Month: August 2001

Turn the Music Off Already

Some of the stories at Cyber Age Adventures look interesting, especially if you’re interested in good comics fan fiction. The site received a nice writeup in the latest issue of Wizard magazine. The Wizard profile mentions that the site was the Grand Prize winner in Writer’s Digest‘s 1st annual Natoinal Zine Publishing Awards contest.

Fine, fine, but why do they have to play that stinking music when I visit their site?!?!? What really angers me is when I visit a site like this at work, and I’ve forgotten to turn down the speakers. The last thing I need is to have some crappy music start assaulting the ears of my coworkers just because I want to visit your site.

Stupid.

HP to Offer DVD+RW Drive in September

According to ZDNET, Hewlett-Packard will begin selling a DVD+RW drive early next month for $599. Along with being able to write to DVD+RW discs, the drive will also be able to write to CD-R and CD-RW discs at 12X and 10X speeds, respectively.

The ZDNET article goes on at length about a format war between DVD+RW and the competing DVD-RW format, but I’m not sure how much of a factor that will be. The bottom line is that both DVD+RW and DVD-RW media will be readable by consumer-level DVD players (at least recently manufactured DVD players with the most recent ROM versions). That puts them light years (pun intended) ahead of DVD-RAM which is cheaper and features storage up to 9.4 gigabytes, but uses a cartridge-based media.

I suspect the ultimate thing that determines whether DVD+RW or DVD-RW wins will be largely based on price, and considering the HP drive is coming it at about $200 less than the current DVD-RW drive offering from Panasonic, it just might have the early lead.

Not to mention an actual presence in stores. Best Buy, for example, will sell you a DVD-RW drive for $799, but only with a special order. An HP DVD+RW drive that’s actually on store shelves at $200 less is going to be a clear winner with early adopters.

SHAC's Favorite Activist Sentenced to Three Years in Jail for Assault

In February of this year, Huntingdon Life Sciences executive Brian Cass was attacked outside his home by three men wielding pickaxe handles. This month one of the attackers involved, animal rights activist David Blenkinsop, plead guilty to the assault and was sentenced to three years in jail for what the judge in the case called a “wicked act.”

Police tracked down Blenkinsop from DNA samples they found on the pickaxe handles. In Great Britain, most people convicted of crimes have DNA samples permanently stored in a nation-wide database. Blenkinsop has a long history of convictions for animal rights-related violence. When police ran the DNA samples through their database, Blenkinsop was flagged as a suspect.

Prior to his sentencing, Blenkinsop’s lawyer, Ian MacDonald, claimed that his client no longer believes violence is acceptable. “He was, and remains, appalled at the suffering of animals at HLS. He deeply regrets his part in this attack and now realizes that peaceful protest is the only way forward.”

It is amazing how so many animal rights terrorists have sudden changes of hearts when trying to angle for lenient sentences from judges.

And lets not leave this story without noting that a little more than a month ago, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty’s Kevin Jonas issued a press release endorsing Blenkinsop as “a brilliant and accomplished animal rights activist.” In a SHAC press release, Jonas said,

The police and animal abuse industries in the UK have wanted to stitch him up for years but have never been able too. While in custody Dave was also charged with the liberation of 600 Guinea Pigs from Newchurch Farm (a major breeder in England) in September of 2000. (Why he is being charged with this now is a mystery to everyone and indicates the police just want to make sure he remains in jail during the wait for his trial.)

Dave did not attack Brian Cass and this will be proven during his trial, in the meantime though the police think they have taken one of the best activists out of commission. We must prove them wrong and show that we only get strong as they attempt to stifle the only voice those animals inside of HLS have. Please send kind letters of support to Dave. Be advised that all of his letters are read by police and prison officials. Also, the police will use anything they can to try to tie Dave to direct action so please send him only updates about and news about legal campaigns.

Hmmm, “Dave did not attack Brian Cass and this will be proven during his trial.” As a psychic and a judge of character, Jonas is almost as pathetic as he is in his attempts to explain away the need for the animal research that HLS conducts.

At least now we have a good benchmark for what qualifies as a “brilliant and accomplished animal rights activist.”

Sources:

Jail for lab boss attacker. The BBC, August 16, 2001.

Animal activist jailed for attack. Claire Hu, The Times (London), August 17, 2001.

Protest attacker jailed. The Scotsman, August 17, 2001.

Animal rights activist jailed. Harvey Morris, The Financial Times, August 17, 2001.

Activist jailed for attack with pickaxe handle. Chris Gray, The Independent (London), August 17, 2001.

