While I continue to wonder where I am going to find a date, I will definitely be following the best free dating site's blog. Lots of good stuff on there with mathematical analysis, from politics vs. age to what profile picture will make people interested in you.
This blog will also help me set my expectations. I didn't realize to what degree I was "expected" to send messages to women: now I know that men send nearly 4 times as many first messages as women. Now I need to figure out what to say in my messages, and get over my aversion to messaging people when I can't tell if I like them from their profile alone.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Rethinking copyright
What if there were "replicators" with which you could make any object at minimal expense? Someone responding to a Slashdot article seemed to think this would be a bad thing:
Reality disagrees with you. Almost everybody now has a replicator--of bits and bytes. Yet somehow the companies that make brand new songs, software, movies and TV shows stay in business while continuing to make major profits. The biggest stars still make millions of dollars per year, and Big Content spends as much on blockbuster films as ever. The cable companies manage to get upwards of $600 per year from typical customers, and for all that money you still have to put up with 15 minutes of ads per hour and you still don't get to watch shows on-demand.
Somehow, people are still willing to pay for things they could copy for free. Partly this is because of Big Content's success in lobbying for powerful laws in their favor, and in using those laws to shut down networks and individuals that share files. Partly it may be that sheeple actually do believe ads that compare copying a song to stealing a car (it's frustrating how many people think this way!) For me, it is sense that those who make the best movies and music deserve to get paid, and I pay for those works that I like (provided that the price is reasonable and the DRM is not excessive).
Our society greatly benefits from the fact that people do not steal from a supermarket just because they can avoid getting caught. Recently I read about an incident where the staff of a grocery store were missing, but customers generally left money to pay for their purchases. That people are generally good means less resources must be wasted on security and prisons (which themselves produce nothing useful), people are less afraid of other people, and people less often have the unpleasant experience of being robbed.
Because people are generally good, they are willing to pay for copyrighted works even though copying them (unlike stealing physical objects) technically does not hurt anyone. Generally good people (GGP) know that these things must be paid for or they will not be produced in the first place. It's a principle we all understand, except perhaps Big Content, who assume their customers are criminals. And so, we the GGP have some willingness to do our part by paying for copyrighted works, just as we are willing to pay taxes and do occasional volunteer work and give a bit to charity and not steal from the supermarket.
Big Content, however, does not want merely to have enough money to pay for a healthy music and film market--they always want to increase profits if possible, regardless of what they get now. Consider how much smaller the market for films was in 1960: the world population was only 3 billion and American films would probably have had a very small market beyond North America. Did the movie companies ever complain then that there were not enough humans available to buy copies? Today the potential market is nearly 7 billion and the actual market is probably several times larger than it was in 1960, yet film companies complain very loudly if, say, 1/6 of that market (China) is not paying them enough. Do they really need the money? Of course not: if money was tight they would simply scale back movie budgets, just as budgets were necessarily small in 1960. Certainly low-income pirates in no way prevent them from making movies, and the actual movie budgets of today prove that they are doing very well for themselves. Even if you took away the entire third world market, the would still have a good billion potential customers left.
But in copyright markets, the cost of "buying" a work has almost nothing to do with covering the cost of production: a movie DVD that costs $10 may be for something expected to take a heavy loss like Waterworld, or for something that has already made billions of dollars in profit like Star Wars, and certainly doesn't "need" more. Likewise, their rhetoric about people losing their livelihoods from "piracy" does not necessarily bear any resemblance to their actual financial health. Maybe copying is a serious threat, maybe not, but their rhetoric is always the same regardless of the truth.
Big Content, unlike generally good people, have no sense of fairness. While sometimes they take losses, the potential for "jackpots" like Star Wars means they would surely oppose anything to make copyright more fair, like limiting copyright to 28 years, or that takes advantage of humans' natural goodness (like removing DRM and repealing the DMCA, or my personal favorite, a more radical rethinking of copyright that would let citizens buy the right to copy works for free, paying some minimum amount yearly for this privilege based on income level).
I am tired of this stubborn belief that restricting our civil liberties (specifically, the personal right to copy) is the only way to ensure new works are created. I am also tired of the argument that Big Content "deserves" every penny it makes and that people don't "deserve" the freedom to copy. "Deserves" is a moral judgement. Big Content doesn't use morality to make business decisions or to decide what laws they will lobby for. Big Content doesn't use morality to select prices. Big Content doesn't use morality to select DRM schemes. Why should the rest of us, therefore, make a moral judgment that they "deserve" the profit they get from us?
...That was what I posted. But let me add something.
Some authors will claim they have the "right" to make money from their work and that this justifies ever-expanding copyright law. Wrong. You only have the right to try to make money. Laws that help you make money are provided by the government, and they should not be considered rights, any more than subsidies on corn or government science grants. And if you ask me, the 300-year-old copyright model is just plain wrong for the modern age. Copyright itself doesn't grant you the "right" to make money, only the power (if you have the lawyers for it!) to restrict copying, and this only helps you make money in a roundabout way: typically, you prevent all copies except the ones you make, then charge money for those. This system sucks because it denies money to authors of some of the most valuable works society produces: open source software.
Open source software provides tons of value to society precisely because it is copied so freely, yet copyright provides no money whatsoever to authors of said software. While free software refutes the claim that "no one would make music/video/software if they weren't paid", the fact is that without monetary benefit, the free software ecosystem usually produces software of lower quality than commercial rivals (with a few exceptions such as Firefox, or cases where commercial software is of low quality due to niche status or a monopoly market). Open source is a better model of software development, but because there is usually no funding for extensive testing or documentation and, since free software authors must have a "day job" to make money, free software gets much less time put into it than it needs. If the government provided some way for these authors to be paid for their work, open source might well explode in quantity and quality. I, for one, would give up my $44K-a-year job doing closed source, if I could do open source software of my choosing at minimum wage.
Intellectual property is imaginary property. I wish I could persuade society that copyright is neither the only nor the best system to pay authors for their work. But the ones who benefit most from copyright are the same people involved in writing copyright and related laws, evangelizing it (you've seen the anti-piracy ads), and thrusting it upon the world through international treaties. Supporters of true freedom--real rights--have no such financial or political clout, and so our ideas are censored by glut.
And once everyone had a replicator - everyone would replicate the newest, coolest, best car. [...] And all of the advancement and innovation that we've seen since the first car and now would grind to a halt.Others pointed out how flawed this is:
Since you can duplicate everything, including food and shelter, the whole idea of working to survive goes out the window. If such a device existed, you would be free to do whatever you please with your time. For many, this would be designing amazing cars. For others it would be building amazing cars. Everyone has a hobby, and a replicator would enable everyone to pursue their hobbies; hobbies that are often out of reach of the average person today.But really the topic of the article was copyright, so I made the following argument.
Reality disagrees with you. Almost everybody now has a replicator--of bits and bytes. Yet somehow the companies that make brand new songs, software, movies and TV shows stay in business while continuing to make major profits. The biggest stars still make millions of dollars per year, and Big Content spends as much on blockbuster films as ever. The cable companies manage to get upwards of $600 per year from typical customers, and for all that money you still have to put up with 15 minutes of ads per hour and you still don't get to watch shows on-demand.
Somehow, people are still willing to pay for things they could copy for free. Partly this is because of Big Content's success in lobbying for powerful laws in their favor, and in using those laws to shut down networks and individuals that share files. Partly it may be that sheeple actually do believe ads that compare copying a song to stealing a car (it's frustrating how many people think this way!) For me, it is sense that those who make the best movies and music deserve to get paid, and I pay for those works that I like (provided that the price is reasonable and the DRM is not excessive).
Our society greatly benefits from the fact that people do not steal from a supermarket just because they can avoid getting caught. Recently I read about an incident where the staff of a grocery store were missing, but customers generally left money to pay for their purchases. That people are generally good means less resources must be wasted on security and prisons (which themselves produce nothing useful), people are less afraid of other people, and people less often have the unpleasant experience of being robbed.
Because people are generally good, they are willing to pay for copyrighted works even though copying them (unlike stealing physical objects) technically does not hurt anyone. Generally good people (GGP) know that these things must be paid for or they will not be produced in the first place. It's a principle we all understand, except perhaps Big Content, who assume their customers are criminals. And so, we the GGP have some willingness to do our part by paying for copyrighted works, just as we are willing to pay taxes and do occasional volunteer work and give a bit to charity and not steal from the supermarket.
Big Content, however, does not want merely to have enough money to pay for a healthy music and film market--they always want to increase profits if possible, regardless of what they get now. Consider how much smaller the market for films was in 1960: the world population was only 3 billion and American films would probably have had a very small market beyond North America. Did the movie companies ever complain then that there were not enough humans available to buy copies? Today the potential market is nearly 7 billion and the actual market is probably several times larger than it was in 1960, yet film companies complain very loudly if, say, 1/6 of that market (China) is not paying them enough. Do they really need the money? Of course not: if money was tight they would simply scale back movie budgets, just as budgets were necessarily small in 1960. Certainly low-income pirates in no way prevent them from making movies, and the actual movie budgets of today prove that they are doing very well for themselves. Even if you took away the entire third world market, the would still have a good billion potential customers left.
But in copyright markets, the cost of "buying" a work has almost nothing to do with covering the cost of production: a movie DVD that costs $10 may be for something expected to take a heavy loss like Waterworld, or for something that has already made billions of dollars in profit like Star Wars, and certainly doesn't "need" more. Likewise, their rhetoric about people losing their livelihoods from "piracy" does not necessarily bear any resemblance to their actual financial health. Maybe copying is a serious threat, maybe not, but their rhetoric is always the same regardless of the truth.
Big Content, unlike generally good people, have no sense of fairness. While sometimes they take losses, the potential for "jackpots" like Star Wars means they would surely oppose anything to make copyright more fair, like limiting copyright to 28 years, or that takes advantage of humans' natural goodness (like removing DRM and repealing the DMCA, or my personal favorite, a more radical rethinking of copyright that would let citizens buy the right to copy works for free, paying some minimum amount yearly for this privilege based on income level).
I am tired of this stubborn belief that restricting our civil liberties (specifically, the personal right to copy) is the only way to ensure new works are created. I am also tired of the argument that Big Content "deserves" every penny it makes and that people don't "deserve" the freedom to copy. "Deserves" is a moral judgement. Big Content doesn't use morality to make business decisions or to decide what laws they will lobby for. Big Content doesn't use morality to select prices. Big Content doesn't use morality to select DRM schemes. Why should the rest of us, therefore, make a moral judgment that they "deserve" the profit they get from us?
...That was what I posted. But let me add something.
Copyright is not a right
The most common and annoying perceptual error people make with copyright is that they consider it a "right" - like the right to life, the right of free speech, or the right to move freely throughout the country. Copyright, however, is the exact opposite of these important rights. Normal rights prevent certain parties (especially the government) from doing bad things to you--no matter who "you" are. Normal rights limit the amount of control others have over you. For the most part, they allow you to be left alone. Copyright, however, is not a right to copy; rather, it is the right for an "owner" to prevent other people from copying. To prevent you from copying. In an age where copying is as natural as eating or sleeping, it prevents you, the commoner, from being left alone.Some authors will claim they have the "right" to make money from their work and that this justifies ever-expanding copyright law. Wrong. You only have the right to try to make money. Laws that help you make money are provided by the government, and they should not be considered rights, any more than subsidies on corn or government science grants. And if you ask me, the 300-year-old copyright model is just plain wrong for the modern age. Copyright itself doesn't grant you the "right" to make money, only the power (if you have the lawyers for it!) to restrict copying, and this only helps you make money in a roundabout way: typically, you prevent all copies except the ones you make, then charge money for those. This system sucks because it denies money to authors of some of the most valuable works society produces: open source software.
Open source software provides tons of value to society precisely because it is copied so freely, yet copyright provides no money whatsoever to authors of said software. While free software refutes the claim that "no one would make music/video/software if they weren't paid", the fact is that without monetary benefit, the free software ecosystem usually produces software of lower quality than commercial rivals (with a few exceptions such as Firefox, or cases where commercial software is of low quality due to niche status or a monopoly market). Open source is a better model of software development, but because there is usually no funding for extensive testing or documentation and, since free software authors must have a "day job" to make money, free software gets much less time put into it than it needs. If the government provided some way for these authors to be paid for their work, open source might well explode in quantity and quality. I, for one, would give up my $44K-a-year job doing closed source, if I could do open source software of my choosing at minimum wage.
Intellectual property is imaginary property. I wish I could persuade society that copyright is neither the only nor the best system to pay authors for their work. But the ones who benefit most from copyright are the same people involved in writing copyright and related laws, evangelizing it (you've seen the anti-piracy ads), and thrusting it upon the world through international treaties. Supporters of true freedom--real rights--have no such financial or political clout, and so our ideas are censored by glut.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Dreams as simulations
Now that I drive to work, sometimes I wonder: what if an emergency happens? A car hits me from behind, or someone changes into my lane... this never happens, so how can I be prepared for it? Are my dreams helping out?
For centuries people people have wondered about the meaning of dreams. Some time ago I decided that the likely primary purpose of dreaming is to train us for potential future situations: a sort of virtual reality where the brain creates a random situation, we react to it in the dream state, and then the brain attempts to predict the outcome. By doing this every night, we learn, while asleep, how to react to waking situations before they ever happen.
This article I just found lends credence to my pet theory. Of course, it is widely reported that we learn better if we sleep after studying. So perhaps dreams also exist to give the brain a chance to examine what has recently happened, and make better sense of it.
For centuries people people have wondered about the meaning of dreams. Some time ago I decided that the likely primary purpose of dreaming is to train us for potential future situations: a sort of virtual reality where the brain creates a random situation, we react to it in the dream state, and then the brain attempts to predict the outcome. By doing this every night, we learn, while asleep, how to react to waking situations before they ever happen.
