The New York Times reports that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investing the Bush administration for disseminating "covert propaganda."

From the article:

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, "The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education."

The auditors declared: "We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds."

The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush's education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.

Sadly, this is nothing new. In 2004, the GAO chastised the Bush administration for violating federal law by using taxpayer dollars to manufacture propaganda in support of its Medicare bill and designing the advertisements to look like TV news reports. Earlier this year, in May, the GAO gave a report to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation titled "Unattributed Prepackaged News Stories Violate Publicity or Propaganda Prohibition."

The talking points memo disseminated by the RNC on Monday will no doubt include a slander of the GAO, which it will call a partisan organization. It will use as evidence for this the fact that Ted Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg -- both Democrats -- called for the investigation.

Conspiracy theory? Think again. In March, an anonymous memo was discovered which listed political talking points regarding the Terri Schiavo case. This discovery confirmed the existence of what we had suspected all along: that Republican politicians receive a list of "talking points" and sound bites that they are to repeat when discussing a particular issue. This is why it seems like Republican pundits all say the same things in reaction to an issue or event: it's because they are all saying the same thing. They're all repeating the Republican talking points. This is why Michael Chertoff and Richard Meyer said that when they opened the newspapers after Hurricane Katrina, the newspapers said that "New Orleans dodged the bullet." They were both instructed by the talking points to say that (because no newspaper said that, except for the right-wing website WorldNetDaily). After they lied, Al Franken went through sound-clips of their statements in a hilarious segment called "Who Got the Memo?" There was something eerie about them repeating, almost verbatim, the same lie.

Now, I don't want to suggest that the Bush administration uses taxpayer dollars to disseminate propaganda in an attempt to get people to buy into its legislation. Nor do I want to suggest that the administration is the center of a highly sophisticated system of media manipulation advanced through the distribution of talking points memos to Republican politicians and pundits, making it appear as though commentators objectively favor the administration's policies when in fact they are told by the administration how to describe the administration's policies in a good light and its opponents in a bad light.

No, wait. I want to suggest both of those.

Posted by Mark at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Boing Boing comes something particularly hilarious.

Someone had the bright idea to create a movie trailer for the film The Shining, editing the trailer so as to make it look like a romantic comedy. If you had never seen The Shining, then after watching this trailer, you'd be convinced that it was a film like My Girl or even Jack Nicholson's own As Good as It Gets. What's priceless is the choice of background music for this trailer. It's completely inappropriate.

The New York Times even wrote an article about it:

A few weeks back, he said, he entered a contest for editors’ assistants sponsored by the New York chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.

Mr. Ryang chose “The Shining,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. In his hands, it became a saccharine comedy — about a writer struggling to find his muse and a boy lonely for a father. Gilding the lily, he even set it against “Solsbury Hill,” the way-too-overused Peter Gabriel song heard in comedies billed as life-changing experiences, like last year’s “In Good Company.”

Posted by Mark at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a public service announcement:

For your health and well-being, the United States of Me kindly requests that you shut the f*ck up about my work with needle exchange.

That proclamation is to serve as a slightly comedic, mostly serious introduction to today’s topic – Needle Exchange: Preventing HIV vs. Enabling Heroin Addicts.

First, allow me to introduce the topic to those of you unfamiliar with it. Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution (NEED) is the large needle exchange program (NEP) in the Bay Area. NEPs are based on the health care model of harm reduction. They are usually established in the face of skyrocketing AIDS rates. In this area, San Francisco and other counties declared a state of emergency due to AIDS a few years ago. AIDS rates of IV drug users (IDUs) can range from 25-60% in different areas.

IDUs contract HIV due to the sharing of needles. It is illegal in most areas to possess needles without a prescription (for example, given to diabetics needing to inject insulin). Opiate withdrawal does not merely suck sweaty ass, it kills, sometimes, especially if the cold turkey method is used outside of the naloxone-dispensing expensive rehab centers. When IDUs need to inject, they really, physically, need to inject. Opiate addiction is one of the most physical of all possible addictions. In the absence of clean needles, they will use old ones, even ones on the street or in abandoned housing. Once HIV penetrated this community, it is easy to see how it would naturally spread like wildfire.

NEPs were developed in response to the alarming levels of HIV transmission due to dirty needles. They claim not to advocate drug use but rather to provide individuals with the healthiest possible choices within a decision that they have already made. Opponents claim that they are enabling drug use, diverting candidates from rehab, and encouraging initiates to use because of the facility of attaining all but the main ingredient through the NEP.

Admittedly, certainly, there is logical reasoning to the argument of those that believe NEPs are the work of misguided enablers. Not only do NEPs provide individuals who might have been hesitant to use because of HIV risk with clean and sterile alternatives, they also provide a venue through which to connect with experienced users who can provide further assistance to them in their path to full-blown addiction.

The founders of NEPs are not idiots. They recognized this possibility. So, we had a hypothesis. The hypothesis was that NEPs enable heroin use. And what better to do with a hypothesis than to test it? Surely, you’re not going to take it out to lunch, as it doesn’t have a stomach, and inviting it to do so might hurt its feelings. No, it seems like testing it is the best idea.

Let the scientific mountain of support begin to accumulate. Some of the most extensive studies to date have been completed by UCSF AIDS Institute, one of the best, if not THE best, AIDS research facilities in the world. They studied 52 cities throughout the world, mostly in Europe. The cities with NEPs experienced an overall 6% decrease in AIDS whereas the cities without NEPs experienced an overall 6% increase in AIDS. No rise in heroin use was reported in any NEP city. In fact, candidates for rehab were often reached through NEPs that would refer them if, and only if, they asked for such assistance.

Once NEPs were legalized in 2000 (at least in this area), the fight for federal funding began. Previously, NEED here in Berkeley was an underground operation, activist hippies passing needles out from a baby carriage, sometimes being arrested once discovered. In 2000, significant research mandated the legalization of the programs. However, in the current federal political environment, funding for the projects is banned. The government put together a research panel to recommend whether federal funding should be used for NEPs. Out of eight participating institutions, eight found NEPs to be effective AIDS prevention policy, six of them going on to recommend funding and two of them abstaining from recommending or not. Despite this, the federal government refused to lift the ban as the results did not come out as they wished. NEPs have been supported by the former head of the Department of Health, the former head of the NIH, and the former Secretary General.

Why, though, do NEPs NOT increase drug use? Opiate use is a complex psychological and physical process that is independent of facility of obtaining supplies. If supplies are there or drugs are there, people will find them. Unfortunately, often what they find are low-quality or dirty supplies and drugs, increasing not just their risk for HIV, but also their risk of overdose and death.

But some people don’t care about the IDUs. They did it to themselves, they claim. If that is your stance, though I disagree with you, I would still urge you to consider the innocent people that are also at risk for HIV transmission due to the behavior of IDUs, particularly the sexual partners and even children of users. How do you look at a baby with HIV from its mother’s drug use and not have NEPs in the back of your mind, wondering if they could have saved these two lives?

Unfortunately, police officers often target IDUs coming to NEPs, waiting across the corner to arrest them with drug paraphernalia charges. This causes fear that I have personally seen in participants, many of whom come for their friends, even their parents. Some of the people who pick up supplies are not IDUs but they know their father is and want to protect him. Meanwhile, NEP volunteers face criticism and misunderstanding from the local communities, people screaming about how we are helping “dope fiends�? and bringing them into the neighborhood.

