WebWriting.com

Robyn E. Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times writes about her dream that Al Gore will run for President in 2008.  She pulls in a choice quotation from Gore’s interview with Rolling Stone and follows it up with a good contrasting point.  Here is what might be a combined pitch line:

The GOP spent the past eight years borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Middle East just to bring it here and destroy the planet that our children will inherit.  And what the Republican’s are worried about today is whether their kids are going to pay any taxes on it.

In a stroke of legislative genius, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to restrict access from any library, school or public building to any social website through which independent internet users can post comments or engage in any social behavior. With so many sexual predators sitting at home soliciting minors through social networking, the legislature sought to remove the possibility that anyone might fall vicitim to the Internet version of free candy while under the supervision of responsible librarians, teachers and government officials. In one simple bill, Congress has brilliantly obviated the need to shield public officials from litigation should some kid get into the car of an adult so long as they first met on myspace. Parent’s have been doing such a great job or monitoring their children’s Internet usage that Congress felt it proper to simply disallow any public Internet access that might be used for socialization. In a bout of paranoia paralleled only by that experienced at the height of the cold war, when asked why they might choose to restrict what is arguably the most useful aspect of the Internet an anonymous Congressman answered, “it’s a series of tubes.”

The only good part of the recent Washing State Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage is the dissent:

“The plurality and concurrence condone blatant discrimination against Washington’s gay and lesbian citizens,” Justice Fairhurst wrote, adding that the 1998 law “was motivated solely by animus toward homosexuals.”

If you have an extra few hours, read through the six opinions, size of which were dissent.

Whether the White House is politically brilliant or not, they accomplished a respectable job of keeping Tim Russert occupied for this week. With his dry boring tone and insistence on sticking to the talking points, Josh Bolton delivered an utterly unremarkable performance on Meet the Press this past weekend. Baring Mr. Bolton occupying 20 minutes of Tim’s time, Tim may have given a voice to any number of political opportunists to continue hammering the administration’s handling of the war on terrorism and the middle east. Bravo, well played.

I wrote my one-click comparison for downloading Meet the Press while making coffee and thought it would be fun to contrast what I do in order to download the latest episode of a podcast (a relatively new concept) with the steps I go through in order to make fresh coffee:

1. Fill the kettle with water and get it boiling
2. Retreive the grinder and grind bin from the drying rack
3. Replace the grinder and bin and set it to coarse grind
4. Put about 15g of coffee beans into the grinder and press the button
5. Retrieve the french press from the drying rack
6. Remove the grinder and brush the inside
7. Remove the grind bin and dump the grind into the french press
8. Rinse and dry the grinder and grind bin
9. Wait about 10 seconds after the water boils and pour the water
10. Microwave a bit of milk in my coffee mug for 30 seconds
11. Plunge the press after 3-4 minutes and pour into my mug with milk
12. Enjoy fresh coffee

Just as dave says that his 22 step download only takes a minute, I don’t fret about the time it takes to make fresh coffee (except when I’m running late).

Dave Winer details the 22 steps it takes to download an episode of Meet the Press. To contrast, I have a program on my phone called Egress. It’s not perfect but it does this relatively well.

First time setup:

1. Go to my Bloglines account and search for feeds about Meet the Press.
2. Click on the serach results to preview the feed until one of them has an “enclosure” link in it.
3. Add that feed to my Bloglines (I keep it in a folder called podcasts).
4. On my phone, launch Egress and tell it to add a feed from a synchronized channel (Bloglines)
5. Give it my Bloglines username and password
6. Pick the Meet the Press feed from the list.

In order to get the new show, I click on the update button in Egress. It helps if I’m on a wifi network because the shows are pretty big for EDGE. though sometimes I leave the building before I download ;).

Reasoning that heterosexual marriages are more tenuous and that children produced as a consequence of such marriages deserve better than the “all too often causal or temporary” nature of such relationships, the New York State Court of Appeals finds that opposite-sex couples need an incentive.  By which they mean in comparison to the same-sex couples who, having all too stable relationships, and who “do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse” should be refused the right to marry.  It makes perfect sense that the State of New York might encourage the deadbeat dads and underage moms to marry happily ever after by pointing at the gay couple across the street who can only dream of being afforded the many “undisputed benefits of marriage.”

