A learning experience is one of those things that say, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”
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Author: Redactor
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Dropout versus NSA
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t finish college, and they did okay. John Brooks dropped out of middle school at age 13, and he is doing okay.
Now 22, he began developing an encrypted chat program called Ricochet some four years ago — long before Edward Snowden so profusely exposed the National Security Agency’s spy-on-everyone programs.
Wired reports that Brooks eventually crafted “a full-fledged desktop client that was easy to use, offered anonymity and encryption, and even resolved the issue of metadata — the ‘to’ and ‘from’ headers and IP addresses spy agencies use to identify and track communications. . . .” He did a better job crafting the package than others offering similar armored tech.
One problem. For a long time, few people knew about his robust chat program. But dramatic revelations of unfettered surveillance by both government and businesses of everybody can sure concentrate the mind. Many more people have become worried about metadata that can be easily scavenged without a warrant. And Brooks realized that his achievement would be widely welcome if only he could get the word out and prove that Ricochet does what it is supposed to do. If not now, when?
That’s around the time a group called Invisible.im announced plans to develop an encrypted chat program to do what Brooks had already done. He told them about his own software; they dropped their plans and are helping him finalize and distribute Ricochet.
May the best private, secure, anonymous chat program win.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The National Labor Relations Board has ordered CNN to rehire 100 workers and pay off 200 others.
NLRB rebukes CNN for “failure to bargain” with a union. The dispute apparently involves no breach of contract with employees — only a breach with a union’s demand that CNN deal with it.
Blogger Daily Pundit is giddy: “I can’t imagine a happier outcome than seeing CNN, the hack propaganda mouthpiece for the ‘respectable’ American left, being forced into bankruptcy” by a “rogue bureaucracy.”
But wait. Would the tyrannical destruction of CNN be — ideological schadenfreude aside — a happy outcome?
No.
However poetic the justice, or injustice, being inflicted on its owners and officers, their right to make economic decisions — the right to control our own lives and property — does not hinge on the content of their notions. The only way we can all have rights, share the same standing in the world, is to ground our rights in our shared humanity … and not anything more specific, narrow, or particular. Only those who forcibly violate the rights of others properly forfeit some of the protections to which peaceful persons are normally entitled.
Even if Pundit’s point is only to relish CNN’s comeuppance, not to root for governmental harassment of lefty prattlers, it’s misguided. Each new assault on our freedom — to hire, to fire, to speak, to write — serves as precedent for comparable and worse assaults. If we hope to defend our own freedom, we should defend that of all peaceful individuals. And prefer that they be left alone.
We must defend even those with some pretty noxious ideas.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Douglas Adams
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
Some political opponents win your respect, even if not your agreement. Others … well, not so much.
Earlier this week, a publication called Arkansas Business editorialized against Issue 3 on the Natural State’s November ballot, calling it “a freakish hybrid, a gambit to trick voters into expanding term limits for state legislators.”
This constitutional amendment was proposed with overwhelming support from state legislators, who designed it to hoodwink voters into gutting their term limits. The measure hides that consequential change — from six years in the House to 16 years and from eight years in the Senate to 16 years — inside a so-called “ethics” amendment.
The ballot wording only tells voters that the measure is “setting” term limits, which Arkansas Business correctly points out “conveys something close to the opposite of what the amendment would do,” adding “it’s certainly misleading.”
Now, Arkansas Business is no fan of term limits. The editorial concludes, “Arguments can be made for each of these proposals [in Issue 3], including longer term limits.… But we can’t endorse the current form, as much as we’d like to.”
Arkansas Business seems clearly offended by the deception. How endearingly unsophisticated!
Meanwhile, more elite opinion applauds the brilliance of the scheme, the amazing skill of these politicians applying their sneaky technique.
“Arkansas voters soundly rejected term-limit changes in 2004,” reports Governing magazine, paraphrasing University of Arkansas Professor Janine Parry, “but this time proponents craftily inserted their language into a broad package that, among other things, prohibits corporate contributions to candidates and lobbyist gifts to elected officials.”
“Craftily”?
What on earth is their craft? Fraud?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ernest Bramah
It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea shops.
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The Eristic of Ann
If conservative Eris-wannabe and apple-thrower Ann Coulter wants to understand why those of us working for truly limited government sometimes have trouble voting GOP down the line, she might consider her beloved party’s history.
The Republican Party started out as the Big Government party, combining the abolitionist/anti-slavery cause with the “internal improvement” Whig Party remnant. That is, the party started out half right, half big government.
Further, Republican Teddy Roosevelt introduced Progressivism into national politics in a big way.
No wonder the Grand Old Party has been so bad about limiting government. It was the party that unleashed unlimited government in the first place. Institutional inertia set in. Some Republicans remain progressives at heart — though nowadays, thankfully, a tad more cautious in their progressivism.
George W. Bush’s many big-gov measures were no abberation.
Heedless of this history, Coulter called limited government folks who vote the Libertarian ticket “idiots,” ending her latest column with a dare: “If you are considering voting for the Libertarian candidate in any Senate election, please send me your name and address so I can track you down and drown you.”
Over at Reason, Ron Bailey provided Google instructions for Ann to get to his house. He’s voting for Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate in Virginia.
I have trouble calling science writer Bailey an idiot for his vote preference. Sarvis is a lot better than his incumbent Republican competitor, Ed Gillespie — whom Sarvis aptly dubbed a “blank check for George W. Bush.”
Maybe Coulter should threaten to “drown” Big Gov GOPers for a change.
Or stop the death threats altogether and help find better Republican candidates.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ernest Bramah
One may ride upon a tiger’s back but it is fatal to dismount.
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Truly “Green” Energy
“The remarkable thing about fossil fuels,” says science writer Matt Ridley, “is that when we use them, no other animal is deprived of its livelihood.”
In a fascinating talk, Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist and other brilliant, eye-opening books, calls our attention to what really should be an obvious fact: “No other animal [than us Homo sapiens sapiens] wants to eat coal, or oil, or gas.” But, he insists, when we fell a tree for our fuel, “we deprive a woodpecker of its life.”
This helps explain why, in so much of the world, animal species are coming back, their populations growing. They are renewing because of our use of non-renewable energy. (Renewable energy, he says, is quite bad for the ecosystem.)
But that’s just one reason burning fossil fuels is a good thing. Another is increased carbon dioxide (CO2).
“What?!?!” — I can hear the enviro-shrieks from here in my bunker. This weekend there were protests around the world about climate change.
But climate change may be a good thing.
Well, at least, the planet is getting greener. The Sahara’s getting greener. Much of the world’s landmasses are re-foresting — that’s even happening in Bangladesh.
I read about widespread reforestation in The Atlantic years ago. I’ve written about this and other greening before. But the reason isn’t simply because our fossil fuel reliance has made agriculture more efficient, thus requiring less land — that disused land can then grow wild, or cultivate non-agribiz plantlife. It’s also because CO2 feeds plants.
The Amazon, Ridley says, is greener than it was mere years ago.
Could later industrial civilization be saving the planet from the depredations of earlier industrial civilization?
Yes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot
Wages will always be in proportion to the productive capacity of the worker, and not in proportion to his needs.