Quotulatiousness

June 23, 2010

Bunch of “radical extremists”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

Protest groups at the G20? No, the Heritage Minister’s sweeping characterization of the people and organizations opposed to the new copyright bill:

So when Moore warns about radical extremists opposing C-32, who is he speaking of? Who has criticized parts of the bill or called for reforms? A short list of those critical of the digital lock provisions in C-32 would include:

* Liberal MPs
* NDP MPs
* Bloc MPs
* Green Party
* Canadian Consumer Initiative
* Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
* Canadian Association of University Teachers
* Canadian Federation of Students
* Canadian Library Association
* Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright
* Retail Council of Canada
* Canadian Bookseller Association
* Documentary Organization of Canada

While there are bound to be a few individual “radical extremists” in any organization, these particular groups aren’t known for their bomb-throwing agitator ways.

June 22, 2010

UK photographers might want to pick up this magazine

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

BoingBoing advises that the July issue of Amateur Photographer is doing something to assist innocent photographers who are still encountering police and rent-a-cop harassment in public spaces:

The UK Amateur Photographer magazine is giving away free lenscloths silk-screened with the Photographers’ Bill of Rights with its July issue. UK anti-terror legislation gave the police sweeping powers to harass photographers for shooting in public places, and to compound matters, tabloid-driven hysteria over paedophilia has seen many photographers accused to paedophilia for taking pictures of (for example) public busses and empty playgrounds.

Between the anti-terror laws, the anti-pedophilia panic in the newspapers, and the general busy-bodiness of security guards, photographers in the UK are being treated like criminals. More on the anti-harassment campaign here.

Sparkly legal shenanigans

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

As I indicated in a Twitter update yesterday, the nice folks at ThinkGeek received their best-ever cease and desist letter:

Recently we got the best-ever cease and desist letter. We’re no stranger to the genre, so what could possibly make this one stand out from the rest?

First, it’s 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they’re not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds.

But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it’s for a fake product we launched for April Fool’s day.

QotD: He bestrides the G8 like a Colossus

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, Italy, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

. . . things are pretty bad in the mother country when a self-described “Whig” calls Stephen Harper “a magnificent fiscal conservative.” It’s like calling Gordon Brown “a brilliant and charismatic leader,” or Jean Chretien “a visionary and articulate statesman.” In politics, at least practical politics, all truth is relative.

Compared to most G8 leaders Stephen Harper does look like a genius. This is, as you’ve guessed, damning by the faintest of praise. Barack Obama is an avowed socialist, who described his one real job in the private sector as working “behind enemy lines.” Japan has been governed by a series of interchangeable non-entities for the better part of the last decade. In most of Europe, and certainly the English speaking world, Silvio Berlusconi would be awaiting sentencing. Angela Merkel rivals Helmut Schmidt in the visionary department. Sarko is a living embodiment of every mistake the French have made since Diem Bien Phu: A domestic policy summed up by the quintessentially French term “dirigiste,” and a foreign policy consisting of German guilty tripping and sophomore anti-Americanism. If Stephen Harper looks taller than others, it is because he is standing on the shoulders of midgets.

Publius, “Well, at least someone likes him…”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-06-21

June 21, 2010

China’s latest currency move

Filed under: China, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:31

The always entertaining Monty has a few thoughts that are worth considering:

BNP Paribas forecasts parity (and below!) for the poor, unloved Euro. The Euro is like the easy girl in every town: popular enough when she was young and cute, but now that she’s looking like nine miles of bad road, no one wants to be seen with her or has a kind word to say about her.

After insisting for months that they weren’t keeping the Yuan artificially devalued via the dollar-peg, the Chinese lift the peg, shout Squirrel!, and run away.

Meanwhile, a floating Yuan may not work out quite the way the US thinks it will. This happens to be my view — I think the export-driven Chinese economy is a lot weaker than they’re letting on (or may even realize themselves), and they have severe internal economic problems that the authoritarian government has been papering over for years. There will be a huge banking crisis in China at some point when the huge numbers of bad loans come to light — they can’t hide them forever. Further, the recent labor troubles in China may be only the leading edge of a big wave.

Of course, if you’ve been following Quotulatiousness for any time, you’ll know that I’m fully in agreement with Monty about the Chinese economy. In the long term, I’m quite hopeful about China and their ongoing liberalization and modernization, but in the short- to medium-term I think there are many problems that need to be resolved and that will cause a great deal of upheaval and disturbance.

