Segways? How about some alternatives?

As you may have heard, there's a fundraiser coming up to purchase a Segway for the Fitchburg Police.

Now, it's not something that would come from tax money, so if people want to spend six grand on a Segway for the cops, they're welcome to do so. But I can't help but wonder just which alternate forms of transportation we could get to help the police be "visible to the public" and "go larger distances in a short amount of time," both benefits cited by Chief DeMoura.

Let's look at the options, shall we?

Segway

• Cost: $6,000, plus energy costs for charging.
• Pros:
  • Makes you look high-tech.
  • Makes you about 6 inches taller, good for increasing visibility and spotting crime at a distance!
  • Can go 12 mph for about 2 hours.
  • Easy to use, even for uncoordinated or out-of-shape officers.
• Cons:
  • It's hard to respect anyone riding a Segway.
  • Requires electricity (energy costs, danger of running out of juice in the field, etc.).
  • Can't jump curbs.
  • Makes you look like you're trying to hump a robot.

Bicycle

• Cost: about $1,000 for this one (6 for $6,000).
• Pros:
  • Goes up to 35 mph or so if you're a good sprinter and can be ridden at a lower speed all day.
  • Elevates you slightly compared to foot traffic.
  • No difficulty going off-road or jumping curbs (depending on rider).
  • Can apparently be useful in a shootout (see photo).
• Cons:
  • Doesn't reverse direction quickly.
  • Flat tires are a pain in the ass.
  • Not good for out-of-shape cops.
  • Saddle sores.

Skateboard

• Cost: roughly $100-$300 (20-60 for $6,000).
• Pros:
  • Elevates you about 3-4 inches, increasing visibility and so forth.
  • Can maneuver quickly.
  • In a tight spot, can be wielded as a weapon.
  • Can be used to do awesome tricks and entertain the community.
• Cons:
  • Requires some fitness and balance, plus practice for the aforementioned awesome tricks.
  • Poor off-road abilities.
  • Cops and skaters do not traditionally get along.
  • Skinned knees.

Horse

• Cost: varies, but probably at least $6,000 for the horse and about $3,000 a year for food and whatnot.
• Pros:
  • Comes with a certain innate dignity.
  • Little girls will get all excited to see you.
  • Best visibility of any of the options here.
  • Can say "Hi-ho Silver, away!" when fighting crime.
• Cons
  • Expenses of buying, feeding, and housing a horse.
  • A male horse may lead to embarrassing moments if it gets sexually aroused.
  • Not appropriate for overweight officers.
  • Manure.

Rollerblades

• Cost: $100-$300 (20-60 for $6,000).
• Pros:
  • Highly maneuverable.
  • Some cops in Antwerp already do it, and don't you want to be like Antwerp?
  • Two to three-inch elevation... visibility, etc.
  • Can move pretty fast.
• Cons:
  • Rollerblades are almost as goofy-looking as Segways.
  • Necessitates a backpack to carry around some normal shoes.
  • Might make you look like you got separated from a gay pride parade.
  • If you have to fire your gun you might go rolling backwards.

"Personal Mobility Device" (aka old-person scooter)

• Cost: varies, about $4,000 for the one pictured, but may be as low as $2,000 (1-3 for $6,000).
• Pros:
  • The town's senior citizens and quasi-disabled will feel you're one of them.
  • Goes up to 10 mph.
  • Can frighten criminals with your little horn.
  • "With its powerful dual motors, the Wrangler is the ultimate all-terrain personal mobility vehicle."
• Cons:
  • Requires electricity (like the Segway).
  • Worst visibility of any of the options here.
  • Little basket on the front better suited to transporting a tiny dog than a cuffed prisoner.
  • Judging from that one "Seinfeld" episode, you may get jumped by a gang of crotchety old people.

Pogo Stick

• Cost: $30-$100 (60-200 for $6,000).
• Pros:
  • Great visibility if you can hop high enough.
  • "Boing, boing, boing..." noise coming down the street will frighten away criminals.
  • All-terrain (depending on skill).
  • Can go undercover as a really lame street performer.
• Cons:
  • Hard to move at a high rate of speed.
  • Significant chance of hitting yourself in the chin if you slip off.
  • May cause motion sickness.
  • Best for catching criminals who are directly above you.

Certainly there are more options than the ones I've listed above, but at least this is a start. Feel free to chime in with your own ideas in the comments (no sneakers though, this is about technology, not footwear!).

Let's make sure the FPD has the tools it needs to most effectively fight crime!

Letters to the Editor are Always Fun!

By "always" in the title up there, I of course mean "never."

Honestly, I feel sort of bad picking on people who write letters to the editor. Yeah, 95% of the time they probably deserve it because they're just totally insane, but it still feels sort of like a cheap shot to address a simple letter-writer instead of the propaganda-spewing paper itself.

But here we have an interesting case.

Obviously, people who write letters to the editor don't provide a title for the paper to use as its headline. So you can sort of tell the political inclination of the paper just by seeing how they interpret the letter. Allow me to provide an example!

In this case, here are two quotes from a recent letter to the editor in the S&E dealing with teen pregnancies. Together, they make up the majority of the letter.

Quote 1:

I think there is a larger influence at work that I have not yet heard blamed: music.

I am personally disgusted with most of the music that is on the radio.

Songs introduces sexual themes to younger and younger audiences, and so they feel ready to expirement [sic] when their parents haven't yet talked about safe sex with their children.

This part is obviously pretty dumb. It's the typical blaming of pop culture for whatever ills you perceive in society.

Presumably, the letter-writer is an older person who finds hip-hop frightening and has forgotten that the only reason most people need to engage in sex is that it's really a whole lot of fun.

It also misses that perhaps "younger and younger" children maybe shouldn't be listening to the Lords of Acid (or whatever kids listen to these days). Which is a parenting issue more than a music issue.

Quote 2 (starts right where Quote 1 ended):

Also I think with the rise in teen pregnancies comes parent paranoia. I feel, in complete disagreement with your article, that parents who continually advocate a no-sex policy with their teens -- and I'm talking older teens not 13- and 14-year-olds -- will only push their kids to have sex behind their backs.

That will only make things worse because teens will then be embarrassed to ask for birth control and condoms, because they don't feel they can talk to parents about it.

I think the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy is to be very open with your children about sex.

Now, this second part is not just larger than the first part, but it's actually pretty sensible (though starting earlier than 13 or 14 would be preferable, kids can already get pregnant at those ages). Abstinence-only education is a huge failure, any way you look at it. And being open with your children about sex is good advice.

Guess which part of this letter the Sentinel decided to focus on? The part criticizing abstinence-only sex ed?

Here's the letter: Reader: Popular music to blame for teen pregnancy increase.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you write a letter to the editor expressing criticism of a policy that the editor endorses, stick to just that topic. If you mix in anything else, it's going to get the headline. Especially if it's crazy.

