Quotulatiousness

October 7, 2012

Libertarian propaganda appears even in video games like Minecraft!

Filed under: Gaming, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

Those evil Ayn Rand types are fitting their loathsome philosophy into everything! It’s even shown up in otherwise wholesome areas like video games:

I just realized that this has been nibbling at the back of my mind for some time: Minecraft may be a very subtle (and probably unintentional) piece of propaganda that could corrupt people into believing in Objectivist or libertarian/anarchocapitalist ideas. For those not familiar with political theory in this vein, one of the popular libertarian metaphors is that of resources as sand on a beach, and that there are so many grains of sand that no one should need to share, because they can just go out and get more sand.

Nowhere is this ideology more present than in Minecraft. You are a single individual, gendered male, who is placed randomly in a wilderness. You are able to fashion tools from only that which surrounds you. At first you can only build primitive tools and live in a shitty shack, but as you work more and more, you can eventually dwell in a castle. All you have to do is work hard and know what to do.

The metaphor gets even worse when we factor in monsters and villagers. Monsters are like socialist parasites — they come to attack you, and literally to parasite themselves off of you, but many of them — especially creepers — destroy your projects in trying to get at you. Think of Howard Roarke’s courtroom speech in The Fountainhead. The player in Minecraft is that quintessential builder-architect who discovered fire and was hated by others. Meanwhile, the villages — people living together in communities — can never aspire to the kinds of feats that the player can, and they exist only as resources to be exploited. There is no moral penalty for demolishing them or for stealing.

I’m not saying Notch intends this to be the reading of Minecraft, but it’s there and it unsettles me.

October 3, 2012

One for the (male) gaming geeks

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:29

A few Twitter updates from “Muskrat John” Kovalic (of Dork Tower and Munchkin fame):


https://twitter.com/GeekyGeekyWays/status/253497061922721793

September 30, 2012

Innovative idea? Better get congressional approval before you go to market

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Radley Balko linked to this story on Twitter, nominating it for the most “incredibly dumb IP story of the day“. Hard not to agree, possibly even upping that nomination to “of the month” or possibly even “of the year”. Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick has the details:

One of the reasons why we live in such an innovative society is that we’ve (for the most part) enabled a permissionless innovation society — one in which innovators no longer have to go through gatekeepers in order to bring innovation to market. This is a hugely valuable thing, and it’s why we get concerned about laws that further extend permission culture. However, according to the former Register of Copyrights, Ralph Oman, under copyright law, any new technology should have to apply to Congress for approval and a review to make sure they don’t upset the apple cart of copyright, before they’re allowed to exist. I’m not joking. Mr. Oman, who was the Register of Copyright from 1985 to 1993 and was heavily involved in a variety of copyright issues, has filed an amicus brief in the Aereo case (pdf).

[. . .]

But he goes much further than that in his argument, even to the point of claiming that with the 1976 Copyright Act, Congress specifically intended new technologies to first apply to Congress for permission, before releasing new products on the market that might upset existing business models:

    Whenever possible, when the law is ambiguous or silent on the issue at bar, the courts should let those who want to market new technologies carry the burden of persuasion that a new exception to the broad rights enacted by Congress should be established. That is especially so if that technology poses grave dangers to the exclusive rights that Congress has given copyright owners. Commercial exploiters of new technologies should be required to convince Congress to sanction a new delivery system and/or exempt it from copyright liability. That is what Congress intended.

This is, to put it mildly, crazy talk. He is arguing that anything even remotely disruptive and innovative, must first go through the ridiculous process of convincing Congress that it should be allowed, rather than relying on what the law says and letting the courts sort out any issues. In other words, in cases of disruptive innovation, assume that new technologies are illegal until proven otherwise. That’s a recipe for killing innovation.

September 19, 2012

Hawaii Five-0, the most unrealistic cop show yet

Filed under: Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

As usual, Gregg Easterbrook’s weekly NFL column contains a fair bit of non-football stuff. This week, he spends a bit of time detailing just how unrealistic the rebooted TV show Hawaii Five-0 is. It’s a rather overwhelming list of unlikely, unrealistic, and just plain silly TV:

All action shows contain some nonsense. As the television critic James Parker has noted, an action series that consists entirely of nonsense is an art form. Parker thought 24 was an achievement in that sense. Inheriting this mantle is the reimagined Hawaii Five-0, whose third season kicks off Monday. Five-0 has emerged as television’s most entertaining delivery system for pure nonsense.

