What the hell do they want with Iraq?

Consider this a preview for an upcoming blog entry, (since I have to leave now but I'm annoyed enough to want to write something to remind myself at how annoyed I was). I read blogs from all ends of the spectrum, and I don't understand what the left wingers want with Iraq. I get the impression that they want the US to leave Iraq so that the country can fall apart, and then the lefties will be able to blame Bush for leaving Iraq.

The sad thing is, they will probably get their wish.

Insulting the president

A T-shirt was being sold in Seattle that had a slightly ambiguous message on the label. Of course, being good capitalists, they decided to print a T-shirt with the label enlarged and printed on the front. It reads:

Nous somme desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui.

The company apparantly is going for strategic ambiguity:

While our best guess here at Tom Bihn is that this was a prank meant to poke fun at the company's founder and president, Tom Bihn himself, many have assumed that this is about another president.

Uh-huh, sure thing buddies. CEO's are generally voted in, right?

Funny Ebay Auctions

Most of these are funny because of the text that accompanies the item:

• Somebody was unhappy with their table, so they sold it on ebay.


• A wedding dress sold by a bitter husband, auction had about 6 million views which is pretty hefty for ebay. Asking price was $1200, and he got over $3000... some people have too much money


• A book from Amazon.com (not Ebay) with a sure cure to depression.

I think the trick to making big money on ebay is to write a good description, I'm going to try and make up a good sob story one day and see if I can cash in.

Abortion: Autonomy

In a followup to my previous post, I decided that I would clarify my position on abortion, with a quick review as to some of the principals involved.

Autonomy
This is the most important core principal to the abortion debate. All human have a right to autonomy that pretty much supersedes all other considerations. When one person's right to autonomy would violate the rights of someone else, we have a conflict of rights. Can the right to autonomy ever be lost? Possibly yes, but it should be a solution of the last resort.

In terms of medicine, the right to medical autonomy is very strong in the Western world. Medical autonomy is why Jehovah's Witness' are not forced to receive transfusions against their will. Autonomy is why anyone can refuse the treatment prescribed by a doctor. Autonomy is the driving force behind DNR orders.

In the abortion debate, the pro-choice side believes that the autonomy of the mother is an important principle, while the anti-abortion side believes that the fetus has some rights to autonomy.

Abortion: Child as maximum

Anti-abortionists often claim that the pro-choice side believes that the fetus is just a blob of tissue with absolutely no rights at all. This is not necessarily true. The idea of abortion is not inconsistent with granting any rights to the fetus. One early consideration is the "child as maximum" principle, which I discussed about a month ago with regards to the Utah case, where a woman was charged for not submitting to a C-section against her will.

A quick summary of the "child as maximum" principle:

b. our obligation to ensure the fetus's welfare can equal but not exceed our obligation to a born child
c. child as a maximum principle emphasizes that our duties to a born child constitute an upper bound for our duties to a fetus rather than a strict equivalent, because the potential for wronging one person (mother) in effort to aid another (fetus) will be greater

As I explained this principle previously:

An easier way to think of it would be to ask what a father would be expected to do for his born child. If it is acceptable to force a father to undergo surgery against his will for a live child, then it might be acceptable to do so for a fetus. You can't even think about charging a mother for drinking during pregnancy unless you are willing to charge a father for drinking around his born children.

Some people don't believe in this principle at all, I was having an argument on another blog and I asked, somewhat rhetorically, if a father should be forced to donate a kidney to his daughter (to save her life) if it was against his will. The answer was surprising:

We generally require parents to take affirmative acts to protect their children. So sure

I suspect/hope that this guy was posturing for the sake of his anti-abortion position.

When I look at the abortion debate, the child as maximum principal impacts very strongly upon my views. I look at the obligations of a mother to her born child, and I take great efforts to ensure that the obligations of a mother to her fetus do not exceed her obligation to the child when it is born.

(to be continued later on tonight)

Abortion: Rape and Incest

I have often found myself embroiled in abortion debates. To put it mildly, I am pro-choice, and I consider it a duty to try and convince the anti-abortion side that their position is misguided and injust.

