Hotinan asks a good question — does teaching your children to be bloodthirsty suicidal killers qualify as child abuse? Oh, that’s right, it’s Sharon’s fault that these kids are being raised as homicidal maniacs…(just ignore the adults cheering them on in the back)
Anyone still holding any delusions about the nature of PLO/Hamas should read Mike’s latest editorial on the "peace process" and this dated by still very relevant essay: "Do the Palestinians Deserve a State?"
Thanks to Mr. Anonymous for this this comment:
Someone googled "Jews evil greedy" and stumbled upon your site. You may be Jewish, and you may be greedy, but are you really evil?
I am indeed Jewish by birth and greedy by choice, but am I really evil? Well, since everyone knows that public opinion determines right and wrong, I think this is a perfect opportunity to test my blog’s new polling abilities:
| How evil am I? |
|
Axis-of-evil evil RIAA/SCO Evil Mega-evil Mostly-evil Semi-evil Quasi-evil Pseudo-evil Nano-evil Tiny weeny bit of evil |
Unless you’ve been living in a hole the last few months, you know that Iranian students are staging protests in support of democracy and against their fundamentalist regime. Perhaps becuase they have been unable to do anything exciting outside their homes, they have developed a very active blogging community hosted by "Persian" blog hosts like Persian Blog. (Did you know that the word "Iran" stems from "Aryan" as Persia (rather than Germany) is the actual home of the Aryan race? The swastika is actually an ancient Iranian symbol which Hitler borrowed along with the name for his crackpot theory. Many Iranians seems to be aware of this, as all the ones I’ve met in the U.S. say that they are from "Persia.")
Anyway, almost all these Persian sites are in farsi, which has hampered recent efforts by the blogging community to reach out in support of their movement. Fortunately, I found this list of Iranian blogs in English. Such blogs have become popular among westerners following "The Baghdad Blogger’s" personal account of the war from Baghdad. There was much speculation about whether Salaam was even real, but few realized that he was (and still is) risking his life by criticizing the regime, Islamic fundamentalism, and openly talking about his homosexuality. I applaud his objective report on the situation (coming from me, that actually means something), but I have one big beef with his epigram: "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do" — while the media unflinchingly accepted this travesty, Raed fails to understand that it was precisely because of the superiority of it’s ideas and values that the West is generally a nice place to live while the rest of the world is basically a big open sewer. Oh, speaking of crap, a judge declared rap a foreign language.
What do they say? If you can’t take the heat, (or the competition) get out of the kitchen. This "criminal at the computer" read your book and is tired of your "someone should do something!" commieconservatism.
Edit: A further comment. O’Reilly says
the Supreme Court actually helped [the child molestation people] by ruling that virtual child porn, computerized images of kids being raped, are legal, an extension of free speech.
What he is almost certainly talking about, is hentai, or the popular Japanese version of anime, or animated nudes. Japan has strict censorship laws that prohibit the portrayal of genitals (even animated ones), but are very flexible and open on everything else, including breasts. The weird result is that mainstream anime features plenty of bare-breasted women and porn has genitals that are digitized just enough to get past the censors. Anyway, women in Japanese anime only come in two forms: young, nubile, and top heavy, and old hag. Although their huge cleavage, enormous eyes, and purple/green hair hardly qualifies as "human," a number of conservatives (like Mr. O’Reilly) have labeled hentai as "child porn" and sought to ban it outright. It doesn’t take much brains to figure out that this is only a stepping stone to banning pornography, masturbation and all kinds of other things their preacher thinks are bad. So what is child porn and what should be illegal?
