BradyWatch: hilarious hypocrisy alert
February 5th, 2010
The Brady Campaign’s Dennis Hennigan:
The NRA needs gun owners to believe that the debate is not “really about” such reforms as background checks at gun shows, but rather is about a sustained attack on a personal possession that has great practical and symbolic significance for millions of Americans and is, ultimately, about the values of those gun-owning Americans.
Dennis Hennigan’s recommendations to the Obama Administration:
Congress should enact strong legislation that closes the loopholes in the previous assault weapons statute and restricts civilian ownership of other weapons that were originally designed for military use
[...]
High-capacity ammunition magazines and armor-piercing bullets should be similarly restricted.
The jokes practically write themselves.
The iPad
January 27th, 2010
Yes, it’s finally released! There’s not much I’m going to say because I’ve been working on its guts for months now, and it’s unlikely you don’t already have an opinion one way or another. Either way, go check it out! Admit, it, you want one. I know you do.
I need to post this RIGHT NOW
January 26th, 2010
Maybe I’ll comment later but the most important thing is that I get this up here THIS SECOND!
Free speech and big money
January 22nd, 2010
Every once in a while, the Supreme Court decides to drop a real bombshell. The last big one we got was Roe vs. Wade, but yesterday was another one of those days, with the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case that was decided yesterday. I think it promises to be the next big Supreme Court-created wedge issue. And what a wedge it is! On the Huffington Post, commenters are saying no less than that it represents a fascistic corporate coup, while the Drudge Report proclaims it a victory for free speech.
When one side sees it as an attack on democracy, and the other sees it as a triumph of liberty, you know there’s gonna be a fight. I found a couple good round-ups of the differing opinions regarding the decision. And as I read the articles and debates listed there, I noticed that the primary difference between reactions was not reflected so much in the writers’ political parties, but in the way they perceived and framed the issue itself.
Those who celebrated the decision generally spoke about free speech, and the dangers of regulating and privileging certain types of speech above others. They warned that once the ball on clamping down certain types of speech had gotten rolling, it would keep going until all speech was regulated. They decried the fact that a man who produced a political video had more rights to show it than a man and his friends organized as a corporation created for the same purpose. They wondered it was fair that GE’s political speech was protected because it owned NBC, but corporations that had no media subsidiaries were muzzled.
On the other side, people who viewed the decision as unfavorable focused in on entirely different aspects. They tended to talk about free speech very little, while talking about democracy itself quite a lot. They worried that corporations would dominate political discourses with infusions of cash. They felt that regulation or even banning of political speech can be justified if it furthers the goals of an informed polity. They ruminated on the substantial differences between corporations and individuals and sought to elevate individual voices while clamping down on corporate ones.
In short, one side focused on the process: Is it fair that men organized as corporations have fewer speech rights then other men? Does “free speech” really mean anything if congress can strip it from disfavored groups and entities at will, and enact laws about who can speak where, when, and about what subject?
The other focused on the outcome: What will unfettered corporate influence and money do to democracy? How will the common man’s political voice be heard in a sea of corporate cash? What does democracy really mean if money can speak louder than votes?
I encourage you to read the NYTimes debate here, but here are telling snippets from each contributor that I think illustrates my point that they focus on dramatically different elements:
The debaters opposed to the decision:
Heather K. Gerken: “The court has done real damage to the cause of reform[…]”
Richard L. Hasen: “The way the opinion is written will make it very hard for Congress or state legislatures to put effective controls on money in campaigns, or even adopt effective public financing laws.”
Michael Waldman: “What can be done to prevent this outcome? Given the huge power of corporations to tilt policy, at the very least it may make sense to pass laws saying that corporations and unions with government contracts cannot spend unlimited sums on campaigns.”
Fred Wertheimer: “Today’s Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is a disaster for the American people. It will unleash unprecedented amounts of corporate “influence-seeking” money on our elections and create unprecedented opportunities for corporate “influence-buying” corruption.”
Now the ones in favor:
Eugene Volokh: “The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision simply means that other corporations, and unions, will enjoy much the same First Amendment rights that media corporations have.”
Joel M. Gora: “The First Amendment has always been based on the idea that the more speech we have, the better off we are, as individuals and as a people. The Citizens United case eloquently reaffirms and reinforces that core constitutional principle.”
You see how all the writers opposed to the decision focused on its perceived negative political outcome, while those in favor focused on the perceived improvements to the process of free speech?
I am totally fascinated with this stuff. Ever since I read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions
The issues this judgement addresses are age-old and pretty irreconcilable. I think we’re going to be debating it for a very, very long time.