This article I just found lends credence to my pet theory. Of course, it is widely reported that we learn better if we sleep after studying. So perhaps dreams also exist to give the brain a chance to examine what has recently happened, and make better sense of it.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Peter Watts
Several months ago, sci-fi writer Peter Watts was assaulted by US border patrol guards. He was then charged with assaulting a federal officer, who claimed that Peter choked him. Apparently there was a video of the event that (along with a witness) proved the choking claim was false.
Peter Watts' blog is kind of a mess and so far I haven't been able to find the information I was looking for (such as: was the whole thing captured on video or was the car out-of-frame? did he give the guards his keys at some point before the altercation?), but the jist of the story is: while attempting to return to Canada, US border guards began to search his car without telling him. Upon noticing that they were doing something, he got out of his car and asked what they were doing. The guard didn't answer, but instead told him to get back in the car. He made the mistake of repeating his question, at which point one or more border guards punched him in the face and sprayed mace in his nose. Apparently he was outside his car for just 10-12 seconds, but nevertheless was convicted with a felony for failing to obey the instruction.
Like the Iraq story I wrote about in my last post, what we have here is a clear case of abuse of power. And like the last story, the most shocking thing to me is not so much that somebody abused their power (a common failing among people with power), but rather what the consequences were for that abuse. Instead of the guards being fired, fined, or reprimanded for their behavior, the government not only protected the perpetrators, but formally charged the victim with a felony for being a few seconds too slow. Just as amazing, the jury found that the law was on the government's side, and they had to convict (see "DVD Extras" link below).
Doesn't this lack of consequences lead directly to more abuse of power? Spare the rod, spoil the adult, you might say.
And as with the Iraq incident, I fear that cases like this happen more often than we know. A relatively well-known individual with media-savvy friends like Peter Watts can make the news (even if the news doesn't care to talk to him). But for every Peter Watts there may be hundred ordinary joes seriously mistreated by people with power, who don't have enough connections to get their story heard.
While writing about the Iraq incident I read all the high-rated comments at Slashdot, some of which were very interesting, such as Mondorescue's comments about rules of engagement, and insightful quotables like "the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill".
Likewise there are some good comments on the Peter Watts case, so I'll quote them if you don't mind.
All this reminds me of this interesting 40-minute educational video: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. Stay safe out there!
Peter Watts' blog is kind of a mess and so far I haven't been able to find the information I was looking for (such as: was the whole thing captured on video or was the car out-of-frame? did he give the guards his keys at some point before the altercation?), but the jist of the story is: while attempting to return to Canada, US border guards began to search his car without telling him. Upon noticing that they were doing something, he got out of his car and asked what they were doing. The guard didn't answer, but instead told him to get back in the car. He made the mistake of repeating his question, at which point one or more border guards punched him in the face and sprayed mace in his nose. Apparently he was outside his car for just 10-12 seconds, but nevertheless was convicted with a felony for failing to obey the instruction.
Like the Iraq story I wrote about in my last post, what we have here is a clear case of abuse of power. And like the last story, the most shocking thing to me is not so much that somebody abused their power (a common failing among people with power), but rather what the consequences were for that abuse. Instead of the guards being fired, fined, or reprimanded for their behavior, the government not only protected the perpetrators, but formally charged the victim with a felony for being a few seconds too slow. Just as amazing, the jury found that the law was on the government's side, and they had to convict (see "DVD Extras" link below).
Doesn't this lack of consequences lead directly to more abuse of power? Spare the rod, spoil the adult, you might say.
And as with the Iraq incident, I fear that cases like this happen more often than we know. A relatively well-known individual with media-savvy friends like Peter Watts can make the news (even if the news doesn't care to talk to him). But for every Peter Watts there may be hundred ordinary joes seriously mistreated by people with power, who don't have enough connections to get their story heard.
While writing about the Iraq incident I read all the high-rated comments at Slashdot, some of which were very interesting, such as Mondorescue's comments about rules of engagement, and insightful quotables like "the difference between a murderer and a soldier is that a murderer wants to kill".
Likewise there are some good comments on the Peter Watts case, so I'll quote them if you don't mind.
"This law includes offenses ranging from assault and battery to simply standing too close to an officer..."
"Standing too close to an officer" is a crime? OK, that's about the walking definition of a bad law.
What was Watts' crime? He asked the officers what they were doing.
He didn't strike anyone. He didn't kick anyone. According to the record he didn't even use harsh language. Apparently our law enforcement community has become so vicious and cowardly they'll beat people bloody just for looking at them wrong.
Peter Watts is a geek scifi writer. Judging from his photos, he weighs about 160. My wife could smack him around. He's about as threatening as a tuna sandwich.
-jeko
I recently took a defensive driving course (because my insurance offered me a sizeable discount for doing so) and they pointed out that in the little book given for drivers for the written test, it explicitly states that should you be pulled over, at no time should you exit your vehicle unless instructed to do so by the officer. There really is no excuse.
Then you are an idiot. You don't understand why it's in there. It was never for the protection of the police. It was for your own protection. Think about it (I know, hard for you). You pull over on the right side of the road. Your door is on the left. You open it, and you are standing out in traffic. Safety is the one and only one reason that rule was ever started. However, since then, they've asserted that to be "normal" behavior and any abnormal behavior at all is dangerous. So now, it's an issue, not because of the police's safety, but for your own for not playing in traffic, and for your own because it will be seen as unusual behavior. There's nothing aggressive about getting out of the car. There was never an issue about it being bad for cops when the recommendation was created.
[....] -AK Marc
I visited the US and drove around as a tourist once, got stopped by the police and did what folk in the UK do - I got out of the car to wait by the side of it to show the police that I wasn't going to do a runner. I didn't know that you sit inside the car until the police come to you in the USA, nobody told me this when I got my tourist visa stamped at immigration or when I picked up the hire car.(Does an official handbook even exist that says you can't get out of the car when pulled over?)
Things escalated very fast and I found myself surrounding by two or three police cars with people shouting stuff and pointing guns at me. Very scary when you're not quite sure why this is all happening. Fair play to the police officers, after a couple of minutes of me putting my hands in the air and shouting "Sorry, I am a tourist, I don't know what I've done" things calmed down to the point that we could have a chat and sort things out pleasantly (we all shook hands at the end of it and the cops pointed out where a local hotel was, my mission of the moment).
Not sure what the answer is, should foreign nationals have to read the local written driving test / read the handbooks before being allowed to drive a car in another country?
-fantomas
A jury found him guilty of felony non-compliance, so he must have done more than just stepped out of his car.(I don't entirely agree with this comment but I love the one-liner: Cowardice is no excuse for brutality! Mind you, I'm not sure it's fair to say that bullies are cowards. If somebody might be a threat so you beat them up just in case--to guarantee your own safety by hurting an innocent--that's cowardice. Hurting someone because you're a bully--that's just evil.)
Actually, from the reports, that's EXACTLY what he did, and the judge basically cut him loose for it.
he did so at border patrol, which by definition carries a higher risk for officers,
I am so sick of hearing this. Cowardice is no excuse for brutality. I grew up military. Come to one of my family dinners and let the Vietnam veterans in my family explain what a dangerous job is.
Looking at the Department of Labor statistics, being a cop is a VERY safe job. You know who gets killed on the job more often than police officers? Construction workers. Cab drivers. Fast food workers. Hotel clerks.
Hop over to the forums on "Officer.com" and listen to the boys on blue in their own words for a while. They'll tell you quite openly they feel absolutely no obligation to put themselves in harm's way for the "sheeple," and they proudly proclaim "I AM GOING HOME TONIGHT" no matter how many receptionists and secretaries have to die to make that happen.
I spent some time with the State Fire Association. Seems like everyone last one of those guys is missing an eye, ear or finger, and has a quietly proud story of how they traded that part of their body for some stranger's kid. I stand in awe of their dedication, sacrifice and courage.
The institutional cowardice and crutality of law enforcement stands in stark contrast.
- jeko
(e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNNz5kl4w-A)[....]
Perspective anecdote: one of my personal "unknown heroes" is a highway cop who stood there calmly listening to this frustrated motorist he pulled over deliver this obscene tirade of vitriol. He just asked questions, wrote the ticket, and let the guy vent. No shouting, no arrest for disorderly conduct, no mace, no "he tripped in the car and hit his face on the steering wheel", nothing. Totally kept his cool. You could have balanced tigers on his cool. So when I read of situations like this, where a guard flies off the handle and beats the crap out of a tourist for daring to ask what the problem is, I know one bad cop doesn't mean all bad cops - I've seen the proof otherwise.
When an officer of the law resorts to the use of violence (and I mean bloody violence, not some wrestling lock or whatever) on a non-violent "offender" (regardless of any verbal aggressiveness), I consider that officer has failed in his duty. But what truly disturbs me is not that it inevitably happens - we're all human - but that it can be excused and abetted when it happens so blatantly. When the testimonies of those guards present not only don't match but contradict, when the guy laying on the ground covered in mace and his own blood gets dragged through the courts and convicted of a felony, when the officer who put him there does not even get an official reprimand let alone arrested himself... it has gone way past one officer losing his temper and making a mistake.
- Sabriel
[....]
The fault with the statements above is that they equate police officers with DHS guards. Despite having been on the wrong side of the law many times, I do believe that the vast majority of police officers are honest folks who foster good relations with their citizens and have honest intent(the only bad publicity seems to come from Los Angeles, with its officers up against crotch-grabbers [cnn.com] and coked-up madmen using babies for human shields [policeone.com]). I also agree that they're not out to cause trouble because they want to go home to their families without any bullshit.
However - DHS guards are not police officers. They are glorified security guards gone mad with the power they attained in the wake of 9/11. The vast majority of them face no danger, and the last one to be shot to death(since the '80's) passed under mysterious circumstances with his gun stolen, an obvious cover-up. [....]
- Ethanol-fueled
but what trained officers are supposed to do is expect the subject to do the worst possible thing...
No. Not even soldiers are trained to do that. Civilian law enforcement is trained to use good judgement. It is more important to know when NOT to shoot than it is to know when TO shoot. Keep running Mad Max fantasies through your head like anyone who COULD pull a gun WILL pull a gun, and you end up shooting a kid for no good reason like one ex-officer I personally know.
If you haven't been in a situation where a person wants to argue with cops and then for some unknown reason pulls out a gun,
Here's another nonsense argument I'm sick of. Since you're pressing the point, yes, I have been shot at. No, it's not pleasant at all. No, the fear that someone MIGHT take a shot at you is no excuse for beating civilians bloody. -jeko
All this reminds me of this interesting 40-minute educational video: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. Stay safe out there!
Thursday, April 08, 2010
It's Hard To Watch
A collage of thoughts.
On my cruise in March, I met a friend, Tom, who believes the U.S. will fall like Rome of old, because corruption will rot its core until, finally, everything falls apart.
We'll see. But whatever happens, it's painful to watch. U.S. politics seems to have become utterly nuts. I had hoped Barack Obama would help bring people together, but to my astonishment the polarization that the Bush administration seemed to revel in only seemed to get worse under Obama, despite the new president's attempts to establish bipartisanship. It seems these days like straw men are a thousand feet high.
Listening to the right--now the majority, if the ratings of Fox News mean anything--the policies of the great Ronald Reagan (or was that George W. Bush? who's can remember, it was so long ago) have been swept aside by the tyrant Barack Hussein Obama, who will bring socialism (or has already done so) and take the unprecedented step of drowning the country in debt.
From where I sit, the new boss looks too much like the old boss. The Bush Administration started a warrantless wiretapping program and passed a bill (with Obama's vote) to give immunity to cooperating telecomms; Obama is continuing to prevent information about the program from leaking. Bush passed a stimulus package for megacorporations worth hundreds of billions; Obama passed another one. Neither bailout had conditions to prevent excessive executive compensation. Bush started two wars; Obama is continuing them. Bush raised the debt over $4 trillion; Obama ambitiously continues the trend. Bush catered to big business interests; so does Obama.
How is Obama different? Well, he passed a health care bill. Or as Dennis Kucinich called it, "insurance care": a plan only barely better than the status quo, that takes care to protect big insurance company profits. Oh, and he's more intelligent... but less experienced. His skin color is slightly different... that's gotta be worth something. He's pledged government transparency... but half the country will find reasons ("talking points") why this and every single thing he ever does is A Bad Thing.
What's scariest to me about American politics is not what's going on at the top, but at the bottom. The country seems saturated with extremists. People watching Fox News and MSNBC instead of CNN. People listening to Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Limbaugh as if they were Walter Cronkite, Larry King, and 60 minutes. Shouting matches instead of debates. And above all a disregard for truth, honesty, and ethics. Too many Americans seem to be confusing "right" and "left" with "right" and "wrong", while many others would rather just watch American Idol and, when they get to the polling booth, punch a chad beside the first name they recognize. Damn sheeple everywhere.
I'm really worried that corruption is killing the United States. Not just at the top, but at the grass roots too. Why does it look like the fringes are taking over, like mold spreading across a slice of bread? If the grass roots were healthy--if the common man were ethical and did not tolerate lies--maybe they could reign-in the craziness in the federal government and the mainstream media. But without people that cherish truth, balance, love and reason... maybe American politics is the result.
WikiLeaks recently released a video from the point of view of a U.S. gunship that shows it mowing down a group of people including 2 Reuters journalists and two children in a van. They say at least 12 people died (the children survived). I wonder if the mainstream media will give it much coverage.
If you're one of those war-monger types, please do watch the video (17 or 39 minute version), lest you brush it off again as no big deal. Around 2:00 (39 min version) when the guy says "Have five to six individuals with AK-47s", I challenge you to find a single AK-47 on the screen, let alone any evidence of hostility (unless I'm mistaken, in war-torn countries it is not uncommon for individuals to be armed, so merely possessing a weapon shouldn't get you killed by our tax dollars.) For those with softer hearts, there is a transcript (now if only there was one with pictures.)