Remember that even with the best good will in the world, China’s economy is still moving painfully from state-run to private enterprise, and the most common stop on that road is crony capitalism (that’s like capitalism without the rule of law but with private armies). The good news is that a greater proportion of the economy is adjusting to free(r) markets, but there’s still lots of zombie corporate entities set up and run by various branches of the government . . . and the army.

In the latest move, the exchange rate change may not be the panacea that too many American politicians are hoping for:

China’s decision to move away from its currency peg might mean the yuan weakens against the dollar instead of strengthens as Washington wants, Nouriel Roubini, one of Wall Street’s most closely followed economists, said Saturday.

China said Saturday it would gradually make the yuan more flexible after pegging it to the dollar for nearly two years, a move that the U.S. government and others around the world have long been calling for.

It won’t fix the underlying trade issues, even if the yuan moves in the “desired” direction, as the problem is much more rooted in American policy than in Chinese currency rates. As long as the American government insists on increasing the debt load, piling on additional regulatory regimes, and directly interfering in corporate decisions, the longer the economy will be unsettled. Stability is a key condition for economic recovery, yet the American government demonstrates a knee-jerk reaction against stability for every opportunity that arises.

Oh, and if you think the US banking system has bad loan issues, wait for the other shoe to drop:

China’s banking regulator warned Tuesday that the nation’s banking system faces risks from bad loans, particularly among those made to local governments and to the real-estate sector.

In its 2009 annual report, the China Banking Regulatory Commission urged banks to use cause and scientific risk analysis in their lending, and warned of dangers to the sector, both from lending in the past year and from development in the future.

Junk science round-up

Filed under: Media, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:43

Those sceptical curmudgeons at the Financial Post just finished their “Junk Science Week”:

FP Comment’s 12th annual Junk Science Week comes to a triumphant close with today’s 2nd annual Rubber Duck Awards to recognize the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who each year advance the principles of junk science. Junk Science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, when risk is exaggerated or discounted, when science is adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda. The Rubber Duckies are named in honour of Rick Smith, president of Environmental Defence Canada and co-author of a remarkable piece of junk science literature, the 2009 Slow Death by Rubber Duck. In the book, Mr. Smith perpetrated a science scam over the Bisphenol A and established himself as Canada’s leading scaremonger and distorter of science. Let this year’s awards begin!

QotD: Children and parenting styles

Filed under: Economics, Quotations, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:38

If you enjoy reading with your children, wonderful. But if you skip the nightly book, you’re not stunting their intelligence, ruining their chances for college or dooming them to a dead-end job. The same goes for the other dilemmas that weigh on parents’ consciences. Watching television, playing sports, eating vegetables, living in the right neighborhood: Your choices have little effect on your kids’ development, so it’s OK to relax. In fact, relaxing is better for the whole family. Riding your kids “for their own good” rarely pays off, and it may hurt how your children feel about you.

Once parents stop overcharging themselves for every child, the next logical step is straight out of Econ 101: Buy more. When you raise your children the easy way, another child is more likely to pass the cost-benefit test. This doesn’t mean you should copy the Duggars with their 19 children; when prices fall, Econ 101 says “Buy more,” not “Buy dozens.” But whatever your priorities, the science of nature and nurture tilts the scales in favor of fertility.

As you weigh your options, don’t forget that the costs of kids are front-loaded, and the benefits are back-loaded. Babies are a lot of work even if you’re easy on yourself. But the older kids get, the more independent they become; eventually, you’ll want them to find time for you. So when weighing whether to have another child, you shouldn’t base your decision on how you feel after a few days — or months — of sleepless nights with a new baby. Focus on the big picture, consider the ideal number of children to have when you’re 30, 40, 60 and 80, and strike a happy medium. Remember: The more kids you have, the more grandkids you can expect. As an old saying goes, “If I had known grandchildren were this much fun I would have had them first.”

Bryan Caplan, “The Breeders’ Cup: Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think”, The Wall Street Journal, 2010-06-19

June 19, 2010

Penn still waiting for that call from Hitler’s booking agent

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:57

An amusing interview in Vanity Fair points out that Penn Jillette would even go on Hitler’s talk show:

Is that why you don’t have a problem going on Glenn Beck’s show, because he doesn’t pretend to be objective?

