KN@PPSTER

First Impressions of Yahoo! Axis

2012-05-24T09:35:00.001-05:00

Didn't even know it was coming until I discovered this morning that it's here.

Interesting new search "browser" -- actually, for a desktop user with no Apple mobile devices, just a browser extension. Since I don't use iPad or iPhone (apparently the killer feature is sync between those devices and desktop), the desktop app is the only thing that matters to me.

It's quite nice. Sits in the lower left-hand corner of my screen as a search form. Not only auto-completes searches as I type them in, but pulls up preview screen shots of the results. I could get used to this, even dependent on it, pretty quickly.

I'm impressed by its quickness and fluidity. I mean, I'm using a 2006 Mac Mini -- Core Duo, not 2 Core Duo CPU, and maxed out at 2Gb of RAM, but the results show nearly instantly, and scrolling back and forth across those thumbnails happens without visible pause or delay. Which makes me think that, despite opening day exposure of a serious security flaw, this thing was in general very competently designed.

One down side: So far as I can tell, it can't be turned off without actually disabling the extension (we're talking Chrome for Mac here; your OS/browser mileage may vary). There really should be a convenient on/off switch.

A Little Snort of the Old Solidarity ...

2012-05-22T10:40:00.003-05:00

When someone as flush with seizable assets as Steve Newton goes out on a limb for principle, I see no reason not to join in. So:

US military intervention in Yemen, pursuant to orders given by US president Barack Obama and absent a congressional declaration of war, constitutes not just stump-stupid foreign policy but high crime.

This remains true even if we set aside the fact that American citizens have been murdered under color of law in Yemen pursuant to those orders -- and that's a fact we shouldn't set aside.

If the wheels of justice do indeed grind, even coarsely, Obama will one day find himself standing, clad in orange coveralls and manacles, in front of a bureaucrat wearing a black dress, to answer for his crimes, and these things shall be counted among those crimes.

If I come across any way to materially "obstruct" Obama in commission of his crimes which does not otherwise violate the principles by which I strive to live, I'll happily engage in said "obstruction" six days a week and twice on Sunday.

If there's a jackbooted thug responsible for monitoring this kind of thing and toting up prospective Seizures for Sass^©, he may now feel free to augment that prospective take by my net worth of approximately $1.43.

Hey, if other bloggers kick in, maybe we can raise enough to buy Obama a steak dinner some day ... prepared by the staff at FCI Terre Haute!

Another "New Gmail" Bug?

2012-05-20T13:33:00.002-05:00

Sometimes a new user interface grows on me over time -- at first I think it's ugly and dysfunctional, but later I admit that it's actually more intuitive and has improved my user experience.

So far, no signs of that happening with "New Gmail." It's still ugly, and new annoyances continue to pop up. Lately (only lately, which is why I think it's linked to "New Gmail"), when I start to type in an email address or contact list name for which there are quite a few possible options, "New Gmail" freezes. About half the time it regains its footing after a few seconds. The other half of the time, it never does and I eventually get one of those Chrome browser messages asking me if I want to kill the non-responsive page.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" can be taken too far -- new stuff comes along that users just don't want to do without, etc. -- but in my opinion the previous version of Gmail wasn't broken in any respect. It worked great. It looked great. "New Gmail" is ugly and doesn't work right. Why, Google?

On the plus side, the Chrome browser now lets the user set to automatically invoke Gmail instead of defaulting to a desktop email client when clicking an email link on the web. That's nice!

Marriage: Politics vs. Society

2012-05-16T18:07:00.002-05:00

That's the title (and topic) of my latest C4SS op-ed:

Marriage has existed, in one form or another, for as long as humankind. Monogamous, (theoretically) life-long heterosexual marriage with property equality between partners is only one such form. If that form was truly superior to all conceivable others in all ways, it wouldn't need a politician with a tin badge and a .44 Magnum to "protect" it from competing alternatives.

Check it out.

Some brief notes on a recent controversy

2012-05-13T15:13:00.002-05:00

After saying my initial piece on this, I resolved to remain mostly silent on it in public. In private, too, for that matter.

One venue in which I didn't have the luxury of silence was on the board of the Center for a Stateless Society, which, after much discussion, arrived at its organizational response (which you can read here).

That discussion's penultimate result was my resignation from the board, not because I disagree with that response (although I do in some particulars), nor by way of dissociation from C4SS itself (I gave up my vote -- but not my voice -- in the Center's governance, not my day-to-day work with the Center), but because we were at an impasse which only that would resolve.