Right now, one of my friends refuses to talk to me because of “what I am doing.�? I hope that we will come to a more enlightened conclusion, based on the substantial scientific evidence, for the good of the world community that is facing a raging AIDS epidemic.

Posted by Ed at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, in a 78-22 vote, the Senate confirmed John Roberts as the new chief justice of the United States. After being confirmed, Roberts was sworn in by acting Chief Justice John Paul Stevens.

But what of Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement? The court's term starts Oct. 3, and there's still a vacant seat -- but not really. O'Connor made her retirement in June contingent upon the fact that her replacement be confirmed before the beginning of the court's 2005 term. Since that's four days from now, it looks like O'Connor will resume her duties when the court convenes on Monday. Bush spokespeople have said that he will announce his O'Connor replacement sometime next week.

Bush announced Roberts as his O'Connor replacement July 19, and his confirmation hearings were scheduled for approximately six weeks later, on Sept. 6, but William Rehnquist's Sept. 3 death stalled the process for about a week as Bush shifted Roberts to the chief justice track. It will probably be December before O'Connor is replaced, as Senate Democrats will want to look extra-carefully at Bush's O'Connor replacement to ensure that the candidate is just as moderate as O'Connor. For Bush to replace her with a person as conservative as Roberts would tilt the court to the right, something the Democrats really don't want.

Let me tell you something: Roberts isn't as bad as everyone's making him out to be. For one, he's more than qualified (something we can't say about all Bush appointees), and for another, he's not the hard-right ideologue that NARAL would have you believe he is. During his confirmation hearings, he acknowledged that he is not the same lawyer that he was in the 1980s when he worked for the Justice Department. His opinions as a federal court judge show that, while he interprets the law conservatively, he takes cases as they come and doesn't try to make his court opinions match some sort of grand, overarching judicial philosophy. Of course Bush was going to appoint a conservative; there's no way around that. The only question was: will this conservative consider his opinion of a case in light of the law itself, or in light of his theoretical model of how the law should work? At the very least, we have a justice who subscribes to the former, not the latter, attitude toward interpreting the law.

Posted by Mark at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to violate political fundraising laws. Texas laws prohibit corporations from donating money to political parties, but a political action committee (PAC) set up by DeLay and others acted as an entry point for corporate donations. Money was given to DeLay's PAC, then from DeLay's PAC to the RNC in Washington, and then back to individual candidates in Texas. Also indicted were John Colyandro, formerly the executive director of DeLay's PAC, and Jim Ellis, the head of DeLay's national political committee. Read the actual indictment. Go on, I dare you! You hate your country if you don't.

As with any scandal, there are two explanations. One is that DeLay actually committed a crime. The other is that the prosecutor is a crazy partisan Democrat who will stop at nothing to use the legal system to see to it that one of the most powerful Republicans in the United States gets convicted of a crime despite overwhelming evidence indicating that he's a really upstanding guy who didn't commit a crime, and furthermore, would never, ever even think of laundering money in the interests of getting Republicans elected to the Texas state legislature, and here's a picture of DeLay holding a kitten.

Guess which one DeLay and other Republicans are promoting?

Yes, that's right. As if guided by some mysterious talking points memorandum sent from the RNC higher-ups, Republican pundits simultaneously lambasted prosecutor Ronnie Earle and pulled the Crucible card by calling the investigation a "witch hunt." See, the only problem with that comparison is that the phrase "witch hunt" refers to an investigation without a basis. DeLay's investigation, on the other hand, has a basis: there is actual, tangible evidence indicating the existence of a money chain which goes from corporations to DeLay's PAC to the RNC and finally, to individual candidates. This is all in violation of the law, by the way. Nevertheless, DeLay called the indictment "one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history." That's compared to the actual Salem witch trials and Joe McCarthy's accusation of communists in the Army. And there's Emmett Till.

Some pundits also fail to acknowledge that it was a federal grand jury -- that is, twelve normal people from Texas -- who agreed that there was enough evidence incriminating DeLay to pursue charges against him. Or are these twelve people also engaged in a witch hunt?

Clearly, that's the only answer. Not only is Ronnie Earle engaged in a witch hunt, but he falsified evidence and bribed and brainwashed twelve citizens of Texas into believing the baseless claims that Tom DeLay -- a politician, for crying out loud! -- committed a crime.

Kevin Madden, DeLay's spokesperson, accurately summed up the issue: "This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat. [...] We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle's pursuit of headlines and political paybacks." Damn that Ronnie Earle's black heart! How dare he waste taxpayer money on one of the most baseless indictments in American history (next to all of those ones that are several orders of magnitude more baseless)!

DeLay was on Hannity & Colmes yesterday. There isn't a transcript yet, but you can bet your patriotism that Hannity and DeLay both agreed that the charges were baseless and somebody -- probably John Kerry -- bribed the judge and jury. Ooh, that Kerry! He really busts my buttons with his east coast liberalism and the kind of intellectual and political snobbery that can be equalled only by every other politician in Washington! Nevertheless, it's he who is the snob and Republicans who own shares of the largest for-profit hospital company in the country who are the voices of the common man!

Does Michelle Malkin even live in this universe?

Posted by Mark at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While listening to an NPR discussion this morning about Karen Hughes's "listening trip" through Saudi Arabia, an interesting thought occurred to me after one comment that the appropriately named commentator made. I had much time to mull this over, what with sitting suspended hundreds of feet above a large body of water motionless (read: stuck in traffic due to yet another broken down SUV in the friggin' middle of the Bay Bridge). A paraphrase:

The Muslim women are telling Hughes, "Your values are not our values. Issues that would be problematic for American women are not problems to us. We are happy. We are content." The problem is not with values being shared or not between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; the problem is with foreign policy. Hughes will have a very, very difficult job improving the image amongst Muslims abroad because she has no jurisdiction over the policy that is at issue.

To pull from that comment one seemingly smaller issue in the whole foreign policy vs. values at issue deal, I started thinking about feminism.

We, being open-minded forward-thinking college-educated foot soldiers in the army of the intellectual elite, know that feminism is A Good Thing. Obviously. I, myself, am a self-proclaimed feminist who hopes to tear down the pejorative connotation that has adhered itself to the term like an unfortunate fly on fly paper. We, being enlightened, realize that women are equal and should demand equal rights. If any of our "oppressed sisters" at home or abroad seek to overthrow the patriarchal construction crews' building bulletproof glass ceilings, then we should aid them, intellectually or literally. Feminism should be spread throughout the world. But what happens when women don't want
it?

Now, my far leftist conspiracy-theory-esque side (which is like the Sahara compared to a grain of sand when compared to my neo-conservative blind faith side), informs me that such women do want it; they just don't know that they want it ... yet. If they could only see the benefits that we U.S. women reaped after the women's right movement. If they only understood how their culture has been keeping them from realizing their full potential as thinkers and doers.

So, how can we make them realize what they're missing? How do we tell them, "No, you really do want to be a feminist, to be equal." We educate them. But how? First, how many of your local feminist friends do you know that speak Arabic? So, to educate en masse as we would need to do, we would probably have to conduct outreach in English. So they will have to learn in English. At best, we could hope for a few feminist Arab-Americans or a handful of die-hards who learn a choppy Arabic to attempt to get the message out to women in their native tongue.