Well, it’s complicated. Tommy Smothers, who’s one of my heroes, got really angry at me about it. We actually had this argument in public, on another show that’s going to be on Showtime this summer called The Green Room With Paul Provenza. Tommy attacked me for being on Glenn Beck, and he ended up saying, and I don’t think this part made it on the air, “If Hitler had a talk show, you’d probably do that too.”

And your retort?

I said yes, I would, and I would tell the truth.

Wow. O.K. then.

I’m not kidding.

Just don’t mention the part about telling the truth to Hitler’s talent bookers, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get a guest slot.

Oh, I won’t say a word. But you know what I mean, right? It does have an effect. I go on Glenn Beck as an atheist and talk about atheism. And I have people come up to me and say, “You know, until I saw you on Glenn Beck, speaking so passionately about atheism, I’d never considered that as a moral decision.” That’s incredibly powerful. These are people watching a hardcore Christian show and being exposed to an atheist point of view.

Your intentions seem genuine, but I can’t help myself, Penn. Every time I hear you’ve been on Glenn Beck, it makes me a little sick.

It makes me sick too! When people come up to me and say they love the show, I feel sick. Because I do disagree with a lot of what he says. But I also feel a little sick whenever people say they saw me on Keith Olbermann.

And yet you continue to do it. You know, there’s an easy way to stop making yourself sick.

But I think it’s important. I may be the only person who goes on Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and says the exact same shit. I am so much more socially liberal than Olbermann will ever be. You can’t believe how pro gay and pro freedom of speech I am. I’m way out beyond anyone on the Left. And as for fiscal conservatism and small government, I’m so much further to the right than Glenn Beck. Nobody is further left and further right than me. As I’m fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it’s straight ahead.

And I love Penn’s suggestion for the Obama re-election campaign in 2012 at the end of the article.

June 18, 2010

Royal charter granted

Filed under: Britain, History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:01

The most recent recipients of a royal charter are the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists:

The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists received its Royal Charter yesterday — its mark of approval from the Queen.

The Livery Companies were originally proto-trade unions or professional standards bodies, depending which you look at it, based in the City of London. The first, the Worshipful Company of Mercers, got its Royal Charter in 1394 but was in existence for an unknown time before that. Although some retain a regulatory role — assay marks to show the purity of gold and silver are still overseen by the Company of Goldsmiths — most are now social and charitable bodies.

Yesterday’s ceremony was part of Evensong at London’s most beautiful building, St Paul’s Cathedral. The actual Royal Charter — a large vellum certificate — was blessed before freemen and livery men walked to Mansion House escorted by a ceremonial guard of Pikemen and Musketeers for a banquet with the Lord Mayor.

I was hoping that the recipients were the chaps with the morion helmets and the back-and-breastplates:

The final word on the Air India atrocity?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, India, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:23

This National Post editorial summarizes the report on the bombing of Air India flight 182 twenty-five years ago:

Yesterday, former Supreme Court justice John Major delivered his report into the attack, and the bungled investigation that followed. It is a damning indictment of the performance of the police and the government which does not mince words in portraying officials as slow, disorganzied and curiously detached from the enormity of the attack, which killed all 329 passengers, most of them Canadians. The government was simply not prepared to deal with terrorism, he said, and the two major investigating forces — the RCMP and CSIS — became bogged down in turf wars, bureaucratic battles and alarming displays of investigative ineptitude.

It has long been argued that Canadians’ seeming indifference to the bombing derived from the fact most of the dead were of Indian background, a suspicion Mr. Major addressed directly. “I stress this is a Canadian atrocity,” he said. “For too long the greatest loss of Canadian lives at the hands of terrorists has somehow been relegated outside the Canadian consciousness.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with relatives of some of the victims, calling the report a “damning indictment” and pledging to respond to Mr. Major’s call for compensation and an apology to the victims’ families.

Though it has been apparent for years that the police response to the tragedy was riddled with errors, the extent of the blundering as detailed in Mr. Major’s report is no less startling. While victims’ families clamoured for information and some form of justice against the killers, CSIS and the RCMP lost themselves in bureaucratic battles, treating one another more as rivals than as co-operative forces engaged in the same search for answers. Between them, he noted, there was ample intelligence to signal that Flight 182 was at high risk of being bombed by Sikh terrorists. Yet taken together, their performance at gathering, analysing and communicating information was “wholly deficient.