C4SS's board operates on something close to a "consensus" approach. I was unwilling to endorse the course of action which all other board members seemed to be coalescing around, and most of those other members had one or more irresolvable problems with the course I proposed. This would have continued until minds were changed, and that just wasn't going to happen. By resigning from the board, I stopped being a roadblock to the unanimity they required to do anything.

Why bring this up? Well, I've heard that it's already been mentioned on at least one Internet radio show. If the rumor mill vomits up something that doesn't match the account above, it's inaccurate.

As to other facets of the issue (some of them covered in civil tone in two blog posts by Claire Wolfe, here and here, and a little less civilly in comments on those posts), I may write a long piece on them in C4SS's "mutual association" area, but I'll throw out a couple of clarifications/correctives here:

If Ms. Litz had been part of a clandestine or military revolutionary organization, or was being judged not on "movement credentials" but solely in the context of black/gray market considerations, I'd have no theoretical problem with a resolution along the lines of "... and they never did find the body." Neither context applies here.
I agree that much of Ms. Litz's post-revelation rhetoric has been self-serving and indicative of a desire to shift at least some responsibility onto shoulders where it doesn't belong. That may make her less easy to sympathize or empathize with, but it doesn't change the basic factual landscape (she was abducted; she was threatened; she broke under coercion; she's admitted it).
Double, triple, maybe even quadruple standards are at work in various takes on the matter. Most of us break under far less immediate and onerous state coercion in various ways, every day; Ms. Litz's own actions are treated as different not just in degree, but in kind, even though the gun was closer to her head and had a larger bullet chambered. At least one voice loudly condemning Ms. Litz immediately turns right around and commends the informant who snitched on her because that informant has since gone through alcohol rehab and is a "different person" now. And while I'm not normally known for smelling sexism in every word or action, I note that a number of males who took their sweet time about revealing what they knew, and continue to defend each other, felt the urge to throw a bunch of "evil little woman" innuendo into the mix when it came time to attack her.
Contra those who seem to think otherwise, I have not suggested that Ms. Litz immediately (or for that matter, ever) be returned to a place in the movement in which trust regarding confidential information is a factor. I understand not trusting her now. I understand not expecting to trust her in the future. If I wanted to buy drugs the government didn't approve of, she wouldn't be on my list of people to talk to. If I wanted to form a clandestine revolutionary organization, I wouldn't recruit her to it.
BUT! For me, it comes down to a few key questions. Do we, the movement, decide who's with us, or do we let the state decide that for us? The latter is a bad idea, because they can break almost anyone. Do we signal to activists that if they ever break under coercion, it's better to stay broken and rat out as many as they can (and to keep it secret as long as possible), because all coming clean will get them is condemnation and cold shoulders? That's a bad idea too. We should fight to keep control of our own movement rather than allowing the state to act as our HR department. And we should do our best to bring those who break under coercion back into the movement -- albeit in less trusted roles for obvious reasons -- rather than accept this kind of attrition.

Finally, something to think about:

Ms. Litz -- and, from what I can tell by reading other accounts, not only Ms. Litz -- made the mistake of assuming that it's possible to do three things at the same time: Climb the bourgeois upward mobility ladder (go to college, get a law degree, open a practice, buy that nice brownstone, etc.), and engage in black/gray market activities on a larger than trivial scale, and play key roles in the freedom movement.

Ms. Litz is living proof of the flaws in that assumption. Try to do all three things, and it's likely you'll end up not being able to do any of those things. Ms. Litz is still trying to find a way to do the first and the last, having been caught in and blackmailed over the middle; I doubt she'll succeed.

There are some respects in which living in a society which has progressed further toward real totalitarianism is actually ... liberating. If you're Orwell's Winston Smith in fictional Oceania, you already know you are the dead. If you're Nechayev in tsarist Russia, it makes sense that:

A revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion -- the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose -- to destroy it.

The society we live in at the moment pretends not to pose that conflict -- having to choose between being a revolutionary or having a "normal" life in many respects. Ms. Litz's situation proves that that freedom is at least partially an illusion, subject to state suppression at any moment.

Of the things I find offensive in this whole matter, probably the ugliest is that some have presumed to judge Ms. Litz on Nechayev's criteria while continuing to indulge that illusion for themselves.

And that's all I have to say at the moment. More than I intended to, actually.

It's Mine and Mine Alone

2012-05-09T18:21:00.002-05:00

My opinion regarding the proper approach to comrades who, under coercion, assist the state, that is.

This post is also mine and mine alone. I sought no permission or approval from anyone before writing or publishing it.

