Excellent advice from one who did.
Rule number two in this list of ten commandments goes beyond the needed snark (and the first principle, which might be called the Tao of science: the only way to achieve Nobelity is not to strive for it).
This second principle actually says something dead on point on where discovery happens, in an argument that I think bears on much beyond science itself. It requires that the prize-aspirant should “hope that your experiments fail occasionally.” Why?
Because:
There are usually two main reasons why experiments fail. Very often, it is because you screwed up in the design by not thinking hard enough about it ahead of time. Perhaps more often, it is because you were not careful enough in mixing the reagents (I always ask students if they spat in the tube or, more recently, were texting when they were labeling their tubes). Sometimes, you are not careful enough in performing the analytics (did you put the thermometer in upside down, as I once witnessed from a medical student whose name now appears on my list of doctors who I won’t allow to teat me even if I’m dying?). These problems are the easiest to deal with by always taking great care in designing and executing experiments. If they still fail, then do them over again! But the more interesting reason that experiments fail is because nature is trying to tell you that the axioms on which you based the experiment are wrong. This means the dogma in the field is wrong (often the case with dogma). If you are lucky, as I was, then the dogma will be seriously wrong, and you can design more experiments to find out why. If you are really lucky, then you will stumble onto something big enough to be prizeworthy.
And with that, a chance to think about non-stupid things for a while. Open thread, y’all
Image: Diego Velasquez, The Drunkards, or the Triumph of Bacchus, 1629.
Baud
I got nothing.
BGinCHI
I thought the first rule of the Nobel Prize was “Don’t talk about the Nobel Prize”?
srv
I always wanted one, but it would be a lot less meaningful after Obamas
mclaren
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imonlylurking
I saw a new stray cat last night, on my way home. Medium sized, white with gray splotches, something seriously wrong with the left eye. (S)he vanished before I could get anywhere close. I put out some food and water-tonight is supposed to be cold so I’ll dig up some towels or something. (We have a little shelter on the back stoop but it’s not very warm.) Hopefully she can get used to us so we can get her some vet care.
ETA And I am already calling it her. I have no idea if it’s he or she.
JPL
Not sure that if this was mentioned below, but SC is charging a police officer with murder. I wonder if this was before or after the NYTimes obtaining a video showing the black male being shot in the back. link
The police officer said the man took the taser and he feared for his life. CBS evening news didn’t cover the part of the video showing the officer placing something near the body.
also.. I’m listening to the police and mayor press conference
there are two families that are suffering tonight ..wtf..
also, they would love to know who took the video just to thank that individual…
shell
Where exactly was he sticking that thermometer?
Definitely ‘triumph of Bacchus’ here. Having glass of Pinto Grigio after bad knee aching all day from the damp weather, and now looks like it’s gonna rain the whole damn week.
divF
The Nobel prize is the most visible of scientific achievements to the general public. For all that, it is a quirky award, in the sense that it must be given for a specific scientific accomplishment, (much like the Oscars). It can’t be awarded for the cumulative accomplishments of a sustained scientific career (unlike the Oscars, which do give such such awards). One of the best-known examples of this (at least to physicists) is the 1983 prize in physics awarded to Chandrasekar. The prize cited his work on stellar structure and evolution. He is said to have been upset that the citation mentioned only that particular piece of work, rather than a broader range of his accomplishments. He had an enormously productive and wide-ranging career, and that particular piece of work is not even the thing he is most famous for (the Chandrasekar Limit probably is). It was as if the Nobel committee recognized that his not getting the physics prize was becoming a scandal, and they had to choose something .
geg6
I, a complete non-scientist, am reading “Merchants of Doubt” by Oreskes and Conway. Learning a lot but it’s crazy how the same names and organizations are behind all the current false “information” out there screwing up our country, not just in science.
