But of course, my intent (as usual) is not to infringe on copyright, but to show how amazing Archer is and actually get more people to watch, so I’m still going to try to share this clip with the world. (Hey, I would embed their video and drive traffic to FX directly to promote the show, but their video clip collection is a bit sparse.)

Anyway, so here is it: from “The Limited” (season 3, episode 3), a great clip with Archer & Babou (the ocelot) that perfectly captures a key part of how awesome the show is. I’m obligated to give you a SPOILER ALERT warning since the clip is from the end of the episode, but watching it really won’t ruin anything for you since almost every Archer episode ends with some crazy chaos. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. You have no YouTube videos
2. New Moon Volturi Fight
3. Lame cop-outs

Many believe World War II not only helped, but was one of the biggest factors in the US pulling itself out of the Great Depression– some do not– and I’m sure it’s been joked many times over that another war– in addition to the one we just finished fighting like, 5 minutes ago (did you know military operations had websites?), and the one we’re still fighting in Afghanistan– would help us out of this Great Recession. Well, the thought of someone in government or similar sphere of power seriously considering that idea is a morbid thought, but perhaps this is an even more twisted one: although domestic growth created to support wartime efforts could help us get out of our current, particularly deep economic rut, the thought of waging war for economic benefit– essentially letting the blood of American soldiers be payment for a way out of our current economic state, one created by Wall Street’s high risk, shady deals with subprime mortgages and derivative markets– is too “distasteful”. So, instead, those in power look at alternatives and given the somewhat misguided, but constant ranting about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its regulations are “job killers”, a conspiracy is born to systematically lower EPA regulations to allow corporations to redirect resources they would normally have spent ensuring they were abiding by various environmental laws and regulations, knowing that it may cause adverse health effects on millions of communities around the country. They decide that considering it takes much longer for you to die from cancer than a soldier to die from a bullet or a bomb, and it is much harder to prove that the chemical waste improperly dumped near your home’s water source is the direct reason why you get a particular type of cancer at a particular point in your life– especially if litigation gets tied up in the court system and you die before its conclusion, should you decide to sue your health insurance company and/or the owner of the factory or plant that caused the pollution in the first place– that slow, causally ambigous death of a few million is not only a more preferable and conveniently politically advantageous, but morally justifiable route for economic growth compared to more American soldiers dying in another war (or ideally, just working harder to come up with better economic policies). Besides, the increased health problems may boost the healthcare industry and once we’re out of the rut, the EPA can create even more jobs by raising– or in some cases, re-raising– regulations, therefore creating a need for corporations to go back out and hire workers and obtain other resources to abide by them.

And then the next time there’s an economic slump, all over again… until they find “the next thing”…

I’m not saying this is what could happen under a President and/or Congress that rails just a little too much against the EPA or that anybody is even seriously considering it, or if anybody seriously believes anybody is seriously considering it, but if I thought of it, someone else must have…

“The bottom line is that your country and you have to be on the same page where values are considered, principles are considered, what you believe in. And if that is not the case, then it’s… you may be born somewhere and brought up somewhere, but then you don’t feel that same type of loyalty. Because loyalty comes through ideas, not through the earth, not through mud and trees and hills. That’s the same everywhere in the world. Is there any country in the world that has it enshrined in the constitution that you have a right to be happy?”

And to underline the point even more, note that Larsen is originally from Pakistan. Food for thought– check out the trailer for “Citizen USA” below:

Related posts:

1. The Daily Show on DC, NPR, Juan Williams
2. In mourning

“If they’re not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and violent extremists, then why should I take the time to distinguish between decent, fearful white people and racists?”

Related posts:

1. Zimbardo on The Daily Show, Viacom vs. YouTube
2. The Daily Show on the N-Word
3. Personal Responsibility and Collective Power

It’s been a whole year since my last IdeaFarm™ post and I thought I would post an update. I didn’t see the truck around for a while (at least in Mountain View– they apparently have people at locations all over the Bay Area), but then, a few months ago, they popped up again, parked near the intersection of Central Expressway and Rengstorff Avenue. They’ve apparently downsized to this trailer and bike (plus what looks like solar panels?).

This week, the trailer was parked at the corner of El Camino Real and Phyllis Ave after having been “silenced by MVPD” (Mountain View Police Department). I’m not sure what they did since I’ve never actually seen anybody next to/around the truck or trailer, but I suppose just parking for long periods of time in front of businesses and at busy intersections could cause problems. Nevertheless, I haven’t seen anything that would actually be illegal and if they had done something illegal, I assume the truck/trailer/whatever would have disappeared altogether.

So, I’d be curious to know what caused them to be “silenced” and how MVPD silenced them, but I still haven’t figured out what the actual, practical purpose of IdeaFarm™ is, what they do or how they do it. (One commenter summarized it as a version of “libertarian socialism”.) In any case, the IdeaFarm™ website has been updated once again, so maybe you can take a look and try to make some sense of it.

Otherwise– or perhaps as background– you can check out my previous posts:

• IdeaFarm™ (February, 28, 2008)
• Idea Farm™, part 2 (March 27, 2008) – includes information and comments from the man behind it all
• IdeaFarm™, part 3: Return of the Truck

Related posts:

1. IdeaFarm™ Returns – August 2009
2. IdeaFarm™, part 3: Return of the Truck
3. IdeaFarm™

I meant to post this a while ago, but here it is now: the IdeaFarm™ truck reappeared at the corner of Castro St. and El Camino in Mountain View, CA in late August. It disappeared apparently on September 11 at the conclusion of its Political Economy course. If you can’t read the sign, it reads (I think): “Mexicans colonize because you don’t receive them as brothers.”

Read my previous posts on IdeaFarm™: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The IdeaFarm™ website has been significantly updated since my previous posts and it looks like there will be a big opening performance.

Related posts:

1. IdeaFarm™, part 3: Return of the Truck
2. IdeaFarm™
3. IdeaFarm™, part 2

Two Women, Two Babies, One Family (from Real Simple)

A sweet quote:

At night, we started putting our bellies together so the babies could say hi and tap at each other. It was sweet.

What could make this more perfect? Marriage.

Related posts:

1. Grace Hopper and Women in Computing
2. We TV: it’s not just for women and gay men anymore (sort of)
3. Vonnegut on Love, Men and Women

Another example of his great talent for explaining complex issues so that more people are aware of and understand these issues (and have a laugh while you’re at it).

Another show that’s great at this: The Daily Show, of course. Remember John Hodgman’s piece on Net Neutrality? Genius.

Related posts:

1. Lame cop-outs
2. Personal Responsibility and Collective Power

In addition to personal videos, I managed to slip a Kids in the Hall sketch through the system. Amazingly, I received a message from the KITH today via YouTube and I was afraid I was going to have another copyright complaint in my hands. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the following message:

Hey Hey,

Thanks for posting one of our videos on YouTube. We love it! Wanted to tell you about our new sketch "Car Bangers," available only online. If you like it, please subscribe to our page as well. And we are on tour- check out dates on our MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/kithtour08.

Peace!
KITH

Based on the comments posted on the KITH YouTube channel, it looks like many other fans got similar messages thanking them for posting video clips online. It’s one of the few times I’ve ever heard of artists (or rather the people that own the copyright allowing the artists) to support fans putting some of their works online. It gives the concept of viral video a fair chance! This is a particularly interesting idea for artists like KITH– it’s been years since they were on the air, but with fans posting videos online, they can reach a whole new fan base, a fan base who can buy their DVDs, buy tickets to their live shows, and more. It’s a great marketing opportunity and I’m glad somebody sees it so clearly and simply and acts on it. No muddying the waters with threats of lawsuits and content hoarding.

So, aside from loving their sketches, that’s another reason why I love the Kids in the Hall. Check out their latest video: Car Bangers.

Related posts:

1. You have no YouTube videos
2. You have no (YouTube) Friends
3. links for 2007-03-30

Over $4.00
Originally uploaded by sindy

It’s official: gas prices are over $4.00 per gallon (at least for premium). Taken in the Palo Alto/Mountain View, CA area. President Bush should have been paying more attention to those rumors.

Related posts:

1. IdeaFarm™
2. Mr. Bush comes to Stanford
3. Trouble in Paradise

Just when I thought this chapter: was over, the IdeaFarm™ truck reappears! I saw it parked on the corner of Castro St. and El Camino Real. Looks like the website is back up too– and chock full of stuff.

Related posts:

1. IdeaFarm™, part 2
2. IdeaFarm™
3. Living in a coed interacial world, part 1: Negotiating

Unfortunately, while you can read my original blog post, sometime between March 9 and now, the IdeaFarm website is no longer up and all you get is an “Under Construction” notice. Luckily for you, here’s a copy of the cached version through Google you can take a look at (I grabbed it as a PDF in case it “disappears”). The Way Back Machine took me as far back as 1997 and through multiple versions of the site over the last decade. In any case, the version I saw when I wrote my post last month was actually closer (maybe even the same) to the cached version from Google, so keep that in mind while reading what follows. (As an aside, the site I saw that matches the cached version from Google is actually a “freebee placeholder” since lack of funds forced the “normal web site” to be shut down. Personally, I think the placeholder site looked less sketchy.)

The email from the man behind IdeaFarm was somewhat rambling, but he did address a few specific issues I had raised:

1. The “Governing Propietor’s” real name. Privacy, or maybe more appropriately anonymity, is a key part of the organization’s interactions. One way IdeaFarm is organized is through villages– economic associations that work to “create a compelling economic incentive for everyone in the postal code to live unselfishly.” This work is usually done during anonymous weekly dinners and if names must be used, only first names are allowed. I had originally commented that they should make at least one exception for IdeaFarm’s organizer (he refuses to call himself the “leader”), even if it’s just his first name to help lend credibility (or at least make it feel less creepy– imagine having to call someone the “Governing Proprietor” all the time). Surprisingly, the first thing he pointed out in his email to me is that his name is on the website– at the very bottom, he “signs” the website with his legal name: “Wo’O Ideafarm.” (According to this guy, he changed his name in 1999; from 1954 to 1999, it was Jon Clyde Duringer.)
2. The “accusatory” sign.” He says the photo I used is very old and that the signage was changed several years ago. The phrase “THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU HAVE BECOME A SELFISH PEOPLE” is no longer on the sign and what’s left is the word “SELFISH” in a circle with a slash through it. He suggested that I check out his YouTube interview (embedded below) where he talks about the signage and why he changed it, among other things. (Basically, like me, people had a negative reaction to the sign, but some so negatively that they threw eggs and yelled insults and threats. Aside from that, he also realized that if someone is having a hard time, is feeing down and out, seeing that sign might make him unfairly feel worse.)
3. The Yahoo! email address. I had commented that using a Yahoo! address on his site– ideafarmcity@yahoo.com– didn’t seem very professional, but he assured me that it is not his private email address, but a “throw away” one (although that was the address he used to email– seems more like temporary, not throw away). This is apparently one of the consequences of having to take down the IDEAFARM.COM server.

Which brings us to the topic of software and servers. Remember that IdeaFarm is a “civil and political project funded by the sale of software products and services.” It seems that, in the last six months to a year, the “real” IDEAFARM.COM server is no longer up and running because a) it is not yet “hacker proof” (one mission guiding development is to “connect people wholesomely” through a “zero spam, zero advertisement, zero thought steering, secure email service”) and b) Wo’O Ideafarm ran out of funds for the normal website. As aforementioned, the website I saw was a simple “freebee placeholder” because he ran out of funds for the “normal website,” which was running IP-DOS. IP-DOS, if you remember, stands for IdeaFarm™ Piggyback-Distributed Operating System, one of the organization’s software products. Unfortunately, it’s a memory hog” (not a good sign) that requires a “full dedicated server,” which costs about $100 per month (versus shared virtual hosting which can be as cheap as $5 to $10 per month or even a virtual dedicated host which is about $45 per month). So, until it can be re-written to be less of a memory hog, the freebee placeholder (or now the “Under Construction” page) will have to suffice. Unfortunately, his resources, programming or otherwise, are scarce:

There is a lot of software work to do, I am doing it alone, and I am doing it under very difficult conditions. (I live in that old truck and do my programming in there and in noisy public libraries. My computer is old, the monitor is failing, its data cable is broken and splinted with paint stirring sticks to keep it working. My second hand keyboard finally became unuseable, so I replaced it with an el-cheapo Walmart keyboard that, even though brand new, is almost as bad; I have to hit the ’5′ key 5 times or more to get a single ’5′ keypress.)

Funds are also short because although he is “one of the most experienced software developers alive today,” he currently works part-time as a minimum-wage day laborer (perhaps as part of his rejection of the selfishness that he says has tainted Silicon Valley) and given the tenuous nature of day labor, especially in California, he’s relocated to Las Vegas, NV, where business is also slow, but he’s keeping busy working on IP-DOS, getting the website back up and then getting some temporary work.

About half of the email, as described above, was useful and informative– he did clear up questions about his name and email address, including clarification on the website itself and IP-DOS (although, I’m still not exactly sure what kind of software it really is). The second half of the email though started with a somewhat lengthy and detailed description of his personal living situation, the part I call the “pity party.” By no means do I think the life of a day laborer is easy and I know that everyday, especially in Silicon Valley, that type of work is devalued in favor of information workers and those jobs are constantly disappearing. However, he made a choice to work as a part-time day laborer, living out of that truck– he explains in his YouTube interview that he started working with computers as early as 1974 and experienced the exciting boom in personal computing of the mid-80′s to the early 90′s. Maybe he didn’t mean for it to sound that way or for that purpose, but it sure came off as fishing for pity, going on about his old computer, failing monitor, broken data cable and cheap keyboard with a faulty “5″ key.

