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Gonzo political links, movie reviews, and more.

December 30, 2008

links for 2008-12-30

Posted by ClioCJS under Journal
1 Comment 
  • ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: Survey: Excessive police violence evident in emergency care cases, say US doctors
    Findings based on 315 responses to a representative survey of 393 academic emergency care doctors across USA:
    99.8% believe police use excessive force
    98% confirmed they treat patients they suspected were injured by police.
    66% said they treated 2 or more cases a year like this.
    71% said they had not reported these incidents, despite 70% feeling these incidents should be reported. 95% said there is no policy for doing so (like with child abuse), which is probably why they don't get reported despite the fact they feel they should.
    Just over 50% believe mandatory reporting should be law – like with child abuse.

    I'm going to have to agree. Police are granted more rights to legally commit violence against someone which means they should be watched, investigated, and punished with more vigor than a civilian.

    (tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority police brutality policeBrutality ThinBlueLine doctors emergencyRooms ERs surveys violence beatings injuries bluntTrauma handcuffs Eurekalert news articles)
  • CORPORATIONS: EPA veils hazardous substances in violation of it's own rules and law — by the way, teflon causes birth defects, but I bet you still use it.
    Section 14 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the foundation for all the EPA's toxic and chemical regulations, stipulates that chemical producers may not be granted confidentiality when it comes to health and safety data.

    "The EPA has chosen to ignore that," said Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin.

    Why the corporations tag? Becuase our government largely exists to serve corporate profit now, and not the people. The only entity who benefits from this information being hidden is the corporation. No human (other than a CEO or two) benefits from this. Our government is largely corporatism, not capitalism.

    In a FREE market, you can apparently buy your government's silence. After all, if hiding information has a monetary value, so why shouldn't someone be abel to buy it?

    In a FAIR market, all information would be laid out in such a way that everyone is aware of just what they are buying.

    (tags: politics capitalism corporations corpratism EPA government corruption secrecy transparency health medical environment ToxicSubstancesControlAct YourTaxDollarsAtWork lies tradeSecrets pulmonaryFibrosis DaleKemery JournalSentinel news articles EnvironmentalWorkingGroup ReneeSharpe DuPont Teflon 3M toxic chemicals BASF)
  • VIDEO: Last Major Supplier Calls It Quits For VHS
    I've been meaning to blog about some parallels I noticed with technology:
    Email in the 1990s, like video in the 1990s, involved a lot of old, clunky technologies. Nowadays we have Gmail and DVD Menus that allow us easy access to our emails/movie chapters. Back in the day, we had VHS tapes. We had to press play, see where we were on the tape, if you were lucky you had a goto command that let you specify "rewind 2 hours and 30 minutes and then stop", and if you weren't you just had to pay attention the whole time. Similarly, there was no gmail search. I would have to use grep to grep the text files that represented my email folders, and then open that file up in a text editor to find the old email.

    I'm glad that the video-of-the-90s, and the email-of-the-90s are both days best left forgotten. The technological dark ages, both in terms of personal communication, and personal video management.

    (tags: media video tapes videoTapes VHS last Slashdot news articles formats)
  • POLITICS: The Story Of Stuff
    Never has 1 video so thoughtfully encapsulated everything that is wrong with our consumerist society.
    Wow.
    This truly relates things together in a way that is bound to annoy conservatives and free-market capitalists. But it's not a partisian piece at all. You'd really have to be stupid to argue with the sentiment of this video. It's brilliant.

    Unfortunately, it's 20 minutes long. I thought there was 0% chance I'd get through it, but I ended up riveted. Thanks, Ryan!