The reason I am writing and publishing it is to dispel any false impressions that might arise from reading comments like this:

I will never trust anything associated with [the Center for a Stateless Society] again after watching so many of you choose to retain such a liability in your midst.

For the record:

Yes, the person in question has been associated with the Center for some time.
Yes, the matter of the person's continued status with respect to the Center is under discussion and some kind of statement will almost certainly be published once that discussion has ended and any actions resulting from it have been taken. If commenters like the one above know the outcome already, they have bright futures as TV psychics.
No, I am not going to divulge particulars of that discussion at this time, except to note that my particular positions on the subject seem to be very much in the minority (some particulars more than others, different particulars resonating or dissonating with different people). In other words, not only do my public writings on the subject not represent the Center's position, the Center's position when fully formed will likely not greatly resemble those public writings.
No, that person's association with the Center never has been of such a character that it constituted or constitutes a "liability" of the kind the comment implies, if for no other reason than that none of the Center's activities are of a character that could be informed on (we fly our black flag in the open) and that even in the very limited sense in which the Center handles any confidential information (donor lists, for example), she has never had access to that information.

This is the place where I stop before I'm tempted to get mean, and ask those who are interested in the matter and the Center's response to it give us a little time to arrive at that response. Keep in mind that when this matter came to our attention and yours, the people who brought it to that attention had known about it, and had been considering their responses to it, for weeks or months. It's not unreasonable for us to take a few days on it ourselves.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm ..."

2012-05-09T15:51:00.003-05:00

Steve Newton over at Delaware Libertarian (welcome back to the blogosphere, Steve!) has posted a couple of items on the possible impact of Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson on the presidential race.

In particular, Steve has theorized that Johnson might impact the race with respect to the issue of marriage apartheid. Here's one of Steve's pieces on that, which links to another.

I'm personally more skeptical than Steve as to whether or not Johnson will have any great effect at all on the outcome (aside from possibly determining the disposition of New Mexico's five electoral votes -- he's that state's former two-term governor).

BUT! I think a lot of people are thinking about this in the wrong way. To steal one of Steve's quotes from a spokesperson for the American Anti-Family Association ... er, "National Organization for [sic] Marriage:

If Obama were to embrace same-sex marriage, he'd be on the wrong side of majorities in [several battleground] states.

And that's true, but it's nowhere near all the math.

First of all, it's a reasonable bet that most voters who are very much against same-sex marriage, and consider it an important issue, are already just not available to Obama under any circumstances. He loses nothing by further pissing them off.

Secondly, by getting fully and unambiguously on the right side of the issue (which, the news broke as I started this post, he just did), he energizes otherwise lukewarm supporters who care about the issue and didn't like seeing him remain on the fence.

Where does Johnson come in? Well, Johnson's been a supporter of marriage freedom for a long time, and has recently publicly reiterated his support for it from the bully pulpit of his presidential candidacy.

Had he not done so, Obama might have been able to remain on the fence. After all, it's not like Romney was an alternative for those "I support Obama but wish he'd come out for marriage freedom" voters.

But Johnson is right on that issue and Obama wasn't. And Johnson excels Obama by far on the ACLU's civil liberties canvass, too.

And the key here is that we're talking about battleground states, where a percentage point or two may be the difference between getting those electoral votes and not getting them.

A pro-marriage-freedom Democrat, especially one who also cares about other civil liberties issues just might be disappointed by Obama's record, and tempted by Johnson's.

And it just might only take a few of those voters to swing a close election.

So yeah, I think we can at least prospectively and partially credit Johnson with bringing Obama down off the fence, and on the right side of it, even.

And, well, it sucks to be Mitt right now. He's painted himself into an anti-family, pro-torture corner on marriage and civil liberties. He doesn't have any fences he can climb down from. His only hope with regard to pro-marriage-freedom and pro-civil-liberties Republicans is that he can satisfy them enough on other issues, or scare them badly enough about Obama on those other issues, to hold on to their votes. Too bad for him that Johnson's better than he is on foreign policy, immigration policy and economic policy, too.

When the Comrade Beside You Falls ...

2012-05-08T14:33:00.000-05:00

... do you kick her in the kidneys, or do you help her up?

When the comrade beside you is captured by the enemy, do you curse her name and write her out of the movement, or do you rescue her if possible and aid her and keep solidarity with her if that's the best you can do?

If the enemy extracts information from the fallen or captured comrade, at what point do you determine that that comrade is a traitor rather than a victim? Do they have to waterboard her, pull out her fingernails, and show her a family member with a gun to his head? Or are there lesser coercion levels, including threats -- "we'll put you in a cage for 20 years;" "we'll abduct your children and put them in foster care;" "we'll seize your father's business" -- to which capitulation is an understandable, rather than treasonous, act?

