Link Blog
Dickipedia: Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam (born July 4, 1776) is the national personification of the United States, an economic and cultural imperialist, the mascot of the New York Yankees, frequent used car salesman, and a dick. More...
(author unknown)Wall-E is a copyright criminal
2. WALL-E archives the audio, he doesn’t merely time-shift it. He listens repeatedly! A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61
3. WALL-E shares his DRM-broken music with his friend, another robot named XXXXX. A COPYRIGHT CRIME UNDER C-61
LinkSF Man Looking For Nemesis
Ah, the Internet. Remember the old days when you had to earn a nemesis by wronging someone or their family or AT LEAST by discovering someone whose value system was in diametrical opposition to your own? A May posting on Craigslist has some lazy bastard trying to circumvent the cat and mouse courting process of the archenemy. Still, if you live in the Bay area and are looking for a chance to unleash the evil that lurks within us all, this is your guy.
"...I'm willing to pay $350 up front for you services as an arch enemy over the next six months. Nothing crazy. Steal my parking space, knock my coffee over, trip me when Im running to catch the BART and occasionally whisper in my ear, "Ahha, we meet again". That kind of thing."
Via [Cragislist]
Murdering Milton Friedman
McCain's Secret Plan for the "Internets" Leaked to Press
"McCain Staffer Turns His Candidate Into A Joke The Whole Internet Can Enjoy"- HuffPost
"'The Google'" - Ben Smith
(author unknown)
Want a gun? Let's ask Ellis.
Apparently, Ellis Henican knows that the people he was on the A-train with are not responsible and will most likely kill other people if they have guns. So, from now on, I guess we need to pass everything by Ellis Henican. Everybody got it? If you want a gun, you should arrange a meeting with Ellis and let him determine whether or not the Constitution applies to you. Thank you for your cooperation.
BenJay-Z To Oasis: "Are Your Songs 'Appropriate' Glastonbury Material? Just Checking" [Videodrone]
After months of buildup, Jay-Z played his much-discussed headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival last night, and he opened it with a special dedication to Oasis' Noel Gallagher, who had said that Jay was an inappropriate addition to the Glasto bill because it was "built on a tradition of guitar music." Jay strolled out with a guitar, strumming and warbling along to "Wonderwall," last-call-on-a-long-night-style, before breaking into "99 Problems." I think this is a way to tell Gallagher "your move," although I shudder to think what an Oasis cover of "Big Pimpin'" might sound like. (There's a download of his full set from last night here.) [YouTube / HipHopIsRead via madeupmemories]
Maura Johnston
A Somewhat Skeptical Take on <em>Heller</em>
I hate to pee in the pool, here, but I'm having a hard time getting too excited about today's decision.
Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion avoids any decision on incorporating the Second Amendment to the states, and his history suggests a strong reluctance to incorporate individual rights. Scalia's opinion does interpret the Second Amendment as an individual right, but only for self-protection, and only in the home. The concept of the Second Amendment as a bulwark against an overly oppressive government seems dead.
In the past, when Scalia's limited government principles have conflicted with his law-and-order instincts, law and order has won handily. He's been a happy federalist when it comes to allowing states to infringe on individual rights, but will bring down the hammer of the federal government on states that defy the feds by giving their citizens a bit more freedom.
As Jacob Sullum noted earlier, Scalia also goes out of his way to note that the "individual right" the Court found today doesn't undo onerous regulations on the sale of guns, leaves untouched bans on "unusual or dangerous" weapons, and doesn't overturn existing bans on concealed carry.
So what's the real practical effect of today's ruling? Seems to me, it's limited to the following:
• A future Congress is barred from passing a uniform federal ban on handguns or rifles in the home. Just about any other federal regulation would probably still be okay, provided it meets the minimal Commerce Clause test in U.S. v. Lopez.
• The 600,000 residents of Washington, D.C. and residents of other federal protectorates now have the constitutional right to own a handgun, provided they meet a set of conditions put forth by the city council—the limits of which will be litigated at a future date. Also, even this right for this small group of people extends only to handguns or rifles kept in the home.
Any other city, state, or locality may still pass a gun law just as restrictive as the one struck down in D.C. And even the D.C. city council can still make its citizens jump through a number of hoops before allowing them to own a handgun.