Or maybe the court should stop “could”-ing and “might”-ing as to the intent of the state legislature or drop the misconception that “it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father” and realize that it is a fallacy to deny same-sex couples the right to marry on the basis of the prejudiced perception that any children such couples may adopt or birth are somehow at risk.  The court is effectively citing as reason against same-sex marriage that it is better for a child to grow up in an orphanage or a series of foster homes than with two mothers or two fathers.  Is it possible that the generalizations on which the court based its decision are a result of statistical averaging and not a function of any real world research?  The court should find error in its own argument as it claims to have insufficient experience in the quality of child rearing in same sex households.

Such inconsistencies regarding studies of same-sex parents are self serving as the court claims that “what they show, at most, is that a rather limited observation has detected no marked differences [between children in same-sex and opposite-sex households].  More definitive results could hardly be expected, for until recently few children have been raised in same-sex households, and there has not been enough time to study the long-term results of such child-rearing.”  Am I reading this right?  When there isn’t enough evidence we should assume that gay people are simply incompetent at raising children.  With statements like that, how could the plaintiffs possibly persuade the court that “this long-accepted restriction is a wholly irrational one, based solely on ignorance and prejudice against homosexuals?”  Apparently it takes centuries of strife, war and a handful of Constitutional Amendments to convince the court that those who think gay people should not marry are bigots, plain and simple.

The court conveniently fails to address any possibility that the decisions to deny same-sex marriage on the basis of the false claim of harm to the child comes at the expense of same-sex couples who do not have children.

While it is difficult to argue with the court’s reasoning due process, I imagine they could have found better precedent than to compare same-sex marriage to suicide.  Given the pretext (which has already been criticized) the claim to “legitimate governmental interest” of “protecting the welfare of children” stands or falls on the absurdity of those findings.  The fundamental assumption that marriage equals children all but predates the current court and will probably die with the last of the pre-boomer generation.  Upon removing the idea that the purpose of State endorsed marriage is procreation the entire stack of cards falls apart.

Alternatively an equally effective slice is dismantling the misguided belief that “fostering relationships that will serve children best” is somehow related to “sexual activity that cannot lead to the birth of children.”  This is completely counter-intuitive.  Relationships that cannot result in the birth of children (it seems the court has now chosen to forget adoption or artificial insemination) have zero relevance to children.  Such couples are as removed from the realm of child-care as they are in such a relationship in which they are not officially married.  The court also fails to address the very real existence of same-sex couples living together out of wedlock and raising the natural children of one or the other or both.  Is the state denying them the benefits of marriage going to change their relationship or the welfare of their children for the better?

Finally, the blogosphere as been rife with criticism of the courts inclination to refer to sexual orientation as “sexual preference.”  Reading the preceding dozen or so pages of arguments this is just par for the course.  Let us hope this benighted ruling serves as a wakeup call to the New York State legislature and that they take head to the courts closing statement to “listen and decide as wisely as it can.”  Marriage is a basic human right.  Being against gay marriage is not a moral or religious stand; it is bigotry, nothing more.

The Democrats need at least one politically minded operative.  They need someone to com up with anti-Bush Bushism (Bush like rhetoric against Bush)?  Bush says he created a war in Iraq to fight terrorist there, not here.  But he hasn’t reduced terrorism.  There’s been more terrorism in the world since Iraq.  He hasn’t fixed the problem, he just diverted it somewhere else.  Bush is a Diverter, not a Fixer.

Wire reports that the Senate Commerce Committee is deadlocked on some net neutrality amendments in a current telecommunications bill.  The amendment basically says that a service provider cannot prioritize their own packets over competitors’ that are traveling on their lines.  It does not prohibit prioritization by type (e.g. all video can go faster than all e-mail).

I showed my wife the included quotation of Senator Ted Stevens’ attempt to explain why the amendment is bad.  After reading about his e-mail problem her first question was “Did he check his e-mail since Friday at 10?”  Well put.  Perhaps Senators should not use anecdotes from their own experience with technology to make laws.  I wonder why we have Senators who are obviously ignorant of technology involved in regulating it.

This is an election year.  It is a good time to promote some churn in Congress and elect new young faces into Congress.  Let’s elect some people who can represent the United States of America in the 21st century.