mfwic-o-rama

Ron Paul is a real grassroots phenom. His bid at a Presidential nomination is going very well considering his start. The Digg effect really seems to be in play. I Dugg these this morning.

Labels: Digg, politics, Ron-Paul

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Empty-Stomach Intelligence - New York Times
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Does pornography breed rape? Do violent movies breed violent crime? Quite the opposite, it seems.

First, porn. What happens when more people view more of it? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.

The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.

Read the rest at:
http://www.slate.com/id/2152487/?nav=tap3
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This should also help demonstrate to uptight Americans that drug laws, decency laws, and other assorted vice laws are actually harmful. Legislating morality is unproductive and laws based on FUD do more harm than good. - mfwic

Safe at Any Speed
With higher speed limits, our highways have been getting safer.

Friday, July 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

It's another summer weekend, when millions of families pack up the minivan or SUV and hit the road. So this is also an apt moment to trumpet some good, and underreported, news: Driving on the highways is safer today than ever before.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008621

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The Broadband is Kay Hanley, Jill Sobule, and Michelle Lewis.

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Death by DMCA
Hollywood is good at telling stories. The one it has been screening in Washington—that music and movies will perish if the regulators don't kill the dangerous gizmos first—is powerful drama but has about as much basis in reality as Lord of the Rings. Killing off gizmos and subjecting technological development to the whims of federal regulators will ultimately hurt not just consumers but also tomorrow's creative industries—both technology and entertainment.
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The Eternal Value of Privacy

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

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American Scientist Online - The Toxicity of Recreational Drugs
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Wired News: The Jasons Exposes Secret Science
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/22/AR2006042200112_2.html?sub=AR

Intel's Hard-to-Define Viiv Doesn't Live Up to the Hype

"Viiv (pronounced like 'five')..."

"On a typical Viiv box, Hewlett-Packard's Pavilion m7360y, it amounts to a smattering of free Web video clips and discounts on online music, movie and game rentals -- plus a nifty rainbow-hued Viiv sticker on the front of the computer."

"Quick Resume doesn't actually put a Viiv computer in any sleep mode; it just turns off the display and speakers while barely affecting the rest of the machine. (You can provide a decent approximation of it by pressing the power button on your monitor.)"

"All of the Viiv-exclusive content that I found on this HP required lengthy program installations that temporarily punted me out of the remote control-driven Media Center interface. (Apparently the concept of preloading this software eluded the folks at Intel and HP.) The rewards for this work were surpassingly lame."

"The subsequent download seemed to stall out when the HP-bundled Norton Internet Security firewall warned that 'EntriqMediaServer' was a high-risk program that it should always block.Naturally, that was a Viiv component."

"Intel says Viiv will mean much more in the future."

"And we may also see smaller Viiv computers that depart from standard-issue PC design. But in the meantime, Intel is only embarrassing itself with its half-witted hucksterism for Viiv."
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Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American living outside L.A., was interviewed on Al-Jazeera Television on Feb. 21, 2006. During that interview she voiced her disdain for Muslims that distort Isalm for their own gains.

Partial Transcript of Al-Jazeera Interview.

Letter of Thanks to Dr. Sultan at anneqed.com

Video: Wafa Sultan Clashes with Muslim Cleric

Some quotes from A NY Times article about her.

"In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence."

"Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.""

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats - New York Times
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Gotta love his succinct comments on 25 programming languages.
What Languages Fix
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Yahoo! Privacy
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When I first saw this I thought they meant the kid in the red jacket.
I think I found Waldo.
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WESH.com - News - Officials: Woman's Gang Rape Story Is Bogus
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