The saying goes that death and taxes are the two certainties in life. Taxes are a necessity to keep the government running. And the government is needed to provide security and peace for all people who live under it’s authority. I only say this because not many people understand where their hard-earned money goes.
You know what really grinds my gears? Being ‘green’. ‘Environmentalists’ cloud their hatred for globalization in being green. Most global warming ‘facts’ are ill-researched and when pressed on the issue, these people will turn to emotional responses, not ones laid in truth or even science.
What I’ve noticed is how little research these environmentalist actually do into anything they are saying. One of the popular ‘facts’ I’ve heard is that the east coast will be flooded and will disappear because the oceans will have grown. Another ‘fact’ is how were losing hundreds of species everyday and we’ll lose 50% of animals by 2050.
All of these ‘facts’ were produced (read created) by computer-generated models. Not history, not facts. Computer models that can be manipulated to show ‘worst-case scenerios’ and not reality. But despite these non-truths, people still spout them because it sounds alarmist and gets people fired up.
People like me, who don’t think the world is going to end, are taking advantage of these gullible people by selling products that are more expensive because being ‘green’ is more expensive. Of course, no one on the environmental camp has complained about this. Why is that? Do they even do research on whether these products are actually ‘green’?
I’m convinced that you could sell polished poo to these people and call it ‘green fudge’ and they’d by it by the masses.
Google is probably the biggest advocate of the net-neutrality cause. With their “Don’t be evil” mantra, Google has used its mighty power to shame ISPs who want to “shape” their networks. Their stance is that no one should restrict or filter internet access.
However, as time goes by, it seems that more and more people are accepting the idea of proprietary access. Slashdot and many others have posted a storyabout how portals like Yahoo can delete user’s content without any question. The heart of this is the Terms of Service that users agree to when they register for an account. The ToS states that Yahoo has the authority to do what they want with the data that’s on their servers. They own them so they should be able to do what they want.
This relates to net-neutrality because ISPs are already filtering out what you can and cannot access. The biggest perpetrator of this is Comcast, which is blocking most BitTorrent traffic. Comcast contends that they are not blocking anything, but reports and tests say otherwise.
People SCREAM that they want net-neutrality but does their behavior dispute that opinion?
With the release of hulu.com, many people have hailed it as the next-generation TV station. NetFlix, Apple iTunes, and Amazon all offer online videos to rent. YouTube garners so much traffic that many companies block it. Same goes for MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.
The sad thing part is that sooner or later, hulu and the link will unable to sustain themselves with ads alone (read dot-com bubble). They will eventually want to make it subscription-based. Heck, most people are willing to pay money to keep from seeing ads! In order to accomplish this, we will probably have to give up net-neutrality.
Why? If more and more people start going to hulu for television, ISPs will have a lot of traffic going to that one URL. While it won’t cost them more, they will want to get money from it so why not charge extra for “faster access”?
I support net-neutrality. But at some point, I have to ask myself what is it that I really want. To be honest with you, I’d rather have faster hulu.com access than have everything the same speed. This, of course, assumes that this is how proprietary access would work.
Net-neutrality is important because it gives the little man the same voice as the big corporations. It gives everyone a fair chance to reach their audience. Can you imaging typing in http://www.amazon.com and instead being directed to http://www.bn.com? From there, you’ll be greeted with a window offering you lower prices for the item that your looking for. If you stillwant to go to amazon.com, you’d have to hit another button to continue. But then your browsing comes to a crawl. But then you go back to bn.com, and everything is fine again!
We want net-neutrality, but we may be beating a dead horse. At the very least, we’re saying one thing and doing something else entirely.
Yesterday, SCOTUS ruled against Washington, D.C. and said that their law against handguns in the home violates the second amendment. They also held the lower court’s ruling but also extended the ruling to extend the protection against disassembled rifles in the house.
There are many things that the Bill of Rights protects. What is abundantly clear from those oh-so-important amendments is that the Rights guaranteed to all persons. Scalia poignantly states “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.” Just like you can’t yell “FIRE” in a crowded building, laws can be written to prevent the mentally ill or felons.
The entire case can be summed up simply: “the right of the people” reflects individual rights, not corporate rights.
The case was not only important for the general defense of home and country, but it was important to validate all other amendments that refer to the right of the people.
The ruling does a great job of explaining the history and nuances of the law, which I won’t bother getting into. I’ll, instead, reflect on the importance of “the right of the people” and then dive into the false facts that people have spouted.