Animal Lib Prisoner. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, Press Release, June 28, 2001.

HSUS vs. the First Amendment

One of the few things I agree with the Humane Society of the United States about is that cockfighting is cruel and should be outlawed. Unfortunately, as they typically do, even in this matter the HSUS resorts to tactics that are simply wrong and ultimately leave the supporters of cockfighting look like the victims (leave it to HSUS to make cock fighters look sympathetic).

In this case the HSUS actually wants the editors of two Arkansas-based cockfighting magazines, The Feathered Warrior and The Gamecock to be prosecuted for doing nothing more than publishing their respective magazines.

HSUS’ Wayne Pacelle told the Associated Press that the two magazines should be prosecuted under a provision of the Animal Welfare Act which makes it illegal to use the mail to promote “an animal fighting venture except as performed outside the limits of the States of the United States.”

If that is indeed what the Animal Welfare Act says then it is almost certainly unconstitutional given that cockfighting is still legal in Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico. In fact, I suspect the statute would be ruled unconstitutional even if it were promoting cockfights in states where the practice is illegal (Pacelle might want to brush up on his First Amendment law — if promoting illegal acts could be outlawed, many animal rights activists would wind up in jail).

Like the attempted ban on transporting chickens across state lines, this is just another example of HSUS and others being unable to muster enough support to outlaw cockfighting in the three states that still allow the practice. With that avenue cut off, HSUS attempts to limit the rights of people outside those states who are not directly involved in cockfighting but cover it in their magazines or sell supplies to those who are involved in cockfighting.

Source:

Humane Society trying to shut down Arkansas cockfighting magazines. The Associated Press, August 8, 2001.

Novelist Doris Lessing Condemns Feminist Excesses

In an appearance at the Edinburgh book festival, novelist Doris Lessing (best known for her books, “The Grass is Singing” and “The Golden Notebook”) lashed out at what she described as an “unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is no so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.”

Apparently what set Lessing off was a visit to a classroom of young boys and girls where the teacher offered a simple stereotype for why wars happen. Lessing said,

I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men. You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the boys sat there crumpled, apologizing for their existence, thinking this was going to be a pattern of their lives.

…

This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing. It has become a kind of religion that you can’t criticize because they you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not.

Lessing said that the energy the feminist movement had created had “been lost in hot air and fine words when we should have been concentrating on changing laws.”

Source:

Lay off men, Lessing tells feminists. Fiachra Gibbons, The Guardian (UK), August 14, 2001.

I’m An Electricity Hog and Proud of It!

The Wall Street Journal’s Cynthia Crossen wrote one of those look how much electricity Americans are using articles claiming that, “Compared to your grandparents, you, personally, are an electricity hog. Just look around your house.” To which I have to say, you’re damn right!

Crossen notes how little our grandparents used (and I assume by the time frame she means the grandparents of baby boomers), but newsflash — compared to us, the generation she’s talking about lived in abject poverty and conditions which are hard to imagine (I still don’t understand how people coped without cordless phones, much less without dish washers).

My house is like an energy black hole, sucking in any electricity bold enough to come close. According to MSNBC, the average Michigan resident pays $600/year for electricity. Are they serious? That wouldn’t even get me through the winter. Last January we came just a few kilowatt hours short of topping the 2,000 kw mark. Even in the summer months, when we’re not at home as much, we’re still up there above 1,000 kw hours a month.

And to be honest, I like it that way. Crossen cites a study claiming that “a 180-gallon coral-reef aquarium might need more electricity than a central-heating system and refrigerator combined.” Yeah, but have you ever tried to fit tropical fish into the door of a refrigerator?

The problem with the “Americans use too much electricity” argument is that it assumes that I really care about how much electricity I’m using. I don’t. As Robert Bradley pointed out a few years ago in the wonderful Three Cheers for Christmas Lights!, the main scarce resource I’m worried about conserving is my time.

Obviously there is a diminishing return once the cost of electricity starts to require too much time to pay for, but that’s the beauty of energy efficiency. I don’t want an energy efficient appliance to reduce my total energy usage, but rather to extend what I can do with my existing energy usage. For example, I’d prefer lights in my living room that would be so efficient it would never pay to turn them off, even at night. But generally, the initial investment in such energy saving devices rarely pays off in the long run unless you have a huge economy of scale (i.e. you’re a large corporation buying thousands of efficient light bulbs).

All other things being equal, the more energy used the better, and a more reasonable approach would be to expand the supply of energy to make it cheaper and look for realistic alternative energy sources (I don’t want solar panels on my house, I want almost free energy from a fusion reactor like I was promised by all of those scifi novels).