Shots Across The Bow

Sunday at the Home Place

We opened all the windows and gave the house a good airing out, and then my daughter and I drove to the store with the car windows down, and the sun roof open.

If this is the result of global warming, all I can say is "Bring it on!"

In fact, just to make sure that we keep this weather around a bit longer, I started up my SUV and let it idle for 2 hours. And to multiply the effect of the CO2 exhaust, I plan on generating some methane by making chili for dinner tomorrow night.

No need to thank me; I'm just trying to do my part to help out.

Hamas is now the Majority party for the Palestinians

About 3 years or so ago, I got into a discussion on this blog about whether or not there was a silent majority of moderate Palestinians cowed into silence by the violence of the more radical fringe groups. I said no, there wasn't.

I guess I was right.

Tragically, it appears that the presence of the Israeli Army was the only thing that allowed even a semblence of security in the Palestinian areas. One they withdrew, factional violence escalated, and now a majority of Palestinians (75% of those eligible to vote did so) have voted for a group who openly endorse the violent destruction of Israel.

This is not a good thing.

While I'm being Irritating...

Here's a question that's been bugging me for quite a while.

How is it that women can say "It's my body; my choice" when we talk about abortion then turn around and say "You can't take your clothes off for money" when we talk about strip clubs?

Something just does not track with me on this one. It's okay to kill a fetus, but it's not okay to bare a boob for a dollar?

C'mon, that just doesn't make sense!

And don't give me the whole "exploitation" thing, because the only one getting exploited in this game is the chump with a pocket full of singles.

I started thinking about this when I heard on the news that there was a couple of shootings at Raymond's, a pool bar out on Clinton Highway. It used to be a strip club until Knox County regulated them out of business because 'adult oriented businesses' create crime.

You know, I was in Raymond's a time or two when it was an 'adult oriented establishment', and as I recall, while the women were stripping, nobody got shot at. In fact, the only crime I'm aware of was the fact that they charged $3.00 for a Coke.

The Obligatory Brokeback Mountain Post

!!!WARNING!!!

The following post may be deemed offensive by people sensitive to the needs of people living with alternate sexualities, those who in fact have alternate sexualities, those with no discernable sexuality at all, liberals, and sheep. For these people, and the rest of the humor impaired, I suggest you do not hit the "more" link, and instead spend the next 5 minutes or so in meditative contemplation on the wonders of our world. For the rest of us, onward, but certainly not upward...

Has anyone else noticed the irony of a movie featuring gay shephards? Why are folks so happy about it, like it's a major revelation or something. Are we celebrating the progress of shepherds from bestiality to homosexuality?

"Hell Martha, at least them boys have finally latched onto the right species! Sell my stock in Velcro!"

And why do all the ads and commentary call it a movie about gay cowboys? Are there any cows in the movie, much less herds of cattle? How about a stampede? Everybody knows you can't have a movie about cowboys without a stampede.

Do sheep even stampede? I'd bet not, because if they did, the first shepherd to ever pull the wool over his thighs would never have survived the experience. He'd have been found dead in the pasture with his pants around his ankles and little hoof prints all over his body.

But hey, it's a great movie, all the critics love it, and you chould all go and see it. For me, I'm just going to watch The Cowboys with John Wayne before Ang Lee remakes it into a NAMBLA wet dream.

Didn't Somebody say that about Blogging?

I just read John Hawkin's dismissal of the current state of podcasting. It sounded remarkably familiar, and I realized his argument was almost identical to that used by the MSM to put down blogging.

• Too small
  
• Inept
  
• No way to make money out of it.
  
• Passing fad.

And I think we all know how that turned out.

To give John credit, he does realize that podcasting may have potential, but his advice to take a wait and see approach bugs me just a little bit. The early adopters are the innovators who will shape the medium. Why discourage them? Of course, the early adopters are the kind of people who will blithely ignore any naysayers and do what they want anyway.

As a side note, comparing podcasting to talk radio isn't a very good comparison because talk radio is an interactive medium, while podcasting isn't. A better analog for talk radio would be a moderated chat room, while podcasting would be better compared to community programming on cable.

For a podcast to succeed, it will need one of two things, preferably both: unique, entertaining content and/or high production values. You either have to have something to say that people will want to hear, or enough flash to mask the fact that your show is totally inane.

No Big Surprise: Joel Stein

I'm not sure why so many folks on the right are getting so exercised about Stein's admission that he doesn't support the troops, and his statement that by volunteering to serve, they "willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism."

We've heard worse before.

It's a fairly common, but by no means universal feeling among the left that supporting the troops lends at the very least a tacit level of support for their mission. Stein just has the guts to come out and admit it.

Not only that, but he's echoing many on the right, who've said from the beginning that you cannot support the troops if you do not support their mission.

So why all the fuss? When the spectrum of progressive thought runs from Joe Lieberman clear to the venemous hatred of Ted Rall and Michael Moore, Stein clearly isn't worth more than a quick and quiet dismissal.

Not a Big Surprise

From the Grouchy Old Cripple, I found this quiz. Here's how I scored:

You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on! Philosophy 100% Mathematics 100% Journalism 100% Engineering 92% English 92% Psychology 75% Theater 75% Linguistics 67% Biology 58% Dance 50% Sociology 42% Chemistry 42% Art 42% Anthropology 33% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

Mathematician, philosopher and journalist? Me?

My Last Post

Folks, it's been 4 years and just over 2300 posts since I started this thing. I've talked about everything under the sun, shared large portions of my life with you, wrote jokes told stories, and even offered up an entertaining science lesson or two. I've spent countless hours working to come up with enjoyable posts, written with a certain style and flair. I've done research, looking up facts in government databases, always an exciting time, let me tell you. I've had encounters both real and virtual with the famous, the near famous, the almost famous, and the infamous. I've met some really nice people and gone shooting with them. I've caused a well known columnist to throw a conniption fit in front of the entire blogosphere. I've been the recipient of many Instalanches. I've outlasted millions of other bloggers. I've seen my traffic grow from a dozen hits a day to a couple of hundred, some of which represent actual people and not comment spambots.