The only thing in this video for which the attackers could be forgiven is at 2:34, where they mistake a large camera for an R.P.G., probably because they only see it for a few seconds and the way the man leans against a building looks rather like taking cover or preparing to fire. Hell, maybe some RPGs do look like that.
Anyway, on the whole it's truly amazing. A group of people calmly walking around--no sign of hostility toward anyone, most of them appear unarmed, no weapons in-hand, standing on the street, none of them near cover, most of them seeming unaware of the gunship's presence--and they just "light em up".
Later a van comes by, which apparently had been picking up bodies or wounded, and tried to rescue one of the journalists. No sign that the van's occupants are armed or hostile, but god damn how the gunship guys chomp at the bit!
According to WikiLeaks,
So what does this have to do with American politics? Since 9/11 I've seen several Americans on the internet posting filthy tirades against foreigners. Afghanistan? Bomb it! Iraqis? Bomb them! Maybe we'll hit a terrorist or two by chance and that will make it worthwhile. And I am reminded of how they--we?--treat a human life as worth so much less if it's an Iraqi, or any foreigner not from a wealthy western nation. What comfort it is that we need not even try to measure the death toll in these places. Is it 200,000 dead in Iraq or a million? Who knows, who cares. What really matters is that 4287 U.S. soldiers died and 139 journalists. Mind you, one dead Micheal Jackson gets more press than 1000 dead soldiers. Some Americans have leftover appetite for war, but maybe less appetite for news about it.
We ruined Iraq. After keeping the country poor with onerous sanctions for many years, we downgraded it from a ruthless dictatorship to a lawless cesspool of poverty, evil and death, and finally, tired of letting the suicide bombers get all the kills, we join the party, pop open a few civilians ourselves, and don't worry about it too much because the rules of engagement were followed. The bad guys kill so many civilians, what's the big deal if we get a few too?
When I saw that group of 9 civvies in the crosshairs it reminded me very much of the online video games I sometimes play. It's such a great feeling to blow up three or four other players with a single group of stickybombs in TF2, or sneak up on a group of enemies in CS and light 'em all up with a grenade. I wonder if these fucking murderers in a real gunship got the same feeling when they saw all "five to six" of their supposedly AK-armed targets, plus a few bonus points, all clumped together out in the open where they could kill them all in a matter of seconds.
It's hard to watch. So for the most part we don't watch it, and we allow the government to censor it indefinitely. But once in awhile a WikiLeak comes along, and you're forced to wonder how many other events like this have occurred. When the official word is that the U.S. killed X number of insurgents--as it was in this case--how often is it true, and how often does "insurgent" mean "unidentified civilians walking down the street"?
I must admit though, I really can't focus on the worst of it most of the time. To dwell on it too long destroys one's happiness. And yet my birth country did commit this atrocity and cover it up. They did cause the whole mess in Iraq. And I just can't believe people would think it's okay to just start a war and destabilize a country because ... because what? My mother could list a hundred reasons. Iraq had aluminum tubes for making nukes! They had secret trucks filled with chemical weapons! Even if the reasons weren't complete fabrications, we still shouldn't have been buying the war.
But the truth is, I think about Iraq very little. There's nothing anyone can do about it now; for all I know, withdrawing the troops could make the situation worse there. Dwelling on unsolvable problems is very draining, trust me, I do it a lot. But before this WikiLeaks thing, I gave no thought to Iraq for quite some time.
We have this nice little feature in our brains that lets us ignore things that we're used to. Like the dirty clothes blanketing my bedroom floor. But people seem to think this absolves them of responsibility for evil in society, family and government that they could eliminate, but don't because they're used to it. Damn it, everybody, stop being sheeple. Mind you, I have to admit, I don't change society much myself. I want to, but the evil is piling up and I feel as though it's crushing my will. What can I do? It's just little me and a few nonprofits versus the big bad world. Over time I have been shrinking from it more and more, save for a few outbursts like this one when, for once, I feel like something needs to be said.
I understand that it is easier not to try to improve the world. It's less painful. So understandably there is this group of non-political people just living out their own lives and ignoring the wider world. But I'm afraid--maybe justified, maybe not--that time is running out. While so many people concern themselves with family values and fiscal responsibility (to be accomplished by replacing Democrats with Republicans, I guess), they allow dangerous trends to go unchecked: rhetoric is getting more extreme. Lies are tolerated. Wars are tolerated. Investigative journalism is replaced with punditry. Every man can now choose facts to fit their opinion.
I'm sort of a pundit, you know. One that almost no one reads, but still. Punditry is easy: all you have to do is have an opinion and share it in an entertaining way. It helps if you know some facts but it's by no means required (just make them up or find an official-looking page on Google), and you don't have to spend much money to produce a story that grabs eyeballs. You can't blame pundits for being cheap, I mean, it costs less. But they are no substitute for more substantive news, where money has been spent to gather data, and to carefully analyze it, and editors have tried to make sure a story is fair and balanced. They say traditional news is too expensive to produce when the internet makes everything free. Can't we find a way to fund it? Or is it too late, now that so many think it is enough to take the word of their favorite pundit as gospel?
I'm committed to giving 10% of my income to good causes. I have plenty of money after all, provided I keep my job. So recently I gave 1200 or so to United Way, 500 to Red Cross Haiti Relief, 500 to the EFF, 500 or so to Avaaz, and I'm thinking of giving 500 to WikiLeaks after seeing this video and hearing about threats to this vital source of truth, such as the U.S. government. I have to get over a little mental barrier when giving to my favorite charities though, because they are not tax deductable. EFF and WikiLeaks are based in the U.S. so Canada (yeah, I'm up North) doesn't recognize them, and Avaaz wouldn't be tax-deductable anyway because it "engages in political lobbying". I'm sure the regular tax-deductable charities like United Way and Red Cross do good things, but aren't they kind of like Advil, easing the symptoms instead of curing the disease?
It's been hard to reach the full 10%. Not because I am unwilling, but because like so many other people I'm so wrapped up in my own life. Just about every night I escape the world with a video game or a TV show. All that real-life stuff is either boring or depressing. A lot of important goings-on are probably slipping by unperceived as I do this, but dammit, where's the encouragement? I don't have a lot of energy to do things on my own when no one else seems to care.
So please, if you're reading this, do something good in the world. Good people are holding the world together. Ethics, fairness and reason are keeping it together. Love for one another is binding us together. Oh, and get educated. Frontline's documentary on Hugo Chavez taught me how a people's general lack of skills and education can hinder a country's development. Do good and let others see it, so that those of us who want to do good know we are not alone, and can gain courage from you.
Oops, it's 4:17 AM. Good night.
Note: Reposting because I was originally not logged in as myself.
On my cruise in March, I met a friend, Tom, who believes the U.S. will fall like Rome of old, because corruption will rot its core until, finally, everything falls apart.
We'll see. But whatever happens, it's painful to watch. U.S. politics seems to have become utterly nuts. I had hoped Barack Obama would help bring people together, but to my astonishment the polarization that the Bush administration seemed to revel in only seemed to get worse under Obama, despite the new president's attempts to establish bipartisanship. It seems these days like straw men are a thousand feet high.
Listening to the right--now the majority, if the ratings of Fox News mean anything--the policies of the great Ronald Reagan (or was that George W. Bush? who's can remember, it was so long ago) have been swept aside by the tyrant Barack Hussein Obama, who will bring socialism (or has already done so) and take the unprecedented step of drowning the country in debt.
From where I sit, the new boss looks too much like the old boss. The Bush Administration started a warrantless wiretapping program and passed a bill (with Obama's vote) to give immunity to cooperating telecomms; Obama is continuing to prevent information about the program from leaking. Bush passed a stimulus package for megacorporations worth hundreds of billions; Obama passed another one. Neither bailout had conditions to prevent excessive executive compensation. Bush started two wars; Obama is continuing them. Bush raised the debt over $4 trillion; Obama ambitiously continues the trend. Bush catered to big business interests; so does Obama.
How is Obama different? Well, he passed a health care bill. Or as Dennis Kucinich called it, "insurance care": a plan only barely better than the status quo, that takes care to protect big insurance company profits. Oh, and he's more intelligent... but less experienced. His skin color is slightly different... that's gotta be worth something. He's pledged government transparency... but half the country will find reasons ("talking points") why this and every single thing he ever does is A Bad Thing.
What's scariest to me about American politics is not what's going on at the top, but at the bottom. The country seems saturated with extremists. People watching Fox News and MSNBC instead of CNN. People listening to Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Limbaugh as if they were Walter Cronkite, Larry King, and 60 minutes. Shouting matches instead of debates. And above all a disregard for truth, honesty, and ethics. Too many Americans seem to be confusing "right" and "left" with "right" and "wrong", while many others would rather just watch American Idol and, when they get to the polling booth, punch a chad beside the first name they recognize. Damn sheeple everywhere.
I'm really worried that corruption is killing the United States. Not just at the top, but at the grass roots too. Why does it look like the fringes are taking over, like mold spreading across a slice of bread? If the grass roots were healthy--if the common man were ethical and did not tolerate lies--maybe they could reign-in the craziness in the federal government and the mainstream media. But without people that cherish truth, balance, love and reason... maybe American politics is the result.
WikiLeaks recently released a video from the point of view of a U.S. gunship that shows it mowing down a group of people including 2 Reuters journalists and two children in a van. They say at least 12 people died (the children survived). I wonder if the mainstream media will give it much coverage.
If you're one of those war-monger types, please do watch the video (17 or 39 minute version), lest you brush it off again as no big deal. Around 2:00 (39 min version) when the guy says "Have five to six individuals with AK-47s", I challenge you to find a single AK-47 on the screen, let alone any evidence of hostility (unless I'm mistaken, in war-torn countries it is not uncommon for individuals to be armed, so merely possessing a weapon shouldn't get you killed by our tax dollars.) For those with softer hearts, there is a transcript (now if only there was one with pictures.)
The only thing in this video for which the attackers could be forgiven is at 2:34, where they mistake a large camera for an R.P.G., probably because they only see it for a few seconds and the way the man leans against a building looks rather like taking cover or preparing to fire. Hell, maybe some RPGs do look like that.
Anyway, on the whole it's truly amazing. A group of people calmly walking around--no sign of hostility toward anyone, most of them appear unarmed, no weapons in-hand, standing on the street, none of them near cover, most of them seeming unaware of the gunship's presence--and they just "light em up".
"Keep shootin'".The bullets take a full two seconds to reach their targets, and the helicopter may have been up to 800 metres away (source), explaining why the civvies seemed to take little notice of it at first.
...
"Keep shootin'".
...
"Keep shootin'".
Later a van comes by, which apparently had been picking up bodies or wounded, and tried to rescue one of the journalists. No sign that the van's occupants are armed or hostile, but god damn how the gunship guys chomp at the bit!
"Let me engage"After that I'd had enough. I didn't need to watch that shit.
"Can I shoot?"
"Request permission to engage..."
"Picking up the wounded?"
"Yeah, we're trying to get permission to engage."
"What's goin' on, let us shoot!"
"Request permission to engage."
"This is bushmaster 7, roger, engage."
According to WikiLeaks,
After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".I'm ashamed to say I have seen several short "snuff films", graphic videos of real people actually dying by accident or by murder. By the numbers this is the worst snuff film I have ever seen, but it has a low-quality black and white picture, and given what evil I have exposed myself to before, it doesn't leave quite as vivid an impression on the memory as a close up full-color death. Still. It's keeping me awake.
So what does this have to do with American politics? Since 9/11 I've seen several Americans on the internet posting filthy tirades against foreigners. Afghanistan? Bomb it! Iraqis? Bomb them! Maybe we'll hit a terrorist or two by chance and that will make it worthwhile. And I am reminded of how they--we?--treat a human life as worth so much less if it's an Iraqi, or any foreigner not from a wealthy western nation. What comfort it is that we need not even try to measure the death toll in these places. Is it 200,000 dead in Iraq or a million? Who knows, who cares. What really matters is that 4287 U.S. soldiers died and 139 journalists. Mind you, one dead Micheal Jackson gets more press than 1000 dead soldiers. Some Americans have leftover appetite for war, but maybe less appetite for news about it.
We ruined Iraq. After keeping the country poor with onerous sanctions for many years, we downgraded it from a ruthless dictatorship to a lawless cesspool of poverty, evil and death, and finally, tired of letting the suicide bombers get all the kills, we join the party, pop open a few civilians ourselves, and don't worry about it too much because the rules of engagement were followed. The bad guys kill so many civilians, what's the big deal if we get a few too?
When I saw that group of 9 civvies in the crosshairs it reminded me very much of the online video games I sometimes play. It's such a great feeling to blow up three or four other players with a single group of stickybombs in TF2, or sneak up on a group of enemies in CS and light 'em all up with a grenade. I wonder if these fucking murderers in a real gunship got the same feeling when they saw all "five to six" of their supposedly AK-armed targets, plus a few bonus points, all clumped together out in the open where they could kill them all in a matter of seconds.
It's hard to watch. So for the most part we don't watch it, and we allow the government to censor it indefinitely. But once in awhile a WikiLeak comes along, and you're forced to wonder how many other events like this have occurred. When the official word is that the U.S. killed X number of insurgents--as it was in this case--how often is it true, and how often does "insurgent" mean "unidentified civilians walking down the street"?
I must admit though, I really can't focus on the worst of it most of the time. To dwell on it too long destroys one's happiness. And yet my birth country did commit this atrocity and cover it up. They did cause the whole mess in Iraq. And I just can't believe people would think it's okay to just start a war and destabilize a country because ... because what? My mother could list a hundred reasons. Iraq had aluminum tubes for making nukes! They had secret trucks filled with chemical weapons! Even if the reasons weren't complete fabrications, we still shouldn't have been buying the war.
But the truth is, I think about Iraq very little. There's nothing anyone can do about it now; for all I know, withdrawing the troops could make the situation worse there. Dwelling on unsolvable problems is very draining, trust me, I do it a lot. But before this WikiLeaks thing, I gave no thought to Iraq for quite some time.
