YouTube video of loons at Faux News laughing at Peter Schiff as he tries to warn of impending financial disaster in the 07-08 timeframe:

Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007 (2nd Edition)

What stock picks were the FOX tools recommending?  WaMu, Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs... financials basically.

WBUR.ORG will be carrying live audio election coverage tonight. Local coverage at 7PM eastern, and national coverage at 8PM. I will be listening and I encourage you to as well! If you live in Massachusetts you can tune it in at 90.9 on your FM dial.

boston.com has the story...

...Overall, for the six networks that aired the program simultaneously, the spot had a household rating of 21.7% (meaning that 21.7 percent of all households watching television were tuned to the spot)...

It's funny that James wrote about this today, because I wrote about it last night on a discussion forum.  I'm pleased that James and I saw the same videos and came to the same conclusions.  If you haven't heard, a young man (Andrew Meyer) caused a disruption at a John Kerry Q&A forum and finally was removed by the police.  During his removal he became more combative and resisted the officers which ended up getting him arrested and finally tasered as it was the only way to get him to stop shouting and remove him from the hall.  Predictably (I suppose) people have seen an editted version of the video that makes Mr. Meyer look like more of a victim than he actually was and the most outspoken conclusions I see on YouTube basically boil down to "he asked a question 'they' didn't like so he was tasered and arrested, wake up America, we are living in a dictatorship".  *yawn*

Anyway, here's what I wrote on a discussion forum where someone had posted the editted version of the video under the heading "A Most Terrifying Video":

The video was editted to make the kid look more like a victim than he was. There is a more complete video with commentary that makes the kid's behavior easier to see through and makes the cops behavior more understandable:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1na1hcGQCHg

I'm a liberal and I believe in civil liberties. The kid was totally in control of that situation, he WANTED a big scene and he got it. He was totally playing to the cameras.

The cops were standing behind him because he had a reputation for causing trouble at public events. The moment he took the mic and began speaking one of the college officials went to the police and said "he's a troublemaker, watch out". This made the police suspicious of him. At one point a police officer told him to finish his question and let Kerry answer, he responded rudely (through the mic so everyone could hear) and continued. As Kerry tried to answer the boy's first question, he ignored Kerry and launched into his second question. It was clear at that point he was there to talk not to Kerry, but to the crowd.

Well it's cool if you want to talk to a crowd. You can put a video on YouTube, or you can schedule your own rally and see who shows up, but you can't just grab the mic, take the floor, and talk whatever crap you want as if it is your show. It's not your show and the organizers are going to eject you if you won't play nicely, which they attempted to do at the end of his THIRD question which is the part you got to see. No surprises there.

All this boy had to do is say "sorry officer, I'll cooperate" and in all likelihood they would explain to him why they were ejecting him the moment they got him out of the room. Which by the way, they did, except you don't get to see that because the video that was posted at the top of the thread doesn't include it. Heck, if he had cooperated they probably would have let him go at the door.

This video does show his detainment once they get him outside the room:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

Watch that video where he reveals by his own behavior just how much of a neurotic nut he is:

"They're going to give me to the government! They're going to kill me!"

Those of you who think its actually okay to scream HELP HELP and WHY WHY when a police officer has decided to detain you should take heed: when the police arrest you, they are allowed to hold you and don't have to charge you with ANYTHING for 48 hours. That is the law of this country. If you don't agree with it, please contact your representatives and work to get the law changed. If a police officer tries to escort you out of a building, you DO NOT have a right to know why. If a police officer chooses to arrest you, you do not have a right to be told immediately why you have been arrested. If a cop tells you "stop shouting, and stop resisting me or I am going to arrest you (or taser you)" and you choose to continue shouting and resisting, well duh, do the math.

The rights you do have upon arrest are read to you in long form, or in the abbreviated form:

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."

Did you see "you have the right to know why you are being arrested" or "you have the right to scream loudly and resist arrest"? Me neither. That's because we don't have those rights.

It's a shame this boy provoked the police into tasering him by repeatedly refusing to cooperate. I'm sorry he got tasered, but freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to disrupt a political rally. Watch the full video and pay attention to the commentary, and watch the second video that shows what happens outside, how he keeps craning his neck so he can shout to the cameras... because he's all about the cameras.

