politics

Something I posted on Slashdot, regarding the perceived and actual threat from terrorism:

The biggest single problem in the US today is there are indeed terrorists

No, it's not. Not even close. The threat perceived is way out of proportion to the actual threat.

About 16,000 people are murdered in the U.S. per year; that makes the number of people killed in the U.S. by terrorist attacks over the past decade on the order of one fiftieth the number of people murdered in conventional assaults.

The annual number of deaths from AIDS are roughly comparable to those from murder. AIDS is about 50 times the threat to your life as terrorists.

Both murder and AIDS are of course tiny compared to deaths from cancer or heart disease, which together have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million people in the past ten years. Bacon double cheeseburgers and lack of exercise are far more deadly to Americans than Al Qaeda.

Over a million people died in accidents in the past decade; about 400,000 of those were killed in motor vehicle accidents.

Heck, about as many people drown every year as died in the 9/11 attacks. 3,372 fatal drownings in 2001, versus 2,974 killed in the 9/11 attacks. And yet nobody gets all bent out of shape about how we have to suspend habeus corpus to protect ourselves from the dangers of swimming pools and lakes.

Fear terrorists? Feh. If you want to save lives, put resources into health promotion and medical care, safer roads, and crime prevention.

That doesn't mean "do nothing about terrorists"; but it does mean "do sane things, not crazy-ass useless things".

According to Wired, Homeland Security records obtained by
the Identity Project (under a Privacy Act request) show that screeners
are tracking information including airline passenger's reading choices:

One report about Gilmore notes: "PAX (passenger) has many small flashlights with pot leaves on them. He had a book entitled 'Drugs and Your Rights.'" Gilmore is an advocate for marijuana legalization.

Another inspection entry noted that Gilmore had "attended computer conference in Berlin and then traveled around Europe and Asia to visit friends. 100% baggage exam negative. Resides 554 Clay Street , San Francisco, CA. PAX is self employed 'Entrepreneur' in computer software business."

Hey, TSA, here's something to put in my record: PAX is on record as saying nosy goverment agents can kiss his ass.

Usually I'm pretty proud to be a Marylander. Not today, though, when our state's highest court hands down a irrational and homophobic ruling, overturing a Baltimore Circuit Court that found that the state's law restricting marriage to heterosexual couples was unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Instead, the Court of Appeals found that claimed that the state has a legitimate interest in maintaining heterosexual marriage because it allows procreation and the traditional family structure. How that squares with allowing elderly or infertile people to marry is beyond me. And the "traditional family structure", as we all know, is where a man buys a woman from her family with a dowry. Is that what Maryland law is supposed to encourage?

Shame on the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Something I posted on Slashdot
today, following on to a discussion about asking Presidential candidates about whether
they accept the reality of evolution.

Notice you didn't see a thread here encouraging people to ask Democrats [about taxes and Al Qaeda]

Well, this being a site whose demographic is more united in a concern with science than on an agreement about tax policy or foreign policy, no, you didn't.

I'm not a Democrat or running for President. (Yet...I've hit the age requirement, and looking at the current field of candidates, might just write myself in 2008.) But I'd love to hear such questions put to candidates.

Here's how I'd answer: well, sir, if you want to lower taxes, you have to lower spending. Now, given that Americans pay lower taxes than most nations of comparable economic development, I don't find the issue tops on my priority list; especially when we're talking about increasing taxes on the unearned income of the wealthy, whose share of the tax burden has fallen.

But as it happens, a tremendous amount of money is being wasted on American "defense" spending, especially in the Iraq occupation. (Not to mention American and Iraqi lives.) U.S. military spending makes up close to half of the world total, with the next tier of nations (the UK, France, Japan and China) with around 5% each. We could almost halve our military budget and still be outspending any other nation five to one! But talk about such spending cuts - which would enable significant tax cuts - and neoconservatives go apeshit. It's as if they view the military as America's penis and fear it shrinking. (I fear they've confused their rifles and their "guns".)