We have this nice little feature in our brains that lets us ignore things that we're used to. Like the dirty clothes blanketing my bedroom floor. But people seem to think this absolves them of responsibility for evil in society, family and government that they could eliminate, but don't because they're used to it. Damn it, everybody, stop being sheeple. Mind you, I have to admit, I don't change society much myself. I want to, but the evil is piling up and I feel as though it's crushing my will. What can I do? It's just little me and a few nonprofits versus the big bad world. Over time I have been shrinking from it more and more, save for a few outbursts like this one when, for once, I feel like something needs to be said.
I understand that it is easier not to try to improve the world. It's less painful. So understandably there is this group of non-political people just living out their own lives and ignoring the wider world. But I'm afraid--maybe justified, maybe not--that time is running out. While so many people concern themselves with family values and fiscal responsibility (to be accomplished by replacing Democrats with Republicans, I guess), they allow dangerous trends to go unchecked: rhetoric is getting more extreme. Lies are tolerated. Wars are tolerated. Investigative journalism is replaced with punditry. Every man can now choose facts to fit their opinion.
I'm sort of a pundit, you know. One that almost no one reads, but still. Punditry is easy: all you have to do is have an opinion and share it in an entertaining way. It helps if you know some facts but it's by no means required (just make them up or find an official-looking page on Google), and you don't have to spend much money to produce a story that grabs eyeballs. You can't blame pundits for being cheap, I mean, it costs less. But they are no substitute for more substantive news, where money has been spent to gather data, and to carefully analyze it, and editors have tried to make sure a story is fair and balanced. They say traditional news is too expensive to produce when the internet makes everything free. Can't we find a way to fund it? Or is it too late, now that so many think it is enough to take the word of their favorite pundit as gospel?
I'm committed to giving 10% of my income to good causes. I have plenty of money after all, provided I keep my job. So recently I gave 1200 or so to United Way, 500 to Red Cross Haiti Relief, 500 to the EFF, 500 or so to Avaaz, and I'm thinking of giving 500 to WikiLeaks after seeing this video and hearing about threats to this vital source of truth, such as the U.S. government. I have to get over a little mental barrier when giving to my favorite charities though, because they are not tax deductable. EFF and WikiLeaks are based in the U.S. so Canada (yeah, I'm up North) doesn't recognize them, and Avaaz wouldn't be tax-deductable anyway because it "engages in political lobbying". I'm sure the regular tax-deductable charities like United Way and Red Cross do good things, but aren't they kind of like Advil, easing the symptoms instead of curing the disease?
It's been hard to reach the full 10%. Not because I am unwilling, but because like so many other people I'm so wrapped up in my own life. Just about every night I escape the world with a video game or a TV show. All that real-life stuff is either boring or depressing. A lot of important goings-on are probably slipping by unperceived as I do this, but dammit, where's the encouragement? I don't have a lot of energy to do things on my own when no one else seems to care.
So please, if you're reading this, do something good in the world. Good people are holding the world together. Ethics, fairness and reason are keeping it together. Love for one another is binding us together. Oh, and get educated. Frontline's documentary on Hugo Chavez taught me how a people's general lack of skills and education can hinder a country's development. Do good and let others see it, so that those of us who want to do good know we are not alone, and can gain courage from you.
Oops, it's 4:17 AM. Good night.
Note: Reposting because I was originally not logged in as myself.
- CNN reports the Iraq leak online: one, two, three (video interview)
- MSNBC reports the Iraq leak online: one, two, three
- The Fox News version
- Apologists explain the soldiers' behavior
- Iraq slaughter is not an aberration
Saturday, September 12, 2009
My Copyright Submission
For some reason the Canadian government sought opinions on the future of Canadian copyright law (web site), and asked five questions of submitters. The consultation period ends tomorrow. The following is my submission, plus some additional notes in [square brackets] that were not in the original submission.
1. How do Canada's copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
I think copyright affects our entire society more than we realize. For example, when copyright was retroactively extended by 38 years in the U.S. (18 years in 1976 + 20 more in 1998), two generations of people were denied any additional public domain works, yet few people even noticed. But those of us that did were largely angry about it.
The very premise of copyright — that the only way people should make money is by denying others the right to make copies, and then charging for each copy — frames every discussion about how the "creative economy" works and should work. This is unfortunate because I believe there should be other options.
There are many creative people such as myself that would like to be compensated for our work, but who would also like to share it with the world as widely as possible. I am a Software Engineer, and I make software on salary. What bothers me about my job is that I am making totally closed software, and the number of customers for it will probably be quite limited. I write many algorithms that could have a wide range of applications, but insofar as the software is closed, those algorithms will only ever by used for the one application for which I wrote them. What a waste! And the whole reason I wrote this software is that the third-party closed software we used before didn't meet our needs. If we had access to the source code we could have modified it for our needs (though the expensive license fees were also an issue), but since the software was closed, we had to write the whole thing from scratch. And the software in question—map software similar to what you get in a portable GPS unit—has been written many times over by different companies. Doesn't this amount to wasteful duplication of effort? And the government pays an SR&ED credit for it.
I don't think my company would be materially affected by any changes the government might make to copyright law. Whether you enlarge or shrink the copyright term, whether or not you pass DMCA-style legislation, whatever you do about orphan works, none of that is likely to affect the bottom line [my company relies more on contracts and secret source code than copyright, as we typically sell to business and government].
But for me personally, I would like to see a government program that actually pays some authors outright for their work, in exchange for making that work freely available for anyone in Canada to copy and remix (or, in the case of software, re-use and modify in source code form). Such a system would, of course, not replace copyright, but simply provide a way for authors to be paid without forcing authors to restrict copying.
2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?
What does that even mean?
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
As I mentioned, I think the government should provide more funding options for authors, artists and programmers. In addition to the standard "charge for each copy" model, the government should consider another public consultation about at least a pilot program to pay willing artists with tax funds to make free works, and to pay open-source software developers for their valuable contributions to society.
Long copyright terms are not necessary for innovation and creativity. Most commercial copyright works make money for under 20 years. If copyright was 20 years, do you think any film would not be green-lighted because "it may make millions at first, but people will stop buying copies in 2030?" However, perhaps non-commercial rights should last longer than 20 years, such as the "moral rights" of attribution and the right to prevent others from altering the work.
DMCA-style anti-circumvision laws are not necessary for innovation and creativity. Organizations like CRIA, RIAA and MPAA desire such provisions to help them keep using old business models and avoid joining the 21st century. It seems to me they would much rather squeeze more money out of the general public for existing IPs than create new IPs. Economically, if you give in to American lobbies, the main effect will be that Canadian citizens pay more to U.S. corporations.
Remember, these corporate lobbies mainly do not represent artists and authors. They do not represent the Canadian economy or the world economy. They only represent their bosses.
So please, stop considering such things. It would be better to do nothing at all.
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
I don't think anything that strengthens copyright will have a tangible impact on competition or investment. But why aren't you asking what changes would be best for the people of Canada? It's not only artists and corporations the government should aim to please, but the citizens too! The citizens would benefit from having access to as many works as possible, with as few restrictions as possible. Ordinary citizens are the most important group to please, because there are vastly more of us ["the greatest good for the greatest number"]. This should be the focus of your lawmaking.
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?
What does "digital economy" mean, exactly? If you mean online trade, or the software industry, or electronic trade in music and movies, I don't think anything has to be done to copyright law to keep those things healthy [you know what would increase online trade and lead to new business models? a ubiquitous micropayment system for making instant purchases under $1]. Don't listen to the scare mongers in the CRIA and Hollywood. Their piracy figures are absurdly large, and anyway digital trade is kind of a zero-sum game: "piracy" just means that some low-income Canadians are enjoying more songs/films/software than they can afford to pay for, and middle-class Canadians are spending their money on some other part of the economy instead of giving it to the record or film or game industries. It does not harm the economy as a whole. Let the people speak with their money: if they want to pay these industries they will. I do buy my favorite movies and shows on DVD, and I have paid for many terrific video games, even though I have the means to pirate anything I want.
In any case, the supply of artists and authors will never dry up no matter what you do. It's human nature to create — I work on open source software, even without pay. It's just that if I could get paid, I would make more of it [and better quality, and I'd be more responsive to users' needs--aspects which often harm the uptake of open source].
Look, we already have a bind-bogglingly rich landscape of copyrighted works. No one could ever consume a significant fraction of all available English works or software. Even if you just consume the "best" works, you could never come close to running out. But our laws are wasteful — both economically and morally — because they restrict the audience size for, and re-use/re-mixing of, those works. People don't realize the laws are wasteful because powerful groups have successfully propagated the current intellectual property system and long copyright terms throughout the world. Thus, there are no examples to point to of countries that have successfully taken a different path.
[One more thing I would add--though it is unpopular to say--is that we should seriously consider what size of market for entertainment and software we need. If people had freer access to creative works, they might realize that there are more than enough of them. If we are making too much, we should be open to the possibility that the market should contract--that less works should be produced, and yes, as a consequence, some creative personnel would have to leave the field. Personally I can see virtually unlimited demand for software, when you consider the infinite possibilities for niche customization, and the many new software ideas that have not yet been exploited. But there is a limit to the amount of mass-market entertainment that society needs, and if (when you include the vast library of past works) there is too much, we should not think it a tragedy if Copyright law were weakened so much that the market contracts.]
In conclusion, the Canadian government has so far only considered copying U.S. law. Please don't. Doing nothing would be better. Weakening copyright would be better. Almost anything would be better.
1. How do Canada's copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
I think copyright affects our entire society more than we realize. For example, when copyright was retroactively extended by 38 years in the U.S. (18 years in 1976 + 20 more in 1998), two generations of people were denied any additional public domain works, yet few people even noticed. But those of us that did were largely angry about it.
The very premise of copyright — that the only way people should make money is by denying others the right to make copies, and then charging for each copy — frames every discussion about how the "creative economy" works and should work. This is unfortunate because I believe there should be other options.
There are many creative people such as myself that would like to be compensated for our work, but who would also like to share it with the world as widely as possible. I am a Software Engineer, and I make software on salary. What bothers me about my job is that I am making totally closed software, and the number of customers for it will probably be quite limited. I write many algorithms that could have a wide range of applications, but insofar as the software is closed, those algorithms will only ever by used for the one application for which I wrote them. What a waste! And the whole reason I wrote this software is that the third-party closed software we used before didn't meet our needs. If we had access to the source code we could have modified it for our needs (though the expensive license fees were also an issue), but since the software was closed, we had to write the whole thing from scratch. And the software in question—map software similar to what you get in a portable GPS unit—has been written many times over by different companies. Doesn't this amount to wasteful duplication of effort? And the government pays an SR&ED credit for it.
I don't think my company would be materially affected by any changes the government might make to copyright law. Whether you enlarge or shrink the copyright term, whether or not you pass DMCA-style legislation, whatever you do about orphan works, none of that is likely to affect the bottom line [my company relies more on contracts and secret source code than copyright, as we typically sell to business and government].
But for me personally, I would like to see a government program that actually pays some authors outright for their work, in exchange for making that work freely available for anyone in Canada to copy and remix (or, in the case of software, re-use and modify in source code form). Such a system would, of course, not replace copyright, but simply provide a way for authors to be paid without forcing authors to restrict copying.
2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?
What does that even mean?
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
As I mentioned, I think the government should provide more funding options for authors, artists and programmers. In addition to the standard "charge for each copy" model, the government should consider another public consultation about at least a pilot program to pay willing artists with tax funds to make free works, and to pay open-source software developers for their valuable contributions to society.
Long copyright terms are not necessary for innovation and creativity. Most commercial copyright works make money for under 20 years. If copyright was 20 years, do you think any film would not be green-lighted because "it may make millions at first, but people will stop buying copies in 2030?" However, perhaps non-commercial rights should last longer than 20 years, such as the "moral rights" of attribution and the right to prevent others from altering the work.
DMCA-style anti-circumvision laws are not necessary for innovation and creativity. Organizations like CRIA, RIAA and MPAA desire such provisions to help them keep using old business models and avoid joining the 21st century. It seems to me they would much rather squeeze more money out of the general public for existing IPs than create new IPs. Economically, if you give in to American lobbies, the main effect will be that Canadian citizens pay more to U.S. corporations.
Remember, these corporate lobbies mainly do not represent artists and authors. They do not represent the Canadian economy or the world economy. They only represent their bosses.
So please, stop considering such things. It would be better to do nothing at all.
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
I don't think anything that strengthens copyright will have a tangible impact on competition or investment. But why aren't you asking what changes would be best for the people of Canada? It's not only artists and corporations the government should aim to please, but the citizens too! The citizens would benefit from having access to as many works as possible, with as few restrictions as possible. Ordinary citizens are the most important group to please, because there are vastly more of us ["the greatest good for the greatest number"]. This should be the focus of your lawmaking.
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?
What does "digital economy" mean, exactly? If you mean online trade, or the software industry, or electronic trade in music and movies, I don't think anything has to be done to copyright law to keep those things healthy [you know what would increase online trade and lead to new business models? a ubiquitous micropayment system for making instant purchases under $1]. Don't listen to the scare mongers in the CRIA and Hollywood. Their piracy figures are absurdly large, and anyway digital trade is kind of a zero-sum game: "piracy" just means that some low-income Canadians are enjoying more songs/films/software than they can afford to pay for, and middle-class Canadians are spending their money on some other part of the economy instead of giving it to the record or film or game industries. It does not harm the economy as a whole. Let the people speak with their money: if they want to pay these industries they will. I do buy my favorite movies and shows on DVD, and I have paid for many terrific video games, even though I have the means to pirate anything I want.
In any case, the supply of artists and authors will never dry up no matter what you do. It's human nature to create — I work on open source software, even without pay. It's just that if I could get paid, I would make more of it [and better quality, and I'd be more responsive to users' needs--aspects which often harm the uptake of open source].
