches someone in their party is a moderate is a good day to me. Related point the second: I doubt Schwarzenegger's candidacy will succeed, but I believe this experience will have his next run for office taken much more seriously. I'm not sure how I feel about this, overall.

Point the third: According to The Eagle, a newsletter for San Diego County poll workers and poll owners (I'm volunteering) the March 2004 elections (and subsequent) may -- MAY -- be using a touch screen voting system (presumably Diebold's system(s)). To say I am not pleased about this is an understatement. I believe that replacing a known process with known weak areas -- and thus practice compensating for them -- with an unknown electronic system with unknown weak areas -- and no practice, or, heaven forfend, training compensating for them -- is incredibly unwise. How many IT people do you think are volunteering to work in precincts? I mean, besides me?

Ashcroft Going After Judges?

Ashcroft Orders Tally of Lighter Sentences.

The directive, contained in a July 28 memo from Ashcroft, is the latest salvo in an escalating battle over how much discretion federal judges should have in handing down sentences in criminal cases. The more extensive reporting will lay the groundwork for the Justice Department to appeal many more of those sentencing decisions than it has.

The Ashcroft memo amended a section of the United States Attorneys' Manual that previously said federal prosecutors had to report to the department only those sentences that prosecutors had objected to and wanted to appeal. In the new directive, U.S. attorneys were told to report all "downward departure" sentencing decisions that meet certain criteria in nine categories.

Ashcroft's critics reacted angrily to the memo, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) accused Ashcroft of engaging in an "ongoing attack on judicial independence" and of requiring federal prosecutors "to participate in the establishment of a blacklist of judges who impose lesser sentences than those recommended by the sentencing guidelines."

According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 35 percent of the sentences handed down in federal court in fiscal 2001 fell below the range set in the sentencing guidelines. Almost half of those involved plea bargain agreements or other cases of "substantial assistance" to prosecutors, but 18 percent of the "downward departures" were for other reasons. Federal judges imposed sentences that exceeded the guidelines in less than 1 percent of the cases; the Justice Department appealed 19 of more than 11,000 "downward departure" sentencing decisions.

I have two points

1. 19 out of 11,000 is 0.172%, kids. Gee, that's not much.
2. Sounds like the US Sentencing Commission already provides the relevant information for determining if federal judges in general are consistently being "too nice" (they're not, as indicated by the pattern of Justice Department appeals, see Point 1), so why the extra harrassment?

Politics and Science in the Bush Administration

Politics and Science

The American people depend upon federal agencies to develop science-based policies that protect the nation’s health and welfare. Recently, however, leading scientific journals have begun to question whether scientific integrity at federal agencies has been sacrificed to further a political and ideological agenda.

At the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the minority staff of the Government Reform Committee assessed the treatment of science and scientists by the Bush Administration.

The report "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration" (PDF) finds numerous instances where the Administration has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings. Beneficiaries include important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups.

Better bookmark this, kids.

Thanks to K for the link!

Great Post

Everyone should read this: Don't Assume I'm Like You.

Great Idea, sort of

I mean, you can see why someone would think of this. Pentagon drops betting market on terror attacks

"Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators or dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting things such as election results: they are often better than expert opinions."

But, you know, the emotional impact. It's just not going to fly now that it's been labelled the 'terrorism futures market'.

Diebold Election Systems on their Touchscreen Units

Company Defends Electronic Voting System

Diebold Election Systems said computer security experts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reached their conclusions by using outdated computer code for its touchscreen software. The company also said the researchers ran the software on a device on which it was not designed to work.

In addition, Diebold said many of the weaknesses attributed to the operating system on which the software was tested are inapplicable to the operating system used by the North Canton, Ohio-based company.

OK. I just read the report, and I'm not done digesting it. The analysis covers a different area of the overall e-voting system than my last blog entry on GEMS, which is on the ballot server, not the touchscreen units that would be deployed in the field. This report focuses on the actual touchscreen units, which are discussed somewhat in Bald-Faced Lies about Black Box Voting Machines -- and according to one of the technicians interviewed, the touchscreen units are running Windows CE.

Some things to keep in mind:

When you install upgrade software on your computer, you use a floppy disk, CD, or download an archive from some location on line.

Installing or upgrading software on an embedded system (your DVD player is an embedded system) you frequently save the new software to a PCMCIA or other kind of 'smart card', and insert that card into the device. An area of memory ('flash') on the device is overwritten, and that constitutes installation. So the card is like your upgrade CD.

My recent blog entry focused on GEMS, Diebold's back-end server (ballot server). This entry and probably a much longer one will discuss the touchscreen units and precinct-ballot server communications, as analyzed in the John Hopkins ISI report.

Diebold is currently protesting that the analysts ran the allegedly Diebold source code on a Win2K machine, which was not the correct OS.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but the differences between WinCE and Win2K are probably smaller than the differences between RedHat linux and BeOS. The code compiled on the 2K box, and after reading the John Hopkins ISI report, nothing they discuss concerns the compile OS, beyond the broad discussion of the implications of using an unsafe OS -- such as any version of Windows.

