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ReasonOnline Reports:

A village jury in Pakistan ordered a 16-year old girl and her sister-in-law to be raped. The decision was made as restitution after the daughter of the rapist allegedly had relations with the brother of the girl. Police say the rapist had tried to rape the girl before but been prevented, so he sent his daughter to the family’s home while the brother was there, then he called the other villagers and accused the boy of having an affair with his daughter. A village meeting was then called and the girls were ordered to be raped. The man then allegedly took them to an outhouse and raped them.
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CLIVE THOMPSON, The New York Times, writes:

This fall, as many as 20 percent of American voters will be able to cast their ballots on A.T.M.-style electronic voting machines. But to put it mildly, these machines — where you simply touch a screen and a computer registers your vote — have not inspired much confidence lately. North Carolina officials recently learned that a software glitch destroyed 436 e-ballots in early voting for the 2002 general election. In a Florida state election this past January, 134 votes apparently weren’t recorded — and this was in a race decided by a margin of only 12 votes. Since most of the machines don’t leave any paper trail, there’s no way to determine what actually happened. Most alarmingly, perhaps, California’s secretary of state recently charged that Diebold — the industry leader — had installed uncertified voting machines and then misled state officials about it.

Electronic voting has much to offer, but will we ever be able to trust these buggy machines? Yes, we will — but only if we adopt the techniques of the ‘’open source'’ geeks.

One reason it’s difficult to trust the voting software of companies like Diebold is that the source code remains a trade secret. A few federally approved software experts are allowed to examine the code and verify that it works as intended, and in some cases, states are allowed to keep a copy in escrow. But the public has no access, and this is troublesome. When the Diebold source code was accidentally posted online last year, a computer-science professor looked at it and found it was dangerously hackable. Diebold may have fixed its bugs, but since the firm won’t share the code publicly, there’s no way of knowing. Just trust us, the company says.

But is the counting of votes — a fundamental of democracy — something you want to take on faith? No, this problem requires a more definitive solution: ending the secrecy around the machines.
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David Steinberg writes:

Masturbation is usually a private thing.

And orgasm, that moment when everything spins so delightfully and totally out of control — your mind, your body, your face — well, that’s private, too, something you only want the most intimate and trusted of other people to see.

Usually.

But now, on a sunny Sunday morning, I’m driving to San Francisco for the purpose of masturbating in front of three other people and having my orgasm recorded on videotape for (potentially) all the world to see.

Part of my orgasm, that is. The plan is to videotape my face, only my face, close up and personal, as they say — all the way through arousal and climax.
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