Just asking.

In my view, we need to accept that the state is at war with us -- all of us, not just "movement people" -- and recognize that when we write off an actual or potential comrade because he or she was brutalized to the point of (quite possibly temporary) surrender, we are by definition adding one person to the state's ranks and removing one person from our own.

I'm not great at math, but that just doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

Obviously there are information issues which may be less than completely transparent. Did the comrade capitulate under coercion, or actually change sides? Yeah, it's a universe of imperfect knowledge, isn't it? But let's work to realize our best aspirations instead of indulging our worst fears.

Libertarian Party, Born Again Hard?

2012-05-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

Well, after the anti-climactic (the nomination of former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for president and former California judge Jim Gray for vice-president) came the apocalyptic!

In the race for chair of the Libertarian National Committee on Saturday evening, first sitting chair Mark Hinkle, and then challenger Mark Rutherford were eliminated in favor of None of the Above.

After Rutherford's backers unloaded every dirty trick they could think of to nullify the result, it somehow magically became a tie instead of a NOTA win, and a new election was held this morning, resulting in the election of Geoff Neale of Texas (who has served as chair in the past as well).

Apparently the completely fraudulent nullification of NOTA's win was the signal for a full-scale delegate uprising that swept most of the the 2010-2012 "establishment" out of office.

R. Lee Wrights beat former chair and sitting at-large member Bill Redpath to once again become vice chair (a position that, if I am not mistaken, he once held when Neale was chair the last time).

Ruth Bennett (whom I've always liked, although I was disappointed with her recent stand in favor of forcing convention delegates who just wanted to be convention delegates and nothing else to subsidize the luxury hotel/circus sideshow preferences of more well-heeled party members) unseated sitting secretary Alicia Mattson.

Tim Hagan (with whom I served as an LNC regional alternate around the turn of the century) unseated Aaron Starr for the position of treasurer.

Establishment figures Redpath and Wayne Allyn Root did secure at-large positions ... but so did LNC newcomer Arvin Vohra, coming-back-after-long-break Michael Cloud, and ... holy bustier, Batman! ... Starchild!!!

I haven't seen Judicial Committee results yet, but at this point it looks like a different ballgame in terms of internal governance. The faction behind much of the 2008-2012 fuckery (and there's really no other word for it) seems to have been shorn of its key figures and working majority.

I still don't see the LP getting anywhere in terms of fulfilling its purposes, but it may at least have extended its own life for a few more years with these outcomes.

"New Gmail" Redux

2012-05-06T12:06:00.002-05:00

Awhile back -- not worth finding to link to -- I opined that "New Gmail" looks like ass.

Not svelte, sexy ass, but "shouldn't be wearing stretchy fabrics in public, because it grosses people out" ass.

That was back in the day when it was still possible to revert to the previous user interface. It recently became non-optional. You get "New Gmail" whether you like it or not.

Thane Eichenauer just reminded me -- via "New Gmail" -- that I've been meaning to comment on how badly I hate "New Gmail."

It is to me as Bagginses are to Smeagols: We hatesssss it forever and ever!

Aside from looking like ass, it also seems to have at least one functionality problem.

One nice thing about Gmail is that you can start typing in an address in the "to" field and it will pop up with addresses from your contacts list.

Another nice thing about Gmail is that you can organize your contact list internally into other lists -- and those will pop up if you start typing their list names.

Lately -- just since "New Gmail" arrived -- I've found that about half the time if I start typing a list name into the field, it doesn't pop up. I have to log out and log back in to get that function to work. And it happens to be a function I use multiple times most days.

I know that I'm not the most adaptive individual on Earth -- when I like something and get used to that thing, I'm never really happy to see it changed from under me. But this goes beyond that default position. I have yet to notice so much a single, solitary way in which "New Gmail" is aesthetically or functionally superior to the previous version.

What libertarians are doing this weekend

2012-05-05T17:34:00.003-05:00

Well, I mowed the lawn, poured some concrete, and am considering dinner out and maybe a movie.

Some other libertarians are spending the weekend in Vegas. I hope they're having fun, but from what I've seen, it doesn't seem to have been nearly as exciting, or as worthwhile, as my yardwork so far.

