Random Fate

If any further proof were needed that identity theft is out of control...

...apparently children are being targeted as well.

Read the entire article.

Then, write your Senator and Representative to tell them to do something about this problem instead of focusing on the broadcasting of nipples on television.

I think we may be in trouble...

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
   -Thomas Jefferson

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
   -Thomas A. Edison

Should legal philosophy prevent us from doing what is right?

From a Wired News article on a lawsuit filed against ChoicePoint because of the recent data theft:

In a previous case in South Carolina, an identity theft victim tried to sue Citibank and two credit agencies for negligence for not properly authenticating the identity of someone who applied for credit cards under his name. The case was thrown out of court by judges who concluded that since the victim was not a customer of the bank and credit agencies and they had no business relationship with him, they had no responsibility to protect his personal data or identity.

I am not a lawyer, but I do understand the legal theory behind the dismissal of the case.

It is time to rethink our legal theory.

When a victim of identity theft has no recourse in the law against companies who are profiting from his personal information when they mishandle that information or do not properly verify identities and therefore facilitate the crime of identity theft, our legal theory is broken.

Our legal system has become this complex, abstract ethereal construct of philosophical absolutes guarded by a highly educated and exclusive priesthood of lawyers that often results in rulings that while consistent with the legal philosophy fly in the face of common sense and what the common man would regard as right.

Should the law be so complex that one has to attend graduate school for years just to know the exact meaning of the terminology used? Should the law be so rigid that someone who was obviously harmed by corporations has no legal recourse because he had no direct relationship with those corporations?

One would think the position of "judge" is called judge because they are supposed to help provide the balance depicted in the statues of blind justice, not be so beholden to abstract philosophy that obvious harm is not rectified because it conflicts with the theory.

In law, as in science, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is a huge difference.

You'd think this was from the "old, stupid laws" file

In Alabama, it is illegal to "produce, distribute or otherwise sell sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."

One would think this is a hold-over from times long past.

Think again, the law was passed in 1998.

You can get FDA approved devices, however, leading to this article in Wired News:

You Have an Rx for That Vibrator?

So, why is it important that the government prevent us from having available "sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs"?

A possible reason arises from one definition of puritanism: absolute horror at the thought that someone, somewhere is having fun...

Is this what we really want?

A serious question

During the recent visit by President George W. Bush to various parts of Europe, I have had an opportunity to see live a large number of press conferences and other events where the President and whoever he was visiting (President Jacques Chirac of France, the European Union in Brussels, Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom, etc.). In other words, instead of being limited to the typical "sound bites" and highly scripted situations, there have been several instances where President Bush was forced to speak extemporaneously. After seeing the President speak on serious matters with a demeanor that implied he was sincere and not joking, I have a question that is not based upon partisan beliefs or political inclinations:

Is there some kind of disorder that causes a person to smirk or twist up the corners of the mouth in a way inappropriate to the situation such as when they are trying to be serious and emphatic?

I have written before about how the "Bush smirk" along with his general body language leaves a very negative impression on me, but after seeing these extended events with the smirk appearing in the midst of speaking about things that the President appears to be very sincere and serious about, I must ask if there is some physical cause for this inappropriate facial expression.

Does anyone out there know?

As has been asked for thousands of years...

...who watches the watchmen?

The choice of members for the Homeland Security Department Privacy Advisory Panel speaks for itself, and it speaks volumes.

Quotes for the moment

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
   -Edith Sitwell

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
   -Robert Anton Wilson

RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.
   -Ambrose Bierce

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
   -Franklin P. Jones

They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.
   -Benjamin Franklin

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
   -John Adams, Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, December 1770

Up to 100,000 Social Security numbers have been easily accessible for years

Let's start with the press release from the company that is exposing the problem:

Think Finds Flaw Revealing Up To 100,000 Social Security Numbers

BOSTON, MA -- February 23, 2005 -- Think Computer Corporation has released another security-related White Paper detailing how anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Social Security numbers may have been accessible to the public for several years. The discovery of the flaw is particularly timely given the recent controversy surrounding similar problems at ChoicePoint, Inc., as well as changes in California state law that require companies to notify California residents whose Social Security numbers may have been compromised.

Though PayMaxx, Inc., the company responsible for the problem, was contacted repeatedly and urged to remedy the problem, a representative responded by saying, "we already cooperate with a significantly experienced testing agency and have been tested several times for security issues." (NOTE: Emphasis added)

Since PayMaxx, Inc. provides payroll services to its clients, salary data and home addresses were also exposed.

The paper is available at:

http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/news/identitycrisis.pdf

About Think Computer Corporation

Think was founded in 1998 with the long-term goal of developing simple, useful computer software. From its inception through 2001, the company offered IT consulting services to over 150 clients. Today, it writes software programs that make businesses and organizations worldwide more productive. Think is on the web at http://www.thinkcomputer.com.

Continuing with News.com:

Payroll site closes on security worries
Published: February 23, 2005, 3:54 PM PST
By Robert Lemos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Online payroll service provider PayMaxx shuttered its automated W-2 site on Wednesday after a researcher claimed that two security holes had exposed data on more than 25,000 people.

A description of the problem posted on Think Computer's Web site by Aaron Greenspan, president of the software start-up, said the security issues could allow anyone to view the W-2 forms generated for employees of PayMaxx's clients for the last five years.

PayMaxx did not acknowledge or deny the problems, saying that a third-party security company was investigating the allegations.

"No system in the world is 100 percent secure from a sophisticated and determined hacker," the Tennessee-based payroll company said in a statement sent to CNET News.com. "PayMaxx has made and continues to make every effort to secure its system against any breach."

That is correct, no system in the world is 100% secure. However, look at how the system was "cracked":

Greenspan, a former PayMaxx customer, said he discovered the alleged problems in the company's system more than two weeks ago, after he received notification from the company that his W-2 tax form was available online for download and printing. The link to access the W-2 included an ID number, and he wondered whether the company had protected against an obvious security problem: adding one to the ID number to get the next form.

Instead of being denied access, Greenspan found that another person's W-2 was downloaded and readable. Sequential, rather than randomized, ID numbers made it easy to call up numerous customers' data.

The hole could have allowed employees at PayMaxx's clients to access more than 25,000 W-2 forms for last year and the W-2 forms for years back to 2000, he said.

He said his investigation revealed that PayMaxx's database contained a record for testing purposes that contained a Social Security number of 000-00-0000 and a password of all zeros. That could allow anyone to log into the site and then use the lack of authentication to sequentially download all the W-2 forms, Greenspan said.

"Anyone could have been exploiting these security issues for years, and no one would have known about it," he said.

I repeat, no system in the world is 100% secure, but I expect people handing Social Security numbers to be better at security than using sequential ID numbers.

This is beyond incompetent.

This isn't the only newly revealed problem, however. From the weblog Become the Media:

Thank You Bank of America

First it was ChoicePoint. Then it was PayMaxx. Now, 1.2 million federal workers may be at risk of identity theft because Bank of America lost computer tapes which contained sensitive information such as Social Security numbers.

When are these companies that collect and hold our personal information going to be held responsible for their actions? As it is, we don't even own the data that these companies keep on us. We have no control over what they can do with it. If they want to sell it to the highest bidder, they can. As a matter of fact, they already do. The only solution it seems is to hit them where it hurts - in the wallet. One woman in California is already suing ChoicePoint for fraud and negligence.

His question "When are these companies that collect and hold our personal information going to be held responsible for their actions?" is a completely valid one.

I have questioned if we can effectively say we have any privacy. That question has been answered, and the answer is "No."

Even discounting the economic impact and negative effects on lives due to identity theft, we should be concerned about this from the standpoint of terrorism, which is said by everyone to be a priority.

It's easy to get a LOT of things with a valid Social Security number, especially if you have access to other data directly related to that number.

Do the math...

After the "No" response to questioning if we have any privacy at all, I have another question: Is this really the way we want it?

Essentially no privacy, companies are free to collect and sell our personal information without our permission.

Millions of dollars stolen by identity thieves and millions of hours of lives wasted in dealing with the problem.

Providing terrorists and other criminals easy means of hiding their identities.

Instead we focus on huge fines for broadcast swear words or nipples, fines higher than for willful death or human testing of pesticides.

Again, do the math...

What are our priorities?

Priorities

If this doesn't send a signal regarding our priorities, I don't know what will:

A review of fines levied by other federal agencies suggests that the government may be taking swear words a bit too seriously. If the bill passes the Senate, Bono saying "fucking brilliant" on the air would carry the exact same penalty as illegally testing pesticides on human subjects. And for the price of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl, you could cause the wrongful death of an elderly patient in a nursing home and still have enough money left to create dangerous mishaps at two nuclear reactors. (Actually, you might be able to afford four "nuke malfunctions": The biggest fine levied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year was only $60,000.)

Do the math.

A broadcast nipple merits a larger fine than causing a wrongful death and avoiding regulations in a nuclear reactor.

An accelerated death isn't that big a deal, but heaven forfend we actually have something to do with sex!!!

Violence, however, is just fine.

Personally, I don't like this new math.

Unintended barbs

I just read this:

Even today your dad's 20 year old Canon AE-1 can make technically better images than any digital camera. The Canon AE-1 is about the same as a 20 megapixel camera. The AE-1 Program is about the same as a 25 megapixel camera, presuming you are using Canon brand lenses.