1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=1na1hcGQCHg

2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

I'm trying not jump to conclusions (paranoia is unhealthy). As far as I can see, this boy orchestrated what happened to him through his own behavior and could have put a stop to it at any time.

There are a lot of affronts to free speech in this country, serious ones that we should be concerned about ("free speech zones" for example: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/04/hilden.freespeech/index.html), but this nut and his bad performance art does not qualify. He should have been ejected, and he was.

The jobs don't pay a lot, and you take most of your pay in self-esteem, but somebody is always trying out for village idiot or village atheist. Often they're one and the same...

-- Wesley Pruden, Revival time with the village atheist, (Washington Times)

In a classic pot-and-kettle scenario, Wesley Pruden has done disservice to the readers of the Washington Times with an irrational screed mocking atheists for writing "irrational screeds mocking those who have the faith the authors clearly envy."  The saving grace for these unfortunate atheists is that the average Times reader is probably too smart to be taken in by such drivel.

Pruden has nothing constructive to offer in his screed.  He merely calls atheists names and cites examples of atheists saying bad things about people who deserve to have bad things said about them.  This is what his article boils down to:

• Did you know that there are atheists living among you?
• Atheists are idiots.
• Atheists hate people of faith because they don't have faith but desperately want it.
• Atheists say the darndest things.
• Atheists are getting more attention than I am and it pisses me off.

Mr. Pruden apparently doesn't concern himself with the facts regarding persons atheists have spoken ill of, or even facts about the atheists themselves.  I mean really, who among us who has actually read The God Delusion would use the word "irrational" to describe it?  I've been struggling with the book myself and have found it incredibly dense, repetitive, and belaboring of points, but irrational?  Rationality is the coin of the atheist realm.  The author has got it backwards... it is faith that is irrational.

The article is clearly calculated to incense the readership, as opposed to communicate any meaningful argument as to why atheists are idiots, or naughty, or whatever else he's trying to say.  He notes Christopher Hitchens' reference to Mother Theresa as "the ghoul of Calcutta", without bothering to say why.  He notes Pulitzer prize winner Paul Greenberg's mention of Reverend Falwell's one "decent" moment on record, without bothering to say why.  Apparently the "why" doesn't concern the unencumbered-by-a-Pulitzer-Prize-Pruden.

A rational person will find little of interest in this yawn-inspiring rant against atheism, except perhaps an appreciation of the irony by which the author reveals himself to be the shrill irrational caricature that he tries to paint atheists as.  Beyond that, there's nothing to see here.

Okay, here's a bunch of little things I want to talk about.  None of them really deserves its own article but I want to share it anyway.  I suppose I should caution you that I am on percoset right now, so I am a little loopy... I apologize if this is a scatterbrained.

Eating

I still can't chew, and won't be able to for another week at least.  So I am exploring different things that I can eat without chewing.  Stuff that has worked out well has been jello, applesauce, soup broth, rice in thick gravy, spagettios, small bits of bread soaked in broth, yogurt, pureed fruit mixed with yogurt and juice, and so forth.  Pureed baked beans is really grainy, and I don't like it.  Gonna try baked beans again sometime soon where I just try to swallow the beans whole, unchewed.  I've found I can eat Italian Ices, but all the acid in fruit juice is making this bothersome.

All this nigh-liquid food combined with drugs that mess up my sleep schedule, and amoxicillin (to avoid infection) is making my stomach pretty upset.  But I'll get through.  (It's not like I have a choice!)

NPR Podcasts

When I go to bed I like to listen to music or speech on my MP3 player.  I find that listening to the same stuff every night helps me sleep.  But eventually I get tired of the same stuff.  The NPR website has always been a great place to go to stream shows you've missed, but at some point they began offering these shows as podcasts.  (The difference, from my perspective, is that you can download old shows as MP3 files, drop them on your MP3 player or your computer, and listen to them anytime.)  You guys were probably aware of that, but to me it's big news... streaming is great, but it is much nicer to grab the last few episodes of my favorite NPR program and listen to it whenever (in my case, when I go to bed.)  NPR has a huge podcast directory with shows from all their member stations.  Here's a link to the directory... you can subscribe to these shows as feeds in Google Reader or just hit the URL directly and save the MP3 files.