What I find amazing is that the decision was 5-4. This made common sense to me that any reasonable person could read “the right of the people” to mean “individuals.” The first amendment states that “the right of the people” to petition the government, say whatever you want, or peaceably assemble “shall not be infringed.”
Very few people argue that the first amendment only applies to the press, or to a group of citizens. But it is only understood as such because of the cases that have honed and polished it. Now, the Second Amendment is going through the same refinement and much can expected for future cases.
But then there are some people who completely missed the point of the ruling – even the dissent!
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said this:
Today, President Bush’s radical Supreme Court justices put rigid ideology ahead of the safety of communities in New Jersey and across the country. This decision illustrates why I have strongly opposed extremist judicial nominees and will continue to do so in the future.
What Senator Lautenberg missed is that the majority opinion did cover this. States have the right to restrict sales but no government has the right to ban guns as a whole.
What people like Senator Lautenberg don’t realize is that guns kill people in the same way that cars kill people. There are so many fuzzy-logic statistics that it’s worth clearing up:
As long as entities like the Brady Campaign indoctrinate people that cars kill people, pens misspell words, identity theft is caused by the Internet, and guns kill people, sure, people are going to be afraid of guns. Most people’s fear of guns is irrational. I don’t say that to be insulting but using the clinical definition of irrational. Allow me to give you an example from my life. I am afraid of bugs. All bugs, big and small, no matter how cute, I hate them and fear them with my life. Yes, I know it’s irrational. The fear is based on the fact that I was stung on my eyelid when I was a kid. I’ve gotten over it but I still flinch when I see a spider or a bee. Even though it’s irrational, it doesn’t make it any less real. But I have to be willing to admit that I’m scared of nothing.
Consider this quote:
“This decision’s going to say to these guys that it’s OK to have guns _ that’s the message the street gets from this … If you take this ruling the wrong way, everybody and their mother’s going to go out and get a gun.” — Tio Hardiman, of the Chicago violence prevention group Cease Fire.
The irrational fear here is that as soon as someone gets a gun, they are going to run up and down the street, having shootouts at every corner. Crime is going to go through the roof so the likelihood of you being a victim increases. People like Tio use that fear to continue their addenda. But just like me, we have to realize that just because I’m afraid of bugs should keep others from having them as pets.
I’ve written well more than I wanted to but I hope I get the point across. The Supreme Court ruling was the correct ruling for many reasons. The dissenting opinions, if read in context of the whole, illustrate the problems the justices had with the petition. While they do point out that DC’s laws are acceptable, recognizing that “the right of the people” is protected to all people is a great outcome. The first and fourth amendment, in light of this ruling, further protects people from the government. It was about time the second amendment caught up.
When I was a sophomore in college, I had to learn how to cook, primarily because I had to at least once a week for my roommates. The first meals I started to cook were based primarily on a recipe, especially ones with pictures. I did this so that I could see if I were on the right track.
I’d get all my ingredients together, and start cooking. For the first couple of months, I would be really nervous. No matter what I cooked, and no matter how many times I had already cooked it previously, sometime within the middle of the cooking time, I would get worried because the dish cooking in the pot didn’t even remotely resemble the picture. (One recipe in particular sticks my mind. I don’t remember what I was cooking, but the cookbook showed the meal as being a bright reddish orange, while my pot was green and yellow.)
I kept telling myself, "It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re not done yet. It will hopefully look right in the end."
I pressed forward in fear because I had to feed five people in 15 minutes and it was already too late to do anything else.
In the end, the meal turned out perfectly!
So why tell a story about cooking? Frankly, I think our politicians can learn a thing or too from this story.There have been many debates about the war in Iraq. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard democrats saying, "The American people want an end to the war!" I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t!
Harry Reid, Hilary Clinton, John Kerry, et al…You do not speak for me!
Yes, I still support the war! Yes, I still think we’re there for a good reason. And yes, I still believe that we should have gone in when we did.
In the last month, there have been growing reports that the latest troop surge is working, that both civilian and military deaths have significantly decreased. In fact, more and more reports are showing vast improvements about the conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But democrats, even facing these reports, still demand that the troops be brought home because the Iraq war is wrong.
It occurred to me last night that democrats are like me when I’m cooking: they are stuck in the recipe with 15 minutes left and they are panicking because the meal doesn’t look like the pretty picture.
I’ve asked this before: why does it seem that the democrats can’t see pass the present?