Second, the cultural logistics. In some countries, a feminist American woman would cringe at the restrictions placed upon her, especially in areas such as travel and clothing. We should reject the covering and the male accompaniment as devices of the patriarchy. But then, how do we travel? The men are not likely to be convinced to ease up on these rules. So, we would have to force the men in power to accept the values and conduct of the American feminist. Perhaps we could place economic sanctions against them or start a preemptive war based on intelligence that the government will not be friendly to American feminist foreign policy.

Imperialism, anyone?

Or, to emulate the expansive vocabulary and historical references characteristic of my colleague Mr. Marcus Aurelius Wilson, cultural hegemony, friends, Ro(wo)mans, country(wo)men?

And then there are the women. That just don't know that they are secretly dying to be liberated. How do we free them? If a position of inferiority for women is an integral part of a religious and cultural tradition, how do we end that component without imposing our culture and diluting theirs?

We, the youthful thinkers of tomorrow, face a dilemma. We hold to be self-evident two truths that appear irreconcilable:

Truth #1: Women should be equal. Feminism is not a theory but the just pursuit of equality.

Truth #2: Cultural diversity should be preserved. Ethnocentrism ruins ancient traditions in danger of extinction, particularly as a result of Americanization.

How do we bring rights to women without Americanizing them? Are there (eek! squirm uncomfortably) positive facets to imperialism? Let's look, shall we, at the Roman Empire, a bunch of imperialists if there ever were any (it's even in the name!). They wreaked all sorts of havoc of the necessary and unnecessary sorts, wiping local cultures and values aside like gadflies. And what was the end result? Order, relative peace, a lingua franca that improved communications and diplomacy, roads that defined effective transportation, ingenious engineering feats like mortar-less aqueducts, universities with scholars mulling over questions like the one I mull over here, forward-thinking and sophistication, the arts. In fact, the quality of life, the standard of living of the average individual, had
undoubtedly improved.

Hmmm, is that famed token imperialist of Bishop Hall, Drew M---, onto something after all?

My hippie peace-loving chillness says no, but ...

Posted by Ed at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Two days ago, Scott McClellan said this:

Q Scott, the President -- is the President's call for fuel conservation a temporary one? Or is he asking Americans to permanently change their behavior and their energy usage?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there are steps that -- in the energy bill that we passed, to, as I said, expand conservation, and there are steps that -- or initiatives that the President has outlined that are important steps that we can take to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy. This has been a high priority for the President from day one, and he has spelled out a number of steps that we can take when it comes to addressing the root causes of high energy prices. We need to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy.

I'll highlight the important words:

[...] or initiatives that the President has outlined that are important steps that we can take to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy. This has been a high priority for the President from day one, and he has spelled out a number of steps that we can take when it comes to addressing the root causes of high energy prices.

Oh, really?

Rewind to May 7, 2001, when former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said this:

QUESTION: Does the president believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the president believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The president believes that's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.

Did you notice the words "That's a big no" in response to the question "Does the president believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?" And ... wait, what's that? There's more?

QUESTION: So Americans should go on consuming as much/more energy than any other citizens in any other country of the world (inaudible) want?

FLEISCHER: The president believes that the American people are very wise, and that, given the right incentives, they will know how -- they will make their own right determinations about how much they can conserve, just as the president announced last week that the federal government, as part of its consumership in California will reduce energy needs, for example, the Department of Defense facilities in California, by 10 percent.

He believes the American people, too, will make the right decisions about conservation. And the program he will announce shortly will also include a series of conservation items.

The president also believes that the American people's use of energy is a reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy. And he wants to make certain that a national energy policy is comprehensive, that it includes conservation, includes a way of allowing the American people to continue to enjoy the way of life that has made the United States such a leading nation in the world.

As always, there is an explanation for this. On an LSAT, this is called a "resolve-the-paradox" question. So, let's do a practice question together.

Which of the following, if true, would explain the discrepancy between what Ari Fleischer said in 2001 and what Scott McClellan said two days ago?

(A) Inflation caused the truth value of Ari Fleischer's 2001 comments to decrease relative to Scott McClellan's comments.
(B) A malfunctioning robot duplicant of Scott McClellan, rather than McClellan himself, made the statement two days ago.
(C) Saddam Hussein enjoys eating Doritos.
(D) Dick Cheney made comments similar to Ari Fleischer's in 2001.
(E) Scott McClellan is lying.

Let's use Process of Elimination to get to the best answer. Answer choice (A) appears to make sense: the more time that has passed since a statement, the less held to scrutiny is the truth of that statement. While that is a true principle of political punditry, it doesn't explain the paradox. Choice (B) is irrelevant to the current argument, even though it contains the factually correct implication that Scott McClellan is a robot. Choice (C) is similar to choice (B) in that it contains true facts that are beyond the scope of the argument. Choice (D) would be the appropriate answer if this were a question that asked, "Which of the following, if true, most weakens Scott McClellan's statement?" But, unfortunately, that's not what the question is asking. Therefore, we are left with choice (E), and it turns out that this is the correct answer: Scott McClellan lied two days ago when he said that energy conservation has been a high priority for the president since day one.

Suggestions for Further Reading

• Scott McClellan's Sept. 26, 2005 Press Briefing
• Ari Fleischer's May 7, 2001 Press Briefing
• A Time magazine article from May, 2001 that discusses Cheney's energy policy. In May, 2001, Cheney delivered a speech in which he said, regarding the newly-unveiled White House energy plan, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." [Registration of some sort may be required to view the Time article. Just do a Google search for the quote.]
• The National Energy Policy, released in May, 2001 after lots of meetings between Cheney and unnamed consultants. The National Energy Policy concluded that, while we should research alternative fuels, we should focus most national resources on expanding the use of existing fossil fuels. These recommendations prompted environmental groups to ask for the names of all the people who were consultants to the Energy Task Force. A 2004 Supreme Court decision concluded that the White House wasn't obligated to hand over those names.

Thanks to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for pointing out this discrepancy.

Posted by Mark at 2:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In what will prove to be the most important case the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt with in the last twenty years, the Court has granted certiorari to Vickie Lynn Marshall v. E. Pierce Marshall, 04-1544 (2004) [link goes to Ninth Circuit Court's opinion]. But you might know Vickie Lynn Marshall better by her stage name, "Anna Nicole Smith." So, I guess this case won't be that important at all. Never mind.

And, as you probably guessed, E. Pierce Marshall is the son of J. Howard Marshall, II, the man she married a year before he died in 1995 at age 89. For ten years, Anna Nicole Smith has fought with Marshall's son over whether or not she is entitled to over $400 million of her late husband's fortune. Marshall fils contends that she is not in the will and therefore doesn't get any money.

The Supreme Court, though, will not be deciding who gets the money. In fact, nothing about this case is interesting. There's no money, no glamour, no fame or fortune. At issue is whether or not a federal court has jurisdiction to hear claims from state probate courts. The case began in a Texas bankruptcy court, then to the U.S. bankruptcy court, then to a U.S. District Court in California before ending up at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in San Francisco. (Shouldn't the case have gone to the Fifth Circuit Court, which has jurisdiction over Texas?)

So why did this case start in bankruptcy court? Turns out that Anna Nicole Smith was going bankrupt in California at the same time that probate proceedings were going on in Texas. The bankruptcy court in Texas awarded her $474 million, but the U.S. District Court brought that down to $89 million. In 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that federal courts in California had no jurisdiction over the case and declared that Smith should receive no money, which brings us to the question at issue for the U.S. Supreme Court: did the U.S. District Court in California have the jurisdiction to consider a claim from the Texas probate court?