Comments

So, I'm trying a new commenting engine. Please leave a comment on this post and help me test it out. Preferably one letting me know what you think of the thing.

With any luck I can circumvent the whole obnoxious "must have a blogger account" issue while also not descending into the ugly world that is total comment jackassery.

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UPDATE: Okay I already noticed one small issue. The commenting link may not always appear unless you actually click on the post title and go into its own page.

Also, let me know if you're forced to go through a terrible registration process.

Also also, you can leave an assholey comment if you want so I can test the moderation. Go on, have at me!


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UPDATE II: Well, I got it set so that it displays the commenting link at least, but it means old comments are either unaccessible or poorly imported (the thing keeps timing out). Argh! Anyway, going to stick with that for the moment. I can bring the old comments back easily enough if I feel the need.

DiNatale's Gas Price Craziness

After my little post on Nathan Bech being a big fat liar a commenter (and local blogger) pointed me to this editorial by city councilor Marcus DiNatale.

Apparently the aforementioned commenter was annoyed with its dumbassery and was looking for someone to debunk it in a calm and rational manner. Which is of course what I'm known for. Polite political discourse.

So let's see what the dumbass had to say...

The basic argument was expressed in the headline Federal restrictions fueling gas price boom. Pretty simple concept. Here's a quote:

For years voters have heard from federal politicians that the United States needs to relinquish its dependence on foreign oil. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Canada supplies America with the most oil per day at 1.7 million barrels, followed by Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela. It is also a fact that the United States will spend approximately $400 billion in crude oil imports for 2008, and this number will continue to rise if Congress continues its failure to act on behalf of the American people. There are three solutions to alleviate this pain at the pump: Allow American oil companies to drill, build refineries, and encourage nuclear power development.

I did go over two of these "solutions" in the Bech post, but let me reiterate the points here.

Drilling is not only potentially environmentally disastrous, but there's little indication that it would make much difference. We're talking about a 1.8 cent decrease in price per gallon in 2025. Not exactly earth shattering stuff.

As for refineries, there's little incentive to build new ones since their profit margins are traditionally tiny and they're a huge pain in the ass. Anyway, there's unlikely to be any benefit there for a solid decade. Plus it probably makes more sense to continue what the industry has already been doing for the last few decades and decreasing the number of small refineries while expanding and improving the efficiency of the big ones. This is why our capacity for refining has increased while the actual number of refineries has decreased since the last one was built in 1976.

I didn't address nuclear power before, because Bech didn't talk about it. So let's get that out of the way too. Nuclear plants are ridiculously expensive to build (for good reason), but the actual power output is largely on the same cost level with coal plants, both of which are considerably cheaper fuels than oil and natural gas.

It's actually a little odd that DiNatale mentions nuclear power, since that's really only a factor in the production of electricity and has little impact on gas prices (to Bech's credit, that's probably why he didn't mention it). The US doesn't use a significant amount of oil in electricity production, so even if all those plants swapped to nuclear we're not talking about any significant change in gasoline price, which was supposedly the topic at hand. (There is a debate to be had about nuclear power, but it doesn't involve gas prices.)

Bascially, all of DiNatale's "solutions" for high gas prices will in reality have little or nothing to do with the actual price of gas.

But that's far from the end of DiNatale's editorial. Indeed, that was just the opening. He goes on to bash "Liberal politicians" and "fear mongering... environmental special-interest groups" in what I can only assume is an attempt to ingratiate himself to local Republicans.

DiNatale appears especially eager to drill in ANWR, and wants to make us all feel good about it!

One specific area of contention for drilling is the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. According to anwr.org, 75 percent of Alaskans favor exploration and production, and only 8 percent of ANWR would be considered for exploration (2,000 acres of over 1.5 million acres of the Coastal Plain).

Let's take that apart, shall we?

First of all, anwr.org is a propaganda site created by a group called "Arctic Power." Arctic Power was formed by oil companies. Specifically, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and ChevronTexaco. All but ExxonMobil have dropped out recently. I guess Exxon just figured nobody would notice the incredibly huge fucking conflict of interest.

The real site for ANWR is here. Not as pretty a website, but then again it's not funded by oil company money.

Now, you may think that maybe Marcus DiNatale was just pulled in by the slick propaganda put out by an oil conglomerate and are willing to cut him some slack. As we'll see later, it really doesn't matter, because even if he knew oil companies were behind the site he seems to have more faith in their truthiness than any sane human being should have.

Second, it really doesn't matter one bit if 75% of Alaskans support drilling in ANWR. Even if the number is accurate, it's a fallacious appeal to popularity, and doesn't mean that what they support is right. By way of example, if 75% of Alaskans supported clubbing baby seals, that doesn't mean we should all support clubbing baby seals.

As for the 2,000 acres figure; that doesn't sound so bad in such a large area, does it? It sure sounded good in Prudhoe Bay, where they claimed only 2,100 acres would be affected back in 1972. Too bad that's now expanded to a total drilling footprint of 12,000 acres with drill sites spreading over 640,000 acres. You have to be pretty gullible to think this time we'd really keep things down to just 2,000 acres.

DiNatale goes on to try to convince us even the animals want us to drill in ANWR:

Environmentalist groups say that wildlife would be in danger as a result of oil exploration in ANWR. However, the small amount of oil and gas development going on currently in ANWR coexists successfully with wildlife. The Central Artic Caribou Herd has grown from 3,000 animals to its current level of 32,000. Brown bear, fox and bird populations have also not been impacted negatively.

Yay, wildlife loves oil exploration!

Indeed, the Central Arctic Caribou Herd has grown (though the figures I've seen placed it at 5,000 before, not 3,000). Too bad we're dealing with the Porcupine Herd. I wonder what more informed people say...

Although the same animals, the two herds are very different. The Porcupine herd migrates over a much larger range, an arduous journey that takes its toll on the herd. Scientists also believe the Central Artic herd, a much smaller herd, has access to several acceptable calving grounds. The Porcupine herd has fewer alternatives and the herd has suffered declines in years when deep snow cover made it difficult to reach its preferred calving grounds on Alaska's coastal plain.

Some biologists suggest a major reason why the Central Arctic herd has flourished is because as much as three-quarters of the area where it calves has virtually no oil activity.

"Yes, the herd has grown, but only 25 percent has been affected," said Griffith, an associate research professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "The fact that it has grown does not mean there is no effect. It means that the effect wasn't sufficient to keep it from growing at all."

Ground observations of the Central Arctic herd in the nearby Kuparuk oil fields have found that over time the caribou increasingly avoid areas of intense activity - especially during the sensitive calving period -- and shift into areas with fewer roads and pipelines.

Dangit, maybe wildlife doesn't appreciate oil drilling as much as we're supposed to believe!

