12.21.05
Posted in General at 4:18 pm by Dan
The Star Tribune (the local rag where Dan lives) puts a snarky title on an article about airplane security. You can now bring scissors, screwdrivers, knitting needles and nail clippers onto an airplane.
Those rules were a perfect example of bureaucracy gone wild and what Bruce Schneier calls “security theater”. Is there any reasonable person who genuinely thought that forbidding nail clippers on airplanes would make anyone safer? Could you ask people on the street and find anyone who thought that an airplane might be hijacked or passengers be seriously injured by a person wielding nail clippers?
I’m always curious how these sorts of things happen. I can’t think of anyone honestly suggesting a no-nail-clippers policy, but someone did just that. Who is that person, and what was he or she thinking? What makes those kind of government officials so out of touch with regular people and the real world?
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12.19.05
Posted in General at 10:27 pm by Dan
Well, I’m honored that Clay thinks I am at once moderate and wacko, and invited me to post here. I haven’t used WordPress before, so I’m testing things out, adjusting the mirrors, moving the seat up, and changing all the radio presets, just so Clay is mad when he gets in and tries to start up the blog. Or something.
At any rate, ignore this if I do something wonky, I’m still figuring this out. I hope to have a more-or-less real post up soon.
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Posted in General at 5:55 pm by Clay
I read this in the Wisconsin State Journal, but it is by David E. Sanger through the New York Times News Service:
President Bush acknowledged Saturday that he had ordered the National Security Agency to conduct an electronic eavesdropping program in the United States without first obtaining warrants, and said he would continue the highly classified program because it was “a vital tool in our war against the terrorists.”
So, to paraphrase, the president has said, “I have the right to spy on anyone I want, because I know what’s best for the country.”
So, total spying power with no checks or balances. Does this make you feel safer?
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12.18.05
Posted in General at 2:36 am by Clay
I read an anti-Flying Spaghetti Monster letter today. It was an interesting, though misguided, attack on Pastafarianism. What really bugged me, though, was this paragraph:
One of the cornerstones of modern intellectual thought is the concept of liberty. From liberty we get the term liberal, which retains the root “liber” meaning free. During the Enlightenment period, a period whose influence reaches deep into the foundations of current intellectual thought, liberal was taken to mean – “free from prejudice, tolerant” (www.etymonline.com). Considering this definition of liberalism, my concern is this; Mr. Henderson’s comments are in direct violation of liberalism. His comments, while they are protected under the first amendment, do not reflect the liberal spirit of the amendment. FSM is intolerant and prejudiced; a perverse mockery of what many hold sacred. If we stand by and let our peers follow Mr. Henderson’s example then we are allowing them to slowly chip away at the foundations of liberty itself.
So, to paraphrase the author, intolerant and prejudiced speech, while protected under current law, are really not what the first amendment was all about.
Does everyone see how incredibly stupid that idea is? You do not need to protect speech that you agree with. Obviously, censors don’t censor speech that they want to hear. So, the letter-writer has it exactly backwards. Not only is this speech protected by the first amendment, it is exactly the type of speech the first amendment was designed to protect.
Sure, you could make the argument that a “tolerant” or “politically correct” nation would not allow certain types of speech. But that’s saying that freedom of speech is not as important as some other goal. The letter writer has the goal of stopping speech with which he disagrees. Therefore, logically, he is against freedom of speech in some circumstances.
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