Look, we already have a bind-bogglingly rich landscape of copyrighted works. No one could ever consume a significant fraction of all available English works or software. Even if you just consume the "best" works, you could never come close to running out. But our laws are wasteful — both economically and morally — because they restrict the audience size for, and re-use/re-mixing of, those works. People don't realize the laws are wasteful because powerful groups have successfully propagated the current intellectual property system and long copyright terms throughout the world. Thus, there are no examples to point to of countries that have successfully taken a different path.
[One more thing I would add--though it is unpopular to say--is that we should seriously consider what size of market for entertainment and software we need. If people had freer access to creative works, they might realize that there are more than enough of them. If we are making too much, we should be open to the possibility that the market should contract--that less works should be produced, and yes, as a consequence, some creative personnel would have to leave the field. Personally I can see virtually unlimited demand for software, when you consider the infinite possibilities for niche customization, and the many new software ideas that have not yet been exploited. But there is a limit to the amount of mass-market entertainment that society needs, and if (when you include the vast library of past works) there is too much, we should not think it a tragedy if Copyright law were weakened so much that the market contracts.]
In conclusion, the Canadian government has so far only considered copying U.S. law. Please don't. Doing nothing would be better. Weakening copyright would be better. Almost anything would be better.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
What's wrong with me?
It's been over four months since I wrote a blog post, and it's not for want of material. So much is going on in the world, and so much is weighing me down in my own life, that I could write a heck of a lot about a heck of a lot if I were so inclined. But for some reason I have not desired to write. I suppose a big part of it is that I feel I have no audience for my blog, though this is probably due in large part to the lack of posts. It's a vicious circle!
I could talk about how corrupt/incompetent I suspect Alberta's premier is, or how disappointed I have been by the Obama administration, its DOJ, Joe Biden's pro-Hollywood-MegaCorp opinions and by the disgustingly superficial e-mails I get from "Organizing for America" (which I had hoped would really turn out to be a positive "movement", as they call it, rather than a way to herd sheeple). I could point you to a dozen news items that have caught my eye over the past few months, if I could remember them. But I don't feel like talking about that crap right now. Luckily, for the first time in over four months, there is some crap I am sufficiently motivated to write about.
I saw a movie called The Reader last night, and it left me feeling sad and empty inside. This movie comes in two halves, one a tale of a young man drawn to fornication (with his sexual experience presented in detail), and the other of a tale of a woman whose life was ruined by an awful past--a past the audience is told virtually nothing about. All we know for sure is that she lies to a court and as a result spends over twenty years in prison. It is a tragedy that is unrelentingly realistic--as often happens in life, the protagonist, out of fear, doesn't do the right thing and ultimately the audience is left without any answers, explanations, or closure for what has transpired. It's also a very slow movie, but somehow not boring enough to put me to sleep.
The movie gave me insomnia or contributed thereto; I couldn't sleep, and as is often the case when I can't sleep, I played a video game, which doesn't help me sleep at all. I was slaughtering zombies all night, yet the only real zombie was me.
It seems like I have been tired almost continuously for a month. It got so bad I asked my employer for permission to sleep in, and I saw a doctor, who made me go for a blood test, of which I don't yet have the results. One surely important factor is that for over six months I have had an medical condition (which I don't care to describe publicly) that often deprives me of sleep. My doctor, whose is overly concerned with getting his patients out the door as quickly as possible, decided it should be left basically untreated even though it had been going on for over three months when I first saw him.
Meanwhile, I have stopped going to church, even though I still believe that of all the world's religions, mine is the one most likely to be the truth. I have read and seen media recently that leaves me greatly disliking Atheism, for it is a religion that deceives people into thinking it is not a religion. Yet my mind has been dwelling on the more unsavory aspects of God as we know Him. In particular, the law of Moses and the events of the old testament stand out as something awful. Admittedly, I have not actually read the Old Testament (it's so damn big, and not exactly a page-turner), but I know some of its stories and laws.
I'll give two examples that distress me to no end. In Old Testament times, if you had an affair and it was discovered, your own community would murder you by stoning. Well, let me be bold and just state what's on my mind, because I've been fuming inside: I find this barbaric and evil, yet it seems to be God's own idea--even His commandment. My second example: when the Jews came to the promised land, the land was already inhabited. Therefore, God ordered the extermination of all its people--men, women and children. To me, something like this is even worse than when God killed everyone in the great flood, because this time he had His children do the dirty work rather than bearing it himself. In this instance he actively encouraged His children to develop blood-lust and a belief that violence is God's Way.
People often talk of how wonderful Jesus was and indeed, it seemed in the New Testament as though there were no end to his kindness and tolerance, though perhaps I just haven't noticed the bad parts. Yet in Mormonism, the God of the Old Testament is supposed to have been the very same spirit that inhabited the body of Jesus. How can these be the same beings? And why would he cancel the law of Moses halfway through human history? It does not make any sense to me. Certainly, I would say, good riddance; but changing the law does not excuse the law's original content. I don't worry about those law-of-Moses rules like "don't eat shellfish" or "watch out for the cloven hoof!"--those laws may have made sense at the time on for hygienic reasons. But I believe that a punishment should fit the crime, and death for adultery is overly harsh. Moreover, to have God's tacit approval to kill someone, based on the flawed judgments of man? It is disgusting.
In my view these laws demand explanation and justification. It is not enough to say "that was all in the past, we have new a law now and we can ignore the old law"--no, for it is the same God that made both laws, and God even claims that he never changes. What changed, then? Did man change? I do not think the typical person in 50 BC was so starkly different from the typical person in 50 AD that God should give them different laws or judge them by different standards. It seems to me that there is more variation among human beings in different cultures at any single moment in time, than there was between an average Jew at 50 BC and an average Christian Jew at 50 AD. Why then does God's law depend on the timing of his birth and not on the circumstances of his upbringing? My church has no answer to offer, and I find no comfort in ignorance.
There is also a principle, that God presents repeatedly in the Bible, that I have refused to accept. Basically the principle is the same one that you hear every day from mothers that are in public places with their children. "Don't do that, come here, stay beside me, don't say that, put that away!" The parent gives an order, and the child asks "why?" And usually the mother's response is "because I said so." Or, if the mother prefers to be condescending, "because I'm your mother".
To me anyway, it sounds a lot like God, when he says things like "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD." But "I'm your mother" and "because I said so" are not reasons at all. These statements mean "I refuse to provide a reason at this time". And I know only a couple of reasons why a parent would refuse to give a reason for a commandment. One is that there simply isn't time (the parent needs obedience immediately); another is that the parent does not know how to explain in such a way that the child will understand. So, as our eternal parent, what are God's reasons for his commandments? Every week I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering "why?"
Why did God change his commandments? Why doesn't God help us reconcile his version of history with science? Why did God forsake every person on Earth in the dark ages? Why did God create sex and sex drive in 12-year-olds and then tell us never to have sex before marriage? And most of all, why won't He tell us why?
Unfortunately, God uses the rationale "because I said so" by default. I am not even certain that God ever provides reasons for his commandments. Reasons are often provided, though typically brief and superficial, but I wonder sometimes whether the reasons actually came from God or if it was merely the writers of scripture writing the reason they assumed would justify the commandment. Bah, never mind, I'm probably just getting cynical from all my heartache over this issue.
God told Adam to kill a lamb every so often and burn it at an altar. As I recall, Adam did this without question, until one day an angel appeared and asked him if he knew the purpose of this action. He replied that he did not, and so the angel explained that it was symbolic of the death of the messiah that would later come. Centuries later, God told Abraham to kill his only son, Isaac, and when Abraham told Isaac of this commandment, he agreed to allow himself to be killed. As Abraham was about to stab his son to death, an angel appeared to stop him: the commandment had been given only to test his obedience.
I feel as though God has made this the measure of a man: his willingness to obey without demanding a reason to. And I think many Christians would agree that this is a fine way for God to choose his leaders and to rule his people. But I am utterly unsatisfied by this approach to governance. It may make sense in a military relationship, where the superior gives orders and the subordinate obeys, but for God's sake, God, we are your children, not your soldiers and not your slaves!
Yet I seem to be the only person around that feels this way. We sing a song: "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war / with the cross of Jesus, going on before." I don't like this song. I mean, I like the music, but I don't like the attitude. I do not wish to see life or eternity as a war: I prefer peace. I do not wish to be a mere soldier in God's army: I want to be His son. Is the purpose of life to expose us to war? Is this why God will never attempt to justify himself in our eyes--because he is our commander, and we are here to obey, and if we do not wish to obey without reason or question, we can damn well report to the brig and tell it to the court marshall?
My problems in the church started in the groin. I was told that masturbation was wrong, and even as I did it, I believed it was wrong, too. But I couldn't stop; I was too weak. I used to feel so guilty, though now I feel less guilty and more unhappy that I am a weak person. But as time went on it slowly dawned on me that the commandment did not seem to make sense. Incidentally, should any non-Mormons be reading this, it should be noted that the Bible doesn't say anything whatsoever about masturbation; rather this commandment is given by the modern prophets (whose existence might come as a surprise, I know...)
It doesn't make sense because God created it. We are told He created not only the genitals themselves but the associated urges--hormones, and whatever it is in the brain that makes us feel the way we do. You may have heard a rumor that 98 percent of men masturbate--and the other 2 percent are lying. While I have no doubt some people don't do it, I think this little joke just reflects the reality of how difficult it is to remain 100% sex-free. How can God himself create something and then condemn its natural use as a sin? Consider the related doctrine in the Catholic church that one must only have sex with the intention to have a child. Mormons don't go that far, thankfully. But consider the church's justification: they say God only "intended" that the genitals only be used to procreate. It's like if God created the cat, then condemned it for licking itself, saying God only "intended" that the tongue be used to assist in food consumption; ergo, any other use is a fault in the cat's character (and God can disavow all responsibility for the behavior--it must come of the devil!)
I don't think you can blame this one on Satan, and it's a stretch even to blame it on man. How can we be held responsible for the design of our bodies? It isn't fair! It just is not fair!
Yet despite a probable prevalence of masturbation among Mormons, "good" Mormons (i.e. not me) do not need to know why they have been asked not to masturbate (or fornicate, for that matter). They just accept the claim that it's a sin, often feeling a sense of shame instilled at a young age, and somehow, they do not see any contradiction in the fact that God is both encouraging them to have sex (because of His design of body and mind) at the same time as he absolutely prohibits it (but only in word).
I often liken our bodies to the Garden of Eden. In the center of the Garden of Eden, like the center of our bodies, there was forbidden fruit, from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat. Eating of this tree was beneficial in the sense that it bestowed knowledge upon the partakers, yet forbidden because God said so. In the timeless land of Eden, according to Mormonism, nothing noteworthy would ever happen as long as Adam and Eve obeyed this commandment--they could not have children, for they did not know how (for some unspecified reason, their immortal junk didn't work); and they could do no good or evil, for they had no knowledge of either. And so, inevitably, a day came when Satan convinced Eve to partake of the fruit, and God's response was to cast them out and cut them off from his presence. Why? Because they did not obey. And yet this had been his design from the beginning. So far as we know, partaking of the fruit was a sin for only one reason: because God said so. And so it is with masturbation.
Because He said so.
I can't tell you how frustrating this has been for me. "Because I said so"? Why is this reasoning sufficient for everyone else? Am I the only Mormon on the planet who can't stand the fact that God is keeping the reason for such an important commandment secret? By the way, is this commandment even important, or am I "making a mountain out of a molehill"? I know that church leaders take it seriously. I have a Church-published pamphlet here called "Repentance Brings Forgiveness", which lists the unforgivable sins (murder and denial of the Holy Ghost) and says "Next to the unforgivable sins come sexual sins. Some such sins may be committed with oneself and some with another person".
So there you have it. Masturbation is "next to [...] unforgivable". Sounds pretty serious all right. No wonder the Holy Ghost doesn't want to hang around with me.
Why doesn't such an important commandment warrant an explanation from the Lord beyond simply "God intended for this organ to be used during marriage, ergo any other use is a sin?" Why is it wrong of me to demand from the Lord to know why masturbation could be considered worse than lying, stealing, vandalism or violence? Why is it a big secret?
Well, my best friend has arrived home. It's time to set this putrid matter aside and enjoy some light entertainment and a meal. But will this matter keep me awake at night? Will I become depressed with worry for my soul, again, and suffer reduced performance at work as a result, or will I be lucky enough to forget the whole thing until the next Sunday comes along? I am hoping for the latter, but admittedly, not praying.
I could talk about how corrupt/incompetent I suspect Alberta's premier is, or how disappointed I have been by the Obama administration, its DOJ, Joe Biden's pro-Hollywood-MegaCorp opinions and by the disgustingly superficial e-mails I get from "Organizing for America" (which I had hoped would really turn out to be a positive "movement", as they call it, rather than a way to herd sheeple). I could point you to a dozen news items that have caught my eye over the past few months, if I could remember them. But I don't feel like talking about that crap right now. Luckily, for the first time in over four months, there is some crap I am sufficiently motivated to write about.
I saw a movie called The Reader last night, and it left me feeling sad and empty inside. This movie comes in two halves, one a tale of a young man drawn to fornication (with his sexual experience presented in detail), and the other of a tale of a woman whose life was ruined by an awful past--a past the audience is told virtually nothing about. All we know for sure is that she lies to a court and as a result spends over twenty years in prison. It is a tragedy that is unrelentingly realistic--as often happens in life, the protagonist, out of fear, doesn't do the right thing and ultimately the audience is left without any answers, explanations, or closure for what has transpired. It's also a very slow movie, but somehow not boring enough to put me to sleep.
The movie gave me insomnia or contributed thereto; I couldn't sleep, and as is often the case when I can't sleep, I played a video game, which doesn't help me sleep at all. I was slaughtering zombies all night, yet the only real zombie was me.