    (tags: politics consumption society government corporations recycling waste trash pollution environment sustainability obsolescence labor capitalism forests deforestation videos retailers rights externalities economics globalism fromRyanS)
  • COMEDY: A romantic dinner for 2?
    The BDSM crowd will love this. Pretty much safe for work too.
    (tags: comedy eating meals bdsm furniture table picture Haluze)
  • TECHNOLOGY WAR: NET NEUTRALITY: BBC wants to charge people 10/month extra for "high quality streaming"
    This is exactly why net neutrality is impotant. Nevemrind the fact that BBC is supposed to be paid for via the taxes Brits pay on their television licenses. (Yes, in the UK you need a license to have a television, and police actually have TV detectors to detect people who don't pay for the liense…. which is a Technology War issue in and of itself.)
    (tags: politics TechnologyWar NetNeutrality technology internet connectivity BBC streaming broadband)
  • TECHNOLOGY WAR: Oregon to consider watching every vehicle with satellites, taxing you for every mile driven
    Uh, don't we already have a gas tax? Oh, I see. We're to be punished for buying fuel efficient vehicles by a 2nd tax, because now they can't make as much money with the gas tax.
    Yes, pretend your poor as an excuse to expand the surveillance state. [sarcasm on] Gee, nobody will ever use this to violate someone's privacy or rights. And when they privatize roads and sell them to corporations who then maintain them, we'll end up paying tolls AND taxes. They *already tried* to turn the D.C. Beltway into a toll road. Can you imagine???!?!?!
    (tags: politics TechnologyWar technology surveillance freedom movement freedomOfMovement cars vehicles tracking BigBrother oregon taxes OregonDepartmentOfTransportation roads stupid government setellite GPS YourTaxDollarsAtWork finance)
  • WAR ON DRUGS vs CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Coke-sniffing dogs and the Fourth Amendment – the rule seems to be unworkable?
    The Founding Fathers could not possibly have understood how technology would change things. I've been saying for awhile…
    Tthe future of the drug war is unmanned aerial vehicles with real-time gas chromatagraph spectrometers, wirelessly acting as a single cloud of surveillence.

    By the time this comes around, the courts will have whittled the 4th Amendment away enough that this somehow wont be a 'search', in the same way that a drug dog sniffing your car (or your house's doorknob — they do that in places) somehow isn't a search.

    This is exactly why it's important to scream that the sky is falling at every possible erosion of our rights, even if you can't imagine how it would be used against you.

    Future technology will find ways to exploit those chinks in our armor that did not exist when they were made. We're being set up, basically.

    (tags: politics WarOnDrugs drugs rights ConstituaionlRights 4thAmendment FourthAmendment searches cocaine fromChrisY ArsTechnica news articles animals dogs drugDogs)
  • COPYRIGHT: RIAA's Request For Appeal Denied In Thomas Case – $220,000 is indeed an unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment
    And in the ultimate in-your-face follow-up, it looks like the jury instructions were indeed invalid; the RIAA's 11th hour tactic didn't work, the $220,000 damages were set aside, and now they've not been allowed to appeal that fact. Of course, I said this the night it happened: That the only way they won was by getting a bullshit argument into the judge at the last minute. And that argumnent has since been thrown out.

    Even if they win, they are going to lose money (as this whole campaign has). This is around the time that they decided to start going after ISPs instead of individuals. Which would be like the FBI telling Verizon they have to listen to our phone calls to hear if we are talking about anything illegal….

    Here's wishing for the complete and utter destruction of the music industry. Music existed before you, and music existed after you. The short period of time during which physical recordings are sold for profit is naught but a tiny blip in the long history of music.

    (tags: politics copyright intellectualProperty corporations RIAA lawsuits OverlyHarshPunishments unconstitutional JammieThomas GeekPolitics media music losers haha MichaelJ.Davis Slashdot news articles)

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One Response to “links for 2008-12-30”

  1. ideonexus Says:

    January 3, 2009 at 2:04 PM

    Awesome! I’m glad you got to check out the video. I had the same impression when I started watching it too, “20 minutes? I’ll lose interest…” but then got sucked into it. The video’s been out for awhile, but it’s just now getting noticed by the MSM.

    Reply

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