The podcasts (shows) that I am most interested in are:

• NPR Science Friday with Ira Flatow
• On Point with Tom Ashbrook
• Car Talk
• Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, The NPR News Quiz

Stem Cells

So I was listening to one of those podcasts of NPR Science Friday where the topic matter was stem cell research. A guy called in who equated a 14-day-old blastocyst with a person. He was in the crowd that considers a fertilized human egg to be a human being, what he framed as "life begins at conception".  Obviously holding that view, there was no way he could get behind stem cell research since it involved killing embryos.

Then one of the guest experts offered the caller a challenge which I committed to memory because I never wanted to forget it:

Imagine you are a fireman dealing fighting a fire in a fertility clinic.  You enter a room and find in it a six year old girl, and a tray with 20 frozen embryos.  You can either save the girl or the tray of embryos.  Which one do you choose?

In my opinion, the caller chickened out.  He said something like "that would be a call I would have to make as a fireman... it would depend on who was closest to the door and who was most likely to survive."  I felt his answer betrayed that he couldn't really equate 20 embryos with 20 people... if  he could, the decision should have been both straightforward, and patently ridiculous... as if anyone could ignore a 6 year old girl screaming for rescue from a fire and instead choose a rack of test tubes.

Although it isn't clear exactly when an embryo becomes a person, it seems downright obvious that a 14-day-old blastocyst is far less a person than a six year old girl.  I'm going to remember this challenge.  It really made me think.

Birdies

I've been feeding the birds in my yard again lately.  I stopped many years ago, but started up again after my Dad passed away.  It's funny, I sort of got him interested in birds and birdfeeding years ago, and now he has sort of gotten me back into it.  Things haven't changed much.  Regular wild bird food doesn't have enough millet in it, and has some other seeds that most of the birds don't eat.  So I went back to one of my old recipes and it worked like a charm, but it involves buying parakeet food and mixing that into the seed, which is expensive.  I have to find a place where I can get millet cheap.  Anybody know a place?

Dawkins Discussions... on Amazon?

I've been following some discussions on Dawkins which are popping up on Amazon.  Apparently any product for sale on Amazon gets its own discussion forum.  So at the bottom of the amazon page for The God Delusion are the hot forum topics related to that book.  It's amazing what lengths some people will go to in order to discredit Dawkins.  Check it out, if you dare.  This is where I found out about the "Dawkins Pause" video... this particular discussion links to the video (it's something of a relief to see that the theists seem to be in the minority on this forum.)

If you need more Dawkins, here's a feed for RichardDawkins.net which you can drop in your news aggregator.

I'm about halfway through The God Delusion myself.  Having trouble reading it right now... mostly because of the percosets.

Topix.Net

Don't know if I've recommended this before, but topix.net is a nice source for regional newsfeeds for small towns.  They incorporate feeds for local newspapers and blogs, and all you do is enter the zip code of the town you are interested in, and topix.net will generate a feed for that town that you can plonk into a feed reader like bloglines, Google reader, and so forth.  (It's my understanding that IE7 has a feed aggregator built right in.)

My Shared Shite

I've been regularly flagging articles in the feeds I read as shared so that other people can enjoy them.  You can access the GoogleReader page devoted to my shared articles here.

3Hive Decency

Some fairly decent stuff has cropped up on 3Hive since my last article about indie music.  I recommend The Autumn Defense and Lymbyc Systym.

From University panel says student parody "harassed" blacks (AP via Boston.com):
...The parody of "O Come All Ye Faithful" calls black people "boisterous" and proclaims, "Born into the ghetto. O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas."

The lyrics also say, "No matter what your grades are, F's, D's or G's, give them all privileged status."...

I can understand that someone who is a conservative might have issues with affirmative action, a system that attempts to correct for the effects of years of injustice and discrimination.  But when you write "funny" songs called "Oh Come All Ye Black Folk" that indicate that black people come from the ghetto and have bad grades, you probably aren't doing your cause any favors.