As I mentioned the other day, the RCMP has largely squandered their once sterling reputation, and Mr. Major’s report makes it clear that the rot has been long-established and festering. It’s up to the federal government to make some serious changes to save that organization — or to disband it and start over fresh. For historical reasons, I hope reform is possible, but I’m not betting on it.

The point that most Canadians didn’t see this atrocity clearly because the vast majority of the victims were of Indian origin is well made: Canadians, for all of our vaunted “multicultural values”, didn’t see all those innocent people as part of our nation. Racism isn’t pretty, especially for a country that pretends to be beyond such historical problems.

EFF introduces “Encrypt the Web” Firefox plugin

Filed under: Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

A very interesting new project from Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta of a new Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere.

This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google’s encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

A “new chapter in U.S. history”

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Ron Hart congratulates President Obama for delivering on his promised change:

We are so in debt to China that President Obama had to visit their president in his first year in office. It was an important meeting between the most powerful communist leader in the world and the president of China.

Obama is so popular in China that a nightclub named after him opened in Beijing. In keeping with the Obama theme, the club opened with $10 trillion in debt. It will, hopefully, close in just four years with $15 trillion in debt and no apologies to its “hope-based” investors.

[. . .]

To sum up our situation just short of two years into this Obamanation of an administration: Our debt is much higher, an unwanted ObamaCare bill that will cost us at least $2 trillion more than predicted was rammed through Congress, more troops are in Afghanistan, unemployment is much higher even after a union handout “stimulus” bill, and the biggest tax increase in American history is coming in 2011. So yes, Mr. President, technically I guess you can say you have brought about “change.”

As for your assertion, Mr. Obama, that you are going to usher in a “new chapter in U.S. history,” it looks like you will make good on that too. Unfortunately, it will be Chapter 11.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.

Another “daring” ad

Filed under: Britain, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

If it was really “daring”, it wouldn’t be Christianity being mocked for commercial purposes:

A controversy-courting Italian ice-cream maker is in hot water for running an ad featuring a heavily pregnant nun with the strapline “immaculately conceived”, after a stream of complaints to the advertising watchdog that it is offensive to Christians because it mocks the birth of Jesus.

The ad, which is featured in magazines The Lady and Grazia, features a pregnant nun enjoying a pot of Antonio Fedirici ice-cream.

The Advertising Standards Authority has launched an investigation to see if the campaign breaks the advertising code on the grounds of taste and decency. The ASA has received about 40 complaints from members of the public that it is offensive to Christians, especially Catholics, “because it mocks the virgin birth of Jesus”.

It’s not only safe to poke fun at the religious beliefs of Christians, it’s rather expected in certain quarters. Just as a thought experiment, what are the chances that someone would do something similar mocking any other religion?

Update: Of course, there’s mockery and then there’s mockery.

When it’s rational to be irrational

Filed under: Books, Media, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:08

Cory Doctorow really likes Dan Ariely’s The Upside of Irrationality:

. . . there are sections in which the science of irrationality is readily converted into practical techniques for living better, and these really shine. My favorite is the section on adaptation, that is, the way in which both terrible pain and incredible delights fade down to a kind of baseline normal over time. Ariely points out that adaptation can be slowed or even prevented through intermittent exposure to the underlying stimulus — that is, if you take a break, the emotional sensation comes back with nearly full force.

Here’s where our intuitive response is really wrong: we have a tendency to indulge our pleasures without respite, and to take frequent breaks from those things that make us miserable. This is exactly backwards. If you want to maximize your pleasure — a great dessert, the delight of furnishing your first real apartment after graduation, a wonderful new relationship — you should trickle it into your life, with frequent breaks for your adaptive response to diminish. If you want to minimize your pain — an unpleasant chore, an awful trip — you should continue straight through without a break, because every time you stop, your adaptive response resets and you experience the discomfort anew.

June 17, 2010

New release of WordPress

Filed under: Administrivia — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 15:22

I’ve been happily using WordPress since I moved over from the original site (under MovableType), and the latest version of WordPress has just been released. However, any software update can have unforeseen results, so it’s possible the site will be affected by some minor (or even major) glitch. Please excuse the mess as I try the upgrade and see what other changes I may need to make . . .

https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.21

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