Archive for category Social Issues

Is a corporation really like a person?

In the US, (IMHO very bad) court decisions have made it so that businesses – corporations – are commonly treated as if they were persons under the law. This leads more or less naturally to weighing the rights of the corporations against the rights of a flesh-and-blood person; and when a corporation contributes more to the public trough than the citizen does, the outcome is often a foregone conclusion.

Lately, it’s been rattling around in my old head that perhaps, instead of treating corporations like persons, we should treat them like useful, but very dangerous, viruses. Comparable to one that generates some useful end product, but would eat your flesh off if you got any on you. Because other than the end products they make, I’m really hard put to think of much good corporations do unless they’re legislated into a corner and forced into it.
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SCOTUS empowers another ex post facto law

rippedThe Supreme Court ruled on May 17th, 2010, that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates after their prison terms are complete. The high court in a 7-2 judgment reversed a lower court decision that said Congress overstepped its authority.

Ex post facto laws are explicitly forbidden to the federal government and the states by two separate and quite specific clauses in the constitution, the government’s authorizing document:

The federal government: “Section 9 – Limits on Congress – No … ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

The states: “Section 10 – Powers prohibited of States – No State shall … pass any … ex post facto Law”

You may be asking, “What is an ex post facto law?” The legal definition is given by Calder v Bull (3 US 386 [1798]), in the opinion of Justice Chase, which defines four classes of laws:
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President Obama, you’ve put your foot in it.

Much as I like you, Mr. President – and I definitely do – you have really put yours foot in it this time. I’m not a sycophant. I don’t agree with all of your positions. For instance, I think your stance on gun control is outright unconstitutional, while at the same time, I understand why you’d prefer that it were otherwise, and, since the system itself is corrupt and largely unconstitutional these days, why you’d be willing to violate your oath in order to see things done the way you’d like them to be done.

This isn’t stupid; it’s calculating and it is very much political, “just the way things work today.” For instance, if you actually think the government presently is authorized to restrict citizens from owning arms, I’d love to sit down with you and show you why you’re 100% wrong. I think you’re far too smart to buy the standard arguments for your own position, though, and I suspect that in private, you’d simply admit that is the case. I understand political expediency. I also understand an urge to do good, and that the legalities of the system can frustrate that urge if not pushed to the side.

But this time… I’m disappointed in you.
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Publishers and the E-book Ecosphere

leap-pubIn e-tech, publishers look to be an obsolescent cog. They exist(ed?) with books in a legitimate role because someone needs to take on the cost of printing a physical book, shipping it to a store, etc., and your typical author can’t afford to do that. With an e-book, the costs – such as they are – are handled by the retailer (Apple, Amazon, smaller sellers – even the author.)

Speaking as someone somewhat familiar with the industry, publishers, long known for providing only minimal advances and the smallest possible royalty to the actual artist (the author(s) and illustrator(s)), appear to have no role in the e-book ecosphere.
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What does TL;DR Really Mean?

This is the first in a series of helpful tips on Internet shorthand. Quite often, we’ll encounter an acronym and not know what it means. So, I’m here to help.

TL;DR is, at least at first glance, an abbreviation for Too Long, Didn’t Read. What it really means is that you have encountered a person with a pathological attention span; they are simultaneously saying that they have failed to bring adequate reading skills to bear, combined with the intent to cut someone down for “elitist” behavior. What elitist behavior? That of writing a literate post. Yes, really.

So when you encounter TL;DR, you can just ignore it. I put no small amount of blame upon the “sound bite” environment created by television. The erosion of the ability of much of the populace to deal with even a mildly extended presentation has closely followed television’s failure to present any such thing.

No discussion of this would be complete without a nod towards courtesy. If someone addresses an issue at length, this is an offering of information to everyone else. If you legitimately don’t have the time to read it, then the answer is not to say “you should have written a sound bite.” The answer is silence until you have read the material.

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AGW skepticism is warrented. Here’s why.

Science – The path from unsubstantiated hypothesis to experimentally-verified theory, more to the point – requires that we come up with models, which then lead to predictions of the result of experiments in the realm of the hypothesis. These predictions, if borne out by experiment (the model is not falsified), validate the hypothesis and then we have a theory with laws (that is, rules for models we can use to predict.) If the predictions are wrong, they falsify the model and we are back to, or still have, an unsubstantiated hypothesis. We get to try once again, if we still think the hypothesis has merit, hopefully with more information at hand the next time around.

Now, the problem with the AGW hypothesis is that the models which are making the predictions are not matching the actual results. These climate models never worked well at both the poles and the mid-latitudes; they failed to predict the current long-lasting stall; the rates of temperature rise predicted don’t match, when rise actually does occur; and so what we have here are hypothesis that are not producing rules that we can use to predict their notional basis. With regard to predictions made of future performance, as that future has not arrived, as the near-term predictions have failed, there is no basis to presume that the models are verified long term.
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Science fiction, Fantasy, Spec Fic…

I propose the following distinctions:

Science Fiction: Fiction with science and/or technology elements that, at the time of their writing, either match what we know about science, or aren’t ruled out by what we know about science. Ex: “Lucifer’s Hammer”; “The Two Faces Of Tomorrow”; “Neuromancer.”

Speculative Fiction: Fiction with science and/or technology elements that don’t match what we know about science, or are ruled out by what we know about science. Ex: “Star Trek”; “Firefly/Serenity”; “Star Wars.”

Fantasy: Fiction entirely unrelated to our reality, no matter how far you’re willing to stretch science. Ex: “Lord of the Rings”; “A Voyage to Arcturus;” “A Wizard of Earthsea.”

SyFy: Pitifully incompetent examples of any of the above three. Example: What Hollywood turned Harry Harrison’s excellent SF novel, “Make Room, Make Room”, into: “Soylent Green”; “Dr Who” in any of its manifestations; “Lost in Space.” When you say SyFy, you’re required to sneer.

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On "The Price of Freedom"

The price of freedom is risk.

The price of safety is conformity, restriction, and repression.

You can bank on it. Our leaders certainly have.

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