About Thoughts of a TechnoGeek: This is where I'll post my thoughts, interesting articles, or anything else I want to. If you don't like it, don't read it. David L Brenner my email Subscribe Links
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Wed, 16 Feb 2005
Last week legislation was introduced and passed by one of the houses that introduces a de facto national ID card. The purpose of the law is to crack down on illegal immigration. One of the provisions says that all states must have specific information available with driver's licenses in an electronically exchangeable format. The government will also not accept IDs for any official purpose that don't comply. States that don't comply will be denied funding from the Federal Government. This is a problem. This won't actually solve the problem. It will just ensure that people find ways to get government issued IDs with other false credentials. I'm all for cracking down on illegal immigration, but this isn't the way to handle it. It may reduce the services that are offered to illegals, but I don't see this fixing the problem. You need to create stiff penalties, like deportation with no future hope of citizenship or legal entry. Of course, that is only an incentive for people that are seeking citizenship. This won't dis-incent terrorists or people that are just coming here for a higher (not high) standard of living. I guess my point is that a simple thing like disallowing IDs to illegals and forcing all of us to have a de facto National ID doesn't fix immigration problems. It only tracks people that follow the rules, or can get around the rules. It doesn't confirm legitimacy. Wed, 03 Nov 2004I watched both of the speeches this afternoon. I need to say that I have respect for Kerry conceding the race. He could have pulled the bullshit that went on in the last election, but he faced the reality that he couldn't win and took the high road. It takes courage to do the right thing. I know that his supporters aren't happy with the outcome, but they supported a man that did the right thing. I also give him credit for wanting to head off some of the division that this election caused and I hope that it wasn't just posturing on the part of both candidates. I've been reading posts by a lot of people in their blogs. Most of the people that I read seem to be diehard Kerry supporters. I am the minority among my friends and the blogs that I read. I find it really appalling that the people writing these blogs are such sore losers. Neither of the candidates was a real prize. I understand that this was an emotional election for everyone, but let's get real. George W. Bush cannot destroy this country by himself. He is not the anti-Christ. He is not entirely bad for this country. He is not entirely bad for the world. Get the fuck over it. Kerry was not going to fix all of the world's problems. I don't like a lot of the policies of this administration. I think Ashcroft seriously needs to go. I'm not a big fan of the religion factor. I'm flabbergasted by the treatment of science. Having said that, I am all for someone that is willing to take a stand and keep with his convictions. Even if I don't agree, you know where George stands. I wanted a candidate that I would feel comfortable with, and the Dems gave us John Kerry. You could never nail him down on specifically what he wanted to do. One of my co-workers summed up the problem: if you couldn't put together a candidate that could beat W. with all of his problems, especially after the 2000 election, you are a loser. All I needed was something other than "I'm not George Bush". I'm not going to vote for someone that won't tell me what he stands for. All he needed to do was answer the questions about what specifically he was going to do. I never heard that answer and I watched all of the debates. George was repetitive but he's done things to make things better. He's also made some things worse. We all need to just relax a little bit. If you've been watching the way elections go, in order to get elected you need the support of the Christian Right. It is just a fact in elections. That is why both candidates reinforce that they go to church regularly. Now that George isn't going to be running again, there is the very real possibility that he won't pander to the right as much as he has. He needed their support in order to get elected and then re-elected. Give the man a chance. He is now free to veto things that he doesn't necessarily support. I don't believe that he is as far right as people make him out to be. He went right because he needed the Evangelical support. People are also doing a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on the Iraq thing. Congress saw the same intelligence and voted to allow the war. Bush couldn't do it without them. Everyone forgets that. It was his recommendation and others came to the same conclusions. The data was faulty, but knowing what he knew, I think he made the right decision. If he hadn't acted and there had been a terrorist attack, he would have been strung up and