From NASA’s “Image of the Day” gallery

Transiting the Sun

In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope.

The phtographer made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.

Image Credit: NASA/Thierry Legault

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Via The Public Record

Diebold Admits Audit Logs in All Versions of Their Software Fail to Record Ballot Deletions

Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold’s) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That’s the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier’s Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier’s tabulator system, GEMS v. 1.18.19.

An election system’s audit logs are meant to record all activity during the system’s actual counting of ballots, so that later examiners may determine, with certainty, whether any fraudulent or mistaken activity had occurred during the count. Diebold’s software fails to do that, as has recently been discovered by Election Integrity advocates in Humboldt County, CA, and then confirmed by the CA Secretary of State. The flaws, built into the system for more than a decade, are in serious violation of federal voting system certification standards.

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The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative will go into effect June 1, 2009 for land and sea travel into the U.S.

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative WHTI requires U.S. and Canadian travelers to present a passport or other document that denotes identity and citizenship when entering the U.S. It is a result of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 IRTPA.

The goal of WHTI is to facilitate entry for U.S. citizens and legitimate foreign visitors, while strengthening U.S. border security. Standard documents will enable the Department of Homeland Security to quickly and reliably identify a traveler.

The State Department has designated Saturday, March 28, 2009 as “Passport Day in the USA”:

All Department of State Passport Agencies, and many Passport Acceptance Facilities around the country, will host passport application acceptance events. U.S. citizens without a valid passport book or passport card are encouraged to apply on this day.

More passport info on the State Department travel web site.

More info on the Customs web site.

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You know how sometimes you’ll be looking for something on the web and you end up somewhere completely unrelated to your search, and have no idea how you got there?  yeah, well, that’s how i stumbled across the Morey Amsterdam show, as originally aired on the DuMont network, now being shown on TV4U

Related: History of DuMont Television Network site

Update 9:44 pm: I also discovered that the Internet Archives now contains classic tv clips

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