And what do I have to show for all this work?

A couple million words on a server in Florida and $1.63 in the tip jar!

I mean, I got into this whole blogging thing like everybody else, to meet women, and it just hasn't happened. I don't know what the problem is but I haven't gotten a single date from this thing and I've got calluses on my butt from sitting in this chair so long.

You know, when Carrot Top gets more groupies than you do, it's a sign that it's time to make a change.

And so I'm done.

No, I won't be back. And I won't hang around and comment on other people's sites.

I'm done.

I've got nothing else to say, and even if I did, I don't want to say it here.

I'm done. Not another word.

I'm going to find a social life, dammit, one with women in it, and not relatives but real women I can kiss and not feel funny afterward. (Sharing too much again, aren't I?)

I'm done. I'm gone.

Out the door, putting a lock on the keyboard, erasing my bookmarks and moving off into the real world. Forget the blogosphere, I'm venturing out into the...ummm...realosphere.

I mean it this time. I really do. Not another word. There's really nothing left to say. Except that post I'm working on about my aquarium. And the posts I've come up with about remodeling the house. Oh yeah, and some new stuff about the kids, including an announcement about one of them.

But that's it. There isn't anything more I have to say. I'm done.

Except that I've had a really good time doing this, and really enjoyed meeting all of you that I've met whether virtually or really. (really? Yeah, I guess it works.)

I'm outta here. I'm Caspar.

Thanks to Instapundit, for getting me started, Uncle for getting me shooting, Les for letting me pick his brains about ecommerce, Michael for linking so often, and of course my loyal readers, both of whom have made all the blood and sweat I poured into this page worthwhile.

But all good things must end, and the same goes for this blog. So here they are; we've come to it at last: the final words of the final post of this blog.

I've thought about them for awhile, considering what to say if this day ever came to pass. What can I say that I haven't already said? What explanation can I give that doesn't sound hopelessly corny, or obscenely egotistical? I debated endlessly, wrote hundreds of "Final Statements" that summed up everything that I've been trying to say for the last 4 years. And I realized that it was an impossible task, so I decided to try and just hit the highlights. Since there really were no highlights, that idea failed as well. So finally, after much deliberation and careful thought, I came up with the following 7 words:

Just kidding folks. I'll see you tomorrow!

Illegal Immigrant or Guest Worker?

R. Neal posts about a survey on illegal immigrants and their labor conditions here in the US. I responded in his comments, and since I'm short on time today (remodeling projects tend to expand and eat up all available time once you start) I'll just send you over there to read it.

It's Alive!

R. Neal has cobbled together the best parts of the old SKB site, along with pieces from K2K, Metro blab, and assorted other ventures, filed off the appropriate serial numbers, given the thing a shiny new coat of paint, and called it Knoxviews.

I've never seen a group blog site that is as integrated as this one is. It's clear that R. Neal put a lot of effort into getting this thing rolling, and I hope it goes well. Given the spirited nature of the debates seen in the past, it certainly will not get boring!

I've signed up under the pen name Rich Hailey.

Ain't I creative?

Fatherhood:It Never Ends

Michael Silence, Say Uncle, and Les Jones all have beautiful little baby girls, roughly the same age. And when I say roughly, that means they could be anywhere from 6 months to 2 years apart. I've been past the baby thing for quite some time, and while I did it 6 times, for some reason, possibly massive and prolonged sleep deprivation, they all tend to blur together now, so my estimate of their ages may be off a bit.

But they are all beautiful, that's for certain; just ask the proud poppas.

And now Uncle and Les each have another little one on the way. (Michael, you're falling behind!) Or more accurately, Melissa and Mrs. Uncle have another one on the way. All these babies make me think about raising my small herd and the days I spent changing diapers and wiping butts. To be fair, I did spend a lot of time away from home during those years since I was in the Navy, and even when we were in port, I had to stay on the ship at least one night in four. But when I was home, I did as much as I could. In fact, the first time my future ex left me (I'm a slow learner sometimes) I cared for my middle daughter, a newborn at the time, singlehandedly for several months, until her mother and I got back together. It was frightening and exhilerating at the same time, not to mention exhausting, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I got to be closer to my daughter than most dads ever get the chance to be, and it was a wonderful thing.

Little babies are awesome. Yeah, there was work involved, and mess, but watching a little person begin to discover the world for the first time brought back some of the wonder of discovery to my life as well. To a baby, everything is new, and good, and because we parents go to great lengths to shield them from the traumas and tragedies of life, for the most part discovery is glorious. I can remember one summer afternoon in Bremerton, sitting out on the lawn with my oldest, who was 4 at the time, watching a worm bury itself in the dirt. My son was fascinated by the process, and because he was, I was as well. We sat there watching for about 10 minutes until the worm was all gone, then went on with our day, and I never felt like that time was wasted.

But now my youngest is 14, and the discoveries aren't quite so wondrous anymore. They discover rejection, failure, heartbreak, cruelty, violence, and hatred. As they grow older, we can't shield them from everything anymore, and wouldn't even if we could, because in order to function in this world, you have to become familiar with all of it, good or bad. As I watch my kids fight their way through puberty and adolescence, I wish I could either bring them back to the innocence of their earlier days, or inject all the lessons I've learned directly into their cerebral cortex, to save them from making the same mistakes I made.

But it doesn't work that way, and all I can do is guide them, give them my advice, and watch them ignore it because I'm an old fart, and there's no way I could know what it's like to be a kid today. They have to learn from their own mistakes, and all I can do is to be there to pick them up when things go wrong, give them a hug (if they'll let me; hugging isn't always cool) and set them back on their feet to try again.

Following my kids' journey through adolascence has me looking back on the days of 2AM feedings, dirty diapers, and baby puke stains on every collar of every shirt in my closet with fondness and nostalgia for the good old days. You can't fix a broken heart with a kiss and a band aid.

My children are all making the difficult transition from child to adult, and it seems like just when I think they need my help the most, they are the least willing to accept it. I'm hoping it's because I've raised strong kids who want to be self reliant and make their own decisions, but sometimes I wonder if I'm just fooling myself. I watch them during their triumphs and defeats, and just hope that they remember a few of the things that I tried to teach them.

