H/T to Joey “Accordion Guy” deVilla for the link.
If North American cable-and-internet providers were honest, they’d produce an ad that went like this. Note that there’s some swearing involved, as is often the case with cable-and-internet providers.
March 29, 2013
If cable company ads were honest, we’d see something very similar to this
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March 26, 2013
Irish municipal workers fear for their jobs after fixing a pothole … without getting Health & Safety approval first
There are some stories which are just too silly for words:
THREE county council workers have been suspended from duty for attempting to fill in a pothole outside Carrigaline.
There has been outrage at the suspensions, which were imposed by the local authority after a health and safety inspector came across the workers carrying out unscheduled repairs to a road.
The outdoor crew were suspended on full pay pending an inquiry, and are now fearing for their jobs.
Council workers must pre-plan road works, fill in reports detailing the repairs to be carried out, and use the appropriate signage to alert the public.It’s understood workers were on their way back to a council depot in Carrigaline when they spotted a large pothole on the road surface.
They decided to stop their vehicle to repair the pothole, even though it was not on their official list of jobs. They had earlier been carrying out scheduled repairs on the Carrigaline to Crosshaven road.
A health and safety inspector came across the workers carrying out the unofficial repairs and reported them to the local authority for a breach of health and safety guidelines.
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Take diet change recommendations with a pinch of salt
Yes, yes, I know salt is one of the most dangerous substances known to man. Well, this week, anyway. Next week they may decide to recommend doubling your daily intake instead of reducing it. It’s an example of the nanny state’s long history of providing inconsistent — and sometimes even dangerous — dietary advice:
The government told people to switch from saturated animal fats to unsaturated vegetable fats. But that advice may have killed a lot of people. As David Oliver notes, a recent study “in the British Medical Journal” shows that ”those who heeded the advice” from public-health officials “to switch from saturated fats to polyunsaturated vegetable oils dramatically reduced their odds of living to see 2013,” incurring up to a ”60% increase in risk of death by switching from animal fats to vegetable oils.” This possibly deadly medical advice has a long history:
Fifty years ago the medical community did an about-face … and instead went all in on polyunsaturated fats. It reasoned that since (a) cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease and (b) polyunsaturated fats reduce serum cholesterol levels, it inescapably followed that (c) changing people’s diet from saturated fats to polyunsaturated fats would save a lot of lives. In 1984 Uncle Sam got involved – Time magazine reported on it in “Hold the Eggs and Butter” – and he made a big push for citizens to swap out animal fat in their diet for the vegetable variety and a great experiment on the American people was begun.
As Oliver, an expert on mass torts, points out, it is hard to ”think of any mass tort, or combination of mass torts, that has produced as much harm as the advice to change to a plant oil-based diet” may have done.
Some federal food-safety regulations have also harmed public health, such as the “poke and sniff” inspection method “that likely resulted in USDA inspectors transmitting filth from diseased meat to fresh meat on a daily basis.” The Obama administration has foolishly discouraged potato consumption, even though potatoes are highly nutritious, even as it has subsidized certain sugary and fatty foods, and promoted bad advice about salt.
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March 23, 2013
Human Achievement Hour 2013
Oh, right. It’s once again time for the Gaia-worshippers to do an hour’s penance for the crime of being alive in an industrialized society. The Competitive Enterprise Institute proposes a different way of using that hour:
On Saturday, March 23 at 8:30pm (local time), some people, businesses and governments around the world will choose to sit in the dark for one hour as a symbolic gesture to take action against climate change. The organizers of Earth Hour say that they [no] longer expect energy use to actually drop during the hour, but instead see it as a way for people to show their commitment to reducing energy use and taking action beyond the hour.
It’s absolutely every person’s right to decide if they want to conserve energy for whatever reason; they are free to sit in the dark as long as they want. However, it should not be their right to impose their beliefs or opinions on others. And that is what is at the heart of the environmentalist movement. While many participants in Earth Hour sincerely want a cleaner environment — a desire most of us share — the environmentalist movement whether implicitly or explicitly seeks to clamp down on human progress by reducing energy consumption whether through regulation and taxation. They want to make fossil fuels, which they see as dirty, more expensive to encourage the use of renewable “greener” energies.
Despite any good intentions, the ultimate result of environmentalist policies is not a healthier, cleaner environment. Instead we will see a population that is sicker and poorer. The only way we achieve technology that is “greener” is by building on older “dirtier” technology. As we make it harder and more expensive for those in the business of creating new technologies, all we do is slow progress and make it that much longer to reach more environmentally friendly solutions.