Quote of the Week

2012-04-29T10:12:00.002-05:00

From dL's latest post at Liberale et Libertaire:

Simply, when the Executive declares unilateral power to declare anyone "fair game" outside the bounds of due process -- and this power is backed up by the most unaccountable intelligence and military complex in the history of world civilization -- then liberalism and its legal underpinning are dissolved. Both "classic" and "high" liberals should be in agreement that this condition thus marks a point of dissolution of political obligation.

Hard to see that as anything but a very bright line unless you were already okay with the process of Ba'athification American Style from some earlier point. In which case you weren't a "liberal" of any kind to begin with.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere in Sync-Land ...

2012-04-27T11:36:00.002-05:00

Just got my Google Drive. Unlike Dropbox, its downloadable sync software doesn't support MacOS 10.5.x (Leopard). Only 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher. Which makes it considerably less exciting.

On the sunny side, just having it prompted me to finally get around to cleaning up my Google Docs hoard. Had stuff in there that I hadn't looked at (for good reason) in years.

Addenda, instead of a new post:

April 28: David Murphy at PC Magazine lists the service's "six substantial slip-ups." The big one for me, already mentioned above but I'm gonna elaborate anyway, is "cross-platform support."

Yes, I know it's silly to whine about newer programs not supporting your older OS, but in the case of sync software, the further back it reaches the better, because one great use for it is making it easy to port important files from old machines to new ones.

Google Drive apparently supports Windows all the way back to XP, which was released in 2001, but only covers MacOS X back to Snow Leopard (10.6.x), which was released in 2009. I'm running Leopard (10.5.x), which only dates back to 2007, and can't use Google Drive to sync.

Linux? Per PC World, Google says it's on the way due to considerable and semi-organized bellyaching ...

But hey, Dropbox already has me covered on both both my Leopard Mac Mini and my Linux laptop. Maybe even my Android tablet (Dropbox needs 2.1; I may be stuck at 2.0), if it survived the hailstorm we just had. I left it in the tent this morning, but we took a pounding -- the television guy says baseball sized, but it looked closer to golf ball sized to me.

So anyway, I'm glad to have another five gigs of online storage available, but I just don't see using anything but Dropbox for syncing, at least as long as they continue to offer a wider range of support for OSes/versions.

Cool New Dropbox Feature!

2012-04-27T09:41:00.000-05:00

Nick Peers at BetaNews has the whole scoop.

Short version: The latest edition of the Dropbox software allows you to set up so that when you take a picture or shoot a video, it automatically stores in your  Dropbox folder and syncs across your other  Dropbox-running devices.

Pretty cool, especially since there are Dropbox versions for Android, iPad/iPhone, and Blackberry.

So you can be out about town and if (for example) that cop grabs your phone and accidentally drops/stomps it after you shoot video of him beating an unresisting bystander to death with a two-by-four, he'll still be busssssteddddd and will be forced to take weeks of ~~vacation~~ paid administrative leave while his department ~~tries to cover it up~~ investigates and clears him of all wrongdoing in the matter. [addendum: Well, I read it wrong. No good for that particular circumstance. See crossroadsman in comments for why - TLK]

So anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah -- cool new  Dropbox, cool new feature.

If you're already running  Dropbox, you don't have to do anything, it will update automatically within a few days or weeks (but if you're in a hurry, you can just reinstall the software and it will be the newest version). If you haven't been running  Dropbox, the new feature is just one more reason to do so (another is that if you get it -- FREE, by the way -- I get bonus free storage on my own  Dropbox account, hint, hint, why did you think I was linking every instance of the word  Dropbox?).

Not Sure Which Freaks Me Out More ...

2012-04-26T14:41:00.001-05:00

... that when I look at my spam folder in Gmail, there's an ad at the top for "spicy Spam kabobs" ...

... or that for some reason the idea sounds really good to me right now.

A Brief Review of History for the Benefit of Chuck Schumer

2012-04-25T13:57:00.000-05:00

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments for and against Arizona's Know-Nothing Appeasement Law this week. All of the sides are clearly wrong about one or more major issues, but (as is so often the case) US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) garners the award for Dumbest Sound Byte of the Day:

Immigration has not and never has been an area where states are able to exercise independent authority.

In point of fact, the states exercised the only political authority over immigration into the United States from its founding until the late 19th century.

The US Constitution, as ratified, explicitly forbade the federal government to interfere with state control over immigration for 20 years:

Article I, Section 9: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Additionally, the US Constitution, as ratified, forbade its own amendment to change that for 20 years:

Article V: ... no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article ...

That was not accidental. It was debated, and those favoring a federal immigration power lost, primarily because such a power would likely have kept the Constitution from being ratified both in the slave-holding south and industrializing (and therefore immigration-encouraging) Pennsylvania.