But lord, some of the decisions they're making right now! One has gone from wanting to be an astrophysicist to being a waiter on Key West. Another is dating someone 10 years their senior. Another wants to move to Mexico instead of going back to school. It's enough to give a guy gray hairs! (Which explains my new, clean-shaven look, by the way.)

In the movie Parenthood, Jason Robards has a line that really resonates for me right now. He was talking about raising kids and said:

It's like your Aunt Edna's ass. It goes on forever and it's just as frightening.

It's frightening because you're never really sure you're doing it right, and you have no way of knowing until it's too late to do anything about it. All you can do is love them, guide them, teach them, and encourage them, and then hope it's enough as they begin their own lives.

Randy Nichols and the THP; An Illustration of Ethics

Randy Nichols has created the "J. Wellington Wimpy" defense in his letter to Gov Bredesen concerning the THP fixing tickets for employees of Lays Packing Company. It seems that the company made it a practice to give hams to the THP as gifts. According to Mr. Nichols, "This may well have created an atmosphere where Lay Packing Company employees felt comfortable in asking for ‘favors’; however, that would not be in and of itself a criminal offense."

Or as Wimpy would say, "I'll gladly give you a ham today to fix a ticket next Tuesday."

As long as there is some separation between the gift and the favor, everything's cool with Randy.

Sorta makes you want to see what kind of gifts he's been getting, doesn't it?

Osama Offers a Truce

I now offer you the Reader's Digest Condensed version ofhis radio address:

People of the United States: We are winning in Afghanistan and Iraq. So please stop killing us!

Osama may not be dead, but his brain surely is.

Donald Sensing says it even better.

The Wrong Answer for the Right Reason?

This one is tough.

The headlines read that "Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law"

Seemingly great news for fans of voluntary euthanasia, AKA assisted suicide, but on reading the article, that's not exactly what happened. Now I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the argument was not about whether Oregon physicians have the right to kill their patients,but whether the Federal government has the power under the Controlled Substances Act to punish them for it. Obviously, that is a much narrower argument, and although I think that a doctor's job is to preserve life, and not hasten death, (you know, the whole First, do no harm thing) in this light, I agree with the Supreme Court's decision.

I'm a big fan of limited government and State's Rights. It is clear that the Constitution says nothing about a right to die, which means that the decision is left to the States and the people. The people of Oregon decided that they wanted their doctors to be allowed to kill them; more power to 'em. Just don't expect me to be moving to Oregon any time soon. The Federal government does not have "controlling legal authority" as Al Gore would say.

So, I agree with the decision, even though I think physician assisted suicide is the wrong road.

A Good Reason to Vote Third Party

I know, I know.

"If you don't vote [insert party of your choice here], then you're voting for [insert other party here], and that's just wrong!"

"They're all crackpots and loons, with no realistic platform."

"You're wasting your vote when you vote for a candidate that's certain to lose."

Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.

But considering the choices I'm hearing for 2008, and the past performance of the last few "real" candidates, both winners and losers, I'm pretty much convinced that a vote for any candidate is a wasted one.

What does it say about our electoral process that after months of searching, campaigning, and politicking, the best two people we can come up with to lead our nation are George Bush and John Kerry?

Nothing good, that's for certain.

Pardon my cynicism, but the leaders of our two major parties have been behaving like two spoiled children stuck in the back of a car on a 12 hour drive going home after Christmas, and I'd dearly love to pull the car over, get in the back seat, and blister the bottoms of both spoiled brats.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Fear and a Kitchen Floor

I like reading horror novels and going to scary movies. Not the tacky slasher films and gore fests; they're not scary, just gross, not to mention misogynistic. One of my favorite scary movies was Magic, with Anthony Hopkins. Written by William Goldman (Princess Bride), it follows the Hopkins character's ascent to stardom and his descent into madness.

It's intense, scary, and fairly light on the gore.

Of course, I'm a big Stephen King fan as well, and although he really slacked off for awhile, the Dark Tower series stayed strong to the end.

But the scariest thing I've ever read was not from a horror story. It was in a Tarzan book. Tarzan was in the water fighting a crocodile and lost. The croc took him in the death roll and Tarzan passed out from lack of oxygen.

When he came to, he was in the croc's lair. It was pitch black, the air was fetid, the space was too small to move around much, water was seeping from the muddy roof, and Tarzan could hear the croc breathing.

Picture that in your mind for a moment. You wake up in a small, muddy hole underwater. There's no light; you can't see anything. The air is bad, not much oxygen and smells like rot, decay, and croc farts. You don't know the way out; you don't know how far you'll have to swim or in what direction to get to fresh air. You can barely move because the hole is just barely big enough for you to fit.

And we haven't even mentioned the dad gum crocodile yet!

I don't remember how Tarzan escaped, but I still have nightmares about waking up in that croc hole.

Now, I know what you're thinking; "What does all this have to do with a kitchen floor?"

Well,I'll tell you.

He's going to tell he's going to tell He's going to tell he's going to tell He's going to tell he's going to tell

The management would like to apologize for this spontaneous Monty Python flashback and assure you all that we are taking all steps necessary to insure that it will never, ever, ever happen again.

Probably.

I just started a home improvement project; I'm replacing my kitchen floor. The linoleum the previous owner put in was a noxious brown color, and to make matters worse, it was coming up in places. So I decided to replace it with something a little more modern and a little less drab.

Simple enough, right?

Well, if it was, I wouldn't be writing this little piece, now would I?

When I started to pull up the linoleum, I discovered that the previous owner had actually chosen that awful stuff, because underneath it was a layer of luan, and underneath that was another layer of linoleum.

And this is where it gets scary.

The first layer was bad enough, but after I started ripping up the luan, what I saw was so disgusting, so vile, that I don't think I'll be troubled by the croc hole any longer. Not only was the linoleum straight out of a Lileks book, but it was covered in a nasty, slimy, black mold. To think that stuff was hiding under my floor in the room where I made all our meals is just too nasty to contemplate.