It seems like I have been tired almost continuously for a month. It got so bad I asked my employer for permission to sleep in, and I saw a doctor, who made me go for a blood test, of which I don't yet have the results. One surely important factor is that for over six months I have had an medical condition (which I don't care to describe publicly) that often deprives me of sleep. My doctor, whose is overly concerned with getting his patients out the door as quickly as possible, decided it should be left basically untreated even though it had been going on for over three months when I first saw him.
Meanwhile, I have stopped going to church, even though I still believe that of all the world's religions, mine is the one most likely to be the truth. I have read and seen media recently that leaves me greatly disliking Atheism, for it is a religion that deceives people into thinking it is not a religion. Yet my mind has been dwelling on the more unsavory aspects of God as we know Him. In particular, the law of Moses and the events of the old testament stand out as something awful. Admittedly, I have not actually read the Old Testament (it's so damn big, and not exactly a page-turner), but I know some of its stories and laws.
I'll give two examples that distress me to no end. In Old Testament times, if you had an affair and it was discovered, your own community would murder you by stoning. Well, let me be bold and just state what's on my mind, because I've been fuming inside: I find this barbaric and evil, yet it seems to be God's own idea--even His commandment. My second example: when the Jews came to the promised land, the land was already inhabited. Therefore, God ordered the extermination of all its people--men, women and children. To me, something like this is even worse than when God killed everyone in the great flood, because this time he had His children do the dirty work rather than bearing it himself. In this instance he actively encouraged His children to develop blood-lust and a belief that violence is God's Way.
People often talk of how wonderful Jesus was and indeed, it seemed in the New Testament as though there were no end to his kindness and tolerance, though perhaps I just haven't noticed the bad parts. Yet in Mormonism, the God of the Old Testament is supposed to have been the very same spirit that inhabited the body of Jesus. How can these be the same beings? And why would he cancel the law of Moses halfway through human history? It does not make any sense to me. Certainly, I would say, good riddance; but changing the law does not excuse the law's original content. I don't worry about those law-of-Moses rules like "don't eat shellfish" or "watch out for the cloven hoof!"--those laws may have made sense at the time on for hygienic reasons. But I believe that a punishment should fit the crime, and death for adultery is overly harsh. Moreover, to have God's tacit approval to kill someone, based on the flawed judgments of man? It is disgusting.
In my view these laws demand explanation and justification. It is not enough to say "that was all in the past, we have new a law now and we can ignore the old law"--no, for it is the same God that made both laws, and God even claims that he never changes. What changed, then? Did man change? I do not think the typical person in 50 BC was so starkly different from the typical person in 50 AD that God should give them different laws or judge them by different standards. It seems to me that there is more variation among human beings in different cultures at any single moment in time, than there was between an average Jew at 50 BC and an average Christian Jew at 50 AD. Why then does God's law depend on the timing of his birth and not on the circumstances of his upbringing? My church has no answer to offer, and I find no comfort in ignorance.
There is also a principle, that God presents repeatedly in the Bible, that I have refused to accept. Basically the principle is the same one that you hear every day from mothers that are in public places with their children. "Don't do that, come here, stay beside me, don't say that, put that away!" The parent gives an order, and the child asks "why?" And usually the mother's response is "because I said so." Or, if the mother prefers to be condescending, "because I'm your mother".
To me anyway, it sounds a lot like God, when he says things like "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD." But "I'm your mother" and "because I said so" are not reasons at all. These statements mean "I refuse to provide a reason at this time". And I know only a couple of reasons why a parent would refuse to give a reason for a commandment. One is that there simply isn't time (the parent needs obedience immediately); another is that the parent does not know how to explain in such a way that the child will understand. So, as our eternal parent, what are God's reasons for his commandments? Every week I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering "why?"
Why did God change his commandments? Why doesn't God help us reconcile his version of history with science? Why did God forsake every person on Earth in the dark ages? Why did God create sex and sex drive in 12-year-olds and then tell us never to have sex before marriage? And most of all, why won't He tell us why?
Unfortunately, God uses the rationale "because I said so" by default. I am not even certain that God ever provides reasons for his commandments. Reasons are often provided, though typically brief and superficial, but I wonder sometimes whether the reasons actually came from God or if it was merely the writers of scripture writing the reason they assumed would justify the commandment. Bah, never mind, I'm probably just getting cynical from all my heartache over this issue.
God told Adam to kill a lamb every so often and burn it at an altar. As I recall, Adam did this without question, until one day an angel appeared and asked him if he knew the purpose of this action. He replied that he did not, and so the angel explained that it was symbolic of the death of the messiah that would later come. Centuries later, God told Abraham to kill his only son, Isaac, and when Abraham told Isaac of this commandment, he agreed to allow himself to be killed. As Abraham was about to stab his son to death, an angel appeared to stop him: the commandment had been given only to test his obedience.
I feel as though God has made this the measure of a man: his willingness to obey without demanding a reason to. And I think many Christians would agree that this is a fine way for God to choose his leaders and to rule his people. But I am utterly unsatisfied by this approach to governance. It may make sense in a military relationship, where the superior gives orders and the subordinate obeys, but for God's sake, God, we are your children, not your soldiers and not your slaves!
Yet I seem to be the only person around that feels this way. We sing a song: "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war / with the cross of Jesus, going on before." I don't like this song. I mean, I like the music, but I don't like the attitude. I do not wish to see life or eternity as a war: I prefer peace. I do not wish to be a mere soldier in God's army: I want to be His son. Is the purpose of life to expose us to war? Is this why God will never attempt to justify himself in our eyes--because he is our commander, and we are here to obey, and if we do not wish to obey without reason or question, we can damn well report to the brig and tell it to the court marshall?
My problems in the church started in the groin. I was told that masturbation was wrong, and even as I did it, I believed it was wrong, too. But I couldn't stop; I was too weak. I used to feel so guilty, though now I feel less guilty and more unhappy that I am a weak person. But as time went on it slowly dawned on me that the commandment did not seem to make sense. Incidentally, should any non-Mormons be reading this, it should be noted that the Bible doesn't say anything whatsoever about masturbation; rather this commandment is given by the modern prophets (whose existence might come as a surprise, I know...)
It doesn't make sense because God created it. We are told He created not only the genitals themselves but the associated urges--hormones, and whatever it is in the brain that makes us feel the way we do. You may have heard a rumor that 98 percent of men masturbate--and the other 2 percent are lying. While I have no doubt some people don't do it, I think this little joke just reflects the reality of how difficult it is to remain 100% sex-free. How can God himself create something and then condemn its natural use as a sin? Consider the related doctrine in the Catholic church that one must only have sex with the intention to have a child. Mormons don't go that far, thankfully. But consider the church's justification: they say God only "intended" that the genitals only be used to procreate. It's like if God created the cat, then condemned it for licking itself, saying God only "intended" that the tongue be used to assist in food consumption; ergo, any other use is a fault in the cat's character (and God can disavow all responsibility for the behavior--it must come of the devil!)
I don't think you can blame this one on Satan, and it's a stretch even to blame it on man. How can we be held responsible for the design of our bodies? It isn't fair! It just is not fair!
Yet despite a probable prevalence of masturbation among Mormons, "good" Mormons (i.e. not me) do not need to know why they have been asked not to masturbate (or fornicate, for that matter). They just accept the claim that it's a sin, often feeling a sense of shame instilled at a young age, and somehow, they do not see any contradiction in the fact that God is both encouraging them to have sex (because of His design of body and mind) at the same time as he absolutely prohibits it (but only in word).
I often liken our bodies to the Garden of Eden. In the center of the Garden of Eden, like the center of our bodies, there was forbidden fruit, from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat. Eating of this tree was beneficial in the sense that it bestowed knowledge upon the partakers, yet forbidden because God said so. In the timeless land of Eden, according to Mormonism, nothing noteworthy would ever happen as long as Adam and Eve obeyed this commandment--they could not have children, for they did not know how (for some unspecified reason, their immortal junk didn't work); and they could do no good or evil, for they had no knowledge of either. And so, inevitably, a day came when Satan convinced Eve to partake of the fruit, and God's response was to cast them out and cut them off from his presence. Why? Because they did not obey. And yet this had been his design from the beginning. So far as we know, partaking of the fruit was a sin for only one reason: because God said so. And so it is with masturbation.
Because He said so.
I can't tell you how frustrating this has been for me. "Because I said so"? Why is this reasoning sufficient for everyone else? Am I the only Mormon on the planet who can't stand the fact that God is keeping the reason for such an important commandment secret? By the way, is this commandment even important, or am I "making a mountain out of a molehill"? I know that church leaders take it seriously. I have a Church-published pamphlet here called "Repentance Brings Forgiveness", which lists the unforgivable sins (murder and denial of the Holy Ghost) and says "Next to the unforgivable sins come sexual sins. Some such sins may be committed with oneself and some with another person".
So there you have it. Masturbation is "next to [...] unforgivable". Sounds pretty serious all right. No wonder the Holy Ghost doesn't want to hang around with me.
Why doesn't such an important commandment warrant an explanation from the Lord beyond simply "God intended for this organ to be used during marriage, ergo any other use is a sin?" Why is it wrong of me to demand from the Lord to know why masturbation could be considered worse than lying, stealing, vandalism or violence? Why is it a big secret?
Well, my best friend has arrived home. It's time to set this putrid matter aside and enjoy some light entertainment and a meal. But will this matter keep me awake at night? Will I become depressed with worry for my soul, again, and suffer reduced performance at work as a result, or will I be lucky enough to forget the whole thing until the next Sunday comes along? I am hoping for the latter, but admittedly, not praying.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
$838 billion. Whoa.
So how about this $800+ billion stimulus plan? Add the existing $700 billion bailout and I am very concerned we've got a recipe for disaster in the form of massive money mismanagement. My concern is fairly simple. There are only 535 congresspeople and they are vastly outnumbered by lobbyists. For each congressperson there is over 1.6 billion dollars in the $838 billion stumulus plan, but I expect most congresspeople don't directly decide how any of this money will be spent, while a few probably have tremendous power. Thus, there are probably a handful of congresspeople, each of whom are deciding--in the course of just two or three weeks--how to spend tens of billions of dollars. How is it even humanly possible to spend this money responsibly? How will it be micromanaged? How will it avoid giving enormous amounts of free money to undeserving recipients that have good lobbyists?
I like Jon Stewart's idea on the stimulus plan which he discussed with an economist on (IIRC) Feb. 2. They talked about lowering the payroll tax from 15% to 7%, an idea that (AFAIK) is not under consideration by either party, and about refinancing bad mortgages with lower interest rates. They also talked about the importance of giving not to large banks that caused the crisis, but to individuals with lesser faults--a "trickle up" stimulus plan instead of a "trickle-down-from-the-rich-bastards-who-caused-this-mess" plan. What I like about these ideas is that there isn't a lot of room for lobbyists, pork-barreling, or slipping in special-interest funding unnoticed. With fewer line items on the bill, less irresponsibility would get through. These ideas spread some of the government relief money just about equally to all citizens, and some of the money is targeted at people that need it--but at individuals who have no lobbyists, rather than banks and megabusinesses.
It also seems risky to increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion, which is about $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. The total debt after this stimulus plan will be about $11 trillion, I'm guestimating, or almost $37,000 per person. But in the U.S. money system, money is debt, and more debt means more money for everyone. Make sense? Well, to me it's a head scratcher. It seems like most countries around the world are borrowing--but who's lending? In the U.S. I assume most of the money will be "lent" by the Fed, which really means the Fed will punch some numbers in a computer to create the money out of nothing.
Now I don't really have a problem with printing money like this in a time of crisis--as long as they don't print so much that inflation gets out of control. In fact, printing money could be considered a perfectly even (if not perfectly fair) form of taxation: instead of taxing people, just print money. Then inflation decreases the value of everyone's money equally.
But instead of just printing money, the U.S. "borrows" it. But to me this seems ridiculous, when they are borrowing money that didn't exist before, from an organization (The Fed) that doesn't actually have any money in reserve. Presumably they will pay it back someday, and if so they will pay it back with interest. So my question is--and I have never seen anyone try to answer this question--who pockets the interest when payments to the Fed are made against the debt?
Update: This appears to be Obama's answer to my concerns about accountability - "a new website where citizens can track every dollar spent and every job created".
I like Jon Stewart's idea on the stimulus plan which he discussed with an economist on (IIRC) Feb. 2. They talked about lowering the payroll tax from 15% to 7%, an idea that (AFAIK) is not under consideration by either party, and about refinancing bad mortgages with lower interest rates. They also talked about the importance of giving not to large banks that caused the crisis, but to individuals with lesser faults--a "trickle up" stimulus plan instead of a "trickle-down-from-the-rich-bastards-who-caused-this-mess" plan. What I like about these ideas is that there isn't a lot of room for lobbyists, pork-barreling, or slipping in special-interest funding unnoticed. With fewer line items on the bill, less irresponsibility would get through. These ideas spread some of the government relief money just about equally to all citizens, and some of the money is targeted at people that need it--but at individuals who have no lobbyists, rather than banks and megabusinesses.
It also seems risky to increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion, which is about $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. The total debt after this stimulus plan will be about $11 trillion, I'm guestimating, or almost $37,000 per person. But in the U.S. money system, money is debt, and more debt means more money for everyone. Make sense? Well, to me it's a head scratcher. It seems like most countries around the world are borrowing--but who's lending? In the U.S. I assume most of the money will be "lent" by the Fed, which really means the Fed will punch some numbers in a computer to create the money out of nothing.
Now I don't really have a problem with printing money like this in a time of crisis--as long as they don't print so much that inflation gets out of control. In fact, printing money could be considered a perfectly even (if not perfectly fair) form of taxation: instead of taxing people, just print money. Then inflation decreases the value of everyone's money equally.
But instead of just printing money, the U.S. "borrows" it. But to me this seems ridiculous, when they are borrowing money that didn't exist before, from an organization (The Fed) that doesn't actually have any money in reserve. Presumably they will pay it back someday, and if so they will pay it back with interest. So my question is--and I have never seen anyone try to answer this question--who pockets the interest when payments to the Fed are made against the debt?