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: I think the banhammer might be slightly broken
jl
That guy receiving the laurel trophy looks like he is so drunk he’s about to puke in Bacchus’ lap. That would be an interesting addition to the Nobel Prize ceremony
@mclaren: It worked a few minutes ago. Maybe everyone wants a Nobel Prize and is reading it, right now. One inaccuracy in the linked piece is that it refers to the Nobel Prize in economics. The economics prize is not one of the original Nobel Prizes, but something funded (or maybe sponsored would be a better term?) by the central (government) bank of Sweden.
Which I think is kind of embarrassing. Economists left their physics envy hanging out for all to see. They should have set up their own different set of prizes, like mathematics. If economics was so damn hot a science as economists think, people would have paid attention.
Major Major Major Major
Damn it, copy-paste. What I meant was me too.
germy shoemangler
@imonlylurking: Ceiling Cat bless you for caring for the strays.
@JPL: The NYTIMES video shows the officer dropping the taser next to the guy’s body. What I found weird is that after he shoots the guy, the officer is yelling at him to put his hands behind his back.
geg6
Wow. CBS News just led off their broadcast with the news about the cop charged with murder in SC. Scott Pelley showed the video and said the cop “clearly” was not afraid for his life. Wow. Truth from the MSM. Wow.
shell
Another reason for alcohol.. having to hear about 500 times today that Rand Paul is running for president. The media…they are breathless.
*********
In that painting. Why is Bacchus so fish-belly white? I guess to set him apart from all those jolly rustics.
Steeplejack
Jeez, would it kill you to mention the guy’s name you’re quoting? Richard J. Roberts, physiology/medicine, 1993.
raven
And now ladies and gentleman the Paisley House on Capitol Hill, your spot for the best in food, fun and dancing proudly presents the fastest rising interim governmental administration in the western hemisphere. The cabinet of the United States of Being. From Rochester, New York, on lead guitar, the Secretary of Peace. On drums the Secretary of Inner Self. On saxophone, the Secretary of States of Consciousness. And here he is ladies and gentleman, the exp????, the most high Chief of the United States of Being, Stop and Cool it.
-Do you love me?
-Yes we do!
-On this birthday of the founder of our tribe, Sodom Clinton Powell. The first to take our sacred oath “If elected I refuse to serve.”
Hippy Republic of China
-Ciao baby, this is Major Hit in the cockpit of the Enola McGluin, flagship of the 7th Airborne peace Corp and Lending Library. We’re now over the center of rebel resistance in Northen Nigeria. And preparing to drop literature.
-Do the bomb bay door thing.
-Bomb bay doors swinging and open baby
-Groovy and out. Bombadeer, it’s your karma.
-We’re almost ready to drop it. I can see the entire rebel force running out of their huts looking up at the sky.
-Target ready. Books away!
-There they go, the literature is in a tight pattern. The rebels are beginning to scatter but it’s too late. On target. God this is an awesome moment. The last stronghold of unhip resistance is out of sight. Under 8 million hardbound copies of the Naked Lunch. It’s all over, we’re coming home!
chopper
@srv:
right, kissinger, arafat et al were pikers -obummer was the guy what ruined it all.
JPL
@geg6: I was disappointed with their coverage because they didn’t show him obviously planting the taser near the body. You are correct though, give them credit for leading with it.
Eric U.
I just started a long simulation and I’m trying to decide if I did it right. Huh. Last night I couldn’t remote into my work computer for some reason that I don’t exactly understand
Steeplejack
@raven:
You fell out of the Cobra and landed on your head?
Steeplejack
@Eric U.:
I find that when I’m doing long stimulation the feedback from my partner is all I need to tell if I’m doing it ri—wait, what? Oh, simulation. Never mind.
geg6
@JPL:
I was impressed by Scott Pelley stating the obvious, that the cop was in no way in fear for his life. Not often you hear that in these cases.
raven
@Steeplejack: Augered in! Actually I’ll get the certificate tomorrow and I have a year to use it.
geg6
@Steeplejack:
Heh. I read it that way at first and had to go back and read the word again. We have dirty minds.
