Author Archives: Leo Tarvi
The DMCA and SOPA
I’ve been trying to read SOPA, and it’s a pain. Here’s a pdf if you want to give it a shot, maybe you’ll do better than I. I’m hosting it here because I had some inconvenience tracking it down on the Library of Congress site, so I figured I’d save you the trouble.
My trouble reading it is partly the language and partly the way it’s formatted. It’s so nested with paragraphs and subsections and clauses and sub-clauses that when it refers later to a specific clause or subsection you’re not sure which one it means. I think it would benefit from hyperlinks, or perhaps a complete rewrite by someone who knows how to communicate clearly.
I’ll rant about obfuscation in legal texts later, though. (Maybe tomorrow?) Today I want to talk about this claim made at the beginning of the document:
3 (1) FIRST AMENDMENT.—Nothing in this Act
4 shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free
5 speech or the press protected under the 1st Amend-
6 ment to the Constitution.
It’s probably true that they don’t intend this thing to impede free speech or censor anyone. But should it pass it will be used to do that, and I know this because the DMCA is used this way. Read the rest of this entry
Technical difficulties
Hi folks! Apparently the new Linux kernel broke something, and my network doesn’t work from the desktop computer anymore. Not sure how long that will take to fix, since I don’t have the faintest clue what’s wrong. My laptop still works fine, though, so I’ll see if I can’t find out what’s going on.
And even if I can’t fix it, I should be able to keep posting. It just won’t be as convenient for me.
So sorry there’s nothing interesting here, and have a very good evening!
A day offline
So during the SOPA strike I thought it would be interesting to not only black out my site and not post, but to not use the internet at all. The result is a fascinating lesson in how entwined into my daily life the thing has become.
I had already installed the operating system updates when I realized that counted as “using the internet”. But then I went and installed them on the laptop anyways, because there was security stuff in there.
I settled down to read Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, a book I picked up at a library sale for very cheap and never got around to opening. I had only read a few pages before an interesting math puzzle presented itself to me: How close to Hawaii did ancient explorers have to get before they could see it? Read the rest of this entry
Content Redacted
SOPA, H.R. 3261
PIPA, S. 968
In protest of these two bills, I will not be attending the internet for the day of January 18, 2012, as reckoned by United States Pacific Standard Time.
Busy day
Between looking after the lost dog I found yesterday, putting up fliers, returning the dog to his home, and then taking down the damned useless fliers, I didn’t really have time for much writing today.
It didn’t help that I got used to writing tomorrow’s post in the evenings, then managed to miss a day and wrote yesterday’s post yesterday evening. It was really weird when I was plotting out my evening and realized that I hadn’t posted anything yet today.
Anyways, here’s a story from London that really pissed me off. When I went to that blog just now to find that link, I saw another! So apparently threats of violence are effective at curtailing free speech in the UK. Good to know, I guess. Read the rest of this entry
In search of
It’s the 15th of the month again, and that means it’s time to look at my site stats for the last 30 days. Of course when I say site stats, I really mean the search terms, because everything else, while useful info, is a little boring.
So here’s what people searched for that led them to my blog over the last month. As usual, search terms are in bold, while my comments are italic. Read the rest of this entry
Storytime
Long ago in the time of fantasy, far away across the sea, a village was being terrorized by a dragon. It burned crops and houses, ate sheep and cattle, and even killed people. The village was very poor, but they knew this dragon would soon be the end of them, so they put together as much money as they could and offered it as a reward to anyone who could kill the dragon.
News didn’t spread as quickly back then, so mostly the only people who heard about the reward were those who passed by the village on their journey. One knight heard about the dragon, and decided a monster like that was too dangerous for him to deal with. Another knight heard the story but thought the reward was too small to be worth his time. And so the village suffered. Read the rest of this entry
Post stealing!
I wanted to blog about Jessica Ahlquist today, but it turns out that JT Eberhard already said everything I wanted to say, and more.
Funny thing is, if I’d written about it, and then seen Mr. Eberhard’s series of posts, I wouldn’t have minded at all. But somehow knowing those posts already exist completely takes the wind out of my sails.
So I guess this will do for a post unless I suddenly find something else to talk about.
Seriously, what is wrong with people?
Found this on Pharyngula, under the heading “Female genital mutilation has medical benefits?” and my first thought was “Oh how cute, those sick girl-cutters are copying a page from the sick boy-cutters and claiming bullshit hygiene improvements”. And at first it seemed to be exactly that, it started with some bullshit about secretions that accumulate causing an odor that leads to infections (odors cause infections? What?), but then I read this:
Circumcision reduces excessive sensitivity of the clitoris which may cause it to increase in size to 3 centimeters when aroused, which is very annoying to the husband, especially at the time of intercourse.
At some point during the reading of that sentence, part of my brain started screaming and hasn’t fully stopped yet.
The site is called Islam Question and Answer, and is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a place to ask questions about Islam and have them answered by people who presumably know what they’re talking about.
Ok, first of all, listing the removal of an annoyance to her husband as a health benefit for her seems like a joke in very poor taste, considering the flimsy excuses abusive spouses use to justify their violence. Also it really suggests that the woman isn’t being considered a person in her own right, but rather a thing belonging to her husband, to be modified for his pleasure. My little fucktoy, or something. I want to emphasize that the part about considering a woman a person in her own right is more important than what follows, even though I’ll spend less time on it.
Second, I want a serious show of hands from any men in the audience who have ever been annoyed by a woman’s clit during sex. Seriously, as they say on Wikipedia, citation fucking needed! How is that even supposed to work? Read the rest of this entry
Gods Die
(I found this on an old hard disk. Going by the dates on the file, I probably wrote it in early July of 2010. I think it was probably a first draft. I’ve no idea now how accurate any of this info is, and I decided to resist the temptation to research and rewrite and just post it directly. I apologize for any misinformation.)
