normancomment
We watched The Jesus Mini-Series last night. 3 hours of video. A pretty good telling of the story. Makes Jesus quite human and believable. My wife protested my labelling of his miracles as "parlor tricks". The bottom line of the story to me is that death does not exist. The part of Jesus that I have not found it possible to emulate, the part of Peter McWilliams that I have not found it possible to emulate, is to love your enemies, to consider their murderous ways to be cries for help, to resist the temptation to dehumanize them with hate. Guess I won't be a candidate for sainthood any time soon. I also rediscovered my intense anger at God for making human bodies so incredibly fragile, for inventing pain. I consider the universe to be a pretty good high school science project. God is a promising student. When he grows up, he may do some good work. But come on. Sex? Death? Pain? How can anyone take seriously a universe that includes those? It's obviously a practical joke.
NewsMax - ID Kids With Their DNA at Birth, Nobel Scientist Says: Dr. James Watson is recommending a huge database containing the DNA fingerprint of every person. To be used by law enforcement. Infants would be sampled at birth. He doesn't understand why people have a problem with this. Big Brother lives. [unknown]
Michael at Slashdot - AES Algorithm Coming Soon: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will announce the new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) on Monday, October 2, at 11:00am eastern time. Watch http://www.nist.gov/aes for details. NIST plans to webcast the press conference via http://real.nist.gov/. [/.]
Jane Glenn Cannon at the Norman Trascript -
Marijuana view leads to mistrial: a juror who believes that
marijuana laws are wrong hung a jury. YAY!!! Somehow he got throuh
voir dire (jury stacking by any other name...). If it weren't for the
practice of jury stacking, noone who went to trial would ever be
convicted of marijuana charges. Enough of the population believes the
drug laws are bad that at least one in twelve randomly picked jurors
would refuse to convict. And the state has no reason to complain about
this. If you shut down jury nullification, you're gonna get violent
revolution. Guaranteed. The former has gotta be prefereable, even to
the fascists. But then, I have no comprehension of people who want to
control other people's lives. It's hard for me to even believe they
exist. I posted to this article's "Reader Opinions" section, and it
finally got reviewed and included:
Juries were created in England as a way for the people to prevent
tyranny by the king. The king didn't want them, but the people gave
him a choice: give us juries or die. When it becomes clear to the
kings in America that that is their choice as well, they will quickly
relearn that it is the right and duty of the jury to judge the law as
well as the alleged law-breaker. Until recently, judges reminded
juries of that fact. Nowadays, they pretend that the jury's only duty
is to judge the facts. Not! Let's nullify the drug laws. All of them.
The Guardian via Marijuana News - MS Sufferer Cleared Of Cannabis Charge: The British did it one better. They acquitted a marijuana user, completely nullifying English law. Double YAY!! If jury nullification interests you, take a look at FIJA, the Fully Informed Jury Association. [mjn]
Francis Hwang at Feed - Feed Daily 09.29.00: Mr. Hwang reminds us of the magic of computers. When embodied in a computer program, speech has power. [faisal]
At the heart of the DeCSS case lies the Enlightenment-era distinction between word and deed. Although modern democracies are supposed to tolerate unpopular speech, they're under considerably less obligation to tolerate objects that they believe can have a negative social effect, such as handguns, cocaine, or unsafe children's toys. Society has gained much from this division, distinguishing between dissent and treason, thereby allowing science and democracy to flourish. But code is confounding the word/deed dichotomy -- and it may one day transform the distinction from a universal principle of modern political thought to an obsolete political fiction.
OpenCulture.Org says, "Art should be free. Artists should be paid." And they're building a business to embody that idea. They will collect donations to cover the artists monetary needs, pay the artists up front for their work, and then allow everyone to download the work for free. Donators get to see the new stuff a few weeks earlier. OpenCulture takes a 10% cut to fund their company. They're using Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, though they didn't give any details. The are applying for 501(c)(3) non-profit status, but currently donations are NOT tax deductible. [xray]
Miami Herald - Mexico's Fox defies IMF: Mexican president-elect Vicente Fox says that his administration will not follow the dictates of the International Monetary Fund. Mexico paid off the IMF on August 30 with $3 billion. [unknown]
Dornbusch, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology expert considered the "economic guru" of the Carlos Salinas administration from 1988-94, said the next Mexican president will be a disappointment because "he has neither a team, nor ideas nor a Congress under his control."Fox replied that "the last thing we would want is to have his blessing, because he was the principal advisor to Salinas, and we want to do the opposite of what he suggested. We want a progressive, democratized economy."
Apple now has 1-Click® Buying, advertised right on the front page at www.apple.com. Should we boycott them for supporting Amazon's patent? [/.]
bob lonsberry - Some Things I Learned on the Computer: Mr. Lonsberry comments on one of the most potent addictive drugs ever invented, the computer. His prescription?
Click on Start. Click on Shut Down. Click on Shut Down The Computer?Click on Yes.
And go out and live life.
Richard Cowan at Marijuana News - Gore On Medical Marijuana: "So far there is absolutely no evidence that it has the effect that some people say." Mr. Cowan comments on algore's statement at an MTV taping on 9/26. I was feeling festive today, so I followed his advice and wrote the Gore campaign some email: [mjn]
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 07:51:44 -0400
To: townhall@algore2000.com
From: "Bill St. Clair" <bill@billstclair.com>
Subject: Why is Gore lying about medical marijuana?
Cc: bill@billstclair.comI just read on the web that on September 26, at the taping of an MTV Special -- "Choose or Lose" -- Mr. Gore said of medical marijuana, "I don't agree that it's medically effective. Doctors have studied this question pretty extensively, and so far there is absolutely no evidence that it has the effect that some people say." How can he lie so blatantly about this when the Clinton-Gore administration's own Institute of Medicine said in March of 1999 that, "There is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting." And why is what adults put in their bodies in the privacy of their own homes any of Mr. Gore's business? Why is behavior that was "youthful indiscretion" for Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush a crime for other Americans?
The suppression of medical marijuana is nothing less than cold-blooded murder. If Mr. Gore continues to do so, he has blood on his hands.
-Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com