American civilians would be dead. He made the right choice, he may not have handled everything correctly, but he is human just like all men are. The upside is that Iraq will have free elections and Saddam is out of power. In addition, it will help stabilize the oil flow eventually so all of the American's can have their gas guzzling SUVs. I see a lot of them with Kerry stickers, and they don't see the irony in this. Face it, as American's we want it both ways. We want safety, but we don't want to send troops into harms way to ensure it. We want stable energy sources, but we won't support other sources from oil. We are spoiled and we don't want to give anything up. Kerry promised "bread and circuses" and wouldn't tell how we were going to get it because I'm convinced he didn't have a plan to deliver. Bush at least is willing to do the unpopular thing because it is his job to do it. It's the morning after. I'm batting about .500 on the election so far. The local stuff I wasn't even close on. Apparently we will be spending money in wasteful areas. Yeah... my taxes are going up. Fuck. And we passed a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage or any non-marriage union "that approximates marriage", what ever the fuck that means. On the up side, we did repeal a law saying you can't have any other laws giving special rights to gays; not that I am for "special" rights, but I think it was divisive and didn't help the city any. Contrary to my hopes, we still don't have an official President-elect. It looks like Ohio will be the deciding factor. Part of me wishes that it was another state. Part of me is glad that my home state is the deciding factor in the election. The biggest problem I have with this whole thing is the fact that neither of the candidates was what I wanted. You have two idiots that shouldn't be running for President, yet they are the only choices we have. Frankly, who ever wins, we don't. Personally, I would rather have a form of direct election. I think the electoral college is an antiquated system that fucks with the results every time. There is a summary of alternative voting methods in this month's Wired magazine. Tue, 02 Nov 2004As I feel it is my duty, I voted today. In all the years I've been eligible to vote, I think I've only missed 2 elections. I think that is a pretty good record. This year was a tough choice. I just needed to go with my gut on it, and hopefully my candidate wins because I'll hate it if the other guy wins. My new problem is I am officially embarrassed to be from Ohio. Apparently, everyone else in the state thinks that gay marriage is wrong. They also think that we shouldn't recognize unmarried couples. This is plain wrong. As I've mentioned before, I don't think that its any one else's business if two gay people want to get married. I don't see how this affects my marriage. I'm going to go to sleep and I wonder if there will be a President-elect when I wake up... Last time, I was in Boston and it was stressful hearing it go back and forth. I'll never forget getting on the plane in Cincinnati hearing the election going one way, getting off at Logan hearing it going the other way, then switching several times before I fell asleep. I'm not up for that this time. Thu, 23 Sep 2004CNN ran this story about a party in Jacksonville, FL. Apparently, a couple of college students installed a stripper pole in their on-campus appartment. They then had a party with... should I say it... beer. Can you believe it??? They got repremanded for having the party. Their RA, a woman, turned them in. Seriously... a college party... with beer... and fully clothed girls. Like this doesn't happen every fucking weekend of the school year. Do these people actually know what goes on at college? I hope they repremand everyone at this school. And I want to know, how is this degrading to women??? They were fully clothed, the purpose of the party was advertised, and I'm sure that it was consentual. I really don't see the problem here. If you were going to be offended, you didn't need to go to the party. Sat, 28 Aug 2004It's that time of the year again, banned books week is coming. The ALA has posted the list of 100 most frequently challenged books here. I always find it interesting to see what people are banning. It always seems to be childrens and young adults books primarily. There are obviously exceptions. Some of the books are no surprise. You have the old stand-bys of Catcher in the Rye and Huck Finn. Then there are the newer books like the Harry Potter series. There are others that I kind of scratch my head at: Judy Bloom and Stephen King don't seem all that out there, at least the books that are on the list. What I find amusing about the whole thing is this makes me want to go out and read them. I've read a number of the books on the list and I have enjoyed them emensely. There are some of them that I wouldn't want young children to read, like Madonna's book Sex, but I don't think it should be banned. I'm going to sterotype here, but I'm guessing the majority of the people