Normally, I start off every argument by seeking to find a common ground, discussing the principles that apply to that common ground, and then expanding those principles to encompass other situations. My normal common ground is the case of abortion when a woman has been raped. Once the anti-abortionist agreed that an exception needed to be made there, it was often easy to move the discussion to more interesting cases.

But... sometimes the common ground is harder to find.

A surprisingly large number of people believe that abortion should not even be allowed in the case of rape or incest. While that article is pretty light in terms of real arguments, others really take a strong stance:

Allowing abortion for cases of rape or incest effectively blames the preborn for another's (i.e. the father) crime. Killing a preborn because his or her father is a rapist is no more justifiable than killing the rapist's mother or father (perhaps even less so, in that, plausibly, a parent could have in some way influenced, caused or contributed to the son's actions. The preborn child has not yet been created; no causal influence, and therefore culpability, is possible). The perpetrator alone should be punished; punishing the preborn makes him or her a scapegoat and the second victim

Many other sites present the same viewpoint:

The unborn entity is not an aggressor when its presence does not endanger its mother's life (as in the case of a tubal pregnancy). It is the rapist who is the aggressor. The unborn entity is just as much an innocent victim as its mother. Hence, abortion cannot be justified on the basis that the unborn is an aggressor.

I honestly don't know where to begin with this. It is impossible to discuss ideas of autonomy or relative rights with an individual who can't even acknowledge that forcing a woman through an unwanted pregnancy after she has been raped is somehow wrong.

I need to find a common ground situation. The common ground of "mother's life is in danger" doesn't work since the anti-abortionists simply classify that as self-defense and allow the abortion there while still restricting it everywhere else. I think that's my mental job for the next 24 hours.

Why do I care? Bush is going to win the next election, and I honestly believe that some serious anti-abortion work is likely to be initiated south of the border. I have to start gearing up mentally for the battle, and for me, it starts here.

Great gifts from Ebay

What do you give to your dear mother who already has everything she wants?

Why, a Rachel Corrie watch of course!

Speaking of photo scams

Salon.com has a story showing 2 versions of a shocking photo at the top. You may have to watch a quick ad to see the story.

Tainted Photographs

I have come across a picture recently in a number of different locations. It purports to show a Palestinian child who is strapped to the hood of an Israeli jeep, presumably so that the child could be used as a human shield.

Some context is provided by a "witness":

Sheirman accounted on that the child was bewailing and shuddering of fear when the Israeli soldiers placed him in front of the jeep and tied him off to be a human shield. He added that he along with two peace activists were tied with the next military jeep

Sadly, the photographers apparently only felt that it was important to take a picture of the child, leaving Sheirman out of the public spotlight.

Obviously, some problems surface immediately:

1. The "restraints" presumably refer to the band on the child's upper left arm, since I can not see any other equipment in the picture that would do the job.


2. The boy is acting as a human shield for a smoking break


3. And neither of the first 2 points matters anyway, because the picture doesn't provide any context and could have easily been photo-shopped.

Wait, can photographs actually be faked in these days of digital photography? Some examples (from Snopes):

• John Kerry showing his big anti-war credentials


• Some silly 3rd world protestors.


• A satellite view of the big August blackout


• That stupid prez George Bush holding a book upside down.

Sometimes, the photo can be real, but the context can be falsified, such as this photo taken of a charging bull by a tourist in a heap of trouble. The picture is real, but the context is fake. Ditto for pictures of Hurricane Isabel, which sadly are not even pictures of a hurricane, go figure.

So, the question is, how can we determine, in this age of ubiquitous digital fakery, which photographs are legitimate? The answer is simple, we trust photographs that have substantiating proof or that are taken by verified news organizations such as Reuters or AP.

Previously, both major news sources have been happy to pick up pictures that painted Israel in an unfavourable light. The human shield picture would be especially powerful... if it was real. However, neither Reuters nor AP has carried the story. Some conspiracy theorists would believe that this is because the mainstream media is purposefully ignoring it.

