In the Republican primary last Tuesday, Bush walked away with only 85% of the votes. Look who came in second:

The Nation: US Senator John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, who won the Democratic primary, came in second to Bush in the Republican contest, winning 3,009 votes. Kerry's name was written in on almost 5 percent of all GOP ballots. ...Kerry wasn't the only Democrat who appealed to Republicans. In third place on the Republican side of the ledger was former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who won 1,888 votes, more than 3 percent of the GOP total. Retired General Wesley Clark secured 1,467 Republican votes, while almost 2,000 additional Republican primary votes were cast for North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and the Rev. Al Sharpton. In all, 8,279 primary voters wrote in the names of Democratic challengers to Bush on their Republican ballots. That's a significant number. In the 2000 general election, Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in New Hampshire by just 7,212 votes. Had Gore won New Hampshire, he would have become president, regardless of how the disputed Florida recount was resolved.

Sweet, sweet justice.

New developments in the German consensual cannibalism case in a BBC article here. Here's the run-down:

In March 2001, Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, 43, answered an advert Mr Meiwes had posted on the internet for a well-built male who was prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed. They met, and Mr Meiwes allegedly took Mr Brandes back to his home in Rotenburg, where the victim agreed to the removal of his penis, which Mr Meiwes then flambéed and served up to eat together. Mr Brandes was then killed, cut up, and put in the freezer. The act of cannibalism is not in itself a crime in Germany, meaning that particular legal avenue was closed to prosecutors.

I can't help but think that some edgy, moody author (like Chuck Palahniuk or J.G. Ballard) will use this as the basis for a psychotic, apocalyptic novel. I like this case because the eater seems like such an amiable, straightforward fellow who forced nothing. Wonderful twist. Are you paying attention, Patrick McCabe?

I wish there were more students like the author of this paper: Kovar/Hall: "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass".

It has always been said that digital computers are unsuited for certain tasks, and they may always be, just as people are not particularly well suited to certain tasks (how many digits of pi can you quote?). The internet may provide a link between computers and humans, in which humans can not only solicit computational tasks from a large number of computers. Computers may also be able to solicit large numbers of human-computable tasks using a simple reward mechanism: pr0n. According to slashdot, some spammers may be using this technique to break through a visual blocking technique, which they claim is called a "captcha" (although I think I've heard more precise technical names for this technique). Basically, some text is distorted in ways that are very difficult for computers to figure out, but easy for humans to read. When this text is displayed as a graphic, a human user can proceed by typing in the correct text. An automated computer script would be halted in its tracks when presented with such an image -- unless it can go out and find some human to decode the graphic. But automated scripts process pages in bulk. Where will you find a human(s) to process all those captchas? Porn sites! Decode a graphic, get some porn. Slashdot | Porn Rewards Users To Get Past Anti-Spam Captchas And that was how the revolution started.

Michael Moore has posted a response to the media's reaction after he called Bush a "deserter" while introducing Wesley Clark. Moore defends his claim as follows:

