FTR, I used to support "hate speech" laws because I thoguht they had a positive impact on discourse. Then I read the ACLU Nazi cases in Skokei Illinois and realized that it's far, far better to have people free to spew their obnoxious opinions and allow others to make a judgement than to try to hide this behind a cloak of law. I was about 16 or so, and I was workign out that societial pressure can sometimes be a good thing.
Glenn Greenwald has an excellent column up today on how the Canadians are getting this wrong, and how we might as well.
Yes, some people have some pretty obnoxious ideas, but they only fester in the dark, bursting open like a deep bedsore once they have done their damage. Expose these ideas to the light and have some faith in the marketplace of ideas. It's one of the things that makes America worth defending.
All sorts of valid criticisms are frequently voiced, including by me, about the erosion of basic protections and individual liberties in the U.S. But that doesn't mitigate or detract in any way from how oppressive these sorts of Canadian and European laws are. One of the core political values is and should always remain that which Justice Robert Jackson defined in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943):
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Finding Your Way Out of the Woods
A pretty good story about moving from Christianity to atheism. It's very similar to the stories of a lot of folks I know, and certainly mine.
At some point, the collective weight of the religious nonsense outweights the utility value of faith and some of us tip over into free thought. I thought her story was pretty good.
(via)
At some point, the collective weight of the religious nonsense outweights the utility value of faith and some of us tip over into free thought. I thought her story was pretty good.
(via)
Friday, January 11, 2008
Freedom Isn't Free
"What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do. "
-Mayor Giuliani
I was in New York during the Giuliani administration I didn't think he was particularly good for the city, especially in the latter parts of his tenure. One of his proposals was to impound the cars of anyone accused of frunk driving and quickly sell them at auction without benefit of trial. His justification? Basically it was that some folsk get aquitted and he *knew* they were guilty so he should sell their cars anyway.
Glenn Greenwald puts it best:
Whenever he found a crusade that triggered his sense of righteousness, legal and even constitutional constraints were of little concern to the mayor. He ended up on the losing end of one court battle after the next, arising from his efforts to stifle private expression that he disliked, including endless campaigns against an art exhibit he deemed blasphemous, bus and subway advertisements he considered offensive, and political protests he found annoying. According to Rachel Morris‘s recent article in The Washington Monthly, Giuliani “lost thirty-five First Amendment cases in court.”
-Mayor Giuliani
I was in New York during the Giuliani administration I didn't think he was particularly good for the city, especially in the latter parts of his tenure. One of his proposals was to impound the cars of anyone accused of frunk driving and quickly sell them at auction without benefit of trial. His justification? Basically it was that some folsk get aquitted and he *knew* they were guilty so he should sell their cars anyway.
Glenn Greenwald puts it best:
Whenever he found a crusade that triggered his sense of righteousness, legal and even constitutional constraints were of little concern to the mayor. He ended up on the losing end of one court battle after the next, arising from his efforts to stifle private expression that he disliked, including endless campaigns against an art exhibit he deemed blasphemous, bus and subway advertisements he considered offensive, and political protests he found annoying. According to Rachel Morris‘s recent article in The Washington Monthly, Giuliani “lost thirty-five First Amendment cases in court.”
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Things Not to Google, #17*
Lemon Party
Avoid especially Google Images. I promise you, you will know the meaning of "rue".
*brought to you in part by a grant from Geoff Inc. Geoff Inc., building distrust between generations since 1985.
Avoid especially Google Images. I promise you, you will know the meaning of "rue".
*brought to you in part by a grant from Geoff Inc. Geoff Inc., building distrust between generations since 1985.
Iron My Shirt
I saw the picture and laughed. I guess I am just a bad person or something, but I thought it was a joke, not a serious commentary.
Don't Try This At Home
Some people might say it's not a very smart idea to throw 6 lighters into a blender. Those people would be right.
Me: I am going to get one of these.
Geoff: Get two.
Me: Why?
Geoff: because otherwise they are going to find you dead in your apartment and the coroner is going to wonder why you choked to death on a smoothie spiked with Brillo pads.
Me: I am going to get one of these.
Geoff: Get two.
Me: Why?