The OS protest is bull. I'm sorry, guys. My best advice to you right now is to pull your methodologies together, get a serious QA and project management team in place if you haven't found one by now, and completely redesign and rewrite the application, including tossing legacy code. It's obvious the older stuff had minimal oversight in development (this, by the way, is typical for software teams' first projects, and the reason why I'm not an early adopter of any technology that might come near my money, in fact, why I've been known to laugh out loud when discussing 'emerging' software).

The report does discuss certain distinctions between Windows and WinCE with regards to CE's treatment of smartcards, that is, how smartcards 'appear' when mounted on a system running CE, and what dangers may be present in a touchscreen box running the e-voting system they analyze. That's the only OS-specific discussion, and it's about the 'right' (runtime) OS.


Some initial notes:

The language of choice of the analyzed application, which is allegedly a version of the current Diebold application, was C++, which, like C, makes it easy to induce errors in memory management. Not on purpose.

Each instance of a voter corresponds to a voter card, a 'smartcard' provided to the voter either via mail or at the time of sign-in at the precinct (the process is not defined).

There are multiple ways to attack one of these systems, as discussed in the JH ISI report, and *not all of them* require advanced computer knowledge. Some of the CS-experience-required include reordering ballot lists so candidate 1 gets swapped with candidate 2 and gets their votes, creating a fake admin/ender card to terminate the election prematurely, generating fake cards that ignore the 'this card's vote complete, cancel card' function call, to permit substantial re-use and multiple votes. Flaw in e-voting software? by Randall Edwards mentions reprogramming a smart card to enable a voter to cast multiple votes for one candidate. The scary thing about this idea is that once programmer A has created this card, they're easy to duplicate and don't take any technical savvy to actually use. The Hopkins report discusses different scenarios, including (shudder) taking advantage of code that appears to permit use of the preinstalled 'manufacturers' password present on every smartcard at the time of sale. So you don't even need the 'real' password to use a smartcard.

In addition, whether you try to hack the touchscreen end of the system, by building fake smartcards, or whatever, when all is said and done, election data is transmitted IN THE OPEN, in this version of the application. Not to mention the passwords in the open between the touchscreen and the card.

You know how when you go shopping online, your browser changes from http to https, thus indicating you're now about to transmit your credit card data via a secure connection (SSL)?

Not in use, here. Should be in use. Without that kind of protection, someone can perform a 'man in the middle' attack and intercept data sent from a precinct to the main ballot server via the Internet (dialup too, if you know the right kind of person), and

a. simply keep it from getting to the final destination (if the ballot server doesn't have builtin checks for precincts, this would drop a balloting station off the map)
b. replace the ballot data with a modified set, thus falsifying election results.

This one flaw by itself is enough to warrant not using the application.

Transmission of election results, if made online, must be encrypted. Further, no handshake or data integrity analysis is performed when data from a precinct station is transmitted 'home', which means that data could be intercepted, its format parsed, and replaced with a false data stream. Worse, a precinct could be simulated entirely, sending false returns to the ballot server.

I heard on the radio that e-voting (I assume, Diebold) units are slated to appear in San Diego elections in the not too distant future. I am thoroughly opposed to the introduction of these systems without substantial oversight, and that means a non-partisan, non-corporate affiliate group analyzing both the code and the process. Where's a standards Working Group when you need one?

I'll say two final things on this subject (for now):

I'd feel a lot more comfortable if the source for these systems were in the open - because e-voting is an emerging technology, and involves a critical process concerning the government of this and other nations. It needs to be secure.

Failing that, I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I were one of the people working on this application.

Possibly both.

John Hopkins Information Security Institute: Analysis of an Electronic Voting System
Diebold Election Systems
Bald-Faced Lies about Black Box Voting Machines
Company Defends Electronic Voting System
Flaw in e-voting software?

Go Read

The President Has Misled Us -- an excellent, albeit chilling, compilation of promises and statements made by Bush, and the actions of the Administration. Some of the smaller, but more disturbing, in my opinion, contrasts:

promising money for HUD Hope VI homes, and cutting all funding
promising money to Boys and Girls Clubs, and slashing funding
lauding Teach For America and AmeriCorps, and slashing funding or cutting it entirely

Honestly, it seems like when you're dealing with Bush, if a promise is made, expect the exact opposite.

The Truth IS Out There

9/11 report: No Iraq link to al-Qaida

The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida...

"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.

Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.

Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Cleland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers." [emphasis added - sid]

The revelation is likely to embarrass the Bush administration, which made links between Saddam's support for bin Laden -- and the attendant possibility that Iraq might supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction -- a major plank of its case for war.

Cleland goes on to assert (quite correctly, in my view), that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence "for political ends", to scare the American people and justify war on Iraq.

ref snagged from Medley.

Best Programming Quote Ever

"OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows."
-- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c

(spotted in someone's .sig)

Genetic Vulnerability to Depression?

Gene Variant Keeps Stress from Becoming Depression

Research published today in the journal Science indicates that variation in a single gene more than doubles a person's chances of succumbing to depression in response to life's stresses.