Now, I love the Supreme Court. But seriously. Bankruptcy and probate are boring unless there are vampires involved. And not even Anna Nicole Smith can spice up a probate case. Now, if she were a vampire, then I'd have a fighting chance of staying awake. Come on, take some First Amendment cases! The Court's 2004 term was super-awesome and was probably one of their most exciting ever. I don't expect the 2005 term to be as nail-biting, but it better not be a snoozer. Oh, and if you're shopping for my birthday, sentencing guidelines cases put me to sleep, too.

[Fox News story about the case.]

Posted by Mark at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A judge today dismissed the RIAA's suit against the mother of a 13-year-old girl accused of file sharing. This mother was one of three moms who refused to settle out of court with the RIAA's "conference center." The conference center is like the Mexican police:

RIAA: Okay, that's ten shared songs at $10,000 each. That will be $100,000.
Defendant: But I don't have $100,000.
RIAA: So how much do you have?
Defendant: I have $5,000.
RIAA: We'll take that, then. And we'll make it $2,500 if you'll become a spokesperson for the new Napster and tell the world what great people we are. And then we'll kill you.

In the past, the RIAA has filed suits against anyone and everyone, and it's been profitable, since the money they get from the settlements more than pays for the costs of going after file sharers. But the moms who refuse to settle may put an end to the practice: there's a chance that a court might rule in favor of the moms, and in that case, the RIAA's technique would cease being profitable, and thus they would stop.

Patricia Santangelo was the first person to refuse to settle out-of-court with the RIAA. She contended that she didn't know how the files got on her computer, as she is pretty computer illiterate, and said that the account name didn't belong to any of her kids. The ruling today, however, concerns Candy Chan, mother of Brittany Chan. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan threw out the RIAA's lawsuit against Candy Chan back in May. The court dismissed the suit "with prejudice," meaning that the RIAA could no longer pursue a case against Candy Chan, but it could pursue a case against others.

To give you an idea of the kind of people the RIAA are, their next move was to file a motion to bring action against Brittany Chan, the defendant's daughter. Today, the judge denied the RIAA's motion. It's a funny business practice, isn't it? How many other industries make money by suing their customers? And they wonder why music sales have gone down. No one wants to do business with these people!

And now, on to TiVo. TiVo is a subscription-based service that allows you to record things from cable with a hard drive instead of a VCR. You can record at a particular time, you can cut out commercials, you can fast-forward and rewind. Back on Sept. 13, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing -- along with lots of TiVo users -- noticed something peculiar going on with TiVo: it wouldn't save certain shows or allow users to move the shows with TiVo2Go.

Then, on Sept. 16, TiVo said that DRM had been enabled for certain shows by accident. Whoops! Even though TiVo said that it was an accident, DRM was still enabled for certain programs. Sounds like some content providers made TiVo an offer it couldn't refuse.

On Sept. 24, reports surfaced that TiVo was charging users $150 if they tried to cancel their newly-crapified service. Apparently, what was merely an "accident" was a mandatory "update" to the TiVo software that detected broadcast flags. These flags introduced new restrictions to certain programs and users were unaware and unable to opt-out of these restrictions. So one TiVo owner decided to cancel his service. He signed up for TiVo back when it did X, and now it wasn't doing X anymore, so he didn't want it. TiVo then charged him $150 as an "early cancelation" fee. Apparently, the download of a software update also caused him to be entered into a new contract for which the "early cancelation fee" was $150. Read any EULA and you'll find that it gives the licensor the right to alter the software at any time, for any reason, without voiding the contract. Read those EULAs! They're designed to take rights from you and make you do whatever the licensor wants you to do. ABC doesn't want you to be able to save Lost? So you won't, no matter what you -- the person who's paying TiVo and who owns the machine -- want.

And now the content companies are trying the broadcast flag again, only this time they're being sneaky about it: "One especially sneaky way to get an amendment passed is to smuggle it into a reconciliations bill. Reconciliation is the mirror image of appropriations. Appropriations is about taxes; reconciliation is all about making cuts. Because Congress dearly loves to appear thrifty, reconciliations has special fast-track status. It can't be filibustered, it's almost impossible to amend once agreed upon, and it only needs a plain majority to pass."

Posted by Mark at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Don Adams, who played bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart from 1965-1970 on TV's Get Smart, died today at age 82. Adams was hilarious with physical comedy and frequently played the comedian to Edward Platt's "The Chief" on Get Smart. Ed Platt died in 1974. Perhaps the funniest moments between Maxwell Smart and the The Chief were when Smart insisted on using the "cone of silence" to discuss top secret information with The Chief. The only problem with the cone of silence was that anyone else could hear what they were saying, but they couldn't hear each other. Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry as a parody of James Bond films. Maxwell Smart was as bumbling as James Bond was resourceful, and yet somehow he still had a job. His sidekick, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon, usually found a way to get both of them out of a situation that he had gotten them into. The series was also a satire of Cold War espionage, as both CONTROL (the U.S. intelligence organization) and KAOS (the Soviet/German intelligence organization) were equally inept.

Don Adams reprised his role as Maxwell Smart in the 1989 TV movie Get Smart, Again!. In 1995, Fox tried to revive Get Smart, this time with Maxwell Smart as the chief of CONTROL and Andy Dick as his son, Zach Smart. The series didn't go too well.

You may also remember Don Adams as the voice of Inspector Gadget.

Posted by Mark at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year, the American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week, which "celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them."

Banned Books Week is being celebrated this year from Sept. 24 to Oct. 1. Here are some BBW resources:

• The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books, 1990-2000
• The Top 10 Most Challenged Books, 2004
• Pico v. Board of Education, 457 U.S. 853 (1982). In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a school board's removal of books that it characterized as "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy" was unconstitutional. The case was decided 5-4, with Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Powell, Rehnquist, and O'Connor dissenting.
• Banned Book and Censorship Resources
• Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971). This is the case that determines what "obscenity" is. Are you aware that "pornography" has no legal definition? There are two kinds of unprotected speech: speech which can "incite" people to violence, and "obscene" speech. Cohen defined "obscenity" and the Court ruled that a jacket that said "F--k the Draft" was not legally obscene.
• "Focus on the Family Exposes the 'Banned' Books Lie." This is what the other side thinks. James Dobson's Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, an evangelical Protestant organization, suggests that the ALA wants hardcore pornography in libraries, alongside classics.

What should you do this week? Go read a banned book! I suggest one of the classics, like Of Mice and Men, which is really short, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (because when Mark Twain uses the n-word, it's because he hates black people). Oh, and don't skip the hardcore pornography, either. I would think that it's in 302, "Social interaction," or in the 700s, the art section.

Posted by Mark at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In evaluating things like the Pledge of Allegiance or intelligent design, we'd best bear in mind the Supreme Court's Lemon test, which is used to determine whether or not a government act relating to religion violates the First Amendment. The case is called Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). Reversing a lower court decision, the Supreme Court, in an 8-0 opinion, ruled that a Pennsylvania law allowing the state to "'purchase' certain 'secular educational services' from nonpublic schools" was unconstitutional.