But, the thing that really bothered me in the end was how he ended his email:

Skepticism regarding legitimacy of anything new is healthy, up to a point. But you people in the United States are immobilized by excessive skepticism. This project is totally “out in the open” and I’ve done everything that I can think of to eliminate any basis for suspicion. The bottom line is that if I can’t get you people to take a serious look at this project, get beyond your skepticism, and get involved, then the project will fail. I cannot do this alone… Your first blog article was one of ten zillion responses voicing skepticism and encouraging people to DO NOTHING. Why not be different? Why not break the pattern? Be bold and tell your readers that maybe, just maybe, this project is legit and that it is an opportunity to DO SOMETHING.

For most of you, your skepticism is comfortable because it provides you with just the excuse you need to continue to DO NOTHING. You like that because you are indeed a selfish people.

Anything that includes use of the phrase “you people” starts to sound like a rant and makes it hard (at least for me) to take it seriously. And after having taken down the old sign because it was “accusatory,” those last comments sound like a well-practiced speech full of accusations. Nevertheless, while my original blog post did voice my skepticism, I consider it more of a critical look at something that was being advertised to me very publicly, very often. Interestingly, I asked many of my friends about the truck/sign and almost all of them said they had seen and wondered about it, but had never looked into it. If anything, I did bother to look into this project, to take a “serious look” at whatever materials were available and in the end, questioned whether this project was “legit.” I voiced my opinion, which I think I’m entitled to after having done what research I could, and while I voiced skepticism, I don’t think I encouraged anybody to “do nothing.” I close my original post with the words: “[S]o if you see this truck around the Bay Area, now you know a little bit more. Judge for yourself!” At the end of the day, I certainly don’t think IdeaFarm is the only remedy for selfishness and I’m not sure what necessary connection there is between skepticism and complacency– or in Wo’O Ideafarm’s words, comfort “because it provides you with just the excuse you need to continue to DO NOTHING.”

I could go on and on about this, but I’ll stop here and say again, “Judge for yourself!” In fact, I think a better argument for IdeaFarm is presented in the YouTube interview (filmed about a year ago), so check it out:

Related posts:

1. IdeaFarm™

This truth is that this clever little stunt was part of the annual fake Daily published by the Stanford Chaparral (or the “Chappie” as it’s affectionately called), Stanford’s student humor magazine. The article is actually quite well-researched and well-written, including references to actual facts, such as the highly publicized “three strikes” policy” in which students not only face increasingly severe disciplinary actions for repeated DMCA violations and complaints, but are also charged increasing amounts of money through associated “reconnection fees.” The article also says that over thirty students have reached their third strike in the past year with settlements with the complaining record companies totaling over $100,000. While the numbers are about right– over thirty students and settlements totaling about $100,000 in the past year– they actually apply to the results of the record companies’ “pre-litigation letter” campaign that started in 2007 and in which they target college students all over the country with the threat of lawsuits. As part of the new “integrity initiative,” the article explains, Stanford is now scanning its network for DMCA violations and actively reports the culprits to the “RIAA and other appropriate authorities.” In the first day alone, the article continues, “78 unnamed students” have already been reported and the University’s IT organization “predicts that approximately 34% of Stanford undergraduates will be contacted by the end of Wednesday.” (That’s approximately 2,274 students.) The article goes on to direct students on how to find out if they’ve been flagged (via riaa.stanford.edu) and in turn, find legal help (the EFF gets a nod).

The article itself was pretty funny– Stanford, like other universities, has been spending increasing amounts of resources dealing with illegal file-sharing and copyright and personally, I think it was a good jab at how ludicrous the effects of the DMCA and intimidation tactics of the entertainment industry have become.* Just last week, I was summarizing the results from the annual undergraduate computing survey and many students commented on their dissatisfaction with the University’s handling of file-sharing and copyright issues, wishing Stanford would take a stronger stance against the RIAA and the MPAA’s efforts.

The website though… I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but aside from probably breaking some basic network usage policies (for setting up riaa.stanford.edu, use of the Stanford seal, etc.), the website took it a little too far. The reality is that since the first lawsuits targeting students (circa 2003), the University really has been stepping up their efforts to stop illegal file-sharing and punish repeat offenders and something like this initiative isn’t completely impossible. The reality is that over thirty Stanford students– peers and perhaps even friends of the Chappie staff members– really have been sent pre-litigation letters and really have had to pay approximately $100,000 in settlement deals. The reality is that the entertainment industry really is targeting college students– people who have little knowledge of their legal options and/or resources to defend themselves. When you enter your name and hit submit at riaa.stanford.edu, it looks like they use your name to randomly** give you either a thumbs up (you haven’t been reported) or thumbs down (you’ve already been reported and look forward to a letter in the next three to four weeks). I would hate to think that a student who’s already paid out thousands of dollars because of a pre-litigation letter was tricked into going to the website and got a thumbs down.

I don’t know how long the site will stay up and working, so if you’re curious, here are some screenshots, etc.:

• riaa.stanford.edu front page
• PDF copy of the online version of the article
• screenshot of the “you’ve been reported” message
• screenshot of the “you haven’t been reported” message

Notes:

* If you’re curious about Stanford’s actual policies on file-sharing and copyright, check out my department’s FAQ on File-Sharing & Copyright (also used by the General Counsel’s Office as well as the Information Security Office as the University’s “official” FAQ on the issue).

** It’s pseudorandom– the algorithm they’re using is deterministic. Unfortunately, no matter what Leland Stanford, Jr. does, he will always show up reported to the authorities.

Related posts:

1. links for 2007-04-28
2. links for 2007-05-25
3. Stanford’s New DMCA Policy and changing the discussion

I see this truck almost everyday, parked in various locations along El Camino as I drive from Palo Alto to Mountain View. (I’ve always wanted to take a picture of it, but have never had the chance to, so, even though I have no idea who you are, thanks cjanebuy for posting a pic onto Flickr.) The combination of the self-lettering, the accusatory nature of the phrase/motto of “THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU HAVE BECOME A SELFISH PEOPLE, and the strategy here for marketing their message by parking these trucks all over the area and inviting passersby to “come and eat with us” to find out more has all the trappings of a cult, of some type of weird group of fanatics of something. (Not to mention that all interactions are done “anonymously,” participants using only first names.)

I finally bothered to visit the website– www.ideafarm.com– and while I don’t think it’s a cult like The Family International– but it’s definitely an enigma (they also depict IdeaFarm as “IdeaFarm City,” trademarked, of course, and a federal constitutional protectorate of the US.) It’s very Silicon Valley– the “civil and political project funded by the sale of software products and services,” such as the IdeaFarm ™ Piggyback Distributed Operating System (I, like you probably, have never head of this and have no idea of the pros/cons of this OS).

The mission of the project is to “[P]romote unselfish living by creating a compelling economic incentive to live wholesomely connected to other people, to the Earth, and to one’s Higher Power.” The main way to do this is through a yet-to-be-released “zero spam, zero advertisement, zero thought steering, secure email service.” Participants in this project are divided into two groups– the first, composed of non-members, agrees to a) “sign a public declaration of intent to live unselfishly” and b) participate anonymously in weekly community dinners. If you decide to become an actual member, you move up and become part of the second group who agrees to a) “participate regularly in the weekly community dinners,” b) “loan $8 to the organizer for 64 days, and c) pay 1 cent per day.” In turn, you apparently get “nifty” IdeaFarm software products and services plus richer access to the website.

In any case, reviewing the website and information, a few things to note that might raise red flags for you:

• For an organization with unselfish living at its core, it is still a “private, for profit entity” and the “owner can dispose of revenue as he sees fit.”
• The “owner” or “leader” of the organization is never mentioned or known by his name (not even his first name)– he is only referred to as the “Governing Propietor.” While anonymity is central to their interactions, disclosing the leader’s name (at least first name) seems like an acceptable exception, especially to lend credibility to the whole thing since they claim he is a “libertarian student of political economy, a product of the Ph.D. program in economics at the University of Chicago.”
• A stratified system of participation and membership, largely based on financial contributions– Scientology anyone?* To be fair, they do assert that they are not asking for nor will they accept donations– financial contributions are considered “loans.”
• Discussion of IdeaFarm and the website will only be done via email.
• They’re using a yahoo email address. Weak.

Anyway, so if you see this truck around the Bay Area, now you know a little bit more. Judge for yourself!

* PS to the Scientology folks: please don’t sue me.

Perhaps they’re only actively monitoring new content now– those lazy bastards.

In any case, I’ll scrounge around and try to replace the clips.

Related posts:

1. Zimbardo on The Daily Show, Viacom vs. YouTube
2. You have no (YouTube) Friends
3. links for 2007-03-30

I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by sharing some of these case study examples since they are real world examples of sexual harassment litigation, so here’s a little sampling so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:

One word: priapism. If you don’t know what this word means, you should learn, especially if you’re a guy, and then check out the 2006 case Arrieta-Colon v. Wal-Mart. Props to Arrieta-Colon in winning the case, but talk about awkward.

That may be sexual harassment, but more importantly, it’s sexual assault. There were one or two examples where one co-worker (usually male) continually made unwanted romantic/sexual advances towards a co-worker (usually female)– advances that weren’t just repeated requests for a date or inappropriate comments, but extended to groping, touching, and more. (Specifically, check out the 2006 case Howard v. Winter as one example.) While admittedly there are serious sexual harassment issues, what about the sexual assault? This type of behavior is illegal not only in terms of creating a hostile work environment, but also because it’s a crime. I don’t know about you, but sexual assault trumps sexual harassment.

Spanking. And lots of it. WTF? There were multiple examples of spanking somehow being introduced into the workplace as a sometimes valid, sometimes invalid form of punishment. Check out the 2002 case Yerry v. Pizza Hut of Southeast Kansas. If someone seriously suggested to me to physically hit or be hit, much less spank or be spanked, as a way to punish someone in the workplace, I think my head would explode. And yet, somehow people involved in such cases went along with this treatment. It’s amazing what people don’t understand about their rights, will put up with to keep their jobs or do to avoid confrontation.

And with that, a little video to lighten the mood:

Related posts:

1. links for 2006-04-13
2. Lame cop-outs

This is about as much as I can show you of the art exhibit we dropped by during lunch yesterday. A series of oil paintings of an Asian-American woman having sex with various American presidents (and we’re talking like George Washington, not Bill Clinton). As one of my coworkers said, “She can paint, for sure.”

View “Join or Die,” by Justine Lai. and read her statement about the paintings. Also, read the Stanford Daily article about the exhibit.

UPDATED 8.29.2009: from reading her statement, I discovered that the woman in the paintings is actually herself!

I grabbed lunch yesterday at the Village Cheese House, one of the few great delis around here (at least from an East Coast-ers perspective). They always have a great, eclectic variety of stuff (and manage to do it without seeming snobbish or condescending)– they make their own candy canes from scratch during the holiday season, they’ve got candy and chocolates from around the world (from gourmet European chocolates to fruit-flavored Japanese goodies) and they stock their shelves with a rotating selection of unique beverages.

I’m not just talking about stocking their shelves with stuff that aren’t “brand name” or “corporate” in the way places like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods like to do– instead, I’m talking about Dr. Pepper in glass bottles with old-fashioned labeling; even good ol’ Vernor’s Ginger Ale in glass bottles with labeling/packaging I haven’t seen anywhere else (and as an aside, why don’t more people in this world love ginger ale?). It’s where I found Jolt Silver (and unfortunately, never saw it there or anywhere else ever again).

In any case, my latest find was this bottle of “Leninade,” boasted as having “a taste worth standing in line for” and the bottle itself is stamped with the phrase “the Party wants you.” I bought it for a friend who I thought would appreciate the humor, so I don’t know what it tastes like– I’m sure nothing particularly unique, but I’m sure there’s a pinko lemonade joke in there somewhere.

Go to: Leninade Dot Communist! website.

Obviously, I’ve been sitting on commenting on this announcement for a couple of weeks, partly because I’ve been busy with my own life and partly because I wanted to be sure about what I wanted to say on the issue. On one hand, I’m a current employee of the University– I work for Student Computing and Residential Computing– and no matter how I feel about the policy itself, I have to enforce it to whatever extent my job requires. On the other hand, I obviously have an opinion about the policy, one way or another, just as I have strong opinions about file-sharing, copyright, the DMCA, and especially how they all relate to students and universities, and feel that this is an important issue to comment on, as I have before on previous University policies. On top of that, in addition to being an employee, I’m also a Stanford alumna (class of 2001, BS in Computer Science) and often find myself deeply invested in University policy and how it generally treats its students. That’s not to say that other Stanford employees who are not alumni don’t feel this way as well, but I mention it to point out why I find myself so frustrated so often– my four years at Stanford as a student were an extremely important part of my life, as college years are for most people, and when faced with policies such as this one, I am particularly bothered because I see them as the University stepping away from what I valued so much about my undergraduate experience and why I’m (for the most part) proud to call myself a member of the Stanford community. In any case, my point is that the above touches on the complicated relationship I have with the University, probably why I don’t sleep at night as well as I should, and why I haven’t blogged about the announcement yet despite a fair amount of national press coverage.