I was arguing with a prominent "libertarian" a few months ago who was said that while child molesters are guilty of a crime, those who distribute child pornography are are not, because they didn’t actually harm anyone. I compared this to saying that while a thief commits a crime, those who knowingly buy his stolen loot do not, since they didn’t steal anything themselves. (The libertarian agreed with this as well, at which point I gave up.) The fact is in both cases, both parties are guilty: one of the actual crime, the other of aiding and abetting. When dealing with virtual child porn however, there are no victims and no crime. The behavior may be immoral, but it’s in the same status as watching the numerous rape and gang-bang scenes in adult movies. (Not that I watch that kind of stuff, but did you know that the rape scenes frequently feature tiny white women and mean-looking black men, yet are happily purchased by all races?) Not surprisingly, I have heard many arguments made by feminists for banning "rape" scenes and by conservatives for banning adult stars who dress to look underage. Their logic is based on the implicit assumption that humans are like apes who mindlessly imitate whatever they see, be on it television, computer, or newsprint. If that were the case, then my many hours of playing Doom are a much bigger threat to society than my small but growing hentai collection. In any case, child porn it is not, and to prove it, I’ve posted a random sample here. Judge for yourself, but not for too long, since it may soon be against the law.
kids fight back..
I was ego-surfing the web today, when I came accross a biography of my namesake — in Russian. It seems that Äàâèä Âåêñëåð was a a psychologist at Columbia University who invented the IQ test. Specifically, he came up with the following definition of intelligence: "The aggregate, or global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment."
Unfortunately, when Äàâèä came to the United States, he spelled his name "Wechsler" rather than my "Veksler," which is why the very-appropropriate legacy of my namesake remained hidden from me for so long. (Actually, when I was 16, I had my first name legally changed from "Dennis" to "David" — but that’s besides the point.)
There are a number of interesting stories covering the witch hunt the government is pursuing against Martha Stewart. A number of papers are running stories such as "Official Poll: Is Martha Stewart guilty?" and Poll: Majority of New Yorkers think Martha Stewart is guilty. How the hell is Joe Shmoe supposed to know the details of the legal code or what Martha did or did not do? Fortunately, most of the editorials I’ve seen recognize the case for what is is: "U.S. government makes her the subject of a criminal test case designed to further expand the already unrecognizable boundaries of the U.S. federal securities laws." A number of sites in support of Martha have popped up, including Martha’s own MarthaTalks.com and the SaveMartha.com, which features several hilarious clips from her "enemies."
Martha’s own defense has been to say that she is only being prosecuted because she is a successful woman — but I think this take is misguided. Many successful men have gone to jail for insider trading, and Martha’s defense is doomed unless she acknowledges the real motivations of her prosecutors: to inspire fear, uncertainty and doubt into successful businessmen everywhere, and gain political prominence in the process. As the must-read article "Martha Stewart: Political Prisoner" points out,
It is politics, not the pursuit of justice, which is driving this case. Stewart is well-connected politically, but it is to Democrats, who control none of the branches of government at the present time. Her wealth and public persona make her a convenient target of a very political U.S. Department of Justice and of U.S. attorneys who see the example of the Guiliani path to fame and fortune.
I can’t say whether Martha broke the law or not: I’m not lawyer, I don’t know the facts of the case, and even if I were a lawyer, the SEC regulations are vague enough to mean whatever the government wants them to mean in any particular case. What I do know, is that the insider trading laws are a mockery of justice, and that the witchhunt against Martha Steward is only happening because she and Sam Waksal are successful individuals, and in today’s world, success can be a very dangerous thing.
The title says it all: Starving [African] Nations Reject U.S. Food Donation. If you want my take, read last years blog on it.
In other news, the Defense Dept is adopting the "new" IPv6 protocol. My guess is that when every bussiness has IPv6 implemented in 5 years, the Pentagon will still be conducting studies about how to best implement the protocol.
A few months ago, I placed a tiny, invisible image on my blog in exchange for "product samples." A few weeks later, I got a bucket with a shirt, chocolate drinks, other assorted merchandize, and a link to "Raging Cow," a blog "written by a cow" that just happens to have the name and image of a new chocolate drink product. The blog itself has various "humorous" rants that make no sense whatsoever and never explicitly mention the product the blog is advertizing. The only hint that this is a actually an experimental guerilla marketing technique is a tiny link in the corder that sats "©2003 Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc." Will it work? I have my doubts, but their crawler will probably notice this link and send me more merchandize, so I’ll be a good corporate tool and keep on blogging about it. You can sign up here, but your blog has to get 50+ hits a day to qualify.