Slacker trilogy

The morning after I saw Slacker, I overheard a couple of coffee-shop customers swapping anecdotes about automotive repo jobs. Preachers, apparently, are particularly self-righteous about avoiding bills. One local dealership is trying to improve the quality of its credit portfolio by making the salesmen responsible for reposessing cars from their own delinquent customers.
As a particpant and observer of Austin’s cafe culture, I expected Slacker to be a touchstone to Austin’s cafe culture, and so it was. The pickup conversation with the dogged conspiracy theorist, off-kilter petty scams, windy pop-culture critiques, convoluted romantic and roommate drama, each vignette unfolds after the other, in desultory succession.
Immediately after I watched the movie, I wasn’t sure how much I liked it. At the end of each scene, the camera follows a new person off to another weird tangent; without plot and character development, jolts of recognition and amusement war with ambient boredom. The film improves with recollection and comparison.
Clerks built on the low-budget, indy cred of Slacker. The setting is North Jersey, the anomie is post-highschool rather than post-college. Wierd misadventures afflict the convenience store clerks; a rabid anti-smoking advocate riles up customers coming in to feed their habit; a streethockey game is rescheduled to the store’s roof during business hours. Several of the anecdotes are truly funny, other scenes may have been funnier in brainstorming than onscreen, like the customer who obsessively checks for the perfect egg.
Despite the similar low budget, anedotal plot, and slacker characters, Clerks is a more conservative, wannabe Hollywood movie. Unlike Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith cobbles together a plot, tacks on a love interest – Dante, the antihero schlemiel clerk, has an affectionate, go-getter girlfriend but pines for a dramatic and inconstant ex. Smith adds a pop-psych denoument when Dante explains to his best friend the childhood origins of his pathologically passive attitude toward life. The Clerks have opportunities but lack get-up-and-go; there aren’t any opportunities for liberal arts grads in recessionary early 90s Austin.
High Fidelity is the slacker film turned into a sitcom, but I liked it best anyway. The John Cusack character is the owner of a small, starving-artist-snobby vintage record store in Chicago. His music geek clerks — Jack Black’s customer-hostile connoiseur and Todd Louiso’s adorable nebbish steal the show. Over the course of the movie, the characters learn to transcend slackerdom; Cusack learns that his love life is stuck on repeat breakup because he acts like a jerk; the clerks grow beyond roles as passive critics, becoming actors in love and music.
It would take a Chicago person to explain whether and how the film captures Chicago like Slacker captures the windy aimlessness of Austin cafe culture and Clerks gets the gritty ambition of working class North Jersey. I suspect that it doesn’t. Translated from Nick Hornsby’s London novel, some of the social types don’t ring quite right; the skater punks would probably be better as London working class; the egocentric high-chic girlfriend and would probably be better as British bohemian upper class.
Directed by veteran English-gone-Hollywood director Stephen Frears, the movie is more polished and more conventional than the other two slacker films. The movie tells the story of the sentimental education of geeky guys lightly and well. The retail and romantic vignettes are funny, the emotional tenor is wry and affecting.
In the week of a high-stakes election, the comedy of early 90s anomie seems far away.