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March 19, 2013
New British press control rules to apply to the internet … the whole internet
In Forbes Tim Worstall explains why the British government’s new Ministry of Truth press censorship body will have effective reach across the entire internet:
This isn’t what they think they’ve done, this is true. And it’s also not what they intended to do (or at least I hope they didn’t mean to do this) but it is still what they’ve done. They’ve passed a law which effectively censors the entire world’s media. And they’ve done this simply because they are ignorant of the very laws they’re trying to change. Which is, I think you’ll agree, a little disturbing, that politicians would casually negate press freedom just because they don’t know what they’re doing.
[. . .]
It’s a standard Common Law assumption that publication does not take place where the printing presses (or servers etc) are. Publication takes place where something is made available to be read or seen. We’ve even had two recent cases that show this. Rachel Ehrenfeld published a book in the US and yet was still sued for libel in London. For a few copies of that book had made it over to England and thus it was deemed that publication had taken place where English libel law prevailed. Just in case you think that this is some English peculiarity there was a very similar case with Dow Jones in Australia. Something was published in New York. But it was read in Australia (remarkably, by the man the piece was about, he downloaded it) and this was sufficient for the Australian courts to agree that therefore the potential libel had occurred in Oz and should be tried under Oz law.
This is even clearer with reference to child pornography laws. “Production” of child pornography includes the act of downloading such. For before it was downloaded there was one copy, on the server. Once downloaded, there are two, one on the server, the other in the browser. Thus the downloading is in itself the production of that pornography. This very point is drawn from the standard Common Law principles about publication.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter where your servers are. For that’s not what defines publication. It also doesn’t matter who the material is aimed at: nor even what language it is in. Publication happens if someone in the UK downloads whatever it is. That, in itself, is the act of publication.
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March 18, 2013
Britain’s left: they have to destroy press freedom to save it
In the Guardian, Nick Cohen explains why the rush to regulate the press is such a bad move for the left:
We are in the middle of a liberal berserker, one of those demented moments when “progressives” run riot and smash the liberties they are meant to defend. Inspired by Lord Justice Leveson, they are prepared in Parliament tomorrow to sacrifice freedom of speech, freedom of the press and fair trials. They are prepared to allow every oppressive dictatorship on the planet to say: “We’re only following the British example” when outsiders and their own wretched citizens protest.
Try warning them that one day they and this country will regret their hooliganism and they reply in the sing-song voice of a child in a playground: “Well, that’s what Murdoch and Dacre want you to say.” It’s no good pointing out that Murdoch and Dacre are tired old men from a dying newspaper industry and they will not be keeping us company for much longer. Nor can you quote Orwell’s words to the effect that just because a rightwing newspaper says something does not mean it is wrong. Nothing works.
The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties are custodians of the best of Britain’s radical traditions: the traditions not only of Orwell, but of John Milton, John Stuart Mill and the men and women who struggled against the Stamp Acts and the blasphemy and seditious libel laws. Their successors are not worthy to follow in their footsteps. For the sake of a brief partisan victory, for the chance to shout: “Yah boo sucks” at the hated tabloids, they are inviting political regulation of the press at a time when the web revolution allows not only newspapers but also large blogs and the websites of campaign groups to be “significant news publishers”, to use the ominously vague phrase Labour and the Liberal Democrats are offering to the Commons tomorrow.
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March 17, 2013
Proposed British press regulation will apply to bloggers as well
Guido Fawkes offers a warning to those bloggers cheerleading for the British government to impose controls on the tabloid press:
One thing that surprises Guido is that his comrades in the liberal, progressive blogosphere have seemingly not noticed that the proposed Royal Charter aims to control and regulate them as well as the tabloids.
Schedule 4, Point 1 of both the government and the opposition’s versions of the Royal Charter will bring blogs under the regulator’s control:
“relevant publisher” means a person (other than a broadcaster) who publishes in the United Kingdom: a. a newspaper or magazine containing news-related material, or b. a website containing news-related material (whether or not related to a newspaper or magazine)”
[. . .]
To all those bloggers who support this press control Charter because they hate Murdoch and Dacre, Guido offers this cautionary counsel, remember that the new regulator will cover you as well. You will have all the expense and bureaucracy of compliance as Murdoch and Dacre face, without the means. Unless like Guido and the Spectator you plan to become media outlaws too…
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March 14, 2013
Steve Chapman on modern-day Puritans
They haven’t disappeared, they’ve just changed topics:
The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can’t be created and can’t be destroyed — it can only be changed from one form into another. The same holds true of the puritanical impulse.