After 1808, Congress and the states could have amended the Constitution to create a federal power to regulate immigration, but they never did, so no such power exists:

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And that's how it was, and how it was understood until the late 19th century. Congress exercised power over naturalization (how one becomes a citizen), but never over immigration. The closest it came to that was passing a few laws allowing federal port officials to enforce state immigration laws and collected fees or fines to cover the costs of that enforcement.

In 1875, the Supreme Court pulled a federal immigration power out of its ... vivid imagination ... in Chy Lung v. Freeman, and Congress passed the Page Act, which was a very narrow bill forbidding the migration of unwilling Chinese women for sex slavery.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which didn't rely so much on the Supreme Court's ... vivid imagination ... of 1875 as it did on renegotiated provisions of the Burlingame Treaty (which, being a treaty, is on par with the US Constitution as "the Supreme Law of the Land").

But, in the main, the states retained near-exclusive control of immigration until the 1890s, and the feds didn't get "comprehensive" on the issue until well into the 20th century.

Is the Arizona law thoroughly anti-freedom, generally stupid, and specifically completely economically insane? Yes.

Is it unconstitutional? In a few ways, also yes.

First, to the extent that it claims to be an enforcement mechanism for federal immigration laws which, per Madison v. Marbury, are void by reason of being repugnant to the Constitution.

Second, in its attempt to conscript employers as unpaid law enforcement agents ("involuntary servitude" prohibited by the 13th Amendment).

But to the extent that it's an immigration regulation law, not only is it constitutional, but it's one of only two kinds of immigration regulations that can be constitutional (the other being immigration regulations created by treaty provision or constitutional amendment).

What Might Have Been ...

2012-04-22T09:35:00.000-05:00

I'm not generally inclined toward judicial fandom. So a judge makes a correct ruling. That's what they're supposed to do, right? It's not like reading and applying the law is some kind of superhuman feat.

Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised by the dismissal of completely baseless "jury tampering" charges against Julian Heicklen this last week. That's the kind of case where one might expect politics to trump justice. So good on the judge, whoever she was.

But wait ... the judge was that Kimba Wood?

Yup! She was Bill Clinton's second pick for Attorney General of the United States, after Zoe Baird withdrew. She got 86ed as well after it was discovered she'd once employed an "illegal immigrant" [sic^*], albeit at a time when it was completely "legal" to do so.

So we ended up with Janet Reno.

I have to wonder if, absent the immigration demagoguery that torpedoed Baird's and Woods's confirmation prospects, we might have avoided the Waco massacre (and therefore the Oklahoma City bombing), the abduction/deportation of Elian Gonzalez, etc.

* The US Constitution includes no federal power to regulate immigration, meaning that per the Tenth Amendment and Madison v. Marbury, all federal laws on the subject are void.

Movie Night

2012-04-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

Tamara wanted to see the 3D re-release of Titanic, and did.

The kids didn't want to see that, which meant that I didn't get to see it. Which was okay, since they settled on The Cabin in the Woods:

I see that spoilers are already starting to circulate, but I won't do that to you. You already know you're going to see it. I'll just confirm that it's a great, fun ride from Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard and leave it at that.

Problem: The Cabin in the Woods runs about an hour-and-a-half, while Titanic runs about three hours and the latter started 15 minutes after the former. Which gave us an hour-and-a-half and change to kill, with the stores and restaurants around the cinema closing just before the first movie got out.

I'm not naming the venue or the cinema, just so I don't get anyone in trouble: The ticket guy saw us waiting, knew what movie we'd gone into, knew what movie Tamara had gone into, and said "hey, The Three Stooges gets out about the same time as Titanic -- you guys can go watch it on the house if you'd like." So we did:

Which was really cool. If you like The Three Stooges (I do), I think you'll find it a faithful and funny adaptation worth seeing. I hadn't expected to catch it on the big screen. Bonus!

You're Almost Certainly an Expert ...

2012-04-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

... really. In something. It may not be something that anyone (including you) thinks is especially sexy or popular, but there's something you know more about than the average bear. And there's almost certainly a market for your expertise.

Twenty years ago, that market would have had trouble finding you (and vice versa) unless a) there was really huge demand for your niche expertise and b) you had lots of money to promote yourself as the go-to guy or gal in the field.

The problem today is kind of the opposite. The Internet makes it easy to promote yourself, but it's also crowded and cacophonous. These days, all 30 experts in identifying the mating calls of the native birds of Kentucky (or whatever) are vying for Google search position and flogging their 468 x 60 banners around.