Today's ruling gave the right a rhetorical victory (remember, elections are "all about the judges!"), but I'm not sure what it accomplished in actually protecting Second Amendment rights. To be fair, Scalia explains that Heller was basically a case of first impression, and there's much to still work out through litigation. But given the narrow reach of his opinion, I guess I'd just caution against too much optimism that any new litigation will come out the right way.
rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko)Communists for Intellectual Property
This is a bit old, but I don't think it's been mentioned on Hit & Run yet: Che Guevara's children are irked by the unauthorized use of the Argentina-born Cuban revolutionary's name and likeness on products such as T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, and vodka:
Aleida Guevara, the eldest of Guevara's four children by his second wife, Cuban revolutionary Aleida March, said the commercialization of her father's image contributed to tension between rich and poor in some countries.
"Something that bothers me now is the appropriation of the figure of Che that has been used to make enemies from different classes. It's embarrassing," she wrote during an Internet forum sponsored by Cuba's government ahead of what would have been her father's 80th birthday on June 14....
"We don't want money, we demand respect," wrote Guevara...
But Cuba's communist government also has worked hard to make money off of the revolutionary's image, stocking tourist shops with T-shirts, postcards and other trinkets bearing his face and three-letter signature.
Here's a win/win proposal: The Cuban government can retain all rights to Che's name and likeness if it lets Cubans freely own, transfer, and use other kinds of property.
Michael Moynihan on the cult of Che here. Kerry Howley on the commercial sullying of Genghis Khan's good name here and here.
[Thanks to John Kluge for the tip.]
jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum)Winner #5
Statistics
By: David Munoz of Panda Force
White people hate math. If you want to befriend white people, mention “that weird Asian calculus teacher who drew perfect circles” and how much you hated his class (bonus points if you mention how your parents made you get an even worse tutor who was more clueless than you and smelled bad). However, white
people are fascinated by “the power of statistics” since the math has already been done for them. Some magazines, like TIME, have a section in each magazine that has some interesting statistics ($80 trillion: the amount spent by the US in the Iraqi war) followed by absurd, barely related ones (4,317 yards: the
distance covered if you were to take all the ammunition shells fired by US soldiers in Iraq since the war started). White people who read TIME will quote these statistics, but even non-TIME reading white people will throw in stats they read in a less-than-credible study. It’s not unusual to hear such things
as “I don’t mind this neighborhood since I’m not Republican. 80% of them are anti-minority, you know” or “I don’t think you should let Sally play softball because 70% of softball players are lesbians”.
White people love sounding smarter than their peers and will jump at any chance to use a statistic if it’s applicable to the conversation in any way. The more absurd the statistic, the more clever and original you will seem. Stats can also hide negative feelings. If you meet a white person who wishes went to a
school that they refer to as the “Harvard of the (Region where the university they attended is), they may say something like “Good thing I didn’t go to an Ivy since 35% of their graduates reported being unhappy with their lives”. It is considered rude to laugh and you should instead smile or throw in another
appropriate statistic if handy.
The only time you should not use a statistic is to ask a white person if they knew “that (random number) % of statistics aren’t true”. You will be seen as being unoriginal, not funny, and will get stared at.
Disclaimer: 100% of these statistics were made up
Geeks exhaustively crunch numbers to tell us shit we already know
The poindexters at Pro Football Reference have unveiled their list of the worst quarterbacks in the history of the game. You won’t find perennial benchwarmers like Jelly-Roll Lorenzen here, rather the stat-monkeys focused on quarterbacks who logged enough playing time to really stink up the joint. I doubt that anyone in the D will be shocked to learn that Joey Harrington topped the list.
No QB has performed so far below the league average for so long as Joey Harrington. To be clear, Joey Harrington probably isn’t the worst quarterback of all time in an absolute sense. But in terms of being so far below average, but far enough above miserable to earn more playing time, Joey Harrington hurt his team more than any other QB in NFL history. If Harrington had been worse, he would have played less, and he wouldn’t have set back the teams he played on.
Ouch. Don’t sugar-coat it or anything.
Also worth a look is their compilation of the worst quarterbacks in each individual season. This list is a pleasant blend of the expected (Archie Manning, Ryan Leaf, David Carr), the surprising (Phil Simms, Joe Theismann) and players I had all but forgotten (Stan Gelbaugh, Billy Joe Tolliver). Check out Joe Ferguson’s staggeringly awful run as worst QB in three straight seasons (1982-84).
Of course in this day and age a team would never give a QB that long before making a change. Americans will no longer tolerate protracted mediocrity from their quarterbacks. Mediocrity from our President, legislature, courts, social service structure, public schools and economic system is one thing. But from our quarterbacks? No effing way.