The truth is that the blogosphere commentary that picked up the story within two days of the announcement hit on a lot of the immediately obvious issues– the appearance that Stanford is turning DMCA complaints into a money-making business (modifying the Stanford S into a dollar sign was a particularly nice touch), that Stanford’s policy is particularly harsh and perhaps a disproportionate reaction to being placed on the MPAA’s 25 most wanted list, and the general feeling that the policy reflects poorly on the University and how it treats it students. DMCA complaints are, after all, allegations only (and there’s been plenty of stories of, in one way or another, bogus complaints) and to take such a hard line against alleged complaints as opposed to proven offenses/violations of the law sends a negative message about Stanford’s attitude towards its students– at least when it comes to choosing between bowing to the legal pressures and threats of the entertainment industry and standing behind treating students honestly and fairly. (To be honest, I think the “three strikes” policy already in place where students lose Stanford network privileges, including their network logins, after three DMCA complaints is overly harsh and started us down this slippery slope.) Slashdot coverage and comments even include thoughts such as students choosing to apply or attend other schools competitive with Stanford because of this policy and what it reflects about the University.

For me, the sad thing is when I found out about the policy change– only about a day in advance– I actually wasn’t that surprised. A year or two ago, my head would probably have exploded, my blood pressure rising, and there would have been a lot of yelling and swearing. But somewhere in the last couple of years, like I said, we already started down that slippery slope and to be honest, it’s not like we reinvented the wheel here– other schools have had similar “reconnection fee” systems in place for a while. My only point would be that calling it a “reconnection fee” doesn’t make anybody feel any better and, in the end, is simply misleading (at least for the first complaint, you can get reconnected without paying a fee). We should call it a fine because that’s what it is and that’s what it’s meant to be– I don’t agree with it, I don’t like it, but I at least understand it. The University has obviously decided that the current system is not sufficiently punitive, that inflicting fines is the only way to further discourage illegal file-sharing, and that $100, $500, and $1000 today as prices are measures of how severe the punishment should be and/or how important discouraging file-sharing is. In hindsight, I would have probably preferred this measure over taking someone’s network privileges away– it’s nearly impossible to be a student in today’s computing environment without network access; it’s probably a lot easier to scrape together some money.

The interesting thing about all of the negative coverage surrounding Stanford’s new policy is that I have seen some change in the national discussion– maybe it took Ohio University completely shutting down p2p file-sharing on its network or Stanford implementing this new policy, but the discussion is finally turning to why colleges and universities are bearing the burden of policing copyright for the entertainment industry and why all of their measures so far have failed to satisfy the RIAA, MPAA, and Congress itself. Not only are these already under-staffed, under-funded non-profit organizations being asked to spend precious resources policing networks, responding to complaints, and shutting down repeat violators, but they are now being asked to start inflicting monetary fines and even academic disciplinary actions, including expulsion, an area I think is far beyond the reach of the entertainment industry or Congress. When is it enough?

Finally, as I sit here listening ironically to Public Enemy at this very moment, I really do wish and hope that people start to fight the power. The policy announcement did not contain any stipulations on exactly how to challenge the complaints going on your Stanford record (as opposed to a legal counter-claim, e.g.), how to challenge the “reconnection fee” assessment, or the ensuing process thereafter. I think students are entitled to due process and they’re going to have to start demanding it. I hold no hope that Stanford is going to change or take back this policy, but I wish one of our sister institutions would stand up and start the fight– those schools didn’t make it on the top 25 because those student bodies objectively have the greatest amount of file-sharing. They made it onto that list because the RIAA and/or the MPAA targets those schools and in the same way that they target students– people who have little knowledge about their legal options or resources to defend themselves– they target specific colleges– institutions that have enough name recognition to make the papers, but that are afraid enough of what would happen if all of the entertainment industry’s lawyers came crashing down on their heads. But if top-tier schools that have large endowments and profess themselves to be leaders in technology, politics, law, and social awareness don’t start standing up for their students and for themselves, we’re only going to continue losing this battle.

Read: Stanford to hit P2P users in the wallet with reconnection fees
Illegal Internet users to face fines (The Stanford Daily)
Copyright Silliness on Campus By Fred von Lohmann (EFF)
A Rough-and-Tumble Debate on File Sharing

But today was an even more interesting experience: we’re staying our last night at a hotel that’s actually attached to the airport (Hyatt Regency Pittsburgh International Airport– in short, pretty nice hotel, convenient for an early flight, but what else is really exciting about an airport hotel) and since the hotel restaurant was closed when we got in, we asked the front desk where was the closet place to eat. They directed us to go to the “AirMall,” a sort-of mall with restaurants, shops, etc., but since it’s on the airside of the airport, the hotel has a special setup to allow guests to pass through security without boarding passes. The process first began with the hotel issuing each of us a “passport” with our full names printed on them. In addition to the passport itself, the front desk then needs to call over to the information center at the airport letting them know our names and that we are headed over. Once over to the other side (and a little wandering around until we found the correct information desk), we then each had to fill out forms, providing yet more personal information about ourselves and our stay at the hotel, as well as provide ID.

Unfortunately, about halfway through this process, as I was reviewing the multiple page document explaining what I was agreeing to, I realized that if this whole setup is to help hotel guests pass through security to get to the AirMall, this also means that you have to abide by all of the TSA security regulations. I suppose this is obvious if you take a minute to think about it, but the woman the front desk didn’t really remind us about the safety restrictions, so it didn’t really dawn on me until then. Since we would be checking out tomorrow morning and all we really wanted to do was get something to eat, I realized going all the way back to the room to return the random lotions, lipstick and whatever else my mother and I had between us (ironically, all probably 3 oz. or less each, but no super-duper plastic bag to act as our magic key through security) just to get some airport food was definitely not worth it. So, in the end, our mission was aborted (the thought occurred to me aborting might raise some weird terror flags) and we just ate on the landside of the airport– airport food still, but without all the hassle.

At night, I dream of luxurious airports, staffed like five-star hotels, where polite, well-dressed people help you check-in and you always get the seat you want. Young, good-looking bellhops help you check your bags, bags that always make it safely to their destination. At worst, you have to pass through a metal detector, but the security staff is polite, reassuring and confident as they guide you through the security checkpoint. You feel safe and protected. Airport bathrooms are pristine oases with places where you can safely place your things while you use the toilet, wash your face, etc. There are soft towels and luxurious soaps to help refresh you after a long flight. And at the gates, there are always enough seats for passengers and they are comfortable seats at that– small lounges to relax while you wait for your flight, with couches and soft chairs, with little tables to place your drink on or to eat your sandwich or use your laptop. Power outlets are plenty, wireless is free and the signal is strong. Everywhere.

Unfortunately, this is closer to reality:

Read: Schneier on Security: On the Implausibility of the Explosives Plot
Schneier on Security: What the Terrorists Want

I picked this up at the only place I’ve seen it sold (the friendly local gas station down the street) because I heard it’s finally being pulled off the shelf and being redistributed under a new name. Apparently, the FDA considered the energy drink illegal because a) it is being marketed as a “legal alternative” to the illegal street drug (as you can see if you can make out the tag line on the can in the photo) and b) the company claims that it treats or cures disease. When I last checked the website (a few weeks ago, before they pulled the product from the shelves), there were actually a few disclaimers related to both of the above statements– that the drink doesn’t contain any illegal substances, isn’t really an alternative to any illegal substances (and who cares if it really is– is that really illegal?), and doesn’t treat or cure disease, the last point most energy drink marketing materials point out for themselves.

In any case, being a good sport, Redux, the company behind the energy drink, is rebranding the drink with the new name “Censored.” Ha!

If anyone remembers, Cocaine got some attention a while back from a spot on The Daily Show because of the name controversy (if anybody knows where I can get a clip of the spot, please let me know). In the end, it seemed like the worst thing about the drink wasn’t the name or the marketing message, but the taste itself. And after having tried it today, I can say it does taste pretty bad– it tastes like some combination of overly sweet energy drink and cough syrup and goes down with a frightening burning sensation that is probably similar to the way real cocaine burns away your sinus cavities. Yum.

Of course, all this ridiculous hype fails to mention how the original Coca-Cola formula contained stimulants from coca leaves because the original recipe was a cocawine, a mixture of wine and cocaine. How’s that for ya?

Read: Banned ‘Cocaine’ energy drink re-emerges as ‘Censored’

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Note the copycat version of video sharing: Viacom’s replacement for all those video clips pulled after the mother lawsuit against Google over their YouTube clips. It’s not a bad reproduction of YouTube functionality in terms of letting me embed this clip here or pass around the URL, but I certainly don’t get my pick of clips, which I suppose is part of the point, but also the ultimate price. Case in point: again on The Daily Show, Larry Wilmore and John Oliver did a great piece last week on the proposed N-word ban in New York City. The piece quickly made it onto YouTube and was subsequently taken down due to copyright complaints by Viacom, but it wasn’t in turn made available by Viacom on the Comedy Central site. As a result, another brilliant combination of comedy, journalism, and social commentary is lost in the endless bowels of cable TV history, only to be re-experienced or heard of again by the lucky re-run watcher. Are you happy Viacom?

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1. links for 2007-03-30
2. links for 2006-10-30

If ever there comes a time when everyone you vote for wins and they do everything you think they should do, there will still be a gap between what is and what ought to be, at home and around the world. It’s just inevitable… And so people like you and me– private citizens– have more power to do public good than ever before and we should step into the gap. And unlike previous times, it’s great if you’re rich– Bill Gates and Warren Buffet deserve the world’s thanks and gratitude– it’s amazing what they’re doing, but you don’t have to be rich. In the tsunami, Americans gave 1.3, 1.2 billion dollars. Thirty percent of our households gave over half of them over the Internet. That’s stunning. So, that means if like everybody that’s watching The Daily Show decides tomorrow that they think the biggest thing in the world is to make America free of foreign oil and they want us to go into biofuels and there’s a fund that promotes that and everybody that sees this show gives ten or fifteen or twenty dollars– not big money– they all do it, you could change the world.

Watch it at Comedy Central– Part 1 and Part 2– and check out the the Clinton Global Initiative.

Despite the strange request, my friend just wanted to get on his way, so willingly cooperated with the officer and was able to show the officer the address book on his computer which included his own information that presumably matched his ID. This was apparently enough to satisfy the officer and he sent my friend on his way.

Now, this situation brings up a lot of interesting questions– I’m no lawyer or legal expert in anyway, but it seems like to me that the officer would have to have some type of probable cause to stop my friend and not only search his bag, but in an effort to “prove” ownership of the laptop, search the contents/data of the laptop itself. Young people biking with laptop bags isn’t a rare sight in Palo Alto. Did my friend match the description of potential suspects? When he saw the laptop, did it match the description of recently stolen ones? Presumably, if the officer was aware of laptop thefts in the area, police reports have been filed and serial numbers should be available for those stolen computers. Finding the serial number on a laptop is relatively easy– if the officer did have probable cause to believe this laptop was stolen, he could have easily run the serial number.

But aside from all that, how did the officer expect to have my friend “prove” that the computer was his? Out there on the street, without purchase records, how do you prove that a computer is yours? Maybe you use your real name as your login name, but if you’re unlucky enough not to, you might have to show your address book or other private information to the officer in an effort to show that you’re not a thief. What is sufficient evidence in this impromptu courtroom out on the street? And what if the laptop isn’t yours? That doesn’t mean it’s stolen– plenty of students in my office borrow laptops while working for us and have generic logins and don’t necessarily keep any personal information on them. Then where are they left?

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There could be a lot of answers to this question. Do you want to know where my parents immigrated from when they flew into JFK over thirty years ago to make a new life? The answer is South Korea, Seoul to be specific. But where is my family really from? Korea. There was no North or South when my parents were born and while the political status may have changed many times over the course of the life they lived before they stepped foot in America, they are from everywhere– from the north, from the south, from the countryside, from the city. They are from the Land of Morning Calm.

I don’t want to say the North-South question offends me, but it does bother me because it reflects a fundamental ignorance of the situation and the Korean experience and outlook. First, if you’re a Korean in America, you or your family immigrated from South Korea. Nobody immigrates from North Korea. You defect from North Korea and you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody who has successfully. Or you’re a Korean national visiting the States, which most likely makes you a South Korean national. There aren’t many North Koreans vacationing or going to school in the US.

But more importantly, these North-South distinctions are just political ones, just words that remind us of an over fifty-years old war that still continues to this day. But some say that with such a deep division, the rapid development of such different political and socioeconomic states, especially with the isolation and cult of personality built in the North, is it really just a political distinction anymore? Haven’t two contemporary cultures developed that only make the divide even greater? Can you really call yourselves one people anymore?

My answer is yes. Koreans share a much longer history and commonality than our recent history in the international arena belies. A fifty year divide that is the “tragic consequence of superpower rivalry at end of World War II” cannot wipe out hundreds of years of history, culture, family. And this recent history is the history of all Koreans, no matter which side you are on. It is the struggle and the suffering of the Korean people as a whole around the world. Han. Those are still our brothers we look out across the DMZ, both literally and figuratively. We are one people and we still hope for reunification into our one true nation. Han nara.

So at the end of the day, am I North or South Korean? I’m just Korean. To be exact, I’m Korean American, American born.

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And for more fun, a general history on registration acts in comics.