Decentralization is good, but sometimes centralization is better.

Enter Maven. They hook clients up with consultants. That's pretty much all they do. And they're good at it.

Over the last year and change, I've done several consultations for Maven clients, and I've made money from them (not huge money, but significant money -- double digits each time, for a few minutes of my time; and it's actual money actually paid, not theoretical "credits" and such).

You can make money sharing your own personal expertise (or expertises) too. Looking over their opportunities, there's some really off-the-wall stuff there, so don't think that whatever it is you know about will never be sought out. It almost certainly will!

Yes, the link is a referral link. Yes, I will receive a commission (10% of whatever you make your first year) if you register with Maven and get paid for work you get through them. And yes, signing on with Maven as a consultant is free. It only takes a few minutes, and it could be anything from a small money-maker to very lucrative. See you there!

Yes, Mac Malware Exists

2012-04-09T13:21:00.001-05:00

Some of my Windows-using friends (no, I won't publicly shame them by naming them -- they'll eventually catch up to the 21st century) expressed surprise at the foofooraw about the "Flashback" malware which now apparently afflicts around 1 in 50 Macintosh computers. After all, one of the Mac's informal selling points is that viruses and such aren't something you have to worry about.

I wasn't surprised (nor, btw, was I infected). I've been waiting for years for The Big Mac Trojan to show up.

Macs aren't magically "immune" to viruses -- nor are Linux boxes. While I personally think that both MacOS and Linux are better operating systems than Windows, all OSes have vulnerabilities.

Most malware is written to attack Windows machines for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks ("that's where the money is") and that the 9/11 hijackers hit New York City and Washington, DC instead of Odin, Missouri and Green Forest, Arkansas (a lot more people there to kill or maim, a lot more attention to be had, etc.).

There are basically two reasons to write malware:

1) To make money (by stealing credit card numbers, or use enslaved machines to send out loads of spam and hope it makes people order Viagra, or whatever); or

2) To raise hell, cause accidents, and get noticed.

Either way, attacking Windows makes more sense. There are just a lot more Windows users than there are Mac and Linux users. Until a purple cow comes along and decides to be different, anyway.

And -- I don't mean this as an insult -- a higher percentage of Windows users are probably less intimately involved with their machines, and therefore less likely to notice reports alerting them that they have security vulnerabilities and should download updates and so forth. That is, a higher percentage of Windows machines than Linux machines or Macs are probably thought of as household appliances rather than as potential burglary vectors.

Nothing wrong with that, except that you generally don't have to worry that your toaster will charge up $200 in Scandinavian porn for some guy in Romania to your PayPal account.

But obviously there's some of that attitude with Macs as well, and Flashback's author took advantage of that. There will be more.

OK, Spring is Officially Here

2012-04-08T21:07:00.000-05:00

Someone asked me the other day if I'm still sleeping in the tent. Yup! I allow myself one night per month inside, and my back always regrets it.

Anyway, this last week the mummy bag (rated for either zero or ten degrees fahrenheit, not sure which) got washed, hung up to air dry, and crammed into its attached stuff stack. Most nights now are just too warm for it, even completely unzipped. Switched to a worn, reliable old summer "temperate climate" bag, with blankets still on standby in case it gets nippy.

Haven't decided yet whether or not I want to re-site the tent for the summer, but I'm leaning against it. Got everything pretty much the way I want it, including almost perfect rain resistance even without the tarp lean-to (that came down some time ago, once the coldest winter winds eased up). We've had some real frog-stranglers already in the last month or so, and never more than a smidgen of dampness inside the thing.

Then again, something larger might be fun. Or that cardboard geodesic I was thinking of building ...

A Story About a Cat, But Not Really

2012-04-05T12:05:00.000-05:00

Via MSN:

Her owner died last December, and a 20-year-old will stipulated any cats the woman owned at the time of her death be euthanized. But trust officers at Fifth Third Bank in charge of, um, executing the will, couldn't bring themselves to carry out the request. So they went to court.

The story is followed by a lot of feel-good reader comments, including a few of the "I would certainly do business with this bank!" variety.

Really?

The cat's late owner placed a good deal of trust in the bank, so much so that she designated it to execute her will (a job for which it is presumably to be compensated, and pursuant to which it has probably been compensated for related past business).

But instead of executing her will, the bank went to court to overturn it. The bank sued to get out of its freely undertaken contractual obligations to a customer.

Yes, cats are cute and fuzzy, but that doesn't mean our thinking about this issue should be fuzzy too.

