Month: March 2005

Dogs decide to end it all

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12448213-13762,00.html

At least five dogs have thrown themselves off the historic bridge at Overtoun House in Dunbarton, Scotland, in the past six months.

The bridge, which spans a 13m drop into a stream running underneath, is fast becoming known as Rover’s Leap because of the lemming-like approach it seems to inspire in apparently well-adjusted family pets.

“Dogs do not commit suicide. They have a strong fight-or-flight response,” Doreen Graham, of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told The Glasgow Herald.

“The incidents at the bridge are of very great concern to us because we would like to understand why they are happening.”

Ian A. knows why: “I bow-wow before no man! My life is a waste! I can only sit and shake for treats! I will not let the man roll-over me again! Good-bye, cruel world!”

Radio Free Jason Update

Training is done, folks! I am now a radio personality (or something like that) at WVCW (go listen even though I’m not currently on).

“But when are you on, Jason ?” you may be asking.

Good question.

Tuesdays at 12:30-1:30 pm will be my hour of format playing. Which means I play what pops up on the computer and talk once in a while.

So now a whole lot of me to begin with, but it’s a start. Once I prove myself I can get a specialty show. Which will be all me, baby. Oh yeah.

So go check out WVCW now and be sure to tune in Tuesday at 12:30 for an hour of ME!

Cause you love me.

Right?

Right.

Boondocks Passed For Bush Drug Jokes

The Comics Reporter uh… reports that Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks was not run in the Chicago Tribune recently because of references to Bush’s potential drug use on Feb. 28 and even a less straightforward on that ran Mar. 1, the second one even going so far as to just make fun of the reports.

So, in the name of fighting back or whatever it is I am doing, I shall share with you all these evil strips:

I, personally, have no problem with Bush drug jokes. Probably because I’m a “lefty”.

The coming crackdown on blogging

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign’s Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate’s press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Smith should know. He’s one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. “The commission’s exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines” the campaign finance law’s purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

Now, I was doing my usual “cut and paste” of the article and realized I was just about to pretty much post the whole thing, so go check it out yourself, very interesting stuff and certainly things that anyone that writes online needs to be aware of. But before your blood boils too much, keep in mind this part of the article (towards the end):

Then this is a partisan issue?
Yes, it is at this time. But I always point out that partisan splits tend to reflect ideology rather than party. I don’t think the Democratic commissioners are sitting around saying that the Internet is working to the advantage of the Republicans.

One of the reasons it’s a good time to (fix this) now is you don’t know who’s benefiting. Both the Democrats and Republicans used the Internet very effectively in the last campaign.

What would you like to see happen?
I’d like someone to say that unpaid activity over the Internet is not an expenditure or contribution, or at least activity done by regular Internet journals, to cover sites like CNET, Slate and Salon. Otherwise, it’s very likely that the Internet is going to be regulated, and the FEC and Congress will be inundated with e-mails saying, “How dare you do this!”

…

What happens next?
It’s going to be a battle, and if nobody in Congress is willing to stand up and say, “Keep your hands off of this, and we’ll change the statute to make it clear,” then I think grassroots Internet activity is in danger.

…

If Congress doesn’t change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We’re talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

First, I give the guy a lot of credit for calling this partisan outright. He’s not hiding it and that’s good, that makes me think he’s trying to be honest with us about the issue and that’s what we need. It’s also probably him covering his ass, he knows there’ll be heat for this and he can limit this by not shrouding it as something else.

Second, he tells us outright a proper solution to the issue, get Congress to clear up the statute. So grassroots Internet activity has a means of keeping themselves in the clear, petition your representatives in Congress.

In the end, this is simply the FEC having to enforce laws given to them based on a judicial interpretation. They are simply doing their jobs. It’s just bad law.

Who Owns Your Desktop? You Do!

So there’s been a bit of an uproar lately over a new Google Toolbar feature that adds Auto-Links to websites, making titles of books happen to link to their Amazon listing, restaurants link to their addresses, stuff like that, whether the original author of the site meant for it to happen. And now there are scripts all about to kill this feature because, well, as a webdesigner you design and link as you see fit, who is Google to tweak your page?

EFF: Deep Links says bah and fooey on this hubub:

When I visit your website, and you send me a page in response, I should be able to do whatever I like to manipulate it on my end. Display it in purple, suppress images, block pop-ups, compare prices from other vendors, whatever. In the words of my colleague, Cory Doctorow, “it’s my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it.”

Of course, we have to make sure the butler doesn’t try to take over and act like a jail warden (i.e., monopolists forcing you to take a butler). And we don’t want the butler to sneak into your house when you’re not looking (i.e., spyware). But Google’s Toolbar seems to be a pretty good butler — it’s not like he hides his presence, and you can fire him anytime you like (it’s not as though Google’s leading position in search gives it much ability to force its butler on you; you can choose from lots of other “toolbar” apps that can submit searchs to Google).