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When Chelsea Clinton was a student at Stanford and her parents came for visits, there was never this much disruption on campus. I mean, sure, when there were suddenly ten big black SUVs parked outside of Wilbur Hall or something, we knew the First Lady or the President was in town, but neither parent, including the Leader of the Free World himself, managed to shut down campus when he visited.

Of course, the real kicker is that it’s one of the worst weekends to have a high maintenance visitor come to campus– it’s Admit Weekend and over 1500 newly admitted students and their parents have been on campus since Thursday morning. Obviously, it’s a very busy and important weekend and I hear they already had to cancel an event at Memorial Auditorium (one of our largest indoor venues) because of the President’s visit. Shutting down foot traffic on parts of campus, having helicopters fly overhead constantly as Admit Weekend activities are occurring all over (indoor and outdoor), and just making it generally difficult to get around campus isn’t the best thing this weekend.

The only positive thing that I can take away from President Bush’s visit is that, just like everywhere else in the Bay Area, protesters were out and ready for his arrival, including students who had Admit Weekend responsibilities, but were sure to take time out to voice their opinions. It’s a part of Stanford that I’m kind of glad that ProFros (prospective freshmen) got a chance to see.

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I wore a t-shirt today into the office that featured the Playboy bunny logo in gold. Putting it on in the morning, I certainly realized that it might a bit controversial, a bit eyebrow raising. But I work at a pretty liberal University and specifically, a pretty casual office at that, so aside from the wearing t-shirt and jeans non-issue, I kind of vaguely wondered if people would make an issue out of the shirt. The worst I expected was some ultra-feminist woman to make some snide comment about how magazines like Playboy objectify women. To which, I would probably respond something about how women have got much bigger problems and enemies than Playboy and the like and, if anything, we should thank Mr. Hefner and his magazine for helping to protect and exercise the First Amendment so well. There are certainly those who are supposedly in higher brow businesses, but are much more interested in and better at keeping women down– and many of them are women themselves– keeping us under glass ceilings and telling us what we can and cannot do with our bodies.

In any case, back to my day at the office: truth be told, I usually keep a jacket or something on for most of the day since the office is usually cold, so I didn’t expect many people to see the shirt anyway. During the short time I did have my jacket off, I did get a few quick looks and comments– the director of our department (a woman) did a quick double-take and I got out of the way before she could say something, good or bad. A co-worker said he liked the shirt. My boss first merely noted that I was wearing a shirt with the Playboy bunny on it and then asked the question, part-jokingly, part-rhetorically, “is that appropriate in the modern workplace?”

The interesting thing is that no one is really sure. I probably wouldn’t have worn it in any other office setting, but in this one, I thought I could probably get away with it. But what am I really getting away with it? What is so threatening about it? Is it because the bunny symbolizes “adult entertainment?” Is it because it refers to a very famous, very specific adult entertainment franchise that people might have strong feelings about, for or against? What if a man were to wear a t-shirt from a no-name strip bar– would that cause the same kind of uneasiness? Is the mere presence of the bunny a form a sexual harassment? Is the mere presence of something that is non-sexual in itself, but that is linked to something sexual considered the automatic creating of an uncomfortable work environment? Have we really become that sensitive and paranoid?

Well, I haven’t heard anything from anyone yet, so perhaps I’ve gotten through a day without causing too much of a controversy. Maybe the fact that I was a woman wearing a t-shirt with a Playboy symbol over some big boobs was just a little too weird. What could they say? “Some women feel threatened by the bunny symbol on your very large chest.” Right.

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The West Wing is a great show for many reasons, but one of the most interesting ones is that although they have focused on a Democratic White House for over six seasons, that even if you don’t necessarily agree with the policies and ideologies championed on the show, when you watch The West Wing, you feel like those who work in government feel a sense of duty and, at the end of the day, truly believe they have the best interest of the country and the American people in mind. How close to the truth that really is, I don’t know, but as we watch the rest of the campaign this season, I can’t help hoping that Vinick will win the presidency and that we will get to watch a Republican West Wing. Because even though what side of the culture war I’m on is so very clear and my own distaste for the Republican party could hardly be greater, I think showing a positive, uplifting Republican White House might not only be an interesting writing experiment for the West Wing writers, but an interesting experiement for the rest of us.

The episode is over now. I am slightly concerned that there might be people out there who will think that Smits and Alda are actually running for political office.

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1. West Wing envy

And they’re getting particularly creative too. I love it.

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2. RIAA continues fight while new company tries paradigm shift

But it does remind me of this clip from Kids in the Hall:

I love Dane Cook, by the way. I remember watching him first on his 1998 stand-up special on Comedy Central and he so freakin’ funny. If you haven’t heard his stuff, definitely check out danecook.com and get his latest comedy albums either at his Web site or via iTunes.

For an audio version of the decision, click here (and use BitTorrent while you still can). For the full text of the decision, click here.

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I finally got home a few hours ago and I’m look through my news headlines to find this:

Racial Switch Halts ‘Huck Finn’ Production

Have race relations really become this absurd in this country? For that matter, has copyright really become this absurd in this country?

CMU Professor’s Rebuttal Against RIAA Propaganda (from Slashdot)

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After looking at the question from all sides, I’€™ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda.

If Microsoft is supposed to be such a leader in diversity, why did it have to be pressured to make it a priority in its legislative agenda?

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I wasn’t going to comment on this, but this Daily Show clip is just too funny to pass up: Quicktime, Windows Media.

When I first heard about this, I was really surprised– I thought Microsoft’s change in stance on HB 1515 was very strange. Say what you will about Microsoft as a technology source or even as a corporate power, but from what I’ve heard, they have had a pretty good track record on supporting charitable causes. They have a sizable matching program for their employees’ charitable donations and everyone has heard of Bill Gates’s personal philanthropic efforts. Moreover, in terms of queer rights, Microsoft has a sizeable queer community (GLEAM, Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft. And as Steve Ballmer says in his email to Microsoft employees, they were one of the first companies to provide domestic partner benefits and to include sexual orientation in anti-discrimination policies.

However, the peculiar thing is that Ballmer (and Gates, by extension) says that they are wondering if a corporation should become involved in broader social issues, that if they take an active stance for or against legislation, what kind of message does it send to employees and shareholders who might hold an opposing view?

Well, with the increasing corporatization of America, I would think that its obvious that corporations have an enormous influence on social and political issues and if they want to continue to exert that influence in some areas, shouldn’t they also feel some moral responsibility to, put bluntly, not be a bunch of wusses when it comes to broader social issues? Perhaps the case would be different if Microsoft did not have a history of becoming involved in social and political issues, but to back down when things get a little interesting seems cowardly. By instituting domestic partner benefits and including sexual orientation in its anti-discrimination efforts, Microsoft’s internal policy was already making a broader social statement and while Ballmer says he does not want to promote a law that goes against the personal beliefs of many of its employees is really a lame-ass copout. By supporting HB1515, Microsoft wouldn’t be saying that gay marriage should be legalized or that employees have to embrace homosexuality. What they would be saying is that no matter how you feel about homosexuality personally, a lifestyle choice that is in no way illegal, you should not disciminate against homosexuals in the workplace. You may not like black people, Asian people, white people, Jewish people, Muslim people, red fish, blue fish, but it’s illegal to discriminate against them in the workplace. Obviously, Microsoft agrees with this idea since they have an internal policy against discinination based on sexual orientation and have recognized domestic partners in providing benefits. If they think it’s good enough for Microsoft, why isn’t it good enough for the workplace in general?

But no. Or rather, sort of. When I asked the pharmacist why there was a new formula, it was basically because it’s harder for people to make methamphetamine (“meth”) from it. If you haven’t noticed in some drugstores now, if you want to buy a nasal decongestant, you are either limited to a certain number at a time and/or you have to ask for it from behind the counter because meth addicts have been either buying up or stealing pseudoephedrine products to make meth. I knew that this was possible, but it’s interesting to see that homemade meth has become so popular (check out this Boing Boing post about crystal meth manufacturing being demonstrated at a high school) and it’s become such a problem nowadays that these types of actions have been taken. It’s not exactly news, but meth has seriously become today’s drug of choice.

For more info on meth, take a look at the Wikipedia page on Meth.

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Individual-i

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RIAA cracks down on Internet2 file swapping

There are a lot of obvious comments I could make about this new witchhunt by the RIAA, most of which have already been said by many other people. Nevertheless, I might as well reiterate a few important points:

Internet2 is a “closed” network. The RIAA declined to answer how they were able to get onto the network to discover the alleged copyright infringement in the first place. I hope this will finally push someone to seriously challenge the questionable way the RIAA (and now the MPAA as well) is monitoring these networks. Unless they have people working on the inside (which is not completely out of the realm of possibility), there is some seriously sketchy network “monitoring” going on.

Targeting I2. It’s pretty clear why the RIAA is targeting I2– because it’s considered a closed and centrally-controlled network, it is more regulable and can be used to set a precedent for regulating similar special networks. (Again, if it’s so closed and regulable, it begs the question, how did the RIAA get on there in the first place?) Check out Ed Felten’s comments on the subject.

Liability. Obviously, when asked to comment, the folks behind the i2hub community have stated that they do not condone activities that breach the rights of copyright owners. Well, I’m assuming that they’re not so naive to think that this wasn’t going to cause problems, especially since they so clearly identify themselves on their Web site (where they also say that this whole project is under the umbrella of “collaboration” between students). While universities come down harder and harder on p2p on their campuses for fear of being sued, there hasn’t been a case yet where the ISP (the university) has been sued. However, the entertainment industry first went after those running file-sharing services on campuses back in 2003 and has not hesitated to go after Grokster, Kazaa, and, most recently, BitTorrent tracker sites, so there’s little evidence that they would not go after the i2hub folks. I will assume that the i2hub folks aren’t stupid, so they should have been expecting something like this to happen eventually. If that’s the case, I hope they’re also willing to stand up and fight.

Digital music services. A number of the schools at which students were sued have university-wide deals in place for legal music services for their students (e.g., Napster, CDigix, Ruckus, etc.) I had thought that making a deal with the devil might offer those universities some comfort, but I guess not. This also shows that the amount of illegal file-sharing does not necessarily go down significantly just because you have legal services available. Both of these points don’t give universities much incentive to make campus deals.

In any case, we’ll see what happens. The RIAA sued no more than 25 students at each of the 18 schools (this statistic somehow meant to make us feel better since they claim to have evidence of many more cases of infringement). I sincerely hope that at least one of those students will fight back, will file a countersuit, will do something to stand up to the entertainment industry’s targeting of college students and universities in general. Maybe then they can get back to actually providing entertainment rather than punishing their customers and we can get back to the business of educating students.

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1. RIAA continues fight while new company tries paradigm shift
2. Universities and Napster
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For example, when they discover Willy Wonka and his crew attempting to link up with Space Hotel “USA,” the Chief of the Army exclaims, “Let’s blow them up first, crash bang wallop bang-bang-bang-bang… Come on, Mr. P… Let’s have some really super-duper explosions!” And as they try to figure out who is in the great glass elevator, the Chief Spy plays a game of twenty questions and he leads the President into coming up with his own crazy conspiracy theory as to who these people are and what they are trying to do. More insanity ensues and let’s not forget Miss Tibbs, the Vice President, who also happened to be the President’s nanny. She’s constantly seen having to guide him along and actually sings a song where she laments the fact that she helped the idiot become president.

The book was originally published around 1972, but it’s strangely and frighteningly appropriate for 2005.

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Committee to Protect Bloggers

Of course, although it’s perfectly legal when done according to each band’s/artist’s trading policies, just using BitTorrent on my computer makes me nervous because of my employer’s current policy on copyright complaints (for staff, three strikes you’re fired and my home network is currently on their network). Can the music industry really think it’s good to make its customers this paranoid, this scared?

In any case, if you’re interested, check out bt.etree.org, the community tracker site for etree.org and get connected. And remember, don’t be a leech!

But because we’re talking about “technology” and this new phenomenon of “blogs” (which, by the way, let’s admit, have existed in many forms long before personal publishing systems, RSS feeds, and commercial blog services/sites), we think that somehow, the rules of engagement are different. On one hand, people think that because of the feeling of anonymity on the Internet (which is only a feeling for the most part and you’re probably easier to track online than most places), putting things out there on the Internet isn’t somehow going to bite you in the ass someday. On the flip side, some think that just because it’s on the Web, blog entries are factual, representative of something, and/or important. But outside of official news blogs (and even then), they are actually rarely factual, representative of the blogger only, and not that important to anyone, including the blogger himself. There are “blog celebrities” out there with extremely high readership, but for the most part, opinions expressed on somebody’s blog usually only represent that blogger’s opinions and are read by a very small audience usually made up of people he knows.

The real difference between online and offline opinion spouting is that for the most part, what you put online (and unprotected) is completely accessible to everyone, even if no one really looks at it. And with that key difference in mind, my rule of thumb before putting something on my blog or posting to another blog or putting anything on the Web in general would be, if I’m not willing to stand up in a crowded room filled with my enemies and say it through a bullhorn, then I probably shouldn’t do it. Also, when talking about specific people or topics that involve specific people I know (even if they aren’t mentioned by name or description), I wouldn’t say anything I’m not willing to say to their face. The point is that, it’s the fucking Internet people: it’s really hard to cop out and say things behind someone’s back. And while nothing may come of it most of the time, you have to be prepared for the worst case scenario– could you lose a friend, could you get sued, could you lose your job? If you’re not ready to face the worst case scenario (I’m not saying you have to accept it– you just have to be ready to face it and deal with it, whatever way you decide), you probably shouldn’t do it.