Puritanism in the historical sense is as dead as the Salem witches. The religious group that settled in New England outlawed theater, rejected any form of sex except marital intercourse, banned celebration of Christmas and spent hours in church listening to horrifying depictions of Hell.
[. . .]
But the underlying motive is to enforce one model of acceptable behavior on everyone. Obesity is commonly regarded as a grave personal failing, an abdication of healthy restraint and abstinence. Some of the virtuous feel entitled to demand virtue of all.
Sound like anyone who landed at Plymouth Rock? Truth is, sexual puritans can make equally plausible arguments on the practical need to regulate the exercise of bedroom behavior, which has major implications for both health and government budgets.
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February 28, 2013
Cybersecurity … can it be anything more than fear + handwaving = “we must have a law!”
At Techdirt, Mike Masnick fisks “the worst article you might ever read about ‘Cybersecurity'”:
There has been a lot of discussion lately about “cybersecurity” “cyberwar” “cyberattacks” and all sorts of related subjects which really really (really!) could do without the outdated and undeniably lame “cyber-” prefix. This is, in large part, due to the return of CISPA along with the White House’s cybersecurity executive order. Of course, the unfortunate part is that we’re still dealing in a massive amount of hype about the “threats” these initiatives are trying to face. They’re always couched in vague and scary terms, like something out of a movie. There are rarely any specifics, and the few times there are, there is no indication how things like CISPA would actually help. The formula is straightforward: fear + handwaving = “we must have a law!”
However, I think we may now have come across what I believe may top the list of the worst articles ever written about cybersecurity. If it’s not at the top, it’s close. It is by lawyer Michael Volkov, and kicks off with a title that shows us that Volkov is fully on board with new laws and ramping up the FUD: The Storm Has Arrived: Cybersecurity, Risks And Response. As with many of these types of articles, I went searching for the evidence of these risks, but came away, instead, scratching my head, wondering if Volkov actually understands this subject at all, with his confused thinking culminating in an amazing paragraph so full of wrong that almost makes me wonder if the whole thing is a parody.
[. . .]
There’s been plenty of talk about these Chinese hacks, which definitely do appear to be happening. But, what economic activity has been undermined? So far, the hacks may have been a nuisance, but it’s unclear that they’ve done any real damage. It is also unclear how CISPA helps stop such hacks, other than making Congress feel like it’s “done something.”
Are there issues with online security that need to be taken seriously? Yes, absolutely. Do we need legislation to deal with those problems? That’s debatable, and we’re still waiting for some evidence not just of scary sounding threats, but that this kind of legislation will actually help. Unfortunately, this article keeps us waiting. But, it did make us laugh. Unintentionally (we think).
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February 27, 2013
QotD: “There ought to be a law”
Before 25-30 years ago, most people had a sense of what the law was, without having to go to law school, because they understood, intuitively, that some things were bad. Mala in se, the law calls it — “bad in itself.”
But the criminal codes have proliferated mala prohibata offenses — “bad just because the law has prohibited it” — like evil freedom-eating Tribbles for 30 years.
Do you know what you are currently permitted to do? Do you know what you will face a criminal penalty for doing?
You don’t. None of us are aware of the myriad laws we’re breaking every day, simply by doing things that seem obviously legal but some vicious Marxist bureaucrat somewhere decided to put you in jail for.
And this state of affairs works out perfectly for the Marxists.
30 years ago, you’d just assume that anything that wasn’t obviously contrary to morality was legal. That is, you’d have a built-in default setting of assuming liberty. And that assumption of liberty would then propel you to take actions.
But now, you have to assume that many things that aren’t contrary to morality are illegal anyway. And so you now have — quel coincidence! — a built-in default setting of assuming prohibition. And that assumption that many of the things you’d like to do are illegal and criminal thereby reduces your desire to take any action at all.
You become docile, unmotivated, compliant, and risk-averse.
And this state of affairs works out perfectly for those who would control you. Only half the things you’d like to do are actually criminal, but you assume the rest might be too, thus putting it in your head you need State Permission to take virtually any action besides going to work and, of course, paying the state its dues.
Ace, “Enemy of the State”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2013-02-26
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February 23, 2013
QotD: “Cultural Sovereignty” (aka piracy)
Canada originally became one of the most wire-cabled countries in the world because of the insatiable and inviolable addiction of English-speaking Canadians to American programming. To salvage a television industry in Canada, the regulators approved the acquisition of American programming by Canadian channels, which would simulcast them with the networks by or for which they were produced. The Canadian channels were authorized to sell and insert their own advertising on those American programs. This practice, outright piracy in fact, was justified by Canadian media executives as an exercise in “cultural sovereignty” when they appeared before U.S. congressional committees.
