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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 12:21:06 GMT
This morning was the beginning of the Muslim fast of Ramadan. I am observing the fast for the third time, in sha' allah.

CmdrTaco at Slashdot Florida Election Votes Certified: mucho discussion on this one, including the following gem: [/.]

Patented al-gore-ithm (tm) (Score:5, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26, @08:39PM EST (#29)
volatile int president;
while (!president)
    {
    recount();
    whine();
    sue();
    }

Sierra Times - Gee Dubya Statement: GW's comments on the Florida vote certification. [sierra]

Edward Zehr at Washington Weekly A Jaundiced Judiciary; Florida Supreme Court Authorizes Vote Fraud: a good piece on the ruling of the "Florida Kangaroo Court".

The "counting" procedure calls for a group of election officials (after first donning their swami head-wraps) to meditate upon each ballot in a trance-like state -- presumably chanting the appropriate mystagogic mantras -- and, after making a few passes with a magic wand, to divine the true intent of the enfeebled voter who lacked the strength to poke through the paper to an unequivocal presidential choice (although choices for other offices might have been punched). Bill Bryant, one of the visiting experts produced by the Fox News Network is said to have attempted repeatedly to produce such a dimple using a regulation voting stylus -- without success. The chad invariably fell out of the punch-card each time a dimple was attempted.

Fred E. Foldvary at the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy - Recalculating Consent: an idea for a different way to run a democracy. Individuals vote for and pay taxes (likely only property taxes) to a neighborhood district consisting of approximately 500 individuals. This is a level-1 council. Groups of level-1 councils elect and pay taxes to a level-2 council, etc. This allows each elector to personally know the people he is choosing from. An interesting idea. Certainly superior to our current beauty-contest national office elections. [brianf]

Peter Applebome of the New York Times via the Star Tribune - There's an antidote to this family feud: secession: a half-serious proposal to split the country in two. The dems get one half and the repubs get the other. [market]

"Thorn is a UML diagramming tool, specifically designed for Open Source projects. The UML models are saved in XML format for easy internet transfers and publishing. Thorn supports scripting in JPython and uses the Xerces XML parser." This is release 0.2.5a, an alpha release. I haven't tried it. [meat]

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