I own and use a 20 year old Canon AE-1; I brought it to France with me.

It's not my Dad's, it's MINE.

I am the one who has owned it for 20 years.

Ouch... it's those unintended barbs that are the sharpest.

So what market is this aimed at?

Who thought they could come up with a politically incorrect knife holder?

This probably couldn't be sold in the US...

Sometimes simple turns of phrases say more than paragraphs

Boudicca has had a rough week:

We were on our way home tonight from a soccer meeting. From the back of the car I hear Son#3 (Bones) say… “Mom… sometimes in my head, I cry for you.”

Me: What? Why do you cry for me?

Bones: Because I love you so much, I don’t want you to ever die.

Me: Oh. So when do you do this crying in your head thing?

Bones: At snack and play. (That would be in school.)

Well the whole conversation went downhill from there. I am just NOT the person they should be coming to when they are having some sort of spiritual crisis. I don’t know the answers. At all. I wing it and I do OK, but its going to come back to haunt me.

There were questions about how my grandmother died 2 years ago. Then questions on how THEIR grandmother died 5 years ago. Then what is a stroke? What is old age? Why doesn’t God protect us from disease? And on and on it went… and I just answered all the questions very matter of factly, but then… but then… I had two little sobbing boys in the back of my car. Son#1 was just listening, but Sons2 and 3 were now melting into two small salty puddles.

I was aghast.

I pulled in the garage and when I got out of the car, Bones hung around my neck, as if I were going to spontaneously combust right then and there and leave this earthly existence. Son#2 wasn’t doing much better. Imagine my husband’s surprise when in we walk and two of them are crying messes.

Blech. Sometimes the questions they ask are too deep for me. What fits right in my head would not fit in theirs. I need to just defer all these questions to their Dad.

There's more, but you should go read it at Boudicca's Voice. Even this short excerpt should fully explain why I read her regularly.

Two sentences struck me deeply. The first:

What fits right in my head would not fit in theirs.

Something we could all do to remember anytime we are speaking to anyone. Just because it fits our head, our preconceptions, our ideas, our beliefs, our biases, does not mean it's the right answer for everyone.

The second:

...sometimes in my head, I cry for you.

Out of the mouths of babes come words expressive and poetic. That simple phrase conveys something that I feel that has always been too complex for me to describe adequately until now.

Sometimes in my head, I cry for us all.

A satirical piece that is sharper than usual

Start with a political stance, such as "I support the troops but oppose the war in Iraq," invert it to "I support the occupation of Iraq, but I don't support our troops," and then consider the opposite stance in a satirical piece.

Then think about what you are feeling, and then what you would feel if it was NOT intended as satire.

Think about what is written, and think about some similar things you may have read elsewhere, in spirit if not in wording.

Think about the points "made," including the ones that would make you the most uncomfortable if it was not a satirical piece, and why there is a discomfort associated with them.

Consider it an exercise in stretching your mind.

Just a guy...

I am who I am.

Not entertaining.

Not enlivening.

Not a comedian.

Not someone who creates joy.

Just a guy.

I would like to be entertaining.

I would like to be creative and enlightening.

I'm not.

I'm me.

C'est la vie...

One last note before I go to bed...

...the new Battlestar Galactica series (at least the original miniseries) shows exactly what is missing from the new "prequils" to the Star Wars trilogy, what was present in the original Star Wars movie or the first sequel The Empire Strikes Back.

Emotion and human relationships, something I hope will be present in the third "prequil". We will see.

If I get into details, I'll get all pedantic, and I have few enough readers as it is, so instead I'll just recommend the DVD to the new Battlestar Galactica.

I should just write something myself, that way I can avoid being pedantic. illustrate by doing, and possibly make some money off of it.

Typing away...

Overly simplistic

Read this...

I'll have a discussion on this tomorrow, but this cannot pass without comment immediately.

This is so incredibly overly simplistic that it boggles the rational mind.

After having worked on the first Star Wars initiative...

...I am in a reasonable position to discuss the second one, even after considering the secrecy by which I'm still bound, and I can safely say without breaking any confidential information that it will still not work, despite 15 years of development since then.

You cannot change the laws of Physics.

Despite what "political capital" you might have...

Canada, by refusing to participate, is not being obstructionist to anything other than the unrealistic visions of the Bush administration, and statements that "Canada has given up its sovereignty" by U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci are unhelpful at best, and by any rational analysis completely absurd and out of line.

By a supreme irony, the new cabinet in the Palestinian Authority is being remarked upon for NOT being chosen based upon loyalty, as was done by Arafat, the man whom the current US administration said they could not do business with because of his methods, but they were chosen instead based upon competence.

Need I point out the contrast and resultant irony explicitly? I hope not...

---

Those of you who can't see past your jingoism to the technological and scientific reality of the situation, I would pity you, but you do not merit it because you are choosing to not see reality, and if you insist upon calling that a left-wing attitude, you are just proving your willful blindness.

Tired

I have many things I want to write about, but in the course of researching and writing justifications for patents, writing the lectures for my class in Chemical Vapor Deposition, and running my experiments in making integrated circuits smaller, faster, and more functional, I don't have much energy left to write.

Thank God I'm not a parent. Those who are and can still find the energy and creativity to write for weblogs (or do ANYTHING else other than collapse at the end of the day) have my profound admiration.

Notice those linked above are all women. Yes, they are stronger than men in the ways that count in the long term.

The best response to the Gannon idiocy...

...and the most amusing is from James Wolcott, who I don't always agree with, but who at least is humorous:

Gannon really does embody the Bush-Rove ideal of the journalist as empty vessel. His tactical mistake was to be such an Eddie Haskell suck-up at the presidential news conference and draw attention to himself. Otherwise, he'd still be attending White House briefings and sending Scott McClellan secret messages with coded blinks.

Eddie Haskell... that is the BEST way to think of Gannon, and by extension the entire stupidity.

Given recent trends, he just might win

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
   -Steven Wright

I'm not a "fanboy"...

...really, I'm not. I don't think bigger is always better, I don't think that special effects in movies are cool just for themselves if they don't serve the story. I'm a science fiction fan, but I am very critical if the story isn't there.

I like Star Trek the best, the original series that actually tried to explore problems instead of giving the "technobabble of the week" that it eventually degenerated into. I like Babylon 5 almost as much.

Star Wars, I like, but not as much as Star Trek or Babylon 5, mainly due to the stories and the issues they explore. The archetypes in Star Wars are less than satisfying to me, compared to the human characters and the ambiguity of stories like The City on the Edge of Forever (from the original Star Trek, one of the best episodes of any television series, ever...) or the overall story from the five year run of Babylon 5.

Having said that, and taking into account how unsatisfying as movies the first two films in the Star Wars "prequil" trilogy have been, I am looking forward Episode III, simply for the lightsabre duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (soon to be Darth Vader). As was shown in Babylon 5, a slow buildup to a confrontation can make that confrontation resonate more than it would if you had not seen (or in this case given the first two films, endured might be a better word) the events leading up to it.

It still doesn't excuse the faults as movies that Episode I and Episode II have, though, especially compared to the original Star Wars (now Episode IV - A New Hope) and Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. The Ewoks in Epiosde VI - Return of the Jedi should have been a warning to the problems with George Lucas and what he tended to do when released from the fetters of restrictions from studios and budgets. Often the restrictions are what force the creativity that captures the imagination.

More on the ID theft facilitated by ChoicePoint

Here's more on the ChoicePoint ID theft problem that I first posted about a few days ago. From the Associated Press via MSNBC.com:

ChoicePoint: ID theft could be extensive
Residents in 50 states, D.C., territories may be affected
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:36 p.m. ET Feb. 21, 2005

ATLANTA - ChoicePoint Inc., under fire for being duped into allowing criminals to access its massive database of personal information, said Monday that consumers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories may have been affected by the breach of the company's credentialing process. The data warehouser also announced plans to rescreen 17,000 business customers to make sure they are legitimate.

Well, that is comforting, isn't it? It does not answer the question as to why they didn't screen them properly in the first place, though.

ChoicePoint said it is almost done notifying by mail all of the potential victims. California authorities have said as many as 500,000 people may have been affected, but ChoicePoint disputes that number.

"All I can tell you is our number is roughly 145,000, and we know that we're over-notifying," ChoicePoint marketing director James Lee said. "There will be duplications in there."

Let's hope they are more diligent in their notification than they were in their original checking of the credentials of those they were selling information to...

Last week, attorneys general in 38 states demanded ChoicePoint inform all affected consumers that they might vulnerable to identity theft amid concerns the company was foot-dragging. Politicians have also become involved, with two U.S. senators calling for hearings and stepped-up regulations to protect consumers.

As for the rescreening, ChoicePoint said any business that is not publicly traded or not a government agency will have to be recredentialed to use its services.

"It will involve the revalidation of any information they previously provided as well as requests for additional information," Lee said. "Certain customers will receive site visits, but I can't be more specific than that because we don't want to reveal too much."

He said it could take up to 60 days to recredential the affected customers.

Once recredentialed, those customers will no longer receive access to consumers' Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver's license numbers unless they are sponsored by a public company or government agency, Lee said.

The company said in a statement that it is seeking to "remove information in those segments where organized crime fraud is likely to occur."

