Archive for the 'Rant' Category

Knee jerking at its worst

Published
by
Cody
on May 27, 2008
in Rant
. 0 Comments

Imagine you’re watching TV and a commercial advertising donuts is one. A famous scarf-wearing woman is talking about the donuts. The commercial ends and life goes on. Most people would think “Mmm, donuts” in a very Homer Simpson kind of way. Not Michelle Malkin. Oh no. She sees a terrorism apologist in that commercial. Why? Because the scarf kind of looks like a Muslim headscarf. If you squint.

Believe it or not, I’m not making this up. The Boston Globe reported on a Dunkin’ Donuts ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf that bears passing resemblance to a keffiyeh, a traditional male headscarf in Islam. I don’t see the resemblance, but that could be because 1) Rachael Ray isn’t a Muslim guy, and 2) it’s not on her head. But that’s just me.

Michelle Malkin (and others) looked a little too far into the ad and immediately thought “terrorist!” Apparently, the keffiyeh has come to symbolize “murderous Palestinian jihad”, mostly due to Yasser Arafat. The mindless mouth-foaming of Malkin and her fellow conservative bloggers resulted in Dunkin’ Donuts pulling the ad.

Alas, I can’t find the video anywhere online. But the Globe article has a good picture of the scarf in question. To be fair, keffiyeh’s have indeed become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, but I honestly don’t think this scarf looks anything like one. Similar pattern, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean anything. Two objects can look similar without actually being the same. It’s pretty simple, but I guess you can’t be an ultra-conservative blogger (or a Fox News commentator) without drawing false conclusions.

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It’s not just guns

Published
by
Cody
on May 24, 2008
in Rant
. 2 Comments

While browsing through Reddit today, I came across a news story about an 18-year-old actor in the upcoming Harry Potter movie who was fatally stabbed. Sad stuff, really. He was protecting his younger brother from some maniac with a knife who was stabbing a lot of people outside a bar. The article then went on about knife attack statistics and how much of a problem stabbing is in Britain.

That got me thinking. In modern times, Britain has restricted use of firearms since 1903, banned automatic weapons since the 1930s, and finally went all-out and banned handguns in 1997 after a brutal massacre the year before. As a result, shooting deaths have stayed fairly low. After all, if you make it impossible to get firearms legally, only people willing to break the law will be able to get them. That’s a reasonably small amount of the population (7% of the homicides committed in 2005 and 2006 involved guns). Even so, I am against gun control that gets too strict. To quote the overquoted: guns don’t kill, crazy people with guns do.

At any rate, the British don’t much have to worry about people getting shot by their neighbor. What they do have to worry about, though, is getting stabbed by their neighbor. Guns are far from being the only lethal objects around. The average person has access to plenty of dangerous things without having to get a gun. Steak knife? Check. Blowtorch? Check. Automobile? Double check.

It seems to me that banning guns doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is, of course, people getting killed by other people. Banning knives wouldn’t help, either, since a person could use a sharpened screwdriver. Banning screwdrivers wouldn’t help because there’s always the last resort of bare hands. Problem: you has it.

Since I’m not a psychologist (even though I did take that animal psychology class in college), I won’t go into great detail, but from a layman’s point of view, it looks like it would be more productive to address the why of homicide, instead of the how. In other words, figure out and eliminate the cause of violent crime. It doesn’t really matter what people use to kill each other with. It matters that they kill each other in the first place. Of course, it’s a much larger undertaking to fix society than it is to take away society’s toys. But it can be done. After all, utopia is a realistic possibility, right? Right? Or am I preaching to the anarchist choir?

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Photo ID, please

Published
by
Cody
on April 28, 2008
in Rant
. 3 Comments

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday to uphold an Indiana law requiring voters to present photo identification before casting their votes, thus paving the way for similar laws in other states. Not surprisingly, people complained about it.

From the comments I’ve read, it seems like the general grievance with this is that IDs are not always free. Thus, a person would have to pay to buy an ID just so they could vote, making it an unconstitutional poll tax. However, in Indiana, a state ID is free, so it’s a moot point. The other complaints I read included: voter intimidation, suppression of democracy, fascism, nanny state, and Karl Rove. I’m only partially kidding. Half of the commenters on the Reddit entry for the article I linked to above were calling this a Bad Idea™. I, along with roughly the other half of the commenters were surprised to learn that this wasn’t already required. I’ve never voted in person, as I’ve voted via absentee ballot in the past couple of elections. But if I did actually go to a polling place, I would definitely expect to have to prove who I am.

I honestly don’t see what the problem is here. The right to vote is not being infringed at all. As a few commenters pointed out, every American has the right to buy and own firearms, but no one complains about having to show ID in order to buy a gun. The idea here is to have legitimate people voting. During the 2006 midterm elections (or was it the 2004 presidential election?), King County in Washington had votes coming in from felons and dead people. I don’t know about you, but that seems to be a major problem.

But the main thing to remember here is that the Supreme Court merely opened the door to allowing states to create laws requiring photo ID. As far as I know, only Indiana has such a law, and their IDs are free. I’m all for this ruling as it preserves state’s rights. For you slippery slope people: it’s easier to fight laws on the state level than on the federal level. Interesting stance for a libertarian, isn’t it?

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News flash: iPhone found lacking

Published
by
Cody
on April 21, 2008
in Rant and Technology
. 1 Comment

This is probably a no-brainer, but the iPhone doesn’t do everything. I mean, it doesn’t even double as a flying car. How disappointing is that? In all seriousness, during my love affair with my phone, I’ve discovered a few things that I assumed it would have but didn’t. First off: a video camera. Nearly every modern cell phone has a camera built in. More expensive models go one step further and have a video camera. The iPhone…does not. No, the camera is just a regular still camera. For $400, the least they could have done was put in a video camera. I know, not that big of a deal, but I’ve always wanted to film people with my camera. It’s a geek thing.

The other major thing I noticed today is that the iPhone’s Bluetooth capability is limited to headsets and the like. While other phones (especially smart phones) have the ability to connect to a computer and transfer files via Bluetooth (my dad’s Samsung Sync can do that), the iPhone can only pair up with a Bluetooth headset or similar device, and even then it takes forever to realize that the headset is on and sitting right next to it. Again, it’s not really that big of a deal, since my laptop doesn’t have a Bluetooth card, but honestly, I expected the iPhone to be a lot more advanced than this.

Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone is the best phone I’ve ever used. The touch-screen interface works better than I ever expected, and it does just what I want. But there are a few things that just seem…missing. Hopefully, at least some of these will be fixed in the upcoming firmware update for the iPhone, but I get the feeling I’m going to feel gypped when Apple comes out with the second generation iPhone that has everything I’m missing in my current iPhone. Apple is like that sometimes. Or all the time.

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Enemy of the gamer

Published
by
Cody
on April 12, 2008
in Rant
. 2 Comments

I’m an avid gamer. I don’t own a video game console, but I do have quite the collection of computer games, ranging from Monkey Island to Gears of War. And yet, I am not a mass murderer. I haven’t shot up my school with a 9mm or written violent poetry about killing people. Surprising? Not to most people. But Jack Thompson would have you believe that violent video games are tied directly to real world violence. The thing is, he’s an idiot.

Continue reading ‘Enemy of the gamer’

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