Okay, so far DiNatale has presented what's basically John McCain's plan. Which is to say, one that will have negligible effects in the short-term and largely unknown (but not especially compelling) effects in the long-term.

It's not just McCain he parrots, though. Remember when I mentioned how he seems awfully eager to accept the oil companies' propaganda about all of this? It wasn't just presumption. He actually goes on to quote the president of Shell Oil!

Shell Oil President and CEO John Hofmeister stated, "In the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people. It is not a free market. According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off-limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay, or restrict natural gas projects. The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chosen to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exploration and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development. There is simply no way to keep up - let alone get ahead of demand - except by producing more oil and building more refining capacity."

Holy crud that's a long quote. He must trust Shell Oil just as much as he trusts ExxonMobil!

So, Mr. Oil mentions a report by the Argonne National Laboratory about natural gas projects. Umm... wait a second. Does your car run on natural gas? Mine doesn't. Are we still talking about gasoline prices? No? Okay, then let's not get into that.

But let's deal with the basic gist, summed up by Mr. DiNatale in his final sentence.

There is your answer to high gas prices. It is Congress restricting free market exploration, not "Big Oil."

Huh. That sentence seriously ended the editorial, and came immediately after that big quote from "Big Oil" itself. Trusting guy, that Marcus DiNatale.

Too bad for him that "Big Oil" has a tendency to not be totally honest.

We're going to ignore all the natural gas stuff, since we're dealing with gasoline prices. So the basic argument being made by "Big Oil"/DiNatale is that Congress is standing in the way by keeping us from drilling and making more refineries.

Well, Congress has so far been successful in preventing ANWR drilling, but as we've already discussed, that's pretty much unrelated to gasoline prices. As for refineries, the reason there haven't been any built since 1976 has less to do with Congress than it does with lack of investors in a tumultuous and low-profit-margin industry.

What are we left with?

Well, personally I'm left with the opinion that Marcus DiNatale is for some reason trying to appeal to the conservative dumbasses who think we can get cheap gasoline prices next week if we just rape the environment. I'm also left with the opinion that he puts way too much trust in what oil companies tell him. Oh, and that his ideas about how to lower gas prices are idiotic.

But there's a lot of that going around.

Longsjo Time Again!

Here's a little known fact about me: many years ago I was a bike racer. Not a great one by any measure (by most measures a pretty terrible one, actually), but I had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people. These days I'm an out-of-shape curmudgeon who drinks too much. Times change.

Anyway, a huge part of the reason I got into cycling in the first place was because of the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic bike race, which I've had at least minor involvement in for the last 18 years; first as a racer, then a volunteer, then a spectator (though I do still try to donate a little prime money during the criterium).

It's really an impressive event, and is perhaps the most famous thing about Fitchburg. It's truly an international affair, and has seen the likes of Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond, Connie Carpenter, Davis Phinney, George Hincapie (Who I actually raced against here! If you call watching him disappear off into the distance while I felt like my legs were about to burst into flames "racing against."), Kathy Watt, and Eric Heiden, among countless other cycling luminaries, grace the streets of Fitchburg.

Try this some time when you're travelling: If you run into a bike racer (Note: the males of this species are easy to spot by their shaved legs and fondness for Lycra) mention Fitchburg to them. Chances are they'll have heard of it. This will work in most of the US, and probably a number of other places throughout the world (Australia, for instance, seems fond of sending teams here).

Is there any other thing that Fitchburg is so famous for? Certainly not that I can think of. That whole "second hilliest city in the US" thing is just silly, and anyway Seattle claims that too.

On top of that, the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic is a memorial to the incredible Art Longsjo, a Fitchburg native, and the first person to be in both the Summer (cycling) and Winter (speed skating) Olympics in the same year. He's got a pretty awesome story behind him and was a totally dominant cyclist until his untimely death in an auto accident. There's a monument to him right on Main Street, and the guy definitely deserved it.

Going even farther, the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic is the second oldest bike race in the country (behind the Tour of Somerville). And it's expanded from its original one-day criterium into a four-day stage race! That's a huge amount of work for the people running the race, but people step up to do it year after year!

What am I getting at?

It's simple really. People have a lot of negative things to say about Fitchburg. Some of them are right, some of them are wrong. But the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic is one thing about the town that is totally and unabashedly positive. Hell, it's even a totally non-profit event that tries to involve the community and gives money to the Boys & Girls Club!

So get out there and watch the races this weekend. It's free, and they're cool. They start tomorrow, but the best race to watch is the one on Sunday that takes place down on Main Street. The Saturday circuit race is pretty good too if you're on Pearl Street, but it's not quite as fast-paced as Sunday's race.

If you've never gone before, then I guarantee that you'll see more fit and attractive people walking the streets of Fitchburg than you'd ever thought possible. And just for one weekend, don't worry about the library budget or trash fees or any of that other stuff. Just enjoy something that this city does really, really well.

Enjoy the race.

No Comment

Just read this.

And snicker.

Nathan Bech is going to save us a penny

You may have seen this article in the Sentinel the other day. It's about Nathan Bech, a Republican challenging John Olver for his seat in the House of Representatives.

It's an interesting article mostly because after a whole article that consisted of nothing but parroting favored Republican talking points, it ends with:

"I think people of Western and Central Mass. deserve better," he said. "I'm an independent thinker. A good idea's a good idea."

[...]

"I want to get this seat back into the hands of someone who will diligently and honestly represent the people and not just someone who pushes the party line," Bech said. "I can think for myself."

Okaaaay...

It was of course entirely possible that Bech does have some views that don't match up perfectly with the views of the Republican establishment, and the S&E article just didn't bother to mention them, so I checked out Bech's website.

Man, the guy really harps on being a vet. I will give him credit for that though, most Republicans who support the war haven't ever been in the armed service. He's a Republican who supports the war enough to have fought in it. It doesn't really separate him from the party leadership though, aside from making him seem less hypocritical.

So I kept looking for whatever I could find that might separate him out from other Republicans. Here's what I found:

1. He doesn't support a "National ID card," just something that's exactly like it.
2. He's opposed to torture (which he does not define).

Those are sort of at odds with the Republican party line, right?

No? Oh well, I tried.

But that's not the most interesting part of his website. The most interesting part of his site is this crazy gas thing where he shows how all his fancy plans would have us paying just $2.08 at the pump today compared to how Olver's plans would have us paying $4.01. Oh my god, the man must be good at telling people what they want to hear a genius!

Actually, he just seems to have taken these "ideas" from the Bush administration and stuck numbers with them.

Anyway, we have math to play with! Let's look at all his fancy-pants cuts!

His first item is:
Bring onshore oil online (ANWR, Shale) with a savings of $0.70 - $1.60.

Hmm, that doesn't seem likely. I mean, this study (pdf) on ANWR drilling suggests a mean savings of 75 cents per barrel, and that's not until 2025. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, so that means a 1.8 cent decrease per gallon. Yay?

