Being Pro-Life

Being Pro-Life starts with you, as an individual, and the choices you make. From there it spreads out to your friends and family, to your church, and to your community. It has always been about community activism and giving people information and options to make choices. Being Pro-Life is about loving other human beings and respecting not only their innate and biological life, but the metaphysical workings of their agency. 

When life begins isn't important to these beliefs, only what we do is important. If we are allowing others full access to their agency with the knowledge to use it properly, we are being true to the cause. When we stray from that notion, we stumble and fail. 

The moment we believe the Federal Government can do a better job of taking care of our friends and neighbors than we can, is the moment we can no longer lay claim to being Pro-Life. I think John Koster, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and others are probably having to give their anti-choice notions some thought now. Indeed, I hope the entire Republican Party is thinking about it. 

I personally believe it played a role in them losing the Senate and the White House. 

You can't be anti-choice and a fiscal conservative. It takes money to shake down dealers holding black market oral contraceptives and to kick in the door of every benevolent doctor giving a 12-year-old incest victim an abortion. Worse, this is the last way most police officer want to spend their time. Think! Do you want your community, your church leaders, and yourself responsible for spreading the Pro-Life message? People that really want to be there? Or men with guns that don't? 

Do we really want the Federal Government interfering with a pregnant cancer patient's agency, while she decides whether to fight for her life for her other two kids, or risk all and carry to term? Would you rather have benevolent friends, family, church/community leaders involved, or the Federal Government? 

Hint: The Federal Government tend to deploy heavily armed law enforcement professionals and lawyers with political ambitions to enforce the law. 

The Federal Government can't even balance a checkbook, do we really want them playing doctor with our wives, daughters, aunts, mothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens? I think the message to the GOP and the Anti-Choice movement this election cycle was clear. These "Sanctity of Life" and "Personhood" pieces of legislation that have been pushed unsuccessfully since 1995 need to just stop. Put simply, we're wise to it, and we don't want it, push your radical views to your constituency some other way. 

If you want to be Pro-Life, just do it, don't try to legislate it, quantify it, or put it into a legal context. Anyone with a true devotion to their fellow human, derived from their maker or otherwise, knows that doing so is to invite folley and to see one's beliefs cheapened by a soul-blackening political machine. 

If we don't support and love our fellow humans in spite of the choices they make, we are cheapening the significance of having a choice in the first place. Do not erode the greatest gift that comes with life by supporting people who would foster Federal control over the lives of others. These people are not true advocates of the Pro-Life movement, not true fiscal conservatives, and have utterly lost their way. 

Tablets, Ultrabooks & Copying

There are a lot of devices not the market being branded as tablets and Ultrabooks, when in reality they are anything but. It's maddening to me, as I love both of those form factors, and they seem to get diluted with each new marketing strategy. This is how I define those two form factors:

Tablet Device

- Hand held mobile device weighing 1-2 lb. at most.

- 4:3 screen ratio, designed to be held in portrait (like digital paper), but works equally well in landscape. Android is something of an exception in this regard. Because it was designed to be viewed on a phone, it looks okay (depending on device) with a 16:10 ratio, even when held in portrait.

- Touch screen interface with no others required to access all features.

- Mobile operating system designed for tablet form factor, no mouse pointers or UI that would imply input other than touch. My preference is that the OS is as good at allowing the user to create media, as it is for consuming it. Productivity with equal parts fun.

- 10+ hours of battery life. Anything less doesn't match up with my usual work day.

Everything else is some sort of media consumption device, hybrid, or glorified e-reader.

As exciting as Microsoft's Surface device might be, it is not a tablet device. It's a somewhat baffling personal computer with a touch screen. I know Microsoft and everyone else is going to market the device otherwise, and it just doesn't sit right with me. Windows 8 RT running on the right hardware, might qualify as a tablet device, but I haven't held such a thing in my hand yet.

I hope the Surface is just a step in the right direction to a true Windows-based tablet device.

Ultrabooks

- Clamshell design mobile computing device weighing 2-3 lb. at most.

- 16:9 (or similar) screen ratio, to be viewed in landscape.

- Keyboard, Trackpad interface with no need to carry external mouse.

- Desktop operating system.

- Solid state drive storage.

