They do a whole report on South Korea and how that country wants the US to leave, wants to reunite with North Korea, wants peace, and at the same time is more afraid of George W. Bush than Kim Jong Il. And never once does 60 Minutes ask any of these people the most simple and most important question: WHY?

The report leaves me profoundly dissatisfied, and I must wonder what agenda 60 Minutes is trying to push and what the point of that report was if it reveals nothing we don’t already know.

Today at lunch Adam fought with me about the usefulness of a space shuttle, yelling about how they are going to cure cancer in space and other such great achievements. I maintained that they aren’t doing anything useful whatsoever. Now, I have an article, published today, to back up my claims. Respond to that, Adam!

I do not in any way think that space travel is not worthwhile. In fact, I want to go myself. I just think that the way NASA does it is terrible, and if it were my choice I would send much of the money for space travel elsewhere, to more worthwhile space endeavors.

We went to our first college mock trial competition at Manchester Community College, and it was a great experience. One of our teams won a “Spirit of AMTA” award for working well with others, Sam Dewey got a best witness award, and I got a very funny score that I thought I should share with you.

There are two judges, and they each give a score per item, such as a witness direct or cross, or an opening or closing. Generally these scores are very similar. To give you an idea of the discongruity here, allow me to present the scoring guidelines for these two numbers:

8 – A few errors
Exceptional law student. Reacts to actual events well.

2 – Inappropriate behavior, harms team significantly
Unable to contribute. Acts in an obnoxious way or disrupts trial.

My conclusion? The second scoring judge was a complete idiot. 😛

Alright, alright, I’m finally putting it online:

AMST 100b	Twentieth-Century American Culture
The democratization of taste and the extension of mass media are among the distinguishing features of American culture in the 20th century. Through a variety of genres and forms of expression, in high culture and the popular arts, this course traces the historical development of a national style that came to exercise formidable influence abroad as well.
AMST 134b	The New Media in America
Analyzes the social and cultural adaptation of new media in American history. Examines the ways Americans have thought about and accepted new methods of mass communications in the 20th century.
INET 98b	Independent Study
LGLS 129b	Law, Technology, and Innovation
Study of interaction of the law and technology, including how law encourages and restrains the processes of technological innovation and change and how technological innovation and change affect the law. Topics include such issues as intellectual property rights and new information technologies, biotechnology engineering, and reproductive technologies. Shows how law balances personal, social, and economic interests.
POL 116b	Civil Liberties in America
The history and politics of civil liberties and civil rights in the United States, with emphasis on the period from World War I to the present. Emphasis on freedom of speech, religion, abortion, privacy, racial discrimination, and affirmative action. Readings from Supreme Court cases and influential works by historians and political philosophers.

Someone here gets Rolling Stone, so courtesy of that person, I have this great quote from Matt Groening:

What’s the most significant way that television has changed since The Simpsons started fourteen seasons ago?

All the networks have a feeling of flailing to me. They’re so desperate to keep the viewers, they’re using all this visual chatter. It’s sort of like a fancy restaurant where everyone is talking louder because everyone’s talking louder, and you still can’t hear. This is what TV is like, with the thing running across the botom and the little bug in the corner and the logo. What it does is disengages the viewer. I’ve talked to networks aout how the promos for their shows are so self-hating, it’s obvious that the people making the shows hate the shows. Shows come along that are witty and carefully made and blow people’s minds like The Sopranos and then you realize that they can be done.

Sounds about right to me.

My TiVo has had nine or ten episodes of Twenty-Four saved up for me for a long time now. I was going to just spend an hour watching my last Stargate, but Adam wanted to see something different and so I got started on 24…big mistake. 😛

The main plot has to do with a nuclear device in LA, the (stupid) subplots have to do with domestic abuse and a fiance who may also be a terrorist. Those were annoying, so I just skipped them. End result: the “real-time” eight hours I covered in about 3, while at points doing other work. Call it time travel, call it cheating death, either way, TiVo is useful.

This year I really didn’t get into it, and neither did the rest of my team, and we’re just getting into it now which is fine but somewhat late in the game. I mean, we did basic prep, but then I start talking with Jason and Igor and Sam and Kelson and we get into the intricacies and where people start tearing witnesses apart and I realize that I have not put near enough time into this whole thing, into making tight directs and pointed crosses and a kick-ass closing. And neither have most of my team members. So I need to focus on that for a while. And with that, my love of the law is coming back to me.