Oh, NOW they will not be revealing Social Security numbers...

I want to know why Social Security numbers were included in the information that was being distributed in the first place.

The most discomforting part is next, though:

The customers affected represent less than 5 percent of the company's $900 million in annual revenue.

This company, ChoicePoint, makes $900 million per year in revenue by selling the personal, private information of people without the need to get the permission of the people involved.

Formed in 1997 as a spinoff of credit reporting agency Equifax Inc., ChoicePoint has 19 billion public records in its database at its suburban Atlanta headquarters, including everything from motor vehicle registrations, license and deed transfers, military records, names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

A company is making money by selling information about people, private information such as Social Security numbers and military records.

Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

If you see a problem with this, too, then please write your Senator and Representative to tell them that this situation is unacceptable.

Deja vu all over again?

You have to wonder.... from the 1980s:

In case anyone is wondering...

...the reason I have no new posts today (or Sunday, for that matter) is because I'm preparing for a graduate-level class I am teaching tomorrow (Tuesday) on Chemical Vapor Deposition. The preparation is quite extensive, and it's been about 15 years since I taught, so I had forgotten how much work was involved when I agreed to teach this class. I have 3 hours worth of lecture to have ready by tomorrow afternoon.

Yikes...

And there is a LOT to cover... I'm working on the section dealing with plasma physics now.

So...

I'll post more tomorrow. I'm not lacking for topics, just for time.

When even the book reviews are thoughtful, perhaps the magazine is worth a look

One of the reasons I really enjoy reading The Economist is shown by the opening paragraphs of a recent book review:

Walk into any major European art gallery and you are likely to see soldiers, cavalry and cannon spread across huge canvases. In some, the troops line out across the plain under the watchful gaze of a general. Others show the battle up close, often in a moment of conspicuous heroism-the capturing of a standard, say, or a cavalry charge.

This genre dates from the period between the French revolution and the end of the Victorian era, but after that time it suddenly disappears, killed off by new, more scientific ways of writing history and by fundamental changes in how warfare was imagined. The battles that Tolstoy describes in "War and Peace", which was published in the late 1860s, were neither tidy nor heroic. Even less so were the muddied struggles of the first world war. Treating them as if they were suddenly seemed naive.

This is the opening of a book review!!! They don't even mention the book until the third paragraph.

A magazine that has this level of contemplation in book reviews is well worth the time it takes to read.

Irrelevant question of the day

Why was he called the Lone Ranger if he was always hanging out with Tonto?

Just wondering...

I'm still not sure what was in those Scooby-snacks, either, but I'm sure Shaggy was smokin' somethin' there in the back of the Mystery Machine... Think about it, a bunch of kids, dressed in bright clothes with no visible sources of income... always traveling around...

Yes, it's a Saturday, and I'm avoiding preparing for the class I teach for three hours on Tuesday.

Heads up...

...those folks who have been making money selling your information without even asking you are now selling it without even checking on the legitimacy of the buyer:

ChoicePoint: More ID theft warnings
ID company says criminals able to obtain almost 140,000 names, addresses and other information.
February 17, 2005: 1:10 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - ChoicePoint Inc., a national provider of identification and credential verification services, says it will send an additional 110,000 statements to people informing them of possible identity theft after a group of well-organized criminals was able to obtain personal information on almost 140,000 consumers through the company.

According to a statement on the ChoicePoint (Research) Web site, the incident was not the result of its systems being hacked but rather caused by criminals posing as legitimate businesses seeking to gain access to personal information.

ChoicePoint said the criminals may have gained access to people's names, addresses, Social Security numbers and credit reports.

So now, not only are they making money off of my personal and what I consider my private information, they are pretty much being indiscriminate as to who gets it. Note that some of the information included Social Security numbers. I had my Social Security number used by someone else shortly before I moved to France, and a year later I am still having to deal with the fallout from that.

I have a fundamental problem with someone making money by selling my personal, private information without my consent.

I have a BIGGER problem with someone making money by selling my personal, private information without my consent and not being careful about who they sell that information to, especially when they don't pay me to recompense the enormous amount of time required to correct the resulting identity theft problem.

I guess the people who say there is no "right to privacy" are correct, at least in how our private information is currently bought and sold without any consent. I just wonder what they will say when they have to spend hours on the phone and writing letters to cope with the theft of their identity.

A stark change from living in Austin

This was taken at around 9:00AM from the living room window of my apartment (the window was open, the lens is clean, the fuzzy spots are snowflakes):

(click for a larger image)

Yep, it's winter.

Some thoughts on those who say they should be our leaders

The standard of intellect in politics is so low that men of moderate mental capacity have to stoop in order to reach it.
   -Hillaire Belloc

In the absence of intelligence politics will fill the void
   -Frank Perretti

Two quotes to start the weekend

A long one from a real person, and a short one from a fictional character.

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
   -Carl Sagan

Conquest is easy. Control is not.
   -James T. Kirk

Disgusting and reprehensible...

...are not strong enough to describe what I posted about on The Moderate Voice regarding the recent train wreck thought to be caused by a suicide attempt.

As always, there is more to the story.

Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Ack!!!!

The Looney Tunes characters — six in all — have been "reimagined" (in studio parlance) for a new series called "Loonatics," which is set to air next fall on WPIX/Channel 11 as part of the Saturday morning Kids' WB program lineup.

The show features new versions of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil, Road Runner and Lola Bunny (the newest of the characters, who was introduced in the 1996 Michael Jordan movie "Space Jam").

For "Loonatics," the six characters are being projected 700 years into the future, given superpowers, and outfitted in tight-fitting, slenderizing space gear.

Apparently, falling anvils and exploding cigars are no longer enough to keep kids 6 to 11 years old entertained.

"This is a kids show intended for kids today who are growing up in the Internet age, an age of technology, an age of hip, cool animation, and something that we hope will resonate with that age group," explained Sander Schwartz, president of Warner Bros. Animation, in a phone interview from Hollywood.

Somehow, the powers that be in Hollywood still haven't gotten the clue that it is writing that is witty and thought-provoking with well thought out characters that gets an audience. The rest is just eye-candy, it is the mind that needs to be entertained.

What a bunch of maroons.

Look at what is really popular now, and what is still timeless, and think about it.

Then, vote with your pocketbook. They'll stop selling crap when people stop buying it.

Living in France, I'm a bit out of touch with the American move scene...

...but given what James Wolcott has written about Million Dollar Baby, perhaps I should make an effort to see the version originale here, since I don't yet understand French well enough to get the subtleties of the dubbed version.

I've more often than not enjoyed movies directed by Clint Eastwood, although I haven't seen the one before Million Dollar Baby yet. He has a dark, grim, yet still hopeful in the end vision that matches mine.

Something to think about...

...as the Baby Boomers age:

Woman refuses to leave the hospital
82-year-old was discharged a year ago, officials say

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:10 p.m. ET Feb. 16, 2005

More than a year after Sarah Nome was deemed healthy and given her discharge papers, the 82-year-old woman stubbornly refuses to leave her hospital bed.

Sounds like an amusing story, no?

But wait, there's more to it:

Nome admits there is no reason she should be racking up unpaid medical bills - which have now topped $1 million - but says she has nowhere else to turn.

Now Kaiser Permanente's San Rafael Medical Center in California is suing her for the cost of her stay and trying to show her the door.

Well, they should, given that she's healthy,

But wait, there's more to it:

"The thing is, I have no medical problem. I've been here more than a year, never had any medication, never had any treatment, never had a fever, have a perfect heart, blood pressure is like a teenager," Nome said in a telephone interview from the hospital north of San Francisco. "It isn't that I'm not ready to go. I just have nowhere to go."

...

Nome's troubles began, her daughter Jane Sands says, in 2002 when she broke both her legs while living alone. After several operations, Nome could no longer care for herself and was admitted to the first of several nursing homes.

The most recent one, Nome claims, sent her to the hospital against her will. Hospital officials say she was admitted for a weeklong psychiatric evaluation, was deemed to be in good mental health, was then ordered released.

But because she is suing the nursing homes where she lived before she was hospitalized, Nome and her daughter claim she has no choice but to stay put. Nome is suing the last home she lived in, Greenbrae Care Center, for sending her to the hospital.

OK, NOW we get to something that may indicate a larger issue at hand...

Anthony Wright, executive director of the health care advocacy group Health Access California, said Nome's situation highlights a larger, nationwide problem.

"This issue is becoming more and more contentious because ... we don't have a long-term care policy in this country, so there is no set way that we take care of seniors who need ongoing care," he said.

At one time, there used to be a concept in this country of the "extended family" where people felt obliged to take care of their relatives, whether parents, uncles and aunts, great uncles and great aunts, occasionally cousins, and so on.

Now, that concept has been swept into the dustbin of old ideas, replaced with sending folks to "nursing homes" and "retirement communities" with no further thought attributed to them other than obligitory holiday visits, if those are even remembered.

Some say, "I don't have time in my busy life to take care of them!" That begs the question: who will care for you in your old age?

This is a fundamental problem that the slow change in our culture from "extended family" to "nuclear family" to "individual at the expense of family" has not developed a solution for.

This is a fundamental problem that will only grow as the Baby Boomers age, regardless of any changes in Social Security or other benefits to the elderly from the government.

Think about it, and how it will affect YOU when you are old and grey.