And I kinda agree with this.

Now it’s one thing if folks start making money off your site when you don’t want them to, like in the case of the Amazon book links, but it is an added service to a potential reader. You’d probably be better off creating those kind of links yourself and using the associate feature Amazon offers. And getting to maps is pretty handy too.

But as the possibility of adding links to competitors exists, there should certainly be a way for websites to block Google, which there is.

I don’t think this is entirely EVIL of Google, nor do I think it was malicious. They think they are offering a great service to people using their toolbar and I have to agree. It might be a pretty handy feature to play with. Websites can opt out with the script, sure, but otherwise, let me the user play with what I have available. If that tweaks your site and makes it more accessable to me and my wants, awesome.

The Case for the Draft

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0503.carter.html
America can remain the world’s superpower. Or it can maintain its current all-volunteer military. It can’t do both.

…

In short, America’s all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world. Simply adding more soldiers to the active duty force, as some in Washington are now suggesting, may sound like a good solution. But it’s not, for sound operational and pragmatic reasons. America doesn’t need a bigger standing army; it needs a deep bench of trained soldiers held in reserve who can be mobilized to handle the unpredictable but inevitable wars and humanitarian interventions of the future. And while there are several ways the all-volunteer force can create some extra surge capacity, all of them are limited.

The only effective solution to the manpower crunch is the one America has turned to again and again in its history: the draft.* Not the mass combat mobilizations of World War II, nor the inequitable conscription of Vietnamfor just as threats change and war-fighting advances, so too must the draft. A modernized draft would demand that the privileged participate. It would give all who serve a choice over how they serve. And it would provide the military, on a just in time basis, large numbers of deployable ground troops, particularly the peacekeepers we’ll need to meet the security challenges of the 21st century.

America has a choice. It can be the world’s superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can’t do both.

* empahsis mine

Because a draft is guaranteed to create a completely capabable military, not a demoralized army of forced soldiers putting their asses on the line for something they did not ask or even volunteer to do. Part of what has made the American military so unique and effective over the last 150 years is it’s all volunteer status, the fact that everyone who is in there WANTS to be there on some level. Whether it’s because they believe in the military’s values, see it as a way to get an education or simply like the shiny guns, they are there because they want to be and fight because that’s what they signed up to do.

So what if, instead of instituting a draft and forcing people who don’t want to be in the military to serve, you create a system to where joining the military is more appealing?

Serve six years, your college education is free. Sure, you can get out, but you’re in the Reserves and can be called up, but you get FREE college. And better pay. And more.

Ah, but Carter and Glastris proposed a half assed effort at this:

A better solution would fix the weaknesses of the all-volunteer force without undermining its strengths. Here’s how such a plan might work. Instead of a lottery, the federal government would impose a requirement that no four-year college or university be allowed to accept a student, male or female, unless and until that student had completed a 12-month to two-year term of service. Unlike an old-fashioned draft, this 21st-century service requirement would provide a vital element of personal choice. Students could choose to fulfill their obligations in any of three ways: in national service programs like AmeriCorps (tutoring disadvantaged children), in homeland security assignments (guarding ports), or in the military. Those who chose the latter could serve as military police officers, truck drivers, or other non-combat specialists requiring only modest levels of training. (It should be noted that the Army currently offers two-year enlistments for all of these jobs, as well as for the infantry.) They would be deployed as needed for peacekeeping or nation-building missions. They would serve for 12-months to two years, with modest follow-on reserve obligations.

Whichever option they choose, all who serve would receive modest stipends and GI Bill-type college grants. Those who sign up for lengthier and riskier duty, however, would receive higher pay and larger college grants. Most would no doubt pick the less dangerous options. But some would certainly select the militaryout of patriotism, a sense of adventure, or to test their mettle. Even if only 10 percent of the one-million young people who annually start at four-year colleges and universities were to choose the military option, the armed forces would receive 100,000 fresh recruits every year. These would be motivated recruits, having chosen the military over other, less demanding forms of service. And because they would all be college-grade and college-bound, they would haveto a greater extent than your average volunteer recruitthe savvy and inclination to pick up foreign languages and other skills that are often the key to effective peacekeeping work.

Require service to go to college and thereby better enhance your chances of success in the world? Or you could opt not to join the military and be limited to flipping burgers or working retail the rest of your life. Thanks, guys, way to make that military more appealing.

This does NOTHING to solve the issue of morale or avoid anyone joining feeling like they are forced to be there. “I’m just here for a year and then I’m out, so I’m going to do the bare minimum to get by,” is not the mentality we need our armed forces to have.

There was a time when serving in the military meant something. If you served you were practically guaranteed a job when you were done. But that is no longer the case, society and business needs have moved beyond that the military teaches, leaving many that serve behind those that simply go to college instead.

Fix that and you might have yourself a larger all-volunteer force.