Back in business at the main site

Jon managed to fix the database problem underlying the outage at Quotulatiousness, so I'm switching back there until the next time I need to use the backup here (it has been handy to have an alternate venue, I must admit).

" . . . no defendant has ever won"

Mark Steyn talks to Hugh Hewitt about the travesty that is the Canadian Human Rights process:

HH: Thank you. I’ve got to start, I want to talk politics with you, but I’ve got to start first to alert the audience. I thought it was a joke, these Muslim radicals bringing complaints against you in Canada. But I’m close to boycotting Canada, because their Human Rights Commission hasn’t thrown this stuff out in the back with the trash.

MS: Well, the Human Rights Commission up there is, you know, almost the textbook definition of a kangaroo court, in the sense that of the complaints that have been brought under this section, since it was introduced almost thirty years ago now, no defendant has ever won.

HH: Oh.

MS: So I may buck the odds, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

HH: Well, tell people what the process is, what you’re accused of, and I assume this is a pain in the neck.

MS: Well, it is a pain in the neck. It also has, you know, serious implications, I think, because the Muslim lobby groups have had quite good luck using courts outside the U.S. to block particular books and other ideas that they’re not partial to. And eventually, that does ripple through to New York publishers and so on who don’t want to take a flyer on a book if you won’t be able to sell it in Canada, or get an overseas sale. So it does have implications. But what this is, basically, is a special commission that’s set up, it’s like, think of the most politically correct professors at Berkeley, put them on a commission. The plaintiff, the guys who make the complaints, their legal expenses are paid for by the Canadian taxpayer. The defense has to fund his or her own…essentially, there’s no rules of due process or evidence. And you know, they levy things that would be extraordinary. A woman posted some content on a Christian website in the United States, she’s opposed to homosexuality, she quotes some relevant Biblical passages. The Human Rights Commission banned her from ever publishing in any public forum again those Biblical passages for life, even though they were published on a U.S. website. And if she breaches that order, she’ll go to jail.

I knew the situation was bad, but I had no idea it was as dire as this . . . no defendant has ever won? Yeee-ikes!

QotD: Tancredo outsourced

Tom Tancredo has dropped out of the presidential race. He will be replaced by Montezuma Aztlán Calderón, an undocumented worker from Oaxaca who will denounce the Brown Peril for just $3 an hour plus room and board.

Jesse Walker, "Votes Americans Won't Cast", Hit and Run, 2007-12-20

Is your child becoming a hacker?

James Bond versus Jason Bourne

In yesterday's post at Whatever, John Scalzi posts some interesting ruminations by David Louis Edelman about (of all things) the various Bourne movies (based on the Ludlum books:

Here are a few things that every American knows.

* The world is a vile and dangerous place.
* America is blindly and irrationally hated by just about everybody outside of our borders.
* If we left our security up to the peaceniks, bureaucrats, and Boy Scouts we elect to national office, the United States would be a smoldering ruin in a matter of months.
* Therefore it’s necessary that we fund a zillion intelligence agencies and black ops teams who routinely conduct secret assassinations in the name of defending our country.
* Nevertheless, despite our massive economic and military power, the United States is drastically outnumbered and constantly on the verge of apocalypse.

At least, these are the assumptions behind just about every spy thriller ever made. Now I find myself wondering: When the hell did these assumptions become so ingrained in our psyche? When did we blithely start accepting this worldview? Who says the United States should behave this way — and, for that matter, when did we all decide that the United States actually does behave this way? What the fuck happened to my country?

[. . .]

But even more interesting than the contrast of weapons is the contrast of attitudes towards government. James Bond is, in many ways, a manifestation of how the British would like to see themselves: debonair and worldly; as technologically adept as the Americans, without sacrificing class and gentility; dangerous when crossed. In the world of James Bond, the British government might be stodgy, but its heart is in the right place.

Jason Bourne, on the other hand, is a maverick who was once broken by his own government and is now on the run from it. In the world of Jason Bourne, the United States government is composed of equal parts corrupt slimeball and impotent douchebag, with a small contingent of do-gooders skulking around the fringes.

QotD: The vicious circle

Women have limited roles in sf (print and media) because:

(a.) That’s what audiences want.
(b.) Women aren’t as interesting as men.
(c.) Artists are products of their culture, and have difficulty thinking outside the box.
(d.) Men are doing it on purpose to keep women oppressed.
(e.) The genre is traditionally male-dominated, and its conventions and tropes leave very little room for telling women’s stories.
(f.) SF is always social allegory, and this trend is an accurate reflection of reality.

All of these answers are wrong.

Some are less wrong than others; b. and d. are both pernicious nonsense; f. is a cop-out, as is a.; c. and e. are partially true, but ignore the work already being done, by both artists and audience members of all genders, to change that.

You’ll also notice that cause and effect are hopelessly jumbled. Individual artistic expressions cannot be separated from the culture at large; artists are influenced by culture, and the culture is in turn influenced by artists. It’s complicated and messy, and it’s impossible, past a certain point, to disentangle the synergistic feedback loop between artists and their culture. Again, generalizations just get you in trouble.

Sarah Monette, "A Month of Writers, Day Sixteen: Sarah Monette", Whatever, 2007-12-20

You're not alone, Jon!