UPDATE: I'm not trying to imply that what this woman is doing is anything remotely justified or moral, what I am trying to point out is that we have a huge number of people who soon will need some type of care, and currently we have no accepted way of paying for it if we choose nursing homes or retirement communities. What happens when there is no more money?

Podcasting experiment delayed

I've been very busy both with work (I had a day trip to Munich on this past Monday, all I saw was some streets and the inside of a meeting room... I had already seen the Munich airport before) and with my preparations for the graduate leve class I've been teaching. So, I've had to delay my experiment in podcasting. I hope to get it off the ground soon, since I got the last piece of software I need to make it happen this past week.

Since it's so hard to assemble the software (I have everything I need on the Mac platform, but NOT on the PC platform), I hope that the venue will be a bit less crowded than blogworld, at least at the start. Many of the bigger blogs now are the ones who got started early, and I write according to how it sounds more than how it reads, so hopefully I can get in on the ground floor if podcasting ever takes off like blogging did.

It's a dream, at least...

I'd like to say I can't believe this guy is still around after two years...

...but I can't. I'm not surprised at all, and I do NOT think in this case I'm being too cynical. Just read a few of his "stories."

Tucker Max, certified asshole, and making money off of it on the web.

Thank God or whoever is responsible, he lives in Chicago now. He used to live in Austin a few years ago.

This is scary

From ZDNet:

Automaker Lexus has denied that the Cabir wireless worm poses a risk to the Bluetooth-capable navigation systems featured in some of its vehicles.

We now have to worry about viruses and worms in our car computers because of the use of wireless interconnects?

I do NOT want my car freezing up because some joker decided to write a worm; it's bad enough with the PCs.

Many improvements have been introduced by using computer controlled fuel injection and timing resulting in increases of both fuel economy and power output. When it reaches the point to where cars are equipped with wireless interconnects (in this case, Bluetooth), that opens up vulnerabilities that I'm not entirely comfortable with in a vehicle that weighs thousands of pounds and can travel at high speed.

This definitely falls in the "there is such a thing as too much technology" bin.

Some moderate proposals for Social Security and achieving an "ownership society"

Some of the statements regarding the current uproar over the proposed changes to the Social Security system are out-and-out silly. For example, one politician said that we should “fix Social Security forever,” which is ridiculous. No system, public or private, can be constructed to last forever. The projections used by both sides are merely that, projections, and are only reasonable expectations of what is likely to happen, barring major events negative or positive, for the next 5 to 10 years at best. Any talk of a “permanent fix” is unrealistic at best, and disingenuous posturing in what I suspect is the typical case.

The projections, and indeed the current state, of Social Security show two fundamental problems, problems that the vast majority of us face every month when we have to pay our bills and balance our checkbooks. Eventually, outflow to Social Security payments will exceed inflows from taxes, and relatively immediately after that point, the “surplus” that the government and BOTH political parties have been gleefully using to make the deficit look smaller than it really is will come due to be repaid by that same spendthrift government.

The quickly renamed “personal accounts” (née “private accounts”) do nothing to address this fundamental problem. The vast majority of proposals floated for adding some kind of personal accounts to the Social Security system actually decrease the current inflow of money with no corresponding decrease in the current outflow of payments. Sadly not recognized as widely as merited, most of the personal account schemes have so many restrictions on the personal accounts that they do not create the “ownership society” that President Bush proclaims is his goal, but instead set up a massive new bureaucracy within the already huge Social Security Office to handle the new personal accounts.

In addition, the personal account proposals made to date put the government in the position of picking stocks. Even if the accounts are limited to index funds, this just moves the stock pickers out of the government to private parties, but still has government involvement distorting the markets. The indices are chosen by parties to reflect the performance of the stock market as a whole. Unfortunately, the large influx of cash into the markets from the personal accounts will then distort the markets because the cash will be going into the index stocks and NOT into the broader stock market. Especially given the excesses of the 90s that are now coming to full light, is it realistic to expect that the non-governmental entities that choose the stocks in the indices will not engage in some under-the-table dealing to get certain companies on the indices so they can get a share of the influx of cash?

Finally, we already have “personal accounts,” they are called IRAs. On top of that, many if not most workers are able to participate in 401(k) programs at their companies. Both of these retirement savings schemes allow direct control by people in their personal, private accounts. That is true ownership, not having a government intermediary telling you what you can and cannot invest in, which oddly enough is key in the plans being proposed to modify Social Security. A bit of a contradiction in there for nominal “conservatives,” isn’t it?

There are several straightforward steps that can achieve both an increase in the time that the Social Security System remains solvent without the creation of a new “personal account” system on top of it and increase personal investment to create the “ownership society” that the President says he would like to foster.

First, the Social Security System:

1) Remove the cap off the Social Security tax. I stop paying the tax in late September because by then I’ve earned more money than the cap. Social Security is one of the few taxes we have that is limited to only the first $90,000 of income. The question of why people who earn more do not have to pay has not been answered. Most people benefit from money that the government gave them, directly or indirectly, not just those on welfare or other direct forms of public assistance. Most people with college degrees got them at state universities. Where did the land grants that created those universities come from? The semiconductor industry benefits directly from research money the government gives to professors in the universities, because the technology used to create the computer you are using right now to read this arose from the scientific foundation established by those professors. It is fairly safe to say that those who make the most money in our economy are benefiting directly from how our government has chosen to spend money. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to ask those who have benefited the most to pay more, or even in the case of Social Security tax to pay the same percentage as everyone else. As currently structured, the highest earners pay less Social Security tax as a percentage of their income than everyone else. The high earners do not pay so much that they do not benefit from the fruits of success, and removal of the cap on Social Security taxes will not overburden them.

2) Change the indexing of the increases in Social Security payments from wage increases to the mean of wage increases and inflation. This prevents too small an increase if a simple inflation index is used, but it prevents the high rate of increase that wage indexing has resulted in. Yes, ultimately this will reduce the Social Security benefit, but far less than the proposals that are being put forward now, and this may result in a fairly reasonable increase that prevents absolute poverty but retains a ground floor for those who have chosen poorly in their retirement planning.

3) Consider means testing for benefits, with a sliding scale that reduces the benefits for the wealthy. Is that fair? No, but then neither is the current system, and it reduces the outflow to those who do not need it.

For the setting up the “ownership society”:

1) Change the tax deduction on IRAs for low-income earners. Instead of being able to deduct the IRA contribution from income, have the contribution count as a tax credit. This puts the money where the mouth is. If we want people to invest money instead of the government spending it, then count some level of investment in an IRA directly one-to-one against the taxes that people pay. Income limits with a sliding scale can be set up so that the benefit of the tax credit goes to those earning below the median income to encourage the group least likely to have cash to invest to actually invest at no net cost to themselves, that would be a huge incentive. To make it even more attractive at the risk of adding more bureaucracy, set up a way that the IRA contribution can be made by deduction from every paycheck, the same way taxes are paid and 401(k) plans are administered. Yes, this will reduce government tax receipts, but this can be compensated for by allowing expiration of the tax cuts that President Bush wants to make permanent. Those tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy with no discernable effect on investment, whereas giving lower income citizens an opportunity for a tax credit by investing should have a direct, measurable effect on investment and quickly broaden the base of the “ownership society” the President says he wants to create.

2) Increase the ridiculously low limits for deposits into IRAs. Don’t increase the tax deduction currently allowed, but allow additional money to be deposited without the tax deduction. The low limits now do not encourage the amount of savings needed to have a good retirement nest egg.

Stock markets do not like radical change. Alan Greenspan recently said as much. The proposals above are a less radical change than the current discussions, and avoid the up-front borrowing of trillions of dollars that most "personal account" proposals require. There are a lot of details that have the Devil hiding in them inside these suggestions, but they do directly address both the income/outflow problem of the current Social Security system AND directly increase the scale of investment to create the “ownership society” that the President says is his vision, all without a radical deconstruction of the systems currently in place.

Many thanks...

...to Paul, of Light & Dark, for pointing out my problem with templates (it actually was a Movable Type weblog configuration issue, not a template issue).

Peaking too soon?

Arthur Miller died last week. As has been pointed out, Miller's relevance rests upon works completed over 40 years ago, although he continued writing over a long career since that time. However, it is reasonable to say that he peaked young, before he was even 40, with the plays Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, both of which were once required reading for high school students in the United States, although I fear that soon both may fall off the lists of literature with which an educated person should be familiar.

Neal Armstrong was the first human to walk on another world. He did it before his 40th birthday. Since then, Armstrong has become almost a recluse, rarely making any public appearances.

Then again, what do you do with the rest of your life once you are the first man to walk on the moon?

Then there are the almost innumerable masses who feel that high school represents the best years of their lives...

What comes after?

Templates still not working

OK, I'm reaching the limits of my knowledge on Movable Type installation and upkeep here...

I've installed version 2.66, and for some reason, the templates are still not working, even the default templates that are ALWAYS supposed to work.

It's coming close to time to call for help here...

Argh...

Templates not working

I copied the templates over to the new host, but they are not working properly. I can post, but as you can see, the sidebar is now a "bottom bar". I also lost a few comments in the transition, along with at least one post.

I may need to upgrade to Movable Type 2.66, since this is still a 2.64 installation. I refuse to upgrade to version 3+ because they chose to charge too much for the application.

