ryan.freebern.org

Via Warren Ellis:

A test of the controversial US missile defence system failed on Sunday - the second time this has happened in recent months.

[...]

The MDA revealed on 14 January 2005 that this was caused by the interceptor’s internal safety system preventing lift-off.

If only every weapon contained an internal safety system like that…

I’ve been hearing more and more about a new service, YouSendIt. It bills itself as a simple way to send people files that are too large for email to handle — up to 1GB. You enter an email address, upload a file, and the recipient is given a link (active for seven days) to download the file.

I don’t think I’ve actually heard of anyone using it for its intended purpose, however; everyone seems to be using it as a temporary host for mp3s that they want to share with friends. They upload the file, get the link themselves, and then post it on their weblog or IM it to everyone who wants it, and voilá, a new kind of filesharing.

When I first heard about people using the service this way, my immediate thought was that they must be crazy to just trust that the service provider won’t rat out copyright-infringers to the RIAA. Before making any judgments, though, I checked their website. Right on the top of the page is a link titled “your privacy is guaranteed.” That sounded promising.

Clicking the link and reading their actual privacy policy, however, tells another story:

IP addresses are logged [...]

We collect the e-mail addresses of YouSendIt Delivery recipients and senders [...]

We may disclose your information if necessary [...] Disclosure may be required by law or if we receive legal process.

They claim to guarantee your privacy, and then blatantly state that they log almost every bit of information that they receive and will gladly give it up if the RIAA comes knocking with a subpoena. This is crap. It almost smells like a filesharing sting operation. While many people I know are gladly going about sharing files with this service, I’m wary of doing so, and I urge anyone else with concern for their privacy to avoid it as well.

A mashup is a home-spun mix of two or more songs, usually the lyrics from one overlayed on the backing music from another. The artist uses an audio editing program, chops samples out of one or more songs, and blends those samples in some sort of pleasing fashion with samples from other songs. The result, if done well, can be both fun and intriguing, as you hear some familiar sounds in a totally new context. (For instance, the Kleptones’ “A Night at the Hip-Hopera” is quite possibly my favourite album released last year, and it’s entirely mashups.)

The problem with mashups is that record companies really don’t like people chopping up copyrighted songs and redistributing them. They complain a lot and try to sue people for it. However, the mashing-up isn’t what they have a problem with; it’s the distributino of said mashed-up music. So why not get rid of that distribution? Why not invent a way for people to let other people listen to clever mashups without having to actually send them any copyrighted music?

Say there’s an audio editing program which, along with actually editing the audio, keeps track of all the steps you take to do the editing and can save those steps — essentially, a set of instructions describing how to duplicate the edits you’ve made — as a small, easily redistributable file. Imagine: you open songs X and Y in the editor, and remove the vocals from song Y, then chop a few small sections out of song X and lay them on top of the instrumentals from song Y, and produce a mashup, song XY. Meanwhile, the editing program not only saves song XY to disk, it also saves a file describing every operation the program performed on either of the songs, called XY’.

You then send XY’, a file that contains no copyrighted music whatsoever, to a friend. Your friend has his own copies of songs X and Y on CD, and his own copy of the editing program. He opens songs X and Y in the editing program, and loads XY’, and voilá: song XY (your mashup) is available to him, and — here’s the important part — no illegal exchange of copyrighted data has taken place.

Essentially, it’s an optimized macro-recorder for an audio editing program. Someone on the Audacity team get on this, okay?

The chemical Dioxin has been in the news fairly recently with the poisoning of Ukranian presidential candidate (now president) Viktor Yushchenko. What is dioxin? It’s one of the most toxic chemicals known to science, a potent carcinogen, and a poison that has been linked to severe reproductive and developmental effects.

Why, then, do small amounts of dioxins occur in bleached cotton tampons, which are placed in one of the most sensitive, absorbent, and reproduction-related areas of a women’s body?

The FDA claims that it’s not a problem. They say the levels in most tampons are well below dangerous. However, dioxin accumulates in the body over time, so even these tiny levels can eventually be harmful — especially when you consider that the average American woman uses over 11,000 feminine hygiene products in her lifetime.