Now, your line between appropriate and inappropriate might be in a very different place than mine. And others around you, after reading your words, will most surely take the opportunity to tell you where to put your line. Personally, I think that there are general guidelines that bloggers, depending on the nature of their content, should use and then after that, it’s up to you. Ah, the sweet taste of personal freedom.

First, personal blogs that are like diaries– essentially, “live journals.” This is where you can get into a lot of trouble in your personal life if you get a little carried away and forget the aforementioned rule that if you aren’t willing to stand up in a crowded room and say it through a bullhorn or say it directly to anybody who is involved, you probably shouldn’t say it. If you secretly lust after young children and have and never will tell anybody that you do, you probably shouldn’t write about it on your blog. If you’ve been thinking about breaking up with your boyfriend, but haven’t and aren’t ready to talk to him about it, blogging your break up thoughts is probably a bad idea. If you had a horrible time at a party and you’re not prepared to have the host of the party bitch you out, even if her name isn’t mentioned, you probably shouldn’t write about it. Blogging bad or private things about your friends is a good way to have no friends fast and while blogging deeply personal things about yourself might seem cathartic at first, it’s also a good way to invite people to judge you, attack you, critize you, and further invade your privacy. And last but not least, if you’re going to get into talking about any public topic– politics, social issues, current events, sports, anything– be ready to hear every supporting and dissenting opinion in every degree of politeness and reason possible, including none. This is the price we pay, but for every bunch of assholes out there, there are a bunch of people who aren’t and who are genuinely interested in discourse. Some of them might agree with you, but more of them will probably disagree with you and while nobody may change their opinions, effective communication could bring increased understanding and some type of cooperation.

Now, on the other end, there are the corporate blogs where people maintain blogs as official representatives of their employers, such as IEBlog, the blog for the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft. These are usually pretty tame, even if they offer insight into what’s going on at a company that’s otherwise unavailable. And because they’re “official,” content is filtered through PR, legal, and the like and there’s not much trouble individuals can get into.

Of course, most blogs, from my experience, are a combination of personal and professional content in the same way that a person usually isn’t just about his personal life or his professional life. I mean, even if you don’t live to work, you spend around eight hours a day at work– everyone’s got something to say about their job, even if it’s just to say that you hate it. Especially when you work in tech, one usually bleeds into the other and when you want to talk about something going on at work, you usually want to talk about other larger topics and related issues and you end up talking not just about your job or your employer, but the larger industry you work in or are a part of. One pretty well-known example of this category is Rob Scoble’s Scobeleizer (Microsoft). The blog branches out into looking at technology in general and some personal notes, but much of it is about working at Microsoft, things Microsoft is doing, where Microsoft has been and where Microsoft is going. And of course, the dilemma faced by these bloggers is getting into trouble with their employers or even other corporate entities they discuss, the worst case being sued or dooced (although in the example, Scoble is obnoxiously supportive of Microsoft). And of course, the prime example of the latter (and the term’s namesake) is Heather Armstrong who was fired for posting stories about her coworkers and workplace on her Web site. There are a couple of other well-known examples of this too– the woman who was fired by Friendster or the man who was fired by Microsoft.

When people first started getting fired for blogging, I think many were surprised that employers were looking at employee Web sites and that you could get in trouble for it. That’s a little naive, isn’t it? Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but considering how much we’re online these days, I think we’re all a little wiser and we’re all a little more wary– or at least should be. I’m not familiar with the details of all of the aforementioned cases, but I’ll bet that for the most part, the company was overreacting or reacting inappropriately and if it happened to me tomorrow, I’d probably sue for wrongful termination. As unfair as it might seem, you have to go into it knowing that you could lose your job for what you write online (and probably most of what you do online) and be prepared to fight it if you don’t think you should have lost your job. What you do online can get you in trouble offline, but even broader than that, there’s always a chance that you’ll get in trouble for something you say or do for no good reason– no matter how much you might think you had a right to say or do it and no matter how much you think the First Amendment and other laws protect you. Get used to it. As a minority, it’s a way of life.

Yes, it’s a pretty cynical way of going about life, but unfortunately, it’s a reality. The more important lesson though is, like I said, that you should protect yourself as much as you can along the way and if it does happen to you, be ready to fight. More on this in my next post.

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But what is is that makes me want to live in this world? Well, the Democratic White House is obvious, especially with Martin Sheen’s portrayal of President Bartlett. He’s highly educated, intelligent and talented. He’s a man of character and integrity, knows the Bible like the back of his hand, and while a devout Catholic, he is also modern and tolerant, understanding that the Bible was written a long time ago by fallible human beings. And while the show does tend to shy away from the radical policies and programs that are very unlikely to happen in real life (they often attempt them, but by the end of the episode, you realize why it’s so hard to do those types of things), there are some great moments that you can live out in this fictional world: the appointment of the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, peace (or something close to it) in the Middle East, and most recently, the rise of a woman to the position of White House Chief of Staff.

But aside from great writing, interesting story lines, and the opportunity to watch a West Wing staff pursuing Democratic party ideals, the real reason I want to live in this world is that, at the end of the day, it makes you feel good about government. It makes you feel like even those who you disagree with, even those whose ideas you would spend a lifetime fighting against are, in the end, patriots and really do have the country’s best interest at heart. It makes you feel like while the culture war is real, the left and the right can come together to do great things. It makes you believe that government really is a place that people come together to have a great debate and that even though everyone doesn’t agree how to do it, everyone shares a common goal of serving the public and making America a better place for everyone. It’s a feeling that many of us have been missing for the past four years and will most likely miss for another four.

Many are saying that supporters voted along moral lines in support of President Bush. Well, I wonder about our own moral compasses if the majority of Americans saw President Bush as moral and sharing the same values, values that we wanted to see in our leader. So many questioned President Clinton’s character because of his extramarital affairs and impeached him because he lied about them. But why are we not holding President Bush to the same standard when it comes to going to war on false premises and continuing to risk American lives on a fool’s errand? Why are we willing to ignore that, to let President Bush get away with that, but we find it so hard to forgive President Clinton? In the case of President Clinton, I would say his wife and his daughter paid the greatest price for his indiscretions, they are the real victims. But President Bush’s crusade? The real victims of his mistakes are those we lost on 9/11 as well as their families and loved ones. America’s presence in Iraq is disrespectful to their memories– the tragedy of their deaths are used to wage an unjust war and their murderers walk free. And ultimately, the victims of President Bush’s mistakes are all Americans as our tax dollars are spent and our brothers and sisters are sent overseas while real social, political, and economic problems continue at home.

The problem with democracy is that the majority wins. Unfortunately, the majority isn’t always right and it’s strange to think that when it comes to choosing our political leaders, a candidate winning the popular vote means he has a mandate (although, interestingly enough, this was not President Bush’s story four years ago– his mandate was from the Supreme Court). In so many other areas, the common wisdom is that “average people” aren’t that bright and that more often than not, popular opinion isn’t always the right answer. The times when the minority opinion has been able to push through and win have often been the most important turning points in our time– American independence, abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, the civil rights movement. They were not popular efforts, but in the end, they were the right ones.

So, how do we balance out this struggle between a committment to majority rule and the realization that popular opinion isn’t always the right choice? I’m not quite sure of the answer to that one, but I think part of the responsibility is in our political leaders. We have a representative democracy in this country and most political leaders are elected through a popular vote. Unfortunately, with the way elections and campaigns are run, political leaders are often more worried about keeping their jobs than doing their jobs and while they are representing the interests of their constituents, sometimes political leaders need to step out and go against the majority and fight for the minority opinion. And what if their constituents don’t like it? Well, then convince them of why the less popular choice is the better choice and in the end, maybe it won’t be less popular after all.

Of course, I’m not saying the minority opinion is always the right one, but just because a lot of people want something doesn’t mean it’s right. A lot of people want tax cuts, but a tax cut today doesn’t mean you’ll never have to pay. It just means you’ll pay later. We’re slowly marching toward a society where we’ve bankrupted important social programs– social security being the biggest one– and while we may not pay now, our children and grandchildren will certainly pay the price in the future. Is that the kind of legacy we want to leave our children?

The truth is that as we move further into the new millenium, the world will only grow more complicated and the problems of tomorrow are far beyond the comprehension of “average people.” The problems of tomorrow will not be easily solved by sticking to “family and faith” because with the growing diversity of this country, the question always comes: who’s family? Who’s faith? Yours, mine, his, hers? With new technology and a whole new field of complicated social, political, and economic issues, the problems of tomorrow will not be easily solved by smart people or moral leaders. Intelligence, talent, character, integrity and courage must come together to solve the problems of tomorrow. The real question is– how long will we have to wait for that? Right now, it looks like at least four years.

For live reporting of election results (based on exit polls), check out CNN. From a pure technology standpoint, this is great use of Web technology– clear representation of detailed data, at a glance and with variable levels of granularity. Especially cool is how you can click on states and see gradients of color that show how strong each party won in each county.

Cool video: Eminem’s Mosh. He’s not exactly heading up Creative Commons, but from what I’ve seen, Eminem takes all the file-sharing hoopla with a grain of salt (and a sense of humor)– on MTV a while back, he walked into a record store and bought his own CD, commenting to the cashier and customers that he downloaded it off of the Internet, but it didn’t sound as good. On top of that, while his last album was one of the largest uses of copy protection at the time, his new album actually includes an incentive program. People who buy his newest album (instead of downloading it illegally off of the Internet) when it’s released on November 16th will be eligible for prizes. And now he’s freely distributing his music video for “Mosh,” expressing the rage that many of feel toward President Bush and his administration as well as spreading a great message to get out there and vote. What’s even better than that? That the group of hooded crusaders get together and storm… the polling station and get in line to vote. For all the horrible things that people think and say about Eminem (not me– I’m a big fan), Mosh is certainly a throwback to a time where rap music was more about politics and activism, giving voice to an unheard community, rather than bitches, hoes, and the bling. Bling.

It would certainly be interesting to conduct a similar experiment here in the United States (although there was one done in 2003 to compare takedown procedures in the US and the UK). Specifically, one targeting universities. Why universities? Because around the country, young college students are somehow becoming the target of the entertainment industry because universities, afraid of liability, have been so easy to comply with these notices, and students, intimidated by the legal forces of the entertainment industry, rush to settle out of court. No matter how rich private universities might be, they cannot possibly compare to the financial and legal powerhouses of the entertainment industry and no matter how many kids with rich parents go to these universities, the entertainment industry simply targets all students (and although this doesn’t justify theft, you might wonder why they’re illegally downloading music in the first place– maybe they can’t afford it?). Aside from the widespread use of file-sharing applications on college campuses (partly out of liberal computing policies to encourage academic freedom, partly because college students are early adopters of new technologies), they are, unfortunately, easy targets.

But on top of the legal problems, the price for students is much greater because of the disciplinary actions more and more schools are taking. If Comcast or AOL or whoever cuts off your network access because of repeat copyright complaints, you can simply choose another ISP. But it is not as easy to choose another college and on most campuses, impossible to choose another ISP. More importantly, more schools are taking steps to restrict access not only to Internet service, but also general online services, like email and Intranet resources, and it would be naive to think that computing resources and network access aren’t essential to academics in this day and age. And because these complaints accuse students of breaking copyright law (although they are still civil complaints), schools take it one step further and take disciplinary action, whether its standing before judicial affairs groups, writing an essay about what they did wrong, or simply just getting suspended or even expelled. So then, the price becomes even greater for these young students that, at least in my mind, universities should be trying to protect– but I guess “in loco parentis” applies to keeping men and women in separate dormitories and regulating dating behavior, but not protecting them from questionable civil complaints.

Well, if that’s what universities want to do, fine. The bigger problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any due process. In the same way that those ISPs took down those Web sites without (presumably) even checking whether the claim was valid, I don’t think most universities are taking the time out to verify the validity of copyright complaints, but are taking the time to punish students for mere accusations. Maybe most students are illegally file-sharing and so many people have participated in illegal file-sharing at least once so its difficult for us to see past our own behavior, but I don’t believe all complaints are valid. The entertainment industry has been known to send false/incorrect takedown notices and because there is no penalty for sending invalid complaints, there’s nothing really stopping me from just spamming DMCA agents all over the country, arbitrarily looking up IP subnets and claiming copyright infringement. As far as I can tell, universities as well as ISPs are not actively verifying that the complaining parties are actually the copyright owners (much less real people). But more insidious than that is they are not verifying that the files are actually being shared up at all by the accused party. We’re just taking the entertainment industry’s word for it and punishing our students.

But what if we were to verify that the files were being shared up and found that they were? Well, that doesn’t automatically mean we should convict either. If you haven’t thought of it yet, think about the sharp increase in computer security vulnerabilities and exploits. Aside from launching DoS attacks and stealing/destroying your personal data, viruses and other exploits also take control of your computer to illegally share up copyrighted materials. So, in these cases, files are being illegally shared, but not by the choice of the computer’s owner. And you might say, “well, that’s the price they pay for not keeping their computers secure.” But if you got a speeding ticket because you had a broken speedometer, would you just pay the ticket and accept the points onto your record? Besides, an exploit for an operating system vulnerability could come out before the patch was available and if you just happen to be that unlucky, you could get infected within hours or even minutes and soon, the DMCA complaints could be rolling in one after another. And you may not even know you’re infected until you get one, two, three or even more DMCA complaints. And the lack of timeliness with which DMCA complaints are often filed only complicates matters– by the time you receive them, you may have already cleaned and patched your machine, making it that much harder to prove that you were infected at some point and that the files were shared without your knowledge.

