I kinda wanted this blog to be a respite from my ongoing outrage at our current administration, but this is just too funny. The Daily Show reports, you decide.
I now apologize to my girlfriend, who has outrage fatigue.
Sorry hon.
Archive for September, 2004
1 UPDATE BELOW
After reading Boingboing for the past few months, I’ve become more and more interested in how Americans are resistant to new technology. I say Americans because I have little to no experience with people of other cultures with regard to their use of technology. All of those accounts are 2nd hand at best. The thing that has me the most pissed though, is this. The INDUCE Act could essentially make pen and paper illegal because, as a unit, it
“intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.”
See this for an amusing rebuttal.
(Malcontent and GalacticHero, feel free to call me an idiot and say I have it completely wrong)
Anyway, the thing that always pops into my head when thinking about people being afraid of technology (Besides Jack Valenti’s insane rants) is something that happened to a friend of mine in middle school. He was expelled for having a pager.
Our school rules were crafted slightly after pagers were becoming cheaply available, but not so cheap that you could buy a dozen for $20 (like it seems you can now.) This guy always carried his pager because his parents were split and they didn’t always know with whom he was supposed to go home. So they bought him a pager so they could let him know who to expect to pick him. His parents met with the principal to explain the situation, but they stood firm by their policy that pagers were not allowed.
It was shortly thereafter that we got our yearly, “Here are the school rules and you’d damn well follow them” speech from out vice principal. She explained the reasoning behind the sanctions on pagers. Pagers are used by drug dealers to meet their contacts. Not allowing pagers stops potential drug sales and drug use.
Simultaneously, I now like to imagine, kids were smoking pot in the woods beyond the baseball fields after agreeing to meet the school dealer from a note passed in class. I don’t know if kids were smoking pot behind the school at that moment, but I do know they did regularly. At one point they got high and melted the plexiglass windows in the band room, broke in, and stole a piano. I know, I know. Fuckin’ idiot potheads. What the hell are you going to do with a piano? Fuckin’ push the heavy bastard to a pawn shop? Cause you aren’t old enough to drive you ridiculous asshats.
Anyway, the kid kept his pager, and was caught with it at a dance when his mom paged him. She was paging him to let him know his grandmother had gone to the hospital and she was coming to pick him up. He got caught, was suspended and pending expulsion when his parents pulled him out of school and placed him in a different school. So I guess he technically wasn’t expelled. But he was close.
It’s this type of fear of what technology is capable of that pisses me off. Sure, you can use a pager to sell somone drugs. Or you could use it to the benefit of society. Should we get rid of the pager because it has the potential to harm? Or should we encourage people to find positive ways to use and improve the pager? Cell phones, anyone? WiFi, anyone? Friggn’ teleportaion anyone!? I say, more money to move us further, not more laws to restrict technology.
UPDATE: AnonymousCoworkerSibling (ACWS) points all you coworkers out there to a /. article on Jack Valenti.
The post below was a lame bit of hacking on the part of my younger brother. I guess that’s what I get for letting the cock-smoker know my password. But, as an upside, I really didn’t have anything else to post about today. So there you go, two posts today because of my goof-ass brother. I’ll take back that copy of Doom 3 now, punk.
In fact, I’m not just any monkey - I’m a rather important-looking monkey wearing ostentatious chains and a pair of glasses to make myself look dis-tinguished. I mean, I am dis-tinguished, but the glasses help you to realize that.
It’s important to me that you bear this in mind when considering the weighty comments that pour from my over-developed brain into yours. This is a moment of learning! And you shall call me the mighty Professor Munkenstein, paying homage to the grisly and horrible procedure which trans-formed me into the glorious specimen you see now.
Now on to the standard prattle… lets see, what was I yammering on about? Oh, that swill - what is it the kids call it these days? Oh yes, “brews.” I had a few “brews” with some “amigos” last night, and then we had a wild “brew”-spilling party. Huz-zah!