I need to go to work now, so I'll try to fix this later tonight.

This is a test

This is a test to see if the transfer to my new host is working properly. I forgot how difficult it can be to move a weblog from one host to another without screwing something up along the way.

Notice - Changing hosts

I'm changing hosting services for Random Fate, so during the changeover, there may be a day or two where the blog is either offline or looks like I've lost some recent posts.

I hope to have everything back to normal (whatever that means) by this time next week.

From 11 years ago...

...and the pen of Bill Watterson comes yet more proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

Interesting, if you know history

It turns out that the Hope Diamond originally came from the French crown of King Louis XIV.

That should provide some comfort for all of the France-bashers out there, an American museum (the Smithsonian) has possession of the largest and most precious jewel from the French monarchy.

Lest we forget, the French monarchy sponsored and supported the American Revolution, for reasons of their own, but still, the United States would not exist if it was not for the French monarchy, and the French Revolution overthrowing that monarchy may well not have occurred if not for the money spent on sponsoring those American rebels in the 1770s...

Oddly enough, even though the two revolutions, American and French, are linked, they arose from different fundamental causes. The American Revolution, even though a new type of government arose from it, was in reality a conservative reaction. The colonies had been pretty much left to themselves for many years before what is known in the US as the French and Indian War, and it was the efforts of the English government to make the colonies pay for that war that prompted the unrest and rebellion. In other words, the revolutionaries didn't want things to change, they wanted to be left alone to be self-governing as they had been before the war they were being asked to help pay for.

In contrast, the French Revolution arose because the French monarchy was bankrupt, after spending the money to thwart the British in the American Revolution. That money was spent not to help the American rebels, but instead to harm the English. The French government was forced to call for an Estates General meeting to raise taxes, and it was the Estates General that essentially ignited the French Revolution. Since that revolution was against the status quo, rather than an attempt to preserve it as the American Revolution was, chaos resulted from old animosities being released.

Following the chain down after these two revolutions, the current French Republic (I've lost count, I think it's the Sixth Republic) is a direct descendant of the ostensible Republic that arose out of the French Revolution (keeping in mind they still revere Napoleon Bonaparte in France, even though he was Corsican, not French... it doesn't have to make sense if it increases their visions of glory, just as it doesn't have to make sense in America, either...).

So, in the end, our problems with France may result from the fact that they paid for our independence, which resulted in the chaos of the French Revolution, a revolution that was not driven as a conservative reaction to new impositions as was the American Revolution, but instead was a true turnover. One could say that the French have been in a continual state of turmoil ever since.

The next time you say "but we saved their asses in BOTH World Wars"... recall that WE may not have even existed if not for monarchical France, and republican France may not have existed except for that support and the governmental bankruptcy that accompanied it.

Even over 200 years ago, the world was more interconnected than we are willing to recognize.

History matters, but you need to remember to look back far enough.

Just another survey, but look deeper

Read this from The Los Angeles Times and draw your own conclusions:

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.

The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which animals and plants should be placed on the endangered species list and designating areas where such species need to be protected.

More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.

Bush administration officials, including Craig Manson, an assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, have been critical of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, contending that its implementation has imposed hardships on developers and others while failing to restore healthy populations of wildlife.

Along with Republican leaders in Congress, the administration is pushing to revamp the act. The president's proposed budget calls for a $3-million reduction in funding of Fish and Wildlife's endangered species programs.

"The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey, except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't so."

...

More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information."

However, 69% said they had never been given such a directive. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so.

Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.

"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency."

A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."

Don Lindburg, head of the office of giant panda conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego, said it was unrealistic to expect federal scientists to be exempt from politics or pressure.

"I've not stood in the shoes of any of those scientists," he said. "But it is not difficult for me to believe that there are pressures from those who are not happy with conservation objectives, and here I am referring to development interest and others.

"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics — that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it."

Yes, this just affects the Endangered Species Act and enviornmental policy in general. For many, this is not important, for they either do not agree with the principle of the Endangered Species Act, or feel it has been applied too broadly. This is a legitimate matter for public debalte.

However, there have been other reports of pressure to alter both data and conclusions drawn from data, as well as allegations of loading scientific advisory committees with people who hold specific viewpoints. Deliberately biasing what is presented as ostensibly unbiased scientific opinion is not a public debate, but instead propaganda. What rationale does a truly democratic government have in using propganda on the citizens to which that government is responsible? Think about it.

Allegations are rarely complete truths, but reality can be extracted from patterns observed in the white noise, if you are willing to look...

New Category

Anal retentilve that I am, I have created a new category, Patterns in the White Noise.

White noise is a good term to describe the cacophany of opinion, ostensibly objective reporting, and other additions to the continually roiling imbroglio we now call our information age. Perhaps someday soon I will find the words to accurately describe both what that means and why it merits a category of its own, along with why I am so compulsive about categorizing entries here....

Old computers, like old hand tools, can have fond memories associated with them

A recent online article in the "Circuits" section of The New York Times describes how you can set up a Mac Mini to cohabitate with a PC using the same monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and how to network the two computers together.

This brings to mind a computer I had seemingly ages ago, set the wayback machine to the days of 1995, a Macintosh PowerPC 6100/66 with the PC card (ignore the horridly ugly monitor in the link, I had a nice, speaker-free Apple Monitor that had been on my old Macintosh LC system, which is still functional). The PC card had a full PC computer on it (a 80486DX2 with 32Mb of RAM, a LOT in those olden days), and used a "container file" on the Macintosh hard drive for permanent storage. The Mac could read and write to the PC hard drive container, and the two systems shared a CD-ROM drive quite well, thank you.

In other words, I had a desktop computer with two fully functional CPUs in it, one running Windows 3.1/DOS, and one running Mac OS 7 (eventually OS 8, and then OS 9, but upon installing OS 9 I lost access to the PC card because that support was dropped).

I still own that computer, and it's still fully functional. When I return to the US, I plan to reinstall Mac OS 8 on it so I can have my old 486 DOS PC access again. I played many games on that PC that will not work on modern systems (the game Privateer from Origin Systems was my favorite, but there were several iterations of Wing Commander and a few wargames I played on it as well) that I sorely miss revisiting upon occasion.

So, we're now repeating history, but this time, we have a big box (the desktop PC) and a small box (the Mac Mini) sharing a keyboard, mouse, and monitor but NOT a hard disk, whereas a decade ago we had a single mid-sized box sharing the keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard disk, CD-ROM drive (a disadvantage sometimes...), and in many cases, printers.

I had two fully functional computers for the price of about one and a quarter of the sum of two systems of comparable capability.

I think I may pick up a Mac Mini and a USB/monitor switch-box the next time I'm in the US so I can set up the dual system described in the "Circuits" article. I miss my old 6100/66. That was a GOOD system that did everything I wanted. It was the first system I used to get on the World Wide Web. It was so cool at the time to be able to look at web sites from Europe! Now the prosaic nature of the web (notice the lack of capitalization now...) has diminished that magic, at least for those who have no memory of the time before it was so easy.

A thought for today

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.
   -Robert Frost

More patterns in the white noise...

...can be found here:

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

The details of the report should not be used to once again raise the tired cry "The government did not do enough to prevent 9/11!!!" because that dead horse has been beaten so much that the bones are showing.

What is MOST CONCERNING about this is the apparent politicization of the release of information, tactics in communicating with the public that resemble propaganda techniques, and a cult of secrecy in this administration that is NOT HEALTHY in a democracy.

The people who make up our government, all the way up to the President, are public servants, not overlords who are divinely anointed to decide what the public should and should not know.

Is this the America we really want?

   -A government paying a commentator to promote a policy (and by extension a political agenda), see the Williams imbroglio

   -A government ordering an official in charge of Medicare to suppress release of a significant change in the cost estimate of the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan until after Congress had voted on it (remember that? do you trust the numbers used by the administration in the promotion of changes to Social Security now, AFTER they were caught hiding the right numbers before?)

   -A government delaying the release of parts of the 9/11 Commission Report that are most damaging to the administration in terms of how it viewed the potential threat from terrorism before 9/11, ostensibly because of "security concerns", yet it should not have taken months and months to perform the redacting

Is this the America we really want?

---

Thanks to The Moderate Voice for the link to article in The New York Times.

You've got to read this one just for the headline...

...which reads:

Astronomers spot fun-sized solar system

Patterns in the white noise...

...emerge here:

A New York congresswoman asked the White House to explain Wednesday why a man who worked for a news Web site owned by a GOP activist was able to obtain White House press credentials under an assumed name.

James Guckert, who reported from the White House for the Talon News Service under the name "Jeff Gannon," announced he was quitting the business "in consideration of the welfare of me and my family."

"Because of the attention being paid to me, I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News," he said in a statement posted Wednesday on his Web site.

In a letter to President Bush, Rep. Louise Slaughter, a Democrat, questioned why Guckert routinely received credentials for White House news briefings.

Slaughter linked Guckert's case to recent revelations that two conservative columnists who supported Bush administration policies had received government money.

"It appears that 'Mr. Gannon's' presence in the White House press corps was merely as a tool of propaganda for your administration," Slaughter wrote.

The White House had no comment.

and here:

I am a fan of Condoleeza Rice. I think she is smart and politically gifted. And I agree with those in the White House who say that the Secretary of State is an example of just how far our nation has come on issues of gender and race.