Update: This appears to be Obama's answer to my concerns about accountability - "a new website where citizens can track every dollar spent and every job created".
RIAA and BSA's Favorite Lawyers Taking Top Department of Justice Posts
Hmm, Obama certainly isn't bringing change in the intellectual property arena. Quite the contrary. Presumably at the behest of Joe Biden, the lawyers who participated in suing tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, and lawyers of the BSA (the anti-piracy organization for much of the software industry), now get top DOJ positions.
Update: I recommend the following article, which is more balanced: Influx of Big Content lawyers at DoJ: cause for concern?
Update: I recommend the following article, which is more balanced: Influx of Big Content lawyers at DoJ: cause for concern?
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Israel
Israel sure is a depressing subject. A comment in another post recently reminded me of the curious consensus among both major U.S. parties and all major news outlets that Israel is America's greatest ally and must not be criticized. I was pointed to this document. Assuming this heavily-footnoted paper from March 2006 is accurate in its factual reporting (nearly half of it consists of "endnotes"), the facts are very disturbing. Did you know, for instance, that Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians for every Israeli lost since 2000, including 5.7 Palestinian children killed for every Israeli child killed? The paper notes other interesting facts:
I have the sense, and not just from reading this paper, that those who criticize Israel's policies or government risk being called anti-semitic. This is defined on answers.com as "One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews"--in other words, a racist. Not that I think Jews count as a race at all--they're just white people--but racists tend to think they're a race.
How can criticizing Israel (which of course is shorthand for the govenment of Israel) make you a racist?
If one criticizes the American government, are they labeled anti-American? Actually, I do think that has happened, especially in times of turmoil such as the time following 9/11. But nowadays, luckily, that crap just doesn't stick and says more about the name-caller than the name-callee. America, after all, has always had a tradition of freedom to criticize govenment. Besides, the term "anti-American" doesn't have a strong racist connotation the way "anti-semitic" does, and considering that Americans come in all colors, how could it? But somehow, this tiny middle-eastern nation is almost immune to criticism in mainstream media, seemingly on threat of name calling.
Coincidentally as I write this, the latest news headline is that Isreael has killed a top Hamas official. Oh, and much of his family. Oh, and a bunch of other people that happened to be in the same 4-storey apartment building.
When analyzing the objectivity with which an issue is reported, it helps to imagine how rhetoric and news coverage would change if an act committed by one side in a conflict were instead committed by the other side. For example, the excellent book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man says that, in Latin America, the CIA is widely suspected to have assassinated Panama's populist leader, a fundamentally good man named Omar Torrijos, as part of an effort to regain some control over the Panama canal. The next leader, Manuel Noriega, refused to give the U.S. its desired power over the canal, and eventually the U.S. launched a small invasion of Panama in order to depose Noriega. In the process, somewhere between 2000 and 5000 civilians were killed.
To detect a lack of objectivity in the media--as absurd as it may seem--I think it's worthwhile to imagine if a well-liked U.S. president such as Barack Obama were killed in a mysterious plane crash. A foreign intelligence agency is suspected in the "accident", and the same agency is suspected in a similar accident a few months ago that killed another popular leader. Would the American media pay little attention, as they did to the incident in Panama? And what if a foreign force invaded Washington, D.C., killing thousands of civilians and capturing the President? Would the American people be more aware of this than when their own country invades Panama? Would the American people tolerate having only "ballpark" civilian death estimates that range from 300 to 5000, as noted on Wikipedia? Would some Americans automatically assume that the invasion was justified, as they do when America invades another country?
I suppose it's to be expected that Americans care a lot more about the death of their own rather than the deaths of foreigners caused by their military. Still, is this not a lack of fairness and objectivity? And is there not something wrong?
Fun fact: death estimates in the Iraq conflict range from 100,000 (a bare minimum based on official reports only, see IraqBodyCount.org) to nearly a million (an extrapolation of the 2006 figure of 655,000 put out by the John Hopkins report.) I don't really understand why, but for each and every U.S. soldier killed there (and there are a lot of those, as most Americans are no doubt aware), something like 25 Iraqis are killed. Or maybe 200, I mean who's counting? Of course, I don't mean to imply that Americans killed them; rather, the chaos caused by the horribly mismanaged invasion somehow empowered all the most evil elements of Iraq and neighboring states, other than Saddam himself of course.
Sorry, my mind wanders. Anyway, when I was a child I was taught that we are all brothers and sisters. Not all of us Americans. Not all of us North Americans. Not all of us English-speakers, but all of us human beings. We are all valuable in the sight of God, and all men are created equal. I hold fast to that ideal. I believe that an Iraqi or Panamanian hurts as much when dismembered as an American. I believe that people around the world have as much right to a livelihood as we do. Do you disagree?
Are Americans far more valuable than others? First-worlders far more valuable than third-worlders? Jews far more valuable than Palestinians? If you don't think so, then sit up and take notice, for the facts on the ground suggest otherwise.
So getting back to Israel, let's try reversing the situation. What if you heard that Hamas dropped a one-ton bomb on the 4-storey apartment building lived in by a top Israeli official, which killed him and 6 immediate family members and 5 unlucky others? I would think: "a top Israeli official lives in an apartment building?" and then: "oh dear, a lot of Palestinians will die for this".
But I think a lot of Americans simply wouldn't know the difference. I studied the history of Israel in high school, but by the time I got to university I had forgotten just about everything I knew, and I came to realize this when I got into a conversation with an Arab pizza place employee, and embarrassed myself with ignorant statements. For example, I thought that both Palestinians and Israelis killed one another in suicide bomb attacks, more or less in equal numbers. I guess I was too busy in my job (writing software for said pizza place) that I lost track of the world outside--the world on which America has a tremendous effect while its citizens aren't looking. And isn't that the story of most Americans?
Even though Israel may be the keystone of America's relationship with the world, most Americans know little about the conflict there. And according to the paper I introduced at the beginning, this is just the way the powerful lobby group AIPAC wants it, because the facts are not flattering.
I don't know the solution to this conflict, but I think reconciliation, compromise, diplomacy, and forgiveness--not proud displays of military force by Israel (or desperate acts of terrorism by Palestinian militants)--will have major roles to play. I worry that Israel always takes the latter approach because its unique relationship with the U.S. makes it invincible. I have heard there is a military culture in Israel's government--is this culture, I wonder, more prominent than the military culture in the U.S. government? In any case, I don't think that culture will ever come to an end as long as the U.S. props it up, and the U.S. will not stop propping it up until somebody starts saying "hey, maybe Israel doesn't deserve to be our greatest foreign-aid recipient" or "hey, maybe there's something morally wrong over there" or "maybe Jewish lives aren't quite worth 3.4 times as much as Arab lives".
And nobody in mainstream media and mainstream politics will say that until Americans learn enough about the situation to respond "hey, maybe he's right!" So please, learn a little more about this issue, and be ready to wonder whether decades of U.S. foreign policy is bringing this 50-year conflict to a close--or preventing a peaceful conclusion.
P.S. I know that there is plenty of blame to go around: Palestinians kill Israelis too. It's just that only one side actually has the power to end this conflict, and with great power comes great responsibility. And hey, happy new year! I have no doubt that 2009 will be an odd year. Numerically speaking.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War II. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year.Later on, the paper describes how it believes pro-Israel lobby groups manage to maintain a universal pro-Israel position in both major parties and in the mainstream media as well.
....
The United States has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems like the Lavi aircraft that the Pentagon did not want or need, while giving Israel access to top-drawer U.S. weaponry like Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the United States gives Israel access to intelligence that it denies its NATO allies and has turned a blind eye towards Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
....
In addition, Washington provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the United States has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, a number greater than the combined total of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It also blocks Arab states’ efforts to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s agenda.
....
Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better-equipped, and better-led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in 1967--before large-scale U.S. aid began flowing to Israel. These victories offer eloquent evidence of Israeli patriotism, organizational ability, and military prowess, but they also reveal that Israel was far from helpless even in its earliest years.
Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to its neighbors and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons.
I have the sense, and not just from reading this paper, that those who criticize Israel's policies or government risk being called anti-semitic. This is defined on answers.com as "One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews"--in other words, a racist. Not that I think Jews count as a race at all--they're just white people--but racists tend to think they're a race.
How can criticizing Israel (which of course is shorthand for the govenment of Israel) make you a racist?
If one criticizes the American government, are they labeled anti-American? Actually, I do think that has happened, especially in times of turmoil such as the time following 9/11. But nowadays, luckily, that crap just doesn't stick and says more about the name-caller than the name-callee. America, after all, has always had a tradition of freedom to criticize govenment. Besides, the term "anti-American" doesn't have a strong racist connotation the way "anti-semitic" does, and considering that Americans come in all colors, how could it? But somehow, this tiny middle-eastern nation is almost immune to criticism in mainstream media, seemingly on threat of name calling.
Coincidentally as I write this, the latest news headline is that Isreael has killed a top Hamas official. Oh, and much of his family. Oh, and a bunch of other people that happened to be in the same 4-storey apartment building.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of a Hamas strongman Thursday, killing him along with two wives and four children in the first attack on the top leadership of Gaza's rulers. As the aerial bombardment escalated, the army said it was also poised to launch a ground invasion. Israel also appeared to be sounding out a possible diplomatic exit from the 6-day-old military offensive against Hamas by demanding international monitors as a key term of any future truce.Since the official was in Hamas, we can safely assume he was a bad guy (right?), but wait, what about the eleven other deaths? What about the residents of that building, whose possessions were destroyed and who are left homeless?
The bombing targeted 49-year-old Nizar Rayan, ranked among Hamas' top five decision-makers in Gaza. His four-story apartment building crashed to the ground, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air and heavily damaging neighboring buildings. It killed Rayan and 11 others, including two of his four wives and four of his 12 children, Palestinian health officials said. The Muslim faith allows men to have up to four wives.
When analyzing the objectivity with which an issue is reported, it helps to imagine how rhetoric and news coverage would change if an act committed by one side in a conflict were instead committed by the other side. For example, the excellent book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man says that, in Latin America, the CIA is widely suspected to have assassinated Panama's populist leader, a fundamentally good man named Omar Torrijos, as part of an effort to regain some control over the Panama canal. The next leader, Manuel Noriega, refused to give the U.S. its desired power over the canal, and eventually the U.S. launched a small invasion of Panama in order to depose Noriega. In the process, somewhere between 2000 and 5000 civilians were killed.
To detect a lack of objectivity in the media--as absurd as it may seem--I think it's worthwhile to imagine if a well-liked U.S. president such as Barack Obama were killed in a mysterious plane crash. A foreign intelligence agency is suspected in the "accident", and the same agency is suspected in a similar accident a few months ago that killed another popular leader. Would the American media pay little attention, as they did to the incident in Panama? And what if a foreign force invaded Washington, D.C., killing thousands of civilians and capturing the President? Would the American people be more aware of this than when their own country invades Panama? Would the American people tolerate having only "ballpark" civilian death estimates that range from 300 to 5000, as noted on Wikipedia? Would some Americans automatically assume that the invasion was justified, as they do when America invades another country?
I suppose it's to be expected that Americans care a lot more about the death of their own rather than the deaths of foreigners caused by their military. Still, is this not a lack of fairness and objectivity? And is there not something wrong?
Fun fact: death estimates in the Iraq conflict range from 100,000 (a bare minimum based on official reports only, see IraqBodyCount.org) to nearly a million (an extrapolation of the 2006 figure of 655,000 put out by the John Hopkins report.) I don't really understand why, but for each and every U.S. soldier killed there (and there are a lot of those, as most Americans are no doubt aware), something like 25 Iraqis are killed. Or maybe 200, I mean who's counting? Of course, I don't mean to imply that Americans killed them; rather, the chaos caused by the horribly mismanaged invasion somehow empowered all the most evil elements of Iraq and neighboring states, other than Saddam himself of course.
Sorry, my mind wanders. Anyway, when I was a child I was taught that we are all brothers and sisters. Not all of us Americans. Not all of us North Americans. Not all of us English-speakers, but all of us human beings. We are all valuable in the sight of God, and all men are created equal. I hold fast to that ideal. I believe that an Iraqi or Panamanian hurts as much when dismembered as an American. I believe that people around the world have as much right to a livelihood as we do. Do you disagree?
Are Americans far more valuable than others? First-worlders far more valuable than third-worlders? Jews far more valuable than Palestinians? If you don't think so, then sit up and take notice, for the facts on the ground suggest otherwise.
So getting back to Israel, let's try reversing the situation. What if you heard that Hamas dropped a one-ton bomb on the 4-storey apartment building lived in by a top Israeli official, which killed him and 6 immediate family members and 5 unlucky others? I would think: "a top Israeli official lives in an apartment building?" and then: "oh dear, a lot of Palestinians will die for this".
But I think a lot of Americans simply wouldn't know the difference. I studied the history of Israel in high school, but by the time I got to university I had forgotten just about everything I knew, and I came to realize this when I got into a conversation with an Arab pizza place employee, and embarrassed myself with ignorant statements. For example, I thought that both Palestinians and Israelis killed one another in suicide bomb attacks, more or less in equal numbers. I guess I was too busy in my job (writing software for said pizza place) that I lost track of the world outside--the world on which America has a tremendous effect while its citizens aren't looking. And isn't that the story of most Americans?
Even though Israel may be the keystone of America's relationship with the world, most Americans know little about the conflict there. And according to the paper I introduced at the beginning, this is just the way the powerful lobby group AIPAC wants it, because the facts are not flattering.