The truth in this case is fairly obvious. The picture may or may not be a complete forgery. However, even if the picture is legitimate, the context is almost certainly faked. There is no corroborating evidence, no photos from a different angle or that provide a more complete view of the situation (such as the jeeps and the "protestors" in a single picture), and no legitimate source of verification.

It screams context-fakery.

Revisionist History

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah in Hebrew). I found it chilling that on this very day the Globe and Mail saw fit to print an article concerning the Rwandan Genocide with some very serious undertones:

Defence lawyers also point out that there has never been any forensic testing done on those killed. There's no doubt that hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were murdered, but there is no DNA evidence proving that most of those murdered were Tutsis; it may be that the Rwandan conflagration was more of a civil war than a genocide.

I have never heard the Rwandan massacre characterized as a civil war, and this occurred only 10 years ago. Is it any wonder then that the Holocaust, which occurred 60 years ago, is portrayed as a fabrication today? In the Globe and Mail no less.

The Holocaust was a unique episode of savagery in the history of our species, but modern genocides such as Armenia and Rwanda are also important, and we must not allow them to be forgotten either.

Martyr Math 101

A frequent claim by the anti-Israel crowd is that the targeted assassinations do not serve any useful purpose since "for every Hamas leader killed, hundreds of young Palestinians are recruited to the cause".

But now, after Israel wiped out the second Hamas leader within a month, they have decided to keep the identity of the new head a secret:

After Israel's assassination of two of its leaders in less than a month, Hamas decided to keep the identity of its new supremo in the Palestinian territories a secret, in line with a call from Meshaal

Perhaps its my high-quality grade 8 education speaking here, but that doesn't make mathematical sense. If every targeted assassination only helps the Hamas cause, why would they be hiding the identity of their new leader?

Maybe they use alternative math over there in the mideast...

Crime and Punishment

Hypothetically, if someone steals a ring from a jewellery store and then returns it 24 hours later, which of the following is true:

1. This is a noble person, worthy of the Order of Canada


2. This is a thief, worthy of prosecution

Spam Wars

A few weeks ago, I was getting about 20 spam messages a day, but they all had a weird character set. As a temporary fix, I set up a filter that immediately trashed any email that contained the words "Gµarántêe", "sêxûaÌ", or "Ênlárgëmeñt".

The results were a stunning success, my spam levels dropped to about 5 per week. I was ecstatic, having won a little battle against the spammers.

Sadly though, victory was fleeting. The spam is back, though a different type of spam. For those who are spam-prone, you may have noticed that spammers now include random words at the bottom of their message, for example, at the bottom of my latest spam was the following text:

reach worth montmartre alberta proclamation teacup cruddy candid disembowel hair missy verge bellwether waistline encyclopedic defector reprise chagrin rapt wail gooseberry manor airtight codeposit stellar wreathe garibaldi cliffhang flintlock wondrous punish cellar sensuous wizard chairwomen salad ebb marlborough chunk chose boar huntsville consonantal recompense moonlit

Fascinating stuff. Relatively low level protection of course, I have seen some spam messages that place actual randomly generated stories at the bottom of the spam message. This is probably done to combat a spam-filtering technique known as Bayesian Filtering. Essentially, this type of filter looks at words that are common in the email you get and words that are common in spam that you get, and assigns a "spam-likelihood" probability to each message. For example, a word like "unsubscribe" would be very spammy, but a word like "Diplomacy" would be very unspammy for me in particular, since much of my regular email contains that word.

(I should point out that the linked article above is long, and a bit technical at the beginning, but just ignore the algorithms, its fairly interesting stuff).

When I first read the article of Bayesian Filtering, it sounded like the ultimate panacea, but my ardor was rapidly cooled in this chilling analysis:

This is where the unparalleled strength of the Bayes-type filtering becomes the very makings of unmitigated disaster, as the second-order effects come into play. Consider the question What does it mean for an spam email to make it past a Bayes filter?

The proper answer to that is a mathematical one, but in English, it means that there are no obvious cues that the message is spam. Nothing obvious in the title, nothing obvious in the text, no key words used only in spam, nothing.