Although the findings are promising, the authors caution that they cannot yet form the basis for screening for depression. Says Moffitt: "If replication studies confirm that genotypes can predict in advance who is vulnerable to life stresses that bring on depression, this new knowledge could advance efforts to develop a diagnostic test of vulnerability to depression."

Hm! Very interesting. It's too bad there so little long-term clinical data to work with on depression. By long term, I mean, you don't have Egyptian hieroglyphs describing so-n-so's depression, detailing that in the spring they'd perk up and in the autumn they'd be all down in the mouth again.

Spinning Yarn

Janis finally sat and did a Navajo three-ply in front of my face and proved it works, so I went and three-plied a small ball of some of my famous loaves-and-fishes single. It was called that because the ball of roving never seemed to get smaller. I've spun this stuff into some serious bulkyweight yarn needing size 13-17 needles, and singles that you could weave with, or, say, three-ply into a nice sportweight/dk yarn that would use size 3-5 needles to knit up. That what's so cool about spinning. The same two spinners, sitting at the same two spinning wheels/drop spindles/whatever, can produce drastically different yarns from the exact same stuff.

So, to date I've spun with a drop spindle, a spinning wheel, and have done some passable plying with an Andean plying bracelet (into a two-ply yarn), and much nicer looking stuff with my wheel and a crochet hook and the Navajo technique.

A drop spindle is a fancy term for a stick with a weight at one end. You hold the ball of fluff you want to spin, 'draw out' some from the edge to kind of loosen and thin it, and twist it in your hands. Pouf, you just made a bit of yarn, a 'single'. Use that to tie a loop around the stick just under the weight. Spin the stick to generate more twist, and thus more yarn. Then take up the new yarn onto the stick. The direction you spin the stick in is important -- be consistent until you're done with this patch of yarn. Basically, be consistent in general, so you don't have to think later. You can then 'ply' the 'singles' into yarn, or work with them as-is. When you ply, you'll hold two or more singles parallel to one another and twist them together in the opposite direction. Doesn't matter which direction you choose for spinning versus plying, just so long as you go one way for producing singles and one way for plying them into yarn. If you use a spinning wheel, the direction is pretty much chosen for you.

A spinning wheel looks far more complicated but does exactly the same thing as your hands, or a drop spindle: applies twist to some fluff (roving) that you're holding in your hands. A drop spindle uses gravity to apply tension and you to apply twist, as you spin the spindle with your hand, say, against your leg. A spinning wheel takes a more mechanistic approach, using the big wheel bit -- the part everyone notices -- to spin a bobbin (like a bobbin for thread, only you're putting on thread instead of using it up) and a 'flyer' that rotates around the bobbin at a slightly different speed (and actually wraps your single onto the bobbin). I like the wheel because my feet keep everything 'spinning', applying twist, instead of me having to grab my drop spindle and start it going again. A drop spindle is great for travelling, for introducing kids to the art, and I use it a lot for plying. Though, know that Janis has demo'd Navajo three-ply, that may change.

So, plying? Wha?

Modern yarn is all 'plied', you rarely see singles unless you shop for custom yarns or spin yourself. If you pick apart yarn, it'll split up into 2 or 3 or 4 strands. Those are the singles, and they were spun up first, then twisted all together to form the plied yarn. It's a completely separate step.

I've mentioned two methods, but I'm going to gloss over the first (and link to a great description, with photos):

An Andean plying bracelet is a method of holding a long single on one hand in such a way that you can

1. get at both ends at the same time;
2. keep the stuff in some kind of order as you ply up the ends.

Otherwise you end up with a right holy mess. Note that there are two ends getting twisted together, thus you create two-ply yarn. All you're really doing is folding a single in half around your hand and twisting the two ends together -- in the opposite direction of the spin used to create the singles in the first place! Attach the new piece of two-ply yarn to the base of your spindle, twist up the next section, and eventually you'll work through the whole folded single.

Navajo three-ply is a clever way of twisting very long chain stitchs made out of one single -- again in the opposite direction of the spin used to create the singles. The more singles that go into a plied yarn, the smoother and more even it appears. The chain stitch bit lets you lay three sections of the same single next to one another, and apply twist to them.

Take the end of your single in your hand. Draw out a length (doesn't matter how long). Double and then triple the single up so that you have three strands side by side. Keep your finger, or a crochet hook in the loop that is closest to your bobbin or ball. Apply "contrary" twist to the other end (the start of your new yarn) and attach the end of this new yarn to your bobbin or the base of your drop spindle. Now, go look at the other end. There's a loop with your crochet hook dangling from it, and a strand leading back to the ball/bobbin. Use the crochet hook to draw that strand through the loop, thus creating a new chain stitch. Stretch it as long as the spirit, variation in color, whatever, moves you. You now have three parallel sections waiting for twist. So twist! You've just created the next section of three-plied yarn. Repeat until you've used up the bobbin/ball/whatever.

You don't really need a hook, just a stick or your finger or whatever will do, anything to pull up the next chain stitch.


Andean Plying Bracelet
Navajo Three Ply
Spinning and Navajo 3-ply Instructions Using a drop spindle.