An episode begins with a prisoner on a commercial flight killing the U.S. marshal escorting him. The murder weapon? I am not making this up: Two plastic airline knives held together with a rubber band. Passengers were unaware a murder was in progress onboard, because the marshal inexplicably did not fight back or cry out, although it would take quite a while — probably hours — to kill someone using two plastic airline knives held together with a rubber band.

[. . .]

On Hawaii Five-0, a small group of cops has an omniscient supercomputer the CIA would envy. Plots regularly involve automatic-weapons fire on the streets of Honolulu. The Aliiolani Hale, a Hawaii landmark, is presented as the secret headquarters of Five-0, as if a Washington, D.C., detective show presented the Washington Monument as a secret headquarters. “I confer on you blanket immunity from prosecution, so you can go outside the law to stop crime,” the governor tells McGarrett. Gov, think about what you just said! Not even Oliver North had advance immunity.

There’s a long list of laughable TV cop tropes, including the inability of bullets to even slow down Five-0 agents, immortal super bad guys, better-than-SF crime-solving technology, plus the usual imaginary laws, ignoring both common sense and the laws of physics, and so on. But he also points out a serious flaw in most modern TV representation of police and other law enforcement activities:

On TV, cops in street clothes just say, “Police” or “NYPD,” and instantly are believed. In a CSI: Miami episode, the David Caruso character, asked to prove he is a cop, dismissively waves his badge too far away to be seen. In a Five-0 episode, a person being questioned asks McGarrett for proof of who he is. “This is all the proof you’re going to get,” McGarrett snaps, flashing his badge so briefly no one could know whether it was real, let alone read his name.

Why do TV script writers promote the idea that it is unreasonable to ask law enforcement officers to establish identity? No honest cop objects to this. Fake badges can be purchased in a costume store, and criminals pretending to be police are a long-standing problem. If a guy banged on the door of a Hawaii Five-0 producer, claiming to be a detective but refusing to show ID, that producer surely would dial 911.

Of course action shows are preposterous. But it is troubling that television crime dramas imply that law enforcement officers should never be questioned. Why does Hollywood think this is a notion the American public should be force fed?

September 16, 2012

Nebraska: same penalty for manslaughter and for operating a business without a license

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

Nebraska sure is harsh on people who operate unlicensed businesses. Or they’re really soft on those who commit manslaughter:

The libertarian public-interest law firm Institute for Justice reports on one of the most insane, inane, and profane prosecutions in all-time memory.

Karen Hough is a long-time practitioner of “equine massage,” which supposedly is beneficial in all sorts of ways to the animals in question.

[. . .]

A few weeks later, she received a letter from Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services ordering her to “cease and desist” from the “unlicensed practice of veterinary medicine.” In Nebraska, continuing to operate a business without a license after getting a cease and desist letter is a Class III felony. So Karen could face up to 20 years in prison and pay a $25,000 fine. By comparison, that’s the same penalty for manslaughter in the Cornhusker State.

Nebraska isn’t a place that shows up in the news very often: I’ve posted nearly 5,000 entries here at the blog, and this is the first time I’ve needed to tag anything “Nebraska”.

September 8, 2012

Fifty shades of legal action

Filed under: Books, Humour, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:45

This is just too amusing not to share:

August 12, 2012

Wendy McElroy on the Myth of the Greater Good

Filed under: Liberty, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Have you been punked by your philosophy professor?

In entry-level philosophy class, a professor will often present a scenario that seems to challenge the students’ perspective on morality.

The argument runs something as follows: “The entire nation of France will drop dead tomorrow unless you kill your neighbor who has only one day to live. What do you do?”

Or “You could eliminate cancer by pressing a button that also kills one healthy person. Do you do so?”

The purpose is to create a moral dilemma. The questions pit your moral rejection of murder against your moral guilt for not acting to save millions of lives.

In reality, the questions are a sham that cannot be honestly answered. They postulate a parallel world in which the rules of reality, like cause and effect, have been dramatically changed so that pushing a button cures cancer. The postulated world seems to operate more on magic than reality.

Because my moral code is based on the reality of the existing world, I don’t know what I would do if those rules no longer operated. I presume my morality would be different, so my actions would be as well.