Update:
Here’s a set of word clouds from a Harvard social science blog showing the relative frequency of words used in the majority and minority opinions:
The majority opinion:
So say the Harvard social scientists: “Obviously, what we see is a strong consideration of “speech” interests — no doubt discussed in the context of First Amendment issues.”
And the minority one:
So say the Harvard social scientists: “The actual phrase “speech” is much less frequent, suggesting that the liberal Justices were more concerned with corporations influencing elections than free speech issues.”
Fascinating!
The Book of Eli
January 17th, 2010
I saw The Book of Eli the other day and thought it was pretty good. I’ll admit right off the bat that what attracted me to it was the trailers that showed it to be about Denzel Washington kicking ass in a Fallout-style post-apocalyptia, and on that count I was not disappointed. There’s plenty of excellent post-apocalyptic action and a great deal of effort was put into making the world feel realistic.
That said…
** WARNING: ** This next part contains spoilers! Click to read. Although if you don’t, this post will probably seem very short.
Okay, so there are some pretty gaping plotholes. But the movie manages to redeem itself to me through the rest of it. Maybe it’s because I’m totally in love with the Fallout universe, but seeing Denzel Washington barter for electricity with salt packets and shoot goggled biker thugs with a sawed-off shotgun just makes me happy inside. The world they all inhabit is indeed pretty derivative of Fallout’s but I don’t care because I love that world, and they manage to infuse it a great deal of detail and life.
So yeah, it’s flawed and you’ll have to suspend your disbelief a bit toward the middle, but I had a good time and didn’t feel ripped off by the outrageous ticket price.
defendant has no brains.
January 10th, 2010
I gotta say, it’s pretty true. He took her Pell Grant money to buy… well… just watch it!
Secret Chinese Enlightenment
January 5th, 2010
One of my all-time favorite parts of the video game Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines is an old Chinese man who offers to tell your fortune when you visit Chinatown. The guy’s a total caricature, but so are a lot of people in the game, and he’s pretty hilarious. The little guy goes, “Hey you! You want your fortune read? You give me five dollar, I give you ’secret chinese enlightenment.’ Only stupid person not want to know future!” Of course, you can’t help but give him the money, and each time you do, he tosses out a real gem of fortune telling.
The reason for this post is because I was recently reminiscing about my last playthrough and I tried Googling for a list of all the funny things he says. Alas, the internet failed me and I couldn’t find anything! My wife happened to be playing the game today, so I got her to let me write down the guy’s words as she fed him fivers. So here is my immortal contribution to the internet: a list of the guy’s fortunes.
- That guy you work with? Yeah, he take all credit for your idea!
- You see orange cat on Tuesday! Woah, that bad! Call doctor!
- One year from this day, you going to get mysterious package! DON’T OPEN! Music club will own your ass then!
- Here your lucky numbers. WRITE DOWN I not repeat! Here go: 11, 17, 25, 93, 11, and, uh 62.
- Next time you get on plane, change seat to exit row. This make sure you not sit next to big fatass!
- You going to go to fancy restaurant. You going to order snails. DON’T EAT THEM! That disgusting! Snail very dirty!
- Ahh, love will find you next week. Don’t stay in love too long; husband find you too!
- You going to get a visitor at your door next week. DON’T OPEN DOOR! It Jehovah witness! They so annoying!
What is this, nursery school?
December 7th, 2009
I’m a big fan of WordPress. It’s lightweight, super-flexible, and it has an awesome community that churns out plugins and themes to make setting up a website a cinch. This site itself is based on WordPress and I couldn’t be happier with it.
The WordPress people also let you have a blog as a subdomain of wordpress.com; e.g. you can register and post to mymomsfancypants.wordpress.com if you wanted. I’ve used these simple hosted blogs in the past and I still do. Like many hosted services, there are some restrictions, and by and large you can live with them. But I just ran into one that bugs me. A lot.
You see, the WordPress people are anal about security. Like, really anal about security. I can’t say I blame them because their servers are the ones storing your content end executing your code, but I bumped up against this tonight in a really frustrating way. You see, you can’t embed code in your website. Like, if you try to put the following in your post:
“<object width="400" height="225"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7970212&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7970212&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/7970212">Reel</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1398023">Rafael Hernán Gamboa</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>”
then nothing will happen. In most civilized universes, the server will reach out and turn this into a video or something, but not in WordPress.com-land! Needless to say, this is so annoying that the WordPress people were bound to hear, shall we say, quite an earful. So they helpfully put in some hooks to let you use popular services, such as YouTube, so you can put things like “[Youtube="www.someYouTubeURL"]“.