From Lemon emerged the test to see if there were "excessive entanglement between government and religion." A government policy must meet three criteria:

1. "The statute must have a secular legislative purpose." This is pretty clear: there has to be a non-religious intention behind the legislation.
2. "Its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion." Note that word effect. So, not only can the intent not relate to religion, the main result of the legislation must be that it doesn't affect religion.
3. "The statute must not foster 'an excessive government entanglement with religion.'" Religious activities end up being supervised by the government, curricula end up being regulated by the government. These are the kinds of things that this third prong seeks to avoid.

A government act that fails one or more of these criteria is deemed to be unconstitutional.

How would this relate to something like, oh, I don't know, intelligent design? Well, in Selman et. al v. Cobb County, a U.S. District Court in Georgia ruled unconstitutional a Cobb County school board requirement that warning stickers be placed on biology textbooks used by the district. The stickers advised, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." The U.S. District Court judge found this sticker to be unconstitutional and cited a history of the Supreme Court and circuit courts striking down "balanced treatment" laws, the primary effect of which were to endorse a particular religious viewpoint. While the District Court found that the sticker did have a secular legislative purpose, the sticker failed the second prong in that "the Sticker sends a message to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community, while the Sticker sends a message to those who believe in evolution that they are political outsiders." The court also cleverly observed that "encouraging the teaching of evolution as a theory rather than as a fact is one of the latest strategies to dilute evolution instruction employed by antievolutionists with religious motivations."

In the upcoming Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, the ACLU will be arguing that intelligent design is far too religious to be taught in public schools. Ostensibly, the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa. will be required to acknowledge the ruling of its sister court in Georgia. The real test will come at the circuit court level, as a circuit court can overrule a district court.

Now that you know about the Court's requirements for religious entanglement, do you think the Pledge of Allegiance passes or fails the Lemon test? In evaluating this, keep in mind Congress' purpose in adding the words "under God" in 1954. Consider the legislative history of the 1954 act that added the words "under God," which reveals the purpose of the act ("legislative history" is part of a piece of legislation; it's the authors of the legislation telling us why they're writing it):

At this moment of our history the principles underlying our American Government and the American way of life are under attack by a system whose philosophy is at direct odds with our own. Our American Government is founded on the concept of the individuality and the dignity of the human being. Underlying this concept is the belief that the human person is important because he was created by God and endowed by Him with certain inalienable rights which no civil authority may usurp. The inclusion of God in our pledge therefore would further acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon the moral directions of the Creator. At the same time it would serve to deny the atheistic and materialistic concepts of communism with its attendant subservience of the individual. [Qtd. in Newdow v. U.S. Congress, 00-16423.]

Posted by Mark at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Do you know what the stated purpose of the SAT is? The stated purpose of the SAT is to predict a student's first-year college grades. Unfortunately, it fails in this regard. For example, men outperform women on the SATs, but women outperform men in first-year college grades. You'd think that a test that absolutely doesn't do what it says it does would be dismissed as invalid. But the SAT has a stranglehold on the college admission process. It provides a wonderful little number that admissions people at gigantic universities like Ohio State University -- population 50,000 -- can use to screen applicants.

But the SAT is only the tip of the iceberg. The SAT, SAT II, PSAT/NMSQT, CLEP, and AP tests are administered by an organization called The College Board. That's a lot of tests. But the College Board is only one branch of a larger organization called ETS, Electronic Testing Service. ETS also administers the GMAT (business school) and the GRE (graduate school), as well as a dozen other tests.

But then there's the LSAT and the MCAT. The LSAT is administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), and the MCAT is administered by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Both of these organizations exist so that you must pay them in order to get into law school or medical school. You must pay $115 to take the LSAT. Then you must pay $100 more for the "Law School Data Assembly Service," in which LSAC compiles transcripts, letters of recommendation, and LSAT scores and sends them to law schools to which you apply. This is not optional. You're being forced into doing this if you want to go to an accredited law school, and unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a FEMA director[1] or an intelligent design advocate[2], you need to get a degree from an accredited law school.

But it's too bad these tests don't mean anything, either. The LSAT is merely a test of logical reasoning skills. It has nothing to do with law school, beyond the necessity of having reasoning skills, but being able to do logic puzzles doesn't mean you'll succeed at law school. There's a writing portion, but it's unscored and is sent along with your scores to the schools that you apply to.

Did I mention that it's a stupid baby test? Standardized tests don't reflect anything except your ability to take a test. This is because the tests can be "cracked," and there are half a dozen national organizations -- The Princeton Review and Kaplan are the two big ones -- who make a ton of money teaching students how to exploit the flaws and recurring patterns of the test.

[1] Michael Brown, former director of FEMA, got his J.D. (Juris Doctorate) from Oklahoma City University School of Law in 1981. Daily Kos reports that, until 2003, this institution wasn't accredited by the Association of American Law Schools. The problem with this is that "[m]ost prospective law students won't even consider applying to a non-AALS law school unless they have no other option, because many employers have a policy of not considering graduates of non-AALS institutions."

[2] Intelligent design advocate Dr. Kent Hovind received his Ph.D. in Christian Education in 1991 from Patriot Bible University, an un-accredited Bible college in Colorado Springs which was, at the time Hovind received his degree, "a ministry of Hilltop Baptist Church." Patriot University, like Bob Jones University, maintains that accreditation is mostly for show and doesn't mean anything. Hovind has claimed to have a Ph.D., not a J.D., but I include him here anyway because I don't like him.

Posted by Mark at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BRUSSELS -- The European Court of Justice today ruled that users of Microsoft Windows cannot uninstall anything from their computers. This ruling comes on the heels of a Finnish ruling that users have no legal right to be able to play CDs in their computers.

The case before the ECJ involved Jarmo Järvenpää, an investment banker from Helsinki. Mr. Järvenpää called Microsoft customer support in an attempt to get MSN Messenger removed from his machine. MSN Messenger is an instant-messaging program that, according to statistics obtained by SEDHE, is used by no one.

"I tried and tried to get de Myessenger off of my compyooter, vid no luck. So I called up cyustomer supoort, and ven I said I vanted to remyoove de program, dey sent de police to my house," said Mr. Järvenpää, whose accent has been reproduced phonetically. The police arrested him, citing a little-known EU stipulation that mandates that users cannot do anything to their machines that software vendors do not want. "An end-user of a machine is granted a license by the operating system manufacturer to use said machine. The software manufacturer, not the end-user, is the legal owner of said computing machine, and as such, the end-user is not entitled to do anything to that machine that is prohibited by the software manufacturer," says EU regulation 656-5827-B.

Finnish intellectual property lawyer Tarja Hämeenniemi says that the regulation is bogus. Her accent has also been reproduced phonetically. "De ting is dat de major softvare cyoompanies lobbied to have dis regulation inserted. Dis vay, dey can exercise complete control over deyend-eeyuser. Dis is de fyooture of intellectual property rights," she said.

While the director of Microsoft Finland could not be reached, SEDHE managed to get in touch with the director of Microsoft Sweden, which is just as good. The director, Mr. Weds Cheshif, was less than forthcoming: "Ve heve a poolicy of not tooking about spercific ishyoos vile dey're in de leeteegation phase. All vee can say at deesa point eez dat ve are vorking hard tyoo maintain de control over our eenteelectual property, and eef dat reeqivires de prosecyootion of some people, den so be it. Bork, bork, bork!"

