The WB has chosen previously unknown hunk Will Toale to play Arthur Curry (aka Aquaman) on their upcoming television show. So far, a name has not been announced for the new show.

To anyone at the WB: My boss and I are two professional namers who also just happen to be the biggest comic book geeks around. Need some help with your show’s name?

In related news, UPN and the WB networks are merging. The parent companies CBS and Warner Brothers are joining forces to be a bigger player in the broadcast network arena. The new network will be called CW, taking the “C” from CBS and “W” from Warner. Well, that’s refreshingly creative!. Way to go guys! ::eye-roll::

adn.com | alaska : State rebuffs raw vote demand

The state Division of Elections has refused to turn over its electronic voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs to a private company and can’t be made public.

Of course, there is some technical wrangling going on that obscures the issue. What the Alaska state Democractic Party requested is the raw database of vote tallies from the 2004 state elections. Diebold claims that the format of the data is a trade secret, despite the fact that there are copies of Diebold databases available on the Internet. This in and of itself is not outrageous; I’m no lawyer, but I believe Diebold is required to defend its IP, regardless of whether or not it has been pirated.

However, if that is their defense, then their offer of an Excel spreadsheet undermines it, unless they are willing to admit to obscuring some of the original data. The ’secrets,’ for whatever they are worth, to a database format are simply the names, datatypes, and storage sizes of each column. Producing an Excel spreadsheet from the original data would provide every single piece of that information. In order to produce a spreadsheet that does not, they would need to either exclude columns from the database entirely, or merge two or more of them together. In either case that would tamper with the original vote data. So: What is their motivation? Do they really believe that an Excel spreadsheet is any less revealing than a .sql dump?

More importantly, what if they’re right? What if there’s some sort of database trigger or embedded code that is proprietary, and they really are incapable of reporting the exact original data? Our situation is then that property rights are primary, even in the face of credible allegations of widespread federal election fraud. Why is that okay?

In related news, Diebold’s founding CEO resigned in December for unspecified reasons, while the company blames Hurricane Katrina for their recent woes.

Frank Rich sums up nicely the current sad state of political message massaging. Where do we go from here? Unfortunately the only way out seems to be reactionary, constructing a propaganda machine that is just as bent on delivering form over content, and in the process losing any attachment to content we may have once had. From the body of the article:

Democrats who go berserk at their every political defeat still don’t understand this. They fault the public for not listening to their facts and arguments, as though facts and arguments would make a difference, even if the Democrats were coherent. It’s the power of the story that always counts first, and the selling of it that comes second. Accuracy is optional.

What are our alternatives? Why has ‘framing’ failed to deliver effective results?

Since nyt is extorting, I’m just going to give you the whole thing, after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

Zogby released results of its poll of high school seniors on today’s hot political topics. Some good news and some mixed.

The good news is that most class of ‘06 seniors favor gay marriage or civil unions, and oppose a federal amendment against gay marriage. Hurray, the tide is turning. Now all we have to do is wait for these kids to age 20-30 years and enter the voting demographic.

The mixed news is that most of the seniors oppose abortion, think it’s morally wrong, and don’t think poor women should have the right to an abortion. On the flip side, the majority support Roe v. Wade and don’t think the ruling should be overturned.