Now, that's wholesale of course. You'll probably see less retail. Maybe a cent, if you're lucky. So it must be the oil shale that account for somewhere between 69 cents and $1.59 in Bech's calculations.

Wow, it takes a brave (or stupid) man to propose something with so many nasty environmental side effects while also playing up his supposed environmentalism.

I don't know where Bech gets his figures, but even this RAND study (pdf) suggests it would take at least 12 years to begin production and probably would only save a few dollars a gallon. Plus it would be environmentally disastrous to do, of course.

Well crap, Mr. Bech. Your first figure just didn't work out.

How about the next one?
Bring deepwater oil online (OCS) with a savings of $0.90-$2.50. Sweet!

This is the "offshore drilling" stuff so popular with Bush and McCain and all their toadies these days. The one that would take 10 years before any oil would start flowing and then wouldn't actually have any impact on prices anyway. Well, maybe after 2030. But probably not.

This isn't working so well for Mr. Bech. All his savings are disappearing!

So, what's left?

blah blah blah "gas tax holiday" for 18 cents.

Man, do I even need to mention this one? Like the way every economist in the country has said it won't work? No, I didn't think so. Moving on.

His last sizable cut is also an old favorite of the Republicans who he's oh-so-different from.

Bring new refineries online for $0.15-$0.45.

Sure, that sounds swell. But nobody wants to build them because their profit-margins are razor-thin. The first new one since 1976 has been in the works for a decade or so, and construction has yet to even begin. They do claim to be expecting full operation by 2012, but I got that off a FAQ that's 4 years old.

Damn. Another one down.

I won't bother addressing the supposed 5 cent decrease from halting shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, since both Olver and Bech support it.

I'd like to know where Bech gets his figures (aside from the 18 cent gas holiday one, I already know that). They're either ridiculously optimistic or totally made up. Decide for yourself. Either way, his little gas price chart is nothing more than a big fat lie. Way to represent for the Replubicans, Bech!

So yeah, vote for Olver.

State Senatorial Candidate Website Reviews!

Apparently, there was a debate tonight between Jennifer Flanagan and Brian Knuuttila, who are both running for state senate. Well, I'm not one for fancy debates or driving to Sterling to witness said fancy debates, but I am one to look over the candidates' websites and make fun of them. So let's do that now!

In case you're not aware, there's a contest in the works to replace the retiring Robert Antonioni as State Senator. Antonioni's a pretty good guy, so good luck to him in whatever he moves on to!

In the meantime, we have this weird little race to deal with. Two candidates are vying for his seat, and I don't really know all that much about either of them. What can I say, the site is called Progressive Fitchburg, and neither is from Fitchburg. There's only so much time in the day, people.

No problem though, they both have websites, and we can simply judge them that way!

Going in alphabetical order...

Jennifer Flanagan: www.jenflanagan.com

I'll tell you right off the bat, Flanagan's got an advantage here. Not only does she have this site, she also has a second site here for her State Rep. stuff and her official mass.gov page is the top result if you Google for her name. So she's easy to find. But that could be a bad thing if what she has to say sucks!

To be fair, I'm only going to deal with her campaign site. At first glance it looks pretty professional. It uses the totally cliched "make your site look as much like the American flag as possible" style of website design, but doesn't totally pound you over the head with it. Just a dull throb.

The front page is pretty dull. Mostly it's a press release. The main content is primarily the News page replicated here. Plus there's a newsletter signup thingy and ways to give her money. Uninspiring, but I can live with that.

Now to the more interesting pages! Our first one is simply called Jennifer! Hello Jennifer! Clicking on that link almost makes me feel like we're on a first name basis!

Actually, the page sort of has three parts to it, we're just dumped to the main "Get to Know Jen" part, which has this totally subtle picture on it.


Oh hello, Sen. Antonioni! I almost didn't see you there!

Also hello lady to Jennifer's right (our left)! I don't actually know who you are. Maybe I should, maybe not. Regardless, Sen. Antonioni is looking pretty sharp. I sort of wonder what he's looking at. Some tasty hors d'oeuvres perhaps? Hot chick in a bikini? Someone he's planning to murder? Hard to say, but maybe we'll get lucky and another photo will tell us? Unlikely.

From this page we're linked to Accomplishments. Yay, important issues! Here we find important details about my new friend Jennifer's work as a State Rep.

This is where things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Look, I know the subheading is "legislation filed" and that if you read the whole blurb it's about legislation she's working on to punish those who harbor minors (to protect runaways and so forth, I suppose). That doesn't change the fact that if you quickly skim her accomplishments it appears that the one she's most proud of is HARBORING A MINOR. Not good!

She also has FAILURE TO STOP FOR POLICE OFFICER LEGISLATION further down, which at least has that "legislation" at the end, but still is not at all what you want to have as the bolded, all-caps part of your accomplishments!

There's a lot on that page though, and much of it is good. There's also this, which I find utterly baffling:

MORATORIUM ON INTERNET HUNTING: CHAPTER 83 OF THE ACTS OF 2007 Aligned Massachusetts with 22 other states to ban the hunting of live animals through the Internet and establish a fine of up t [sic] $2,500 or imprisonment for 2½ years if a person is found to have participated in Internet hunting.

Huh? You can hunt live animals through the internet? How the fuck does that work? A webcam mounted to a rifle? Is it even a real thing, or are we preparing for a post-Skynet dystopia in which killer robots are trying to hunt us using the internet somehow and we're hoping this law keeps them at bay?

If it's the former, I must chide my new friend Jennifer for legislating about stupid things. If the latter, I applaud her foresight!

On to the Endorsements page!

Actually, no. Let's not bother. Just go read it if you really care. About the only endorsement that matters is the one from Antonioni, which we'd already figured out from the picture up above.

So instead we'll go to the Our Community page. It appears the main purpose of this page is to provide a map showing the district, and therefore letting people know that if they live in one of those towns they can vote for her. I suppose that's useful. Also, I learned that Clinton is apparently very tiny. Who knew?

The News page is what you'd mostly expect. Press releases and so forth. We already saw the main one on the front page. It also links to Photos on a big bloaty Javascript-ridden page that slows down my browser and annoys me just a bit. Nice effect and all, but I could live without it.

Here's a picture where Jennifer is being arrested by the very minor she was harboring! Citizen's arrests do work!


Perhaps as part of her plea bargain with the arresting pre-adolescent, we next find the odd Kid's Corner page. Apparently kids can vote now?

This page hosts what I assume to be Orson Welles' long-lost masterpiece of zombie filmmaking, "Citizen Brain: Feeding on American Democracy."

Actually, it appears to be about a kid named Vince whose brain escapes his head and starts menacing him while he's trying to play video games. It's creepy. Or at least the first 45 seconds or so are creepy. That was about all I could stomach.