On a completely seperate note, here is a funny error that Sara got a few days ago:

Reason Magazine got an exclusive interview with Mickey Mouse:

How do you think it feels? For almost 70 years, I’ve only been allowed to do what the Disney people say I can do. Sometimes someone comes up with a new idea, and I think to myself, “Great! Here’s a chance to stretch myself!” But of course they won’t let me leave the reservation. If I do, they send out their lawyers to bring me home.

http://www.reason.com/links/links011703.shtml

I was fairly certain of my future a few days ago. I believe in the power of the law. I believe that the law is a slow-moving system, yes, but remarkably resiliant. Our courts are far more stable, true, and just than our legislature. It is ironic, of course, because our courts are the only branch that is not elected. But our courts draw on legislative, constitutional, and judicial tradition and history to apply law to our society. The court must back up each action with citation, and that is its biggest strength: it is the only branch of government that really has a firm grasp of the history of America, that can and must look back at other decisions and findings in order to interpret what is presented today. The court is conservative, meaning that it is resistant to change, but it able to take change into account and act on it.

The problems I have seen are in how the court handles new issues introduced by the internet. The internet is a fundamentally different medium, and often the old analogies do not apply. Meanwhile, our jurists, wise members of society who are generally aged, do not necessarily grasp the implications of some new technologies. We need action to change how intellectual property, fair use, free speech, interstate commerce, and free access are interpreted (not to mention acted upon by the legislature). This is what I hoped to pursue.

All this has changed now that the Supreme Court has ruled on Eldred. In one swift act, our most learned and thoughtful court has once again shown that it can fail, and fail miserably. The first notable instance for me was Bush v. Gore, in which I hoped the court could draw on its wisdom and massive knowledge and bring us to a fair and equitable and just outcome. Instead, we have a decision that any first-year legal student (or even undergrad 😉 ) can read and instantly denounce as bad law. Then we have Eldred, wherein the court simply chose to ignore the central argument of the petitioner and instead rule in favor of Congress and the huge media conglomerates, even when such a ruling is clearly wrong.

I have to ask myself — do I really want to be a lawyer when these sort of things are happening? Can I really change things when our highest court can fail so miserably? If my hero, Lawrence Lessig, cannot prevail, what hope do I have? Meanwhile, I’m taking a class called Law, Technology, and Innovation, in which the professor/lawyer confesses willingly that she doesn’t understand new technology and that such an understanding doesn’t matter for this class. The internet is no different, she says, than innovations of yore, this time is much less exciting than the 1900s and the amazing new invention of the automobile, nevermind that we had trains and horses long before then.

The internet is not a newspaper, it is not a book, it is not a town hall. It is all of those things and so much more. It is a platform for change. Marketing tool? Sure. But also peer to peer file trading, bulletin boards, news conglomeration sites, data mining, Lexis-Nexus, raw data, government reports, millions of stories and thoughts and voices all brought together in a gel that anyone can mold and modify and change and create. This is DIFFERENT, and it is worth fighting for, before the outside forces of SAMENESS destroy it’s potential. And if I can’t count on the court, to whom can I turn?

Who knew the excellent author of Ender’s Game is also a political strategist? While I don’t agree with some of his implications regarding the pending attack on Iraq (especially with this article circulating), I do find his analysis of the North Korea position spot-on.

While the website is a bit…interesting, this article is chilling:

In the run-up to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, there was active consideration of the danger of “a fully loaded, fuelled airliner crashing into the opening ceremony before a worldwide television audience,� according to former Sydney police superintendent Paul McKinnon. Osama bin Laden was considered the number one threat, he said. IOC officials said plane-crash catastrophes have been incorporated into security planning for every Olympics since 1972.

And the people helping them plan for and prevent these attacks? The FBI of course. Here’s the article.

More in the airport-security genre, the latest “Ask the Pilot” on Salon.com focuses on the effectiveness and convenience of those wonderful new bomb-testing procedures at our airports. His most important point? It’s gonna bankrupt the airlines. Well, I certainly wasn’t thinking about that, but it does make sense…

Penn (of “and Teller” fame) took a very very minor incident and made it a big deal. I think it’s kinda funny, although I don’t think it was the best “incident.” Getting a poor minimum-wage worker fired ove something this silly is mean and uncalled for. But I do agree that something has to be done, and soon.

The ACLU has a nice exhibit up about cartooning in wartime.

Apparently comments were broken (thanks Aron!) so that might explain why no one was, ya know, commenting. Now you can, so please do! It makes me happy. 😛

Secondly, I had to do a server restore just now, so this post and a few sleep-related comments were lost. Sorry about that.