But at least it will be gone soon. I'm taking the flooring out all the way down to the sub-floor.

Judge Edward Cashman

So, let me get this straight. Say I went up to Vermont, found Judge Cashman's wife, and raped her. (Man, it's hard for me to even write that.) I'm not saying I'm going to, this is just a hypothetical. And say that my reason for raping her was simply to prove a point to her husband.

Obviously, I would be a low risk to re-offend because the judge can only have one wife, and I would have already made my point. So, do you think Judge Cashman would sentence me to 60 days, and an anger management program?

My guess, and it is just a guess here, is NO BLEEPIN' WAY! I'd rot in that jailhouse.

I have a question for the judge. If this guy is 'low risk to re-offend', then why does he need treatment at all? How in the world can the State of Vermont classify a child molester, a group with staggering recidivism rates, a 'low risk to re-offend' in the first place? Everywhere else in the country, they put these guys on registries and keep tabs on 'em because they know that most of them will molest again. In Vermont, apparently they give 'em a Get Out of Jail Free Card! How many pedophiles do you think are sprinting to Vermont right now?

So when this bastard molests another child, I'd say that the father of that child has every reason to go directly to the judge and shoot him right between the eyes.

If I were on that jury, I would vote to acquit.

Simply unbelievable.

Bill Hobbs Calls it a Wrap

Another one of the early members of the RTB is hanging up his keyboard. Bill, take care, best of luck, and we'll see you soon. (They never stay away for very long)

Curse You, Puppyblender! A Study in Marketing Methods

I've been sorta hinting that i was going to add something new to these pages, and I've been working feverishly behind the scenes to get it ready to go. As a matter of fact, I debated launching it last Friday, but it wasn't really where I wanted it to be.

I had to decide which marketing method I was going to follow. I could follow the path of rushing my product out to meet a self imposed deadline, and correct the bugs later, henceforth known as the BG strategy, or I could wait, let the deadline pass, and work to make sure that the roll out was smooth and problem free, called the SJ strategy. The former leads works if you already have a mno[polistic stranglehold on the market, while the latter works to build interest, resulting in an avid, some might even say crazed fan base.

Obviously, I elected to follow the SJ method, and hold off until I had everything right. Unfortunately, one of the flaws of the SJ technique is that one of the big dogs just might jump out with a similar plan, and when you do launch, you'll look like a pale imitation.

And last week, Instapundit did that very thing.

The big addition to SATB was (and still is) going to be a weekly podcast. I'v been working on builng the opening sequenc, recording family and triends and editing the thing together. It's pretty cool, but isn't quite right yet. I've been teaching myself to use the editing software, along with the MIDI and music editing packages to put the whole thing together. I'm learning a lot, but it's usually the hard way, i.e. "Well, that sounds like a gerbil caught in a garbage disposal. I guess that's not the way to do that."

Anyway, I'm still planning on doing the podcasts anyway, just for the fun of it. But I wanted y'all to know that when I do get them going, it won't be because I'm imitating Glenn. As I've said before, if I decide to imitate anything about him, it will be to find a pretty, intelligent wife.

His car's not bad either...

Downloading and Copyrights

I admit it; I download content all the time. I'm a "pirate." Of course, I mostly download current TV shows, since it's more convenient for me to watch them on my PC than using a VCR or Tivo, and with the wireless network in my house, way more flexible. I can watch Numb3rs when I want, where I want, and commercial free.

According to Hollywood, that makes me one of the bad guys.

But here's a puzzle for you:

I set my VCR and taped Numb3rs the other night because I was busy doing something else, and I wanted to watch the show. Yesterday, I sat down and watched the show.

Have I violated copyright law?

The obvious answer is no, absolutely not. Under fair use, I have the right to time shift programming. In fact, I have the right to archive that programming as long as it is for private, noncommercial use.

Now, suppose my son Adam also missed the show, and I give him the tape to watch in his bedroom.

Am I in trouble with the law now?

Nope. That is still fair use.

OK, now assume my son is deployed overseas, and I send him the tape through the mail since AFRTS isn't available.

I'm still in good shape with the law because it's still private, noncommercial use.

What if I convert the show from a VHS tape to a digital file and email it to him? Now, where do I stand?

I'm still OK, because the show was freely available over the air.

But what if I recordeed the exact same show off of Comcast Cable and then sent it on to my son. Now I'm a criminal. I'm doing the same thing I did with the video tape, yet according to the DMCA, I am now a pirate.

Something stinks here, doesn't it?

Don't even try to think logically about it because there is no logic. The only difference in the two scenarios is that I'm copying the content from a different signal. It's the exact same content, right down to the commercial breaks, but because the signal is different, I could go to jail.

How did we get to such a ridiculous place?

Well, you have to remember about 30 or so years ago, when people began buying VCRs in large numbers. At the time, Hollywood studios opposed the VCR, saying it would devastate their revenues for reruns. If you remember, they even wanted to put a special 'piracy' tax on video cassettes to compensate them for their lost revenue.

They lost the fight.

Then video stores began renting out copies of movies, and Hollywood had another conniption. They sued, saying that their rights were being infringed, because nobody would buy a movie they could rent.

They lost that fight as well.

Remember when movies started coming out with different pricing structures? Some would be priced to sell to the consumer, at $25 or so, while the popular ones would be priced at $100 or so, for the rental market. They soaked the rental store owner untill they figured out that people would in fact buy movies even if they could rent them, as long as the movies were good.

Then came the satellite dishes. Not digital, like DirecTV, but the big, 10' analog jobs that moved with a hand crank. Cable was hard to find outside of major cities, and for many people, the only way to get the programming was to buy a C-band dish, similar to the ones the cable companies and network affiliates used. Dish owners were able to pick up most cable channels, as well as network feeds and live feeds from sporting events, etc. (I can remember one Monday Night Football broadcast, hearing Don Meredith threaten to dangle Howard Cosell out the window of the broadcast booth by his ankles if Howard interrupted him one more time. This was during a commercial break and obviously didn't make the air. Unless you had a dish.)

