"It is now pretty well established that certain types of videos and images have an effect on behavior," New York Governor Eliot Spitzer told reporters yesterday. Spitzer wants video games that are "degrading" to minors regulated the same way as cigarettes for those under 18. Retailers who would sell or rent these "not appropriate" games to minors would face fines.

The Democratic governor plans to give details about his plans this Friday in a Manhattan speech before Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network. Like wagering how many times President Bush will bring up 9/11 in a speech, start placing your bets now on how long it'll take Spitzer to bring up the VT massacre in his speech.

[ Oh, Eliot. No no no. *SIGH* This kind of censorious nonsense is one of main things that the mainstream Democrats get consistently wrong. UGHH. -k]

Joystiq

Vonage sucks. Right now April 19th, 2007 vonage has experienced 5hrs of a self described "network upgrade" to "improve service". It seems that current levels of service are "none" to "bullshit". This includes 911 service. Which put all their customers out of touch with emergency services via the vonage network. The Ts&Cs shouldn't indemnify Vonage Holdings (LLC) of putting their customers in danger.

Of course they could be verizon trouble too. Or they are the target of a DDoS attack. Perhaps some evil villain is using this downtime to rob poor aunt May of all her (what brands does aunt carry?) See Spiderman 3 to find out that and more... (sponsored by vonage our shares aren't worth crap)

[Vonage is done. All your Vonage are belong to Verizon. Consumer VOIP always seemed kinda DOA to me, and I think the industry has finally just nailed that coffin shut, at least for the time being.

Fuck it, i roll all-cell all-the-time now, and it's great. -k]

Vonage - A better phone service for less

A bipartisan group of senators and House members introduced legislation Wednesday that would make the biggest changes to the U.S. patent system in over 50 years.

I'm not holding my breath but this sounds promising...

[I dunno... i want to read the whole thing, but my gut reaction is that this doesn't sound appealing to me. As much as I think the PTO needs reform, i'm not sure this is it... -k]

Patent reform bill may have a chance

Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building, Cho Seung-Hui mailed NBC News a large package including photographs and videos Monday morning, boasting, “When the time came, I did it. I had to.”

The package included an 1,800-word manifesto-like statement diatribe in which Cho expresses rage, resentment and a desire to get even.

The material does not include any images of the shootings Monday, but it does contain vague references. And it mentions “martyrs like Eric and Dylan” — apparently a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold...

The material is deeply angry, crying out against unspecified wrongs done to him in a diatribe laced with profanity.

“I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you f---, I did it for them,” Cho says on one of the videos.

Whow...

[Wow indeed. Fucking raving lunatic jackass. -k]

Gunman in massacre contacted NBC News

Spectragrams of the static in songs on the new Nine Inch Nails album draw pictures! The first picture is from their trailer video. (The spectragram itself is from My Violent Heart.) You can now listen to the entire album on their website.

I know, I should've bumped this before, but i forgot. This really is fucking super cool.

-k

NIN Spectragrams

Last month, conservative Christian leaders demanded that Richard Cizik be silenced or removed from his post. They charged that his concerns about climate change and torture have shifted attention away from moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion. But for Cizik, poverty, war, and the environment are moral issues too. We revisit Krista's 2006 conversation with Cizik that took many listeners by surprise.

This is very much worth listening to.

Rev. Cizik seems to be a reasonable and thoughtful Christian. He elucidates a number of things I've said many times about what it means to be able to call yourself a Christian. At the time of his interview, he expressed a faith that the public perception of evangelical Christianity was skewed and that most follow the sort of rational, informed, compassionate Christianity he espouses.

Sadly, this latest revelation somewhat confirms my cynicism.

At one point in the interview, Krista Tippet reads a letter from a woman who describes personal harassment by the kind of abusive "hellfire" evangelicals we perhaps have come to expect. This woman describes how this kind of experience leads many otherwise practicing christians to try and distance themselves from the religion.

This has been my situation, for some years. I came to find not only that my own beliefs have diminished my tolerance for Faith, but also that what interest I might have had in maintaining ties to the Christian church and the community thereof was absolutely destroyed by my desire not to be conflated with such animals. I have come to believe that so many people have misused the term "Christian" that it has quite literally lost all meaning. And I'm not devout enough to want to fight to take the name back.