Cervantes
@chopper:
Peres and Rabin individually were responsible for a lot more misery than Arafat ever was, and yet all three were awarded the Prize.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am getting really tired of the intern in District Court, he is a law school student, not a lawyer, has not passed the bar, and last week due to staff shortages the DAs office left him in Courtroom #2 trying cases on his own without a supervising ADA. The problem is that he doesn’t fully understand the rules of evidence, and he routinely lets in hearsay, pro se defendants have no idea about the rules of evidence therefore unless you have a judge who is willing to jump in and overrule on his own the defendants are fucked.
Roy G.
It begs the question, does this hold true for the Ig Noble prize as well?
Roger Moore
@divF:
The comments about not pissing off the wrong people and limiting your number of collaborators are also very appropriate. There was at least some head scratching in my field (Mass Spectrometry) when the Nobel committee gave the prize to Koichi Tanaka rather than Michael Karas and Franz Hillenkamp. Karas and Hillenkamp developed MALDI ionization, first using it for amino acids and smallish peptides. Tanaka then published a related technique he called soft laser ionization with an actual protein. Karas and Hillenkamp followed up with MALDI of larger proteins shortly afterward, and everyone since then has used MALDI rather than soft laser ionization.
So why did Tanaka get the prize rather than Karas and Hillenkamp. One part was that the committee was already splitting the prize with Kurt Wüthrich (for protein NMR) and John Fenn (for electrospray ionization mass spec), and they could only add one more laureate. Another was that Tanaka is a really nice, very modest guy, while Karas and Hillenkamp had made enemies. The net result is that Tanaka is the rare example of a non-PhD engineer winning a Nobel Prize in the sciences.
Corner Stone
Good fucking Christ, MSNBC. Don’t put that GD video on the air without a freaking warning.
Holy fuck.
Cervantes
@Roy G.:
That does it. You’re off my Christmas-card list this year.
chopper
@Roy G.:
sounds like you’re already on the right path to answer your question by yourself.
chopper
@Cervantes:
hence the “et al”.
Cervantes
@chopper:
Nice.
Corner Stone
Wow, Johnathan Capeheart, really?
JPL
@Corner Stone: What video? I assume the cop murdering the man but not sure.
Corner Stone
@JPL: Yes, the SC murder by police officer one. It’s horrific. Normally they edit or say something. I was answering a question my son had, looked up, saw a pic of a white cop’s face and then they showed him murdering that man.
There’s no other way to describe it.
edited a little
WaterGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt: How is that even legal?
JPL
@Corner Stone: The NY Times video did a good job of warning throughout.
I listened to the press conference held in Charleston and carried on streaming, although they did a good job,I didn’t feel it was necessary to say two families are suffering.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: That would be upsetting, to say the least.
Decades ago I fell asleep on the couch with the tv on, only to wake to the sound of the most awful scream I have heard in my life. For some godforsaken reason, they were playing the 911 call of some young woman whose father was in the process of murdering her.
Some things you cannot forget.
Corner Stone
Tweety’s a Paul-bot!
east is east
Freaking cold blooded murder. Check your taillights, everyone. You don’t want to get pulled over. Cops are out of fucking control in this country.
beth
When the story about the murder in SC broke last night, before anyone knew there was a video, the cop said he shot the guy during a struggle for his taser and he feared for his life. I was watching the news thinking uh huh, uh huh….
Corner Stone
I wonder if the person shooting that video ever thought he may be next.
Corner Stone
He’s 8 to 12 yards away and moving when the officer steadies himself and unloads.
lamh36
@JPL: yeah right, they want to “thank the individual” who shot the video…yeah, like they “thanked” the dude who shot the Eric Garner video?
(FYI, I know the dude had a “valid” reason for being arrested, but still the time frame between the dude being identified and his arrest)
Corner Stone
Wonder what excuses would be made for a taser in the back if there were no video.
lamh36
@Corner Stone: That was my question as well. How the hell does one taser themselves in the back.
chopper
@beth:
which is stupid because the coroner would clearly discern the distance and orientation of the victim. “oh, I shot him while we were struggling” doesn’t go far after the report comes out.
still thank god for the cameraman.