Publicity directors of other companies we contacted similarly framed the issue in terms of intellectual property rights. "Well, of course they are," said SEDHE Intellectual Property Editor H. Simon Gregory. "That's the easiest way for a company to get rights that it doesn't have: scream 'copyright infringement' and suddenly everyone's listening, especially other media companies, who lobby for ridiculously restrictive regulations that breach a person's rights to use the things he bought in the way he wants. Then, this person must go to court and spend time and money proving that he has the rights that he has, anyway. Suddenly, he's the bad guy!"

The ECJ ruling means that end-users must contact the manufacturers of their operating systems in order to get permission to do anything to their machines. In the case of users of Gentoo Linux, the end-user must telephone everyone who ever worked on Gentoo and ask their permission. If just one person says "no," the end-user cannot modify his machine. Even a cool case-mod like ultraviolet lights would be prohibited. A statement from France-based Vivendi Universal said that the issue was terrorism. "We cannot allow terrorists to take control over our property for their nefarious terrorist purposes. And if you don't believe that, then replace the word 'terrorist' with 'pornographer.' And if you don't believe that, call our PR department and we'll come up with a different excuse," the statement said.

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DOVER, Penn. -- On the heels of a state decision to allow intelligent design into Pennsylvania public school biology classrooms, one school board has taken the extra step of allowing alchemy to be taught in chemistry classrooms.

Dr. Lester Cartwright of the Alternative Chemistry Institute, who spoke on behalf of alchemists, said the decision was a victory for academic freedom. "What we have out there right now are scientific elites who have been working very hard to keep alternative chemistry out of their professional journals, as well as university and high school classrooms. They have no basis for saying that our alternative forms of chemistry are wrong; they just say, 'You can't teach that here' and leave it at that."

Alternative chemistry, formerly known as alchemy, is the science of turning baser metals, like lead, into gold. It also deals with finding a chemical formula for an elixir of life, which would allow immortality. According to alchemists, the use of a "philosopher's stone" is required to acheive these goals, and as yet, no such substance has ever been found.

AC proponents, such as Dr. Cartwright, prefer the use of the term "alternative chemistry," since "alchemy" is a misleading and loaded phrase. "When you hear the word 'alchemy,' you think of men in long, white beards and pointy hats in the middle ages trying to do crazy stuff. That's not what we're about. Look, I don't even have a beard!"

Critics, like Dr. Chandra Gupta of Harvard University, disagree. "There is no rational, scientific basis for the study of alchemy. It has been proven time and again that there is no way to change one element into another element," she said, also pointing out that alchemy had been discredited as a science hundreds of years ago. "Elixir of life? There's no such thing, and teaching kids that it is possible is a waste of time and money, as well as disingenuous to science."

But Dr. Cartwright disagrees. "I'm very familiar with Dr. Gupta. She is one of my staunchest critics, and unforunately, she has been suckered in by the liberal scientific elite. If they're so sure that their methods are right, then why not teach kids both kinds of science and let them decide? All we're asking is the opportunity to teach the controversy."

Rufus Einhorn, author of the book My Date with Albertus Magnus, has studied the history of alchemy and modern chemistry. "There is no controversy within chemistry. AC proponents would like to frame it that way, so that a misguided audience thinks that there is some need to be objective, but no credible chemist actually believes in alchemy. The Law of Conservation is one of the benchmark theories of chemistry, and it precludes the ability to turn elements into other elements," he said. Einhorn also had some choice remarks about Dr. Cartwright. "That guy doesn't have a doctorate in chemistry or any other science. He has a Ph.D. in education from Patriot University, formerly a ministry of Hilltop Baptist Church in Colorado Springs."

Nevertheless, Dr. Cartwright was ultimately successful in convincing one school board in Pennsylvania that not teaching all sides of the issue was academically dishonest. "Lester Cartwright is a true American hero who has stood up to the liberal elite and not been taken down by them. Hopefully, we can spread the teaching of AC to every school board in the country," said David Horowitz, president of the group Students for Academic Freedom. "Our next challenge is the theory of relativity. See that word 'theory'? Yeah, it's going down. Nothing is relative -- not morality, and certainly not time. Everything is fixed, and we believe that students must be taught our viewpoint on the issue. That is the definition of academic freedom."

Posted by Mark at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Down in the Big Easy, President Bush decided to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 for federal employees working on repairing the city. [Link to the president's proclamation officially suspending the act.] The Davis-Bacon Act requires laborers working on construction or repair for the federal government to be paid the minimum prevailing wage for laborers of that class; i.e. the union wage. Federal law allows Bush to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act because Hurricane Katrina and its resultant events were declared a national emergency.

Even though Bush suspended the act last week for laborers, he's thinking about doing it again for service workers. His explanation is that Davis-Bacon would "increase the cost to the Federal Government of providing Federal assistance to these areas."

But the federal government isn't doing squat. You know who is? Halliburton! The company that was formerly chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, the company that sent its private security subsidiary, Blackwater, into Iraq to protect strategic oil assets, the company that sent its subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root into Iraq to provide support for troops, has gotten a giant contract to rebuild New Orleans.

Not surprisingly, former FEMA director Joe Allbaugh -- the guy who left his college roommate, Michael Brown, in charge of FEMA -- managed to secure several lucrative contracts for his clients. You see, Allbaugh now works as a lobbyist, getting government contracts for companies that he represents. Here's a fun fact: Allbaugh arrived in New Orleans days ahead of FEMA in order to get as many rebuilding contracts as he could.

KBR and the other companies given federal contracts in New Orleans will benefit most from a suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act. How curious that, after September 11, there was no suspension of Davis-Bacon. Wouldn't it have decreased the cost to the federal government then and there? Or perhaps Bush didn't want to push his luck. Now, though, he knows that he can get away with giving no-bid contracts to companies that he and his associates have worked for in the past.

If you were in charge of distributing federal contracts, would you give the job to Halliburton, given their piss-poor record? They routinely overcharge the government, underdeliver what they agreed to deliver, and pocket the difference. Rebuilding New Orleans will be no different and suspending the Davis-Bacon Act makes the job all the more lucrative. How much do you want to bet Bush gets a cherry job with one of these companies after his term is over?

Posted by Mark at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

CNet reports that a new variant of the old Bagle virus is coursing through the Internet.

It's interesting to note how viruses have changed in the last thirty or so years. When computer viruses began, they were the projects of kids looking to cause trouble. Today's most prolific viruses, though, are designed to turn an infected computer into a spam robot, sending thousands of spam emails all over the world.

What have I been saying about the pervasiveness of marketing? If this keeps up, James Bond's next villain will try to engage in a hostile takeover of a major company -- literally. Whatever happened to being bad for bad's sake? It's been swallowed up by the prospect of 25 cents per spam email.

Even worse, today's viruses are smart. They automatically terminate processes associated with antivirus and anti-spyware software. They block access to security websites. They effectively strip a computer of its protection. Remember how everyone keeps telling you to install antivirus software? Whether you have it or not doesn't matter to the new Bagle virus, or any other of dozens of viruses. It will terminate the process, anyway. And you want to try to start up in safe mode? Yeah, that doesn't matter, either. It's there in safe mode. I've worked on computers for days trying to get rid of all the crap stuck on them, and sometimes I've had to give up and format the hard drive, because the virus or spyware so pervaded the operating system that there was no way to get rid of it all. Two years ago, this was nothing more than an interesting exception to the spyware/virus rule. Spyware back then was easy to get rid of through "Add/Remove Programs." Now, the spyware hides deep within the registry and file structure. It masquerades as a dozen fake applications in the C:\Windows\System directory. It terminates your anti-spyware program. It blocks web access to Symantec's website. "Add/Remove Programs" doesn't work anymore.

