Today, we save the Internet (again): fix the CFAA! Congress is about to vote on a bill that will make every Internet user a potential felon. It’s time to stop them … again.
Posts from the “Politics” Category
Many argue that California should be able to offer marriage to straight couples and limit gay couples to civil unions. After all, “it’s only a label.” Or maybe, it’s a label that California shouldn’t be able to redefine.
I disagree.
Imagine with me the following two scenarios:
- California allows left-handed people to swim and wade in water, lefties can swim wearing robes, and lefties can dunk each other under the water while wearing robes and while saying whatever they want, but California has a law that prohibited lefties from getting “baptized.”
- Or maybe, California allows lefties to drink wine from little plastic cups and eat small, unleavened pieces of bread, while reading from any book and saying whatever they want, but California prohibits lefties from participating in “holy communion.”
What would be the harm? After all, “baptism” and “communion” are just labels. Shouldn’t lefties just be happy they can participate fully in the same behavior as right-handed people and leave it at that?
I expect you’d agree that both of these scenarios describe what would be unlawful discrimination, that there would be no good policy reason for California to allow the behavior but prohibit the label. You might even wonder why the state was intruding into religious matters. And you would understand why lefties would fight for the right to have their behaviors labeled “baptism” and “communion.”
I don’t think these scenarios are that different from the situation in California regarding gay marriage. California allows gays to live together, express their love physically without fear of criminal prosecution, adopt and use assistive reproductive procedures, and form long-term relationships that the state will recognize and assist in their dissolution. Gays just can’t get “married.”
In other words, gays can act like they’re married; they just can’t call it marriage.
I think California has a couple of options:
- Offer marriage to adult couples in a non-discriminatory manner, or
- Offer marriage to no adult couples because it’s a religious matter, but instead, offer only civil unions to all adult couples in a non-discriminatory manner. Those couples that wanted to be married could find a church to perform a wedding ceremony. I have no doubt that some churches would offer to marry gay couples, as should be the churches’ right.
What do you think?
West Virginia is considering banning use of a “wearable computer with head mounted display” while driving. Makes sense, right?
Maybe not. Imagine the apps that might improve safety:
- Sensing head movement and alerting the driver when those movements indicate drowsiness.
- Using the camera to identify pedestrians and bicyclists in and around the roadway, and alerting the driver to their presence.
- Integrating with GPS so when the navigation voice says “turn right at the next intersection” there’s an arrow superimposed at the appropriate place in the intersection ahead.
- Using the camera to sense traffic signals and GPS to sense speed and alerting the driver to stop or slow when appropriate.
- Using the camera to detect when the driver is not watching the road and alert the driver.
- Displaying caller ID information upon voice command so the driver doesn’t have to look away from the road to take a call on the integrated hands-free phone.
- Wireless integration with the car’s dash to display speed and other crucial operational information.
- Wireless integration with the car’s vision / radar systems to highlight potential obstructions.
Sure, some of these apps could be integrated into the car with a dash heads up display and voice capabilities. Others, however, benefit from having motion sensors and a camera mounted on the driver’s head. And looking at a heads up display seems less distracting than looking down at the speedometer or other in-vehicle infotainment device.
Let’s not knee-jerk ban these devices before they have a chance to make roads safer.
Hat tip: TechnoBuffalo, who apparently didn’t appreciate my comment on their article, which linked to here. Oh well…
The Wall Street Journal claims federal employment, excluding postal workers, is the “lowest total in seven years” and includes the following chart.
Because this is a surprising factoid, I posted it on Facebook. After receiving a comment that 1.6% is probably off by a decimal, I started to question the data. I headed off to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ web site to see if I could duplicate the WSJ’s chart.
Here is the BLS chart of federal employment excluding postal workers.
This doesn’t match the Wall Street Journal’s chart, not even close. Yeah, there’s the huge bump for World War II, but the trends don’t match. This chart shows federal employment steadily increasing until the early ’90s instead of generally decreasing since the mid-’50s. That’s when I noticed that the Wall Street Journal plotted federal workers as a percentage of total non-farm employment, not as an absolute number.
So, what is total non-farm employment? Here is the BLS chart of non-farm employment, which shows a steady rise until the turn of the millennium.
Now, all I need is an easy way to divide the first chart by the second chart…
Getting both data series using the BLS series report tool wasn’t that hard. Nor was creating a spreadsheet that contained both and then dividing government employment by total non-farm employment. Surprise — the Wall Street Journal didn’t slip a decimal.1
Now for the chart I created:
Ha! Looks pretty close to the WSJ’s.2 Good to know. :-)
1At least, not in the chart. The WSJ article’s first paragraph reads, “21.9 million: The number of government workers in the U.S. in January, the lowest total in seven years.” That first number is off by a factor of ten. It should be 2.19 million.
2The blips every ten years in my chart are probably census employees, which the WSJ eliminated from its chart…somehow.
2The blips every ten years in my chart are probably census employees, which the WSJ eliminated from its chart…somehow.