Geoff: because otherwise they are going to find you dead in your apartment and the coroner is going to wonder why you choked to death on a smoothie spiked with Brillo pads.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
FSM Hate Mail
Now and them, I dip into the Hate Mail bin over the FSM site just to see what's what. It's often a very illuminating glimpse into the minds of certain kinds of people. Generally the mail comes in one of two flavors, people who have lost even basic credulity and can't recognize an obvious joke:
How can you idiots belive this stupid religion? You idiot taoist won’t believe Christianity because of eternal judgement, but you’ll believe a bunch of crackheads that think a stupid ball of spaghetti with meatballs created the universe? If that’s your logic on this subject, you belong with these moronic crackheads.
I can't figure if they are religious because they just have a low credulity threshold, or if they are credulous because they are religious. Kind of amusing in the way it's amusing to watch global warming denialists wrestle with facts.
The other big grouping centers around people who, for whatever reason, take personal offense. They then, almost always, threaten to use magical powers to invoke sky-father to do various kinds of smiting:
You have caught my attention Bobby Henderson. You know what you’re doing. You don’t believe any of this, but since you’ve decided to make a war against Jesus, then, let it begin. My campaign against you begins now. You aren’t going to remain unopposed any longer.
It would be slightly more honest, although much more revealing, if this poster capitalized the M in "my".
I suppose this is a self-selected group, motivated to write by their limited worldview, leaving the vast majority of folks to chuckle and move on. Still, I find it pretty surprising that so many folks don't get the joke on such a fundamental level.
Ramen.
How can you idiots belive this stupid religion? You idiot taoist won’t believe Christianity because of eternal judgement, but you’ll believe a bunch of crackheads that think a stupid ball of spaghetti with meatballs created the universe? If that’s your logic on this subject, you belong with these moronic crackheads.
I can't figure if they are religious because they just have a low credulity threshold, or if they are credulous because they are religious. Kind of amusing in the way it's amusing to watch global warming denialists wrestle with facts.
The other big grouping centers around people who, for whatever reason, take personal offense. They then, almost always, threaten to use magical powers to invoke sky-father to do various kinds of smiting:
You have caught my attention Bobby Henderson. You know what you’re doing. You don’t believe any of this, but since you’ve decided to make a war against Jesus, then, let it begin. My campaign against you begins now. You aren’t going to remain unopposed any longer.
It would be slightly more honest, although much more revealing, if this poster capitalized the M in "my".
I suppose this is a self-selected group, motivated to write by their limited worldview, leaving the vast majority of folks to chuckle and move on. Still, I find it pretty surprising that so many folks don't get the joke on such a fundamental level.
Ramen.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
I Can See Clearly Now
At 800x600 it's a far cry from the 2400x1600 resolution I am enjoying with my Dell/nvidia 8800 combo, but it's oh so tempting...
Head Mounted Display
Head Mounted Display
Ice, Ice Baby
A decent article on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
The changes seen in Greenland may turn out to be self-limiting in the short run; surging glaciers can flatten out and slow, for instance. Or they may be a sign that the island’s ice — holding about the same volume of water as the Gulf of Mexico — is poised for a rapid discharge. Scientists are divided on that question, and on whether there is a near-term risk from a Texas-size portion of West Antarctica’s ice sheet that is also showing signs of instability. This split divides those foreseeing a rise in the sea level of a couple of feet this century from water added by Greenland, West Antarctica and mountain glaciers, and a few experts who speak of a couple of yards in that time.
...
“It’s basically a big lump of ice sitting on this bedrock,” Dr. Alley said in describing Greenland’s behavior in warm conditions. “What it tries to do is snow more in the middle and melt more on the edges. If it pulls its edges back, then there’s less area to melt, and that helps it survive. That’s why you can have a stable ice sheet in a warmer climate.”
There has been a flack lately about the Arctic surface ice, with one side suggesting that record amount has melted and it's a sign of global warming and another side pointing out that there was also a record refreeze so it doesn't' matter. This neatly sidesteps the actual science, but gives folks something to fight about. In reality the amount of surface area that melts is largely irrelevant, its the *volume* of ice that's significant, a measure neither side has any good data on.
