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People still use sodium chloride as a deicer? Around here, pretty much all municipalities have switched to calcium chloride, which deices better than sodium chloride, and tends to not kill everone's grass.

In general it's the chloride that's the problem, not the sodium ion, so CaCl2 is not much better than NaCl for the environment. It does de-ice at a lower temperature, though. https://stormwater.pca.state.m... https://www.oxycalciumchloride...

You're kidding, right?
I'm 50, lived in MN in the Twin Cities and southern MN all my life.
For example, IIRC the winter of 1987 - I was a skating rink manager in my early college years, and we were required to close (for safety) when the temps were persistently below -20 - that winter, we were closed in Dec before Christmas more days than we were open.
Usually when it's hitting -35-40C, sure it's usually no more than a handful of days in row but 0F? It's an unusual winter when there AREN'T a week or more.
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/cl...

Tip: the airport where official temps are recorded, being in the depth of a metro area, is typically 5 degrees F warmer than even the western edge of the metro, much less outstate.

Cost of High Speed Rail on greenfield roadbed ~ $1,380,000 per mile without land acquisition
Signaling and Positive Train Control ~$375,000 per mile
  Background on cost estimate for HSR roadbed
The electrification costs of $1,000,000 is about mid range for several sources.

Prohibitive? yes if the traffic density is low.
However for high traffic density, and when constraints eliminate using engines with exhaust (some tunnels), electrification can be reasonable when the entire cost structure is understood. The availability of battery powered locomotives (and possible supplemental batteries) could improve the cost structure, as it eliminates the requirement for continuous electrification on sidings, and low density spurs. ÖBB unveils prototype electric-supercapacitor-battery loco

Both the Florida blooms and I do have information from the department of natural resources stating that nitrogen and phosphorus are to blame for that particular lake (omitted for anonymity) but the DNR is actively managing both to stop algae growth in streams and lakes statewide. But facts probably don't interest you and you seem the type to think man made CO2 emissions don't matter along with the rest of the pollution spilling into the environment.

I can think of one thing that would be useful for self driving cars that would benefit greatly from low latency. The use of RTK for getting highly accurate positions using the CORS network that the US has and supplementing with state CORS networks if available. I know it is being used by some MnDOT and MetroTransit vehicles but can't find the article that I read stating as such but did find a paper from the University of MN when they were doing some trials.

Then again for something like that maybe having a dedicated system that continuously broadcasts the current (last few seconds) of data to all would be better as it would be even lower latency and wouldn't require massive amounts of bandwidth.

Serious statement as a lot of people believe that you can write in whoever you want and it will be counted. This may not be the case as in Minnesota you have to register with the Secretary of State's office to have your write-in votes counted for a number of elected positions. It wouldn't surprise me if there were similar laws in other states as well.

I personally like the ballots in MN. they are a scantron style sheet that you fill out with a black permanent marker. They can be read by a simple scantron machine and provide that nice human readable form that can be easily rechecked by hand. Here is a sample one for the upcoming primary next week if anyone is curious. The last time there was an election I was curious what would happen if someone spoiled their ballot so after I filled in a few spots I went up to an election judge and said that I had spoiled my ballot and they voided it and put in an envelope for spoiled ballots and gave me a new one.

Well depending on your state a write in vote may or may not be counted. For example in Minnesota for votes for a write in candidate to be counted they candidate needs to register in writing with the MN Secretary of State no later than November 1, 2016.

Well those are cuter than the American opossums but that is an awfully low bar. That said I am not a fan of invasive species and will in general shoot them when I see them out in the wild. As opossums aren't native to Minnesota, not protected, and have no closed season you can kill as many of them as you want and I regularly pop a few with with my air rifle. Here in Minnesota a few years ago there was some group pushing for the legalization of shooting feral cats and in a rather strange case the MN DNR stayed silent on the issue instead of weighing in. I think the reason was that it would have offended a lot of people to find out it is perfectly legal to shoot a feral cat, or a dog that has gone wild for you dog lovers, as the way the law is written any critter that is not protected or has a closed season can be freely hunted. Specifically see PDF page 26 (in the booklet is is page 24) of the most recent MN hunting regulations in the "WHAT ARE UNPROTECTED ANIMALS?" section.