Things I’ve learned from not sleeping:
Days lose all sense of meaning. My doctors appointment it today, which yesterday seemed like tomorrow, but tomorrow was still that day because the clock hadn’t moved yet.
It’s dark at night. You need a lot of light to feel not bad about being awake. I can understand why night shift workers can be so depressed.
When you fall asleep at 7 AM and wake up at 2 PM it completely throws off your experiment. Now I think I probably have to give it up. Next chance I have to try it is the 7 or so days of spring break that I’ll be spending at school without many people around.

I don’t think its bad that I did the experiment. It put me out of phase with reality, but I wasn’t really talking to many people anyway. I didn’t really get much work done, but I never do anyway. I always slept for 8 hrs. or less and woke up feeling refreshed. Much better then going to slee at 12 or 1 or 2 and waking up at noon feeling tired, which was my old routine.

As for the future, who knows.

I’m out of sync with the rest of Calfornia because I’m trying this experiment to finally get my sleep problems under control where I try to go forwards around the clock instead of back. Its a bad time because I leave for Boston in 5 days, but I’m doing it anyway. Today is messed up because I’m supposed to sleep from 10AM to 6PM except I have a doctors appointment about sleep at 5PM. Whoops. Well, maybe she’ll tell me I’m an idiot for doing this. I’ll keep ya posted.

Second, I’ve been craving ketchup. I haven’t been out of the house in two days, and on both those days I’ve eaten chicken fingers and hash browns, and both times we’ve been without ketchup, something that never happens in this house but mysteriously has.

If you know me you know I am a ketchup whore, so this is a terrible turn of events. I’ve had to use *shudder* barbecue sauce. And then I’m randomly looking through another blogger’s photo gallery and I stumble upon this. I think I need to cry. 🙁

Glenn Reynolds points out that Montgomery County will be using the tens of thousands of tips that came in during the sniper ordeal to crack down on illegal firearm posession. And this is apparently a bad thing. Says Reynolds:

This is sure to produce less cooperation in the future. And it explains why so many gun owners don’t trust the authorities: They’ve seen things used as excuses for anti-gun sweeps in the past. […] This is just pathetic. How stupid do you have to be to do this kind of stuff? Not too stupid to have a management position at the FBI or ATF, apparently.

And one must logically ask, wha??? First off, the tipsters are not being targeted, only the people who they snitched on. Secondly, is Reynolds defending owners of illegal firearms, or unregistered ones? Gun advocates should be the first to champion upholding gun laws, especially if they hope to make a credible case to those undecided (or uneducated) about gun control legislation. Third, if this turn of events does lead to less cooperation in the future from tipsters, I’d bet that the only tipsters who won’t be responding are those who see second-ammendment concerns under every stone, the same ones who wouldn’t trust the police in the first place. (In addition to the many other segments of society who don’t trust the police, but that is another issue…) If you don’t like the gun laws thats one thing. But if you believe in American democracy, you should also agree that those who break the law must face the consequences.

So explain to me again how this effort is pathetic and stupid?

Here is a case where the last measily broken shreds of my faith in the power of the United States Government (and specifically the military) to understand and implement technology are utterly and completely shattered. A happy little company called TriWest is very upset and worried about some evil peruptrators of cyber-identity theft. It seems that these powerful and malicious hackers broke into their computers and stole sensitive data, including the personal records, social security numbers, and medical histories of some 500,000 U.S. military personnel.

Do you want to know how they did it? Do ya? I’ll tell you. They broke into the office and stole some computers. Yes, apparently common thieves in search of equipment to unload on the black electronics market are now super cyber-criminals. And how did they get this information? Was it through a sophisticated virus, or at least some crazy cryptographic scheme? No, the information was just sitting there, in the clear, meaning without any form of security or encryption or anything, right on the hard disks. Well isn’t that just special.

Our government, and the companies it employs, care so much about the safety and security of our personal and private information that they don’t even bother to put a fricken password on it. Look, if it had been properly encrypted with reasonable software, there would be no possible way for the theives, or anyone else in this world outside of perhaps the NSA, to access it, and this would not be an issue. TriWest would restore the data from a backup tape and go about their business, and no one would give it a second thought. Not even Al-Qaida could get to that data.

Instead, its a national emergency. Because, ya know, no one could have possibly expected that vandals might potentially, I don’t know, vandalize an office. Not in this great country! Those terrorists!

Here is one of the affected with a take on this.