It seems pretty clear that the climate is changing, although it's far from clear exactly why or what can be done about it. Historically, it seems to be changing fairly swiftly as these things are measured (usually in thousands of years), but we have no real written records of a major planetary climate change, so although humanity has lived through this before, civilization has not. It's tempting to blame CO2 emissions and, doubtless they have a part, but CO2 isn't a huge contributor to warming, at least compared to other gasses like CH4, so its a good bet there are other processes going on.
In the end, there may not be a lot we can do about this.
The current state of climatology is similar to the state of early 20th century medicine. It's science but on a complicated organism we don't understand and until recently we just shrugged and prayed to sky-father about it. It's my hopes that advances in atmospheric physics and computer modeling will give us a much better idea of how this whole thing is linked up and what, if anything, we could do to make it better. At this point, almost anything we do is effectively random and may or may not have an effect and certainly it wouldn't have the effect we think it will.
Give science some more time with this.
The changes seen in Greenland may turn out to be self-limiting in the short run; surging glaciers can flatten out and slow, for instance. Or they may be a sign that the island’s ice — holding about the same volume of water as the Gulf of Mexico — is poised for a rapid discharge. Scientists are divided on that question, and on whether there is a near-term risk from a Texas-size portion of West Antarctica’s ice sheet that is also showing signs of instability. This split divides those foreseeing a rise in the sea level of a couple of feet this century from water added by Greenland, West Antarctica and mountain glaciers, and a few experts who speak of a couple of yards in that time.
...
“It’s basically a big lump of ice sitting on this bedrock,” Dr. Alley said in describing Greenland’s behavior in warm conditions. “What it tries to do is snow more in the middle and melt more on the edges. If it pulls its edges back, then there’s less area to melt, and that helps it survive. That’s why you can have a stable ice sheet in a warmer climate.”
There has been a flack lately about the Arctic surface ice, with one side suggesting that record amount has melted and it's a sign of global warming and another side pointing out that there was also a record refreeze so it doesn't' matter. This neatly sidesteps the actual science, but gives folks something to fight about. In reality the amount of surface area that melts is largely irrelevant, its the *volume* of ice that's significant, a measure neither side has any good data on.
It seems pretty clear that the climate is changing, although it's far from clear exactly why or what can be done about it. Historically, it seems to be changing fairly swiftly as these things are measured (usually in thousands of years), but we have no real written records of a major planetary climate change, so although humanity has lived through this before, civilization has not. It's tempting to blame CO2 emissions and, doubtless they have a part, but CO2 isn't a huge contributor to warming, at least compared to other gasses like CH4, so its a good bet there are other processes going on.
In the end, there may not be a lot we can do about this.
The current state of climatology is similar to the state of early 20th century medicine. It's science but on a complicated organism we don't understand and until recently we just shrugged and prayed to sky-father about it. It's my hopes that advances in atmospheric physics and computer modeling will give us a much better idea of how this whole thing is linked up and what, if anything, we could do to make it better. At this point, almost anything we do is effectively random and may or may not have an effect and certainly it wouldn't have the effect we think it will.
Give science some more time with this.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Not Immediately Dismissable
Jose Padilla is suing John Yoo for giving the president legal advice which amounted to advice to do something illegal. I thought this would go nowhere due to sovereign immunity, but it seems I was wrong. There is a pretty good rundown in the comments section over at Volokh. This seems to have some legs after all.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Riva Tuner
Awesome tool for monitoring everything about your system. I started using it to monitor the temperature of the nvidia 8800 card I bought, but you can also download a handful of plug-ins that make it even more useful.
If your idea of fun is opening the window to see if you can drop the temperature of your coreDuo by 1 or 2 degrees, or blowing compressed air into your graphics card to watch the fan speed self-adjust, this is the tool for you.
If you like opening and closing various graphics programs to see what they do to the ambient box temperature, switching OpenGL and DirectX packages in and out, or simply enjoy an afternoon coding programs from Graphics Gems III to exercise your PhysX board, you're in for a good time.
FTR, 61 unloaded on the 8800, 51 ambient.
If your idea of fun is opening the window to see if you can drop the temperature of your coreDuo by 1 or 2 degrees, or blowing compressed air into your graphics card to watch the fan speed self-adjust, this is the tool for you.