I think I need to go and register for a few write in campaigns. In Minnesota for a write in to be valid they need to register and personally I would vote for a pile of rocks as it seems a good way to vote none of the above.

Fuck OCR. A simple scantron ballot like this example one from the Minnesota 2012 election is good enough. Why over complicate things

At the time when I looked at a machine for what I am doing the Intel option was the cheaper one and I could have saved $20 by going with a mid range i5 which I was planning on doing but the unlocked higher end i7 was only $20 more that what I was planning on getting so it was a why not purchase.

As far as tools go, if you want to start out and play around first without getting buried under your own ignorance (I speak from experience here) try something like uDig GIS first. It isn't the most powerful, fastest, or most feature complete tool but it is easy to use and gives you good point to develop enough knowledge to know what to ask and look for. There are a number of reasonable tutorials for it as well. If you already have some GIS background just jump in and go whole hog with QGis or Grass GIS. These are compleatly different monsters and between the 2 of them you get some real power. I have friends who do GIS stuff professionally for some of the counties in MN and they use these tools. If you are on windows there is the OSGeo4Win project that will give you a bunch of stuff that just works that includes these tools as well as a bunch of other ones. I also do make use of tools like GPSBable and the MN DNR's Garmin Application for converting formats as well as GPSBable for pulling data off of some of my GPS units. Add in a smattering of RTKlib for some of my more recent dabbling with high accuracy trail mapping and some custom built GPS devices. If you need some data to play with the MN DNR has their Data Deli where you can get all sorts of stuff.

At the time when I looked at a machine for what I am doing the Intel option was the cheaper one and I could have saved $20 by going with a mid range i5 which I was planning on doing but the unlocked higher end i7 was only $20 more that what I was planning on getting so it was a why not purchase.

As far as tools go, if you want to start out and play around first without getting buried under your own ignorance (I speak from experience here) try something like uDig GIS first. It isn't the most powerful, fastest, or most feature complete tool but it is easy to use and gives you good point to develop enough knowledge to know what to ask and look for. There are a number of reasonable tutorials for it as well. If you already have some GIS background just jump in and go whole hog with QGis or Grass GIS. These are compleatly different monsters and between the 2 of them you get some real power. I have friends who do GIS stuff professionally for some of the counties in MN and they use these tools. If you are on windows there is the OSGeo4Win project that will give you a bunch of stuff that just works that includes these tools as well as a bunch of other ones. I also do make use of tools like GPSBable and the MN DNR's Garmin Application for converting formats as well as GPSBable for pulling data off of some of my GPS units. Add in a smattering of RTKlib for some of my more recent dabbling with high accuracy trail mapping and some custom built GPS devices. If you need some data to play with the MN DNR has their Data Deli where you can get all sorts of stuff.

Well not entirely. It can be used for navigation but it requires actively communicating with a base station or set of base stations and getting their raw pseudo range data as well as the L2 carrier phase data. From there with some fancy processing and enough compute power you can basically get real-time position accuracy. There is a set of open source programs and libraries that can provide the software necessary. Also if you don't want to setup your own base station there may be one nearby or a set that can be used to create a pseudo station provided either by the state or federal government. I have played around with RTK both with my own base station and using a nearby one (1.5 miles) and the results can give you 2cm resolution in real time with something like a RPi doing the processing. I can't find it at the moment but I remember reading that the buses in the Twin Cities metro area make use of the MN CORS network to accurately track lanes when they are driving down the shoulder.

Looks like I missed North Dakota, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Connecticut and one from Minnesota, that's just mentioned in their journal.

Unfortunately you are correct. There are far too many negligent firearm owners. I would also like to see better training for firearm ownership, even if it does end up being like drivers ed in the US it would be better. Personally I would prefer training more akin to the BSA shotgun or rifle merit badges but even something like hunter firearm safety certificate, even if it is lacking compared to the BSA merit badges, is better than the current nothing that is the status quo. I say this as a firearm owner who owns a few long guns and a side arm and keeps them locked up in a very nice heavy fireproof safe that is bolted into the poured concrete floor and poured concrete wall in my basement.