[ ht: MLive.com ]
On Facing the Extinction of My Kind
There’s a very good chance that homosexuals will cease to exist, and soon. And the rest of you — You’ll cheer. Or at least you’ll breathe a little easier. You’ll be glad we’re gone.
No, it’s the truth. Parents overwhelmingly don’t want to have gay kids, and the science is getting better all the time. Eventually, there will be screenings in utero, and treatments, and it will all be a big relief to parents — never to have a kid like me. Never to have to worry.
After that, the only serious questions will be whether the treatment works on adults, too, and whether it’s ethical to force adults to take it. (And how well-armed and willing to fight the adult homosexuals may be.)
I considered these issues four years ago, when I saw that John Derbyshire had written the following:
A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.
Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.
It would also be a very miserable one for homosexuals, as they became an aging, fading cohort, with practically no younger people of their inclination to socialize with. The situation would also be self-reinforcing: As more and more parents took the test and got the fix, the loneliness facing homosexuals would become so dire that no person of conscience could think of raising a person who might become homosexual. The fix might even be applicable later in life, with adult homosexuals “converting” en masse.
In which case, there would be someone, somewhere, who was the last homosexual. What a situation! Think what a playwright or a novelist could do with it!
The legal logic is ironclad: Either parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children (an ancient and indisputable right), or else the gay community will be found to have some collective right to impose gay kids on parents who would otherwise prefer to be rid of them (a fanciful creation without any legal warrant). Want to lay bets on which way that one will turn out?
It’s a fairly good test, I think, of my own political beliefs, for there is nothing in libertarianism that forbids the extinction of homosexuals through technology. I have to let it go, hate it though I may — and I do. I think there’s something wrong, perhaps not at the level of government, but at least at the level of individual respect for human diversity, to the urge to wipe out all human differences. We will have lost something of our wonder, when this difference disappears.
Today’s young people more likely than not think that it’s brave, and kind of cool, that gays and lesbians are getting married in California, Massachusetts, and a few other places around the world. Soon, though, they may have the ability to rescue their children from homosexuality — and they will think of it as a rescue. Then another generation will grow up, who will look on gays and lesbians as being kind of like polio victims: Yes, they’re human, of course, but what a shame for them. And what a shame that we had to make such strange accommodations for them, in our laws, even. It’s a good thing no one has to suffer like that anymore.
But it’s not suffering, I’ll say to them from my grave. Will they listen?
I don’t know. I’m simply glad I won’t be the last living homosexual, and that I have already found a lifelong love, with whom I can watch the coming extinction at some degree of remove.
Tennessee Takes the Fun Out of Toga Parties
Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen signed a measure last week requiring state-funded colleges and universities to notify parents any time their kid violates a school's alcohol or drug policy.
It seems that Bredesen and crew are banking on changes made in federal rules after the Virginia Tech shootings. The Department of Education modified the language in an effort to balance "safety, privacy, and treatment."
In other words, under the guise of keeping students safe, Tennessee lawmakers are forcing state schools to send home behavioral report cards for any kid under the age of 21, whether parents want to know or not.
Bredesen—who either believes (despite available evidence to the contrary) that a freshman or sophomore getting caught with pot or doing upside-down margarita shots constitutes an emergency; or is pretending to believe such a thing in order to force parents into doling out the kind of discipline that deans cannot—has likely gone too far with the new disclosure law.
Students who decide to challenge the law in future, perhaps after mom or dad cuts them off for smoking weed out of an apple, would probably win the court battle.
That is, if their parents don't ground them for getting caught doing a 20-second keg stand while wearing an adult diaper.
Ed Carson for reason on college drinking here.
mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs)Surfing, Orgy, Apple Pie, Boobs
Legal determinations in obscenity trials rely, in part, on "community standards," one of the parameters defined in Miller v. California. The question is whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."
A lawyer in a current obscenity case in Florida has adopted an unusual approach to finding out what the community is really up to--checking out what they're googling. The findings:
Except for brief periods near Thanksgiving, searches for "orgy" consistently outrank attempts to find information about "apple pie" in Florida . The rest of the year, orgy searches are closer in frequency to what might be expected to be a common activity in Florida, "surfing."
We always suspected the much-ballyhooed "community" wasn't quite as wholesome as its reputation suggests. Looks like we were right--our neighbors have been googling orgies all along.
Via Ars Technica
kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward)New at Reason: Marty Beckerman on George Carlin's Linguistic Genius
The late George Carlin was frequently denounced for his foul language. But as Marty Beckerman notes, Carlin's comedic genius was rooted in his love for the written and spoken word.