And why spam? As Bruce Schneier points out, it's because people actually read it. Some people read spam emails, and since the cost of sending spam emails is ridiculously low, it doesn't take a lot of people to read those emails and buy those products to make the emails profitable. We've got one of two options, here: (1) alter people's web-browsing habits so they don't open spam emails; or (2) levy fines against known spam senders. This last one is hard, because spam senders are often not companies, or if they are, they're companies whose "official policies" are to not send spam, while at the same time they pay Eastern European hackers 25 cents per spam email sent with the new spam virus that the kid wrote. What's happened to the world when corporations have infiltrated run-of-the-mill mischief? Pretty soon, punks will be spraypainting buildings and bridges with the Pepsi logo instead of regular old grafitti -- and Pepsi will pay them for their troubles.

Meanwhile, over here at SEDHE, the comment-spam is getting smarter. Now, whatever robots that are sending comment spam are including what appear to be random URLs from actual blogs along with links to the crap that they're advertising. This makes it difficult to program MT-Blacklist, since each individual comment spam contains a different URL and a different, randomly-generated fake email address. The point of comment spam is not to have people click on the links. The point of comment spam is for the owner of the blog to ignore the spam until such time as the page with the comment spam link on it gets archived by the search engines. The more pages there are with the same link, the higher the search result, and the more money these companies can weasel out of advertisers. This strategy takes advantage primarily of Google's search algorithms, which don't just search the Internet for text strings, but also index searches based on how many other web pages are linking to a particular web page. This is precisely how Kerry supporters got the phrase "miserable failure" to link to the White House website as the number one search result in 2004: by taking advantage of Google's unique feature of seeing how many pages link to a given page. The same goes for comment spam and trackback spam.

But it doesn't stop there. All sorts of robots sign up for free Blogger accounts. They're mostly redirects to major porn websites, and they get a lot of hits because people have become wise to what URLs for major porn sites look like; a Blogger URL seems less like "corporate" porn. But, sadly, the online porn industry is smarter than you are. (In fact, the porn industry has pioneered a lot of the technology now commonly found on the web.)

Posted by Mark at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush held a press conference today to announce the beginning of a massive new initiative that he hopes will prevent disasters like Hurricane Katrina from ever happening again.

"Today, the United States embarks on a bold new initiative in order to make the homeland more secure. Today, the United States declares a war on nature. It is evident from the recent destruction in the Gulf region that nature cannot be trusted to keep the United States secure," Bush said. "We were lax in our duties, relying on nature to protect us from hurricanes and floods. Clearly, the forces of evil -- led by Muslim extremists who hate freedom -- have usurped nature, causing it to turn against the United States, resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children."

The president's plan is perhaps his boldest yet. An elite team of Nature Warriors, drawn from the ranks of the Army's Special Forces, will be dispatched to areas affected or about to be affected by natural disasters. Once there, they will fire their weapons into the natural disaster, hoping to kill it or drive it off. "Of course, nature is very strong," said Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker. "Shooting at nature may not be enough to force it into retreat. This is why we are also prepared to use bombs, mines, and missiles to damage nature enough that it will leave."

The new Nature Warriors team is currently being assembled to prepare for the landfall of Hurricane Rita. "We expect relatively few casualties as a result of Operation Dispatch Rita," said Schoomaker. "Those who do die will have died in a noble cause for their country. Jesus will grant them fifty virgins in heaven."

Some critics observe that this is merely the public face of what has been a continuous war on nature since the beginning of the Bush administration. "The Clear Skies initiative, the Healthy Forests Act, these were all the beginnings of the war on nature," said environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "The Bush administration had, since the very beginnings of its tenure, been trying to eliminate nature altogether. The 'war on nature' project confirms this fact, but it confirms that Bush was not anti-nature because of his big business connections; rather, it suggests that he was merely looking out for the country's best interests. Nature can't be trusted to work on the side of the United States."

Justice Department attorneys were engaged in high-level meetings today, wondering whether or not they could indefinitely imprison nature without filing any charges. "We have not yet made any determinations," said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "But we believe that the recent ruling against Jose Padilla's request for habeas corpus will strengthen our case for indefinitely imprisoning nature." Gonzales conceded that he was unsure of where nature would be detained, but he suggested, "Somewhere out west. You know, in one of those states where nobody lives. Wyoming, for example, could be converted into a maximum-security nature detention facility."

The president suggested that a war on nature would cost taxpayers $100 billion, but Congressional Budget Office analysts said the figure was closer to $500 billion. The president then had the analysts arrested and imprisoned as "enemy combatants" for supporting nature.

Posted by Mark at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In 1996, Scream revitalized the slasher flick, the genre born from John Carpenter's 1978 Halloween, in which a knife-wielding maniac attacks teenagers. Seriously, they're called "slasher" films because, without many exceptions, the killer uses a knife to kill his victims. A knife is far more intimate than a gun -- you could shoot someone from one hundred yards away, but that doesn't inspire terror. The goal of the maniac in a slasher film is to inspire terror in his victims, letting them see him and come to a horrible realization that they're about to die.

Wes Craven, the guy who brought you a new twist on the slasher flick in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street with the novum of a supernatural killer, once again turned the genre on its head in 1996. Scream was self-aware unlike any slasher film before it. It was at once a prototypical slasher film and a film that made fun of the clichéd conventions of the genre. For a while, everyone was making slasher films. And they then stopped because they ran out of good ideas.

Cry_Wolf is not a good idea. See the underscore in the title? The movie attempts to be tech-savvy, bringing the slasher film to the "IM generation" of teenagers at college right now. These kids are connected to their friends via instant messaging on the computer, via their cell phones, and via instant messaging on their cell phones. Early slasher films were morality plays in which no character got any less than he or she deserved. Cry_Wolf could be a commentary on the depersonalization of the college environment through the use of electronic messaging, but it decides part of the way through the film that it doesn't want to be about that.

But wait? Isn't Cry_Wolf set at a prep school? Isn't this high school? Not on your life. This movie is about college, and anyone who disagrees is a stupid baby. "Prep school" is used as a proxy for "college" for some reason. I don't know why screenwriters Beau Bauman and Jeff Wadlow decided to make a film set at college and then called the college "prep school," but it's clearly college. Do you know of any co-ed prep schools? And I don't mean private school. I mean "prep school" as in, you get sent off to this place for nine months out of the year. You live there and you go to school there. This is not Lake Catholic High School. This is college.

And at college -- I mean, high school -- we use AOL Instant Messenger to communicate. I thought maybe AOL wouldn't agree to have its name used in conjunction with this film, resulting in a nebulous, generic IM program that looks a whole lot like AIM. But I was wrong. Again. The words "AOL Instant Messenger" are prominently displayed in close-ups of computer monitors. Looking back, why not? AOL's got a good thing going. They're setting up the current generation of high school to think that AIM is just what college kids do, like going to keggers and hooking up every night of the week. That way, they can justify higher ad rates and install more spyware on unsuspecting students' machines. Damn, I love product tie-ins.