All plates must be (1) securely fastened so as to prevent them from swinging, (2) displayed horizontally with the identifying numbers and letters facing outward from the vehicle, and (3) mounted in the upright position. The person driving the motor vehicle shall keep the plate legible and unobstructed and free from grease, dust, or other blurring material so that the lettering is plainly visible at all times. It is unlawful to cover any assigned letters and numbers or the name of the state of origin of a license plate with any material whatever, including any clear or colorless material that affects the plate's visibility or reflectivity.

So in my state any cover one were to put over their plate, including those license plate frames dealers put on, would be illegal. At the same time if one were to rig up a system where one was dumping out massive amounts of IR around the plate in an effort to flood the image that would be legal. Also for the record there are no laws covering the IR emission from vehicles in Minnesota as all light emissions regulations deal with specific colors (white, blue, amber, and red) light, or with flashing lights.

I have done some digging into seeing if flooding ALPRs with IR is possible and while some people seem to say it isn't it seems like their efforts have been fairly half assed. They only put out a few watts of power instead of going for a few hundred watts of power. I want to build a frame that covers no part of my plate but will draw 20 amps at 12V and dump it into a large array of these IR LEDs. From the pictures I have seen where people photograph a 100 equivalent watt bulb showing that even that doesn't flood the image they just didn't take it far enough so ~200W going into some IR LEDs would be about as bright as a 1000 watt bulb which now is starting to get up into the range of back lit by the sun range type of power which will mess with the picture.

In 1988, I was passed over for a D-base job because I "didn't have D-base experience." Two weeks later, the position was still unfilled. What the hiring manager didn't grasp was that, in 2 weeks, I could have learned enough D-base skills to do what they need... but, not everybody can learn like that, and the hiring manager wants a "sure thing" instead of trying one and having to can them and find another one a month later.

What OP is bitching about is that "general principles and skills" translates to being able to learn new stuff quickly, which is all that programming is about, anyway. Any particular skill you have today will likely be less important than another skill within 5 years - what really matters is the ability to learn the next thing.

As for your "engineering" friend who can't be bothered with the minutiae, "engineers" like him were likely responsible for events like this:

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/i35...

I have thought of building an LED license plate frame to mess with the cameras and others have tinkered with the idea some. The results at best could be considered hit or miss but that doesn't mean it couldn't be improved upon since most I have seen only output a few watts of power. I have been trying to figure out if I could build one with a power draw of 100-200W using some high output IR LEDs (the new license plates Minnesota uses are designed to be highly viable in the IR spectrum). Having a frame that isn't covering the license plate at all is perfectly legal in Minnesota but other things are not Minnesota statute 169.79 Subd. 7. Also the existing laws on vehicle illumination would also not prohibit this.

By frame I mean many concentric rings of LEDs packed tightly around the license plate so that you have 100 watts of IR LEDs shining around each plate. One of these days I will get some time to do it, and may also look into illuminating the front and rear windshield with IR LEDs as well in a similar fashion to further flood the image with IR.

What always bothered me about that situation and I could never find an answer to is the laws about leaving property on public land in Nevada. In Minnesota, my state, there are very specific rules about leaving personal property on public land so after 14 days it becomes abandoned property and anyone can take it legally. This is why you hear about people who have their tree stands stolen that they put up weeks before hand but then state that when the reported the incident the police didn't do anything. I have wondered if there was a similar law in in Nevada because if so it would make it so anyone could have claimed his cattle and I bet some other rancher wouldn't have minded getting some free head of cattle to bolster their own herds.

Did they take into account the Voting Rights Act provision that requires that minority voters be concentrated into districts that they have a good likelihood of winning? That alone has the effect of diluting minority strength elsewhere.

Who the hell modded this as "troll"?? Not only have other posts cited examples of how the VRA has frequently been used for it, the issue is specifically discussed in one of the linked articles in TFS:

But, he cautions, in the real world, there are many other factors that go into drawing district lines.

