the unreasonable man

Sometimes, "equality" just means that the Combine has eaten you, too. LGBT citizens are now equally free to serve our corporate masters and genuflect before the military-industrial complex. From Common Dreams: Bradley Manning is Off Limits at SF Gay Pride Parade, but Corporate Sleaze is Embraced (Common Dreams):

News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning, widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued, the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quickly capitulated, issuing a cowardly, imperious statement that has to be read to be believed.

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What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture. Even at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, once an iconic symbol of cultural dissent and disregard for stifling peities, nothing can happen that might offend AT&T and the Bank of America. The minute something even a bit deviant takes place (as defined by standards imposed by America's political and corporate class), even the SF Gay Pride Parade must scamper, capitulate, apologize, and take an oath of fealty to their orthodoxies (we adore the military, the state, and your laws).

From the "duh!" file: two members of congress are (finally) calling for the end of cannabis prohibition. From ABC/Yahoo! News:

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) say marijuana legalization is a common sense fiscal policy that could save the government billions of dollars through a combination of tax revenues and savings from not pursuing costly enforcement and incarceration.

“We are trying to rationalize federal drug policy,” Blumenauer tells Top Line. “We're spending too much money on enforcement for something most Americans think should be legal, and we're losing revenue. And we're going to create federal train wreck if we don't fix it.”

Someone needs to punch the headline author and whoever put the phrase "trippy idea" into the story; but this is newsworthy.

From the Guardian: Bill for compulsory science fiction in West Virginia schools:

A bill calling for science fiction to be made compulsory reading in schools has been proposed by a politician in West Virginia in order to "stimulate interest in the fields of math and science".

Ray Canterbury, a Republican delegate, is appealing to the West Virginia board of education to include science fiction novels on the middle school and high school curriculums. "The Legislature finds that promoting interest in and appreciation for the study of math and science among students is critical to preparing students to compete in the workforce and to assure the economic well being of the state and the nation," he writes in the pending bill.

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"I'm not interested in fantasy novels about dragons," Canterbury told Blastr in a recent interview. "I'm primarily interested in things where advanced technology is a key component of the storyline, both in terms of the problems that it presents and the solutions that it offers."

There's been a lot of discussion lately about "rape culture" and consent, prompted partly by incredibly stupid stupid statements from politicians ("legitimate rape", anyone?), partly by shocking events in Steubenville and New Delhi and...well, too many other places to name.

It's certainly useful and necessary to talk about consent. Anything that gets us communicating about sex can only be to the good, and a conversation about rape can increase respect for victims, help us understand and believe their stories, and make us more determined to catch the assholes who commit it. That's all to the good.

But the people doing most of the raping aren't going to be listening to that discussion. When I hear some folks suggesting that we don't need to teach women how to protect themselves against rapists, we need to teach men how to not rape, I fear that they are mistaking the nature of the problem. I'm sure there are some edge cases, but by and large it's not that the rapists don't understand consent; it's that they don't care.

There's an interesting analysis at Yes Means Yes:

...the sometimes-floated notion that acquaintance rape is simply a mistake about consent, is wrong... The vast majority of the offenses are being committed by a relatively small group of men, somewhere between 4% and 8% of the population, who do it again … and again … and again. That just doesn’t square with the notion of innocent mistake. Further, since the repeaters are also responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of the intimate partner violence, child beating and child sexual abuse, the notion that these predators are somehow confused good guys does not square with the data. Most of the raping is done by guys who like to rape, and to abuse, assault and violate.

The sort of beasts who not only rape a woman but (taking Steubenville as an example) urinate on her in the most primitive possible display of primate dominance, and take pictures to show their friends, are not going to be changed by any sort of discussion. (Short of intensive psychotherapy, at least.) They're not operating at that mental level.

Yes, we also need to talk about how we raise kids, especially boys, so that they don't grow up into people who like to abuse, assault, and violate; and what we can do with someone who has grown into such a person once we catch them.

But to stop these people once they've gone bad and before we catch them, we need to talk about personal safety and self-defense strategies.