As absurd as they are, these are considered to be the “tough” moral questions. In grappling with them, some students come to believe that being true to morality requires the violation of morality in a profound manner; after all, there is no greater violation than the deliberate murder of another human being.

But how can the life of one outweigh those of millions in your hands? At this point, morality becomes a numbers game, a matter of cost-benefit analysis, rather than of principle. This is not an expansion of morality, as the professor claims, but the manufacture of a conflict that destroys morality. In its place is left a moral gray zone, a vacuum into which utilitarianism rushes.

July 29, 2012

British army dispatches troops to … fill empty seats at the Olympics?

Filed under: Britain, Military, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:47

I don’t want to turn the blog into an exercise in mocking the major international sporting event being held in a major English city, but this report from the Guardian can’t be missed:

Soldiers have been drafted in to fill empty seats at the London 2012 Olympics after prime blocks of seating at the Aquatics Centre and gymnastics arena went unused on the first day of competition.

Troops were despatched to the North Greenwich Arena this morning by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), to take up seats left empty by accredited officials from Olympic and sporting federations, as well as some sponsors and members of the media. More troops, many of whom had their leave cancelled to provide emergency cover after the organisers failed to find enough security guards, will be issued with last-minute invites to take seats in venues when blocks of seats are found to be empty, the games organisers said this morning.

The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said on Saturday the empty seats were “very disappointing” and suggested they could be offered to members of the public. He said the matter was being looked at “very urgently”.

I guess giving the seats to members of the public would be too much of a security risk?

July 24, 2012

Quebec continues to strive to exclude Anglophones

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:54

A real head-scratcher in the Montreal Gazette: telephone staff at the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (the Quebec health insurance board) are now required to assess callers’ language skills to determine if they actually require service in English.

Where before callers were given the option of service in English or French by way of a simple touch of the telephone keypad, it has now become more complicated. Now some people who would prefer to have the information given in English could be denied the service on the basis of a subjective judgment of their ability to speak French.

The way it works now is that calls to RAMQ are answered automatically in French, and callers are told that the agency first communicates with its clientele in French. Only after half a minute of silence is it mentioned that service in English is available by pressing 9. But wait: that doesn’t automatically get you service in English.

What it gets you is another recorded message, this time in English, informing you once more that the board prefers to deal with customers in French. The agents who subsequently come on the line do not speak English right away, even though the language of service chosen is English. No, the agents proceed in French, and are then required by the new policy to “use their judgment” to determine whether the caller speaks French well enough to be able to hold a conversation about health in French rather than English. Only if the caller fails that test will service in English be forthcoming.

July 19, 2012

“The USOC Can Do Whatever It Wants Because Olympics Act Of 1978”

Filed under: Law, Sports, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:10

At Techdirt, another example of the true modern Olympic spirit:

Ah, the Olympics. The spirit of cooperation. Of athletic competition. Of the essence of global feel-good-ness, where all the Olympic committees of the world come together to put on a spectacle made of the most brilliant athletes in the world.

Oh, and they also like to stifle links to critical pieces (do we have your attention, boys?), by banning their fans from sharing their experiences via social media, and threatening ICANN for refusing to block Olympic-related terms. And, now, Steve M shares a story from the Philadelphia Daily News about how the United States Olympic Committee has won a 30 year battle they didn’t know they were fighting with a gyro shop.

    “Three decades after it burst from the starting block, the Greek eatery Olympic Gyro has received a cease-and-desist email from the USOC, the nonprofit corporation responsible for training and funding U.S. teams. The June 7 notice demanded deletion of the word “Olympic” from the food shop’s title, claiming copyright of the word under a 1978 law.”

This legislative insanity, which I assume is entitled “The USOC Can Do Whatever It Wants Because Olympics Act Of 1978”, basically grants the USOC sole usership of the word “Olympic” in the United States, amongst other travesties.

July 18, 2012

The “you didn’t build it” meme, inter-personal relations style

Filed under: Economics, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

An amusing extension of President Obama’s “you didn’t build it” claim:

You Got Laid Last Night? That’s Nice, But . . .

somebody else made that happen. Sport.

You met this chick on the Internet, which DARPA invented, with money taken from taxpayers by the government, which printed the money after giving the concession to log national forests to produce the paper, lands stolen from the Indians by the government, aided by soldiers who were paid for with taxes paid by taxpayers through the government. The logging was opposed by ineffectual lawyers hired by environmentalist organizations which received grants from the government, who nevertheless received their legal fees from environmental agencies who still paid themselves liberal salaries underwritten by taxpayers, and which donate to liberal PACs.

