Save The Internet

In a recent comment, Kristi linked to a site which we as independent website owners/operators, ie. the Little Guys, ought to frequent and support. It’s sad to see that so many conservative leaders are slow getting on this bandwagon. We know that corporate pork and funding flow equally among the parties, but it seems as though the recent generation of Democrat Liberal leaders are being very much more vocal about their support of net neutrality.

Acting Presidential

President Bush has spoken, Democrats and assorted scoundrels take heed and quake in fear, for the Commander in Chief has found his voice.

“Democrats in the House in an act of political theatre voted to substitute their judgement for that of the military commanders on the ground in Iraq.”

“Today a narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a spending bill that has no chance of becoming law.”

George Bush, March 23 2007

*Note: this statement does not anticipate any continuation of said Presidential actions and vociferous voicings by said President.

New York Times: Bush Vows Veto

UK Financial Times: Bush vows to veto Iraq pull-out bill

Can’t Get Away

It’s been interesting observing the responses I’ve had to my listening to conservative talk radio (Limbaugh, Medved, Ingram, Prager, etc) in my office at my current job. One guy keeps telling me to put on rap music. Rap music is NOT an option. The project manager, when he’s in the office, laughs sardonically and tells me how mad it makes him when he hears of the absurdities of our increasingly socialized nation. I realize he’d not be able to get involved very well in social change. His anger is quick and over soon and so would his drive for change. I realize how I’m geared for activity in social change, my ability to laugh off many things, my long involvement in cultural change, etc. At times I’ve wished I could get away from the need to fight constantly. Part of the reason I felt like I needed to leave California was because of the constant fight to keep any semblance of correct social order. But I know that I am who I am for a reason. God gives me purpose, like all others. Part of my purpose is to fight. And there are definitely issues here in my new home in Illinois.

It is odd how quiet legislators become when they are working on issues such as Homosexual ‘rights’. Kinda like small children: when they’re making noise, you know they’re all right, but once things get quiet, you go looking for them to see what trouble they’re causing. I can’t get away from the issues, but perhaps that is a good thing. There are some things worth fighting for, and the battle is not over when I decide it’s over. Somewhat like the war in Iraq, just because liberals and turncoats of any stripe decide arbitrarily that it is time to leave.

I Don’t Like You Either

I’m moving into a two bedroom apartment soon, upstairs in the home of a family whose church I attend. I’m looking for a house-mate to help with rent. I’m kinda particular about who I’m willing to allow in the apartment with me as house-mate: he’s gotta be a guy and he’s gotta be a Christian, he’s gotta be clean and he’s gotta be able to put up with me. Nothing to hard right?

So I post an ad titled “Christian man, nice neighborhood, good family” on a popular website and a helpful and friendly monitor sent me a message warning me that my ad violated the law, specifically the Federal Fair Housing Act. Apparently it is illegal to post an ad stating either your preference of religion or your personal religion, both these cases adding up to discrimination.

I’m a little hot under the collar over this travesty, so I make a quick check of other postings on the site and notice plenty of “Male Roommate” titles which I assumed would be discriminatory as well and therefore illegal. I quickly replied back to the monitor:

Matthew:

I trust you’ve notified those who are practicing sex discrimination and other religions as well.

And he patiently replied:

Monitor:

Nope, it’s just Christians that I hate.. heh.. Just kidding. Sorry I didn’t mean to be rude. Yeah every once in a while but very rarely I’ll see someone posting that they are looking for a Muslim roommate or whatever and sure, I’ll e-mail them and/or flag their posting too. As for sex discrimination, it’s actually legal to discriminate on the basis of sex in some rental situations where parts of the living arrangement is shared, such as the bathroom, etc… e.g. an hermaphrodite could advertise that he/she’s looking for a only male, only a female, or only an hermaphrodite roommie. But it’s not legal to discriminate on the basis of religion even in these situations.

Well anyway, sure of course everyone, including myself, discriminates on the basis of religion when they’re looking for a roommate, and I don’t have a problem with it. That seems reasonable, since religion is part of a person’s culture, and if you’re living with someone, sharing living space to some extent, then you want someone whose culture will be compatible with yours.

I guess it’s just preferable for all of us if we can keep advertisements from discriminating specifically on the basis of religion, because that sets up an environment where such discrimination is normalized by all who read the advertisement, so then in people’s minds and actions this discrimination may spill over into other types of rental arrangements, such as a regular apartment or house rental where the person renting it out is not living and socializing with the person renting it. And that really sucks… Wether you’re Christian, Muslim, athiest, wether you do have a family with kids, don’t have a family with kids, wether you’re old, young, middle-aged, there are landlords out there who will discriminate against you because of it. I got denied an apartment the other day because I own a motorcycle, and that, sadly, is legal…

Which answer caused me to think about equality and discrimination again. I’ve thought about it a bit recently, but I’m still at a loss to define truly immoral discrimination versus allowable preference:

Matthew:

Ouch, bummer about the cycle. They thought it would be too noisy? I’d agree with them there :), But I know really nice people who like cycles. I’d like to look up info on the case history or precedents involved in the sex discrimination allowances, that would make for an interesting study.