"One of them is our national commitment to minority voting rights," says Levitt. "It's really the strongest national commitment we have to minority representation anywhere, the voting rights act, and as I think the professor and student would say, their model districts don't even comply with the voting rights act, that's not what they were aiming to do."

Levitt says other factors matter too, including geography.

In response, Mattingly says it's possible to design the program to account for minority representation, but he and Vaughn chose to keep it as simple and as transparent as possible for now.

You don't mod someone as "troll" for bringing up a legitimate issue that's actually discussed in TFA.

Personally, I find it all to be a bunch of bullcrap. Have you seen those voting districts that are along, squiggly lines that wander all over the place?

Yeah, and you know what? One of the most famous ones is in North Carolina, the site of this study.

And guess who created it and why? Democrats did, in order to secure a minority voting block big enough to elect a black person to Congress. Ever since, it's been one of the most litigated districts in the U.S.

I'm always shocked at how many people don't realize that this is one of the primary LEGAL rationales for gerrymandering -- back in the 1980s and 1990s you even saw unholy alliances between minority leaders and conservative Republicans conspiring to create awkward districts in some states that would give each group what they wanted: the minorities got enough people together in a district to elect a minority to Congress, and the Republicans got to excise many of those annoying mostly Democratic minority voters from their districts.

We are still living with that legacy in many states, and I frankly have found news coverage in recent years of gerrymandering to be lacking in discussion of this issue. It's not all just Republicans who have taken control of state legislatures -- we've also had a committed effort for quite a few decades to segregate voter districts in such a way that would allow more minorities in Congress.

But of course that creates a problem, because it ends up disenfranching non-minority Democrats who get stuck in all the surrounding districts that can no longer elect a Democrat because a large portion of Democrats were deliberately removed from swing districts to create the minority-majority district.

So the Democrats end up in a Catch-22. If they want to promote Congressional "diversity," they can create districts where minorities get elected, but they can end up screwing themselves over in the process because then all the surrounding districts become more Republican and make it more difficult for Democrats to actually achieve an overall Congressional majority.

It's certainly not the only issue that has led to Republican majorities in Congress -- but it's one that's not often talked about, and it has had some significant effects.

Well in Minnesota there is the concept of voter intent that needs to be determined. In the MN Secretary of State page there is a brief overview of the recount process. There is the election judge and a representative for each candidate and the representatives can challenge the judges decision. As for how to determine voter intent there is Minnesota Statute 204C.22 that defines what may and must be interpreted to determine voter intent as well as the following decisions and rulings to help guide the decision process. So in Minnesota it looks like the best way to ensure that your ballot gets counted correctly in case of recount would be to fill in the correct bubble but then also write in the candidate's name in the write in spot but not fill in the write in bubble.

Well in Minnesota there is the concept of voter intent that needs to be determined. In the MN Secretary of State page there is a brief overview of the recount process. There is the election judge and a representative for each candidate and the representatives can challenge the judges decision. As for how to determine voter intent there is Minnesota Statute 204C.22 that defines what may and must be interpreted to determine voter intent as well as the following decisions and rulings to help guide the decision process. So in Minnesota it looks like the best way to ensure that your ballot gets counted correctly in case of recount would be to fill in the correct bubble but then also write in the candidate's name in the write in spot but not fill in the write in bubble.

They aren't allowed to charge you sales tax on interstate commerce. And the use tax is discriminatory (not charged to in-state purchases) so it's illegal as well.

Wrong. You are importing goods into your state, hence your state can absolutely tax your imports.

When you buy something "in-state", the retailer is supposed to collect the local/state SALES-TAX from you, and remit to the state's dept of revenue.
When you buy something "out-of-state" (ie: via an online retailer like Amazon) and import goods into your state, then the purchaser (you) is supposed to remit the USE-TAX instead. The Use-Tax rate is typically the same as the Sales-Tax rate.

So the GP is correct, the GGP was supposed to have been paying use-taxes this entire time to Minnesota, for all his Amazon purchases. The GGP a tax cheat (due to ignorance instead of malice I assume).

Citation: Minnesota Individual Use Tax

The same applies if you buy taxable items through mail-order catalogs or the Internet and Minnesota sales tax is not charged on the purchase.