I don't know the solution to this conflict, but I think reconciliation, compromise, diplomacy, and forgiveness--not proud displays of military force by Israel (or desperate acts of terrorism by Palestinian militants)--will have major roles to play. I worry that Israel always takes the latter approach because its unique relationship with the U.S. makes it invincible. I have heard there is a military culture in Israel's government--is this culture, I wonder, more prominent than the military culture in the U.S. government? In any case, I don't think that culture will ever come to an end as long as the U.S. props it up, and the U.S. will not stop propping it up until somebody starts saying "hey, maybe Israel doesn't deserve to be our greatest foreign-aid recipient" or "hey, maybe there's something morally wrong over there" or "maybe Jewish lives aren't quite worth 3.4 times as much as Arab lives".
And nobody in mainstream media and mainstream politics will say that until Americans learn enough about the situation to respond "hey, maybe he's right!" So please, learn a little more about this issue, and be ready to wonder whether decades of U.S. foreign policy is bringing this 50-year conflict to a close--or preventing a peaceful conclusion.
P.S. I know that there is plenty of blame to go around: Palestinians kill Israelis too. It's just that only one side actually has the power to end this conflict, and with great power comes great responsibility. And hey, happy new year! I have no doubt that 2009 will be an odd year. Numerically speaking.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
¡ǝɯosǝʍɐ
¿ʇɐ ƃuıɹɐʇs noʎ ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʍ
Start the latest silly fad: write text upside-down.
Not all characters available. Some restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Javascript required.
For source code, use 'View source' and search for 'fad'
Start the latest silly fad: write text upside-down.
Not all characters available. Some restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Javascript required.
For source code, use 'View source' and search for 'fad'
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Next Year's Laws (Beta)
Click the headline for an interesting theory of how the law ought to be designed, and anecdotes of how terribly inconsistent the legal system can be.
- Bonus slashdot article explaining why the Virginia High Court came to the wrong conclusion by striking down an anti-spam law on first-amendment grounds.
Monday, September 29, 2008
How to steal an election
Intuitively, you might think that e-voting machines should be good for technology industries; after all, if machines didn't replace paper, many of us in these industries would be out of a job. But have you noticed that technology professionals like those that hang around at Slashdot, the EFF and Ars Technica are the same people that loudly proclaim their distrust of electronic voting machines and want paper audit trails?
Click the headline to read all about the flaws in electronic voting systems that can allow votes to be stolen wholesale. As a Computer Engineer (in training) that started programming at age 11, I can vouch for the horrifying plausibility of this article.
By the way, the article talks about how it is possible for vote-counting software to be modified in such a way that the changes can't be detected. But if you take the time to read through the long account I linked to in my last blog entry, you'll note that many of the techniques used to shift the election results from Kerry to Bush in Ohio were actually very blatant and low-tech--such as voter caging, refusing to recognize voter registration cards that are not printed on very thick paper, not giving out provisional ballots, causing long lineups at polls, or declaring a fake terrorist emergency. While these techniques may have angered voters, they served their intended purpose just the same. Apparently, remaining undetected while rigging the ballot is merely a bonus.
The remedy to much of the above, by the way, would be not to put leaders of one party in charge of interpreting and enforcing election law -- duh. The electronic voting system, however, can be subverted even if those in charge of the election are fair and neutral.
Click the headline to read all about the flaws in electronic voting systems that can allow votes to be stolen wholesale. As a Computer Engineer (in training) that started programming at age 11, I can vouch for the horrifying plausibility of this article.
By the way, the article talks about how it is possible for vote-counting software to be modified in such a way that the changes can't be detected. But if you take the time to read through the long account I linked to in my last blog entry, you'll note that many of the techniques used to shift the election results from Kerry to Bush in Ohio were actually very blatant and low-tech--such as voter caging, refusing to recognize voter registration cards that are not printed on very thick paper, not giving out provisional ballots, causing long lineups at polls, or declaring a fake terrorist emergency. While these techniques may have angered voters, they served their intended purpose just the same. Apparently, remaining undetected while rigging the ballot is merely a bonus.
The remedy to much of the above, by the way, would be not to put leaders of one party in charge of interpreting and enforcing election law -- duh. The electronic voting system, however, can be subverted even if those in charge of the election are fair and neutral.
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Every once in awhile I read something about major irregularities in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Having never heard a rebuttal to these stories, I wonder how it is that such a tremendous fraud can slip through the mainstream media unnoticed.
Click the heading for the whole story by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
What about the 2000 election?
I recently saw an HBO movie called Recount, about the 2000 battle for a recount in Florida. You would expect this film to be somewhat dry, but I promise it is quite gripping. While much of the dialogue may be fiction, the plot is basically accurate, yet has more twists than anyone would expect from a true story. I had no idea the election was so close, or that many recounts were halted while in progress. All thumbs up!
P.S. Isn't there something wrong with the fact that votes in swing states like Florida are much more valuable than those in non-swing states? Shouldn't all votes count equally? If you think they should, support an end to winner-take-all elections, or better yet, an end to the electoral college.
Another interesting thing.
As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina. Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''
But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.
Click the heading for the whole story by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
What about the 2000 election?
I recently saw an HBO movie called Recount, about the 2000 battle for a recount in Florida. You would expect this film to be somewhat dry, but I promise it is quite gripping. While much of the dialogue may be fiction, the plot is basically accurate, yet has more twists than anyone would expect from a true story. I had no idea the election was so close, or that many recounts were halted while in progress. All thumbs up!
P.S. Isn't there something wrong with the fact that votes in swing states like Florida are much more valuable than those in non-swing states? Shouldn't all votes count equally? If you think they should, support an end to winner-take-all elections, or better yet, an end to the electoral college.
Another interesting thing.
Economics: war versus common sense
A Slashdot post I saw by "jollyreaper", replying to another post.
FDR tried and failed to fix the 1930s recession..... it ultimately took a world war to bring-back full employment. Without the war, FDR would have been voted out of office in 1940, and the recession would have stretched through most of the 1940s.
Obama faces what FDR faced, and Obama's not going to be any more successful. (Unless a war saves him.)
Why is it we always praise wars for bringing full employment? I hate to use the cheesedick "war on x" phrases but seriously, what if we were literally do pull out all the stops and mobilize the population on the scale of total war but make the enemy be shoddy infrastructure or crappy housing or something. Instead of marshaling the entire industrial might of the nation towards turning out bombers and tanks, why not treat the whole war as a massive public works project? Make the government the employer of last resort. "If private industry cannot provide work for our good citizens, the government will employ them in something as close to their profession as possible, working towards the public good." It's unemployment benefits that don't keep you out of work and gives the government a tangible return for the money. When the economy picks up, the private sector can start hiring the workers back.
We've been cutting back on investing in infrastructure for decades, it'd be good to put some money back into our country again. Set a goal of getting us off fossil fuels over the next two decades, put government labs to work on seriously making a go of fusion power, green living, reshape our cities to be less energy intensive.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
McCain's tax plan versus Obama's
Both candidates seem to have plans that seem impossible to pay for, according to CNN:
The Tax Policy Center estimates that over 10 years, McCain's tax proposals could increase the national debt by as much as $4.5 trillion with interest, while Obama's could add as much as $3.3 trillion.I sure hope both platforms are lies, because I don't think the country can tolerate so much more debt. Let's hope they will raise taxes enough to pay for their plans, or better yet, cut wasteful spending on military and pork-barrel projects.
Obama/Paul for president
It's kind of funny: I like both Ron Paul and Barack Obama, even though they would make wildly different policy decisions.
Obama would raise taxes on the rich and implement universal health care. He will not reduce the size of the military, just recall some troops and shift others to Afghanistan. Ron Paul, if he could, would reduce taxes, drastically reduce the size of government, and reduce the scope of our military spending. Interestingly, despite this last point, the biggest contributors to his campaign were from the military and he was more popular than McCain, Romney or Huckabee among members of the armed forces.
Obama is a mild liberal, now pandering ever more toward the "center" of the political spectrum as perceived by the media.
Ron Paul is a libertarian, who makes up for this somewhat unpopular ideology with sheer integrity, straight talk, and an unwavering commitment to the rules and ideals of the constitution. Almost everything he says is gold because it rings true. He says the kind of things I think, but which the media and ordinary politicians ignore. He also defends the right to bear arms, but I can live with that as long as he promotes the rest of the constitution with at least as much fervency.
Both of them want political debates to focus on the issues, and neither want the media to be distracted by stupid sideshows. Both of them value ethics and a respect for the constitution. Both of them are more tech-savvy than Bush or McCain. Both of them recognize and dislike the corruption in Washington, and want change, though the scale of change Ron Paul would bring is surely greater. Both of them have a talent for speaking--though Obama appeals more to the heart and Ron Paul more to the mind.
Ahh, how nice it would be if I could take the best of each. Paul's straight talk with Obama's electability. Paul's contempt for big government plus Obama's belief that everyone should have access to health care and education. Paul's anti-abortion and anti-war leanings with Obama's anti-gun leanings. Paul's uncompromising support of the constitution, combined--in some impossible way--with Obama's ability to compromise in order to get things done.
I've got it. Let's have Obama for four to eight years and get our universal health care while ending the Iraq war, chipping away slowly at Washington corruption, and altering the tone of politics. Then let's vote Ron Paul, to take a sledgehammer to corruption, shrink government, close some of our 761 military bases, return to fiscal responsibility, end the drug war, and abolish all unconstitutional practices. Of course, for Paul to achieve all this is practically unbelievable today--but after drinking Obama's kool-aid of hope long enough, maybe the nation will be ready.
Mind you, I haven't heard either of them talk about two issues dear to my heart, intellectual property reform and electoral reform. It'll be interesting to see whether Ron Paul could have even the slightest chance of winning without the latter.
For a quick primer on Ron Paul, click here. Then check out his Campaign for Liberty.
Obama would raise taxes on the rich and implement universal health care. He will not reduce the size of the military, just recall some troops and shift others to Afghanistan. Ron Paul, if he could, would reduce taxes, drastically reduce the size of government, and reduce the scope of our military spending. Interestingly, despite this last point, the biggest contributors to his campaign were from the military and he was more popular than McCain, Romney or Huckabee among members of the armed forces.
Obama is a mild liberal, now pandering ever more toward the "center" of the political spectrum as perceived by the media.
Arguably, a deficit-spending platform is necessary--even if it's a lie--because people don't like to hear about service cuts and the MSM rarely points out how crazy a candidate's plan is. Thus, if one candidate says they will cut taxes without cutting services even though deficit spending is already rampant, the other has little choice but to make a similar claim because the MSM won't talk about the absurdity of it all.
For them, it seems, the "center" means accepting the military-industrial complex with its extremely high military spending, a casual willingness to use military force, proposing a deficit-funded budget, avoiding discussion of abortion so as to avoid appearing on one side or the other, an unwavering support for Israel, emphasizing one's Christianity, and so forth. He originally proclaimed that he would run a positive campaign focused on the issues, but with Republicans slinging mud and lies his way, it's no surprise he fights back with negative ads of his own.
Ron Paul is a libertarian, who makes up for this somewhat unpopular ideology with sheer integrity, straight talk, and an unwavering commitment to the rules and ideals of the constitution. Almost everything he says is gold because it rings true. He says the kind of things I think, but which the media and ordinary politicians ignore. He also defends the right to bear arms, but I can live with that as long as he promotes the rest of the constitution with at least as much fervency.
Both of them want political debates to focus on the issues, and neither want the media to be distracted by stupid sideshows. Both of them value ethics and a respect for the constitution. Both of them are more tech-savvy than Bush or McCain. Both of them recognize and dislike the corruption in Washington, and want change, though the scale of change Ron Paul would bring is surely greater. Both of them have a talent for speaking--though Obama appeals more to the heart and Ron Paul more to the mind.
Ahh, how nice it would be if I could take the best of each. Paul's straight talk with Obama's electability. Paul's contempt for big government plus Obama's belief that everyone should have access to health care and education. Paul's anti-abortion and anti-war leanings with Obama's anti-gun leanings. Paul's uncompromising support of the constitution, combined--in some impossible way--with Obama's ability to compromise in order to get things done.
I've got it. Let's have Obama for four to eight years and get our universal health care while ending the Iraq war, chipping away slowly at Washington corruption, and altering the tone of politics. Then let's vote Ron Paul, to take a sledgehammer to corruption, shrink government, close some of our 761 military bases, return to fiscal responsibility, end the drug war, and abolish all unconstitutional practices. Of course, for Paul to achieve all this is practically unbelievable today--but after drinking Obama's kool-aid of hope long enough, maybe the nation will be ready.
Mind you, I haven't heard either of them talk about two issues dear to my heart, intellectual property reform and electoral reform. It'll be interesting to see whether Ron Paul could have even the slightest chance of winning without the latter.
For a quick primer on Ron Paul, click here. Then check out his Campaign for Liberty.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Oh dear, Mr. Obama
I sent the following message to barackobama.com.
Dear Mr. Obama:
Your behavior is a terrible disappointment. I donated $100 to your campaign and I was going to give more, but not anymore. For voting for retroactive immunity for telecomms, I pledge not to donate any more funds. I expected you to have more respect for the rule of law and for the constitution. You should have been the leader of the opposition to this!
Also: after promising to make use of the public financing system, you spun your reversal as some kind of sacrifice and an indicator of your greatness. I am not impressed.
I came to like you when I read "Audacity of Hope", but when I see you behaving like any other politician, it's like a slap in the face. Good luck in the election, and may you stop to look back on your principles when you arrive in the White House.
Dear Mr. Obama:
Your behavior is a terrible disappointment. I donated $100 to your campaign and I was going to give more, but not anymore. For voting for retroactive immunity for telecomms, I pledge not to donate any more funds. I expected you to have more respect for the rule of law and for the constitution. You should have been the leader of the opposition to this!
Also: after promising to make use of the public financing system, you spun your reversal as some kind of sacrifice and an indicator of your greatness. I am not impressed.
I came to like you when I read "Audacity of Hope", but when I see you behaving like any other politician, it's like a slap in the face. Good luck in the election, and may you stop to look back on your principles when you arrive in the White House.
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