The blogosphere is in an uproar over a ballot stuffing scandal. A commenter on Daily Kos posted and ran some code for automagically inflating Kos’ vote total for Best Overall Blog in the 2004 Weblog Awards.

I haven’t mentioned the awards since I am not nominated in any of the categories, but still, how pathetic do you have to be to stuff an online poll in what is basically a vanity contest?

More thoughts on this from Power Line and The Shape of Days.

UPDATE: Jay Tea shares his thoughts on the matter.

UPDATE II: Hugh Hewitt comments on the implications of this scandal for the real world.

Peggy Noonan looks back at Dan Rather’s career:

If you were a young Dan Rather you knew which side was the side to be on. You knew which side your bosses were on. You knew which side would lead to your rise. And you knew which side would win.

It wasn’t exactly complicated. Every conservative in America in the last century, especially in the media and in the colleges, knew they would be dinged and damaged if they held to their beliefs. Every liberal in the media and the academy knew they could rise if they espoused liberal views. Dan wanted to rise.

Probably the worst moment in his career, because it was arguably the one most obvious in showing bias and a political agenda, was the time Dan tried to beat up George H.W. Bush live, on the “CBS Evening News,” over Iran-contra. Mr. Bush decked him instead, and with a question that reverberates: How would you like your whole career to be judged by one mistake? I do not doubt that CBS News that night thought it was going to take down a vice president, and wanted to. And was embittered by its failure. Which may have contributed to the years long, Ahab-like quest of producer Mary Mapes to bring down George W. Bush with documents it took bloggers less than 24 hours to reveal as fabrications.

This just in, Kerry supporters are still making PESTs of themselves.

Twenty John Kerry supporters met for their first group therapy session in South Florida Thursday, screaming epithets at President Bush as they shared their emotions with licensed mental health counselors.

The first of several free noontime therapy sessions at the American Health Association in Boca Raton was designed to treat what mental health counselors have dubbed Post Election Selection Trauma (PEST).

“If I had a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and these people wanted to throw darts at it, I would let them do it,” Robert J. Gordon, AHA executive director, told the Boca News after the session. “It’s no joke. People with PEST were traumatized by the election. If you even mention religion, their faces turn blister-red as they shout at Bush.”

(From LGF)

Jeff Jacoby writes:

Academic freedom is not only meant to protect professors; it is also supposed to ensure students’ right to learn without being molested. When instructors use their classrooms to indoctrinate and propagandize, they cheat those students and betray the academic mission they are entrusted with. That should be intolerable to honest men and women of every stripe – liberals and conservatives alike.

Plus Professor Bainbridge has links to more on that subject in The Economist, Opinion Journal, and an op-ed written by George Will.

Victor Davis Hanson reminds us, ”How Far We’ve Come.”

First it was Space Ship One winning the X Prize, then came NASA’s historic flight of the X-43A aircraft. Now comes the ornithopter?

Come spring, a group of Canadian researchers will try to realize an age-old dream advanced by both science and mythology: to fly like a bird.

With help from his graduate students, James DeLaurier, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, has created an ornithopter–a full-size plane designed to get off the ground when its wings flap. Pilot Jack Sanderson will attempt to fly the contraption a few thousand feet next April.

If it succeeds, the flight will fulfill a dream that has foiled Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci and other, more modern aviation pioneers–that is, to achieve flight by means of undulating wings. In standard planes, an engine pushes the plane forward, and the lift is generated under a fixed wing. By contrast, the ornithopter is like a bird: The engine causes the wings to beat, which, in turn, creates the conditions for a lift.

As the article makes clear the goal isn’t to revolutionize commercial flight, but to attempt the age old dream of flying like a bird. The project has potential military applications, as well.

Early voting was such a big hit in Florida that now the state’s election officials want to replace Election Day and voting precincts with an Election period where voters would go to large voting sites to cast their ballots.

This past election season marked the first time that Florida used early voting across the state and it was a proven success, as some voters waited in line for hours in order to cast their ballot ahead of Election Day.

Election supervisors say the experience showed them they could move away from the traditional Election Day and a precinct structure many believe is outdated. Instead of hundreds of precincts in a county, for example, voters could go to any of a few super-voting sites equipped with enough machines and personnel to keep lines at a minimum.

I watched television coverage of the long lines at the early voting locations in Florida, and figured they where due to too few voting machines and/or low staffing at the sites, as election officials underestimated the popularity of early voting.

That certainly isn’t the case in Tennessee, where we’ve had early voting in specific locations for a number of years, but still relies on precincts for voting on Election Day. I am a big fan of Early voting. I have only had to wait in a long line once while taking advantage of it, which I started doing when I moved into Knoxville proper. And believe it or not, I didn’t have to stand in a long line this year. My wife and I stood in line for early voting during the 2002 mid-term election and since then we’ve changed the site we use to a less popular one. I especially like the convenience of voting when and where I want to vote. Skipping long lines is just a side benefit. Most of the time I have taken advantage of it for general elections, although Tennessee offers it for all elections including the primaries.

‘Blog’ was the most looked for word on Merriam-Webster’s website this year.

A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year’s presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster’s list of the 10 words of the year.

Merriam-Webster said Tuesday that “blog,” defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks,” was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

This certainly signals the rise of blogs into more mainstream awareness. A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law, who isn’t particularly web or computer savvy, asked my wife what a blog was, after she had heard the term used on the radio. I thought at the time that this possibly indicated a shift in awareness on the part of the general non-techie population. An so it seems it is, as my mother-in-law isn’t the only person wondering what a blog is.

N.Z. Bear marks the occasion by using all ten words in a single sentence.

The other day I posted about Microsoft’s forthcoming blog service. Well, it’s here and it is called MSN Spaces. It is more than just a blog tool. I created my own space and played around with it a bit.

Overall, like any Microsoft effort, the first version isn’t anything to be terribly excited about, but I expect that it will improve over time given Microsoft’s track record. The rule of thumb is that it takes them three tries to get something right/done well/usable or as close to that as they can make it.

Redmond has also developed a web-based version of its IM client, Messenger. This has potential, because it allows the use of Messenger without having to download a client. Pretty cool. And it works in Firefox, as well.

(From Instapundit) More on MSN Spaces at Boing Boing and BuzzMachine.

I always thought the problem was employees not coming to work. Apparently, people who show up to work with illnesses are a bigger problem.

Kidding aside, I have always thought that “presenteeism” was a problem, not just in the workplace but in school as well, for two reasons that I think are fairly obvious:

1. Workers who are ill won’t be as productive as they normally would be, and

2. Coming to work with a contagious sickness, such as the flu or a cold, presents the risk of passing the illness on to others; reducing their effectiveness and ability to be present for work.

Number two is mitigated by non-communicable illnesses, like irritable bowel syndrome or migraines, but the first reason applies pretty much for any illness. Overall, the article presents a good argument for employers to implement programs designed to reduce the effects of “presenteeism.”

The poster child for a positive return on such investments is the flu shot. Numerous studies have shown that the cost of offering free shots is far outweighed by the savings realized through reductions in both absenteeism and presenteeism. There is also strong evidence that well-designed employee assistance programs (which offer counseling services for employees and their families), health risk assessments (which gather information from workers on conditions, such as high blood pressure, that may cause future health problems), and wellness programs (which promote healthy practices such as exercising and following a nutritious diet) more than pay for themselves by lowering companies’ direct and indirect medical costs.