Once the dish owner base grew large enough, the programmers started crying foul, claiming that using a satellite dish was piracy, and trying to haul the dish users into court. Their contention was that they owned the broadcast, and that their copyright meant that the simpple act of receiving an open signal was piracy. The son heard the book without paying for it. HBO and ESPN both began airing messages saying that their signal was only available to subscribers, and unauthorized reception was a crime. To make a low tech analogy, it would be like the copyright holder of a book saying that a father could not read a book aloud to his children because they hadn't paid for the book.

Pretty silly, right? They lost this fight as well.

The courts decided that if the signal was transmitted in the clear then those with satellite dishes were not breaking the law by receiving the signal. The courts went even further, and declared that if the programmers wanted to encrypt the signal to keep it secure, they could do so, but they were required to provide a way for dish owners to receive the programming at a cost commensurate with that of a cable customer.

In short, they had to play fair. The programmers began encrypting their signals, and selling decoders, and everybody was happy. In fact, most programmers significantly discounted satellite programming packages, recognizing the additional up front equipment expense faced by a dish owner. (In an amusing development, cable companies began suing satellite providers for encroaching on their territories, because suburban customers began installing dishes instead of cable, preferring the extra value the dish added. cf the Howard Cosell dangling by his ankles story) I can remember in 1995 paying just under $200 for an annual package that included everything, every movie channel, both east and west coast feeds, every sports channel, satellite radio, the whole shebang. You couldn't get basic cable for that.

While the courts had made their decisions, ruling against Hollywood irtually every time, the content providers refused to give up. They searched for a way to roll back the decisions, and with the DMCA, they found their vehicle.

While the law clearly indicates that taping or ripping a program off the air and then sharing it for noncommercial use is allowable,(Note carefully, I'm not talking about ripping TV shows from DVD collections, or movies, games, or music. I am specifically talking about TV shows ripped from a broadcast.) under the DMCA, if the signal has been encoded in any way, this is no longer true.

Now. let's examine this "encoding" thing. What does it mean? In the old C band days, it meant VideoCypher I and II and their successors, i.e. encryption specifically meant to prevent open broadcast. Today, however, we get a different answer. Today, "encoding" is defined as any signal processing whatsoever, including analog to digital conversion. And since this conversion lies at the heart of most cable systems and all satellite systems, if you have watch TV by any method other than rabbit ears, then by the DMCA definition, you can't copy diddly squat without their permission. In fact, the terms of the DMCA are so broad that TIVOing a show is illegal unless you use a DVR approved by the content provider. And you might as well forget the VCR, pal.

It gets worse.

Our caring government, who wants nothing but the best for us, is requiring that all broadcast programming be done in High Definition, possibly as early as 2008. HDTV is, you guessed it, a digital signal and therefore "encoded." That means that all programming, whether over the air, cable, or satellite, will meet the definition of protected content. And if you think I'm exagerrating the threat, programming providers are pushing for the adoption of a "broadcast flag" that will tell your modern HDTV receiver to prevent any recording of the content whatsoever, even on authorized equipment, unless the copyright holder authorizes it.

Between mandating HDTV and the DMCA, not only will the program providers have reversed their losses from the C band wars, they will have gone a lot further, basically eliminating the Fair Use provisions of copyright law. They will have complete control over what you watch, when you watch it, whether you can skip the commercials, and the equipment you watch it on.

How does pay per view everything sound? With commercials no less!

The day I can no longer control what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, and where, that's the day the TV becomes a damn fine boat anchor, and I get a new aquarium.

A Blonde Joke...for Everybody

In what may be a first, Rand Simberg tells a joke.

Hmmmm.

Not too bad for a day when I said I might not post at all. Maybe I ought to not post more often.

For the Love of God, Please Shut Up!

Pat Robertson is the Howard Dean of the fringe right, however the Republicans were smart enough not to put him in charge of the money. If you want an asinine statement, look no further than the 700 Club where Robertson can be found waxing lunatic over politics and culture.

His latest idiocy is to claim that Sharon's stroke was God's punishment for dividing the land of Israel. Isn't it odd that God didn't rain down strokes on all the invaders who sacked and divided and conquered Israel?

It sure would have made the history of the region a lot less bloody.

The Death of Innocents

Roger Keith Coleman was convicted of rape and murder and was executed for those crimes in Virginia. Now Va. Gov Mark Warner has ordered that the DNA evidence in the case be retested.

The stakes appear to be high; if he's exonerated, then death penalty opponents will have the martyr they've been desperately searching for. If he isn't, the system will once again demonstrate that it works.

But I think we're missing a key point here. The very fact that Gov. Warner believes that there was enough uncertainty about the case to revisit it demonstrates why the death penalty is unethical. Death is final; if you can't be absolutely certain, not mostly certain, or beyond a reasonable doubt, but absolutely certain without possiblitiy of error that the suspect is guilty, then you can't kill him. You may say that I'm holding us to an impossible standard, but it's no more impossible than bringing a wrongfully executed man back to life.

The counter argument is that you still have blood on your hands if the guy is not executed and gets out to rape or kill again.

That's crap. He has the blood on his hands, not you. Try this little thought experiment. You're in a room with 10 little Austrian boys. You're given a gun, and told that one of these little boys will grow up to be Hitler, but there is no way of knowing which one. You know that one of these children will grow up to murder millions if you don't shoot them all.

Do you take 9 innocent lives to kill one guilty one?

Let's make it an even closer analogy. 9 of the little bastards are Hitler clones, and there's only one innocent kid. Do you kill him to make sure you got the right 9?

If you aren't willing to pull the trigger on an innocent person, then you have no business supporting the death penalty. And if you are willing to pull that trigger, and knowingly murder an innocent, then I would suggest that you are every bit as dangerous as the bastard you're trying to kill.

This is where we'll be folks, if the DNA comes back and proves that Coleman was innocent.

Ariel Sharon

Arab leaders are hoping for Sharon's death and Palestinians are rejoicing over Ariel Sharon's stroke, and why shouldn't they? After all, he represents the hard line of Israeli politics, a "Bulldog" who has relentlessly opposed Palestine at every stance.