The many talents and skills of Dr. Rice make me all the more befuddled and frustrated over what happened yesterday in France. Dr. Rice stepped into the Institute of Political Sciences, an elite school in the heart of Paris, and responded to questions and questioners who were vetted by the school and by the state department in advance. That's right! America's top diplomat was unable or unwilling to talk on her feet and face anything that was unscripted.

A state department official said the U.S. embassy had asked the school to vet five people/questions. And what do you know? Rice took a total of five questions. As the Washington Post reports, "Like the questions, access to the hall was controlled. Of 500 seats, only 150 went to the school's students and staff. Another 150 were given to French opinion leaders and government officials. Fifty went to American organizations and etc. Meanwhile, scores of students from the school were kept well away from the session. Several complained of being pushed back by police."

and here:

The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will rob their children of privacy.

The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory.

and this:

Attention, parents: The state of Virginia understands that you lead busy lives, but lawmakers are confident that you will be only too happy to tack just one more task onto your morning routine -- a quick pants check as the kids head out the door.

The House of Delegates voted 60 to 34 Tuesday to impose a $50 fine on anyone found wearing pants low enough that a substantial portion of undergarments is showing. Note the vote: It wasn't even close.

Sure, it will be difficult to guarantee that your kids' pants stay secured around the waist all day, but there are ways to protect your offspring from exposure to police action and resulting fines. I suggest duct tape or, in extreme cases, super glue.

Is this the America we really want?

   - A government that refuses to be open and answer questions that are not planted or pre-approved...

   - Tracking elementary school students like inventory or cattle instead of teaching them responsibility by expecting them to be responsible...

   - Invasive and idiotic laws fining people for not exposing their bodies, but their underwear...

Is this the America we really want?

---

Thanks to The Moderate Voice for the first pointer to the GOP activist in the White House press room.

On perspective and turning points

I mentioned briefly earlier this week that I was ill. What I did not give were the details. I've been piecing things together, and doing some other thinking, for reasons that will soon become clear.

I had food poisoning from some sunny-side up eggs I had cooked for myself Saturday night (comfort food for me). I was ill early Sunday morning. The toilet in my apartment here in France is not in the same room as the sink and bathtub/shower, it's in a small room off the hallway that leads to my front door. The geography here is important, because in that hallway I had some empty bottles that I was going to be taking out to the recycle bin (they require glass recycling here). I awoke early Sunday morning rushed to the toilet to get ill. After my body finished thinking it was getting rid of the poisons and I felt I could leave the toilet, I stood up to go wash my face. I got up too fast for my heart which was racing more than I was fully aware, and the world faded to black.

When I awoke, I was on the floor and I heard some kind of sound, which I now realize was me, moaning. As I had fallen, I hit those bottles on the floor, and I now have a cut on my nose and right eyebrow. It took me a while to piece the chain of events together, needless to say I wasn't entirely coherent Sunday morning with both being sick at my stomach and having a blow to the front of my head. At first, I thought I had hit the radiator in the hallway, but the neat ring shape of the cut on my brow indicated otherwise.

An inch farther to the right, and that bottle might have gone through my eye-socket into my brain.

No big skiing accident with my life flashing before my eyes, no spectacular story, just a simple combination of circumstances that added together to a "might have been" that is far more chilling than each and any of the individual, prosaic links in the event chain leading to the key chance of life versus death.

Death is usually this prosaic, unremarkable and unremarked, despite our desperate wish for some meaning, despite the happy endings Hollywood sells.

So for the last few days, I've been thinking about what would have happened if that inch farther to the right was not a "might have been." Even if I wasn't killed instantly, it may have been a few days before someone would have checked up on me. I could have bled to death on the floor.

Perspective and turning points seem very relevant to me right now.

I am doing some thinking, thinking that will remain private...

---

NOTE: Comments to this post are turned off. I'm not looking for expressions of sympathy or horror. I'm working my way through what happened.

Yes, we did land on the moon

Panorama images from the lunar landing missions.

Geek cool...

'nuff said.

Some trends that may affect the computer you can buy in 2012

For some perspective on the challenges of my job this page, which is part of a larger description of past trends and future evolution in microprocessor development, give a reasonably good description of the problems I am trying to overcome.

I recommend reading the entire article, which is part one of a series on "The Quest for More Processing Power".

What is interesting is that I didn't see really any note in the parts I skimmed regarding how in the next few years we will be undergoing a transition from where process technology (which is the way we actually make the microprocessors, using different processes to put films down and selectively remove them to make the transistors and the wires that connect them together) and the improvements in the process technology are paramount in the increase of capability of microprocessors to where the design of the microprocessor itself becomes the key to continued increase in processing power.

Most of the improvements in electronics (specifically processing and memory capacity) have been due to improvements in process technology. In my career, which started in 1991 when I was working on state of the art technology of the time, we have gone from the thinnest layer we make (which happens to be the heart of the transistor, and the part that I have consistently worked on) going from a thickness of roughly 9nm (a nanometer is 1E-9 meters, a meter is a wee bit over 3 feet long, and nano, or 1E-9 is 1/1,000,000,000, so a nanometer is 1/1,000,000,000 of 3 feet... atoms on average are about 0.5nm apart) to about 1.5nm. Atoms are roughly 0.5nm apart (not all are that distance apart, but it's close enough and it makes the math easier), so we have gone from the thinnest film being 18 atoms thick in 1991 for the absolute state-of-the-art, to about 3 (yes THREE) atoms thick for the current state-of-the-art microprocessors.

Think about it, 3 atoms. There's not much room left for this film, is there? Admittedly, there are some ways around it, notably changing the material used, but I've been working on that project for the last 5 years, and no one has the answer to which material to use yet.

Also, another key part of the transistor is the length of the gate. The gate is what is controls whether the transistor is "on" or "off", in other words, a "1" or a "0" in the binary signals used in MPUs (MicroProcessor Units). That gate length has gone down to where it is in the range of 100 atoms across.

Again, think about it, 100 atoms.

So, this change in primacy from process technology to design techniques for improvement in performance is not only expected but almost inevitable unless we come up with some breakthrough in either materials or fundamental structure of transistors.

I don't see this truly watershed transition really recognized widely.

As an FYI, the stuff I work on now will go into production around 2011 or 2012, which means I have a reasonable view of what will be available around 7 years out.

There are a lot of wide-ranging effects that will arise out of this transition. I may write on them later, but for now, to sleep, perchance to dream, but hopefully not and instead an all too brief visit with the bliss of an inactive brain.

From the "it must be that New Math" bin...

...comes an article at Wired News on the impending release of Star Wars Episode III:

Take the fan who posted the following note on TheForce.net's message board: "When (Revenge of the Sith) comes out, I can die peacefully.... No life after Star Wars.... I waited 28 years for this movie and I will only be at the theater for 2 hours. It doesn't add up."

No, it doesn't add up.

Perhaps he should re-do his math, especially the variable that he has assigned a value of "No life after Star Wars"...

Turning points

Doug McKay, over at The Reality Stick, has written on how the day that the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed was a turning point in his life for more than one reason. He also writes something that I feel is worth adding to my quote collection:

...human stupidity will always trump human achievement...
   -Douglas R. McKay

In his revelation of the second event of that day that was a turning point in his life, he also reminds those engaged in the HIV/AIDS discussion elsewhere in blogworld (one which resembles more of an imbroglio due to statements from all sides rather than a reasoned debate) that regardless of belief in what is the actual root cause of AIDS, some people die from some cause after being diagnosed HIV+, and shows us the effects that those deaths do have on those they leave behind.

A thought on perspective...

The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world.
   -Robert Orben

How the Mac Mini has implications for biological computing

From the January 27th column by Robert X. Cringely:

Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top. That's a 720 gigaflop micro-supercomputer that costs less than $9,000, can fit on a bookshelf, and can be up and running in as little time as it takes to connect the network cables. High schools will be sequencing genes.

Holy cow!

For less than the cost of even a mid-range motorcycle, much less an average car, it is now possible to buy and build a supercomputer that has more computing power than the room-sized machines of just a decade ago.

Holy cow!!!

Take a moment to consider the last sentence of the quoted passage, "High schools will be sequencing genes."

Now, read this bit from Science News:

In the past few years, scientists have taken the first steps towards creating a host of cellular robots that are programmed to carry out tasks such as detecting and cleaning up environmental pollutants, tracking down cancer cells in a body, and manufacturing antibiotics or molecular-scale electronic components. These researchers have imported notions of electrical engineering—digital logic, memory, and oscillators—into the realm of biology. Their plan: to create cells with computer programs hardwired into the DNA.

"Eventually, the goal is to produce genetic 'applets', little programs you could download into a cell simply by sticking DNA into it, the way you download Java applets from the Internet," says Timothy Gardner, a bioengineer at Boston University.

The goal is not to produce a Pentium in a test tube. Cellular computers will probably never rival silicon chips in speed and reliability. "We don't use cells because they're a good medium for computation but because they can actually do stuff for us," says Adam Arkin, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Scientists intend to harness the multitude of cellular activities, which go beyond the capacity of silicon devices. Living cells can survive on the flanks of undersea volcanoes and in acidic mine drainage. They operate amazingly efficient factories for producing antibiotics, enzymes, and other useful chemicals, and they generate numerous copies of themselves. Cells can detect minute changes around them, and perhaps most crucially, interact with their environment.