Poopyman
@east is east: If they were they wouldn’t get arrested.
In America’s Insane Asylum, no less.
JPL
@Corner Stone: He would have walked. After the NY times posted the video this was still what was up at the Charleston paper.. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150406/PC16/150409558
mdblanche
President Obama discusses the Iran deal with the Mustache of Understanding. The comments are most revealing. The Readers’ picks comments run heavily in favor of the deal, most of the Times’ picks comments are much more negative.There are often telling gaps between those categories but I can’t recall such a yawning chasm ever before. The President is keeping the Times from getting their war and they are pissed.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@chopper:
A coroner’s report could be altered or suppressed for “the good of the department.” A video that’s already “out there,” not so much.
Corner Stone
I think we know who is truly guilty here.
Corner Stone
Ok, that one went into the ether. FYWP.
A second one went boosh, too. Just saying that North Charleston paper post has some dirt on Sir Walter Scott, so clearly he deserved to die.
Narcissus
@Corner Stone: Attitude of the filmer probably depends on his skin color
WaterGirl
@east is east:
Quoted for truth. (emphasis mine)
BillinGlendaleCA
The shit just got real here, there’s water falling from the sky. I’m quite concerned.
Corner Stone
@BillinGlendaleCA: Why do you lie?
Corner Stone
Who decided that McKay Coppins was a thing?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone: Is your contention that I’m lying based on water falling from the sky or my concern about it?
WaterGirl
I can understand why people say they want their country back, because I want mine back. You know, a country where we have respect for the rule of law, everybody gets to vote, respect for the constitution, right to privacy, abortion is safe and legal. You know, a few little things like that.
Edit: I know it wasn’t perfect before, but damn, if the police were shooting people in cold blood, it sure wasn’t happening every day. And at least before 2000 I could actually believe that the highest court in the land wasn’t partisan.
(sorry about the whining, just particularly discouraged today.)
Corner Stone
@BillinGlendaleCA: I just think that living extensively in a quasi Road Warrior post-apocalyptic desert environment has clearly pushed you round the bend.
At this point if you told me Gwyneth Paltrow was our finest living actress I probably would not believe you. Even though it’s clearly true.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl:
You’re originally from South Africa?
Keith G
@Corner Stone:
I’m guessing Sweden.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
“Take my country back” in this case is dogwhistle speak for “put a white man in the White House, as God intended.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone:
Why yes, I’ve visited Houston.
Tommy
@WaterGirl:
In about 30 minutes, I’ll get a call from my mom who works the elections in her district. It is kind of a tradition now she calls me after every election to report how it went. We don’t always see eye to eye on politics, but as sad as it is to say, I am the only person she knows that gives a fuck about people voting. I’ll listen to her rant and agree with her 110%!
She will be near tears because only a couple dozen people will have voted. Now her town is only 12,500 people and there are multiple polling stations, but clearly there are more than a few dozens people that could vote. My mother and many others in my part of the state work hard to make it easy for us to vote.
I’ll see pics on election days at Daily Kos of the long lines and the nightmare stories of how hard it is to vote ….
I like to joke I can vote faster (like I did today) then I can order a Big Mac. I so wish everybody had that. Heck I am on the record saying if close to 100% of the population voted and the people I voted for lost elections, I could live with that. Might not be happy about it, but happy the population as a whole at least was engaged and voted.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Yeah, I know that what I mean when I say that is a hell of a lot different than what THEY mean when they say that.
I guess I’ve been thinking about the question pollsters like to ask “is the country going in the right direction or the wrong direction”. It used to be that a “wrong direction” answer was a reflection on the president or the party in power, but now everything is upside down with the crazy republicans and their scorched earth policies so “wrong direction” answers tell you absolutely nothing.
I have heard “both sides do it” from 3 friends in the past week and I just want to throttle them and ask if they are even paying attention. Thank god for the one friend last week who said he thinks there is no “fourth estate” anymore to help keep everything in check.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I was the only voter at my polling place when I went in to vote, it was about 3:30pm.