Meanwhile, they love to make a big fuss about cutting spending on welfare and social programs, which make up a very small amount of federal spending and wouldn't save the average American more than a few dollars a year.

The following tale of civil forfeiture woes was sent in by an anonymous correspondent. (Well, I guess someone who leaves a phone number isn't really anonymous...) I've cleaned up typos but otherwise this is as received. If anyone has leads please contact the querent. (I've already suggested contacting FEAR.)

On 12/04/06 I was served a forfeiture summons. I responded back to it on 12/14/06. IC 34-24-1-3.states that the state has 90 days from that date to file with the courts. They filed with the courts on 4/10/07. Do the math, that's 117 days from receiving my response to file. That is a state law in Indiana. How come the state can break these laws and take our hard working money? They forfeited my money yesterday. On 7/09/07. What can I do the system is failing me. I have not been convicted of any crime. How can they DO THIS..........CAN ANYONE HELP ME. The ICLU won't, who will? I need help. You can contact me if you have any advice at (317)246-7059. Please...I have all the paper work on this in my possession.

Marine Corporal Trent Thomas is being court-martialed for his role in the murder of Iraqi Hashim Ibrahim Awad, in April 2006.

His defense lawyer, Haytham Faraj, is claiming that he had no choice, because "Marines in combat don't challenge orders."

I can only quote Thoreau:

A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?

Famed televangelist and founder of the "Moral Majority" Jerry Falwell is dead.

I must admit, there is part of me that wants to cheer that he's gone, will no longer be able to spread hate and intolerance and his twisted notion of Christianity. But really, it's so sad: a life wasted on fear and small-minded bigotry.

Some say hell is reserved for those who believe in it; if so, I hope Jizo Bodhisattva will soon help the poor guy out of it.

According to CNN, the LAPD today opened fire on and assaulted protesters engaging in a demonstration for immigration reform.

In Los Angeles, California, police in riot gear fired rubber bullets to disperse a crowd at MacArthur Park at the end of a day of peaceful rallies at the park and at City Hall. Witnesses said police gave no warning before moving in around 6 p.m.

Police said a protester had knocked down a motorcycle officer.

No arrests or serious injuries were reported.

Footage broadcast on CNN International shows cops clubbing people to the ground for not clearing the area quickly enough, and threatening those who attempted to turn back to help fallen friends.

CNN's coverage downplayed the danger of rubber bullets; they are less lethal than metal ones, certainly, but people are killed by them on occasion.

Regardless of one's opinion on the complex questions of immigration, this is abhorrent infringement on free speech.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (hexadecimal notation).

What's so magic about this number, you ask? It’s an HD-DVD Processing Key, and it the movie industry would like to censor it to keep monopoly control over the manufacture of HD-DVD players.

This is not the first time the industry has tried to maintain its monopoly by infringing free speech - a few years back there was the DeCSS case, which led to people putting the code on t-shirts to demonstrate the absurdity of trying to censor such information.

Posted to the Cyberdojo today:

"Robert Agar-Hutton" robert@pro...tics.co.uk writes:

> In China or Korea - He couldn't have gone and bought (legally) the
> gun!!!

Well, yes, but if anyone thinks strong gun control laws keep guns
away from determined bad guys, read the news about the shooting murder
of the mayor of Nagasaki; firearms are strictly banned in Japan.

Gun control laws keep guns away from bad guys about as well as
drug control laws keep heroin away from junkies. If your nation doesn't
have a heroin problem, it's not because prohibition laws make it
impossible for people to get drugs, it's because your society has given
people better options than smoking or shooting up addictive synthetic
opiates. (Hurray for you!)

If your nation doesn't have a violent crime problem, it's not
because prohibition laws make it impossible for people to get weapons,
it's because your society has given people better options than killing
each other. (Hurray for you!)

A determined killer doesn't even need a gun - one guy in China a
few years ago got ten people in one bloody night with an axe and a
knife. In the U.S., we have a higher *non-gun* murder rate than the
total rate for the U.K. or Japan - we beat and stab each other to death
at a higher rate than you guys shoot, stab, and beat each other.