(...although I am starting to see the merit of hybrid drives provided they don't add bulk to the device.)

- No optical drive.

- 7+ hours of battery life.

Everything else is some kind of personal computer.

There are a number of devices that will probably break my rules, succeed, and find consumers that crave their line-blurring form factors. The industry will probably call them tablets or Ultrabooks for the sake of marketing, but it still feels wrong. These unique form factors deserve names of their own.

It sounds like I'm just describing the iPad and the MacBook Air in my quantifications above. It's probably because those two devices have defined their respective form factors like no other. They are pretty much the standard against which all others are measured by tech sites, comment section trolls, and myself.

The year is half over and I haven't seen anything that comes close to making me want to relinquish my 2010 MBA or iPad (except the newer iPad). Windows 8 RT gives me hope that there might be a Windows Product worth buying again in the Ultrabook category, but no one is making a tablet worth buying right now. Props to Google for their Nexus 7 media consumption device, it looks really good.

I can't even look at the comments section of any tech website without marveling at the number of people pointing out how similar laptops, tablets, and similar are to Apple products... whether they are or not. Everyone from car makers to PC manufacturers has been copying each other since the inception of their respective industries. It is a practice that sits at the core of all human innovation, natural as breathing. Why this is so surprising to people or that they feel the need to point it out all the time is mysterious to me.

There are certain design truths whether you are crafting a commercial aircraft or a double decker ice cream cone. As the mobile computing industry settles on these truths they will come to resemble each other more and more over time as standards of creation are quietly adopted. It's just another sign that we are becoming a global community with a greater awareness of one another.

Washington Post Social Reader = Evil

For those of you who still insist on using the Washington Post Social Reader on Facebook as a means to consume news - I present the following for you to consider. Yes, things like this can end up in the newsfeed of your friends, family and coworkers who currently have you subscribed.

Friends don't let friends use the WPSR!

I submit that linking the article in your status update is dumb and messy because Facebook made it that way, but at least you are in control of what people subscribed to your feed see!

The Captains Of Finance

If any of the Captains of Finance are wondering why the OWS movement has gotten all sorts of traction and international attention... they need look no further than the Mayors and Governors playing into the OWS's hands. Bloomberg should have just thrown a press conference and had the NYPD beat the heck out of kid clutching an American flag. It would've been cheaper and had the same results. Like I needed more proof the world has lost its mind.

Reuter's take.

Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the Police

Photo via Flickr and probably from these folks. (Still trying to find out who took it.)

I don't troll the internet looking for video of police beating, shooting or otherwise harming protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. You don't have to, it's starting to get common enough that it's everywhere. I'm beginning to think that US policy makers, mayors and police chiefs don't think this will spiral out of control; that something like the LA Riots can't happen again in the United States.

As more people drop below the poverty line and European countries continue to engage in the same financial brinksmanship we have, the situation gets even more dire. People are getting desperate, and they are tired of not being heard. I don't even agree with half of what the Occupy Wall Street movement espouses, but I 100% sympathize with them now that police departments are acting outside the confines of the law to suppress these people.

Full disclosure: My father's been a member of Law Enforcement virtually my whole life, so I'm not making these comments out of any bias for or against the Police. I've seen what the average police officer is capable of... the same thing any other human being. The problem is that they don't have room to make mistakes in a world where one in five people have a smart phone capable of shooting high definition video and sending it to the internet in two taps of the touch screen.

I doubt the police officers responsible will ever be held accountable. Right now, something like that would make the national news, and that's something no town or police department wants. The Police have already put the movement into the mainstream and are threatening to give it a sort of legitimacy that get's attention without solving any of the larger problems.

Click this...

...and this...

While people are looking at disgruntled college kids getting kicked around by the police, kids that might be their own, focus shifts from the real problem. I believe that many people that bought a house without putting 20% down, bought things they didn't need on credit, and took out student loans instead of looking for work outside their home town, are just as much to blame as the banking industry for what's happening in the US. That said, I believe that the Americans who engaged in these unwise financial decisions have suffered, and dearly, for those choices.

The Banking Industry hasn't paid the price for their participation, suffered crippling regulation, or been seriously investigated by any government entity responsible for protecting the public from those actions. On the contrary, they've been rewarded and given a pass by our government and allowed to continue on using the same tactics they used before. The US Government has passed new legislation, but none of it has any teeth or means of enforcement.