“User Error” is a voting machine problem

Last weekend, frightened emails circulated around Travis County. At least one voter tried to select a straight-party Democratic ticket. When proofing the ballot, George Bush was selected for President.
Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir and the local democratic party were quick to spread the word that this was “human error and was not a machine malfunction.”
They’re doing the right thing to get the word out and ask voters to proof their ballots. But they’re missing the point about voting system design. User errors are symptoms of design flaws.
The way it happens is this. “After pressing ENTER after marking Straight Democrat, some voters inadvertently turn the SELECT wheel one click through the ballot while meaning to go to the final “PROOF” page. If you hit enter at that point, your cursor is over the first candidate on the ballot: Bush/Cheney.”
For the few steps, the user follows a pattern to make selections, and suddenly, the pattern changes. If the user doesn’t notice they change, they accidentally select the wrong candidate.
Like the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Florida, this is a design flaw with the user interface.
These types of design flaws can be uncovered with usability testing. There are well-known techniques for detecting and fixing problems in the user interface that lead users to make mistakes.
But we don’t do usability testing in Travis County. Before elections, the county does “logic and accuracy testing” to prove that the voting system generates the right results when voters make valid selection. The county puts out press releases explaining how this testing proves that the voting system is reliable.
But we don’t test what happens when voters make mistakes. Usability testing is critical for all sorts of systems — particularly systems where user choices have serious consequences like voting.
The lack of usability testing — and the lack of rigorous security testing — show that voting administration hasn’t yet caught up to the responsibility of electronic voting.

Congrats to Prentiss

for being named Best Austin Blogger in the Austin Chronicle Best of
Austin 2004 Critics’ Poll.
So many things to like about Prentiss’ blog
* a grab-bag that always has tasty new surprises about art, music, books, movies, architecture, and cultural categories-without-names
* a Austin-lover’s tour of Austin, highlighting the distinctive and strange
* a parent’s perspective that is caring, protective, and attuned to the strangeness of kids discovering the world.
Thanks, Prentiss!

Texas SOS not making sense

The week that Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State booted Diebold for failing to fix security holes, the Texas Secretary of State claims that advocates for “safe voting” are mere “special interests.”
The Secretary of State contends that the Texas process to certify voting systems is rigorous — even though our certification process didn’t pick up on Diebold’s problems, didn’t notice thatthe audit feature in ES&S systems is broken — a system used in Dallas, Chambers, and Bexar Counties.
He says the fact that we haven’t had a massive failure yet proves that the system is safe. Not good to have government officials with their heads in the sand.

OutFoxed in Austin

I was also at the MoveOn sponsored showing of OutFoxed that Tim Trentham wrote about. The video shows how the partisanship of Fox news trumps the pretense of news reporting. Funny but telling bit included a reporter assigned to provide stirring and dramatic coverage of Reagan’s birthday at the Reagan library a few years ago, even though there was nobody there but a group of fourth graders; and watching the Fox team echo RNC talking points, like the day they repeated the ridiculous meme mocking John Kerry for knowing French. The scarier parts were the news anchors calling anyone opposed to the Iraq war unpatriotic, and the surveys falsehoods believed by many Fox viewers, like WMD discovered in Iraq,.
The follow on actions promoted by MoveOn, Common Cause, and other sponsoring groups include
* opposing media consolidation
* asking local networks for fairer news coverage
* supporting AirAmerica, a new, left-of-center radio network, and other alternative networks. (Added. Note. I haven’t seen AirAmerica – don’t have an opinion about it).
* a campaign to legally challenge the Fox News “Fair and Balanced” trademark. One the one hand you can’t trademark a phrase, so the suit has grounds. On the other hand it seems rather goofy to sue about a marketing slogan (“Coke doesn’t really add life….”).
What really struck me, watching the debased state of corporate media, was the role that we can play. It’s not just about begging the mass media to do a better job (in conflict with their mission to make a profit by selling violence and sex).
It’s about being the media. Local news is understaffed and insubstantial. If a blogger goes to a meeting and writes about what happened, we can cover the story.
And it’s about using the access we have to to get more sources of media. John Robb does a much better job of covering international terrorism in Global Guerrillas than the mainstream press. Google News provides a selection of stories from worldwide media. It’s eye-opening to see the take on the day’s news around the world.
So, we need to fight the system, but it’s as important to create the new system.
More – nice piece by Lessig disarming criticism of the film.
Still more, via Joi Ito — 80% of of blog readers read blogs for “news they can’t get elsewhere.

Toll roads create traffic jams

Apparently there’s a backlash against the unpopular plan to put toll roads on Austin highways. There’s a petition to recall Mayor Wynn for his pro-toll position.