Everyone is so afraid of getting sued that we’ve gone right past one of the most important concepts in our society– that we are innocent until proven guilty– and instead, we are interpreting accusations as actual violations. And instead of placing the burden of proof on the accuser, we simply roll over and let accusation equal guilt. Are these the ideals we want to be holding up in our higher education institutions, in the places from which we draw tomorrow’s leaders? Are these the lessons we want to teach them, the attitude we want them to take and the standard to which we want to hold them?

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Problem: poor people, usually those who are traditionally disadvantaged because of race or ethnicity, can’t afford computers and therefore, can’t compete in today’s job market or digital world in general.

Solution: give computers to said poor people or make cheaper computers/make computers cheaper so poor people can afford them.

Case in point: the PCtvt. (Let’s put aside for the moment that a $250 computer for a person making, at the most, $2000 per year is still over ten percent of his annual income.) By bundling television, DVD player, telephone and videophone capabilities into this computer, Reddy hopes to finally bring “computing and communications to populations that until now have been excluded from the digital world.” That’s all fine and good– he’s admirably trying to bring three decades worth of technology to these communities all at once– but the thing that really drives home my point is something he points out himself: because it can be controlled by a simple remote control, it will be beneficial particularly in places with large populations of people who cannot read. Reddy says he thought about what somebody on the other side of the digital divide would really want and the answer he came up with was entertainment.

Doesn’t anybody else see how messed up this is? Hello, have you met some people on the other side of the digital divide? They may want entertainment and be willing to pay more than five percent of their annual income to get it, but is this really where we want to be putting our money and effort when it comes to helping those less fortunate? There are large populations of people who can’t read and our biggest concern right now is providing them with cheap home entertainment centers? Instead of trying to bridge the digital divide, how about bridging this reading divide? And while we’re at it, why don’t we bridge the math divide, the housing divide, the health care divide, the food divide? Why don’t we help people get better housing, have better schools, live healthier? Maybe then they can have both the time and the money to own and use computers and participate in the digital world. Even if people are giving away computers to disadvantaged communities– as some are as part of their effort to bridge this gap– it doesn’t really help the fact that I’m worried about buying food next week or paying my rent. Even if I have a computer– PCtvt or Dell Dimension– it doesn’t really help me because I can’t eat it, wear it or live in it.

You want to bridge the digital divide? Bridge all of those more basic divides and you’ll see the digital divide grow smaller all by itself.

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I wonder though if this kind of stuff continues, whether the RIAA and the MPAA will make a stink that universities are just encouraging illegal downloading of copyrighted materials. I mean, unlike the recent Napster deals, giving out iPods doesn’t discourage illegally downloading music. Duke is distributing the portable digital music players as “part of an initiative to encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life.” Which makes me smirk because that’s what many of us have been saying is the reason for college campuses to have liberal computing and network usage policies– to promote the university’s educational mission by allowing experimentation and self-learning, especially the exploration of “creative uses of technology.” And many people would consider file-sharing, breaking DRM systems, and experimenting with what you can get on and off portable storage devices like iPods certainly as “creative uses of technology.”

Or maybe the next big iPod security risk will be violation of the Honor Code. I’m assuming that even though Duke will encourage iPods to be an integral part of coursework, the powers-that-be will have to ban them from exams (much like how many have had to ban cell phones and in a previous generation, graphing calcultors).

Links:
Slashdot post
Duke News & Communications release

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1. Universities and Napster

While those arguments are somewhat valid, they are also short-sighted. And I don’t know if it’s because people don’t know much about how universities work or because when you have an online forum, you get a lot of not-very-thought-out comments. Probably both. In any case, my point is that yes, it won’t stop students from downloading copyrighted music illegally, but it will probably stop a significant percentage of them since not every college student jumps on the illegal file-sharing bandwagon as quickly as the media and the entertainment industry makes it out to seem. You still have to actually know about programs like Kazaa and BitTorrent and whatever-the-next-thing-is and you have to know how to use these technologies, where to look, etc. And with bandwidth caps and shaping, sometimes even blocking, of file-sharing traffic on an increasing number of college campuses, it makes it even harder. Not to mention that it’s getting harder and harder nowadays to get a decent download of a song on the first try. Realistically, if you find the right price point that’s trivial enough for the average college student, they will pay for music. And no matter what record companies might say, there are still plenty of college students who may download copyrighted music illegally but also buy CDs on a regular basis. The Try before you buy digital music model actually works a lot of the time.

But in general, when you’re talking about how many college students listen to digital music, an investment into some type of campus digital music service isn’t an idea that should be dismissed so readily. And especially when you consider how much of a resource suck DMCA complaints and file-sharing has become on college campuses, it’s worth it to many universities to come up with a better solution. Many universities are drowning in a sea of file-sharing and copyright melodrama and everybody is scared shitless of the threat of liability. That’s why universities are forming groups like the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Community Members– it may seem like they’re just getting in bed with the RIAA and the MPAA, but there’s also a desperation in alliances like this one. Universities know that something needs to be done because it really can’t go on like this– with students getting sued and university legal offices and IT departments spending all of their resources on handling DMCA issues– much longer. By choosing to provide a service like Napster, some universities are simply hoping that they’ll save money in the long run so that they can get back to the business of educating their students instead of the business of worrying about everybody getting sued.

Personally, I think that big (read: rich) universities like Stanford and MIT should lead the charge in standing up to the RIAA and the MPAA. I know, the real fear is that if they did do something like that, the RIAA and the MPAA could unleash all of their resources against them and even higher-ed powerhouses like Stanford and MIT could most likely never fight back with the same force. But you never know. These universities are leaders in technology and research and are home to people like Larry Lessig and campaigns like Computer Scientists for Social Responsibility and Verified Voting. Who knows what support they might be able to drum up if they decided to fight this fight?

In the meantime, I think digital music services like iTunes and Napster should consider offering educational pricing for all students and not worry about making deals with each individual institution. Verifying enrollment and student status might be a challenge, but think about how many college students would jump on that!

Link

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What has our government gotten us, and the world, into? There was once a time when a Roman citizen could walk the earth without the danger of being touched because of the fear of Rome’s retribution. I would argue that an American citizen once enjoyed that same privilege. But today, our citizens and now even those of our allies pay the ultimate price in this attempt to bring freedom to an unprepared and uncooperative people. If this war has shown us anything, it has shown us not only the failure of the US to bring democracy by force, but also the failure of the US to protect its people throughout the world. While the Department of Homeland Security clamors to protect our borders and shield us from foreign attacks, the blanket of protection once provided by fear of US military force and retribution has been taken away from Americans throughout the world. We are hated and disrespected and being a citizen of the last superpower on earth can no longer keep us safe. Many think of the September 11th attacks as evidence that American borders are not impenetrable. I believe they also showed us that American citizenship is no longer invincible.

I mourn for the families, friends, and countrymen of Kim, Johnson, Berg and others we have lost in one way or another during this war. I mourn for America’s place in this world. We may be the richest country in the world, but each day, we lose the respect of our allies, our enemies and in the end, perhaps our own people.

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This fits in nicely with (and includes a reference to) Princeton professor Edward Felten who gave the keynote this morning at the ResNet Conference. Yikes, it was at 9 am EST (hello 6 am for those of us from the West Coast), but well worth it to have someone remind ResNet professionals from around the country the importance of the freedom to tinker, “your freedom to understand, discuss, repair, and modify the technological devices you own.”

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However, we must remember that this does not mean North Korea is looking for change– just for aid. There is no indication that the admission of carelessness will be released within the country– North Korean citizens may continue to live in the dark and be fed propaganda about the accident– and while they tell the world that over half of the casualties were schoolchildren, the North Korean government points a finger at the US, accusing us of planning to attack the isolated country. On one hand, they loosen their tight hold on their borders to let in international aid, but on the other, when the US decides to pull troops from the DMZ, the North Korean government claims this is preparation for a pre-emptive attack.

The release of these two stories on the same day is a testament to the truly unpredictable and, for lack of a better word, insane nature of the North Korean regime.

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Maybe things won’t go as badly as I thought. Maybe this will open up North Korea’s borders just a little bit and we’ll be able to find that glimmer of hope we had four years ago, before the Bush administration, before the Axis of Evil, back when for a brief moment, outsiders were allowed into the isolated country, if only to hold long lost loved ones for a few seconds before letting them go again.

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After the September 11th attacks in both New York and at the Pentagon, 3,030 people died; 2,337 were injured. While the numbers are much larger than the first estimates from today’s accident on the other side of the world, 3,000 is still a shocking number for, what it seems like, just an accident. In this day and age, it is hard to believe that two trains, on their regular routes, would somehow accidentally crash into each other so violently and cause such destruction.

But ironically, this is a country in which “self-reliance” is everything and that means one of the greatest military build-ups in history, even if the entire nation’s infrastructure is in decay and, just as an example, trains are always breaking down, often leaving crowds of people stranded until the electricity can be restored. Of course, you would think that at least fuel trains would have priority in this country, would not be run-down or decaying or susceptible to an accident of this magnitude. You would think since fuel trains are more important than, let’s say, food, they would be maintained better, function better.

In North Korea, both children and adults suffer from famine. Die from famine. How can you be self-reliant and protect your people when you cannot even feed them? No, instead, they will die and then you will only be protecting the millions of bodies of an oppressed people. But you have trained them well and they will tell you through their dying breaths that they are happy because North Korea and the North Korean people are self-reliant.

And now, with news of this horrible accident today, we must turn our gaze upon you again and watch from far away, peeking our heads over your high fences, trying to get a glimpse of what happened, what is going on. Part of it may be morbid curiosity that pushes us to peek– like slowing down as you drive past a fender bender on the side of the road. But personally, I’m watching to see how many have really been injured. How many have really been lost. And who they might have been.

Immediately after the accident, the North Korean government declared an emergency in the area, but then cut off all international phone lines. They did not want the story to leak. And by Friday morning in the northern half of the Land of Morning Calm, they had still not even mentioned the disaster.

South Korea’s acting President ordered his government to prepare aid if necessary and hospitals along the Chinese border prepare for a large influx in patients and offer help to their neighbor. But most of us know that while the aid will probably be very necessary, the request will never come. I will be surprised if the North Korean government even acknowledges the accident. We will most likely never hear a final casualty or injury count.

We mourn those who were lost or injured today not just because of this horrible disaster, but because they have been lost to us now for over fifty years– long enough for the pain to have subsided, but short enough for it to be remembered and return again sharply. While terrible accidents happen, they will suffer even more because of a terrorism that eats away within their own country against their own people. A terrorism that teaches militarism and self-reliance over feeding and educating children. A terrorism that will allow thousands to suffer after an accident just to save face, just to avoid asking for help. Just for the sake of self-reliance. How many will die because they were not found quickly enough within all the debris? How many will die because they could not be treated quickly enough or with the right type of modern medicine?

There might not be anywhere near as many casualties and injuries as there were after the September 11th attacks and perhaps, if truly an accident, at least we will not find the face of terrorism and hate behind the forces that killed our loved ones today.

Instead, we will wonder if they are alive. We– the global community– will read news reports of rumors and stories from along the Chinese border and we will wonder if our family might have been in the area. But for Koreans everywhere outside of that tiny isolated nation, the anticipation and frustration won’t be like calling the New York City area on the morning of September 11, 2001, only to hear a blaring busy signal because the phonelines were flooded. We can’t call. We can’t write. We can’t send an email. No, instead, we will wonder, again, if family members and friends left behind are still alive, whether they were in the accident or not. Whether they were even near the accident or not. We will continue to wonder like we have for over fifty years, wonder about the brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers we lost in a political divide not so long ago. We will wonder if they survived the war, if they built families, have jobs or homes. We will wonder if they were lucky enough to survive all of these years of famine and isolation. We will wonder if they would recognize us if they ever saw us again. We will wonder if we could recognize them.

Before, civil unions seemed like the answer– it was this kinder, gentler thing that wouldn’t challenge the religious institution of marriage while still trying to find a solution. However, the MA court ruling flipped that switch in all of our heads and we realized, hey, they’re right– civil unions aren’t enough! Separate, but equal is rarely ever equal and civil unions are a watered-down, cop out answer to this issue. If we, as a society, are going to say that sexual orientation is not a valid basis for discrimination, then we cannot bar homosexuals from the right to join together in a legally recognized union and we cannot place special conditions or limits on that institution simply because the two parties are of the same sex. Either we discriminate or we do not.