The beer you plied her with was paid for with money paid to you by a corporation for whom you used to work, before you conspired to get fired to collect your 99 because you were tired of taking it from The Man, which is permitted to exist by the government, which taxes both its income and yours. On the way to meet your date, you withdrew money for the date at an ATM which charged you a $2 convenience fee, though it operates on a system paid for by taxpayers to the government. The government used taxpayer money to bail out the bank in question when its mortgage investments went bust-oh! largely because the government, in concert with government-subsidized political agencies and government lawyers, threatened the banks, who paid their executives lavishly for accepting the ridiculous loan standards demanded by the government-subsidized political agencies and government lawyers who performed their agitation on the taxpayer dime. Once again, the lawyers and the non-profit executives were well remunerated, and turned around to send some of their salaries to legislators who would vote them more grants and loans, and who were further rewarded by well-compensated positions at those institutions after they were forced to resign after scandals for which other people might have been sent to prison.

If you somehow missed the start of the “you didn’t build it” meme, try here.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.

July 17, 2012

The declaration of dependence

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:51

President Obama goes the extra mile to portray every successful person as being just a pawn in the hands of vast, impersonal forces of destiny:

Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

The “Leader of the Free World”, folks! Let’s give him a hand! (Applause.)

Elizabeth Warren may have said it first in this election campaign, but nobody will top Barack Obama’s reworking of her theme.

(more…)

July 4, 2012

Canada’s new Cyclone helicopters — already 4 years late — may not arrive for another 5 years

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Greg Weston reports for CBC News:

Canada’s long-promised fleet of new Sikorsky naval helicopters, already four years late and $300 million over budget, likely won’t be delivered and ready for combat for up to another five years, informed industry sources tell CBC News.

Last month, Connecticut-based Sikorsky missed its latest contract deadline to finish delivering 28 sleek, state-of-the-art Cyclone maritime helicopters to replace Canada’s aged fleet of increasingly unreliable Sea Kings, now nearing 50 years old.

In fact, delivery of the new choppers hasn’t even started.

[. . .]

As of last month, Sikorsky had only provided a couple of prototypes that have no military mission systems, and aren’t certified to fly over water or at night.

The two helicopters apparently spend most of their time on the tarmac at Shearwater Heliport at CFB Halifax as “training aids” for ground mechanics.

The machines are so incomplete the Canadian government refuses to accept them as an official delivery of anything in the contract.

What is it about helicopters in particular that makes it so difficult and so expensive for the Canadian government to acquire? Here’s the sad chronology:

  • In 1963, the CH-124 Sea King helicopter (a variant of the US Navy S-61 model) entered service with the Royal Canadian Navy.
  • In 1983, the Trudeau government started a process to replace the Sea Kings. That process never got far enough for a replacement helicopter to be ordered.
  • In 1985, the Mulroney government started a new process to find a replacement for the Sea Kings.
  • In 1992, the Mulroney government placed an order for 50 EH-101 Cormorant helicopters (for both naval and search-and-rescue operations).
  • In 1993, the Campbell government reduced the order from 50 to 43, theoretically saving $1.4B.
  • In 1993, the new Chrétien government cancelled the “Cadillac” helicopters as being far too expensive and started a new process to identify the right helicopters to buy. The government had to pay nearly $500 million in cancellation penalties.
  • In 1998, having split the plan into separate orders for naval and SAR helicopters, the government ended up buying 15 Cormorant SAR helicopters anyway — and the per-unit prices had risen in the intervening time.
  • In 2004, the Martin government placed an order with Sikorsky for 28 CH-148 Cyclone helicopters to be delivered starting in 2008 (after very carefully arranging the specifications to exclude the Cormorant from the competition).
  • Now, in 2012, we may still have another five years to wait for the delivery of the Cyclones.

Update: In the National Post, Kelly McParland tries to draw some useful conclusions from the longest-running Canadian comedy act:

If there is a solution to this farce it’s not easily identified. Canada desperately needs the helicopters and it is far too late to return once again to the drawing board. The blame is so widespread that politicians barely bother to bestir themselves to try: if Jean Chretien’s government hadn’t maliciously cancelled Brian Mulroney’s original 1992 purchase, a full decade might have been cut from the script, but there is no guarantee other mishaps wouldn’t have occurred. Ottawa’s only option now is to hound Connecticut-based Sikorsky relentlessly and mercilessly, recover every cent possible for its repeated failure to live up to its promises, and accept nothing less than full compliance with its contracted responsibilities.