Would you really trust this institution to execute your will (after you are, obviously, no longer around to keep tabs on them and make sure they do so properly)?

What if they decide that the money you designated for your children should instead be donated to a local homeless shelter? Or spent on a Vegas holiday?

They've just publicly proven that if they don't like what you decide, they'll go to court to get what they want instead.

The Part of the Exchange ...

2012-04-04T07:33:00.001-05:00

... that Gene Callahan apparently decided not to approve (he moderates all comments in advance of posting).

Published exchange begins here.

Last published sentence from Gene: "Is it necessary to embellish your flagrant misreadings with sneers?"

(So far) unpublished response from me, as best I can remember: "Necessary? No, but I like your usual style so much that sometimes I'm moved to emulate it."

Economics Question: Does Poverty Force People to Spend More?

2012-04-03T11:27:00.000-05:00

Is being poor self-reinforcing because it forces one to spend more on stuff a little bit at a time over time, as opposed to saving up and/or forking over a large sum at once, and eventually spending less?

I don't consider myself "poor," but I do have a personal situation that illustrates the question:

I have dental problems. That's no secret -- I've talked about it, and other people have talked about it, both to my face and behind my back (no, Sully, it's not "meth mouth" -- I'm not a druggie).

I've had these problems for years, and have taken steps toward getting them corrected. A couple of years ago, for example, I had all of my top teeth pulled and got a denture. That ended up costing around a thousand bucks.

The denture only got used for awhile. My remaining bottom teeth are so fragile that if I wear the denture, it breaks them ... and I haven't been able to afford to address the bottom teeth yet.

Essentially, I need another thousand bucks worth of dental work (at a minimum -- if I go to one of the $299 denture places, they'll extract my remaining teeth for $30 a pop, so $600 for two dentures since the old one has long since ceased to fit due to gum shrinkage, and $340 for the extractions).

Since I don't have a thousand spare bucks to get all that done, I spend money on benzocaine gel, over-the-counter pain relievers and decongestants (I've noticed that usually the most painful times are when I'm congested -- I guess the sinuses press on the tooth nerves), occasionally on antibiotics, etc.

I can attest with certainty that I've also missed out on opportunities to make more money due to this problem. Not only am I embarrassed to be seen this way (which means that I no longer do public speaking engagements, which have been an occasional income source in the past), but I spend probably a week out of each month in severe, sometimes literally blinding, pain that reduces my personal productivity.

And, like I said, I don't consider myself "poor." Granted, I personally make little enough that even if I consented to fill out tax returns I'd have little or no liability; and granted, until very recently about half (sometimes more!) of what I made went to a child support obligation; but my significant other makes fairly good money, nobody's starving at my house, and we do live beyond the bare necessities.

I suspect that laying out a thousand bucks at a whack is a pretty big deal for most people, and out of the question for the truly "poor."

I also suspect that this is self-reinforcing because various things nickel-and-dime the truly poor to death and stop them from getting out of the hole.

A newer car would set them back three grand, but they can't manage that ... so they trickle out $50 or $100 a month repairing the old clunker because they absolutely have to have it to get to work.

Or they mow two or three yards a week and know they could make good money running a full-time lawn service, but they can't fork over for the additional equipment and other startup costs, so they just keep on working at Taco Bell.

Or any health problem -- mine above is just an example -- costs them X days in lost income from being off work each year, but they can't get the cash together to get it correctly addressed, so they spend a little bit at a time on pain reduction and such and just try to muddle through.

I assume that this is a well-described economic phenomenon, but I thought I'd bring it up for comment. It's pretty much a matter of needing to post something to the blog, and the only thing on my mind being this damn toothache. So anyway, discuss.

Contra Wilkinson

2012-04-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

Over at The Moral Sciences Club, Will Wilkinson classifies originalism as a form of "judicial activism." While he may be correct in one way or another, here's where I come to full stop.

The orginalist argument is somewhat like the argument that although men now wear baseball caps instead of fedoras, they should begin wearing fedoras because they used to wear them.

Um, no.

The originalist argument is that rules should be interpreted on the standard of what their framers/ratifiers intended them to mean.

If the framers/ratifiers of a club's rules did, in fact, mean to specify the wearing of fedoras (as opposed to, say, caps, or even just headgear in general) as a condition of membership, then that's what the rule means, period, end of story.

That doesn't mean the club can't change the rule -- through whatever process it has for doing so -- but the originalist theory dictates that the rule doesn't automatically change itself through a mechanism of re-interpretation.

That's what "rule of law" is all about. Non-originalism isn't rule of law, it's rule of fad.