Blog Articles 111–115
It is easy, in our present age of apparent gridlock and vitriolic
talking points passing themselves off as reasoned arguments, to be
discouraged about the state of political discourse in our great
Republic. To think, perhaps, that there is no common ground in our
political disputes, that we are doomed to talk past each other with no
mutually-agreeable outcome. That there is nothing of substance about
which the leaders or people of the land are in agreement on the best
course of action.
In such times, it is important to remember that there is, in fact,
wide bipartisan consensus on a number of important issues of our day.
Obviously there are a few misguided individuals who obstinately refuse
their consent, but the following points see little dissent from either
side of the aisle in our present political landscape:
- It is totally fine, if not admirable, to be in a perpetual state of
war against a nebulous, undefinable enemy (the ‘Bad Guys’).
- The national surveillance state is a good and necessary development
to protect ourselves from aforementioned Bad Guys.
- Drugs are a great evil; to attempt to stop them, it is appropriate
that the Land of the Free has the highest incarceration rate in the
world.
- We must secure the border from people who wish to pursue gainful
employment and thereby contribute to our nation’s industry and
economy.
- Gasoline should be inexpensive, and the private automobile sustained
as the principle means of transport.
- Our constitution guarantees criminal suspects the right to be
informed of the charges against them and brought to a speedy trial,
unless the President alleges the suspect to be a Bad Guy. In that case,
there is no problem with locking them in jail until the world ends.
- Edward Snowden has betrayed his country and undermined democracy by
alerting the people to the secret actions of their government. This has
greatly aided the Bad Guys.
Published on Wednesday, June 19, 2013.
That post was written on May 13, 2003. It’s just a few thoughts on
games. That’s it. Snowden made over 773 posts to the Ars Technica
forums, and the one I shared above has nothing to do with anything,
really. That’s how we act on forums, especially before Twitter. They
were often a place to scribble a few thoughts, to jot a quick message to
whoever was reading. Rarely do we think of anything we saw as being a
part of who we are, or a manifesto leading to further actions. It’s a
way to scream at the ocean, not to create a blueprint for our future
selves.
— Ben Kuchera on our
online pasts and chatting about games.
A common refrain in articles attacking Snowden for leaking the NSA
documents is that he worked
alone and didn’t
go up the chain of command.
I beg to disagree. No, he did not go one or two steps up the chain of
command. He knew what would happen — he would be red-flagged
and stopped. His career would likely be over, with no serious
discourse or change to show for it.
He went higher up the chain of command. The problem goes all the way
to the President and Congress, so he went over their heads. He
went, via the press, to the American people. That is exactly how
representative democracy is supposed to work.
Published on Thursday, June 6, 2013 and tagged with
bicycling.
This week, the Wall Street Journal published a singularly
unhinged rant against the NYC bike-sharing program. Following a
chain of links from Krugman’s
musings, it seems that there is a variety of nonsense
going on and being rebutted about bikes. Ugh.
I, for one, welcome the Dutch Invasion of bicycle-friendly urban
spaces and internally-geared hubs.
Published on Monday, April 15, 2013 and tagged with
spam.
The tricks of spammers are many and subtle. And I’m not always sure
what their game is.
I was selling something on CraigsList recently. One of the inquiries
I received asked me to e-mail the person’s personal e-mail, included in
the mail message, directly (rather than hitting Reply); this was
ostensibly to keep scammers and bots out. A bit odd, maybe, but somewhat
plausible (at least in a misestimating-computer-capabilities kind of
way), and CraigsList interactions are full of communications behavior
that seems odd to me. I sold the item to someone else, but to close all
my open loops on it, I e-mailed the address they specified to tell them
that the item had been sold.
Big mistake. Since then, I’ve gotten at least a dozen e-mails, all
with the same subject as that mail I sent and similar text about being
interested in or attracted to me and my ad, asking me to sign up on a
particular site (no fee, of course!) to send a private message.
Occasionally, a picture is attached.
I’m not entirely sure what the game is with this. Phishing? Malware
installation? Getting credit card info? I haven’t visited any of the
linked sites, so I don’t know. But it’s yet another “spammers are doing
what? and why?” moment.