The greater lesson lies in the nether world that surrounds military procurement. It’s a world where no promise can be accepted as reliable, no cost guarantee assumed to be binding, no contract treated as worth the paper it’s written on. The federal Conservatives should think long and hard on the Sea King saga as they push ever deeper into their own purchase of new fighter jets, whether the F-35 or otherwise. Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be well-advised to abandon his usual aggressive approach and tread warily. The uncertain costs, the shifting due dates, the obdurate insistence of the military mandarins on having their way, the determined stonewalling of the politicians : it has all the identifying markings of a Sea King re-make.

Update the second: On Facebook, Damian Brooks suggests that Kelly McParland is only able to see the humour because he hasn’t been close enough to the situation: “I’d be curious to know if McParland’s ever flown in one of our Sea Kings, with tranny fluid dripping down the fuselage, practicing autorotations ad nauseum (literally). I suspect not. If he had, I have a feeling he’d find the situation much more disgraceful and much less funny.” He also posted a link to this:

June 15, 2012

The horrific environmental scourge of the plastic bag

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:40

Terence Corcoran on Toronto City Council’s most recent brainfart — banning plastic bags — and the actual environmental impact of same:

Meantime, most Canadians, through the media, would be relying on green activists and demagogic politicians who have been promoting plastic bags as a local and national environmental scourge for more than a decade. There’s not enough space here to review the mindset of politicians, including the inhabitants of Toronto city council, who last week voted 27-17 to ban plastic bags by 2013. Most of the bylaw’s backers would be getting their information from professionals, including Dr. Rick Smith, head of Environmental Defense.

[. . .]

Canadians who answer polls should know that Mr. Smith holds a PhD in green bull. He said Canadians know at a “gut level” that plastic bags are a “not terribly complicated environmental issue.” Well, here are three complications:

Litter The last city of Toronto audit of litter across the city, in 2006, found six plastic bags out of 4,341 items. That’s 0.14% by item. By weight, the percentage would be less.

Waste The 450 million plastic bags Mr. Smith mentions is a 2008 number. The city says the current number of bags is now estimated at about 215 million (the science of calculating this is something else). But even the 450 million-bag total, at about six grams per bag, works out to 2,600 tonnes. As a percentage of the city’s estimated 800,000 tonnes of waste, plastic bags would account for 0.3%. If all plastic bags were eliminated — an impossibility given their necessity as garbage-bin liners and other uses — Toronto’s waste stream would be essentially unchanged. Not a penny will be saved, and costs would likely go up under complications brought on by the ban.

Environment Numerous comprehensive studies by people who are as green or greener than Mr. Smith suggest plastic bags are better than the alternatives — whether paper or cloth. Plastic is less polluting and toxic than paper and cotton, according to a 2011 U.K. Environment Agency report. As for global warming, a cloth bag would have to be reused 327 times, and a paper bag nine times, to match the low warming impact of a high-density polyethylene bag that’s reused as a garbage-bin liner.

June 8, 2012

Toronto City Council’s latest collective brain-fart

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

Terence Corcoran is too kind in his discussion of Toronto’s new ban on plastic bags:

In star-struck liberal green Los Angeles, it took a full-court press by environmental groups, major propaganda efforts, endorsement by the roll-over editorialists at the Los Angeles Times, and deployment of Hollywood stars, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Peter Fonda, to work up the political steam needed to prompt L.A.’s city council to vote last month to ban plastic bags.

In starless Toronto, all it took was a bunch of dumb city councillors who suddenly decided — seemingly out of the blue — to stage a surprise vote.

“Ban the bags,” somebody said. “Good idea. Let’s vote!” Passed: 27 to 17.

No study, no research, no public review, no thought, no concept and no brains. What’s the environmental and fiscal impact of the ban? Nobody knows, although many people say the cost to both the city and the environment will be greater than the cost of using plastic bags.

As I think Adrian MacNair mentioned, one of the most likely outcomes is that people will end up buying less. It’s those little impulse buys that will be curtailed the most, as many folks — especially tourists — won’t have realized they need to bring their own carry bags.

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