Except for agreeing in principle to a two state solution.

Except for withdrawing unilaterally from the Gaza Strip.

Except for forcibly dismantling Israeli settlements in the occu[ied territories.

Except for allowing Palestinian self rule in former occupied territories.

Except for splitting from the conservative Likud he co-fouded to form the moderate Kadima party to continue working to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts.

Yep, he's a hard liner all right.

I'm a Hostage in the War on Drugs

The other day, as I was standing in the pharmacy waiting for my background check to come in so I could buy some cough drops, it occurred to me that the War on Drugs is already over, and drugs won in a walk. Think about it; it's easier for a kid to score a bag of pot than it is for me to buy cold medicine.

And probably cheaper.

Does He Even Read What He Writes?

From Bob Krumm, via Michael Silence, I read this:

Undoubtedly, some will criticize me for placing blame on President Bush here. The defense will be that Bush didn't cause the explosion that collapsed the mine. My response will be that he didn't do anything to prevent it. In fact, if anything, the actions of his administration made the situation worse.

[Emphasis mine]
Blogger Scott Shields is clearly blaming President Bush for the collapse, and defending that action by referencing changes made by the MSHA during Bush's administration. Then, in what has to be one of the fastest flip-flops on record, when challenged on the ghoulishness of politicizing the tragedy, he says this:

If you've gotten this far, you likely know that this piece most certainly does not blame Bush for the Sago Mine disaster.

A hint for Scott; if you don't want people to think you are blaming the President, then don't say you are blaming the President.

Abramoff

I haven't written anything about him yet, because up until now, he wasn't guilty. Now he is.

Fry the bastard. Send him to a real jail, not some Federal minimum security country club. Let any pol who took his money join him there. He's everything that's wrong with politics rolled up into one slimy package.

Unfortunately, that ain't gonna happen. A few small fry will go down with him, but the big dogs will slip through as always. You don't get to be a big dog without learning how to survive this kind of garbage. Heck, old Honest Abe himself got caught up in a corruption scandal when he was a congress critters for fraudulently inflating travel vouchers, but it didn't seem to hurt his political career any.

You Mean People Actually Read These Things!

There's a funny article in Tuesday's News Sentinel. Apparently kids with My Space pages or blogs are discovering that their parents are reading them, and they are shocked.

They feel like their parents are invading their privacy.

Dear hearts, I think your privacy ends where the internet begins.

Building a Ship

As if I don't have enough to do, I decided to build a ship. Realizing that my time is limited, I decided not to build a full size ship and build a model instead. So I got this one.

It looked easy enough until I opened the box. Now, when I think model kit, I think of a few sheets of plastic parts that you twist out of the frames and glue together with plastic cement before painting. Total time, a couple of hours.

It took me a couple of hours to read through the manual for this puppy.

My first clue that I'd gotten in too deep (yet again) was looking at the box filled not with parts but strips of woods, bundles of cloth, and several sheets of drawings. There are no parts, folks. As I read through the manual, and saw that I had to build virtually everything, I began to wish I'd stuck with a Revell monster truck kit.

But life is nothing if not a series of challenges, so I spread everything out and got started.

Now guys, here is where being divorced comes in handy. NO longer is the kitchen table reserved forpedestrian duties like eating. It can be used as nature intended, for projects, games and incredibly complex models.

The first step was to cut out the frame pieces and assemble them. Since they go together very similarly to the glass pack moving boxes, and I've moved many times, I felt comfortable with this step.

Next, I had to install the main deck, which is that oval shaped piece of wood shown above. Note carefully the hole in the deck, which are for the masts. They become very important later.

As pretty as the deck is, it isn't realistic enough for this model, so the next step is to apply thin strips of wood to simulate a planked deck.

Notice anything missing? I didn't.

Next, I put on the upper deck and the bulkhead joining it to the main deck.

And the fo'c'sle.

It was about this point that I realized that the mast holes had somehow fallen off the model, and after looking around the floor for the holes, I decided I had to cut some new ones into the carefully laid and sanded strips.

It was painful plunging that sharp knife into the deck (Actually, I kinda enjoyed it, but don't tell anybody) but I did it, and I now have three well placed mast holes.

And two not so well placed.

And that's where the model stands today. The next step is to plank the hull, and then the really tricky detailed work begins.

I have a feeling that I'm going to be giving up caffeine for the next 6 months or so.

One More Time for Intelligent Design

A few weeks ago, I used Intelligent Design theory to demonstrate the weakness of Global Warming theory. In the comments on that post, Steven has presented an impassioned, albeit flawed, defense of ID. Since the post is a couple of weeks old, I decided to move my response up here.

First of all Rich, you don’t have the information to assume that ID proponents such as Dr Behe and myself are incorrect. To suggest that you KNOW we are in error is not at all truthful.

Actually, I do. One of the core principles of scientific research is that all aspects of our world result from natural, mechanical processes. As soon as you step away from that principle, you've left science behind and entered philosophy. The only way for ID to be considered science is to prove that life could not have occurred without divine intervention. The burden is on IDers to prove that life couldn't have evolved and they haven't come close to meeting that burden. As long as natural, mechanistic explanations can be found for the development of life, then the leap to ID is simply not justified. The fact that all of the explanations haven't been found in no way means that they won't.

Additionally, if you make the assumption that life was designed, where does that get you as far as science is concerned? What new knowledge comes from it? What experiments can you perform that would have any scientific meaning? The answer, of course, is none. Once you invoke a Designer as your answer, it becomes the answer to every question.

For these two reasons, ID is not science. Period.

Scientists would like to believe that Humans are the pinnacle of the Universal Food chain (not just terrestrial.)

This is simply not true. No biologist I know believes that there even is a top of the food chain, much less that man is at the top of it. In fact, many of the ones I've talked to can reel off several better candidates for top-of-the-heap honors, nearly all of them bacteria. Single celled organisms totally changed the atmosphere of the planet, a feat that dwarfs building the pyramids. And let‘s not forget that those single cell organisms will dine on our remains at the end of the day. The food chain is a cycle, not a ladder.

