stuff just keeps happening
A few more recent stories I wanted to share...
More of what our Congresscritters (tm Revere at Effect Measure) are up to:
Senator Spector is considering putting a hold on NSA funds until Bush answers questions about the wiretapping. This may well be the only way Congress can get Bush to actually listen to them on anything, even on matters that are clearly their constitutional purview, e.g., making laws.
Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, downloading music is worse than child porn.
It appears that the DMCA will have a maximum sentence of ten years inside for the crime of software and music piracy.
...[A]ssaulting a police officer will get you five years, downloading child porn will get you seven years, assaulting without a weapon will get you ten years and aggravated assault six years.
So in other words if you copy a Disney CD and sell it you will be in the same league as a paedophile who is distributing pictures of sexual attacks on children.
Well, yeah. It's all about the kids during the photo ops, otherwise, it's all about corporate profits.
Congressmen to Bush: Don't Start A War Without Asking Us, plskthx.
Legal stuff:
The U.S. is trying to keep evidence in the Moussaoui trial out of the hands of 9-11 families who are suing the airlines. Obviously I don't know if the evidence should be kept secret or not, but I'm encouraged by this quotation from the judge who said it should be released:
"It is amazing what some agencies think is secret," Brinkema said before issuing her order last month. "As a culture, we need to be careful not to be so wrapped up in secrecy that we lose track of our core values and laws."
That's what we like to hear. And just for the record, protecting corporations from lawsuits is not a core value.
Meanwhile, Ken Lay loses his shit on the stand. And he gets laughed at.
"Where does $100 million go?" Mr. Secrest asked.
Mr. Lay said he was forced to sell his three homes in Aspen, Colo., and three others in Galveston, Tex., to pay legal fees and other debts. What remains are his Houston condominium and three cars. But he acknowledged that he had lived very well for a long time.
"Happily," he said, "we achieved the American dream."
That comment drew a muffled laugh from a spectator in the courtroom, which was packed with ordinary Houston citizens on Wednesday.
Mr. Secrest is Lay's lawyer, btw, so he should be the one to make Lay look sympathetic. ... Wow, is he going to jail.
This Week In God (tm a big corporation that ought to have a sense of humor):
Catholic Church may revise its ruling on condoms to allow their use by married couples to prevent the spread of AIDS. Wow, such... such sanity.
If you're going waitaminute, yeah, this would be a change from the Pope's last position on the subject, when he said Catholic teachings were the only failsafe way to prevent transmission of the virus. Apparently, someone has since told him that married people (*cough* men) sometimes cheat on their spouses or have premarital sex, and that sentencing the spouse to death for this is a bit... harsh. That, or the've been having trouble making converts in Africa with their current asinine stance.
The stated reasoning behind perhaps allowing condom use for couples where one partner is positive is that it's the "lesser of two evils." Wow. My question is, how has it taken that long for you to do that moral calculation? This is what happens when you let celibate old geezers dictate sexual morality.
But, I shall move along before I insult people's religion when I don't want to... and move on to religious beliefs I do feel like insulting.
Apparently some people in America are now doing "Christian Yoga", i.e., praying while doing yoga and listening to Jesus-y music. This according to a BBC World News "look at what those crazy Yanks are doing now" report. I couldn't find a link online - perhaps BBC has removed the story because it gave it a migraine. I wouldn't blame them.
I find this borderline silly to begin with, but what pushes it over the line for me was the statement that yoga's Hindu-based (technically, vedantic, but nobody knows that word, so I forgive the BBC for not using it) seeking of divinity within is something some Christians find "offensive."
Where do I even begin? First off, it's not that hard to find yoga classes, tapes, dvds, etc., that feature no chanting, no meditation, and no mentions of divinity; yoga that's almost entirely de-religified. If it really bugs you to say "Namaste" at the end of a class, you can mutter, "Amen," or "Blessed be," or "Peace be upon you," or just bow and say nothing, and I don't think anyone would much mind.
But perhaps more importantly... "offensive"? It's offensive to you that yoga comes from a non-Christian cultural background, so much so that you have to ram Jesus up its chakras? As one man speaking for Hindus said, "If you take a tree and cut off its root, you don't have a tree any more, do you?" No, you don't. You have a Christmas tree. Make of that what you will.
I'm sorry, the vedantic origin of yoga is simply a fact. If the background of the cultural commodity you're appropriating for your own use is offensive to your religion simply because it's not from your religion, then your religion is officially the whiniest, brattiest, most entitled, most titty-baby (tm Kos?) religion ever. Or maybe that's just you.