He then gives an example of the type of spam we should expect to see shortly:

That's a nice point, but I think you should consider the information at http:/\/www.somewebsite.com/info.html before going with that approach. I found that information to be really pertinent

A message like that cannot be filtered by any antispam software, since it looks exactly like a real message. No key words to hit, nothing to distinguish it from normal email.

But that's not even the scary part. As Jeremy points out, the truly horrifying aspect of this inevitable evolution of spam is that humans will have a hard time recognizing it as spam. Right now we can see which messages are spam almost immediately and delete them, but imagine if that became impossible?

In some doomsday scenarios, spam will spin out of control within a year or two. Many solutions have been discussed, one of the more reasonable ones being a charge for sending email. ISP's could even make the first 10,000 email messages a month free to subscribers, and that would still stop spammers cold in their tracks.

I think that a charge for sending email is inevitable. The only question is: will we be forced to suffer through a "dark age" of email before this change occurs? I certainly hope not.

Revenge for Yassin

Yassin, leader of the terrorist group Hamas, was killed on March 22nd. By tomorrow, we will be celebrating the 3 week anniversary of his demise.

Why is this notable? There hasn't been a single successful retaliation suicide bombing.

Remember, the Palestinians were calling for blood, to show Israel how wrong it was to go about killing innocent terrorist leaders. Everyone around the world expected that Israel would pay a price for daring to strike at the heart of its enemies. However, no price has been paid as of yet.

Obviously, the next successful attack will be touted as justifiable revenge for the killing of Yassin, but is that credible? Three full weeks without an attack is quite reasonable. If anything, it seems that Israel has been rewarded for the attack on Yassin with a period of relative calm.

The time has passed for Hamas to take revenge. The next successful suicide bombing will be one that would have occurred regardless if Yassin had been assassinated. The message to take home from this is that terrorism can be fought, as long as you have the resolve to take the necessary measures.

Is this funny?

Not feeling inspired to comment on anything, I present the potato song. Is it humorous? I'm not quite sure...

Leave google alone!

Google is in the process of introducing a concept in web-based email that will revolutionize the way we view web-based email. Google is offering a 1 Gigabyte storage free web-based email service. This is about 500 times as large as any of the other free email services.

Obviously there has to be a catch of some sort, and there is. The text of the email messages will be scanned so that google can deliver some targeted advertising. This will be a machine scan and no human will ever see it.

Is there a problem here? Obviously not, but some pseudo-civil liberties groups seem to have forgotten the definition of civil liberties.

A coalition of 28 privacy and civil liberties groups wrote Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page a letter Tuesday urging them to think again about the service, which they said sets potentially dangerous precedents for the automated scanning of private communications. The service may conflict with European privacy laws, and should be suspended until privacy issues are addressed, they wrote.

Of course, as these groups admit, email is already scanned on a regular basis in order to filter out spam. This is no different, as long as the email message (or parts thereof) are not seen by a human, there really is no violation of privacy. In fact, the spam filters are, if anything, a more egregious assault on privacy since the scan can result in some email messages getting censored, whereas the google ad-scan will never result in a message being blocked.

However... none of this really matters, because the google gigabyte mailservice is voluntary. If you think that your privacy rights are being trampled, don't get it, plain and simple. If you start pushing google to not offer the service to anyone, then you are essentially trampling on my own liberty to choose, and presumably that is something all good libertarians would want to avoid.

Tradition

Demonstrating their historical connection to nature, the Quebec Innu slaughtered 30 endangered caribou and left many of the carcasses out to rot. The term used was a "protest hunt". The response should be obvious:

1. Jail/fine: The Innu should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Not only did they poach, but they poached an endangered species. If a white guy went into the woods and shot up 30 spotted owls and left their bodies to rot, he'd probably be facing jail time, why should the Innu be exempt?


2. Hunting: Any Innu involved in the hunt should have their hunting licenses revoked immediately.


3. Punitive damages: You can't claim a historical right to a sustainable hunt if you don't use it responsibly. Sadly, for this band of Innu at least, I don't think they have the right to ever lay claim to a traditional hunt in the future. Let them apply for a license like everyone else who feels the need to use assault weapons on animals.