Additionally, as Heather Guidone says in her study entitled Endometriosis & Dioxin: a Toxic Link?:

Currently, the FDA requires tampon and related menstruation product manufacturers to monitor dioxin levels in their products; however, the results are not available to the public and the dioxin tests relied upon by the FDA are done by the manufacturers themselves. That’s a little bit like having the fox guard the hen house!

So the FDA, trusting giant manufacturing companies to put consumer safety over profit margins, tells us that bleached cotton menstrual products are safe.

What’s a concerned woman to do? Well, in the course of researching a rumour regarding asbestos in tampons (which proved to be false), Snopes’ esteemed Barbara Mikkelson reached the conclusion that the best bet is to buy unbleached organic cotton tampons, which are just as effective as any other tampon while being much safer. And Guidone suggests that you write to your state-level political representatives and urge them to support legislation mandating independent testing of feminine hygiene products to determine and warn consumers about the dangers of dioxin.

If it isn’t blindingly obvious to my dozen faithful readers, I’m fairly liberal in my political leanings. It should come as no surprise, then, that I endorse John Kerry for President. Now it’s on the record.

If Kerry wins next Tuesday (as I fully expect him to), in the upcoming years, I will try and be a fair observer of his performance, and judge him no more or less harshly than I have Bush. I want you, my readers, to help keep me honest. I thank you all for challenging my opinions in the past few months that this blog has been operational, and I hope that you will continue to do so in the future.

That said, when I started this blog, I didn’t mean for it to be entirely political. That’s just been the main issue on my mind for months, so it’s been mainly what I’ve been posting about. From here on out, I’ll try harder to shift my mind away from politics to other topics occasionally, and make thoughtful and entertaining posts about them.

I’ve been busy with the transition between jobs for the past few weeks, so updates have been scarce. My life will probably be settling into a more regular pattern in the next couple weeks, and there ought to be more regular updates soon thereafter. Thank you all for your patience.

In the third Presidential debate, John Kerry said this:

I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.

In response, Dick Cheney said:

You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected. And I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father.

Lynne Cheney said:

This is not a good man. Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.

A spokeswoman for the Bush/Cheney campaign said that Kerry is

backpedaling from what is a crass, below-the-belt political strategy to attack the vice president’s daughter.

Political trick? Attack Mary Cheney? What on earth are these people talking about?

Go read Kerry’s statement again. He says two things: one is the fact that Mary Cheney is a lesbian. This is indisputable, has been discussed many times by many different people, including her parents. It is not a trick to state the fact, since it is well-known, and it is not an attack, since being homosexual is not a bad thing. He also says that, in his opinion, she would tell you that she is who she is. This is an opinion, but it’s a pretty harmless one: he’s saying she’s herself, no more and no less. This is also not a trick, nor is it an attack.

So what on earth are the Cheneys talking about? Well, they’re trying to claim that merely bringing up Mary Cheney’s sexuality is a “trick” and an “attack” in and of itself. If this is true, why did Dick Cheney thank John Edwards for his “kind words” about Mary Cheney?

If the Cheneys want to get mad about an attack, why not direct their anger towards Alan Keyes, who infamously said that homosexuality is based on “selfish hedonism,” and that “of course” that assessment applies to Mary Cheney? That is an attack, pure and direct. It’s despicable and low, and ought to have enraged the Cheneys. But did they respond? Not at all.

(This strategy, of choosing the path of greatest political gain over the one that is actually right, is the same thing that drove Bush and Cheney to attack Iraq because they could paint it as possibly a threat while ignoring North Korea’s actual threat. This is a dangerous way to run a country or to live a life.)

So what’s really going on here? Well, it’s two weeks until the election, and the Bush/Cheney campaign has realized that they can’t let the voters actually spend their time thinking about actual political issues, because the Bush/Cheney record on those issues is so incredibly dismal that they’d lose the election without a doubt. So instead, they have to stoop to making up ridiculous, absurd, and patently false accusations in an attempt to paint Kerry as “cheap,” “tawdry,” and “crass” in the hopes that people won’t have the chance to pay attention to anything substantive until the election is over.

Who would want dishonest, manipulative jerks like this running our country?