Conrad Black, “Opening up the must-carry spectrum”, National Post, 2013-02-23
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The DHS paperwork error that resulted in a boat being seized
There are few things more frustrating to deal with than officious bureaucrats with a rule book (and a gun). Here’s an example of how “the rules” matter more than common sense or rationality:
DHS takes documents supplied by the builder and creates a government form that includes basic information about the boat, including the price.
The primary form, prepared by the government, had an error. The price was copied from the invoice, but DHS changed the currency from Canadian to U.S. dollars.
It has language at the bottom with serious sounding statements that the information is true and correct, and a signature block.
I pointed out the error and suggested that we simply change the currency from US $ to CAD $ so that is was correct. Or instead, amend the amount so that it was correct in U.S. dollars.
I thought this was important because I was signing it and swearing that the information, and specifically the price, was correct.
The DHS agent didn’t care about the error and told me to sign the form anyway. “It’s just paperwork, it doesn’t matter,” she said. I declined.
She called another agent and said simply “He won’t sign the form.” I asked to speak to that agent to give them a more complete picture of the situation. She wouldn’t allow that.
Then she seized the boat. As in, demanded that we get off the boat, demanded the keys and took physical control of it.
What struck me the most about the situation is how excited she got about seizing the boat. Like she was just itching for something like this to happen. This was a very happy day for her.
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February 18, 2013
Opening the food testing can of worms: “We don’t test for hedgehog either”
Tim Worstall on some of the issues with demands that all British beef for human consumption be tested for horsemeat:
Now let’s turn to that meat problem. We’re going to test something to make sure that it is indeed what it says. Most of the time, usually, we’d go looking for beef DNA and on finding it say, yup, that’s beef.
But now we’re talking about trace amounts of other species. Some of this horse contamination is someone deliberately substituting, yes. But a lot of it, those trace amounts, is someone not cleaning the pipes between species being processed. Or the knives even. Which leads us to something of a problem.
How many species do we test for? Some minced beef… or pink slime perhaps. Do we test for beef and horse? For beef, horse, mutton, pork, chicken, duck, goose? What about rat and mouse? For I’ll guarantee you that however much people try there will often be the odd molecule of either one of those in there. Sparrow? That’s more of a problem with grain processing but still.
For example, one lovely story about vegetarianism. Those (umm, OK, some) who have moved from the sub-continent to the UK. They carry on eating the (possibly Hindu caste based) vegetarian diet they are used to. And they start falling prey to all sorts of dietary deficiencies. Anaemia, there have even been reports of kwashikor (a protein deficiency). The grains and the pulses of the sub-continent have rather more insect and other residue in them than our more modern processing and storage systems provide.
People don’t test for hedgehog DNA in meat supplies, no. But how many species should they test for?
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February 14, 2013
February 12, 2013
Rules for the masses, but not for the bureaucratic elite
The European Union’s rules on gender equality appear to apply to everything in the EU except the EU’s own bureaucracy:
Part of the aggrandised myth EU institutions like to propagate about themselves is that they are pioneers in promoting tolerance, gender equality, and diversity in the workplace. Read the promotional literature and you will find effusive descriptions of liberal workplace revolutions and the achievements of Soviet-style five-year plans. Yet, like the Soviet Union, there is an embarrassing mismatch between the trumpeted idealism and the reality.
Since its creation in 1967, DG Employment (Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission) has nominally been responsible for fair employment conditions in the European Union. Rising levels of workplace equality in member states (for which DG Employment take an undue amount of credit) are woefully incongruous with the situation of EU civil servants. Women occupy 19 per cent of senior management positions; compare this with the often decried 35.9 per cent of women in the top levels of the UK civil service.
Yet it is figures like the UK civil service’s that prompt EU proposals on affirmative action. One set of proposals has recently been discussed in the European parliament, for example, which if passed will introduce gratuitous and complicated legislation across the continent. That bureaucracy breeds bureaucracy is unsurprising, but it is hard to take seriously calls for equality from an institution endemically opposed to the concept.
The only European agency where women in management positions outnumber men is in the Institute for Gender Equality (the administration is 95 per cent female). Incontrovertibly, out of all the agencies, this is the one with the strongest prerogative for tackling equality in its workforce. But the message is clear: shout about equality to the world and create a dummy institute to anyone holding a mirror up to the EU bureaucracy itself. So far, the commission is on its fifth ‘action programme’ to tackle inequality within its institutions, taking the same form as every one that has come before it; vague guidelines forgotten until lobby group pressure becomes too annoying.
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