I saw in the Mpls Star Tribune the other day that Amazon are going to start charging (MN residents) sales tax as from 1st October.

I don't know if this will apply to digital content as well but if it does then I will have to cut back on buying books, magazines, and music from them as well.

The only stuff we will be able to buy is clothes...

If Amazon is collecting sales tax, it means that you were supposed to have already been paying the sales tax, and you're practicing tax evasion if you haven't paying sales or use tax on your purchases.

http://www.revenue.state.mn.us...

This a thousand times. In the US we live in a society that has lots of firearms so the genie is out of the bottle on that one. What we need is compulsory education on them just like we do for vehicles. In my high school everyone had to take the drivers ed course where everyone learned the rules of the road and hopefully enough to get their learners permit. We need the same thing for firearms. Hopefully this would accomplish two thing, the first being fewer stupid people doing stupid things with firearms, and the other might be fewer people who are absolutely terrified by the mere existence of firearms.

As far as training goes the following models are all good with the first 3 being among the best:
The basic firearm safety
Hunter education course (same as above but also focuses on hunting)
The BSA shotgun or rifle merit badges.
A state carry permit course (not impressed with these compared to the other options)

They take a sample from every herd, because even if it would only add $0.01/lb of beef, would there actually be time to analyze all 33M slaughtered head of beef every year?

In Finland they check every healthy specimen over 30 moths old and sick ones that are over 24 months old at time of slaughter. Texas might have a cow or two more, but something something economics of scale might be of some help.

Anyway, beef has been big business in the US for a long time. Why is (according to the Minnesota Dept of Health) the disease rate still 1/1,000,000 per year? http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/diseases/cjd/cjd.html

I honestly hope the disease rate stays low.

They take a sample from every herd, because even if it would only add $0.01/lb of beef, would there actually be time to analyze all 33M slaughtered head of beef every year?

Anyway, beef has been big business in the US for a long time. Why is (according to the Minnesota Dept of Health) the disease rate still 1/1,000,000 per year? http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/diseases/cjd/cjd.html

Check out RTK systems using the L2 carrier to figure out the ionospheric error. Yes you do need a stationary unit and also a mobile unit. If you want real time corrections you need a wireless link between them to transmit the corrections over and it becomes harder to get rid of the off by 1 error that is often prevalent. More popular is to have a base station that is operational recording raw pseudo range and carrier phase data at a well known position (survey bench mark or from a long initial self survey) and a roving unit also collecting the pseudo range and carrier phase data. Once your surveying is done the data is post processed to provide highly accurate results. The problems with single reverence station RTK solutions like that is that you are limited to a radius of about 10mi (might be km) before the accuracy starts falling off so a better solution is having a CORS network with the ability to create virtual reference stations from "near by" reference stations.

the ignorance of their audiences... primarily people who've lived their entire lives in big cities who think that bread and meat come from stores, electricity comes from wall outlets and water comes from pipes (i.e. people who have no clue about the real world and where things actually come from)

Methane is a naturally-occuring gas which appears in pockets deep beneath the earth; it has often been encountered all around the nation in the wells people drill for water (we drill for oil, we drill for water, we drill for gas, etc... there's lots of useful stuff deep beneath the surface of the Earth) and there are plenty of accounts of people drilling for drinking water and getting gas instead, or mixed with the water, a century ago (LONG before the current "fracking" faux controversy). There are even places in the US where the methane finds its way to the surface naturally and you can light it with a match (often in swamps).

Here's a little evidence Minnesota Govt Website which I site here because it's a left-leaning state government (so nobody can say I'm a right-wing nazi pawn of the frakking industry... I'm not, but lefties love to shoot the messenger when the facts are not on their side).

The current anti-frakking propaganda is just the latest panicky reaction by the anti-fossil fuels crowd to the appalling news that America has plenty of cheap energy from sources that are far superior to windmills and solar panels; they thought they had succeeded in pushing Americans into expensive and inefficient sources of energy by using bad government policies to drive-up the costs of the cheap fossil fuels the US had the most of... and then along came frakking to ruin all their dreams...