(author unknown)Goodbye, George Carlin
There’s many other comics that did it, but Carlin always found some way to wax philosophical on life & mix it with humor. Without a doubt, he was one of the best period. I’ve quoted him several times here (but I can only find one right now) and I think I use his train thought in my reality more than even some of the greatest thinkers & writers of our time. So I’d be remiss to not share something with you in the time of his passing.
George Carlin: A YouTube Obituary
George Carlin - 7 Words You Can’t Say On TV
^ Props to OED for the link
Feel free to share your own Carlin quotes or video clips.
Carlin Kicks the F*cking Bucket
The guy whose raunchy lines your prudish friends hated you for reciting in crowded restaurants, George Carlin, is dead of a heart attack at 71 years old.
CNN misses him so much that it's hosting an ever-so-lightly censored version of the “Seven Dirty Words” sketch on its site. The sketch (which grownups can view uncensored below) led to Carlin’s arrest and the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. Fortunately, the 5-4 ruling let Carlin off the hook on the grounds that his monologue was "indecent but not obscene"; unfortunately, it also gave the Federal Communications Commission some guidelines on how to censor the airwaves without violating the Constitution.
Carlin refused to vote, calling the electoral process the "delusion of choice." Ironically, one of the last times he publicly discussed politics was during an interview with the late Tim Russert.
For your pleasure, a compilation of reason-esque Carlin quotes:
"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."
"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.""Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.""If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him.""Think off-center."
And of course, the video:
Nick Gillespie on Carlin's American Spirit, here. Jacob Sullum writes here on two decades of post-Seven censorship.
UPDATE: Check out Jay Dixit's thorough and fascinating interview with Carlin on the Psychology Today blog.
mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs)
George Carlin, 1937-2008
It is said of a man that you cannot know how far he has come unless you know where he began. Perhaps on the occasion of George Carlin’s death this might be said as well about American comedy in the last half century and so also of America, itself.
Carlin’s 1972 Class Clown was the first comedy album I ever bought. It was dedicated “to Leonard Schneider for taking all the risks.” But like Schneider, aka Lenny Bruce, Carlin was himself arrested for obscenity, ironically for doing his best known bit from that album, “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” (As far as I can tell, at least when it comes to broadcast television, the list is still valid.)
I remember earlier appearances of Carlin, clean-shaven, dressed in suit and tie and more wacky than cutting-edge, doing guest appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, his Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman, cracking Johnny up rattling off a meteorological jargon packed weather report only to end with “But our radar has also just picked up hundreds of ICBMs heading our way, so I wouldn’t sweat the cold front.”
Carlin changed with the times over the course of the sixties and early seventies and, it could also be said, helped in his own small way to change them. The sort of comedy we tolerate, let alone laugh at, says something about us. Carlin was funnier than Bruce, his “observational” eye for the absurd or the merely comical, especially in matters of language, was much sharper than Seinfeld’s and his “transgressiveness” was far more authentic than 99% of the comics that came along after him.
I don’t think it would be too unfair to describe Carlin’s politics as left-libertarian, though the leftist bent often got the better of his libertarian inclinations whenever the two came into conflict. But it is probably more fair to say that Carlin’s comedy was a study in equal opportunity misanthropy, notwithstanding the fact that some targets are just richer than others. Regardless, his was a unique talent. In any ranking of 20th century comedy genius, a pantheon that would include, for example, Groucho Marx and Richard Pryor, George Carlin would almost certainly make the Top Ten.
Goodbye, George Carlin
George Carlin, legendary comedian and free speech advocate has died at age 71.
Here is a verbatim transcript of "Filthy Words," the George Carlin monologue at issue in the historic 1978 Supreme Court case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, prepared by the Federal Communications Commission.
Update: Below, "For George," by Least Wanted (via Brett Walker via Susannah Breslin)
George Carlin: Goodnight, funnyman
George Carlin died yesterday. He was 71. You certainly don’t need us to tell you that he was the progenitor of the pissed-off comic that has been copied with varying degrees of success over the past several decades. Furthermore, it was Carlin who officially codified the seven dirty words. And as the LA Times could tell you, KSK wouldn’t be around except for those bon mots.
Carlin was right about many things, including his observation that everyone who drives slower than I do is an asshole and everyone who drives faster than I do is a maniac. This is one of his better known bits, and our favorite. Enjoy, all you assholes and maniacs…
“Listen to this dude Rufus. He knows what he’s talking about.”