Via BoingBoing: Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the country’s largest television broadcasting companies, is letting its bias hang out by ordering its affiliates to broadcast an anti-Kerry documentary during prime time two weeks before the election. I don’t have a Sinclair affiliate in my area, but if I did, I’d use this page to locate their website, then send them an email expressing my displeasure at this smear tactic.

I just read this post on John Scalzi’s blog about how pathetic it would be if John Kerry managed to lose this election. Despite Scalzi’s wonderful writing, something about his reasoning just struck me as a little bit off. It took me a bit of thought, but I think I’ve come up with the answer: taking a cue from the President himself, Bush’s supporters think that changing their minds about voting for him is a sign of weakness.

Bush has pulled off a fantastic bit of legerdemain here: he’s managed to convince about half of the nation that reconsidering their options, that taking a second look at the facts, that changing course at all is foolish. And they’ve swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. It’s been pointed out numerous times that in real life, people who carefully consider new evidence and change their minds are considered wise and careful, while in politics according to Bush, they’re “flip-floppers.” And now, he’s managed to cow these poor folks into not even considering new facts, much less changing their minds based on them.

I might be wrong here. I might be way off base. But what else can explain this behaviour? What else would drive so many people, who quite possibly are intelligent and thoughtful people in other areas of their lives, to vote for a person so obviously incompetent? A person whose record includes so many utter failures and lies?

I think they’re just embarassed, and hope if they plug their ears, close their eyes, and walk blindly into the polling booths, perhaps Bush will redeem their faith in the next go-round. Here’s your wake-up call: he’ll only get worse.

If any Bush supporters would like to enlighten me, I’d love to know how you reconcile his utter incompetence in so many areas to the point where you feel it’s a good idea to support him. You and I have been looking at the same things for the past four years, and I just don’t see how, given all that, any logical, rational, or reasonable person can decide that voting for Bush is the right thing to do.

I just learned about presidential candidates David Cobb and Michael Badnarik getting arrested. They were attempting to serve papers to the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is the supposedly independent organization that organizes the Presidential debates. The papers charged the CPD with breaking campaign finance laws by inviting Bush and Kerry to debate but not Cobb or Badnarik. The two candidates crossed the police line outside the debate last night and were summarily arrested.

Why can’t the CPD include third-party candidates in the debates? Because the CPD’s arbitrary rules state that they only include candidates who “have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations”. There are so many things wrong with this approach that it’s hard to know where to begin.

It’s both wrong and stupid to disallow third-party candidates from debating. The public has a right to know the positions of all the candidates, and these candidates who are already afforded very little media coverage and who have relatively tiny campaign funds need all the support they can get. So when a supposedly independent organization claims to hold debates between the presidential candidates, it should include all of them.

In my opinion, John Kerry should take this opportunity to declare that, if elected, he’ll work to lower the bar for qualification in the debates. Not only will this potentially win him some of those third-party voters, but if he does manage to lower that bar, will strengthen the state of democracy in this country.

Here’s why it’s important for you, and everyone you know who cares about the future of our country and the world, to vote. Voter registration deadlines are very soon; make sure everyone you know who wants to vote can.

“I don’t care either way who wins. I am going to vote in the fall; I’m going to do what I do with every election: bring a coin to flip.”

“While it may be true that ‘every vote counts’, I choose not to vote because I have never been well enough informed (by choice) on either candidate’s issues or causes in any election. Also, when the person elected totally fucks up I can say, ‘Well, I didn’t vote for them.’”

“Personally I have to vote for Bush, otherwise my mom won’t pay for my apartment. Vote for the party, not the man, and all…”

(All quotes found on random blogs. Sorry, no attribution.)

My sister attended the RNC protests in New York City at the start of the month, and, thankfully, didn’t get arrested. However, at least 1,500 others were arrested, and many of them held in inhumane conditions at facilities like Pier 57, also known as “Little Guantanamo.”

Via Tuttle SVC, I have come across this letter on ZNet from the mother of one person detained at Pier 57. She claims to have inquired as to the leaseholder of Pier 57 at the time and found out that it was the Republican Party itself.

Reuters has the story that one of the 30 Guantanamo detainees reviewed so far (out of 585 currently held) has been found to be innocent. My first post here said that I hoped that wouldn’t happen, just so that holding these people for the last two years without any judicial review would be justified. Oops.