LeBron James Discovering What Happens When You Try To Suppress Something

from the calling-attention... dept

Every time you think people understand that trying to suppress some kind of information only draws more attention to it, it happens again. The latest, as pointed out by Tim O'Reilly is that basketball star LeBron James had videos confiscated after he was dunked on by a college sophomore -- and because of that it's now being written up on various news sites and blogs. If he'd just let the video go out it may have amused a few people but no one would have thought any less of James, one of the best players ever to play the game. Instead, even more people are finding out about it and makes James look really insecure and controlling. In fact, the Rivals.com points out that because the video can't be seen, people will just assume it makes James look as bad as possible:

The Crawford dunk would have been a temporary embarrassment for LeBron. Let's say the video was put on YouTube. It blows up for a bit, dominates blogs for 36 hours, everyone has a good chuckle and then it's forgotten about.

But by censoring the tape, LeBron turns the dunk into a legend. On video, it's just a dunk. Without video, the jam can reach mythic proportions. Because nobody can see it, the story of the dunk will grow in stature with each telling. Today, it was a simple two-handed slam. In a few days, it will be a 360-degree windmill. By the time Crawford makes his Xavier debut in October, he will have jumped off LeBron's shoulders, flipped in the air, slammed the ball home with his left pinkie and then handed LeBron $3.99 for his dry cleaning.

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Judge Won't Allow Researchers To Reveal Report On E-Voting Machines

from the it's-not-like-we-have-an-election-coming-up-that-use-these-machines dept

You may recall that earlier this year, after some serious problems were discovered with Sequoia's e-voting machines in New Jersey, that the state asked a group of independent researchers to investigate the machines and prepare a report. Sequoia threatened to sue the researchers though. Luckily, a court allowed the researchers to investigate the machines, and said that 30 days after the court had received the report, it could be released. However, Sequoia, in its usual "It can't be our fault, no, no!" fashion, has convinced the judge to suppress the report.

Despite the fact that we're a month away from an election that will use these machines that time and time again have been shown to have problems accurately and reliably counting votes, no one is allowed to see the report. Voters in New Jersey won't be told the results of the report until after it's too late to request absentee ballots. As the head researcher on the report notes, even New Jersey's governor and secretary of state are not allowed to read the report and use it to make public policy decisions that would more likely create a fair election. For so many years now, the e-voting companies have dismissed concerns, blocked attempts to investigate, threatened investigators and almost never admitted any fault, despite tons and tons of evidence that the machines simply do not work that well. It's a travesty that this report is being suppressed.

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