The banks can pretty much just ignore it.

I feel badly that the Police are left to bear the brunt of the people's anger over this. Protecting a populace from themselves and a criminal element is at least a noble pursuit most of the time. Getting paid overtime to protect the interests of soulless corporations and policy makers too blinded by the money flowing into their reelection campaign funds? Yeah, that would make me question what my oath and my badge stood for if I were a member of Law Enforcement.

As a citizen I don't know what I'd do if our own tiny Occupy movement came under attack in this way. It'd get pretty personal, and I don't think I'd sit by and watch the police take those kinds of actions in my town. I can only imagine how the people in Oakland must feel, and that's really the crux of the problem with the police taking violent action against the protesters.

The flip side is that the protesters need to make sure what they are doing is as legal as possible and that any laws they disobey be done in a civil manner. Using the cause as a front to traffic illegal substances, provoking the police needlessly, or causing local businesses to suffer will hurt the Occupy movement. So far, this has been a battle for public opinion, and if the Occupy folks continue to be merely civilly disobedient, they might have a chance.

Smoke and Vaporware

I've been an avid reader of John Gruber's "Daring Fireball" for over two years now. I even bought a couple Daring Fireball T-shirts, a black and a grey one. I've always enjoyed his objective take on things and the way he thoughtfully presents things. He gets a lot of flack because he's Apple-centric in the way he writes and a great source of PR for that company.

Full disclosure, I also use a number of Apple's products. Since 2009 I've owned four apple computers, an iPad, and an iPod Touch. I'm also firmly in the Windows Phone 7 camp and have a couple of Thinkpads running Windows and a Samsung Focus. My most modern Lenovo dual boots Windows 7 and Ubuntu. When it comes to operating systems, both desktop and mobile, I'm a well rounded and open minded guy.

Microsoft released a video of one of a number possible futures for mobile business computing that I found fascinating. John has been relentless in his criticism of that video and has posted a lengthy defense to that criticism. Speaking as someone who loves Microsoft's Metro-designed Windows Phone 7, I don't share John's feelings.

John's entitled to his opinion, but I think the video introduces several ideas that would revolutionize mobile computing. I agree that there are many things in the video that are sitting in the distant future. There is one thing I saw that I desperately want, and I think is within reach if Microsoft, Apple or others wanted to reach out to it.

I would love to be able to point the camera on my tablet at the display for my desktop and be able to set a file transfer based on what was on the screen, and vice versa. Using optics and displays as a LOS based interface to initiate file transfers, access advertising and make purchases would open all sorts of doors for mobile computing. Being able to share information this way would make offices, big and small, more efficient.

Obviously, there would be significant security considerations to overcome, but then, there always will be.

Wayne Static's Pighammer

As of today, I used to be a huge Static-X fan. Their last two albums very gently shoved me away. I really liked the idea of the metal crowd reaching across the gap to something with an obvious industrial influence. Their early stuff is very inspired, much the way Fear Factory was in the early 90s.

On to my point.

Wayne, Static-X's front man and song writer, has gone ahead and done a solo album. I went ahead and read the reviews and interviews relative to the release and listened to some of the tracks. I half expected it to be like picking up Fear Factory's "Mechanize" album and the music would sound like a moment of clarity.

It wasn't.

It does sound a little better than Wayne just fooling around in the studio for a weekend, but it doesn't fill me with confidence that either he, or Static-X will ever return to the pre-"Start a War" album days. Wisconsin Death Trip, Machine and Shadow Zone are amazing albums that defined a time in my life when I was mostly out of control, endlessly angry, and conflicted as a creative.

I'm better now. I promise.

If you're a hopeless fan of Static-X, it's better than Cult of Static and most of what's on their Cannibal Album. I think it will probably do well in that regard because the fans have been craving something closer to the Static-X's first four albums. In that regard, Pighammer delivers, and I may still pick it up to support Wayne.

Tomorrow is, after all, another day.

Amazon Fire Tablet

There is a ton of hype surrounding this new device. Then there's all the shameless headlines claiming this device will take on Apple's iPad just for page views. Finally you have what must be obviously a serious gamble on the part of Amazon releasing a $200 Android tablet at what is probably cost.