The last page is just a Contact page. Nothing notable there.

Conclusion: It's a nice looking website, with a good long list of accomplishments (even if some of them are baffling). Unfortunately, it doesn't really look forward much. Lots of talk about what she has done, but very little about what she will do in the future. Still, nothing about it was totally ridiculous. Except for the zombie brain (which I assume is also a cannibal).

Now on to her competition!

Brian Knuuttila: brianforsenate.com

Well, it's obvious who spent more on their website here. Mr. Knuuttila's site looks like it hails back from 1995 or so. I really recommend you go visit it, because the magic of the marquee scrolling doodad at the top can't be effectively conveyed in my screenshot.

On the plus side, when I first visited the site it had blinking text too, and that seems to be gone now, so things are improving! In fact, it says it was last updated today! (It also says it's only had 178 visitors, let's get that number up!)

Anyway, we actually have a pretty busy front page. First off, we have his slogan, which is honestly pretty cool: "No matter how you say Knuuttila, it means good government"

So he's got a sense of humor.

Also, he appears to be a very literal tree-hugger!

Wondering what his site is all about? Wonder no more, he tells you right on the front page!

The website is intended as a way for me to express my views and qualities and a way for you to contact me with thoughts and ideas on how you would like to see your City and Town improve in the future with my support.

As a former State Representative and still very familiar with the issues and needs of our district [sic]. We need new and fresh ideas to bring economic stimulus [sick] to our district and I plan to work hard for you to bring economic stability back to us. I am running for Senate and I am asking for your support. Please contact me with your thoughts and ideas as I promise to respond to you.

Sincerely,
Brian Knuuttila

How nice. Might want to do some proofreading there though, as I actually went light on the [sic]s. (In fairness, Flanagan got some too.)

First page! It's called About Me, which is a little less intimate than "Jennifer." I recommend he change the link title to "Bri-Bri" or some other funny nickname in order to one-up her.

On this page we encounter exactly two images, and both are flags.
These flags are supposed to be waving, but it seems blogger may have killed their rockin' animation. Regardless, it seems clear that Brian is both an American and a Marine.

In fact, as we learn from the "About Me" page, he was not only a Marine, but also a five-term state rep, a Gardner City Councilor, a cop, a firefighter, an attorney, and several other things. Clearly he gets around. Also he has a wife and two kids, so he's apparently heterosexual and capable of impregnating a woman. I'm not sure why these things matter, but politicians seem to like to point them out.

Next we move on to his View Points [sic].

Okay, let's ignore the typo in the fucking link menu and just deal with the substance of the page. It's mainly encapsulated in the bullet points at the top, which is handy!

Nice bullet points! He likes me!

Oddly, the rest of the page seems to veer off from the bullet points, since the headings continuing down the page are (in order): Education, Health Care, Environment, Balanced Budget, Jobs, Affordable Housing, and then a big huge "Honest and Responsible Leadership" at the bottom. All good things, and while the synopses he gives are unfortunately rather vague, it sounds like he has some good priorities.

Next is the News & Events link. Right now it's just four links to various websites with articles about him. Still, we can pass this up just like we would any old "links" page.

On to Endorsements. Okay, I pretty much ignored Flanagan's endorsements because I don't care about endorsements. But I do note that while Flanagan has Mayor Wong on her side, Knuuttila seems to have the lion's share of the city council. What's up with that?

Still, endorsements, meh. Hopefully the next page will be more fun!

Crud, it's a Helpful Links page (though the page title says "Key View Points" for some reason)! Oh well, at least they're helpful. And he has this nice blurb at the top:

Below are some links that I hope will help you. Please let me know if I can add other links that you've found useful.

That's a very nice offer! And he does have a "blogs" section at the very bottom (because nobody respects blogs). Maybe I can make it there!

Aside from that, it's mostly links to city government websites in the district. And you know what I said about links pages just a few paragraphs ago. So we move on...

To Photos 2008! I love a good photos page, and it's nice to know these are all recent photos! Even though they're all laid out in a single horizontal row in order to make a crappy-ass slideshowy thing that will require ridiculous scrolling... bah.

Interestingly, the majority of the photos do not in fact feature Knuuttila himself! Still, here's an awesome one!

Now you might be thinking I'm going to say something rude about how this is the multicultural shot that all political websites must have, just because it has a black man, an Asian, and either two women or one woman and a guy with luxurious long hair.

You are very jaded, my friend.

In fact, I just like the look on that guy's face. It's like he has some sort of really cool secret that he's keeping from the people in his little group there, but that he's sharing with the photographer, and by extension us. Awesome.

Anyway, it's probably better when Knuuttila stays out of the shot, because apparently he has a tendency to point directly at women's breasts...

Note to Brian: Please work on subtlety. Just because Prince Charles can get away with it doesn't mean you can!
Okay, better move away from these photos before things get dirty. What's the next link?

Oh crap, it's Photos!

Look, I like photos as much as anyone. Especially when they're goofy like the ones above. But do we really need to separate out 2008 from all other photos (which are presumably earlier and not from the future)? And seriously, tell me it's not just an excuse to run this one:

Actually, it's a fascinating photo. What part you like most about it depends entirely on who you are.

If you're a big Red Sox fan, it's the World Series trophy. If you're a pedophile, it's the teenage girl in the short skirt. If you're already a big Brian Knuuttila fan, it's Brian Knuuttila. If you're me, it's that awesome surly guy on the right side who looks pissed off at the whole thing. It's a feast for everyone's eyes!

But enough photos already! Let's move on!

Dammit, the final page is just a Contact Me page! I hate those things! Plus it's very limiting!


What if I just want to tell him a joke or ask him where he gets his ties? What do I check then, huh?

Okay, that's it for his site.

Conclusion: Somehow, I find this site both really terrible and very charming. It's probably all the pictures and the warm feeling I get remembering what web design was like in 1995. Still, it doesn't really tell me all that much about what the hell Knuuttila would actually do if he got elected!


VERDICT: Seriously, they both sort of suck. They get the job done, but neither site really tells me anything about what to expect if I vote for these people. They spend all their time focusing on the past and not what they're going to do, which is far more important. Flanagan's site is clearly more professional, but Knuuttila has a better sense of humor. If I were to vote based on websites alone I'd probably go with Flanagan, but neither of them is terribly compelling.

New species of Letter to the Editor writer discovered!

We humans are pattern-seeking animals. One could argue that we're driven by our very genes to create taxonomies.

This doesn't just apply to science, of course. We do it with everything, sometimes without even realizing it.

For instance, I've developed an informal taxonomy of people who write letters to the editor. Most of them fit into certain groups pretty easily.