By cutting and pasting pieces of genetic material, and most recently using artificial evolution as a design tool, engineers are starting to program microbes to carry out behaviors that nature never dreamed of. "We're basically hacking DNA instead of software," says Ron Weiss of Princeton University.

There is more, well worth reading.

Now that the geek cool factor is out, take a step back and think: The pieces are falling into place for an infrastructure to build custom genes, similar to how we can already easily make custom integrated circuits, and infrastructure that is relatively inexpensive, especially when compared to that required for integrated circuits. The DNA "circuits" have an even larger number of potential applications than what we have made of integrated circuits and electronics.

Now, think about this...

It is theoretically possible (remembering that in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they're not) to put custom tailored DNA into a self-replicating structure such as a bacterium or a virus.

A high school can now afford most of the equipment for DNA sequencing...

I think you can see how I'm both thrilled and concerned.

Deja vu all over again?

Before the current Iraq War and Occupation, I wrote that larger and more immediate threats to the security of the United States than Iraq were Iran and North Korea. Now, it appears that we have a lot of the same activity (read: PR) that was underway in the selling of the Iraq War now being aimed at Iran.

Better late than never? At this point, no, because the situation has changed.

Despite the current apparently positive outcome of the recent election in Iraq (I say apparently positive because we are neglecting the recent decision of the Iraq Governing Council to base civil law in the new government on Islamic Shari'a law, which according to one person very familiar with it has as many interpretations as self-designated clerics... this does not bode well for constructing a stable and peaceful society), a repetition of the same rhetoric at this date is troubling, to say the least, in light of how wrong much of the "logic" used before the Iraq War has been shown to have been.

Regardless of how much President Bush feels the results of the November elections justifies his actions both of the past and the future, there is a sizable number of citizens (according to some surveys, a majority) who feel that the Iraq War was a mistake. Playing the same fear card that worked in the run up to the Iraq War and is trying to be used in domestic politics regarding Social Security will likely not work with respect to Iran.

I expect President Bush will get a rude awakening when he tries to spend his "political capital" and discovers it won't buy as much as he wants.

Pennywit has his own analysis that is well worth reading, and also pointed to the use of similar rhetoric and tactics.

Notice - On the mend

I'm feeling much better than I did this morning, but I doubt I'll be eating any sunny-side-up eggs in the near future.

I'll likely not go to work tomorrow because I'm feeling pretty weak (no food yet today, not good for being 100% tomorrow), so I'll work from my apartment. I have a lot to do that requires a fast computer, which I have in my apartment but sadly NOT where I work.

Notice - Ill

I have a case of food poisoning, so posting may be a bit off for the next few days.

...on families...

Families.

We all have them, even it we chose to be a self-imposed exile from them.

You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your relatives.

Some have to strive to keep their families together and solvent.

Others have no family at all.

In the end, what do we have to turn to?

Some choose to be alone, others are alone through circumstance, some have many obligations, and most have families that they jokingly say "burden" them but hopefully provide far more joy than pain...

As with everything else, it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Choices (part III)

In our lives we are continually confronted with choices.

Some choices affect only ourselves.

Some choices affect those we care about.

Some choices have ramifications beyond all those we might imagine.

Some choices resonate for centuries after they are made.

We all have to live with the choices we make, looking at ourselves in the mirror in the morning upon awakening, deciding if the person we see there is worth continued existence.

I make that decision every day of my life upon looking in the mirror.

Some days, that decision is not as easy as some optimists would think.

In the final analysis, as people like to refer to, we have to live and die with the choices we have made, for on our deathbeds there is no other appeal than whatever deity we have chosen to cast ourselves and our ultimate fate to.

Choices...

We all make them, even when we think we are postponing them. Although Hollywood is terrible at describing ultimate outcomes, see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the consequences of "choosing poorly."

Choices...

Every day.

Every minute.

In the end, what do they all add up to?

Ultimately, the sum is our choice...

Consider that when you make your choices.

Choices (part II)

Recently, I posted about the choices that one man made.

As I said before, we all have choices in our lives. The choices we make now are the ones we have to live with decades from now.

Choices in our personal lives....

Larger choices as well....

James Wolcott has a discussion today comparing the choices made in Iraq and in Iran in the recent elections in both nations.

It can indeed be argued that the elections in Iran were more democratic in the true sense of the word than the recent elections in Iraq.

Does this mean the elections in Iraq were wrong or invalidated?

No, not in my eyes anyway, for what little that counts in the larger scheme of things...

Democracy means that you have to accept the choice of the majority, even if it doesn't align with what you want.

But...

True democracy also means protecting the rights of the minorities, even if you violently disagree with their philosophies.

Something we should keep in mind in America as we strive to promote democracy elsewhere, if we want to take the most recent State of the Union address literally, as I feel the man who delivered it felt it should be...

Is it really still "patching"...

...when there are THIRTEEN of them?

On 8 February 2005 the Microsoft Security Response Center is planning to release:

- 9 Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Windows. The greatest aggregate, maximum severity rating for these security updates is Critical. Some of these updates will require a restart.

- 1 Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft SharePoint Services and Office. The greatest aggregate, maximum severity rating for this security bulletin is Moderate. These updates may or may not require a restart.

- 1 Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft .NET Framework. The greatest aggregate, maximum severity rating for this security bulletin is Important. This update will require a restart.

- 1 Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft Office and Visual Studio. The greatest aggregate, maximum severity rating for this security bulletin is Critical. These updates will require a restart.

- 1 Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft Windows, Windows Media Player, and MSN Messenger. The greatest aggregate, maximum severity rating for these security updates is Critical.

These updates will require a restart.

Yes, "only" ten of these patches are Windows, the rest are for other Microsoft applications and add-ons, but the question is still valid - a boat needing this many "patches" would have sunk by now!

Then there is this anecdote:

So about a year ago, the SO finally upgraded her Net connection to DSL, carefully installed the Yahoo! DSL software into her creaky Sony Vaio PC laptop and ran through all the checks and install verifications and appropriate nasty disclaimers.

And all seemed to go smoothly and reasonably enough considering it was a Windows PC and therefore nothing was really all that smooth or reasonable or elegant, but whatever. She just wanted to get online. Should be easy as 1-2-3, claimed the Yahoo! guide. Painless as tying your shoe, said the phone company.

She got online all right. The DSL worked great. For about four minutes.

Then, something happened. Something attacked. Something swarmed her computer the instant she tried to move around online and the computer slowed and bogged and cluttered and crashed, and multiple restarts and debuggings and what-the-hells only brought up only a flood of nightmarish pop-up windows and terrifying error messages and massive system slowdowns and all manner of inexplicable claims of infestation of this worm and that Trojan horse and did we want to buy McAfee AntiVirus protection for $39.95?

Four minutes. And she was already DOA.

A lot of the griping about Microsoft is really jealousy of the wealth that Bill Gates and many of his associates have gained. However, it is now reaching the point where Windows-based computers can become unusable by the average person so quickly after going to an always-on Internet connection that many of the criticisms are starting to gain validity beyond simple envy.

So why haven't more people voted with their wallets but instead seem to just accept the flawed software?

Fucking Windows...

I try to post some quotes from an article on MSNBC (of all places) using a supposedly compliant Windows application, and guess what, it completely fucks up both the apostraphes and the quotations marks.

I do this with my Mac OS X system, and none of these problems occur.

Fuck Windows...

Even in technology "tipping points"...

...which you would think had clear-cut decision points, there are a multitude of "what if" scenarios (read the comments).

For anyone who has ever had to deal with their company computer "support"...

...here is satire, at it's best.

Enjoy.

Another view from outside the United States

In an attempt to get views other than that of the infamous MSM (aka the MainStream Media), I looked at C.A.+, which is based in Costa Rica, and of which David Anderson of ISOU hopes will be The Economist of Central America.

Based upon the one issue currently available, I cannot say if they will have the same (relatively) abstract judgment that I feel The Economist has shown (despite being wrong occasionally, and actually admitting it...), it is still well worth checking out, simply for the alternate viewpoint.

A more common concern than truly recognized...

...is that of regional accents in the United States.

It doesn't just concern extremely strong accents, such as that of the Appalachian regions, however. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, but lost my accent in my attempts to speak as clearly as possible while teaching Physics at Arizona State University, Now, an class in a Kentucky theater group directly addresses this concern (which I find relevant given that one of my US colleagues speaks French with a Kentucky accent...):

A new class that seeks to teach youngsters how to lose their Appalachian accents has set off an age-old phonetic debate: Should mountain natives drop the drawl or hold tightly to their twang?

The class, put on by an eastern Kentucky theater group, is designed for children in middle and high schools who want to reduce their accent to "broaden their performance opportunities and improve overall marketability."

"We don't want people to be held back just because they have an accent," said Martin Childers, managing director of Jenny Wiley Theatre in Prestonsburg. "If you want to work professionally, you have to be able to drop the accent when it's required. We want to give people the opportunity to learn to do that."

Some things relating to regional cultures are well worth preserving. Not necessarily prejudices (i.e. the old Southern predilection for regarding anyone of a skin color not lily white as being inferior), but other aspects such as personal responsibility, and, dare I say it, personal honor...

