Punchscan

Via Lindsay Beyerstein: Punchscan is interesting. They've come up with a way to give voters a receipt they can check against a website to ensure that their votes were counted properly, without being able to use that receipt to prove how they voted to anyone else. The randomly-generated ballot separates into two pieces, and both are necessary to tell how you voted, but the one you keep can be used for verification.

(The requirement of nonverifiability to others is why current voting systems don't give you a receipt: if you could prove how you voted, that could be used to pay or coerce people to vote a certain way.)

Despite their assurances, I do wonder about usability issues; they've given some thought to disabled access, but these ballots do seem slightly more complex than the simple optical-scan system we use in most elections here, though not anywhere near as bad as Palm Beach-style punch-card ballots.

Public service announcement

If a machine calls you eight times in a row and begins by saying something like "Stay on the line for some important information about Candidate Foo", the organization that is harassing you is probably working for Candidate Foo's opponent.

Just so you know.

Friday at the museum

On Friday, mezdeathhead, schwa242, and schwa242's sister Katie came through Boston on their way home from Ireland, and samantha2074, Jorie and I met them at the Museum of Science. It was Jorie's most involved outing since she was born, and she's more prone to sudden cranky moods than she was back in her sleepy newborn days, so the logistics were nontrivial; Sam spent a considerable amount of time feeding Jorie in the car. But Mez, Schwa and Katie were wonderful and charming despite the effects of jet lag and end-of-vacation exhaustion, and a good time was had by all.

In the process I made a somewhat truncated visit to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the MoS. I'm aware that there's been some controversy over this exhibit, which shows partially dissected human bodies artfully preserved through a process called plastination, but I was surprised at how interesting and generally non-exploitative the actual exhibit seemed. I noticed a lot of people with medical training having a grand time there, pointing out stuff to their friends.

There was a bit of pernicious silliness on the exhibit web FAQ, though:

Why are there not more women plastinates in the exhibits?

Sensitive to perceived community concerns, Dr. von Hagens did not want to appear voyeuristic in revealing too many female bodies. Further, he sees himself in the tradition of Renaissance anatomists, whose works traditionally included far more masculine than feminine bodies, since all but the reproductive systems are essentially the same. The musculature of male bodies is generally more pronounced and illustrates more aspects of the muscle system. The organs on display come primarily from the female body donors. However, since opening the exhibition, Dr. von Hagens has received numerous requests from women visitors to see more examples of female anatomy. Based on this, Dr. von Hagens has included more female plastinates in BODY WORLDS 2.

When feminist theorists talk about "privileging the male gaze", this sort of thing is what they're going on about. There's something odd about the idea that display of the female body is "voyeuristic" or inherently sexualized in a way that display of the male body (including male genitalia, which were very much on display) is not. It reminds me very much of the late Stanislaw Lem's stated reason why his novels had so few female characters, that introducing women would bring in a sexual element where he didn't want one. If your readers are all assumed to be straight men and they see women as the carriers of sex, I suppose that makes sense, but it doesn't otherwise. I'm glad that this version of the exhibit did include some female bodies.

Your polling place

When using mypollingplace.com to find out where to vote, do click through to the linked local government site on the results page. The site is a little misleading, in that the results page also gives the address and phone number of your local election office, and if you don't read it too carefully you might believe that that is your polling place.