Despite public input 10-to-1 against, CAMPO Transportation Policy Board members passed a modified version of the toll plan Monday 16-7. Loop 360 will require another vote, but parts of Mopac, US 290, US 183 and the new SH 45 will be converted to toll roads.

What on earth are the politicians thinking! I lived in New England for a long time, where there was a long tradition of toll roads. They were wildly unpopular, because toll roads create traffic jams.
In 1996, Massachusetts governor Bill Weld made a big popular splash when he presided in person of the destruction of tollbooths on the Massachusetts turnpike.
Even the new electronic systems make cars slow down to pass through the lanes. This is not what you want during rush hour and during holiday vacation exodus periods.
I hope we can stop this before Austin learns the hard way.

Mosquitoes

Is there any truth to the tale that vitamin B discourages mosquitoes?
They always find me. In a group of people, I’m the one usually covered in bites. It’s been a wet late Spring/early Summer in Austin. Mosquito repellent is somewhat helpful for spending long amounts of time outdoors near water or at sunset, but doesn’t seem like a good everyday solution — I get bitten on the few square inches I forgot to cover. And covering oneself with greasy toxin everytime one goes out seems like a cure worse than the disease.
Do others really cover up in mosquito repellent every time they leave the house? Any better solutions than staying indoors during the summer, and trying not to open the door too often?

Texas strips Unitarian church tax exemption

The second and sixth US presidents, John Adams and John Quncy Adams, belonged to the Unitarian church.
But that’s not enough for the State of Texas. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled this week to take away the tax exempt status of the Unitarian church, because the church “does not have one system of belief.” See this Knight Ridder story for more detail.
Why stop with the Unitarians? Hindus and Buddhists surely don’t meet the standard either. In fact, Jewish theology has far to much room for variance in important areas such as the precise nature of the afterlife. Time to tax synagogues and temples.
The failed attempt to finance schools with “sin taxes” on cigarettes, strip clubs, and lottery machines was clearly a step in the wrong direction.
Clearly, we need to finance Texas education with taxes on religious organizations with insufficiently rigorous theology. Not to mention atheists, who should register to pay extra taxes.
Or maybe reread the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Texas strips Unitarian church tax examption

The second and sixth US presidents, John Adams and John Quncy Adams, belonged to the Unitarian church.
But that’s not enough for the State of Texas. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled this week to take away the tax exempt status of the Unitarian church, because the church “does not have one system of belief.” See this Knight Ridder story for more detail.
Why stop with the Unitarians? Hindus and Buddhists surely don’t meet the standard either. In fact, Jewish theology has far to much room for variance in important areas such as the precise nature of the afterlife. Time to tax synagogues and temples.
The failed attempt to finance schools with “sin taxes” on cigarettes, strip clubs, and lottery machines was clearly a step in the wrong direction.
Clearly, we need to finance Texas education with taxes on religious organizations with insufficiently rigorous theology. Not to mention atheists, who should register to pay extra taxes.
Or maybe reread the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Senate Hearing on Electronic Voting

The Texas Senate State Affairs Commitee held a hearing yesterday, May 17, on the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Professor Dan Wallach and I testified on behalf of a voter-verifiable paper trail. (Without a paper trail, there is no good way to audit or recount the result of an election.)
Chairman Duncan asked county administrators sharp questions about what happens if there are discrepancies in the vote tally. Senator Nelson’s son has worked in computer security, and she asked questions that showed an understanding of the vulnerabilities and risks that affect computer systems.
The voter-verified paper trail got better reception in Senate State Affairs than at the House Elections Committee hearing on March 31, where the Representatives had a much earlier level of understanding about computer security. Chairwoman Denny dismissed evidence of problems with electronic voting systems in other states, even though the same systems are used in Texas as elsewhere in the country. We have more education to do in the House.
You can download and watch the video of the meeting here on the “lege-cam.”
Dan’s testimony is here