Does Amazon have the content to back up handing these things out for virtually no profit? I think they do and then some. The problem is that the media and tech blogosphere is being really quick to shove the little guy into the ring with the iPad. It'd be like watching a Ford Focus try to outrun a BMW 530d during a chase scene in a John Frankenheimer movie.

Maybe if Robert De Niro is in the Ford Focus, and he's packing a H&K MP5.

I don't see a lot of people holding an iPad in one hand and an Amazon Fire in the other and weighing the pros and cons of each item before making a purchase. They barely resemble each other in what they would and can be used for by both casual consumer and tech adept. Employing my previous comparison, I don't see someone who went in to buy a BMW 530d being talked into a Ford Focus instead, and vice versa.

There's some chatter that Amazon's Fire could unleash doom for it's more expensive Android brethren fighting for market share. Could a cheap device being handed out at cost for the purpose of distributing paid content wreck the ambitions of devices put on the market to provide that and dozens of other services in addition, just because it's cheaper?

The tech market is largely perception based. It is for this reason that companies don't release their sales figures unless they are pretty sure they're top of the heap. Just because a device doesn't sell well, there must be something wrong with it. Given the youthful nature of the mobile computing device market, it's not odd at all that it would all look like melodrama unfolding in a junior high hallway.

The analysts making the assertion that a $200 price point will give Amazon an edge in competing with Apple haven't been paying attention to the last 10 years of mobile computing. My first laptop in 1999 was $2500 for a 200mhz. Most of the people who buy and rely on mobile computing devices are used to paying a high premium for the privilege of bringing their computer with them wherever they go. Relative to what my iPad does for me on a day to day basis, the $700 I paid back a year and a half ago seems like a bargain.

Yes, it's easy to forget that I'm not the typical iPad user and that even the games loaded on my iPad are somewhat work related. I use it to create far more content than I consume, something the majority of people who use desktop computers at home probably can't say. I'd really like to bash Jeff Bezos (it'd be easy) for his snide comparisons made during the unveiling of the Fire tablet, but he isn't trying to sell one to a guy like me.

In The Name Of God(s)

Folks ought to figure out the implications of their actions relative to their own temporal identity before doing it in the name of a Celestial one. Maybe God doesn't care about your earthly means and contrivances? From what I've seen, it's a lot safer bet. Glorifying a heavenly entity shouldn't be about earthly things that won't matter in a month.

You want to glorify a Maker, a (the, w/e) supreme creator of stuff? Create something that can't be spent, lost or easily forgotten.

Okay, I'm done for awhile. Ranting that is. Maybe.

Trolls, Spam, Anonymity and Censorship

There was a pretty decent editorial on Engadget about anonymity on the internet. They seemed to be trying to find a way to combat the excessive amount of trolling in their comments sections and made a thinly-veiled suggestion that maybe things would be better if people had to sign in under a verified real name. I'd link the article but it got pulled right after I commented beneath it. If it is still there somewhere, darned if I can find it.

My response to the editorial was shorter... but here's the expanded version:

I've been pretty hard on the US Government for their inability to find proper ways of regulating the internet that didn't amount to stupidity or censorship. If heavyweights like the folks at Engadget are struggling with the moderating the comments sections beneath articles, maybe it really is a problem. I was just spinning through Boing-Boing and saw a similar post about using mini URLs in the comments section to combat spammers and advert-bots.

I went ahead and committed some of my not-so-considerable brainpower to the problem and did a quick look around at the various sites I read and contribute to. Other than taking the Daring Fireball road and just not having a comments section at all there are three things I see to being key to preventing spam, trolls and so forth. None of those things have a thing to do with depriving people of what I see as their right to privacy online.

1. Hire professional writers who have a college level vocabulary.

Articles and content that are written well, by professionals, will deter a portion of the sub-human population that assuredly makes up a percentage of online trolls. I believe that an article written by someone who knows how, sans 1337speak/slang/etc, should act as a natural deterrent to certain types of trolls. It's clear from the way many trolls use language, words with more than two-syllables are pretty tough.

You can't fix stupid. Trolls are almost universally ignorant and will generally seek to verbally spar with people they consider their near equal intellectually. I find that whenever I engage or confront trolls in the comments section a few well placed ten cent words take the wind right out of their sails. Where pointing out how ignorant or irrational they are fails, illuminating their stupidity sometimes succeeds.

