Putting your own Favorites on Safari's 4 Top Sites

Everyone is complaining that you can't set your own favorites in Safari 4's Top Sites page. But you can! What am I missing here? The following seems to work:

1. Click on the Top Sites icon (the 3 x 4 grid of boxes in the bookmarks bar).
2. Click the Edit button in the lower left corner.
3. Now, in the address bar, type in the address of the web site you want to be a favorite, but do not press the Enter key.
4. Drag the favorite icon next to the URL down into the sites, and watch the grid of images rearrange. Put the icon where you want it to show up in the grid of sites.
5. Once you have where you want it, press the pushpin.
6. Click Done.

Now the one down side is that the push pin doesn't seem to force the page to stay there during editing, and I could argue that is a bug. But this seems to work.

The Misuse of Statistics

Sigh. I shouldn't be surprised by this. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi decides to drop data to make the current recession look worse than it is. I recommend you follow the link to read more; I haven't the time to copy over the charts. And Hot Air deserves the hat tip for this.

What are we doing?

I haven't posted in ages, and it's my own fault. I was following the election so closely I never took a step back to blog on it. But I found this video interesting. 

What Google Engineers do for Fun: Computerized Lego Art Project | The

http://www.breakitdownblog.com/what-google-engineers-do-for-fun-lego-art-project

How many people do you know who can take a picture and turn it into a LEGO build-by-number project?

I just can't help but imagine how much money I could have made from my fellow students if I had done this back in elementary school. But that is why I am not a lead engineer at Google.

Real Trekkie Tricorder Invented | LiveScience

Real Trekkie Tricorder Invented | LiveScience

I don't need you anymore, Spock! Although we aren't at the point where we can imbed this in an iPhone, it is a fantastic step forward to get medical technology in the remotest parts of the world. A great step forward.

The Little Secret in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board

I have to thank Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy for finding this. The news this week coming from the Supreme Court was about Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the Indiana Voter ID law under review. The court voted 6-3 to support Indiana's law. In the majority decision writing by Justice Stephens, he added this footnote, which I wish to include in its entirety:

Three comments on JUSTICE SOUTER’s speculation about the non-trivial burdens that SEA 483 may impose on “tens of thousands” of Indiana citizens, post, at 1 (dissenting opinion), are appropriate. First, the fact that the District Judge estimated that when the statute was passed in 2005, 43,000 citizens did not have photo identification, see 458 F. Supp. 2d 775, 807 (SD Ind. 2006), tells us nothing about the number of free photo identification cards issued since then. Second, the fact that public transportation is not available in some Indiana counties tells us nothing about how often elderly and indigent citizens have an opportunity to obtain a photo identification at the BMV, either during a routine outing with family or friends or during a special visit to the BMV arranged by a civic or political group such as the League of Women Voters or a political party. Further, nothing in the record establishes the distribution of voters who lack photo identification. To the extent that the evidence sheds any light on that issue, it suggests that such voters reside primarily in metropolitan areas, which are served by public transportation in Indiana (the majority of the plaintiffs reside in Indianapolis and several of the organizational plaintiffs are Indianapolis organizations). Third, the indigent, elderly, or disabled need not “journey all the way to their county seat each time they wish to exercise the franchise,” post, at 29, if they obtain a free photo identification card from the BMV. While it is true that obtaining a birth certificate carries with it a financial cost, the record does not provide even a rough estimate of how many indigent voters lack copies of their birth certificates. Supposition based on extensive Internet research is not an adequate substitute for admissible evidence subject to cross-examination in constitutional adjudication.

[emphasis mine]

Translation: Souter made his decision based on a lot of research on the Internet, and Stevens is saying that such research cannot replace information that perhaps should been submitted to the court as evidence but wasn't. In this case, Souter found (and cited in footnotes) the number of branches of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) in various counties taken from the Indiana state web site. He also cited a page from the American Public Transportation Association.

This is huge, and great. Why? Several reasons.

It is fine to use the internet to research the proper flowers for your garden, to gather information for politics or study, or anything that involves your personal life. But a judicial case must be determined based on the evidence presented in court and not by a judge doing his own research. Once a judge writes a decision based on such personal research, he has become a confederate for that side of the argument. It maintains a high standard that claimants must meet in order to present evidence in court. It must be evidence, not speculation on web pages.

And let's add: It continues the good tradition in effect in most reputable colleges and universities and book publishers that internet research generally cannot be considered a viable source. The biggest problem in this area is Wikipedia, regardless of the work taking place now by the Wikipedia folks themselves to try and make it a more stable source.Justice Stevens has done us all a service.

It's all clear to me now

cgon16l.jpg (JPEG Image, 266x400 pixels)

It makes so much sense.