Violet
@Corner Stone: I had no idea who that was so I googled. Yuck.
Corner Stone
I’m not sure that I have quite literally wanted to physically assault someone as much as I do that last R politician from Kansas Chris Hayes just had on.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tommy: I sympathize with your mom, and I vote every time. Or more accurately, I vote every time I remember it’s an election day. I wish all elections were either on the first Tuesday of November or May, 6 months apart. It would save money too.
Our school bond issues are often at odd times. I’m not sure that’s an accident. The side supporting the bond may value low turnout. I’m not sure.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Same here at 7:30 AM. I then had to go to town hall right afterwards, because I have a problem with my utility bill. Town hall is another polling station. I was there was 8 AM until about 8:30 and not a single person showed up to vote. Not a one.
Tommy
@Iowa Old Lady: My mom used to be proud she worked the polls. Done it for more than a decade. When she was over last weekend for Easter was the first time I ever heard her complain about it. That she was basically wasting an entire day and nobody would vote anyway. Hearing her say that made me very sad.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Iowa Old Lady: And; please, oh please get rid of off year elections(odd numbered year elections).
Corner Stone
@Tommy:
Ummm…hmmm…
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: The ONLY reason that it took me longer to vote than order a Big Mac(though I’ve not done that in years) is that the kid(they had one senior citizen and the rest high school kids staffing the polls) thought my middle name was my last name.
ETA: I usually take my sample ballot with me and just give it to the first person that checks names. The girl that did the address lookup completed that rather quickly before the guy figured out that he was looking for my middle name.
NotMax
@Tommy
‘Twas ever thus.
Certainly would never want to see people fined, punished or incarcerated for not voting.
Howard Beale IV
As I posted in the open thread: Stan Freberg, RIP
Tommy
@NotMax: Well I wouldn’t suggest any of those things but I think it is safe to say we could make it even easier. I mean heaven forbid we have an app for that. Voting is about the only thing I can’t do on my phone. I do my banking, insurance, PayPal, credit cards, you name it.
I know the right will scream voter fraud, voter fraud. BS. The stats I’ve seen is that voter fraud happens .00001 percent of the time. But why don’t we try it. If we find voter fraud happens, l can admit it, and then we try something else.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: What gets me is I am a huge tech nerd so I tend to look to technology to solve problems. When I vote there is almost NO technology of any kind outside of a pencil and an optical scanner.
There are just people at a long table with signs in front of them that say A-E and so on. You go to the one that includes your last name. They have these little books, almost like a cop carries to write tickets. You tell them your name, they find a copy of your voting card. You sign the page behind it. Go to the end of the table and you are handed a ballot.
You vote. Put it in an optical scanner. You are given a sticker saying you voted.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
Do! Not! Want! Voting needs to be extremely secure. The reason the kind of voter fraud the Republicans are always talking about isn’t a problem is because it’s virtually impossible to pull off enough voter impersonation fraud to tip an election, so nobody will bother. If you allow all electronic voting, though, it becomes possible for a sufficiently capable hacker- or cheating politician- to steal votes wholesale without leaving an obvious trail. Until you have a way of proving your system is both anonymous and secure, I don’t want to touch it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Howard Beale IV: The Wiki says he told the driver to drop him off in Hollywood, Warner is in Burbank(as is Disney).
Tommy
@Roger Moore: And I totally understand your concerns. Look I am a tech nerd that works in technology, so when I see a problem I tend to think of how to solve it with technology. I am both old enough and I hope smart enough to know that technology can’t solve every problem, no matter how much I wish it could.
But I think it can be both anonymous and secure. Isn’t Oregon the state where every voter gets a ballot in the mail now. I don’t see why the same thing couldn’t be done where every voter gets a letter and a ballot with a code, that code is entered in the app, and they vote.
IMHO if you can do it with paper you can do it with email/an app.
Howard Beale IV
@BillinGlendaleCA: A demigod has died, and that’s the best you got? Did you not see the quotes in the Wiki article?