So here's the deal: some girl gets killed at this prep school. A bunch of friends decide it would be a lark to make up a "forwarded email" in which the killer is a serial killer who's going to strike again. The only problem is that the stuff they made up actually starts happening. Man, it would be great at this point to talk about how anonymous electronic communication makes misunderstanding even more possible, and make it hyperbolic by having the "misunderstanding" turn into murder . . . but we're not going to. Heck, let's start in that direction and then totally abandon that line of thought. (This is what the screenwriters were thinking. I know. I was there.)

The main character is a transfer student who's been in trouble at lots of other prep schools. But he hasn't really been in trouble. He's just taken the fall for others because he's a Nice Guy. As the national representative for Nice Guys Everywhere, let me state that this guy goes beyond Nice Guy. He ventures into Stupid Guy territory. "Nice" is staying up all night with someone who's having some sort of crisis, foregoing sleep for yourself. "Stupid" is admitting to commiting a crime that you didn't commit just because you don't want to see the real criminal put in jail. Oh, and the guy is British for some reason. "Hey, here's this crazy movie, and let's make it exotic by having the protagonist be British!" Just imagine if they'd tried that for The Terminator. Sorry, this guy doesn't belong in the Nice Guy club because he's a big dope.

Why am I complaining so much? Because I was bored. Yes, this movie is actually boring. And the first half is really boring. A couple times I thought about leaving altogether. (Oh, and the dialogue was written by George Lucas while he was taking LSD.) If you're going to bill this as a scary film, let's see something scary!. There aren't even any real "jump" moments. Sure, there's a lot of chasing, but that isn't scary. That's vicarious exercise. By the end of some of these scenes, I had had a good virtual workout, but I wasn't any more scared.

Do yourself a favor and save your seven dollars for a bucket of popcorn for when you go to see Corpse Bride next week. Unless you want to spend seven dollars to see Hotty McHotterson Lindy Booth, who plays Nice Guy's love interest. But you could just wait until this came on TV to see her. So avoid this movie and go spend the money on nachos next week. Trust me, it's a better investment. At least the nachos won't be boring. And if you want to watch a good slasher film, go and rent Halloween or Friday the 13th. Heck, it's nearing Halloween time; one of them has to be on TV somewhere in the world.

Posted by Mark at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

California's favorite killer cyborg from the future cum governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, will run for a second term, guaranteeing those of us in the comedy business with jokes for seven more years.

"I'm going to follow through with this here. I'm not in here for three years. We're going to finish the job. I'm in here for seven years," he told crowds. Then he said, "And after that, I'm going to stay for seven more years. And seven years after that!" Smoke began to pour from Arnold's ears, and aides whisked him away from the stage. In a statement made later today by Arnold's spokesman, Miles Bennett Dyson, the governor was said to be "just fine. Couldn't be better. There was a short in one of his quadritonic optical subprocessors . . . I mean, he had a cold. Oh boy, I hope no one heard that."

Analysts had long theorized that Arnold actually was a cyborg from the future who had been reprogrammed to terminate -- via the electoral process -- bad government. "Of course he's a robot," said Dr. Raymond R. Pinchbeck of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. "I've been saying that for years. Ever since he made Jingle All the Way and his career didn't suffer, I said, 'Boy, he must be bulletproof.' Of course, I didn't mean it literally, but it turns out that, due to his metal endoskeleton, Arnold is bulletproof. But in theoretical physics terminology, he's gone totally bonkers."

But what could have caused Arnold's approval ratings to hit rock-bottom? Dr. Matilda M. Pyle of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign believes she has an answer. "Part of the way into his term, Arnold's positronic matrix suffered a minor failure at this redundancy checkpoint," she said, pointing to a diagram of what she believes Arnold's positronic brain looks like. "This particular failure, though minor, caused a checksum error that made him do strange things like cut benefits for teachers and veto gay marriage legislation. In computer engineering terminology, he's gone totally bonkers."

While President Bush could order the Army to come in and destroy the robotic governor for the safety of Californians, an unnamed aide said that was unlikely. "Since when did Californians do anything for Bush? You know how he loves loyalty. More than logic, more than reason, more than fiscal responsibility and a nice Christmas ham, he loves loyalty. Californians weren't loyal, so they can get what's coming to them for being with the terrorists. And besides, Arnold supported him in his second presidential bid. Who rewards supporters by calling in the Army to blow them up? Not this president, that's who."

Posted by Mark at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A file containing the social security numbers of every student who attended Miami University during the Fall 2002 semester somehow ended up in public webspace. From Miami's official press release:

Miami University is notifying all students who attended Miami during the fall 2002 semester that a report containing their names, Social Security numbers and grades had been inadvertently placed in a file accessible through the Internet.

University officials said that at this point they have no evidence of illegal use of the information, which included data on the 21,762 students enrolled on all Miami campuses in fall 2002. No other students were affected.

Officials say the information was in an isolated area of the university's network, in a file assigned to a now-retired faculty member, and thus avoided detection until this week when an alumna told Miami she had discovered the file after entering her name in a search engine.

“Nevertheless, private and confidential information was exposed, and we deeply regret the incident. We have removed the file and are writing the students and alumni to apologize. We also are taking steps to rectify the problem and to avoid a similar instance in the future," said J. Reid Christenberry, Miami's vice president for information technology.

As a recently former employee of Miami IT Services, I won't comment on this information.

Posted by Mark at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court totally wussed out in Elk Grove School District v. Newdow? No? Well, here's a refresher: petitioner Newdow was the father of a girl in the Elk Grove School District and objected to the Pledge of Allegiance being said in her classroom. Newdow is an atheist. So he sued the school district, alleging that the Pledge of Allegiance -- with its sentence "under God" -- was unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit Court ignited a firestorm in 2002 when it agreed with Newdow. The case went to the Supreme Court, where 5 of the 9 justices threw the case out on a technicality: Newdow was divorced and his wife had legal custody of their daughter. Thus, the Court said, Newdow didn't have standing to bring the case, since he wasn't the girl's legal guardian. The Court thought that they had averted the Pledge of Allegiance issue.

Until now! Deep within the murky depths of the Pacific Ocean, where the Japanese had been testing nuclear bombs, a monster emerges from the water: the Pledge of Allegiance! Watch as it destroys Moth-ra, Megalon, and Mecha-Pledge of Allegiance! Nothing can stop it this time!

That's because Newdow, a lawyer, found himself some people who did have custody of their kids and agreed to be petitioners in a new lawsuit. Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Nothern District of California ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. This launched a new firestorm: what would the Ninth Circuit do? Would it rule the same way three years later? What if this case got to the Supreme Court? John Roberts, as chief justice, might have to make a ruling about it!

The only issue with the Pledge of Allegiance is the issue that there are some people -- I call them demagogues, and I call Sean Hannity World's Most Pus-Filled Douchebag -- who don't understand what the Constitution means. It's very clear: "Congress shall respect no establishment of religion." That's called the establishment clause, kids. It means Congress cannot give an endorsement to any religion, and placing "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance constitutes such an endorsement. Whose God? The Christian God? What about everyone else's gods? What about atheists? Some people -- again, demagogues -- accuse the judiciary of trying to remove God from people's lives. They're mistaken. The judiciary is trying to remove God from the government's life, a place where it definitely doesn't belong.

Posted by Mark at 2: