Top Twelve Reasons Not to Support Gay Marriage

I came across "Top Twelve Reasons Not to Support Gay Marriage" at Neurosophy and would like to include it here, since the list seems to be in the public domain. (The only one I disagree with is #8.)

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can't legally get married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are property, blacks can't marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
10. Children can never suceed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "seperate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Seperate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as seperate marriages for gays and lesbians will.

The "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act"

One of the main reasons the Internet has been so successful in the last decade is the fierce resistance given in response to meddling politicians who want to protect us from ourselves. Most of the laws that have been passed to regulate the web have either been ruled unconstitutional, or were completely useless and ineffective.
There is one bill however that has been particularly destructive and dishonest – the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Most of it was overturned by the Supreme Court, but one of the provisions that remained is TITLE XIII, which requires parental permission to collect personal information from any child under 13 years of age. “Parental permission” means that a parent must submit their personal information, and a verification of their age using something like a valid credit card. Most websites cannot afford to install such a complex verification system – nor can they afford the legal liability if ingenious kids circumvent that system. Neither will the parents of most 13 year olds submit their credit card numbers to an unknown website. In practice, the majority of community websites that require some information for participation simply say “By Federal Law, ALL applicants MUST be 13 years of age or older.”

When faced with such a notice, 99% of kids will simply lie about their age. This is fine for them, but not for the website operators, who are forced to either not collect any information at all, or to ban children from using their website (and hence not be able to market to them.) This is why there are no child-oriented online communities on the web that I’m aware of. There are many child-oriented sites of course, but by “community,” I mean a place where individuals can interact with each other and build online personas – something that requires at least a username and email address. The few websites that can afford to spend millions on the technical and legal challenges necessary for children to register usually ban children from its online forums and communities anyway – encouraging them to lie even when parental consent is possible.

In short, the government’s attempt to “protect” children has wiped out a major market niche, taught children to lie from an early age, and forced them to move their communities to underground IRC channels and general audience sites – exposing them to much more risk then a properly moderated child-oriented site would. It has also set a precedent for online censorship, one that the Supreme Court has mostly rebuffed, but may not do so in the future.

Go CIA!

I can't say how true this is, but it's certainly a great story:

In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.

Anti-China Protest in Taiwan

Wow:

More than 2.5 million people joined hands to form a 500-kilometre (310-mile) human chain stretching the length of Taiwan in a huge anti-China protest ahead of the island's presidential elections next month, organisers said.

Limbaugh warns of danger to free speech

Well, I never expected this from the conservatives, but I'm glad that one of them finally had enough sense to say it:

The nation's top radio host Rush Limbaugh warned of growing government intervention in broadcasting content.
Limbaugh made the comments after his parent company clear channel dropped Viacom's Howard Stern from its stations.
'Smut on tv gets praised. Smut on TV wins Emmys. On radio, there seems to be different standards,' Limbaugh explained.
'I've never heard Howard Stern. But when the federal government gets involved in this, i get a little frightened.
'If we are going to sit by and let the federal government get involved in this, if the government is going to 'censor' what they think is right and wrong... What happens if a whole bunch of john Kerry’s, or terry McAuliffe’s start running this country. And decide conservative views are leading to violence?
'I am in the free speech business. Its one thing for a company to determine if they are going to be party to it. Its another thing for the government to do it.'

Comanche Helicopter Scrapped

The Comanche helicopter program was scrapped today after $6.8 billion, 20 years of development, and not a single operational model. The helicopter was intended to oppose non-existent Soviet super-weapons, and after 1990, a non-existent Soviet empire. It took 13 years for the program to catch up with political reality. The helicopter has been featured in numerous movies, computer games, and television shows as the future of military technology. I think an observation made by my IT professor last week is appropriate: “Military contractors operate in a totally different universe. They have absolutely no conception of business reality, budget constraints, or product marketing -- and thus have a very hard time applying military technology to civilian applications.”
While the military does need to develop new hardware, the current pork-driven ménage a trois between politicians, local constituencies, and defense contractors is not the right way to do it.

Flying Around

I probably won’t be doing much blogging in the near future. In addition to my usual hectic life, I got MS Flight Simulator 2004 yesterday, and will be spending most of my free time up in the clouds. Once my dvi-vga adapter comes in, I’ll be flying with 4 monitors.

Drudge has a review on the new book "Rumsfeld's War." Drudge picks out the primary reason why pacifists of all flavors despise him: “Rumsfeld changed the rules of fighting against terrorists, focusing on one primary goal- killing them.” Amen!
Update: The Washington Times has another good story on the book.

Gay Marriages in San Franscisco

Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to take a stand against the orgy of gay marriages coming out of San Francisco City Hall. Whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of gay marriage, I think this is a brilliant move for City Hall and a win-win situation for everyone. The San Fran authorities obviously have a wonderful PR campaign on their hands. The media gets a controversial story full of suspense and intrigue. When will the courts stop the marriages? (Any day now.) Will they be declared null and void? (Probably.) Will there be a huge uprising with protests and mock marriages all over the nation? You bet! Conservatives aren’t left out in the cold either. Neo-fascist conservatives like Bill O’Reilly will score bonus points by decrying the “moral decay of America,” and the shadowy liberal conspiracy known as the “secular/humanist movement.”

I’m pleased with the move too -- the hippies are too busy attacking “the institution of marriage” to protest capitalism and war on terror, and the conservatives are too distracted fighting a battle they lost 40 years ago to wage their campaign of FCC censorship. Meanwhile, politicians of both parties will be busy announcing "pro-marriage" bills and amendments (which have zero chance of long-term success) to figure out new ways to divorce me from my money. Since national politicians of both parties cannot afford to alienate a large percentage of their electorate, no kind of coherent stand for or against gay marriage will come out of Congress. The only loser in the whole thing is the rule of law, which City Hall has blatantly ignored – but then California laws are so screwed up as it is that it might not be such a bad thing.

"polluting our minds with unnecessary greed"

I ranted last month about the socialist rag produced by the business student council at my school. I had hoped that this was an anomaly, until I opened up the latest issue. Here is a quote from “Can’t Buy Me Love,” an editorial from a freshman business major:

Gullible consumers rush to the stores, confident that their new pair of Nikes will suddenly transform them into 6’5” NBA all-stars surrounded by flashy cars and beautiful models. What, you mean that’s not true? …. As silly as it may seem, we do fall for this ingenious plan, hatched by companies to seduce us to spend money. Why has materialism become such a huge problem?
With technology in the increase, our society has become so fast paced that people no longer bother to fully communicate with one another. Now instead of tucking their kids into bed ever night, busy parents can read them a bedtime story via videophone. This lack of attention results in families spending less and less time together. Dinner is eaten in front of the television and kids only come home to sleep…. The chance that companies will stop pushing products on us and polluting our minds with unnecessary greed is very slim. Therefore, the chance of resolving these problems falls on the average consumer’s shoulders.

On a more positive note, we discussed offshore outsourcing in my global IT systems class this week. Despite my professor’s best efforts to raise doubts about the benefits of outsourcing, virtually the entire class was united in the opinion that it was a good thing. When he suggested that CEO’s ought to value “human factors” above profits, one student exclaimed “why, that would be negligent!” The professor then proceeded to spend an hour writing dozens of complex diagrams and equations, all to make the point that out-outsourcing is attractive because foreign IT workers get paid less, although “there’s no reason to think that they’re less productive than Americans.”

New Objectivist Community!

Do you want to take a leading role in America’s intellectual renaissance? Are you interesting in participating in an active Objectivist community on the web? Would you like to exchange ideas in a forum that does not tolerate irrationality?

To provide all this and more, ObjectivismOnline.net has been created to bring together the vast resources on Objectivism that are scattered all across the Internet into one integrated marketplace. We believe that the Internet is a key tool to spread the ideas of Objectivism, and would like to invite you to join us. ObjectivismOnline.net has many features that make it the best marketplace for Objectivist ideas on the Internet today:

• A meta-blog combining original content, commentary on latest news and events, links to great articles on the web, and announcements about new Objectivist events, essays, books, and more!
• Our forum, now in existence for over a year, brings the opportunity for extensive dialogue with Objectivist intellectuals all across the world on topics such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, art, science, and more! Our forum recently broke the 3,000 posts mark and has over 185 registered members.
• An essay section which serves as a resource for Objectivist ideas from all the branch of philosophy as well as other essays of philosophical interest. We currently have 35 essays and would like to greatly increase that with your submissions.
• A chat room specifically for our users. We plan to use this chat room for informal chats as well as moderated discussions on various philosophical and informal topics!
• Our web links section brings together Objectivism-related resources from all corners of the web. With 112 current links and more on the way, you can find a vast resource of ideas currently being spread!
• Additional features include: a movie/music/book reviews section, photo and art galleries, and fliers for Objectivism clubs! Soon, we will be adding an in-depth marketplace where you can find reviews on a variety of products through amazon.com ranging from books to music to DVD’s and much more!

We are currently looking for volunteers to participate in this blog. If you are interested, please leave a comment or .

a quick look at the Win2k source

LMAO: "We Are Morons: a quick look at the Win2k source."

Interesting: Commercial software aided reboot on Mars.

An Islamic "human rights" group

The video you are about to watch is a rap video designed to inspire people to take up jihad against the West. Posted on a radical Islamic website based out of the United Kingdom, the video is undeniably entertaining, as professionally produced as any video you might see on MTV. Consider the irony: radical fundamentalism, sworn to destroy Western culture and beliefs, uses that culture to market its hate. Paralleling the same deception, the Islamic organization that produced and marketed this video claims to be an Islamic "human rights" group but in reality is a group sworn to support the killing of Jews, Christians and moderate Muslims.

"An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World"

Check out Charles Krauthammer's awesome speech: "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World". This is definitely one of the best and most insightful foreign policy talks I’ve ever read.

All of whom "just turned 18", I'm sure...

Harvard University voted yesterday to approve a student-run magazine that will feature nude pictures of Harvard undergraduates and articles about sexual issues.

At this point, I could write a brilliant philosophical rant on how the vote was a liberal echo of the FCC’s “anti-indecency” jihad, ultimately stemming from a corruption of the concept of “censorship” by both sides, but uh, where do I send for my subscription??

Kerry's Hypocrisy

In 1970, John Kerry shed his pacifist front, and revealed his altruist ideology:

Kerry said that the United Nations should have control over most of our foreign military operations. "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."
On other issues, Kerry wants "to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." He also favors a negative income tax and keeping unemployment at a very low level, "even if it means selective economic controls."

Kerry seems to favor worldwide military interventionism - but only if it’s not in America’s interest. Not surprisingly, he’s also in favor of increasing the welfare state, and Nixon-era price and wage controls. Bush certainly deserves to be taken to task for his lackluster response to terrorism and runaway spending – but coming from this guy, it's the pot calling the kettle black.

Return of the KGB

Leading challengers to Putin’s re-election are quietly disappearing, with murder investigations being shut down by the Kremlin, and the state media keeping mum. Putin has already silenced and nationalized the media, secretely shot opposition politicians in cold blood, and all but assumed his former KGB role. Anyone doubting that Putin is capable of any of these things should remember that the KGB (now FSB) had no qualms about killing 30 million people in the gulags, by starvation, and outright -- and no reason to behave now, especially now that it firmly controls the media. The Russians themselves are united in supporting a return of dictatorship, and their opposition to liberal (as in pro-liberty) candidates .
Despite the dark path to a return of Soviet-era tyranny, there remain major differences between today's Russia and the Soviets: with communism discredited worldwide, the new tyrants lack an ideology to excuse their power grab, and have no "noble experiment" they can use to solicit sanction and aid from the rest of the world. Not that the Russians arren’t eager to accept a new religion – here are the current “science” headlines on the Pravda website, the former official Party paper:
“A Girl with an X-ray vision”
“Remedy for Evil”
“Soviet Army fought UFOs”
“Are Dragons for real?”
For more, I highly recommend visiting the Center for the Future of Russia.
Update: Rybkin says he was drugged and kidnapped.