This is fine if you want to put in a YouTube video, but what about Vimeo or iBBC or some other embeddable thing that WordPress hasn’t added in support for yet? Well, I’ll tell you what, You’re Screwed, with a capital Y and a capital S and make sure you don’t drop the soap.
I can understand the security motivations, but really, is this nursery school or something? You can’t embed video?! There are other hosted solutions that embed video, and I don’t see them collapsing under the weight of their pwnz0red servers! What a drag.
Animal rights
November 29th, 2009
Here’s something that’s been bugging me for a while: animal rights. More and more people are talking about animal rights in a casual sort of way without really thinking about what that would mean. I’ll just be up front and say it: Animals don’t have rights. Here’s why:
What is a right?
Ask a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred different stupid looks. Duh, rights let you do things, right? Actually, not exactly. That ability has always been there. Animals illustrate this very well; they literally have the capacity to do anything within their power. They can eat, drink, sleep, run, jump, kill, maim, invade, and stalk, sometimes on a daily basis! Nothing constrains an animal besides natural factors such as hunger, disease, and predation.
Having no rights is in fact a state of perfect anarchic freedom. You can do whatever you want, up to and including acts however savage and barbarous as you wish, and others can do the very same to you if they are able. The social order is determined by strength and ability to resist the predation of others. It is an animal existence.
But humans don’t do that stuff. That’s because we have rights, a human construction intended to restrain negative human behavior. For example, my right to life and property prevents you from murdering me or stealing my stuff without getting punished. The key is this: rights constrain potential malicious behavior by using the threat of justified retaliation by the wronged party or a so empowered third party (the government, police, etc). Censor me or search my bags without permission and you’ll get sued. Steal my stuff and you’ll get locked up. Attack me and you’ll get shot. etc.
Why can’t animals have them?
Animals can’t have rights because rights are (1) mutually agreed-upon societal constructions that are (2) understood by and enforceable against the bound parties. Not only are animals bereft of an empowered third party to enforce these hypothetical rights, but there isn’t even any type of mutual agreement that certain behavior is malicious and wrong in the first place! For example, humans believe that killing without provocation is wrong; animals don’t, and can’t, or else all the carnivores would starve.
This is because to an animal, might makes right; there really is no behavior that is “wrong” in the human sense of the word. The lion eats the gazelle because it’s hungry, and the gazelle drinks at whatever watering hole it wants because it’s thirsty. Were these animals to gain rights, then the lion would be infringing the gazelle’s right to life (and triggering the gazelle’s right to self-defense), and the gazelle would be infringing on some other animal’s property rights. How would the animals understand these things?
In the wild, only an animal with no rights can interact with another animal. Otherwise, for example, predator animals would have to be legally be punished for their victims’ right to life to mean anything. Similarly, if animals had a right to live lives free of cruelty, then if that right were to be enforceable against humans for factory-farming them (as many animal rights activists desire), then the right would have to be equally enforceable against other animals for forcing them to live lives full of fear where they can be brutally eaten alive at any time.
Animal behavior itself is incompatible with the idea of rights. The moment animals get rights, then other animals must be legally punished for violating those rights or else they’re meaningless. The take-home point is this:
Animals cannot have rights until other animals can be legally punished for infringing those rights. As such an idea is absurd in the extreme, we have to reject the notion that animals can have rights.
Black box URLs
November 28th, 2009
URL shorteners have been all the rage for the last few years now due to the rise of Twitter and other character-limited communications systems, where traditional URLs with their “http://www.” can’t help but waste space. But while these short URLs do indeed save space, their drawbacks were illustrated very personally when I friend of mine had a Facebook account hacked to post shortened URLs to virus and spam sites. The problem is that you can’t possibly know where a shortened URL will take you, nor are there any suspicious patterns that you would be able to pick up on. For example:
Normal URLs
Legit:
- www.google.com
- www.paypal.com
Fraud/phishing/virus/junk:
- http://cash4u2nite.ru
- http://188.221.3.88
Shortened URLs
Legit:
- http://bit.ly/14d7yE
- http://tinyurl.com/oex2e
Fraud/phishing/virus/junk:
- http://ow.ly/Dhdo
- http://tr.im/Fckc
See the problem? It’s impossible for even a seasoned internet-goer to tell which of the shortened URLs lead to unsafe websites. We’ve all gotten used to clicking on these anonymous links without having any idea where they’ll take us. And this is all in addition to the problem of link rot as the shortening services go belly-up once their backers discover there’s no money to be made in it. Just say no!