This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
|
Three links to news stories I noticed yesterday wanting to comment on, but then never had time. I figured I’d still pass along the links.
Pro-Taliban Speech Constitutionally Protected, Criticisms of Homosexuality Unprotected (Volokh)
My MiniTake: All forms of speech should be protected, regardless of how it may offend some people, including in many cases myself. This is speech in a public school, which is traditionally more regulated than just regular old speech, but I still think vast deference should be given to the right to be offensive. The desire lately to sanitize and protect people (including kids) from being offended is itself offensive.
(Sidetrack: Having said the above, I have not looked at the actual details of the court case and of course am not doing the lawyer thing, so I can’t say if I feel the judge acted correctly… as a very important general principle, it is very often that the correct decision in a court case is one that would result in an incorrect policy… but I would still believe the court decision is correct… one is about interpreting what the law is, the other is about determining what the law should be, and they are completely different questions.)
Coalition Sounds Off on Net Neutrality Legislation (SlashDot)
My MiniTake: Net Neutrality is a good thing. It is the right policy. However, government has no business regulating this one way or the other. The market should decide. If the major telcos decide to introduce tiered service, it would be a bad thing for the public in my opinion. But they own the wires, and they should have that right. Hopefully if they try they will fail, or other companies will provide alternatives. But it is their stuff and they should be able to do whatever the hell they want to with it, even if it isn’t the “best thing” as determined by some measure of public good.
The Bill the Hollywood cartels don’t want you to see (IPac)
My MiniTake: Intellectual propery rights need to be rolled back, not strengthened. The idea of IP, both copyright and patent, was to incentivise creators to create more than they would otherwise by providing LIMITED protection of their work from being exploited by others commercially for some period of time. Over the last 50 years this has been extended and expanded over and over again. At this point a very strong argument can be made that these laws and regulations are no longer serving their purpose of encoraging creativity and invention, but instead are outright stifling those tendancies by wrapping everything in rules and lock boxes. This law would be a huge mistake, and a huge further curtailment of individual rights with no balancing benefit other than helping to prop up the failed business model of the entertainment cartels. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if this passed with bipartisan almost unanimous support. That seems to be the trend.
Hmmm, I guess I ended up saying most of what I wanted to say anyway.
Was just in the parking lot talking on the phone with Brandy for a few minutes, when I saw a police car pull up on the street outside our parking lot, then two officers got out and quickly headed down the steep hill underneath the bridge that is right across from our building. Moments later a helicopter was also circling.
Went upstairs to find out what is going on. So far I just found a one sentence blurb:
KONG TV
ADVISORY:
Seattle Police are searching for a rape suspect in an area near 12th and Dearborn. The SWAT team and King County’s Guardian One helicopter have been called in.
12th is the bridge. Dearborn must be one of the streets underneath the bridge. I didn’t see anything more than the officers running down the hill and then later a quick glimpse of them methodically walking through a grassy area down the hill.
And I probably won’t see any more since I am now back upstairs in my office and have things to do. But still… a moment of excitement for the day.
Will She Be Impeached
(Drudge, Drudge Report)
While it is not clear if the country is ready for a woman to take the title of COMMANDER IN CHIEF, TV executives at ABC have all but decided to pull the plug on the breakthrough drama, top sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
“No one here will say publicly that it’s over [for the show],” a well-placed insider said this week from Los Angeles. ‘But it is over.”
It was an OK show, but not spectacular. But with both West Wing and this going away, someone needs to start up a new prime time political drama right quick. There are certainly enough Doctor, Lawyer and Crime shows… just kill one of those and do another politics one. K?
Well, actually, most of what is reported here was in 2004. Some of it was after the Abu Ghraib pictures were public, some of it was before. And it looks like there WERE active investigations of the abuse from above. So I’m not sure how much of this is really NEW, but one thing about half way through the article got my attention…
Before and After Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees
(Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall, New York Times)
As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein’s former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government’s torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
…
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, “NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.” The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: “If you don’t make them bleed, they can’t prosecute for it.” According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. “The reality is, there were no rules there,” another Pentagon official said.
…
The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.
…
General Brown’s command declined requests for interviews with several former task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies the unit’s most elite troops.
…
General McChrystal, the leader of the Joint Special Operations Command, received his third star in a promotion ceremony at Fort Bragg on March 13.
(via Daily Kos)
If I am not mistaken, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is one of the brothers of a certain other person with that same last name who ran a company I used to work for.
At the moment I’m in Bellevue, not Seattle, and this is mostly about elementary, not middle, and we’re hoping to get into and figure out the private school route, but this kind of thing is why we started looking that route in the first place…
Parents may get less of a choice
(Tan Vinh, Seattle Times)
Seattle’s difficult school-closure process is under way, but ahead may loom another far-reaching — and potentially contentious — change: reducing elementary-school choice.
District officials say the popular choice system — which, since 1989, allows families to apply for slots in schools beyond their immediate neighborhood — may need to be scaled back to cut transportation costs.
The issue could come up for discussion as early as this fall, and if the School Board approves, students would have fewer enrollment options as early as fall 2007.
“We are not eliminating school choice, but we want to reduce it,” said board President Brita Butler-Wall.
I know I’ve posted a lot today, sorry. Don’t know what has gotten into me.
In any case, forget the Mini. It looks like after several years the Smart will finally be available in the USA! I saw one (with Mexico plates) outside of Pittsburgh a few years ago and instantly said to myself “I want one!” But they haven’t been available unless you wanted to import one yourself and go through all the attending hassle.