My Books

One of the fads going around the blogosphere is to list a dozen or so of the songs you’re listening to. Interesting idea, but I don’t think one’s music preferences really say much about a person. So instead, I decided to post a photo of my bookshelf. Obviously, this is just a fraction of my collection, but it contains the books that impacted my life the most.

Orkut

Orkut is a brand new online community begun by a Google employee. It’s fast, easy to use (there are communities for every imaginable interest – I’m in 40 or so) and it makes it very easy to meet people for friendship, business or dating. It’s invitation-only, so contact me if you would like an invitation.

Ooops

Ever wonder what would happen if you used handwashing detergent in place of dishwashing detergent?

Sorry, the "land of the free" is now closed to the opressed.

Cubans hoping to 'drive' to freedom aboard a converted Buick are stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard near the Florida Keys -- and now face repatriation, exile leaders say. You can find a discussion of the issue here.

Email Troubles

Due my recent hosting problems, I've discovered that my david (at) rationalmind.net address has lost a ton of email. If you've sent me anything during the last week(s) and I didn't reply, please send it again, and CC it to capt_david (at) hotmail.com just in case. Hopefully, things should be back to normal soon.

When Gay Animals Attack

Interesting NY Times story:

Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, are completely devoted to each other. For nearly six years now, they have been inseparable. They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called "ecstatic behavior": that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex. Silo and Roy are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay penguins. When offered female companionship, they have adamantly refused it. And the females aren't interested in them, either.

What implications does this have for humans? None:

Infanticide is widespread in the animal kingdom. To jump from that to say it is desirable makes no sense. We shouldn't be using animals to craft moral and social policies for the kinds of human societies we want to live in.

Wardrobe Malfunction

I experienced a "wardobe malfunction" during a caving trip this weekend. Fortunately, the bastards at the FCC can't censor these photos...yet. It was a lot of fun, and I hope to start going caving with ASS (Aggie Speleological Society) every other weekend or so.

New PC

Check out the new computer I put together. I think I'll call it "The Ghost"

The Specs:

Case: Aspire X-Dreamer II
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton
Cooling: Thermaltake Volcano 9
Motherboard: MSI K7N2 Delta-L (nForce 2)
Memory: 512-MB PC3200 DDR (w/shims)
Hard Drive: 120GB Generic 10K RPM
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 9600
Speakers: Altec Lansing 251 5.1 Surround
DVD-ROM: Pioneer 16X Slot Loading
CD Burner: 48x16x48
Monitors: Mag 19", NEC 17", & Gateway 14" (+ tv out as needed)
...and last but not least:
Mouse: Logitech iFeel Optical
Keyboard: Logitech Internet Navigator

Death By Environmentalism

There are four well-known cases of environmental regulations that forced engineers to use ineffective flame-retardant compounds and may have led to loss of life: the Columbia space shuttle, which had to use the less-efficient foam insulation rather that Freon (see this, this, and this), the Challenger space shuttle, which had to use defective O-ring putty after the original was banned by the EPA for containing asbestos, and the World Trade Center, which was the first major skyscraper not to use asbestos, and hence collapsed sooner than it otherwise would have. Here is another case with less drastic but much more widespread consequences:

If your hard drive failed recently, an "environmentally friendly" flame-retardant compound may be to blame:

Red phosphorus is believed to accelerate the failures, but why did the semiconductor industry begin using red phosphorus as a flame retardant instead of the Br-based compound it had used for years? The answer lies with the equipment and materials manufacturers, who must stress environmental considerations.

The flame retardant most commonly used in encapsulation resins is a combination of Br-based compounds with additive Sb 2 O 3 (antimony trichloride). This mixture is extremely effective, and an encapsulation resin with 2 to 3% content will clear the American UL94-V0 standard for flame retarding performance. It also has a long record of successful performance in the field.