But that's exactly what a Tufts University conservative campus newspaper "The Primary Source" did.  You can imagine how well the idea was received, especially since it was only last month that the same paper garnered the ire of Muslim students by posting parodies of Islamic Awareness Week advertisements in which they discussed brutality in Muslim countries.

There is a value sometimes in being shocking.  Sometimes it is necessary to shock someone into realizing that they are behaving in a manner they wouldn't tolerate from others.  Maybe that's what this paper was doing.  In order to be certain though, I'd need to see some shocking articles directed at white Christians, or something like that.  Barring that, it sounds like the students who imagine themselves to be Tuft's University's "one lone conservative voice" are abusing that voice by saying things that no decent conservative I know would say.

What do you think?

Viacom Sues Google

You probably know that the media giant Viacom recently sued the internet giant Google over Viacom content which appears on YouTube.  People who watch big companies like these have been saying that as soon as YouTube got purchased, the lawsuits would come.  Mostly because YouTube didn't have a lot of money, so suing them for damages wouldn't net much.

Now that YouTube is owned by Google, there's money to be had, and so now a company isn't limited to seeking injunctions so their content can't be shown on YouTube, now they can seek damages--quite a bit of damages actually.  Viacom claims Google owes it 1 billion dollars, which is pretty hefty.

Google for its part has been trying to negotiate with Viacom, to work out some sort of deal where Viacom content can be shown on YouTube.  The lawsuit may just be another way that Viacom is choosing to negotiate, so it may never actually go to court.

Viacom seems less interested in allowing YouTube to show Viacom content, and more interested in having all of its content taken off YouTube.  The sticking point, from what I've heard, has been the filtering of any future Viacom content from YouTube.  In order to prevent any more Colbert or South Park or whatever from appearing on YouTube, people would need to actively view every posted video and delete content owned by Viacom (which is a pretty wide variety of stuff).

Google has basically said "when you want something taken down, just send us a list and we'll take it down."  But that isn't good enough for Viacom, and they want Google to actively filter the material.  To which Google has indicated for that kind of service they would need some sort of compensation.  Of course Viacom is not going to pay Google to take down content which belongs to Viacom in the first place!

The complexity of such filtering, while perhaps not immediately appreciated by Viacom, is certainly appreciated now.  MoveOn.org and a number of other groups have sued Viacom for asking Google to remove videos which were not Viacom content, but parodies of Viacom content and therefore protected under fair use.  You see, it's not as simple as searching for "Colbert" and printing a list.  Duh.

All that aside, I think Viacom has a good case against Google.  The content really does belong to Viacom, and it is copyrighted.  The "we can't control what our users do" argument didn't work for Napster and I wouldn't expect it to work here, even though the content here is partial clips instead of entire songs.  The hope therefore is that Viacom will instead work out a deal with Google so that the case doesn't go to court.

In many ways it is good for a company to have clips of it's content appear on YouTube.  For example, I was never a big Family Guy watcher.  But after laughing my ass off to some clips on YouTube, I went out and bought the first season of Family Guy on DVD, and now I own seasons 1-4 on DVD.  The YouTube clips made the owners of Family Guy some money in my case.  It's really a form of free advertising, and some companies have embraced that.

Ultimately if the case goes to court, I expect Viacom will win, and YouTube will have to change dramatically.  I hope that doesn't happen.

Carol Burnett Sues "Family Guy" Creators

In one of the recent seasons of family guy there is an 18-second clip featuring Carol Burnett's famous cleaning-lady character mopping up the floor of a pornography shop.  Ms. Burnett has responded to this parody of her character by suing the creators of Family Guy for copyright infringement, and is seeking 2 million dollars in damages.

When I was a kid, I loved the Carol Burnett show.  I watched it all the time (even in reruns) with my family and laughed myself silly.  What I find odd is that many times the show included parodies of movies, TV shows, or novels.  So clearly, Ms. Burnett understands the use of parody, particularly in comedy.  One would think that to see her trademark character remembered after all these years would be flattering.

Guess not.

There's no way she is going to win.  It's obviously parody and is protected.  I can't see how she would not know this and so I'm assuming she just needs the money and is hoping for some sort of settlement.  It's depressing really, because I've always liked Carol Burnett.