I, for one, refuse to move back into a cave (or a teepee), refuse to bathe in a cold stream instead of a warm shower, refuse to graze on prairie grass (or arugula, or sprouts, or bean curd) and I refuse to drop dead at the first sign of disease (out of opposition to antibiotics, or the preservatives in them). I am a modern civilized man who believes in using the technology that I and my predecessors created. I support burning oil, gas and coal, using nuclear fission, researching nuclear fusion, building and using fast ships, fast planes, big rockets, giant dams and skyscrapers, vast networks of roads, railways, river locks and canals, etc. I am tired of faux geeks and faux techies who are actually scared of any technology that is not part of the ethereal world of the internet. I have opposable thumbs and I know how to use them!

AIDS is a significant societal down-side to homosexuality.

It may actually shock you but I would suggest having mandatory firearm safety training for everyone, in school regardless if they individual ever want to get a firearm. This is what a number of states do for drivers education currently so why not do the same for firearm safety. This would probably also help to get some people over their irrational fear of firearms as well. There are a number of valid courses that would make effective training courses for the general population. The most intensive of which would be either BSA's rifle merit badge or BSA's shotgun merit badge, but even the standard firearm safety certification course or the various hunter education courses offered by some states. Personally I have been through 4 safety courses (rifle merit badge, shotgun merit badge, firearm safety, and the MN CCW permit) and the most detailed and in depth ones were the 2 boy scout merit badges. The least useful one from a safety and competency perspective was the MN CCW course but since I wanted to carry a loaded sidearm to protect against large predators (I have had close encounters with wolves, bear, and cougar) when walking to and from camp down the road I needed the carry permit. I was stalked by a wolf pack with one trying to drive my back into his friends, the bear I came across was trying to get into a hollow log with its ass hanging out, and the cougar walked under my deer stand like it owned the place. Those are the confirmed instances where I actually saw the animals but I have seen plenty of evidence for them like fresh bear prints, wolf print, and cougar prints (only recently) through out the area as well as seeing fresh bear claw marks on trees, and hearing the wolves at night just outside of camp (this is why we bring the dog)..

The law says (**PDF warning) "All schools located within Minnesota and all schools located outside Minnesota which offer degree programs or courses within Minnesota shall register annually with the office."

Want to bet the 'registration' involves some money changing hands?
I took Andrew Ng's Machine Learning class. Great teacher; it was the Best Class Ever. Go Coursera!

This is all about the state getting its beak wet and the teacher's union trying to protect their phony-baloney jobs.

The law says (**PDF warning) "All schools located within Minnesota and all schools located outside Minnesota which offer degree programs or courses within Minnesota shall register annually with the office."

I think what's really at issue here then is not whether Coursera is violating this law, but rather whether or not this law is compatible with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

No they are not. They are saying that any post secondary education institutions offering courses within the state has to register with the state.

But Ms. Grimes said the law the letters refer to isnâ(TM)t new. âoeThis has been a longtime requirement in Minnesota (at least 20 years) and applies to online and brick-and-mortar postsecondary institutions that offer instruction to Minnesota residents as part of our overall responsibility to provide consumer protection for students,â she wrote in an e-mail.

The law says (**PDF warning) "All schools located within Minnesota and all schools located outside Minnesota which offer degree programs or courses within Minnesota shall register annually with the office."

It clearly says courses. So all they need to do is simply register with the state to comply. It's a consumer protection law that is supposed to weed out scams. It doesn't seem to make a distinction between charging to attend or not.

your accusations of bribery are completely without merit or citation

Oh, did I miss something? Has Minnesota banned lobbying and no-show jobs for its legislators? Because it sure looks like they have a lot of lobbyists for a legislature that doesn't accept any patronage.

The fuck does that have to do with this?

your accusations of bribery are completely without merit or citation

Oh, did I miss something? Has Minnesota banned lobbying and no-show jobs for its legislators? Because it sure looks like they have a lot of lobbyists for a legislature that doesn't accept any patronage.

Did you know that Minnesota has 15 non-native species of earthworms in its forest?