Personally, I believe the only basis for moral discrimination is that based on changeable characteristics. Any unchangeable characteristic (sex or race, etc) cannot be a basis for any moral discrimination ie. it is immoral to discriminate based on unchangeables. There is a difference between preference and discrimination: it is not discrimination to say I prefer to date white women, both of which (white and female) are unchangeable characteristics and therefore immoral to discriminate based upon. This is merely a statement of preference within a state (activity or relationship) where preference is allowable and expected. I’m not sure how to define appropriately the difference between preference and discrimination, but there are times when comparing similar actions in two different situations, one will be preference and allowable and one will be discrimination and immoral.

Though, personal beliefs aside, being as I am a citizen of America and therefore subject to the laws of this country, I do have to abide by the laws of this land while working to change those I see as immoral.

Thanks for the heads up on this issue. I must say my second response was not sent with the nicest of intentions or needed grace, I apologize, I was wrong.

So I’m still at a loss. How do you define allowable versus immoral and wrong discrimination?

Don’t You Wish…

Don’t you wish your printer worked this fast? Memjet says this will be out within a year or so. The trick? This inkjet printer does not have a sliding assembly with the cartridge or cables and heads. It apparently has a head the width of the entire page.

They Can’t Handle The Truth

The Washington Post writes (registration required) an article about the Hillary-1984 video on Youtube.com which I posted here recently. Politicians and any other power hungry people in leadership positions cannot stand the internet because of the ultimate information source it represents. Information is against all lies and all closed systems.  So read what is said about their worries for the future:

Internet content does not have to meet the strict reporting standards that television and radio ads must observe. That makes the Web the medium of choice for stealthy tactics by partisans operating outside the campaigns.

Partisans operating outside campaigns? As though the campaigns are paradigms of virtue and truth. They just can’t handle real truth or even the chance of it finding them.

I Break The Law

Since November I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, a two year old HP Pavilion dv1000 I purchased new. Every time I install that legally free operating system I break the law. I own, as do most of you no doubt, movies on DVD that I enjoy watching on the laptop. However, to watch a DVD you need to have something called a codec, a file which contains instructions for decoding the information on a DVD and presenting it as video and audio streams.

Contrary to common sense, the information on the DVD is not just basic video and audio information laid out for your reader software or hardware to read. Instead, to ‘protect’ the content copyright holders, the information is encrypted and must be decrypted using decryption keys available only from the holders of the copyright. Part of the stipulations for employing the decryption involve working to prevent ‘unauthorized use or duplication’ by using the hardware or software which is allowed to play the media. The result is that open systems such as Linux and BSD are not allowed, legally, to use decryption codecs to play DVDs.

So I use a legal piece of hardware, that I purchased, running software that I am licensed to use, legally, trying to play media that I have purchased, legally, and have not copied or done anything else to infringe the license of the media, and installing the tools necessary to play these disks makes me a dirty criminal. This is not an issue with the DMCA specifically, but it is the same principle. Legally, the laws protect the producers of the media, not the creators or the users. Copyright law is screwed up seriously.

Thankfully, my law breaking actually makes it possible to watch movies, because a bright young chap we like to call DVDJon has written a program which ‘hacks’ the encryption and allows me to use all that legal hardware and software to illegally watch disks I have the legal right to watch. But the principle… that’s what matters.

Must See TV

I know this is old news now, but it’s never too late to see something cool… and Hillaryous!

Top Ten Reasons To Be A Statistician

I read this list off of my Statistics Professors’ T-shirt. It has been a long time since that class but I kept this list with me ever since. Though I must say, my copy of the list is elsewhere at the moment (at the bottom of one of my packing boxes likely), and I found the same T-shirt at this site:

1. Deviation is considered normal
2. You feel complete and sufficient
3. You always wanted to learn the entire Greek alphabet anyway
4. You can legally comment on someone’s posterior distribution
5. You may not be normal but you are transformable
6. You never have to say you are certain
7. You are honestly significantly different
8. You never have to be right-only close
9. Estimating parameters is easier than dealing with real life
10. Statisticians are normal, everyone else is skewed

I’ve found other good reasons to be a statistician, like:

• You are a ‘mean’ lover
• You do it discretely and continuously
• You are right 95% of the time
• No one wants your job

Do you have any other good reasons to be a statistician? I’m not one, but I think statisticians are cool. Caveat: I don’t want to marry one. You think it’s hard enough having a normal girl tell you home many times you’ve screwed something up, imaging if she started bringing out curves and graphs illustrating the normal distributions of your screw ups… no thanks!

Braying Fools Rebuffed

The Chicago Sun-Times published an opinion article that tells it like it is.

Taking issue with everything the Bush administration attempts to do and labeling it as wrong, illegal, a challenge to our civil rights or overreaching one’s authority has become a partisan mantra built on fake issues…

… Your tax dollars are paying for it.