Many have been criticizing those city officials who have been performing these marriage ceremonies, saying that no one is above the law. True, (theoretically) no one is above the law– our judicial system depends on that– but it is our responsibility as citizens to challenge the laws we believe to be wrong. Unfortunately, because they are breaking the law as city officials, they can be removed from office, but at the end of the day, they are courageous and selfless in their endeavors. They truly live up to their duties and responsibilities as both civil leaders and as citizens, using their political power to give voice to those who were not being heard, even if it is at the cost of the office itself. Mayors like Gavin Newsome and Jason West are heroes in this day and age where politicians are afraid to stray from the middle and afraid to fight the fights that need fighting. West’s case is particularly compelling– technically, he was breaking the law, but haven’t all great civil rights battles been fought through civil disobedience? I find it surprising that people are so quick to say that West and his compatriots are doing wrong simply because they are breaking the law. Well duh– although marriage has not been officially defined as a union between a man and a woman, the prevailing legal practice bars gay marriage and “solemnizing” a marriage between two people of the same sex is illegal. We get that. But that’s the whole point. The fight for civil rights starts with the small things– everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks. All she did was refuse to sit at the back of the bus, but it was a beginning. West follows in the footsteps of Parks and Dr. King and Gandhi– he knew he would have to pay a price and he complied peacefully when the day came, but not without challenging the law itself and inspiring so many more through his example.

Related posts:

1. Separate but equal is never equal

That’s beautiful.

Most straight people who are together don’t want to get married, but look at how desperate so many same-sex couples want to get married and publicly declare their love and lifetime committment to each other. Someone should do a study, if they haven’t already, of same-sex couples in general or specifically, these newlywed couples and see how long they stay together after getting married, whether the legality of it sticks or not. I bet same-sex couples would have a much lower rate of divorce– you know why? When you have been denied a right for so long, you appreciate it when you are finally given it. The ban on same-sex marriage, if anything, has probably only made marriage an even more sacred and more cherished union to same-sex couples.

If the courts have now ruled that “sodomy” is no longer illegal, then the courts have declared that this type of physical interaction between members of the same sex is, for lack of a better word, “okay” (or at least the laws that make it illegal are unconstitutional and a violation of privacy). If we can recognize the “okay-ness” of the physical act, isn’t it only natural to extend that “approval” to the emotional and spiritual relationship that can accompany the act? How ironic that so many will revile homosexuals for their presumed promiscuity and unsafe sex practices, but they will not grant them the right to marriage and the opportunity to declare to the world that they are partners in life, committed and true? I bet through legalized same-sex marriage, many homosexuals will publicly disprove the negative stereotypes that have plagued them in this country.

I use to think that civil unions were the solution, but Massachusetts was right. Civil unions are not enough. We are thinking too small. Marriage, truly and completely, is the only real answer. Have we not learned that “separate, but equal” is rarely ever equal?

Whether it was a stunt or a genuine “wardrobe flaw,” looking at that picture (conveniently blown up for everyone at Drudge Report), neither one of them look very happy at that moment. Nevertheless, Janet and Justin have managed to get a lot of publicity over this and as they always say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In my opinion, the real people who will be made to pay will be MTV– everyone seems to be holding them ultimately responsible and gone will be the days where MTV can be the “cool, young, hip” part of “mainstream media” (i.e., the major networks during primetime). No more half-time shows, no more grudging respect for their Rock the Vote campaign. Instead, I foresee a future where MTV will be relegated once again to the backwoods of cable TV where they will be considered a liberal, fringe media outlet that serves up sex and shock along with music videos and rock stars. This time, they may have gone too far and whatever respect they have managed to gain as a media presence has been severely tainted.

Personally, I could not care less about the “incident.” I watched the Superbowl on a 57″ television in high definition sitting about eight feet away and even with my well-trained eye, I thought she was wearing a pastie. And while that may not be a whole lot better, Lil’ Kim got away with that years ago.

Music Industry Sues Hundreds Over Piracy

ISPs and the RIAA go head to head yet again. Interestingly enough, there hasn’t been much news about lawsuits against college students– and subpoenas for universities– lately. Perhaps picking on young, college students and non-profit educational institutions wasn’t doing much for the RIAA’s warm and fuzzy appeal?

The second article is on a new company called Magnatune. When you do a Google search on the name, you get their Web site as the top hit with the tag line “try before you buy MP3 music.” I swear to God I said the same thing the other day. And when you read more about the company, it gets even spookier:

Apple’s iTunes might not be only answer to ending piracy

Oh, and by the way, if the RIAA is losing so much money from illegal file-sharing, how do they have so much money to be filing so many subpoenas and lawsuits in so many different states?

Related posts:

1. New Paradigm
2. Living in Oblivion

However, as much of a technocrat as I might be, I do see the value in physical media. With physical media, you get liner notes, album cover art, and preservation of presentation– the artist usually chooses a particular order in which songs appear on the album and there’s a reason for that. It will be a long time before all of these things become useless to the public (perhaps never) AND it will be a long time before the entire music buying public jumps onto the digital music bandwagon. The music industry needs to embrace digital music, file-sharing and everything they have to offer, but it also needs to come up with a workable hybrid model that marries the benefits of both the digital music world and the hard media world.

I’m not so arrogant to believe that I’m the only one who ever came up with this very general, non-constructive suggestion, but I was once again reminded of this challenge as I was listening to music in my car via my trusty iPod. To be honest, I only buy CDs when I KNOW I am going to like almost all of the songs on an album AND I have some type of long-term interest in the artist. So, even if I liked all the songs on the newest pop star’s album, I wouldn’t buy it unless I believed that the artist looked like s/he would a) make it past the latest episode of MTV’s TRL and b) I would keep listening and enjoying his/her music when s/he does. Unfortunately, this leaves me with owning and buying CDs by a very small number of artists that I started listening to before the digital music explosion and that luckily, I was able to discover, try out and come to love. It also leaves me with a few random CDs from artists that never made it past their first or second album or that I couldn’t stand to listen to after their first or second album.

Today, I add artists to that privileged list for which I actually buy CDs by trying before buying. Unfortunately, online music stores rarely offer more than very short clips of a few songs on a particular CD and I don’t have the time to sit there in the brick-and-mortar music store and listen to the whole CD (if I were lucky enough for the CD I want to buy to be in the listening kiosk). In fact, even if I did have the time, listening to just one CD isn’t enough, which is why I have random CDs lying around in my collection (which I will refrain from naming here). I want to listen to many CDs, listen to a “Best of” type compilation of a particular artist before I decide whether I’m going to sign on as a member of his fan club and start doling out my hard-earned money on some music, digital or otherwise.

Realistically, given today’s music sales model, the only way to really do this (without spending money) is a) listen to your friend’s CDs or b) download some digital music. The music industry needs to admit that trying before buying, not free music for everyone, is the model they are being pushed towards and the sooner they realize that and stop trying to punish their customers for pushing them, the sooner everyone will stop villifying them. The music industry should take a tip from drug dealers. If the music industry would just come through on the trying part, the public will come through on the buying part, but not before then.

Addendum: all of the above also holds true for the television industry. If I wanted to start watching a television show that had already been on for several seasons, I would want to catch up with all the previous seasons’ episodes. Considering the painfully slow speed with which television shows are, if ever, released on DVD or video, downloading them online is an increasingly popular option. However, if I’m not allowed to download them online (perhaps because of anti-copying locks on television broadcasts), I frankly will be less likely to start watching a show other than from the beginning. The television industry needs to come up with a new ad/commercial model to make television-on-demand a viable option because at it’s core, it’s a try before you buy model.

Related posts:

1. Living in Oblivion

While the war in Iraq continues, North Korea rears its ugly head again and reminds us of a conflict that we had decidedly tried to ignore. The truth is that we should have paid this issue the proper attention months ago when they were kicking out UN officials, taking out fuel rods, testing missiles and tailing American spy planes. Time and time again, smart people around the world have been saying that this is the most unpredictable and unstable regime in the world. In fact, North Korea’s highest ranking defector has said this and confirmed what we were all fearing: Kim Jong Il is not just using nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip. If necessary, if pushed into a corner, he will use them.

But what bothers me the most about all of this is that all of the progress we seemed to have made during the Clinton administration has been undone by the current one. By not giving the crisis in North Korea the necessary attention and by taking an overly strict stance, the Bush administration has brought us back ten years, only this time, the North Koreans have had time to truly develop their nuclear weapons program. Gone are the inspirational days when families were reuniting for the first time after fifty years of separation, where brother could see brother once again, even if for a few moments under heavy guard. Gone are the days when North and South walked under one flag, even if only at the Olympics. Gone are the days when North Korea seemed to be willing to open up to South Korea so that Koreans could be united for one brief moment and perhaps, the world could see it as a sign that one day, outsiders would be allowed into the isolated country and bring compassion, democracy and change.

As a Korean American, I hold no allegiance to North Korea. If anything, I am among the most adamant about ending its dictatorial regime. Instead, I hold allegiance to America and Americans, to human beings both inside and outside of North Korea and the Korean peninsula, hoping that we will not be victims of nuclear war, of famine, of the unpredictable insanity of a dictator. And I hold allegiance to the Korean people, whether we are in North Korea, South Korea, the US or anywhere else, that we might be able to see families reunited, our people united once again. That we will no longer see our brothers and sisters living in hunger, in fear, in a quiet desperation under the control of a dictator.

Cartoon taken from NBC 10′s News Today.

Related posts:

1. Those nefarious North Koreans
2. The code word is “Bahamas”
3. Vindicated

But with what I’ve been seeing in the news lately, the world seems to be in such a state of chaos that sometimes, I wonder, I fear that it is the end of days– or at least the beginning of a horrible time that will take a lot of time and effort to get over, correct, come back from. In the same way the world had to recover after the horrors of World War II, to recover emotionally and physically, to somehow try to correct so many wrongs and find a way to go on, I think we’ll find ourselves heading down a slippery slope that is going to take a lot to get back up.

Fires continue to burn and ravage in Southern California– and this time, it’s not nature taking its toll. If this was just a natural phenomenon, what can we do but shrug our shoulders, shake our head, and keep on fighting? But now, we find our firefighters exhausted, our neighbors homeless, injured, even dead because of a lost hunter and some arsonists.

We continue to pour money and troops into Iraq while people are jobless and struggling at home. President Bush seems to have undone all the work Carter and Clinton were able to accomplish in North Korea and the threat of nuclear war by the hand of an isolated nation and its mad leader haunt us. And all the while, we still feel the horror and painful effects of September 11th, remembering those we lost and yet, the ones who are responsible still walk free.

And even closer to home, hate continues. Congress passes poorly written laws banning medical procedures that save lives, forcing us to make a blanket decision on who deserves to live with no room for individual circumstances. And even though we came so far with the Supreme Court’s decision on sodomy, Congress works to ban gay marriage, introducing the first Constitutional amendment that would be specifically for the purpose of denying rights to a partcular group of people.

And the people seem to be desperately crying out for a remedy, for a leader who will bring some sense to this world, but we seem to be at a loss. Why else would we elect an actor as governor? Are we so madly desperate for leadership, for reprieve that we so easily forget the last time we elected an actor to governor and then president?

We’ve started down a road that we can hopefully get off, turn around and never go back down again, but nevertheless, our nation will have to go through a great mending period to set things right.

Well, it’s about time.

It’s been a big week for minority issues in general– affirmative action survives another attack and sodomy gets a thumbs up from the high courts. Okay, not sodomy, but privacy rights. But it’s not as funny that way.

In general, in the face of homeland security and the daily erosion of privacy rights, this week’s Supreme Court decisions have shown that the original framers of the Constitution set up a pretty good system to allow us to hold true to our ideals and change with the times. As Kennedy said, they knew that “times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress.” A propos considering Kennedy was one of the first people to use the term “affirmative action.” It’s a policy that has its flaws, but like the Constitution, can change as our society changes. The Supreme Court’s ruling proves just that– the undergraduate point system was too heavily weighted toward race, but the graduate system was deemed more fair and acceptable. It shows that we do not have to reject policies, ideas, concepts in their entirety, but make important compromises to achieve the best solution in the end.

As Joe Pesci’s character Simon Wilder says in “With Honors,” “the beauty of the Constitution is that it can always be changed. The beauty of the Constitution is that it makes no set law other than its faith in the wisdom of ordinary people to govern themselves.”

During these four days of good ol’ Midwestern fun (if I never see Ranch dressing again, it will be too soon), residential networking/computing groups from colleges and universities all over the country (and a couple world-wide) come to learn from each other, have a little fun and network (no pun intended). Last year’s hot topic was bandwidth and was a pre-cursor to this year’s hot topic: file-sharing and copyright law.

Stanford’s been dealing with the file-sharing and copyright game in a variety of ways for a while now, much longer than most universities out there, but at the end of the day, probably takes what one would consider a more “liberal” approach to the entire controversy (Larry Lessig is a Stanford Law professor, after all). It was interesting to see how many universities take such drastic measures when it comes to controlling file-sharing in terms of both bandwidth usage and copyright law. Most schools have bandwidth caps, but mostly because they have limited bandwidth available for the university as a whole and in the end, this slows down the file-sharing phenomenon on their campus. (Stanford has a gigabit backbone and shapes traffic to give priority to certain types of traffic, but does not limit bandwidth.) In terms of copyright, a few schools treat DMCA notices as junk mail, but most take them relatively seriously and try to fulfill the requirements set forth by the DMCA. Specifically, it usually involves passing on a copyright violation notice to a student (since they are usually filed against an IP address) and if the student does not comply (i.e., notify the DMCA agent that he/she stopped sharing the specified file), turn off his/her network connection. Some schools throw in some meeting with the judicial affairs group at their universities and some general education on file-sharing law and copyright.