(BTW if someone in the Baltimore area has a space, I'd be happy to put on a community self-defense class, for women and men.)

And I thought I had worked on some hairy old code: kottke.org passes on the story of a 1948 vintage plugboard computer still in use (at least as of last year): Don't mess with Texas's old computers

Sparkler's IBM 402 is not a traditional computer, but an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards.

Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed written report. In a sense, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is Baltimore's song, but at times like this I'm glad we gave it to the nation. From WCVB:
Bruins fans sing national anthem in emotional pregame ceremony -- click through and watch the video.

...The Boston Fire Department Honor Guard brought out the U.S. flag to honor the first responders who rushed to the aid of the three killed and more than 170 injured by the twin bombs at the marathon finish line.

Longtime Boston Garden troubadour Rene Rancourt took his place for the "Star-Spangled Banner." But he sang only the first few lines, allowing the crowd to carry the tune while he pumped his fist to keep time.

If Obama's going to exploit parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting to push his agenda, it seems fair to point out that not all of those parents agree with his plan. Funny how this gets no news coverage. From Mediaite: Why Hasn’t The Media Been Reporting On Or Booking Pro-Gun Newtown Parent Mark Mattioli?

Some of the most compelling voices in the current debate over gun violence are those who have been touched by it, particularly the parents of the twenty children slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14. It’s strange, then, that one of those parents, Mark Mattioli, has simultaneously been white-washed and virtually blacked out of the media’s post-Newtown coverage....

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...[T]he testimony of several other parents received widespread attention, particularly that of Neil Heslin, whose testimony was interruppted by shouts from gun advocates. Mattioli’s testimony, however, received very little attention, and what attention it did get was manipulated to obscure his apparent political views. The New York Times published a piece quoting Mr. Mattioli’s opposition to new gun laws, but softened the more explicitly political portion of his testimony. CNN similarly avoided Mattioli’s politics, while reporting a “divide” on gun control in Newtown.

(Of course, in a sane country we'd be looking at actual research and evidence on crime and violence to figure out whether locking people up for possessing unapproved firearms would make us safer and more free, rather than trying to dig up pathos-filled anecdotes...but, yeah, good luck on that.)

The censoring bastards at Apple are at it again, this time banning a comic e-book issue for a portrayal of gay sex:

Though graphic material is indeed prohibited as per Apple's guidelines, as Vaughan points out, Saga and other titles have done far worse than what's shown in Saga #12. Let alone the amount of extreme violence that's found in most mature-readers comics

Students involved in Boston College Students for Sexual Health, a group distributing free condoms around the Catholic university, received a letter from the administration telling them to stop. The letter from dean of students Paul J. Chebator and director of residential life George Arey claimed that "The distribution of condoms is not congruent with our values and traditions".

But as chairwoman of the group Lizzie Jekanowski said, "It harkens to a much deeper Catholic morality of caring for your neighbor — and that’s literally what we’re doing, is caring for our neighbors."

If Catholics ever get over the sex hangups and focus on that caring for your neighbor thing, the Church could actually be a force for good in the world. Want to take bets on the odds of that?

Wired covers the story of Alfred Anaya, a stereo installer and car customizer who built secret compartments into cars. Some people use such compartments to hide legitimate valuables from thieves; others use them to smuggle drugs. As Wired's Brendan I. Koerner explains, dual-use technologies plus federal prosecutorial discretion leave makers like Anaya with a sword hanging over their head. Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. So the DEA Put Him in Prison:

The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when, exactly, they should turn their back on paying customers. Take, for example, a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab so that traffickers can better evade law enforcement, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally? If it accepted payment in crumpled $20 bills and thus should have known it was dealing with gangsters? If the customer picked up the merchandise in an overly flashy car? The law offers scant guidance, but prosecutors have tremendous leeway to pursue conspiracy charges whenever they see fit. And as 3-D printers enable the unfettered production of sophisticated objects, those prosecutors will be tempted to make examples out of people who are careless about their clients.