FSM on a pony….
kc
@Corner Stone:
There’s a moment in the video, right after the cop finishes firing shots, when he appears to glance at the camera. Unnerving.
Matt McIrvin
To extend what Roberts said, it always annoys me when people speak of negative results as “failures”. If they’re unexpected negative results, and they’re not simple errors in experimental procedure (which can admittedly be hard to ascertain), they’re not failures! They’re saying something interesting, though we may not know quite what.
max
@Tommy: When I vote there is almost NO technology of any kind outside of a pencil and an optical scanner.
And paper with optical scanners are *highly* reliable and easy to use. Voting machines: not so reliable, potentially fraudulent and not as easy to use as paper and optical scanners. Speaking as a ‘huge tech nerd’.
We have voting machines here, and we still have to go through all the rigamarole of signing in and whatnot, and it’s silly, and the voting machines are still more difficult to use. Totally with Roger there.
max
[‘What matters is NOT having a machine that goes boing but having a reliable, recheckable and simple & unconfusing to use way to count votes, full stop.’]
PurpleGirl
An acquaintance’s mother shared a Nobel in medicine with colleagues. Dr. Rosalyn Yallow was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Physics. She couldn’t get a job in physics so she took a job at the Bronx V.A. hospital. With colleagues there she began to work on a project that lead to Radio Immuno Assay. That’s what she received the Nobel for. One result of her work was blood tests for diabetes and sugar levels.
max
@Tommy: IMHO if you can do it with paper you can do it with email/an app.
In Oregon they mail out (wait for it) paper ballots and people fill those in and mail it back. Easy peasy, and highly reliable.
You might be able to do it with an app but an app will not improve the system. It just makes a lot of extra complication.
max
[‘Not to mention you have to have a debugged and working app (for every potential OS) that is given put to (wait for people) people who don’t have bloody smartphones.’]
Tommy
@kc: Agreed. What gets me is I figure if I leave my house there is a good chance I could be on camera being filmed. If I was a police officer making an arrest I’d think that chance is about 100%. It seems like they have either not pondered this or they don’t even care.
Now with that said I am not saying anything here that has not been said and people here don’t already know, but I can go buy a GoPro camera at freaking Walmart. It isn’t like we don’t have the tech to put a camera on the body of every cop. It is high time we do just that.
I might be a little more of a “law and order” guy then most far left liberals. But it is also safe to say we have to change the dynamics in this country. Cops just can’t gun down and kill unarmed citizens. I mean how are the police supposed to police a community of the law abiding citizens are scared of the cops?
I am a white dude in a small rural town. Middle to upper-middle class. I consider the police “cool.” But if I lived in some of these communities where they murders (and that is what they are) happen and my skin color was …. well a different color. I’d be fearful of the police even if I wasn’t doing anything wrong/illegal.
Tommy
@max: I realize at some level I am contradicting my own comments. I say we need an app but also say I vote with paper and a pencil and it is both easy and fast. As I said I work in technology so I look to tech for solutions. I realize this is a problem at times. I guess I should remember I’ve tried about 20+ to do list programs. I still find a legal pad, clipboard, and mechanical pencil work the best :).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Howard Beale IV: It’s a LA thing.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: That’s wut i was thinkin’.
J R in WV
@NotMax:
No, no, dude. In this case we want to take our country back from criminal cops, judges who think nothing of hearing cases involving companies they have business relationships with, and Republican wing-nuts who don’t believe in science.
Personally, I think anyone who doesn’t get their kids vaccinated should have their health insurance revoked, and be declared ineligible for treatment by Medical Doctors. Maybe Naturopaths and Chiropractors could help them…
And crooked cops – gawd help us. Many, most cops are well-intentioned guys who do dangerous work for low pay, but who get a feeling of accomplishment when they keep someone from getting into big trouble, or who help people out of trouble.
But the bad cops are SO bad… we have to get them under control. Body cams required for anyone with a gun, and no bust counts without good video. If you shoot someone without good video the assumption is that you committed murder.
