[sigh] CNN, just now, informed me of the latest and greatest supercomputer. Apparently it will be capable of more than "360 calculations per second." Hot dog.

By now I'm sure you've heard that, in Alabama, it's now Mr. Roy Moore. The NYTimes article is here. Moore's legal argument is nonsensical. Apparently, his defense had an establishment clause thrust, even though he explicitly forbade other monuments honoring other religious laws and traditions and codes of ethics to be placed beside his Decalogue monument. Hmm... Also pretty clear is the bizarre and fallacious nature of the original reason for the placement of the monument: that U.S. law is based on the Ten Commandments. For one thing (as somebody in The New Yorker mentioned a few weeks ago) he can't possibly be seriously implying that the nation's laws are based even in part on a divine injunction against "coveting" your neighbor's belongings; what else drives free market capitalism? No, the single most twisted thing about the whole Moore matter, and the one thing likely to cause the strangest occurences, is the electorate of the State of Alabama. As the Times article mentions

The court does not have the power to keep a judge off the bench permanently. The last Alabama judge was ousted in 1999 after he was found guilty of financial fraud. The next year, he was re-elected to the same seat.

The crowd outside the courthouse sounded like a lot of fun, what with the drama that Christian LARPers are usually able to perform. And then there's this guy:

One burly man named Matt strutted up the courthouse steps dressed in a green army helmet and flak jacket "to wage war for God."

Of course, there are those of us who are REAL true believers, REAL soldiers for Jesus, REAL Christians, willing to fight for the antiquated, heavily redacted, supremely confusing set of quizzical proscriptions found in the second book of the Jewish Pentateuch. We are those who are NOT scared of Roy Moore being removed from office, NOT scared of those godless justices who suspended then ousted Moore, NOT scared of the repercussions of a countrywide revolution for Christ. We are those who are just going to go ahead and say it: President Roy Moore.

Vote count marred by computer woes:

Lebanon [Indiana] -- Boone County officials are searching for an answer to the computer glitch that spewed out impossible numbers and interrupted an otherwise uneventful election process Tuesday. ...A lengthy collaboration between the county's information technology director and advisers from the MicroVote software producer fixed the problem. But before that, computer readings of stored voting machine data showed far more votes than registered voters. "It was like 144,000 votes cast," said Garofolo, whose corrected accounting showed just 5,352 ballots from a pool of fewer than 19,000 registered voters.

I believe electronic voting can work. But not if the systems are privately designed by companies which operate strictly on profit-motive. There is a rich tradition of delivering buggy products in the electronics and software industry. There is a common "foot in the door" mentality: we establish our relationship with the client in such a way that it would be infeasible for them to withdraw late in the game. As long as we continue to support the product, and iron out the bugs eventually, it doesn't matter if our initial deliveries are less than perfect. This may be a great model for, say, hospital products. But it is absolutely no good for voting systems. The design of these machines and software should be totally transparent. They should be reviewed by multiple private, government, and university groups. If the design is not open and there are flaws, then it is in the interest of the private manufacturer to conceal those flaws (as with Diebold). In the case of voting machines, such knowledge can be very lucrative. A black-market for information may arise surrounding such systems.