Well, I'm glad they have gone nuts over it. Because here we have a Commander in Chief --who just took off while in uniform to go work for some Republican friend of his dad's -- now sending our kids over to Iraq to die while billions are promised to Halliburton and the oil companies. Twenty percent of them are National Guard and Reserves (and that number is expected to double during the year). They have been kept in Iraq much longer than promised, and they have not been given the proper protection. They are sitting ducks. What if any of them chose to do what Bush did back in the early 70s -- just not show up? I've seen Republican defenders of Bush this week say, “Yeah, but he made up the time later.” So, can today's National Guardsmen do the same thing -- just say, when called up to go to Iraq, "Um, I'm not going to show up, I'll make up the time later!"? Can you imagine what would happen? Of course, none of them are the son of a Congressman, like young Lt. Bush was back in 1972. Today, MoveOn.org has put together it's response to this issue, and I would love to reprint it here. It lays out all the facts about Bush and the remaining unanswered questions about where he went for many, many months: Here are what appear to be the known facts, laid out recently in considerable detail and documentation by retired pilot and Air National Guard First Lt. Robert A. Rogers, and in a 2003 book, “The Lies of George W. Bush,” by David Corn. 1. George W. Bush graduated from Yale in 1968 when the war in Vietnam was at its most deadly and the military draft was in effect. Like many of his social class and age, he sought to enter the National Guard, which made Vietnam service unlikely, and fulfill his military obligation. Competition for slots was intense; there was a long waiting list. Bush took the Air Force officer and pilot qualification tests on Jan. 17, 1968, and scored the lowest allowed passing grade on the pilot aptitude portion. 2. He, nevertheless, was sworn in on May 27, 1968, for a six-year commitment. After a few weeks of basic training, Bush received an appointment as a second lieutenant – a rank usually reserved for those completing four years of ROTC or 18 months active duty service. Bush then went to flight school and trained on the F-102 interceptor fighter jet. Fighter pilots were in great demand in Vietnam at the time, but Bush wound up serving as a “weekend warrior” in Houston, where his father’s congressional district was centered. A Houston Chronicle story published in 1994, quoted in Corn’s book, has Bush saying: “I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.” 3. Sometime after May 1971, young Lt. Bush stopped participating regularly in Guard activities. According to Texas Air National Guard records, he had fewer than the required flight duty days and was short of the minimum service owed the Guard. Records indicate that Bush never flew after May 1972, despite his expensive training and even though he still owed the National Guard two more years. 4. On May 24, 1972, Bush asked to be transferred to an inactive reserve unit in Alabama, where he also would be working on a Republican senate candidate’s campaign. The request was denied. For months, Bush apparently put in no time at all in Guard service. In August 1972, Bush was grounded -- suspended from flying duties -- for failing to submit to an annual physical exam. (Why wouldn't he take this exam from a doctor?) 5. During his 2000 presidential campaign, Bush’s staff said he recalled doing duty in Alabama and then returning to Houston for still more duty. But the commander of the Montgomery, AL, unit where Bush said he served told the Boston Globe that he had no recollection of Bush – son of a congressman – ever reporting, nor are there records, as there should be, supporting Bush’s claim. Asked at a press conference in Alabama on June 23, 2000 what duties he had performed as a Guardsman in that state, Bush said he could not recall, “but I was there.” 6. In May, June and July, 1973, Bush suddenly started participating in Guard activities back in Houston again – pulling 36 days at Ellington Air Base in that short period. On Oct. 1, 1973, eight months short of his six-year service obligation and scheduled discharge, Bush apparently was discharged with honors from the Texas Air National Guard (eight months short of his six-year commitment). He then went to Harvard Business School. Documents supporting these reports, released under Freedom of Information Act requests, appear along with Rogers’ article on the web at http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=154. In the absence of full disclosure by the President or his supporters, only the President and perhaps a few family or other close associates know the whole truth. And they’re not talking. Bush was apparently absent without official leave from his assigned military service for as little as seven months (New York Times) or as much as 17 months (Boston Globe) during a time when 500,000 American troops were fighting the Vietnam War. The Army defines a “deserter” -- also known as a DFR, for “dropped from rolls” – as one who is AWOL 31 days or more: www-ari.army.mil/pdf/s51.pdf.

I just finalized the revisions for a patent application -- my first -- and it will be filed by the end of the week. It has been an interesting experience, but at the end of it all I'm not sure if I even want the patent any more. I guess it wouldn't actually be my patent anyway; it is the University's. About the only way that I can forsee the patent potentially affecting me is that it might complicate later research in which I make use of my own invention, because I might have to pay to license my own damn technology. I also can't make heads or tails out of the claims on my patent application. They were prepared by lawyers, in lawyer-speak suitable for the US patent office. What bothers me is that the scientific language in which I originally described the invention was clear enough for lawyers to understand. But the legalese of the final claims in my patent are written in no decipherable human language. It seems the patent process has been in every way stripped away from the control of the actual inventor. As if it weren't bad enough that the document is meaningless, the value of patents in general is being continually diluted by the granting of patents for trivial inventions, and for things that aren't inventions at all. As one of countless recent examples, IBM has received a patent on a method for paying programmers in exchange for work:

IBM patents method for paying open source volunteers: A PATENT IBM was granted last December is for an 'invention' that allows independent programmers who might work together to produce a unified software product. In fact, the patent, 6,658,642 goes further and gives examples such as open source software development such as Linux as the basis for its patent. The patent says that selected module programmers could earn money while those who don't win might get a 'pre-authorised' small payment as an extra incentive. Those payments, it continues, would be awarded to developers that submitted letters of intent and who submit modules that pass the module tests but are not selected. After this vetting, the modules will be integrated into a software package. It adds 'those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of the appended claims'. Well, it may be an ingenious way of paying open source developers and volunteers, Big Blue, but can it really be described as an invention?

I never thought someone would have the genius to patent capitalism itself. I think a pattern is emerging: patents are written in completely unclear language, and are issued for every rediculous thing. The actual patent itself, and its supporting documents, are totally irrelevant except as a ticket to court. Using a patent as a door-opening mechanism, a large company can pour dollars into legal action against a weaker company or individual. Typically the entity with more legal resources will win. The content of the patent is irrelevant. It only serves to enable litigation.