Br-based compounds, however, have been cited as potential sources of dioxins and other toxic gases when combusted, and this eventually led to restrictions on their use from about 1990, primarily in Europe. This accelerated the trend toward halogen-free material development, not only in encapsulation resins but in all types of applications.

Materials manufacturers developed environment-friendly semiconductor encapsulation resins by adding red phosphorus, but now that this failure problem has occurred, the IC and equipment manufacturers are rapidly changing their stance. Materials manufacturers are being forced to develop new materials.

Incidentally, there is no evidence that asbestos poses any kind of health risk when used for insulation – especially on space shuttles. However, it’s a great example of what happens to human lives when politicians get involved. The most deadly example of environmentalism in action is the banning of DDT, which has caused 10-30 million malaria deaths because of a lack of adequate pesticides.

Where did my site go?

Here's the scoop:

The good news is that my website surpassed 5 GB of traffic 2/3 into the month.  According to my webhost, this should be enough for a "high 5-digit" number of visitors.  According to my own calculations, if each visit consumes 50K of bandwith, I should be good for approximately 100,000 hits/month.  So, passing 5GB halfway into the month means that I was getting about 150,000 hits/month.  I say was because the bad news is that my host shut down my site when I went over the 5GB bandwith limit, and becuase of my technical arrangement, I was not able to purchare more. 

Normally, I could just switch to a backup server, but my site happened to go down at the same time that I was putting together a new computer, so I can't access any of my files either.  So, I'm out of luck until the 12th, when my monthly quota is reset (or so I hope).  Till then, I'll be sitting on my ancient Pentium 233 (with MMX!) Mandrake Linux pc and checking the FedEx tracking website every 5 minutes to see when all the components for my new computer will arrive.  Or maybe I'll actually go spend some time outside.

Dear Valued User.

Email from [email protected]:

Dear Valued User.
At 0 : 12 Eastern Time on Thursday-January 29, 2004,
Microsoft started investigating reports of a variant of a new virus "Mydoom", known as Mydoom.A.
This worm reportedly stops access to some websites, including our Microsoft.com websites. The worm is noticed to entice electronic mail recipients into opening a message with a file attached. If the file attached is opened, virus installs malicious code on the computer user's system and sends itself to any contacts in the user's address book.
Please download the latest security patch available from Microsoft.com website or download this digitally signed attachment.

[Attachment:Windows-KB823989-x86-ENU.exe]
(The attachment was the MyDoom.B virus, which had little effect on my Linux system.)
In a related story, I really hate getting email notification reporting a comment to my blog -- which turns out to be spam.

You know there's something wrong with your religion when...

...Your deity wills mass death during the grand finale:

Nearly 250 Muslim worshipers died in a hajj stampede Sunday during the annual stoning of Satan ritual in one of the deadliest tragedies at the notoriously perilous ceremony.
The stampede, during a peak event of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj, lasted about a half-hour, Saudi officials said. There were 244 dead and hundreds of other worshippers injured, some critically, Hajj Minister Iyad Madani said.
"All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God's will. Caution isn't stronger than fate," Madani said.

...Last year, 14 pilgrims were trampled to death during the ritual and 35 died in a 2001 stampede. In 1998, 180 pilgrims died.

Building a New Computer

I made the dubiously wise decision of selling my current computer to my dad, after not being able to fix his old one. My intention was to fallback to my Linux box, but I discovered to my horror that my hard drive is not supported by my backup pc, so I won’t have access to my data until I get a new computer put together. I tried to check my email via the web, and discovered that I had 120 emails from the last day, 99% of which were spam – and the mail interface didn’t make it easy to sort it out. So, I won’t be checking or replying to much mail until I build a new pc. I’m thinking of following the guide at SharkyExtreme as a model, though the Athlon 64 looks pretty temping. Any suggestions?
This will be my fourth computer, and the third I've built myself, though I’ve done so many upgrades to all of them, (it’ll be my 6th motherboard) that like Theseus’s ship, it’s hard to say where one computer ends and another begins.
Update: I ordered all the components today, and should be online on the new pc by next weekend :-)