This leaves PLENTY of time for another culture to have evolved so to speak, beyond our imagination. But I can easly imagine that terraforming is their means of gardening, and perhaps even replicating.

Ah. Somebody has been reading their Francis Crick. There's a problem with the idea that life on Earth was seeded by some incredible advanced and ancient culture; it fails to answer the question of how life evolved, merely pushes it back one more generation. Put simply, how did that incredibly advanced and ancient culture (IAAA)come to be? An even more IAAA culture? Ok, where did they come from?

You know, it really helps when your answer actually answers the question you're asking. Panspermy doesn't.

As for survival of the fittest providing the mechanism for natural selection. How can anyone with half a mind believe that?” If survival were the only criteria, blue algae is doing quite nicely. Why change at all????

There are two critical errors in this one short statement and it's worth taking a bit of time to address them both.

First of all, to answer the question "Why change at all?" organisms do not change in order to survive; they survive because they change. (Thanks, Mrs. J!) You're putting the cart before the horse. Change occurs whether it brings a survival advantage or not; it occurs because of random mutations caused by multiple factors including transcription errors, cosmic radiation, etc. Change due to mutation is inevitable, regardless of whether it enhances or detracts the organisms ability to survive.

Second, "survival of the fittest" has been junked for decades now, and for the reason Steven suggests. It doesn't explain the thousands and thousands of species that make up the biosphere. As a simple example, if survival of the fittest were the only organizing principle, then the giraffe and zebra never would have evolved from their common ancestor. And looked at this way, it's clear that "survival of the fittest" suffers the same flaw as Steven's question of "Why change at all?" As we know now, the answer is that change is constant.

Biologists today favor natural selection as the mechanism of Darwin's evolutionary model, and that is quite a different beast altogether. Natural selection states that as organisms change, those changes may enhance that organism's ability to survive, which increases the probability that those changes will be passed on to the organism's offspring because the organism has a better chance of surviving long enough to reproduce and pass the changes on. Simultaneously, changes that reduce an organisms ability to survive are going to be less likely to get passed on to the organisms offspring, and will not spread through the population. Reproductive isolation limits the spread of positive change, creating drift between different populations, eventually resulting in the formation of two separate species. Note that neither species changed in order to improve their survival; instead, certain members of the original population reaped an advantage because of the change. Also note that while evolution is examined in terms of species, natural selection occurs at the individual organism level.

Going back to my example of the zebra and the giraffe, in a population of their common ancestor, some had a mutation that gave them a longer neck. Others had a mutation that gave them stripes. Both of these changes produced a survival advantage, (greater access to food and better camouflage), therefore both mutations had a higher probability of being passed on through offspring. This simple example demonstrates how a random process, mutation, can produce a highly structured result, and how that result can be so mindbogglingly diverse. And all without the need for an external designer.

As for “selected for”. ………This tired phrase has yet to have any definition or meaning…selected by what?”???…

“Selected for” is short hand for the process of natural selection. It does not apply that anyone or anything is doing the selection, but that the selection occurs through the action of natural forces, hence, “natural selection.”

Unless you speak from the paradigm of ID, there is surely no mechanism for selecting the proper order of amino acids to make the first protein.

Actually, there is. Lab experiments reproducing the conditions on earth prior to the emergence of life, (CO2 atmosphere, high temperature, lots of water, volcanic activity, electrical storms, etc) have produced all 20 amino acids with no design action required. The laws of chemistry are all that is needed, which leads me to a very important point. In the extreme conditions that existed prior to the origin of life, it is possible that other organizing principles were in operation. Just as Einsteinian physics supplanted Newtonian physics without invalidating it, so too may chaos theory, self-organizing systems, and complexity theory expand the reach of Neo-Darwinism in explaining the origins of life.

Steven’s question also contains another error in perception, that the first protein had a “right” order. At that point in time, any order was the right order simply because it represented order out of chaos, demonstrating the principle of self organization arising naturally. Once that is established, then ID is no longer needed.

Your alternate explanation of irreducible complexity is quite puzzling. Please understand that life makes far too many unbelievable choices too fast to employ this strategy. When a molecular machine doesn’t work out its not stored in the (Cell’s) garage, the organism dies.

Which is why men have nipples, and humans have vestigial tails, and an appendix, right?

The existence of these anatomical irrelevancies illustrate that extra parts do not automatically mean a broken machine. That kind of absolutism isn't seen very often in nature for the very reason that broken machines do in fact die. But the inclusion of junk biochemical chains doesn't automatically mean that the process won't function. Instead, we see mutations that weaken the organism’s ability to survive, like sickle cell anemia. Redundant complexity means that biochemical machines start out functioning, but inefficiently, as they are nearly random collections of biochemical processes. However, as mutation occurs, and unnecessary pieces are dropped, the biochemical machine functions more efficiently. Higher efficiency gives a survival advantage, and is more likely to be passed along. This process of refinement will eventually result in an irreducibly complex biochemical machine that operates at maximum efficiency. Interestingly enough, we have a very good example of this kind of junk redundant complexity that, according to Steven, should not happen. We have literally hundreds of thousands of amino acids tied up in junk DNA in our own genome. And we're still here.

Apparently redundancy is not automatically fatal as Steven would have us believe.

The theory of evolution has NOTHING to do with bio engineering (WHICH FYI, IS ID BY DEFINITION.) Turning genes on and off, spicing, and reverse engineering don’t require or employ an origin theory at all

There's another very common misconception buried in this paragraph, that evolution is an origin of life theory. It isn't. Never claimed to be. It was and is a description of how life evolved once it existed. There have been attempts to apply evolutionary theory to the origin of life, with greater and lesser degrees of success, but as I mentioned earlier, there are indications that other organizing principles may have been operative, along with natural selection. So Steven is right, biotech does not require an origin theory, but his point is irrelevant since evolution is not an origin theory. However, considering that genetics and evolution are inextricably tied together, to say that evolutionary theory has nothing to do with bio engineering is extremely naïve.

And there really is nothing more to say on the issue. Intelligent Design is simply not science, because as soon as you propose the existence of an agent outside the naturalistic universe, whether it be divine or an IAAA civilization, you’ve left science behind.