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialanimals/earthworms/index.html

"All of the terrestrial earthworms in Minnesota are non-native...at least seven species are invading our hardwood forests and causing the loss of tree seedlings, wildflowers, and ferns."

I've seen before/after photos of forests where earthworms moved in and the undergrowth just disappeared. I don't think that increasing the use of non-native worms is a good idea.

First problem is blind people. Second problem is what language the ballot is printed in - there is no official language for the US so every language has to be given equal weight. The language problem has already been decided in courts to the extent that if you ask for a ballot in Swahili the polling place workers are required to have one on hand and to give it to you. If they do not have such a ballot they have to make one up immediately so you can vote. Failure to do so is a violation of the Voting Rights Act and the county may be subject to a huge fine.

... Voting on paper isn't handicapped-friendly and it isn't language-friendly, so it is gone. Pretty much a done deal for most of the US now.

Here's what the State of Minnesota says about accessible voting:

If you need assistance due to the inability to read English or have a physical inability to mark a ballot you may obtain the assistance of any individual you choose with the exception of the following: your employer, agent of your employer, officer or agent of your union, or a candidate for election. Alternatively, you may obtain the aid of two election judges who are members of different political parties. See Minnesota Statutes, Section 204C.15 for more information.

If you can’t easily leave your car, you can ask for the ballot to be brought out to you in your car. Two election judges from different political parties will bring the voting materials out and assist you.

Also, Assistance with voting:

If a voter needs assistance because of a disability, inability to read or write, difficulty with English, or other reasons, the voter has several options. The voter may: ... 3. Use the AutoMARK: Each polling place must have at least one voting machine accessible to disabled individuals, called the AutoMARK. It allows blind voters and those who have trouble marking the ballot themselves to vote independently by allowing voters to indicate their choices using a touch screen or headphones in combination with a keypad marked in Braille. The voter enters their choices and the AutoMARK prints the ballot for them. It does not count the votes or retain their choices. The voter then deposits their ballot into the optical scan ballot counter along with everyone else's.

So we do accommodate the blind (my father-in-law is blind) in several ways. Also, if you have difficulty with English you are allowed to bring someone in to translate your options for you. If you prefer Klingon, for example, feel free to have Mark Okrand there in person with you.

First problem is blind people. Second problem is what language the ballot is printed in - there is no official language for the US so every language has to be given equal weight. The language problem has already been decided in courts to the extent that if you ask for a ballot in Swahili the polling place workers are required to have one on hand and to give it to you. If they do not have such a ballot they have to make one up immediately so you can vote. Failure to do so is a violation of the Voting Rights Act and the county may be subject to a huge fine.

... Voting on paper isn't handicapped-friendly and it isn't language-friendly, so it is gone. Pretty much a done deal for most of the US now.

Here's what the State of Minnesota says about accessible voting:

If you need assistance due to the inability to read English or have a physical inability to mark a ballot you may obtain the assistance of any individual you choose with the exception of the following: your employer, agent of your employer, officer or agent of your union, or a candidate for election. Alternatively, you may obtain the aid of two election judges who are members of different political parties. See Minnesota Statutes, Section 204C.15 for more information.

If you can’t easily leave your car, you can ask for the ballot to be brought out to you in your car. Two election judges from different political parties will bring the voting materials out and assist you.

Also, Assistance with voting:

If a voter needs assistance because of a disability, inability to read or write, difficulty with English, or other reasons, the voter has several options. The voter may: ... 3. Use the AutoMARK: Each polling place must have at least one voting machine accessible to disabled individuals, called the AutoMARK. It allows blind voters and those who have trouble marking the ballot themselves to vote independently by allowing voters to indicate their choices using a touch screen or headphones in combination with a keypad marked in Braille. The voter enters their choices and the AutoMARK prints the ballot for them. It does not count the votes or retain their choices. The voter then deposits their ballot into the optical scan ballot counter along with everyone else's.

So we do accommodate the blind (my father-in-law is blind) in several ways. Also, if you have difficulty with English you are allowed to bring someone in to translate your options for you. If you prefer Klingon, for example, feel free to have Mark Okrand there in person with you.