If you like opening and closing various graphics programs to see what they do to the ambient box temperature, switching OpenGL and DirectX packages in and out, or simply enjoy an afternoon coding programs from Graphics Gems III to exercise your PhysX board, you're in for a good time.
FTR, 61 unloaded on the 8800, 51 ambient.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Also, in Father v. Son
Me: No!
Geoff: Please! I dont have access to Phosphorus Granades and thats the next best thing.
Me: No!
Geoff: How else can I destroy these hard drives?
Me: No Thermite!
Geoff: Please! I dont have access to Phosphorus Granades and thats the next best thing.
Me: No!
Geoff: How else can I destroy these hard drives?
Me: No Thermite!
Musical Interludes
An actual conversation with my son:
Me: No! Stop saying that!
Geoff: Why not, it's true!
Me: No. It isn't.
Geoff: Paul McCartney is the Justin Timberlake of the Beatles! You know I am right!
Me: There is so much wrong with that sentence, I don't know where to begin.
Geoff: Like what?
Me: THE BEATLES WERE NOT A BOY BAND! I'M NOT TELLING YOU THIS AGAIN!
... later
Geoff: you're just angry that Justin Timberlake is a better songwriter than Paul McCartney.
Me: You have a point. I'll tell you what, I'll concede your point when Sir Paul McCartney writes a song about his Dick in a Box. Deal?
Geoff: He won an Emmy for that!
Me: No! Stop saying that!
Geoff: Why not, it's true!
Me: No. It isn't.
Geoff: Paul McCartney is the Justin Timberlake of the Beatles! You know I am right!
Me: There is so much wrong with that sentence, I don't know where to begin.
Geoff: Like what?
Me: THE BEATLES WERE NOT A BOY BAND! I'M NOT TELLING YOU THIS AGAIN!
... later
Geoff: you're just angry that Justin Timberlake is a better songwriter than Paul McCartney.
Me: You have a point. I'll tell you what, I'll concede your point when Sir Paul McCartney writes a song about his Dick in a Box. Deal?
Geoff: He won an Emmy for that!
Friday, January 04, 2008
A Bad Night For the Apparachniks
Last night was a very unusual night in american politics, the mainline parties reversed decades of trends to produce a surprise. It remains to be seen if this is a trend for the election or merely a fluke, but it's a promising sign.
The Dems: For most of my lifetime, the democrats have always nominated the most politically connected, establishment candidate they could. Very by-the-numbers, almost no charisma, very few ideas. Mondale anyone? Kerry? They were like Bob Dole with the quirkiness. If they do actually nominate Obama, it will be the first time in ages a candidate has come from outside the establishment to win the nomination. Which is to say, I am extremely skeptical they will do that. While third place has to sting, Hillary is clearly the establishment candidate and she is no where near out of it. Personally, I am tired of decades of the Clinton/Bush power share and would like to see some outside blood. My expecations are low, but no longer zero.
The GOP: The fruition of the Permenant Republican Majority strategy has yielded up a front candidate who not only beleives the Earth is 6000 years old, but says this with pride. Again, this is a little out of the box, with Romney being their version of Hillary with more god and fewer balls. Huckaee is not popular with the chattering rightwing blogosphere, nor with the party heads, yet is the logical conclusion of their faith-based approach to government (have faith in god and have faith that we know what we're doing because we're not liberals). Huckabee could be a huge problem for them going forward, but again, Romney is nowhere near out of it.
All in all, a good night.
Update: also there is this:
Beyond who won on each side, there's a very big partisan message out of tonight. Just under 220,000 Democrats caucused tonight. About 115,000 Republicans did. That is a very big vote in itself.
I'm not quite sure what this means. I don't, for example, beleive the tradiational percentages have gone away. I expect it means that the GOP field is weak and unexciting, so people aren't bothering to turn out. Also, I expect a lot of independents broke blue in Iowa.
Update II: NPR just reported that Romney spent $80,000,000 in Iowa! Really????!!!??? Holy Shit! $80M and he got second??? Is this true?
I might be wrong, he may really be toast if he can spend that much money and still come in behind Huck.