Bowling for TV

I watched bits and pieces of several football games yesterday as the traditional "Day after New Year's Day because we don't want to interfere with the NFL" football orgy took place.

By the end of the day, the SEC went 3-3 with Auburn, South Carolina and Georgia all falling in defeat. At least they got to play in a bowl game.

But I was really annoyed all day by the ABC logo in the upper left corner of the screen. At the start of almost every play, they had a yellow flare on the logo that looked like a flag. It was very distracting, and while it didn't ruin the game, I hope they fix it before the games tonight and tomorrow.

Who's playing, again?

Unions, Communism, and Capitalism

We'll start this year off with a continuation of a discussion started last year, about unions. In the comments section, and on his own blog, Chris Wage took me to task for my claims that in many, if not most cases, unions do more damage than good. Chris left the discussion behind when I pointed out a couple of gaping holes in his argument, ceding the field to facts and logic. Or maybe the holiday egg nog called louder than the debate. Who knows?

However, in the course of the discussion, he implied a couple of times that unions were a response to unrestrained capitalism, as if collective bargaining as practiced in the US, i.e. strikes, were somehow apart from capitalism.

This is a common perception, but I think it is actually a misperception. Trade unions predated the Communist revolution and in fact owe their roots more to the artisan and crafters' guilds of Medieval Europe than to Karl Marx. In fact, trade unions as we define them were strictly outlawed by the Soviets. Oh sure, there were organizations called trade unions, but as this report from the Soviet Congress makes clear, their primary purpose was to indoctrinate the "uneducated" workers in communist principles.

The most important role of the trade unions in Soviet Russia remains their role as schools of communism.

Reading further, we discover that many of the functions performed by American labor unions were instead viewed as State functions by the Soviets.

At the present moment, the trade unions are already fulfilling certain functions of purely state agencies (the working out of pay scales, the distribution of work clothing, etc.). In the Soviet state, these state functions of the trade unions will gradually be increased.

In fact, the 9th Soviet Congress ruled that:

Being a proletarian dictatorship, the Soviet state is a lever of economic revolution. Therefore, there can be no possibility of any opposition between the trade unions and the organs of Soviet power.

And:

...any opposition between the trade unions, as the economic organization of the working class, and the soviets, as its political organization, is completely absurd and is a deviation from marxism in the direction of bourgeois - specifically, bourgeois tradeunionist -prejudices.

In short, no strikes were tolerated in Soviet Russia. Odd stance for a workers paradise, don't you think?

So, instead of being institutions geared towards ensuring the rights of the workers, Soviet era unions were actually little more than Communist Party indoctrination groups. In fact, the legacy of the Soviet version of trade unions is seen today as one of the greatest factors holding back modern labor relations in Russia today. It seems that the trade unions were so ineffective at garnering basic employee rights for its membership that most Russian workers feel more comfortable negotiating directly with their employer, rather than working through a union.

Imagine that.

But we shouldn't be too surprised. How many strikes have you heard about from Communist countries where the striking workers didn't wind up dead or imprisoned? CHina is one of the last hard line Communist countries, so the ability of the worker to strike should be enshrined in Chinese law, right?

Yeah, right.

Independent trade unions are illegal in China, with all workers belonging to the Communist Party controlled umbrella body All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).

Workers who go on strike over pay and workplace abuses are dismissed while organisers of labour protests face imprisonment.

Hey, if WalMart let's your union in, just how effective can it be, really?

No, the American unions may have been sold with Communist rhetoric, but they are entirely a product of free market capitalism. And because of that, not only did they actually function as advertized, improving the lives and well being of the workers, they did so independant of or at worst in spite of political indoctrination, or government regulation.

Still not convinced? OK, look at it this way. Labor is a commodity like any other. Some people are buying and some are selling. When the two sides can agree on a mutually beneficial price, then we can do business. If the two sides can't find agreement, then things stop until something in the situation changes. Now then, several decades ago, businesses banded together to force the price for labor lower. This was called collusion and the labor folks said it was a bad thing. The short term advantages for the busness owners quickly evaporated as worker became unwilling to sell their labor so cheaply and banded together to force the price back up. This was called solidarity and the labor folks said it was a good thing.

It's the same thing, folks! Collective bargaining by labor was the inevitable response of free market capitalism to collective bargaining by management. The system became imbalanced and market forces reacted to correct the imbalance. The beauty of the system is that it worked robustly and automatically: owners and management fought the changes, without success, and government tried to regulate them, again without notable success. The market ticked merrily along as wages increased to a level that allowed the workers to buy the things their labors produced, resulting in an economic expansion never before seen in history.

And the system is still regulating itself. Now that the pendulum has swung back, and the system is more in balance, union membership is dying out. To be sure, unions will fight against this trend, but ultimately, their struggles will be as futile as those of the forces that resisted unionization in the first place. Short of government intervention, unions that have performed their function will wither away and die, leaving the individual workers in charge of their own fate.

This trend will be accelerated by the fact that businesses are now more savvy about the long term benefits of strong management/labor relations. The companies that can create a co-operative dynamic between the two sides rather than a competitve one will be the companies that lead the next economic expansion.

Happy New Year!

Well, here I sit at my mother's house with friends and family celebrating the New Year. We're all sitting around the kitchen table, singing songs and hoping that nobody has a hidden tape recorder. (I do) I'm not going to make any predictions for the coming year, because I hocked my crystal ball for lottery tickets, but it doesn't really matter. We're Americans; whatever comes, we'll deal with it.

Anyway, the reason for this late night post is simple; I just foundout that my buddy Frank Murphy recorded a phone call I made to the radio station during his shift to play on the air. He liked it so much, he posted it on his blog, so if you want a preview of my voice, albeit recorded over the phone, head over there and listen to it.

I just wonder what ball he thought I was talking about?

Pardon the Dust

By the way, don't worry about the changes around here; I'm working on revising the templates, cleaning up the format, and doing some general upkeep on the place. It may be a bit squirrely over the next few days, but things will calm down soon.