The interesting thing at the conference was the moral stance many people took on the issue. Yes, it is a pain in the ass to many residential network staff since it takes up a lot of time and energy handling DMCA notices and dealing with students over the matter, but some people were pointing out that it was our duty as university employees to mold, to shape these young people and make sure they realized how wrong, how immoral it was to continue to participate in illegal sharing of copyrighted materials. The interesting thing was that this concept had never really come up among our staff at Stanford– yes, we know it’s technically illegal and that we should not encourage students, or anyone else, to break the law. And while we do realize the responsibility we hold as part of an educational institution to not only facilitate learning, but also to shape character, we do not consider ourselves parents or police. And specifically when it comes to file-sharing, many of us feel that file-sharing, outside of the legal issues, is not “immoral.”

I think most students feel the same way. I think if we started giving them lectures of the “moral” and “ethical” issues of file-sharing and copyright law, students would start calling the university a bunch of fascists. Just look at what happened with the alcohol policy.

Much mainstream media explains this phenomenon by stating that people to continue to file-share despite the fact that it’s illegal because “everybody’s doing it.” That’s certainly part of it– much like speed limit laws– but I know for many people at Stanford, it’s also about thumbing our nose at the establishment, showing the entertainment industry (and the people they control on Capitol Hill) that their maniacal hold on how music and movies are distributed is slowly starting to slip– as it should. Everybody talks about Microsoft as a monopoly, but people forget that there are only a handful of entertainment companies– they’re just hidden well with all their subsidiaries and partners. And consumers, file-sharers, are finding that the Internet and digital media is the start of the way to cause a revolutionary change in how business is conducted, to get their power back.

We know it’s illegal, but we break it because we believe the law to be wrong and in hopes that the law will be changed. Isn’t that what America is all about? The Internet was born here, in our research institutions and our government organizations, and it has spread across the country, the world and has invaded, pervaded every aspect of our lives, from the trivial to the essential. How can we be surprised that the Internet and digital technology have become the driving force behind revolutionary change in intellectual property rights and consumer empowerment?

Related posts:

1. File-sharing: missing the big picture?

At Stanford, the Daily publishes articles and editorials regularly on file-sharing and University policy, often causing many headaches for the administration and legal counsel. There is much argument over Stanford’s, not to mention any University’s responsbilities and policies as an ISP and under Title II of the DMCA.

However, most of this media coverage is missing the big picture– nobody should be talking about whether file-sharing is illegal when it comes to copyrighted material. It’s illegal. End of story. What the discussion, the argument, the media coverage should really be about is whether it should be illegal and what millions of people continuing to share digital music and video files says about the future of file-sharing, copyright and the entertainment industry.

Record companies and the like are filing grievances as copyright holders and while they do have the right to protect their creative works, current copyright law severely slows down the passing of material into the public domain where it can be used for learning and more importantly, to build on top of for new creative work. What good is all this art if you can’t have access to it, learn from it and build on top of it? While Disney and whoever else might want to work day and night to hold onto the rights to their own creative works, after a certain amount of time, most people don’t mind their work passing into the public domain for others to access freely and build on. (Check out the The Eric Eldred Act.)

Moreover, we spend all this time fretting over Microsoft’s OS monopoly, but we ignore the fact that the entertainment industry is controlled by a handful of companies– television, magazines, newspapers, movies and music are all owned and controlled by subsidiaries of a few media giants– and for some reason, they’ve decided to fight the changing tide of consumer activity. With the growth of the Internet, people have greater access to information than ever before and they have– and want– everything at their fingertips.

I don’t want to have to go the corner store and pick up a newspaper– I just want to quickly visit some news sites, or better yet, I want to open up my browser homepage and take a quick glance at customized headlines and content put together just for me at my favorite Internet portal.

If I or my TiVo miss that last episode of ER, I don’t want to have to wait until the reruns a year from now– I want to be able to get a copy of the episode ASAP and get caught up on the story. And my favorite episodes of the season? Oh yeah, I want those ASAP too. I can’t wait for the DVD release three years from now.

I don’t want to have to go to the bookstore and go through aisles and aisles in search of a book I know I want, but can’t seem to find because it’s either A) somewhere I don’t think it would be or B) simply out of stock. I want to be able to do a quick search online, order a book I know is in stock and have it delivered to my doorstep.

I don’t want to have to suffer through conversations with incompetent salespeople and long lines to order a new hard drive or digital camera– I just want to go online, see what’s available, read a thousand reviews on a particular type of product, and pick the one I want for the best price I can get. Even if the best price is from a noname electronics store in the middle of Kansas.

And I don’t want to have to pay for an entire CD if I don’t want to– I just want the songs I like. I’ll try the other ones, but only for free and if I like them, then I’ll buy the whole CD. And I don’t want to pay for the cost of media, packaging and liner notes that I never get in a digital media.

The current controversy over file-sharing should not be about whether or not it’s wrong to steal music– we know it’s wrong. But we aren’t doing it just because we can get away with it– well, maybe just a little. The more important thing is, we don’t care– we’ve found a better way to get our fix of movies and music and the truth is, we’re willing to pay for it. But if the entertainment companies aren’t going to provide it, we’ll find another way.

So, the war had already been going on for over 24 hours when I returned to the mainland and now that I’m done clearing things off of my TiVo, I’ve got CNN going on in the background all day long. (BTW, why is Wolf Blitzer allowed on the air?) I have to admit: I still don’t see the point of this war. Bush keeps calling it the war to free the Iraqi people and yes, Saddam is a very, very bad man, but when did the Iraqi people ever ask us to free them? Are we getting Iraqis pounding down the door seeking political asylum?

When we did this the first time with the first President Bush, at least Saddam was actively trying to move into Kuwait. See, a clearly visible act of aggression and a measured response. As for this war? I just don’t see the direct threat that everyone keeps talking about. I really do believe a peaceful solution could have been found. My theory is that it’s once again the Bush administration’s strange obsession with Iraq and we’re fighting this war so Bush can just get his rocks off by making Iraq crap in its pants. He probably hopes to capture Iraq and exploit its oil resources as well as make his mark on history by defeating Sadam, riding that train to reelection.

And as each days passes of this war, Bush really isn’t changing my mind. When he finally spoke to the press after he returned from Camp David this weekend (a vacation for you already, Mr. Bush?), he was inarticulate and unhelpful. He didn’t express the grief and sympathy I think he should have concerning the first casualties of the war and he seemed to perk up a little too much when he started talking about the recent successes in battle. Yes, it’s good that we’re doing well, but people have started dying now, Mr. President, and images of their corpses have been broadcast around the world. I really do hope that you find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and can undeniably prove Saddam’s connection to terrorists because if you don’t, the question of “what did they die for?” will echo throughout the world.

Nevertheless, we’ve started this thing and there’s no turning back. We’ve already laid waste to many parts of Iraq and many people, both soldiers and civilians, both American and Iraqi have died. I don’t support this war, but I don’t really have a choice now, do I? If we listed to all those anti-war demonstrators and pulled out now, then those people really will have died for nothing. They didn’t ask for it, but if we’re going to force help on them, like some overbearing sibling doing an intervention that no one’s really sure is needed, we might as well finish it, delivering what we promise to deliver.

So boys, let’s make it quick and fast and make sure we don’t have to fight another war like this one again. Twice is enough. Here’s to the coalition.

Related posts:

1. Vindicated
2. Priorities, Priorties

So then, last night, I watched a bit of “Real Time with Bill Maher” and the same issues came up, of course. Bill pointed out that while Saddam does have weapons and is not following UN sanctions, North Korea is clearly getting ready for something by taking out fuel rods, testing missiles and tailing American spy planes. He considered that a direct threat, not Saddam’s behavior for the past twelve years. He said that it was time the US stopped waiting for the international community to do something and step up– that any use of nuclear weapons is an attack against the United States, as many presidents have said before and that the only way to prevent a nuclear war is to follow a policy of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Damn skippy.

Related posts:

1. The code word is “Bahamas”
2. Priorities, Priorties
3. Those nefarious North Koreans

The price of gas is skyrocketing now and people, as usual, are claiming that this war is really about oil in the end. We want to “stop terror,” but other countries aren’t joining in because of economic ties, i.e., they need oil. Maybe that’s the case, maybe it isn’t. It’s probably more about the Bush administration’s strange obsession with Iraq, Bush’s attempt to emulate his father and hopefully unlike his father, time the war on Iraq just right so it’ll carry him through to a second term. As for oil though, last time I checked the US has enough oil resources domestically to meet its needs, but environmentalists and the like won’t let us drill for it, forcing us to go to OPEC. Oddly enough, while this is certainly a simplistic way to look at it, the same people who won’t let us drill don’t want us to go to war. Well, what the hell are we supposed to do then? Yes, we should probably trash all our gas-guzzling cars and all get little electric vehicles (well, I won’t until Lexus makes an electric luxury sedan with over 200 HP under the hood), saving the environment and reduing the burning of fossil fuels, but the reality is that there are a lot of freakin’ things that need oil and gas and that’s not going to change overnight, so what do we do in the meantime?

But the real thing that is scaring the crap out of me is the situation with North Korea. Why is no one taking this as seriously as they should? Yes, we could whoop their ass if they ever tried anything, but it only takes one nuclear bomb to kill a whole lot of people and mess up those who didn’t die from the explosion and their children for decades. There is some strange irony to the fact that the first uses of the a-bomb ended World War II, resulting in Korea being released from Japanese colonial rule. Of course, the post-war division of the country by the Allies also resulted in the Korean War, the political division of the country into two separate states, and the development of a very isolationist, very closed, very scary Communist North Korean state. Ah, history.

Incidentally, I went to the dentist a few weeks ago and he acted like I might be personally responsible for the situation with North Korea. He’s got his hands in my mouth, light focused on my face, and the conversation is pretty much like this:

• Dentist: “What is your ethnicity again?”
• Me: “I’m Korean.”
• D: “Right… that’s what I thought. What do you think about this whole thing? Its very scary.”
• M: “Yeah, it is. I think they’re just after aid, money.”
• D: “Mm… so you think it’s just blackmail?”
• M: “Yeah.”
• D: “You’re parents imigrated here? When was that?”
• M: “1973.”
• D: “Oh, so you were born here.”
• M: “Yup.”
• D: “Right… right…”

I don’t think he was really looking to call INS or anything, but weird, definitely weird. Of course, no day is complete unless somebody’s asked about the immigration history of your family while inside your mouth.

So, as we start the mad goose chase to catch Saddam again (what happened to our search for Osama Bin Laden? can we only focus on one Middle Eastern villain at a time?), North Korean jets tail American spy planes and the North Koreans start missile testing. Is this what Bush calls setting priorities?

Related posts:

1. The code word is “Bahamas”

Whatever his plans, they say bad things come in threes and I don’t know what the third thing will be, but the second is definitely the escalating situation in North Korea (we can’t call it a “crisis”– Powell said so). Somewhere in the haze of Christmas turkey with kimchee and New Year’s wine, North Korea decided to give the proverbial finger to the UN and reopen their nuclear facilities. “Energy” they say is the reason for doing it–the US apparently didn’t follow through on a promise of energy resources–but last time I checked, I don’t think you need to develop bomb-grade plutonium just so your lights stay on. Even China and Russia aren’t doing much to help the situation. They’re like, “Oh, damn, yeah, those North Koreans are a little crazy. I mean, we’re Communists, but they’re Communists.” Not everyone realizes that North Korea doesn’t subscribe to the happy go lucky, free market economy version of Maoist Communism China does. They take it back old skool–Stalin would have been proud.

Who knows what will happen in North Korea? Powell refuses to call it a crisis and the newly elected South Korean president seems to realize that his country is on the top of the North Koreans’ list of “Things to Blow Up” and is trying to come to a diplomatic compromise. And this isn’t World War II and the North Koreans are not nearly as organized as the Germans or the Japanese, but if we end up going to war with North Korea, I’m sure there will be some type of yellow peril hysteria. Yes, it may not be like the 1940′s with the Japanese, but especially after 9/11, we all know Americans aren’t afraid of a little racial profiling. And they’re going to have to come up with a new name because we already know what “internment camp” means. Between you and me, if I call you suddenly and say “I’m going to the Bahamas,” you know something’s up.

Related posts:

1. Those nefarious North Koreans

Here’s the main problem: they televised this crap. If the old white guys running the Senate were going to get together and reminisce about those good ol’ segregationist days, they really should have done it behind closed doors. I’m sure much worse things are said everyday behind the closed doors of exclusive country clubs and high powered corporations, but not on national cable television for chrissake. What are these guys, amateurs?

And the hole is only getting deeper. Lott is desperately apologizing, going on BET and telling everyone how hey, he’s not racist since he has African American people and other minorities on his staff. Whoah, Trent, let me sign you up for the NAACP Image Award. News flash: if you’re trying to prove that you’re not a racist, don’t start enumerating how many minorities you know, or employ or whatever. If you keep track of shit like that, then you racist, playa.

It’s kind of strange to think that all this is going on over some comments at a birthday party. Of course, we also impeached a president over a stained dress (who keeps that kind of stuff?) and some nasty episodes with a cigar.

Should Lott lose his seat as Senate Majority Leader? Probably, if he lacks the sensitivity and clarity to see how his comments could be construed as offensive and racist. Doesn’t somebody read his freakin’ speeches before he gives them? Plus, he’s just making the GOP look bad (or worse than usual) and if they want to do some damage control, there needs to be some real consequence to his actions.

Should he lose his seat at Senator of Mississippi? That’s for the people of Mississippi to decide. Of course, as Lott said himself, his state voted for Thurmond in 1948 and they’re proud of it.