This guy throwing his taser down beside the body, after he told dispatch he was attacked by the “suspect” who went for his taser, Right, cop with a gun and the deceased guy went for the non-lethal weapon… that’s what everyone would do, right? right!
argh
SRW1
@divF:
Einstein’s Nobel was awarded “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. The first was understood by everybody to refer to Einstein’s idea on relativity, but that topic was still controversial, so it wasn’t named. On the other hand, as you said, the prize was supposed to be awarded for a specific contribution, so the committee specified the photoelectric effect.
The other fun part was that Einstein received his Nobel in 1922, even though it formally was a 1921 Nobel. What happened was that in 1921 the committee judged none of the nominees for physics to fulfill all of the criteria, so they initially didn’t award the 1921 Nobel in physics and reserved it until the next year.
BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: And cameras on for their full shift, no excuse for the camera not being on.
Bill Arnold
@Tommy:
I think the right would love it at the same time, if it provided ways to deniably perform massive voter fraud. They would justify it to themselves with complaints about the Democrats voting the dead to beat Nixon, etc.
The Projection Is Strong with such people.
kc
@Tommy:
Or they figure they can just seize the cameras and arrest anyone filming them. I think some states have introduced laws to make it illegal to film cops.
Bill Arnold
@max:
How does Oregon protect against coercion (e.g. a controlling spouse) or pay-per-vote? Serious question; the articles that turned up in a quick search said basically don’t worry about these problems since they don’t happen.
J R in WV
@Tommy:
Don’t forget the Diebold voting machines, without any paper trail of votes to recount.
They make ATM machines, all of which have a paper audit trail printed out inside, but then they design and build voting machines with no audit trail?
Crooked from the beginning… and then they find an email from the CEO of the voting machine company telling his fellow Republicans that they don’t have to worry about voting in Ohio, he has that taken care of.
Right, he does.
So I don’t think electrical machines are the go-to solution. Here the voting machines actually print your votes on a paper tape, that you can see through a plastic window, to verify that it was recording your votes as you cast them.
I don’t know if everyone looks at that paper tape to verify that their votes were captured correctly, but if anyone doubted it, the tape could be inspected. And if totals were off, the tapes could be counted and compared. That seems pretty solid, but really, I would prefer paper ballots, No. 2 pencils, and ballot boxes.
I can wait til Wednesday morning to know who won. Last Presidential election here the courthouses were empty by 11 pm newscasts. I remember when the courthouses were like ant hills until 2 or 3 in the morning, with reporters, poll workers and candidates milling about.
That was then, though, and this is now.
I know how your Mom feels, though. My Grandma was a poll worker until she was nigh on 80 years old and couldn’t stand it for 18 hours. Tell her some of us are grateful for her hard work making elections fair and square!
Dentist appointment in the early morning, and then I see the surgeon in the afternoon, all day in town! G;Night all.
NotMax
@Tommy
An app is a terrible idea, for the reasons cited above plus about a thousand more. Just contemplating intrusion into the database or manipulation of the data from within the system itself is sickening.
Unless and until the government provides each and every voter with a smartphone – and the service(s) required to use it – at no charge, then and only then might we begin a conversation about such an app, provided it is reliable, it is demonstrably secure and the information and results can be checked, can be verified and can be replicated by an independent authority if needs be.
FlyingToaster
@max:
True story.
Back when I lived in the ‘Ville, we had a particulary contested election (Municipal Elections, 2001; Ward 6, I believe). There was a 5 vote gap between the two leading candidates.
So Monday afternoon, the Cops trundled the 3 Ward 6 precinct ballot boxes across the driveway from City Hall to the HS Gym. And with the Basketball Cameras broadcasting on local access, they hand-counted those votes.
All of the machine-read ballots matched. The ballots the machines couldn’t read went to a 3 judge panel (the Board of Elections) and they determined if a detectable vote was cast.
The leading candidate netted 3 additional votes. Paper ballots and scanners won.