That might have been offensive.
More of what our Congresscritters (tm Revere at Effect Measure) are up to:
Senator Spector is considering putting a hold on NSA funds until Bush answers questions about the wiretapping. This may well be the only way Congress can get Bush to actually listen to them on anything, even on matters that are clearly their constitutional purview, e.g., making laws.
Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, downloading music is worse than child porn.
It appears that the DMCA will have a maximum sentence of ten years inside for the crime of software and music piracy.
...[A]ssaulting a police officer will get you five years, downloading child porn will get you seven years, assaulting without a weapon will get you ten years and aggravated assault six years.
So in other words if you copy a Disney CD and sell it you will be in the same league as a paedophile who is distributing pictures of sexual attacks on children.
Well, yeah. It's all about the kids during the photo ops, otherwise, it's all about corporate profits.
Congressmen to Bush: Don't Start A War Without Asking Us, plskthx.
Legal stuff:
The U.S. is trying to keep evidence in the Moussaoui trial out of the hands of 9-11 families who are suing the airlines. Obviously I don't know if the evidence should be kept secret or not, but I'm encouraged by this quotation from the judge who said it should be released:
"It is amazing what some agencies think is secret," Brinkema said before issuing her order last month. "As a culture, we need to be careful not to be so wrapped up in secrecy that we lose track of our core values and laws."
That's what we like to hear. And just for the record, protecting corporations from lawsuits is not a core value.
Meanwhile, Ken Lay loses his shit on the stand. And he gets laughed at.
"Where does $100 million go?" Mr. Secrest asked.
Mr. Lay said he was forced to sell his three homes in Aspen, Colo., and three others in Galveston, Tex., to pay legal fees and other debts. What remains are his Houston condominium and three cars. But he acknowledged that he had lived very well for a long time.
"Happily," he said, "we achieved the American dream."
That comment drew a muffled laugh from a spectator in the courtroom, which was packed with ordinary Houston citizens on Wednesday.
Mr. Secrest is Lay's lawyer, btw, so he should be the one to make Lay look sympathetic. ... Wow, is he going to jail.
This Week In God (tm a big corporation that ought to have a sense of humor):
Catholic Church may revise its ruling on condoms to allow their use by married couples to prevent the spread of AIDS. Wow, such... such sanity.
If you're going waitaminute, yeah, this would be a change from the Pope's last position on the subject, when he said Catholic teachings were the only failsafe way to prevent transmission of the virus. Apparently, someone has since told him that married people (*cough* men) sometimes cheat on their spouses or have premarital sex, and that sentencing the spouse to death for this is a bit... harsh. That, or the've been having trouble making converts in Africa with their current asinine stance.
The stated reasoning behind perhaps allowing condom use for couples where one partner is positive is that it's the "lesser of two evils." Wow. My question is, how has it taken that long for you to do that moral calculation? This is what happens when you let celibate old geezers dictate sexual morality.
But, I shall move along before I insult people's religion when I don't want to... and move on to religious beliefs I do feel like insulting.
Apparently some people in America are now doing "Christian Yoga", i.e., praying while doing yoga and listening to Jesus-y music. This according to a BBC World News "look at what those crazy Yanks are doing now" report. I couldn't find a link online - perhaps BBC has removed the story because it gave it a migraine. I wouldn't blame them.
I find this borderline silly to begin with, but what pushes it over the line for me was the statement that yoga's Hindu-based (technically, vedantic, but nobody knows that word, so I forgive the BBC for not using it) seeking of divinity within is something some Christians find "offensive."
Where do I even begin? First off, it's not that hard to find yoga classes, tapes, dvds, etc., that feature no chanting, no meditation, and no mentions of divinity; yoga that's almost entirely de-religified. If it really bugs you to say "Namaste" at the end of a class, you can mutter, "Amen," or "Blessed be," or "Peace be upon you," or just bow and say nothing, and I don't think anyone would much mind.
But perhaps more importantly... "offensive"? It's offensive to you that yoga comes from a non-Christian cultural background, so much so that you have to ram Jesus up its chakras? As one man speaking for Hindus said, "If you take a tree and cut off its root, you don't have a tree any more, do you?" No, you don't. You have a Christmas tree. Make of that what you will.
I'm sorry, the vedantic origin of yoga is simply a fact. If the background of the cultural commodity you're appropriating for your own use is offensive to your religion simply because it's not from your religion, then your religion is officially the whiniest, brattiest, most entitled, most titty-baby (tm Kos?) religion ever. Or maybe that's just you.
That might have been offensive.