Smart Cars: Coming to the U.S.
(Nathan Edwards, pcmag.com)
Good news for the “smaller is better” crowd: The fuel-efficient Smart Car is (finally) on its way to our shores. Smart-Automobile LLC announced today that its Smart For Two Coupe / Convertible, available in Europe since 1998, is ready to be imported to the United States. Much of the delay involved learning how to modify the cars and tooling the proprietary Smart diagnostic system to ensure the cars meet U.S. safety and emissions standards.
(via Digg)
Um… or maybe still a Mini.
Or, more likely still, another Saturn.
Of course for now, the main goal is to keep my 1996 Saturn going as long as possible. It went over 170 kmil a couple weeks ago though, and I don’t think any car I’ve ever driven regularly (the Dodge Colt, the Ford Taurus or the Toyota Corolla) have ever made it to 180 kmil. We shall see…
Oh… and I still haven’t posted about Brandy’s car… maybe if she doesn’t post about it herself I will by the end of the weekend.
I have been meaning to post something about the whole DP World blow up thing ever since it started, but just never got around to it. Noticing as I eat lunch here today that Phatback has commented I thought this would be a good time…
Here is my thought… I disagree with W on almost everything he does, and think is not only wrong but dangerous in most things… but, as much as I hate to say it, W (and Al) are completely right on this one.
Were there some problems with the process in terms of it following the procedure it probably should have followed? Yes. Definately. And that is bad. Do I have an issue with the fact that DPW is not just a foreign company, but is actually completely owned by a foreign GOVERNMENT… yes… But… while both of those things were mentioned in the debate a decent bit, it was not the focus, the focus was that DPW was Arab and the risk was higher because of that. Looking at all that has come out I think that in the end the conclusion the administration seems to have been completely sound. And the orgy of xenophobia and proivincialism from both parties that erupted over this was absolutely shameful.
Are there security issues at the ports? Yes. Damn right there are. People have been pointing out how vunerable they are since well before 9/11, and certainly ever since. But do they have to do with the ownership of the companies that run the ports? Not at all. They are completely independant issues. Why was it OK that the Brits were runniing things, but suddenly when it is another ally of ours that happens to be Arab it is not OK? Come on…
And some people have even been pushing the idea that NO foreign company should be involved in these sorts of things AT ALL. Now, at least that idea is a bit more self-consistant, but it is so isolationist and backwards… Get with it… it is a global economy… national borders will mean less and less as the decades progress. International ownership is not an apriori bad thing. In fact often it can be very positive. And if we are going to decide it is bad across the board, get ready to say goodbye to many things we take for granted….
Anyway…. for the past several weeks while this depate flared up I just kept shaking my head every time I heard the talking heads… taking something which should be a non-issue, and flaring it up to a major thing… with the only end result being that in the end we further decrease trust in the world about us (already at an all time low), discourage foreign investment in the US and give some port business to a US company (as Al says, probably Halliburton)… and do absolutely nothing at all to improve the security at our ports.
Thank you to the raving irrational xenophobic hordes in both parties for that one.
(These same bipartisan folks are also working on such fun things together as making internet gambling illegal even when using overseas sites and on extending bad campaign finance laws so they extend to internet postings thus perhaps making the 1st amendment meaningless for thousands of bloggers… thanks for that too…. Urgh!)
Nice map of my new home town:
Cancer risk from air pollution
(Seattle Times)
And the article:
Where the worst air is
(Warren Cornwall and Justin Mayo, Seattle Times)
The huge red cranes at the Port of Seattle aren’t even visible from here. But it’s what’s invisible that’s the problem. The air in this part of Seattle, some of it wafting from mammoth cargo ships idling at the port, is some of the unhealthiest in the state and the entire nation.
You can definately tell the difference day to day. Sometimes it is crystal clear and you can see the mountains and it is absolutely beautiful. Other days the haze is thick and you can’t see across the water. And yet more of the time, it is raining, so you can’t see anything anyway. :-)
I’m not going to say anything long winded about it. Just wanted to mention that I’ve been extremely amused by the whole Dick Cheney shooting his friend thing.
Ophelia, first a tropical storm, and now a hurricane, has been sitting just off shore from where we live. Sometimes wobbling a bit north, sometimes a bit east, sometimes a bit south… this radar image is as of about an hour before this post. (Follow the link to current radar.) We’ve been right on the edges of the outer bands of the system for days now. It was a little closer yesterday, but not as strong. We’ve been getting lots of nice rain. No really high winds though. But the silly thing is just sitting there, right off shore, practically within sight… teasing us with its presence.
The forecasts have it basically staying stationary right there off shore, slowly gaining strength, for the next few days. Then early next week it will do something. Exactly what, nobody really knows. The hurricane center‘s best guess as of the last advisory was that it would slowly move east, then loop back around clockwise and head back in our general direction… or maybe somewhere else entirely. There will be a new advisory in a few minutes, and of course another every 6 hours after that. We’ll be paying attention.
At the very least, we’re getting several more days of lots of rain as outer bands occationally cross over our heads. At most, sometime in the next week we get a hurricane banging at our door.
Guess we’ll be watching it.
But the strangest thing has been just watching the radar, and seeing it just sit there. Right off shore. Moving slightly every once in a while, but basically just sitting there. Eye and everything. Within sight. But not coming toward us. Not going away. Just sitting there watching us as it spins. Shaking my confidence daily. Well, not really, just had to get a plug in for the next line of the song. I’m not going to be on my knees begging her to come home though.
Anyway, for the moment, the weather is fine, but…
|
|