banning these books are very conservative, religious people. They problably encourage people to read the bible. The funny part is there is a lot more violence and disobedience in there than there is in a lot of these books, but you don't see people trying to ban it. Banning books only works for a short period of time. It is counter productive because by getting behind banning the books, you are limiting the spread of knowledge, and ultimately weakening your position in the world. By exposing people to alternative ideas, you can educate them about the pros and cons of different things. Just because you can't read about a subject doesn't mean that it no longer exists, it just means that you are ignorant about it. Our forefathers put the First Ammendment in place for a reason. They recognized that education and religious freedom were vitally important to a society. I'm glad that this is brought to the forefront every year so people realize that this still happens, even here in America. Thu, 12 Aug 2004A friend of mine posted this link to an anecdote about a search on a ferry. I think the title of this post says it all!. This guy has apprently never read the Constitution. He should be fired. I think that the poster handled this perfectly and should in fact call the ACLU in order to get this Nazi fired. Sun, 08 Aug 2004Every once in a while (okay, fairly often) people do things that are well intentioned, but very irresponsible. This story over at the BBC is a good example. Wanting to raise people's awareness of the ease of duping the media these days is one thing; creating a credibility problem for everyone involved is another. In case you don't want to read the other story, this guy faked his own beheading in the style of the Islamic militants in Iraq. He posted the video on the net and it took like 5 minutes for the thing to be linked and shown on al-Jazeera. This just feeds into the militants hands as a recruiting tool because the retraction won't make it on the air on that "news" station. In America, it could lead to the belief that there isn't anything happening and this is all a hoax. Like I said, this is just irresponsible. I'm sure that this guy is only looking for publicity for himself. If this was done by a media watchdog group, it would definitely have more credibility as a "let's show how fucked up the media is"-kind of thing. This guy just comes across as a board idiot that thought it would be funny. I hope the FBI finds something to charge him with. Sat, 19 Jun 2004
You know, there are some things that just piss me off. No really. Sir Paul McCartney is a wonderful musician. I love his music. Since I have been listening to it my entire life, literally, it would suck if I hated it. That doesn't mean that I want to hear his opinion on why we should all be vegetarians. It is summarized briefly at CNN. Of course there is a double standard between the way we treat chickens and the way that we treat cats & dogs. One of them is food, and one of them is a pet. I see absolutely no problem with this. If I was hungry enough I'd gladly eat the dog or cat. Paul is allowed his opinion on this one. He can be a vegetarian for whatever reason he wants. If it's because of ethical reasons, that's fine for him. I personally think its misguided to skip food groups for this particular reason. I wonder if he wears leather or uses any other animal by-products. We, as humans, are intended to eat meat. Our physiology is setup for it. Out brains are setup for it. We are predators, plain and simple. We augment the vegetable matter with meat. What else would the term "Hunter-Gather" mean? I can guarantee we weren't hunting carrots. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to cut back on meat intake, not the least of which is the resources necessary to provide meat to a large population. We have industrial chicken plants simply because it is the most efficient method for handling the quantity of chickens necessary to meet demand. As a society, we probably eat too much meat. This level of growth isn't sustainable. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate it from our diet all together. Let's address the ethical concerns for a minute, just to be fair. Do I think we should be torturing animals? No. Do I think there should be reasonable procedures put in place to ensure the well-being of these animals? Yes. But let's be honest, us killing, filleting, and eating these animals is contrary to their well-being. Plain and simple. Is it any more ethical to have free-range chickens where they need to compete for food, possibly suffering, and then kill them? I think we are splitting hairs, or maybe feathers, at this point. Personally, I think free-range chicken tastes better, probably because it gets more exercise. But in order for me to make that determination, I need to eat it. And I'm going to continue eating them. Millions of years of evolution tells me that's what I'm optimized for. I can't change what I am. I'm a predator and proud of it.
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