There are the confusingly whiny ones, the ones that are hilariously ignorant concerning the very topic about which they're writing, the religious proselytizers, the ones who predict some sort of apocalypse, people who talk foolishly about the "founding fathers," people who have personal grudges against some elected official (or the very concept of government itself, sometimes), and so forth.

There are other species too, but I mention these specifically because they generally fit into the genus of "people who can't write worth a damn."

Well, today is an exciting day!

I've discovered a letter/editorial thing with the lackluster title of Library budget cuts will have long-term implications in the S&E. This title was no doubt assigned by the paper, because surely the author did not pick such an uninspiring title! Regardless of the poor title, it introduces a species that's rarely seen in the wild, and may in fact be a new one altogether!

The species in question is the poetic-and-literate-apocalypse-
predictor-who-also-mentioned-the-founding-fathers-at-some-point. Witness the awesomeness!

Every once in a while, if we are fortunate to have the favor of divine providence, we find a fellow citizen amongst us who has a truly brilliant and beautiful mind.

I am writing about those citizens in our Republic who help make us be much better than we truly deserve to be.

[...]

The only thing I know for certain about these people is that their brilliant minds were all shaped by reading. Such is the supremacy of books.

There is no greater method of empowering people than to give them the gift of literacy.

Literacy inoculates our Republic from the tyrannies of ignorance and conformity. Our founding fathers knew the importance of literacy and the need for our democracy to have public lending libraries.

Nobody can honestly tell me that a line like "Literacy inoculates our Republic from the tyrannies of ignorance and conformity." is not utterly awesome. You can tell me it's not true (and I'd agree), but it's still a damn good sentence!

Also, I like books too! Perhaps not as much as this guy, but it's nice to see that kind of passion!

He continues, with a bit less aplomb:

Presently, in this day and at this time, I can report to you my fellow citizens; ignorance and conformity are alive and well in Fitchburg Massachusetts.

The mayor and the local City Council are planning on gutting the library and taking away the gift of literacy.

First, check out that semicolon. I have never been properly instructed in the use of a semicolon (it's a huge gap in my education), so color me impressed!

As for the substance; I can agree with the first sentence, but there's something fishy about the second one.

Yeah, cuts to the library would (will?) suck. I'd like to see the library funded as well as it can be. But "taking away the gift of literacy"? That's just silly. There are other ways to get reading material than just the library. They're just not as convenient or cheap. Then again, perhaps our author is just using hyperbole as a literary tool! So let's give him a pass for now.

Crap, it's a recurring theme:

In the United States of America, a nation that for the past 200 years has brought enlightenment and hope to this world, we are taking the power of the written word away from toddlers, preschoolers, grade-school students, middle-school students high-school students and college students.

Toddlers can read now? Dammit, kids are growing up so fast these days! And ummm... don't schools have libraries? Plus, bookstores and the internet still exist I think. Also, don't adults count for anything? We like literacy too!

Now to the apocalypse* with which he closes...

What I do know with any certainly [sic] is that the next brilliant mind of our generation is not going to come from Fitchburg Mass.

The young minds in our community, waiting to be inspired to greatness, will never get the opportunity because the body of all human knowledge; which can normally be found at your local public library, will not be available to them.

Oh Mr. Pretty-good-letter-writing-guy, what happened to you? I hope that typo is the fault of the paper and not you!

The hyperbole boat has capsized at this point (Note: that is a metaphor, another literary tool, which I am currently using in a confusing manner). Is there only one brilliant mind per generation?

Because if so, I'd say that it's a pretty safe bet that out of the 6.6 billion people in the world, Fitchburg won't be the home to that one brilliant person. No matter how good our library is. Still, I don't think you can take a reduction in library hours to mean the next brilliant mind is doomed if they happen to be growing up in Fitchburg.

Also, is it true that "the body of all human knowledge" is found at the Fitchburg Public Library? Frankly, it doesn't seem that big.

Still, these are minor quibbles!

The important part is we've discovered a guy who can write awesomely while also taking on some of the traits of the crazy people who can't write! He's a transitional form, like our Archaeopteryx friend up top!

Today may be a momentous day in the evolution of letter to the editor writing! Expect an increase in well-written letters from literate individuals, as environmental pressures cause the poorly-written letter writers to fade away. It's the dawning of a new age, people! Celebrate!


* Note: By "apocalypse" I obviously don't mean a Mad Max-style nuclear holocaust or anything like that. Rather, the apocalyptic letter-writer specializes in predicting some sort of negative effect that's totally disproportionate to the event purported to cause it. For instance, those who claim that a trash fee will lead to mountains of garbage all over town due to illegal dumping fit into my category of "apocalypse predictors."

Video games will destroy America!

Al Qaeda are bad. Everybody knows that. But did you know they're promoting nuclear jihad now?

At least that's the story according to the SITE Intelligence Group. Oddly, you'll find no reference to the story on their site now. So here's a quote from the news story:

The FBI warning came as the US-based monitoring group SITE said the video encouraging terrorists to develop and detonate weapons of mass destruction in the US and Europe was posted on an Islamist militant forum.

SITE also released a computer-generated image, showing Washington DC in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, which reportedly appeared on an Islamist forum.

Here's that image...


That's scary stuff! Not only does Al Qaeda want to nuke us, but they also have some highly talented graphic artists in their ranks!

Actually, no they don't. The above picture is a screenshot from the upcoming computer game Fallout 3, which has a post-apocalyptic setting (and which I've been eager to play for just short of forever). If you want to see the original, just go here and scroll down to the shot from May 8, 2007.

Should I even mention how the notion of Al Qaeda having the resources to mount a nuclear attack of that scale is ridiculous? I mean, most nations don't even have the resources to do it, a loosely-organized band of angry (and mostly incompetent) guys living in caves certainly doesn't. Or should I talk about how the daydreamy musings of people on terrorist message boards should probably not be considered actual "intelligence" indicating Al Qaeda's plans?

Nah, the picture snafu really tells you all you need to know about the competence of SITE.

Anyway... thanks, SITE! I feel much safer now, knowing you're looking out for us!

Fitchburg's Cancer Center: Now with more placebos!

Fitchburg seems to have a pretty good thing in the form of the Simonds-Sinon Regional Cancer Center.

While I don't have any direct experience with it (or cancer, happily), it appears to be a fairly well-respected medical facility. It's been commended by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons, which sounds like a pretty good thing.

They've also got a nice linear accelerator on-site for use in radiation therapy. And linear accelerators are cool. Plus, you know, they save lives.

So the cancer center seems to be a pretty good place. Which is what makes their apparent embrace of pseudoscientific bullshit "therapies" so disturbing.

The Sentinel has an article about the cancer center's "Evening of Wellness." I'll quote from it in a moment, but let me just start by saying that whenever someone talks to you about "wellness" it means they're bullshitting you.

Okay, article:

The Fitchburg cancer center offered some types of complimentary [sic] care through a 2007 grant, such as music and art.