Read an article at Gizmodo (if you can figure out their cockamamie new format) and then read one from Ars Technica. Look at the threads beneath the articles on both sites and draw your own conclusion. From my perspective the comment sections on Ars Technica are far less painful and sport fewer trolls*.

2. Exercise Editorial Control

Sites that act as thinly-veiled mouthpieces for controversial corporate entities are going to be targets by trolls and regular folks alike. People crave objectivity most of the time and innately sense when you're faking it. If you're going to play that game with your readers, expect them to give you crap. When it's clear you're doing whatever you have to just to get hits and/or sell advertising anyone with a brain can generally tell.

If you don't seem to care about your content, no one else will either. It's common sense.

I rarely see someone giving the folks at Mac Rumors crap for their content. It's clear which team they are rooting for. They don't prevaricate with their audience in the slightest and to that end seem to suffer fewer trolls* than sites who aren't up front about who they think is a good and who they think is crap.

EDIT: Ask your readers within the textual portion of the article or content what you want to see in the comments section. Give them a clear option to participate in a positive way.

3. Forums

Having a separate place where people can discuss and moderate themselves is always a good thing. Generally they can find others of a similar mindset, commiserate in an area designated for the purpose and move on. The trolls, spammers and advert-bots will continue to do what they do, but they'll be easier to spot and kick without accidentally alienating someone who was just having a bad day.

Setting up a forum is easier than dodging around two dozen comments sections a day hunting trolls.

Why is anonymity important?

The internet is a wondrous resource, but there are many times when people need to be anonymous. To that end I think a lot of people would or could be barred from contributing to the online community if they had to shed that buffer.

Folks with general anxiety disorder come to mind. The folks who are related to a member of law enforcement, a federal judge or celebrity probably find anonymity a necessity every once in a while. Then there are all the other occasions when having the option to be anonymous is important.

Example: Your mom/brother/spouse/gerbil is dying of AIDS. You want to find a support group to help you cope with everything going on without compromising your own or your mom/brother/spouse/gerbil's identities online. It's an extreme example, but I can think of plenty others.

The moral of the story?

You can't get people to make good choices (for the right reasons) by reducing the number choices available to them.

*Maybe these sites do suffer the same amount of trolls and have found an efficient way of weeding them. It speaks to their perseverance and the pride they take in the content they provide regardless.

TSA in the USA

I'm not your typical traveler. I suffer from general anxiety disorder and so my reactions to the TSA's recently implemented security measures probably mess with me more than your average person. When my wife and I started talking about taking a flight to her SWIM program classes in Montana, I decided to do some looking around the intertoobs about the state of air travel. For me, it had been awhile.

Frankly, I'm more afraid of having to go through the TSA screening process than I am facing the prospect of being on a flight about to be hijacked. At least with terrorists I can take action, have recourse and some idea of their intentions. The TSA appears to have immunity and powers that regular law enforcement (with ten times the training) does not have. At least with terrorists, I can rip an armrest off my seat and try to cave in their skulls providing them independent oversight and myself some measure of recourse.

Is the hit to your civil liberties and dignity worth the false sense of security the TSA grants? 20 million air travelers this holiday season think so. Do those who sacrifice their liberty for security really deserve neither? I'm not really sure.

I think it really departs from being a privacy issue in the world we currently live in. We opt out of our privacy every time we activate the location services on our iOS device, log on to our Facebook Accounts, use Gmail, buy a car with GPS or Blog online about it. People relinquish their privacy all the time without giving it a second thought. I'm no different in that respect.

Even with all the reading and research I've done recently, the thing about the TSA's practices that bother me have little to do with the TSA. I think my overall disgust isn't with them or the way in which they do their jobs. Mostly, I can't believe I've inherited a world where such a thing is even necessary.

Politicians keep telling me and my fellow citizens that the military actions we've taken overseas is making for a safer America. 20 million people this holiday season are okay with the fact that our government has utterly failed to deliver on that promise. I'm not angry with the TSA, I'm angry at the people whose actions created the conditions whereby the existence of such an agency became necessary.