To continue:

Dee Davis, head of the Center for Rural Strategies, which fights rural stereotypes, said he has no problem with the class as long as teachers keep one thing in mind.

"It's important that they make sure the kids understand that their language is beautiful, that their culture is powerful, and that it's not something they should be embarrassed about," he said.

Davis, a Hazard native who went to the University of Kentucky and the University of Pittsburgh, said some of his classmates had trouble understanding his mountain dialect. When he told them his field of study, "riding," they'd look at him quizzically and say they didn't know it was offered. He'd then spell it: W-R-I-T-I-N-G.

"There's nothing wrong with being able to speak in different accents, but you should above all things hold on to the language you dream in," he said.

I wouldn't argue with that, especially after my attempts to learn French in the last yeart...

A new condundrum, or not?

Although I am not a member of the Catholic Church, no one who has any cognizance of the history of Western Europe can deny the effects that the institution of the Catholic Church has had (for good or for ill) upon the fundamental institutions of what is now called "Western Civilization" including the United States and the United Kingdom, if indirectly through the inheritance of the Protestant Churches which arose from Catholicism.

After finishing reading a book (given to me by a good friend) of the history of The Borgias by Ivan Cloulas (translated by Gilda Roberts), including the accounts of Alonso Borgia and Rodrigo Borgia, both of whom held high positions in the Catholic Church (including the papacy for both), along with my visit to Tuscany last year, I have developed a better appreciation for the effects that the papacy has had on history in general.

So, these statements are of great interest to a student of the history of the Papacy:

Pope John Paul's latest illness has raised the question of what the Church would do if he were permanently incapacitated -- and reopened debate over whether Popes should retire instead of reigning for life.

Like that of any large international organization, the Vatican's bureaucracy hums away even between the election of leaders or when a leader is sick.

But unlike the leaders of those institutions, the head of the world's Roman Catholics is a monarch who traditionally rules for life. No Pope has abdicated since before Columbus reached America.

Modern medicine has created a quandary for an institution that changes only reluctantly. In the past, nature took its course, Popes died earlier, and the problem rarely arose.

"Without the advances of modern medicine, this Pope would not have survived all his various illnesses and brushes with death," said Alberto Melloni, a Church historian.

Church law says a Pope can resign of his own free will, but there are no clear regulations in Church law for the very real possibility that a Pope may be alive but incapacitated for a long time or even the rest of his life.

"The ability of modern medicine to keep the body alive while the mind is deteriorating will eventually present the Church with a constitutional crisis," wrote Father Thomas Reese, author and editor of the weekly U.S. Jesuit journal America.

The late James Provost, a specialist on Church law, wrote that the lack of clear guidelines on what to do if the Pope became severely or permanently disabled was "a rather serious vacuum in the Church's constitutional law."

In other words, the technological "miracles" provided by modern medical technology may give a quandary to the institution that is most experienced in dealing with true metaphysical miracles.

To continue:

In the future, perhaps as soon as the conclave to elect the next Pope, Church historians expect that the subject of papal retirement will break out of the taboo.

"I'm convinced the subject of the duration of the papacy is something that will come up in the next conclave," Melloni said.

"It's a question of time. The change will be slow and the perception of retirement will change. When the bishop of Milan resigns, no-one says he is a traitor or a weakling."

Bishops normally retire at 75 and cardinals over 80 cannot enter conclaves to elect Popes.

Melloni and other Church historians do not think a fixed age for papal retirement will be set in the future, but say a candidate for the papacy may be asked by fellow cardinals about his position on possible retirement for health reasons.

However, some Catholics believe the Pope is a father figure indirectly chosen by God, and so should reign to his dying day.

The last Pope to resign willingly was Celestine V, who stepped down in 1294. Gregory XII reluctantly abdicated in 1415 when more than one Pope was reigning at the same time.

Making the matter even more complicated, there are no Church laws that specifically deal with what to do if a Pope is alive but cannot communicate, perhaps in a coma.

The modern age of instantaneous communication seems to demand that ALL leaders of large institutions be available immediately. The former practice in the Church of simply waiting until "God takes his Own" no longer seems sufficient to the rest of the world.

That does not mean it is no longer sufficient to the Church itself, however...

An unexpected compliment

Dan Schneider, on PunditForum, has proposed adding a new page, Science & Philosophy blogs, and he suggested Random Fate as one of "the better ones" with an advisory to add more weblogs to the list from the blogrolls of the suggested blogs.

Here I was worried I was getting too political, and Mr. Schneider suggests that I am among those who "celebrate the best in the human..."

I am both complimented and embarrassed.

Why complimented? Well, that goes without saying.

Why embarrassed? I've been struggling recently, and I feel the quality here has dropped precipitously.

I guess I'd better get crackin'...

Selective morality

This is too freighted with irony and an odd form of poetic justice for mere words to describe:

Adelphia Communications Corp., the nation's fifth-largest cable TV company, will begin offering hard-core adult films on pay-per-view on Friday in its Southern California market.

The programming is being introduced in response to subscriber demands, Adelphia spokeswoman Erica Stull said Wednesday.

Adelphia said the new hard-core programming, which will be supplied by Playboy Enterprises Inc. and New Frontier Media based in Boulder, Colo., will also become available in other cities.

Five years ago, Adelphia dropped Spice, a soft-core pornography channel, from cable systems it acquired in Southern California because company founder John Rigas considered such programming immoral.

Since then, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002 after Rigas and others were accused of cheating investors out of billions of dollars. Rigas and his son Timothy were convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and securities fraud. Sentencing is scheduled this month. (NOTE: emphasis added)

So, apparently pornography is immoral but cheating investors (aka stealing) is not...

Interesting.

I'll have to remember that one at my next confession,

Ooops... I'm not Catholic.

So much for giving all those things up for Lent...

Where do you draw the line (part II)?

Another quandary from Europe:

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners - who must pay tax and employee health insurance - were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile" and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job - including in the sex industry - or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

So...

Unemployment compensation is a public benefit, and in this case brothel owners, who pay taxes, are insisting on a "return" for their tax money.

In abstract, neglecting "morality" in favor of "what is paid for" it is a simple case.

In the real world, it is not so simple, with the clashing of differing moralities and "rights" versus "benefits".

So, where is the line between public benefits to individuals, requirements on those individuals to draw on the benefits, and the "right" of companies that pay taxes that help fund those benefits?

Where do you draw the line?

Where do you draw the line (part I)?

From Europe comes the following proposal:

A group of conservative European Union lawmakers from eastern Europe called Thursday for a ban on communist symbols, including the red star and the hammer and sickle, to match a proposed EU ban on the Nazi swastika.

The group from Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic said the communist symbols should be included in any ban because of the suffering caused by Soviet-backed regimes in eastern Europe.

"We would like to have an equal treatment of the other evil totalitarian regime of the communist system," said Jozsef Szajer, an Hungarian member of the European Parliament.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has proposed a Europe-wide ban on display of the swastikas and other Nazi symbols as part of a campaign to combat anti-Semitism and intolerance.

"If we decide to ban one, we should decide to ban all of them," said Jan Zahradil, a Czech member of the EU assembly.

The "foot in the door" was the attempt to ban symbols associated with Naziism.

So, where do you draw the line at banning symbols associated with an idea?

I can suggest many symbols that I personally find detestable, but others do not share my opinion. How many people should I need to agree with me to get a public hearing?

A hundred?

A thousand?

A million?

How much is preserving the rights of the minority, ensuring the hearing instead of the banning of unpopular opinion, really worth?

Where do ideals end and practicalities begin?

Where do you draw the line?

...on numbers

We deal in numbers every day. Our bank account balances, how much cash we have in our wallets, how much gas costs, how much milk is in the fridge.

Two die in a car accident on the freeway.

Thirty killed in Iraq today.

Thousands of troops involved in peacekeeping missions.

Tens of thousands dying in a famine.

Hundreds of thousands killed in a tsunami.

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
   -Senator Everett Dirksen

Trillions of dollars in a national debt.

What do these numbers really mean?

To quote a tyrant that I wish we could say was inhuman, but instead shared our DNA:

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
   -Joseph Stalin

Numbers....

Abstract, clean, aniseptic...

Until we actually pause in our day and recall what those numbers are really counting.

Take that pause.

Sometimes its a song lyric...

...that concisely expresses something very complex.

Only very few will ever truly understand why this lyric is very meaningful for me:

It's only in uncertainty
That we're naked and alive
   -Peter Gabriel, That Voice Again

It does have to do with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the universe, and infinite possibilities...

Tough week

I'm having a rough week, for reasons that I won't go into here.

I hope to post more later, until then, I'll post a few quotes that I hope will keep what little audience I have gained from abandoning me.

I also hope to complete the interview with Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice soon.

Please be patient. We all have lives, and I'm not paid for this... instead, I pay...

Song meme...

There are some who are trying to get me involved in a song meme going around right now.

No insult intended, but I won't participate, other than to say this:

There is a reason why I will always remember the song "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel, and it is both happy and sad, pleasant and melancholy, good and bad...

Do not ask me more.

Some things should remain as they are, private.

Some thoughts to consider...

Since I can't generate anything on my own at the moment, here are some thoughts that are worth thinking more about:

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
   -William H. Borah

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
   -H. L. Mencken

We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.
   -Golda Meir to Anwar Saddat just before the peace talks