Category: Uncategorized

Alexander Marriott has written a good post about Martha Stewart: “Stewart Treated Badly Because She is Successful, Not Because She is A Woman.” Whatever her ideological faults, there is no excuse for the horrendous injustice inflicted on her by the government, or the treatment she is getting from the media. I’ve pondered about ways to show my support for her, and here is one of the simplest and most effective: go to MarthaStewart.com and buy something from her catalog.

I think the title says it all: “Iraqi women juggle freedom, ‘moral duty’”
And if you weren’t clear enough on what Islam is about:

It’s my moral duty to stay in the house,” Hassan says, describing the life of a traditional Shiite Muslim wife. “Going out and being seen outside the house is against tradition. People will criticize a woman who leaves her house. This will create trouble for a woman in the community and trouble with her husband.

In other news, I often wonder what the labels “far-right” and “moderate” mean when referring to foreign political movements. The NYT has some clues:

Jörg Haider, the far-right political leader, brought his party an unanticipated victory in his home province Sunday…
In final results, the Freedom Party had 42.4 percent of the vote, and the Socialists 38 percent.

This implies that “moderate” actually means “socialist” and “far-right” is capitalist. Then the article continues:

Many blame Mr. Haider for the party’s national demise. He has been notorious for past remarks that sounded sympathetic to the Nazis and contemptuous of Jews, a visit with Saddam Hussein on the eve of the Iraq war and a friendship with Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi.

So what does “far-right” really mean – “capitalist” or “national socialist?” I know that commie reporters think that the two are the same, but I hope that my readers will know better.

Photos of Chernobyl after 18 years. I lived about 100 miles South-West of it at the time.

Martha Stewart has been convicted on all four counts. I have nothing else to add to the matter other than this: a country that destroys its best, most productive minds does not survive for very long. If 30 years from now, all that is left of America is a broken-down starving dictatorship, today will be the day that finally doomed it. With the media in a witch-hunting frenzy, politicians of all stripes trying to beat one another to the next socialist regulation, and the courts going along, the thugs at the DOJ have nothing left in their way.

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen. -Ayn Rand

To top off a lousy week, my digital camera broke today 🙁
I’m in the market for a new one if any readers have suggestions for me.

AlJazeera Poll: “Who stands to benefit from civil unrest in Iraq?”

Neighbouring Arab country : 13%
Neighbouring non-Arab country : 3%
Israel and the US : 38%
Internal Iraqi groups : 19%
Combination of the above : 12%
Unsure : 15%

Not surprisingly, “terrorists,” “Baathist thugs,” and “Al Jazeera” were not in the list. The article further implicates the US:

There might be infiltrators attacking the Shia to make it appear they are being targeted by Sunnis and the other way round. It is in the interest of both (Iraqi) Sunnis and Shia to agree on putting out this fire and not to react to such provocations,” said Shaikh Salman al-Udah.

(Needless to say, the problem in Iraq is a bit more serious than “civil unrest.”)

A wave of suicide bombings and mortar attacks on vast crowds of Shiite worshippers has killed at least 170 people in Baghdad and Karbala.
…
The near-simultaneous attacks ripped through an annual ritual, banned under Sunni Saddam Hussein, during which Shiites beat their heads and chests and cut their heads with swords to honour a revered figure killed in battle 1,324 years ago.

Should it be any suprise that a religion glorifying death leads to death-worship in practice? Only to someone who glorifies death himself. The main difference between most Christians and Muslims is that the former tend to be much more consistent.

Do you support equal topless rights, allowing women to show their breasts openly, just like men?

Choice Votes Percentage of 10465 Votes
Yes 6366 61%
No 3869 37%

In related news, porn = adultery:

DALLAS — This billboard in Dallas on Feb. 2, 2004, is a campaign by Dallas- based nonprofit software company by NetAccountability, a nonprofit software company that aims to help Christians confront the “secret sin” of pornography. The company is urging men to give their wives a special gift for Valentines — abstinence from porn. The billboards are scheduled to be displayed on Friday, Feb. 13, 2004, the day before Valentines Day.

Continue reading “"Topless rights"”

I came across “Top Twelve Reasons Not to Support Gay Marriage” at Neurosophy and would like to include it here, since the list seems to be in the public domain. (The only one I disagree with is #8.)
Continue reading “Top Twelve Reasons Not to Support Gay Marriage”

One of the main reasons the Internet has been so successful in the last decade is the fierce resistance given in response to meddling politicians who want to protect us from ourselves. Most of the laws that have been passed to regulate the web have either been ruled unconstitutional, or were completely useless and ineffective.
There is one bill however that has been particularly destructive and dishonest – the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Most of it was overturned by the Supreme Court, but one of the provisions that remained is TITLE XIII, which requires parental permission to collect personal information from any child under 13 years of age. “Parental permission” means that a parent must submit their personal information, and a verification of their age using something like a valid credit card. Most websites cannot afford to install such a complex verification system – nor can they afford the legal liability if ingenious kids circumvent that system. Neither will the parents of most 13 year olds submit their credit card numbers to an unknown website. In practice, the majority of community websites that require some information for participation simply say “By Federal Law, ALL applicants MUST be 13 years of age or older.”

When faced with such a notice, 99% of kids will simply lie about their age. This is fine for them, but not for the website operators, who are forced to either not collect any information at all, or to ban children from using their website (and hence not be able to market to them.) This is why there are no child-oriented online communities on the web that I’m aware of. There are many child-oriented sites of course, but by “community,” I mean a place where individuals can interact with each other and build online personas – something that requires at least a username and email address. The few websites that can afford to spend millions on the technical and legal challenges necessary for children to register usually ban children from its online forums and communities anyway – encouraging them to lie even when parental consent is possible.

In short, the government’s attempt to “protect” children has wiped out a major market niche, taught children to lie from an early age, and forced them to move their communities to underground IRC channels and general audience sites – exposing them to much more risk then a properly moderated child-oriented site would. It has also set a precedent for online censorship, one that the Supreme Court has mostly rebuffed, but may not do so in the future.