I'm not saying I agree with all of Rev. Cizik's beliefs -- in fact, I stridently disagree with the NAE on the matters of gay rights and abortion (opposition to which they, of course, call "Protection of the Family" and "Sanctity of Life"). Nonetheless there are points in the interview seemed to me to reveal an encouraging side of Christianity. That is, one that supports environmentalism, trusts science, discourages war and works to eliminate poverty.

I still think the majority of people who call themselves Christian are total frauds, but maybe it's not as overwhelmingly so as I'd thought.

The Evolution of American Evangelicalism [Speaking of Faith� from American Public Media]

flynn23 wrote:

k wrote:

Penn & Teller's "Gun Control is Bullshit"

Worth a watch, I reckon.

My take? Guns don't kill people... Americans kill people.

Somehow other countries manage to get by without them, whereas we can't feel safe unless we've got one. That says something about us and it's not merely the presumptive "We don't and shouldn't trust our government."

A decent wrap up (I'm not a big fan of Penn's idiotic rantings about religion) and does a good job of crystalizing the issue. I'd like to see less gun control and more laws for gun and ammunition tagging, even for hunting munitions. The technology is there and it would allow for massive improvements in crime solving.

Interesting. I seem to recall in The Diamond Age, how everything but everything had some nano-scale identifier.

It seems like a useful crime solving mechanism, so, sure, but it's still after the fact. That's secondary to the gun control debate, I think. I see no logical argument against it. The "the gubmint may need to be overthrown" POV is fine, and if you're already in open rebellion against the Government, who cares if bullets are tracable? So yeah, I think your proposal has merit.

As for gun control, more specifically, I have trouble reconciling the fact that these kinds of rampages are perhaps effectively inevitable and that, truly, if more people were armed, less people would probably die with the fact that I fundamentally don't trust the people around me enough to want them armed.

Penn makes an argument that "most people are good" and thus if you armed everyone the balance of power shifts to the good people. I find that to be a vast oversimplification because I don't think classifying people in general as "good" or "evil" makes sense. You can say that a particular individual (such as this fucker at VT) is evil, after the fact. That's ok with me. Beyond that, all you can say about any other randomly selected individual is that they haven't yet done anything that makes them evil.

The spectrum of emotional stability is broad and arming everyone makes me nervous because I just don't -- and can't -- know what's going to make someone snap. The repercussions of otherwise casual breakdowns of emotional interactions are increased dramatically.

I study aikido in part because the philosophy that many lethal situations can be defused with no injury to anyone - assailant included - appeals to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe my practice applies well to a situation where someone has a gun; a gun is not a sword, certainly. Rather, it leads me to consider more carefully how such situations can be avoided in the first place. In the same way that I've been taught that walking away from a fight is just as much an Aiki technique as kaitenage, it seems that we ought to put some focus on easing the social precursors to the kind of alienation that causes these breakdowns.

To me, use of a gun represents the final breakdown of civil society. I think it's crucial to identify why ours thinks they're so necessary, and try to create a society in which they aren't. I know the pro-arms folks think it's unconscionably naive to even consider such a thing, but I simply can't escape that fact that there are plenty of places that have strict gun control and don't face the same problems as us.

It leads me to the conclusion that American society just isn't that civil.

RE: Penn & Teller's

Although there are abundant rhetorical similarities, I don't think that the issues arising from the Virginia Tech shootings and 9/11 are at all the same. What I do think they have in common is a tendency for overreaction: a tendency for salience-- and a sense of emergency-- to displace good public policy. If there is anything we should have learned from 9/11, it is that a sense of emergency can justify all sorts of bad decisions that we will come to regret later on.

Hear fucking hear.

Balkinization

A vaccine designed to protect humans against the H5N1 influenza virus, known as bird flu, has been approved for the first time in the United States.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the approval Tuesday. Officials said the vaccine could be used in the event of an influenza pandemic to provide early limited protection in the months before a vaccine tailored to a specific pandemic strain of the virus could be produced.

Jesus, they fast-tracked the fuck out of that one.

FDA approves first U.S. bird flu vaccine - Nature

Penn & Teller's "Gun Control is Bullshit"

Worth a watch, I reckon.

My take? Guns don't kill people... Americans kill people.

Somehow other countries manage to get by without them, whereas we can't feel safe unless we've got one. That says something about us and it's not merely the presumptive "We don't and shouldn't trust our government."

Penn & Teller's