Sadly, we all know what will happen. We will find out how about 500 years ago the ancestors of this band were abused by the ancestors of 1% of the current Canadian population, therefore if the Innu want to exterminate a species, who are we to complain?

Japan demonstrates a backbone

Daniel beat me to the punch.

Putting Europe (and Spain in particular) to shame, Japan has shown the world that they are one of the few countries on the planet who will not bend in the face of terrorism.

Presumably, with a Canadian also kidnapped, we will start seeing articles in the paper calling on Canada to distance ourselves more fully from the States so that we won't be targetted by terrorists any more.

Who ever thought that Japan would help the world more than Canada?

Still sick, but blogging

I can't speak if my life depended on it, but at least I can type now, so its time to resume my blogging!

April Fools Joke - gone awry

Early in the morning on April 1st, I wrote a little missive about the drug ecstasy. After posting, I realized that it was April 1st and I decided that it would be funny to play a little April Fool's joke and claim that Blogspot was shutting me down for inappropriate posting. I figured it would be mostly obvious that I was kidding since internet sites never give 24 hours of warning for a closure, but in retrospect I would have been taken in as well.

The plan was to reveal that it was a joke at about noon on April 1st, but then I became extremely ill. Sadly, I still am, but my brother called me to say that the post was getting a large reaction and that I had better write up a retraction quickly before people got upset.

I apologize for keeping up the deception so long, and I especially apologize to StageLeft who put in a very nice post of encouragement. Again, I was hoping to retract it over 24 hours ago, but circumstances conspired against me. There were some interesting issues that were brought up with that situation, and I intend to blog about them fully when I feel better.

I would like to assure the readers of this blog that I will never attempt anything like that again. I pride myself on being factual, and I don't want to lose that credibility. I ask for your forgiveness.

Censorship - Blog Moving

Almost immediately after making my most recent post, I got a message from Blogspot indicating that I had violated my terms of service. It seems that certain subjects are not acceptable blogging topics, perhaps part of the Bush "war on drugs".

Pathetic.

They have given me 24 hours to move the blog off their site. I will probably be moving it over to sympatico, I'll try to keep everyone updated.

Ecstasy Bust

So, the cops are all happy about busting a big multinational ecstasy ring. Soon we will hear the corpulent Fantino crow about the success of his forces and how proud he is... and how guns are taking over Toronto and will continue to do so until the Police Brotherhood gets a donation of a few million dollars.

Ecstasy, the happy rave drug, scourge of our society. Presumably, if people enjoy themselves too much, they might cause society to implode. At least, that's the only reason I can think of that ecstasy gets banned.

Ah, but wait, ecstasy is dangerous, it can kill you!

"The biggest danger of Ecstasy is it can kill you," said Dr. Paul Fischer, the medical director of the emergency department at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center

Of course, water could also kill you if ingested the bad way, and we haven't started tossing the purveyors of liquid refreshment into jail yet. Lets sidle over to the drug hippies and see what they have to say:

The risk of death from Ecstasy use is extremely low. Between 1988 and 1997 some 50-100 UK deaths have been connected to Ecstasy use. The current rate is 7 deaths per million users per year. More people die fishing or eating peanuts.

Of course, those hippies are quoting stats, and stats can be used to prove anything that is even remotely true. The anti-ecstasy cabal has anecdotes, and many of them! When it comes to solid arguments, you simply can't beat an anecdote.

Is this one of those classic controversies where there are two sides to the arguments and everyone has their own appropriate view?

No. It is not.

Drug use in general is not something that should be controlled or curtailed by the government. If you want to fry your brain, then that is your problem. However, repression in the case of Ecstasy is especially egregious simply due to the benign nature of the drug. Big Macs almost certainly kill people on an scale many orders of magnitude higher than ecstasy ever does.

I do not applaud the latest drug "bust". It simply saddens me that we spend millions of dollars pursuing these pseudo-criminals when the money could be better spent on well... anything.