We are doing all that already in Minnesota. I don't know how you'd request to get access to ballots to scan them independently (probably granted by the courts, for example: during a contested recount) but in theory if you could get them, you could easily scan the ballots using your own software for an independent check. This is also dead simple for election officials to recount manually, like in our contested Senate race in 2008 (if it's too close, state law forces a manual recount.)

You may want to look at a few example ballots from Minnesota. Here's the 2012 general election sample ballot: PDF. The green numbers are explanatory notes - ignore them if you just want to see the ballot. This ballot is missing the feeder marks on either side of the page, which helps the scanner. And (obviously) the names and other text are just placeholders.

You can see that our "bubble sheet" ballots are pretty straightforward. Voters just fill in the ovals next to their choices. You can even opt for write-in. I believe these ballots are 11x17, so a pretty standard size.

We are doing all that already in Minnesota. I don't know how you'd request to get access to ballots to scan them independently (probably granted by the courts, for example: during a contested recount) but in theory if you could get them, you could easily scan the ballots using your own software for an independent check. This is also dead simple for election officials to recount manually, like in our contested Senate race in 2008 (if it's too close, state law forces a manual recount.)

You may want to look at a few example ballots from Minnesota. Here's the 2012 general election sample ballot: PDF. The green numbers are explanatory notes - ignore them if you just want to see the ballot. This ballot is missing the feeder marks on either side of the page, which helps the scanner. And (obviously) the names and other text are just placeholders.

You can see that our "bubble sheet" ballots are pretty straightforward. Voters just fill in the ovals next to their choices. You can even opt for write-in. I believe these ballots are 11x17, so a pretty standard size.

The imagery is beneficial but the .shp files are of much more use and various localities give them away for free. For the twin cities area in Minnesota there is Metro GIS and for the whole state there is the DNR Data Deli and the MN DOT GIS sites. Not to mention the various stuff available from the fed the like TIGER or any of the stuff from the USGS, not to mention the National Atlas, National Map, or any number of other sources of info available.

The imagery is beneficial but the .shp files are of much more use and various localities give them away for free. For the twin cities area in Minnesota there is Metro GIS and for the whole state there is the DNR Data Deli and the MN DOT GIS sites. Not to mention the various stuff available from the fed the like TIGER or any of the stuff from the USGS, not to mention the National Atlas, National Map, or any number of other sources of info available.

My state does that as does the US federal government. My personal favorite is:
The MN DNR data deli

There are others as well:
Federal GIS data
MN legislature GIS resource
MN DOT
Minnesota MetroGIS
2011 US Tiger data set
USGS data
National Atlas
This data is all freely available and you can go do what you want with it. Granted you need some program that can parse and display shapefiles but those aren't too hard to come by as there are some very capable open source ones available.

My state does that as does the US federal government. My personal favorite is:
The MN DNR data deli

There are others as well:
Federal GIS data
MN legislature GIS resource
MN DOT
Minnesota MetroGIS
2011 US Tiger data set
USGS data
National Atlas
This data is all freely available and you can go do what you want with it. Granted you need some program that can parse and display shapefiles but those aren't too hard to come by as there are some very capable open source ones available.

a weapon designed to be fired by the use of a single hand and with an overall length less than 26 inches, or having a barrel or barrels of a length less than 18 inches in the case of a shotgun or having a barrel of a length less than 16 inches in the case of a rifle (1) from which may be fired or ejected one or more solid projectiles by means of a cartridge or shell or by the action of an explosive or the igniting of flammable or explosive substances; or (2) for which the propelling force is a spring, elastic band, carbon dioxide, air or other gas, or vapor.

I don't know what the laws are in South Carolina but I bet they activists could be brought up on other charges as well. I would assume that SC has a similar law to Minnesota where it is illegal to interfere with the legal taking of game(p. 23 second paragraph from the bottom).

I had to go and re-read and found this supporting Geekoid and changing my opinion.

http://www.oah.state.mn.us/cases/health-immun/dr-chickenpox.html

"15 percent of persons who have had chickenpox disease, resulting in shingles[...]shingles is very painful and can cause death and disability"

I've never stumbled across that info before. Lots of other good stuff in that link.