There are other folks who have their doubts about Ron Paul. Perry de Havilland is also wondering whether a Paul presidency would be a good thing:

I am a hawk, no doubt about it. If I am going to be taxed by the state, I would much rather my hard earned money be spent dropping bombs on the lackeys of Slobodan Milosevic (Bill Clinton's finest hour, without a doubt) and Saddam Hussain, than on corrosive domestic 'entitlements' and ever more kleptocratic regulatory statism.

So then along comes Ron Paul, the first US presidential candidate since Ronald Regan with any notion whatsoever that the state is way way way too big. Moreover here comes a person who thinks the only way liberty can be preserved is to take a radical axe to Leviathan's tentacles and re-establish constitutional limited government. Cool. Very cool, in fact. So do I really really like Ron Paul? Well I like him but less than you might think as some of his remarks are borderline delusional 'troofer' stuff and that does him no credit at all. Is he actually going to win? Probably not but that is not what this article is about (commenters please note). Do I even want him to win? Well that is what this article is about.

He wants a return to constitutional limited government. What's not to like about that? But then my eye falls on that picture of Murray Rothbard in Ron Paul's office. I am not a fan of Rothbard even though there is indeed much good stuff in The Ethics of Liberty. Although I think he was correct about a great many things, I also think he was often as intellectually dishonest as Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky and perfectly fits Adriana Lukas' definition of a barking moonbat: "someone who sacrifices sanity for the sake of consistency". For Rothbard to have argued that the cold war was a delusion and that the Soviet Union was not really a clear and present danger is so preposterous on so many levels that I am not even going to elaborate why. If you can not figure out that one yourself then this article is not addressed to you. In fact, please stop reading and get lost.

More positive reviews for Ron Paul

I have to admit that this article was custom-tailored to get my attention. Not only is it a positive article on Ron Paul, but it opens with an ultra-libertarian quote from P.J. O'Rourke:

"Politics should be limited in scope to war, protection of property, and the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class."

— P.J. O’Rourke

As evidenced by the wild success of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, Americans have become Libertarians, even though they don’t seem to know it yet. Hardened views on the left and the right dominate the political scene in Washington D. C., with efficient and competent management of government the casualty of an ideological war between the two dominant parties. We have become a red state/blue state country, with elections angrily won 51 percent to 49 percent.

Little noticed in the increasingly shrill red versus blue sniping, however, is the emergence of a purplish centrism. The purple centrists who will shape future elections are we Libertarians, who are fiscally conservative and socially moderate. We believe in personal responsibility and minimal government. We do not meddle when the issues — be they Iraq, your bedroom or your religious beliefs — are not our business. In short, we say: Smoke all the crack you want, or go motorcycling without a helmet; just don’t expect me to pay for your rehab.

Ron Paul’s candidacy is a thoughtful attempt to claim the broad center in the middle of the red/blue political bickering that passes for political discourse today. And if there has been a real surprise in the GOP race, it has been the strength of the independent-thinking OB/GYN doctor from Texas. His Web site gets many visits, and not because men think they might see naked women on it.

Celebrating the very worst in bad writing, 2007 edition

At least bad writing can have a purpose: the very "best" of it gets rewarded in the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:

Miss Cardinal mused over the singularly decadent manner in which Master Hammond consumed the steak and kidney pie and was reminded of the practices of certain cannibalistic tribes with whom she had lived during her travels in Borneo, not New Guinea, although New Guinea is certainly nice this time of year, despite the fact steak and kidney pie is rarely served there, at least not the kind made from sheep or cows.
Brad R. Frazer
Boise, ID

Agent 53986262.9 was strapped precariously to a giant Chinese firework, the fuse slowly shortening like a noodle getting slurped into someone's pursed lips, and although he knew he was running out of time and still had no plan for escape, all he could think of was the song about the Muffin Man and how the word "polyurethane" made it sound like the material was made out of multiple urethras.
Allison Kelly
Great Falls, VA

Much, much more brain-curdling "goodness" at the link.

Extra-geeky gifts

PC World offers some suggestions for the mega-geeks in your life, including this (kinda cool) wearable:

4. Wi-Fi on the Fly
Wi-Fi Detector T-shirt
Wonder which of your neighbors has Wi-Fi? Forget wardriving. Put on Think Geek's stylish black Wi-Fi Detector T-shirt ($30), and you can warwalk. Electric blue bars on the front light up when you encounter a wireless network; the more bars that light, the stronger the signal. (But it won't tell you whether the network is secure--sorry.) When it's laundry time, you can remove the detector, which draws power from three AAA batteries housed in a compartment that slips into an interior pocket. Wow your friends, impress your neighbors, and convince your spouse that marrying you really was a terrible mistake.

Still no improvement at the main blog

All the MovableType interface can tell me is that [This post no longer exists] for each and every post I've ever made there. This is not a hopeful sign that things can be easily rectified.

Er, ooops?

While trying to post something earlier this evening, over on the main blog, I hit a snag: it looks like the ID numbers contain at least one duplicate, which means I can't post anything until we can resolve the issue.

I hope to be back online at the main site soon, but I may have lost a lot of recent posts (currently, the Movable Type interface says I've never posted anything on the blog . . . which doesn't augur well).