Can't make this stuff up

Last week we learned Princeton experts aren't good enough to look at the software Sequoia uses to count my vote in Ocean County. Sequoia threatened to sue Princeton if they touch it.

Bradblog now is reporting Sequoia has the solution.

This guy Mike Gibbons of Kwaidan Consulting, whose quest in life is to find a "well endowed blonde nymphomaniac ... that likes to be under the influence of Jim Beam whiskey in a dimly lit room at least 3 times a week" and shares his curiosity about the fundamental differences between Kierkegaard and Right Guard (or maybe InfraGard?), is the one and only trustworthy "expert" the voting machine company will trust to look at its product -- independently, of course. Here he shows himself in an undated grip-and-grin with Poppy Bush.

He and his friend Starbuck (his only Myspace friend, so sad) are surely more trustworthy than those clowns at Princeton University. Geez! That's Starbuck in the photo. Hotter than Gibbons, no?

Because, after all, Gibbons hails from Sugar Land, Texas, the same Houston suburban where disgraced former Rep. "Hot Tub" Tom Delay made a name for himself as a pest exterminator, literally.

Kwaidan Consulting's address, 2510 Stephens Grant Drive in Sugar Land, is the address Raymond Michael Gibbons signed on a Securities Exchange Commission filing for Suntron Corp. in 2001 as an employee of K*TEC Electronics Corp. of Sugar Land and Kent Electronics Corp. of Houston. Gibbons is listed as Suntron's executive vice president for new business development.

Gibbons created Kwaidan in March 2005 and listed Sanjuro Corp. of Dallas as its general partner. Texas Secretary of State records show Sanjuro ceased to exist as part of a tax forfeiture in February 2007. Now, what enterprise seems more stable for the public to expect accountability for its report on our county voting machines: Princeton University or Kwaidan Consulting, LLC, LLP? (cough cough)

I have to say, his interest in Schroedinger’s cat, referring to the quantum physics genius who won the Nobel, seemed kind of creepy because of 1) the analogy between him inspecting these black boxes and the Schroedinger’s cat paradox and 2) the woman who filed a lawsuit claiming George W. Bush raped her was Margie Schoedinger (all but one ‘r’) of (cue the “Twighlight Zone” music) of Sugar Land, Texas.

The peace symbol is 50 years old

Sadly, the peace sign hasn't yet brought us 50 years of peace.

Fifty years ago on a cold, grim Easter holiday, a protest was meant to be a watershed: a global call to ban the bomb.

... Gerald Holtom was the artist and textile designer who created it.

A conscientious objector during World War II, he was driven to the nuclear disarmament campaign, he said, by a feeling of despair.

Holtom's daughter Anna Scott, also an artist, remembers the image of her father's despair, in the paintings of Goya.

"He used the Goya painting of the despairing image of the person who was being shot, in Spain - I don't know whether the despair was to do with his personal situation or whether it was to do with the world situation, and sometimes these can be muddled up, can't they?"

Working in his West London studio, Holtom sought to transform that muddled despair into something tidy and neat: a symbol for the campaign for nuclear disarmament, based on the Naval sign language of semaphore.

Michael Randle was there in 1958 when Holtom explained his idea: matching the 'N' for nuclear & a straight up-and-down 'D' for 'Disarmament,' with a circle around it. "That's the symbol, very simple and straightforward," Randle recalled. "It was that explanation coupled with his vision of what the march would be like, his sketch of what the march would be like, that really sold it to us and we said, 'Right, we will adopt that.'"

Not without controversy. It was inevitable that Holtom's simple three lines and a circle would bewilder at least one of the anti-nuclear campaigners.

"He looked at it and he said, 'What on earth were you three thinking about when you adopted that symbol? It doesn't mean a thing and it will never catch on.' Of course, he was thinking of the traditional things of a broken rifle, or a dove or something that would be immediately associated in people's minds with peace, and if you're looking at it now it's impossible to separate it from all the history that has gone on since."

(Flickr pict'r by Jeff Wignall)

Feministing's Friday Feminist Fuck You

And the F this week goes to -- who else? -- Fox and other race-ignorant media outlets.

Where was McCain's anti-bigotry speech?

Ladies and gents, here's the fab choir that sang at the Values Voters Debate in Ohio last September for all the Republican candidates, including the now presidential nominee John McCain. Where's the outrage like that on TV this week against Democratic candidate Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?



Here's the hit hymn, to the tune of "God Bless America":

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is.

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray

Why should god bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

Was the Rev. Fred Phelps and his God Hates Fags congregation in the audience? Not unlikely. The homophobic perennial Republican black candidate Alan Keyes (bigotry is a value, right?) and this choir got equally rave reviews from RenewAmerica:

The proceedings began with a church choir singing of one of our national songs, and included was the addition of a couple of lines of their own, with lyrics about a straying nation that needs to be brought back to God and healed. I was truly touched by the choir's presentation.

It's not obscure. A Google search of "Why Should God Bless America" comes up with 3,310 online posts about it.

How could all those 24-hour cable TV "news" networks have not expressed their best punditry outrage about that un-American prostitution of a national patriotic song?

We get Rupert Murdoch's Faux News by now, but CNN, c'mon!