The Dems: For most of my lifetime, the democrats have always nominated the most politically connected, establishment candidate they could. Very by-the-numbers, almost no charisma, very few ideas. Mondale anyone? Kerry? They were like Bob Dole with the quirkiness. If they do actually nominate Obama, it will be the first time in ages a candidate has come from outside the establishment to win the nomination. Which is to say, I am extremely skeptical they will do that. While third place has to sting, Hillary is clearly the establishment candidate and she is no where near out of it. Personally, I am tired of decades of the Clinton/Bush power share and would like to see some outside blood. My expecations are low, but no longer zero.
The GOP: The fruition of the Permenant Republican Majority strategy has yielded up a front candidate who not only beleives the Earth is 6000 years old, but says this with pride. Again, this is a little out of the box, with Romney being their version of Hillary with more god and fewer balls. Huckaee is not popular with the chattering rightwing blogosphere, nor with the party heads, yet is the logical conclusion of their faith-based approach to government (have faith in god and have faith that we know what we're doing because we're not liberals). Huckabee could be a huge problem for them going forward, but again, Romney is nowhere near out of it.
All in all, a good night.
Update: also there is this:
Beyond who won on each side, there's a very big partisan message out of tonight. Just under 220,000 Democrats caucused tonight. About 115,000 Republicans did. That is a very big vote in itself.
I'm not quite sure what this means. I don't, for example, beleive the tradiational percentages have gone away. I expect it means that the GOP field is weak and unexciting, so people aren't bothering to turn out. Also, I expect a lot of independents broke blue in Iowa.
Update II: NPR just reported that Romney spent $80,000,000 in Iowa! Really????!!!??? Holy Shit! $80M and he got second??? Is this true?
I might be wrong, he may really be toast if he can spend that much money and still come in behind Huck.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
The Devil!
No, not me! Harry Potter!
Joe Ratzinger has a chief exorcist who, while not busy helping folks avoid responsibility for their actions (or in some cases treatment for the schizophrenia) by blaming human failing on an imaginary demi-god, has time to do a Dan Quayle act on Harry Potter:
Pope Benedict XVI's chief exorcist, Rev. Gabriele Amorth, has called fictional wizard-in-training Harry Potter the "king of darkness, the devil."
...
"Magic is always a turn to the devil," said the Roman Catholic priest, according to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.
"Magic is always a turn to the devil". Hmmmm... it seems to me his church is full of magic:
Transubstantiation? Magic
Healing Lepers? Magic
A guy raised from the dead? Magic!
A god who watches everything yuo do and deals eternal punishment for making fun of Joe Ratzinger? Magic!
By George, he's right! Magic is the work of the devil!
Most adults know though there is no such thing as magic, and in that light, the "devil" responsible becomes pretty obvious.
(I note approvingly the Canadians have properly categorized this in "Arts and Entertainment").
Joe Ratzinger has a chief exorcist who, while not busy helping folks avoid responsibility for their actions (or in some cases treatment for the schizophrenia) by blaming human failing on an imaginary demi-god, has time to do a Dan Quayle act on Harry Potter:
Pope Benedict XVI's chief exorcist, Rev. Gabriele Amorth, has called fictional wizard-in-training Harry Potter the "king of darkness, the devil."
...
"Magic is always a turn to the devil," said the Roman Catholic priest, according to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.
"Magic is always a turn to the devil". Hmmmm... it seems to me his church is full of magic:
Transubstantiation? Magic
Healing Lepers? Magic
A guy raised from the dead? Magic!
A god who watches everything yuo do and deals eternal punishment for making fun of Joe Ratzinger? Magic!
By George, he's right! Magic is the work of the devil!
Most adults know though there is no such thing as magic, and in that light, the "devil" responsible becomes pretty obvious.
(I note approvingly the Canadians have properly categorized this in "Arts and Entertainment").
The Lowest Threshold Ever Set By Man
as expressed by Presidential Candidate Ron Paul:
It just happens, Tim, that I get more support from black people today than any other Republican candidate, according to some statistics.
LOL!
It just happens, Tim, that I get more support from black people today than any other Republican candidate, according to some statistics.
LOL!
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