HealthAlliance CEO and President Patrick Muldoon announced Thursday night at the center's "Evening of Wellness" that a new donation will help the hospital integrate even more complementary care.

Complementary care refers to art, music, exercise and traditional Eastern therapies in conjunction with traditional medical care administered to cancer patients.

What a second. So "traditional Eastern therapies" basically equals "ancient Chinese medicine," but "traditional medical care" equals scientifically sound and evidence-based modern medical treatments? Man, we're playing fast and loose with the word "traditional!"

No matter... Music and art are great things. They can undoubtedly improve the lives of people with cancer. I don't think anyone has a problem with them being offered. Same goes for exercise. That's just obvious.

"[T]raditional Eastern therapies," on the other hand, are total and utter crap. Neither "traditional" nor "Eastern" is something you should be looking for in your medical care (and yes, the "traditional" term used above to refer to evidence-based medicine is inappropriate).

The current life expectancy in China (where a huge amount of this "traditional" crap comes from) is 73.18 years, and that's with modern medicine. In the US, it's 78.14 years. Yes, please take five years off my life with your dumbass therapies, China!

Of course, at the time most of these "therapies" were made up (and "made up" is the correct way to refer to their creation), the life expectancy was probably closer to 30 or 35. So we're really talking about 40-45 years lower. But why split hairs?

Let's look at a couple of the "complementary" therapies used here. First, a quote:

[Patient Barbara] Patterson also utilized the center's LeBed [sic] exercise program to increase patient's physical strength and immune systems. The therapeutic exercise focuses on movement and dance for women with breast cancer.

"I was just coming out of treatment," she said. "It (exercise programs) opens your lymphatic glands and gets you moving. A lot of breast cancer patients can develop lymphedema."

Hmmm...

I wasn't familiar with the Lebed program, but here's its website. I recommend you watch the video on the front page. As you can see, it appears to be a low-impact dance program. Which may or may not involve blowing bubbles.

Now, Ms. Patterson is right. Lymphedema can be caused by radiation therapy. Furthermore, light exercise is a pretty decent treatment. So we're all good.

But what's this crap about "increas[ing]... immune systems"? I assume it's the reporter's own little touch, since as far as I can tell not even the Lebed people make that claim. They do say it increases "femininity" right after saying it was designed "for women and men," which is a little strange.

Incidentally, much like talking about "wellness," anyone talking about "strengthening the immune system" is at least 99% likely to be bullshitting you.

Anyway, while the Lebed method seems a little odd, I have no problem with it. Hell, it's just a dance class. It even has at least one study (pdf) on it published in a peer-reviewed journal! Sure, it's not a very well-done study (they do admit to some of the limitations in the study itself), but it does suggest that the program has some quality-of-life benefits, even if the actual medical benefits are not well-proven. So again, no worries!

Man, what am I so annoyed about then?

Oh yeah, this:

Dr. Betsy Burbank , who will offer acupuncture to patients at the center in the fall, was the night's guest speaker.

"Science is just catching with what you already know deep in your bones," Burbank said to gathered patients. "You know these (alternative programs) help your wellness."

Umm, way to throw out the "wellness" bullshit along with making a totally idiotic claim that "science is just catching up"! And offering acupuncture on top of it!

Dr. Burbank, believe it or not, actually is a real doctor. Not an oncologist, mind you, but a family doctor. Which is fine, and no doubt more than qualifies her to perform acupuncture.

On the other hand, I'm about equally qualified to perform acupuncture. Though you may want to give me a chart of where the major nerves are, just so I don't hit anything bad. But seeing as how "real" acupuncturists and people just faking it and inserting needles randomly are equally effective, I think I could do just fine. And since it's not like you actually need a medical license to do it, I think I'm plenty qualified!

Acupuncture is bullshit. It's a big fat placebo, nothing more.

"So what?" you might ask. After all, placebos are powerful things. People do sometimes feel better from them. So what's the harm?

Well, there's actually significant harm. Hopefully it doesn't affect anyone actually being treated at the cancer center. After all, they're getting real medical care in addition to the useless crap.

But offering and, more importantly, promoting the totally absurd practice of acupuncture is a problem for several reasons:

• It diverts resources from actual medicine: For every penny spent on acupuncture and its pseudoscientific brethren, that's one less penny spent on curing cancer. Go ahead, ask me which I think is more important...
• It gives the impression that acupuncture is a valid therapy for cancer: It is not. People at the cancer center get real treatments with real medicines and techniques that have been proven to work. But people not at the cancer center may get the impression that they can go to their local quack acupuncturist, save a few bucks, and treat their cancer cheaply. And die of cancer, because acupuncture doesn't fucking do anything.
• It promotes a lie: Simple morality should suggest that a hospital promoting quackery is not a good thing to do.

There are actually many more reasons, but this post is starting to get pretty long, so I won't go into them just now. Suffice it to say that a hospital shouldn't be promoting something that's totally at odds not just with medicine (by which I mean the practice of medicine, not pharmaceuticals), but also at odds with reality!

And it gets worse:

Several patients traveled the corridors of cancer center, watching demonstrations of complementary care, including Reiki and Massage Therapy.

Reiki? Seriously, Reiki? That makes acupuncture look like hardcore science!

Don't know about Reiki? Let me put it in a nutshell for you.

Step 1: Maybe put on some soothing music or something.
Step 2: Wave your hands around on and over somebody's body.
Step 3: Claim you're moving their aura or "energy field" around.
Step 4: Maybe get a placebo effect if you're lucky.

Whoopdy-doo! That's Reiki. One of the most inane and ridiculous of all the pseudoscientific gibberish out there. So bad I don't even really feel the need to debunk it. If its idiocy isn't obvious to you, you're probably not reading this.

As for massage therapy... well, who doesn't like a good massage? It's not going to cure your cancer, but no doubt it feels quite nice.

Look, cancer center people. I know you mean well, and probably think what you're doing is noble. In general, it actually is pretty noble. But not the alternative medicine shit! It's exploiting the gullibility of people who are already suffering enough, dammit.

There are a lot of things you can do to improve the lives of cancer patients. The arts and exercise classes are good, why not expand them? I'm sure they could always be better. You don't need stupid "therapies" like acupuncture and Reiki (and who knows what else!) that purport to help without actually doing a damn thing. Your doctors deserve the credit when they heal someone, but at least a few people are going to walk away truly thinking that these placebo therapies actually cured them. Not because they did, but because these lies have a nasty tendency of fooling people. Even doctors, apparently.

You're better than that, cancer center. Ditch the pseudoscientific nonsense and just work on helping people with cancer!

Best Headline Ever!

Yeah, I knew that sounded bad.

Freedom on the Internet = Bad!

Okay, I've been bored to death with local politics lately. Too much whining about the stupid trash fee (services don't come free, people!).