Take the Combating Online Infringement & Counterfeits Act that was adopted unanimously by the Senate's Judiciary Committee. It's not the stupidest thing to come out of our nation's capital in the last twelve months, but it's top 5. Do I think people should pirate and hack media for mass redistribution online to the detriment of the original creator? No.

Do I think this piece of legislation would have fixed the problem? It doesn't matter. Ultimately the outcome would be the US looking stupid as they tried to open foreign markets to homegrown and legit internet/online content and services. 40 of those foreign markets already engage in rampant online censorship. Censorship our government should allegedly oppose. Something about free speech being a part of our way of life. It's there somewhere, look it up.

Even if the legislation had worked (laugh, giggle, chortle, LoL, etc) we'd have ended up hurting our own case to aid legitimate online services entering foreign markets. Stupid? Self-defeating? Ill-conceived? I give you the majority of the United States Legislative Branch. There are so few people in the Senate and Congress with a clue, I'm terrified to see what they'll do next.

It's like watching someone throw gasoline and rage-virus infected baboons on a train wreck.

Thank God Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat from Oregon) had the sand to stand up and say no to COICA.

One Nation Restoring Honor

8-28-10 "Restoring Honor Rally" 10-2-10 One Nation's Rally

If you liked or supported either of these rallies, please stop reading now. I'm only going to make you angry. If both rallies bothered or enraged you, proceed.

I've been seeing a lot of chatter about these two events, in the news, among my friends, and elsewhere. They both represent very vocal and potentially influential political movements in the country I live. I hear Sweden is nice.

At the head of the Restoring Honor Rally was Glenn Beck. He is one of the most skillful showmen of our age, and he's fairly influential in our country. If he has his way, the separation of church and state will be completely eroded and we'll all be using words like communism and socialism incorrectly with confidence.

This is kinda like being on Jeopardy.

Me: "Alex, I'll take 'Sacrilege' for $1000."

Alex Trebek: "Answer, Talking Head Epic Fail."

Me: "Oh! What is... Glenn Beck asking his radio audience to pray for him so that he can let "the spirit" talk through him at his non-religious rally?"

What Keith Olbermann had to say on the subject made me laugh. I don't like Keith, but this was pretty appropriate.

Now, looking at the One Nation rally, I see a bunch of people who are willing to head to Washington DC to petition the government to fight employment. Fine. They want the government to step in and fix the mortgage laws, fix the foreclosure rate, healthcare, and a whole list of other things. Okay. Most of what the rally was about? Yep, having the Government step in and fix [insert random social problem]. Hoo boy.

I am not a fan of having the government coming in and "fixing" social problems that could be easily fixed by people being anything but stupid with money and/or placing a higher value on themselves and their own abilities. Most of the problems they want the government to fix, start with a single person, a home, and finally a community at large. These problems aren't things a large government can do anything about. Lately, our government has tried to make up for that fact by throwing money at these problems. Money we don't really have.

The sorts of folks who showed up at the One Nation Rally are the kind Glenn Beck and Co. like to lump into the Communist/Socialist pile of stuff he doesn't like. Remember in Junior High when people would call anything they didn't like "gay", completely misusing the word? Yeah, same thing. I don't really like the One Nation platform either, but would someone please get Mr. Beck a dictionary or a semester's worth of High School civics class so he understands they aren't Communists?

Beck probably thinks The Mighty Thor as depicted by Marvel Comics... is Communist Propaganda because there's a magic hammer involved. The C in Comics... is the sickle of course. Then there's Thor's red cape... more not-so obvious symbolism. Diabolical!

The One Nation folks want a raise in the minimum wage. That pretty much precludes them being in the communist party. If you look at their platform, the One Nation folks don't even fall under the "socialist" tag. Yeah, they want a weird welfare state, but that isn't the same thing as engaging the socialist political/economic theory for all it's worth. Having your democratically elected government take other people's money away and give it directly to you in the form of convoluted social programs? Just because you think you're entitled?

That isn't socialism. It's just pathetic.

I'm at an age where I'd like to become more politically active, and have been giving social issues a lot of thought. In everything I write, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to both include and exclude my own beliefs depending on whether it helps tell a good story. In my own life I try to be objective and clinical about the beliefs I share, making sure I've got something more than a feeling.

I have a great deal of civic pride, and I love my country, but I have no idea where to put my support these days.