One of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world was Egypt, and for most of that time one of the principal gods was a Sun god named Ra, or perhaps Re, we aren’t sure what the vowel sound was. Re (or Ra) was worshiped throughout Egypt from the Fourth Dynasty up to the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire.
Ra (or Re) was not some idle superstition. Pharaohs were considered to be Earthly manifestations of the god. Millions of people sang hymns, offered prayers, and recited spells to help Him and His sun boat overcome Apep, the serpent, every day. Soldiers fought for His glory and died with His name on their lips. Priests devoted their entire lives to His service.
Re (or Ra) remained popular for over three thousand years. Huge temples were built to Him. Countless stories of His exploits were recorded in stone and papyrus. Sometimes He joined with other gods; Amun, Atum, Horus, or Khepri the scarab. Other times He was a solo act.
The earliest written record of the Hebrew people was Egyptian writing circa 900 b.c., and Ra (or Re) was already over two thousand years old. He lasted another thousand years before dwindling away, rather suddenly, about the fourth century c.e.
For more than thirty centuries Egypt lived, wrote, sang and died for Re (or Ra). Every morning ceremonial offerings were made to Him. His name is still carved into the stone walls of a thousand temples and pyramids, and now we don’t even know how to pronounce it.
Yet another end of the world
This time the prediction of doom comes from one Ronald Weinland who claims he “is the pastor of God’s Church on earth, has also been appointed by the God of Abraham to be His end-time prophet and one of the two end-time witnesses (and spokesman of both), preceding the return of Jesus Christ on May 27, 2012.”
Here’s the link I got that quote from, and here’s Weinland’s own home page.
I’ve seen some people express dismay that these end days guys get so much press now, but personally I’m glad they get so much attention. I figure the more of these predictions we see in the public sphere, the less credible they’ll be and the fewer people they’ll be able to scam into handing over their life savings.
The money isn’t trival either. I found this in the comments of that goddiscussion.com link, by the author of the article:
If he is following the teachings of Armstrong, then his church members are paying 30% of their gross income in tithes to his church every third year, and 20% in all the other years. I remember sitting in Worldwide Church of God services, listening to sermons about how tithes must be made on gross income as opposed to net.
Deborah
I shudder to think of poor families trying to survive while giving away a quarter of their income. The insistence on gross instead of net especially ticks me off, not only is it really going to hurt people with lots of expenses (like anyone with children) but he’s effectively prioritizing himself at the top of their budget.
Of course, this not only makes the church a lot of money, but it also feeds into the sunk-cost fallacy. When the proposed end date comes and goes, most of the congregation will stay with the church. A few will leave, and there will probably be a sermon about how awful those quitters were. But most will stay, and be even more invested in it. After all they’ve been putting all this money into it, and all this time, and now they’ve endured public ridicule over the failed prophecy. They have to stick with it, or all that sacrifice was for nothing.
So I say publicize it. Public scorn heaped on these charlatans may do little to help those already under their influence, but it will make joining them seem less appealing to others, sparing them this fate. And it may well help some that are already in cults like this, and that’s worthwhile.
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 23 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
This is probably the laziest post I’ve ever made. Except for this paragraph, I didn’t have to write anything! But it is interesting, and I wanted to get it posted well before I do my search term roundup on the 15th, so here it is. I’ll be back with another post tomorrow, or maybe late tonight. See you then!
Curses!
I stumbled over this curious blog post about Wicca this morning. Apparently it’s part of a fairly long series on Wicca and atheism, which I may look into more later. The author, one Eric Steinhart, claims that there’s no ethical way to use magick since it hasn’t been scientifically tested and evaluated for effectiveness.
As you’ve likely guessed, I disagree with him on several points. First is that quite a few spells have been tested and found to be lacking in any effect at all, barring some psychological placebo effects. Not strictly relevant to what I want to talk about but not exactly trivial, either. Read the rest of this entry
Finally saw the Doctor Who xmas special
You know what I’ve noticed about that show? I tend not to care much for the ones where he doesn’t have any consistent companions traveling with him. I really prefer when he has people around who know him and have an idea of how things tend to work, even if they’re completely clueless as to what’s going on at the moment.
Perhaps especially if they’re clueless about the moment.
I’m not sure why that is. I know it’s not about any desire for ongoing continuity. Maybe it’s having things explained over & over, or maybe I just don’t like it when everything we get to know about a character is what can be fit into one episode. Reading my first paragraph again I suspect it’s having to get acquainted with these characters and get them acquainted with each other.
Anyway, I liked it well enough, but thought the base premise about the forest was a little weak. It was one of those episodes that would be better with more comedy to distract you from the silly parts of the plot. The ending made me happy.
Nothing interesting tonight, I’m afraid. Maybe tomorrow.
Since I have nothing to say for myself today
Instead I’ll drop a link to Life Before the Dinosaurs, a blog about paleozoic life run by a very talented seven year old. Awesome stuff.
That blog got me thinking about geological time, and how very much of it there is. I like the clock representation found on Wikipedia here. That little green bit is the dinosaur era. The tiny orange part represents the 65 million years since then. Amazing. For about the first quarter there wasn’t any life at all.
I was considering making a series about the history of Earth, divided up by geological eras, or maybe periods if I felt like getting into detail. I might still do that but really it would be for my own learning, I couldn’t tell you anything you couldn’t find out on Google and I’d have to make an effort not to just copy stuff out from my sources. Come to think of it, my primary source would be Google, since I don’t have any books on the subject less than 20 years old and my local library is underfunded. Huh.
Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for the moment. Now I’m torn between researching the dawn of the Earth and taking a nap. Decisions, eh? What a pain.
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 