But we're back to good times, because we've got another dumb editorial from my good friend Jeff McMenemy!

This one has the very promising title of Laying down the law on the Internet, and it gives me the excuse to talk not just about about a terrible legal case, but also ruminate on freedom on the internet and the nature of pseudonymity! Whee!

The editorial is about the rather depressing case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being rejected on MySpace by a fake person. Said fake person was portrayed as a 16-year old boy, but in reality appears to have been several people. The one we're dealing with today is a 49-year old mother by the name of Lori Drew.

She's just been charged with a crime, and Mr. McMenemy in his editorial couldn't be happier!

The world of the ever-growing and ever-more dangerous Internet got a little dose of much-needed law-and-order Thursday when a federal grand jury indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.

As anyone who's listened to his dribble before knows, McMenemy is no fan of freedom on the internet.

But let's deal with the charge first. What Drew allegedly did is certainly distasteful, but is it really illegal? I mean, this is an old story, and the official word had been that Drew didn't actually commit a crime. But there's an indictment (and here's a pdf of it). So what's Drew charged with?

To put it simply, she's charged with breaking the MySpace Terms of Service. That's right, the "injured party" here is more MySpace than Meier, she's just so much collateral damage. This charge is being brought under a federal law that's generally used against hackers. Not the cool kind, but the intrusive criminal kind.

There are perhaps two big problems here that just about anyone can see:

First, the assumption is made that Drew's messages caused Meier's suicide. Personally, I'd argue that an otherwise emotionally healthy person doesn't hang herself over some MySpace friend she's never met, but people seem to be assuming causation anyway.

Second, the federal law is really about intrusion into systems, not breaking stupid Terms of Service. Breaking Terms of Service is generally grounds for losing your account, not going to jail. So it's an obvious case of trying to cram something that doesn't really fit into the federal law because the federal law has harsher punishments.

So not only does this case have the assertion that bad messages on MySpace were a causative factor in Meier's suicide, we also have a case of misusing anti-hacking laws to punish someone for essentially creating a fake online persona and doing (extremely) stupid shit with it.

It's no wonder McMenemy loves it!

While there is little doubt prosecutors may have a tough row to hoe -- as they say down South -- when it comes to making their case, I applaud them for having the courage to charge the woman with a crime. [Ed: This would be called "wasting taxpayer dollars" if McMenemy wasn't in favor of it.]

For too long, the Internet has been not only a place for freedom of expression and instant communication with anyone in the world, but a place where unsavory people can inflect real emotional damage on another human being.

Man, the internet sucks! People can say stuff that other people might find unpleasant!

To continue with the editorial:

As I've said repeatedly, the Internet is a great tool for the world, but it also allows people with little or no morals to say things to people anonymously that they would never have the guts to say to their face.

Ah, now we're on to a different topic, and it's one I enjoy.

I always love the "anonymous people are cowards" line of attack. Chuck Owen used it on me, and pretty much every pseudonymous blogger in the world has heard the same thing at one time or another.

Not because it's true, mind you. There are a lot of reasons to remain pseudonymous on the internet (note: pseudonymity != anonymity).

Having seen some of the abuse heaped on female bloggers basically just for being female, I'm amazed that any of them use their real identities. People with families also have a good reason to be pseudonymous. To say nothing of whistleblowers, those living under oppressive governments, and basically anyone who would rather avoid every crazy asshole on the internet knowing who they are.

The thing I find funny this is that it's very commonly the line of attack used by newspaper-people. I guess we're supposed to assume that because their names are (sometimes) on their stuff, it means they do have the guts to go up and say these things to people's faces. Which is laughable, but I'll get back to that...

In contrast, they can easily say that pseudonymous people don't have those guts, because who can really tell? If I go up to McMenemy and tell him exactly what I think of him, he's not going to think "wow, that pseudonymous blogger actually does say things to people's faces." He's going to think "hey, that jerk I don't know just came up and told me off!" Most pseudonymous bloggers I know are not shy about telling people what they think in person, they just don't want their names all over the internet.

Of course, I contend that newspaper reporters don't in fact have guts at all. Sure, maybe a few do, but when Helen Thomas is the pinnacle of bravery in journalism, it's a pretty sad state. Have you ever talked to a reporter who's on the job? They're the most pusillanimous little shitsacks you'll ever meet in person. Even an "aggressive" reporter in person is about as intimidating as your average narcoleptic. Maybe not all are like this, but it sure seems to be the majority. No hard questions, no probing, nothing but simple stenography. They're not going to even hint at what they think.

Now, that may be for a good reason. Newspaper reporters need to maintain their access. Bob Woodward is a great example of this (in his more recent years, at least). Not pissing people off becomes important if you want to keep getting interviews. It also leads to cowardice.

Picking right back up with McMenemy:

Combine that with the disturbing trend of people taping people being attacked and beaten, and then posting it online, and it's obvious that it's time to start taking control of the Internet and punishing people who act maliciously while using it.

Yeah, maybe creating limits on free expression because you don't like what people do with it isn't that obvious a need to most of us, Jeff.

People who lack familiarity with the internet (and I'd argue that McMenemy is one of them, as was Chuck Owen) often like to use it as a scapegoat for society's ills. The general form is:

1) Person sees something unpleasant on (or involving) the internet.
2) Person can't recall having seen that particular thing in person.
3) Person therefore blames the internet for causing the unpleasant thing.

This is, of course, a logical fallacy. Just because you haven't seen it before doesn't mean it didn't exist, and it sure as hell doesn't mean the medium on which you saw it caused it to happen.

McMenemy relates what he remembers as a bad day, which boils down to either getting turned down when asking a girl to the prom, getting a strike in baseball, or acting dumb at a party. That's a tough life, alright! Maybe he really does believe that these things didn't happen when he was a kid, just because they didn't happen to him. Could he be that blind to reality?

Just because the technology didn't exist to videotape fights and post them online doesn't mean they didn't happen. They did.

Similarly, jilted lovers have always committed suicide. It's always tragic, but that's life. Is this more tragic because one of the "lovers" was a fraud and MySpace was the vector? I don't honestly know, but I hardly see how it's vastly different. In Meier's mind it was no different at all.

I get the feeling that those who would put limits on freedom of the internet are not really interested in solving these problems (because they won't), they just don't want to have to have to see them anymore. It's reality-denial at its finest.

If this case is successful, it's bad news for everyone. If people like McMenemy are successful in limiting the internet to only the things they like, it's even worse. The world exists in this form whether you can see it or not. If you can't deal with it, shut your eyes. But don't try to force everyone else to shut theirs.

The only thing I have to say about the trash situation, for now.

Dammit, Mr. Follies beat me to the reference.

Enjoy anyway...

People need dictionaries!

Maybe closing the library isn't such a good idea. Protesters desperately need places like that!