People Lining Up In Michigan for Concealed Weapons Applications

The Detroit News reports that thousands of people showed up to apply for concealed weapons permits on the first day of the new law going into effect. Not surprisingly, the News reports that the most active part of the state was Wayne County — which includes Detroit — where apparently people began lining up at 2 a.m. to obtain an application and more than 1,000 applications were handed out.

The real test of concealed weapons will be how it goes over in Wayne County which is a very strong Democratic base and would normally be likely to vote heavily against the law when it inevitably comes up for repeal by voters in 2002. On the other hand the entire city looks like something out of Escape from New York.

The Detroit News, for example, is located only a few blocks from the arena where the Detroit Red Wings play. The building looks like some sort of well defended compound you’d find in Beirut, with enormous brick walls topped off by several additional feet of chain link fence studded with features to prevent intruders from getting in.

If there’s any significant drop in crime in Wayne County over the next year and a half, the law might survive. Otherwise, a voting block of out-state suburbanites and Detroit voters will likely kill the law next time around (the same voting bloc was responsible for the overwhelming defeat of a school voucher proposal this election cycle).

Somebody At The Nation Is Thinking: I Wonder Why We Don’t Get More Subscribers?

Another annoying web design “error” that I still see a lot is where you have to click through three or four pages to accomplish a task that could easily be done with one page. Today’s offender is The Nation.

If you visit the main page, you’ll notice a little “Subscribe” link under their masthead. You would be incorrect, however, to assume that this will take you to a page where you can subscribe to the site. Instead it takes the viewer to a page explaining why the reader should subscribe. Natalie Merchant and Molly Ivins love The Nation, and so presumably will you too.

But at least there are links at the top and bottom saying, “Click here to subscribe now!” So, now we’re in business. Not quite. Rather than taking the viewer to the subscription page, now we see a completely map of the world where we’re asked to choose what part of the globe we’re from.

Finally, we’re staring at an order form. Why not just link the “Subscribe” link on the front page to this last page and put the “This form is for U.S. Residents only. Residents of Canada can click here to order, and all others can click here” in bold (or better yet, redesign the form so users pick their country as well).

Beta Was Best?

I have a hard time taking technology commentary seriously from someone like David Coursey who actually claims that the coming fight over DVD standards is like VHS vs. Beta all over again, adding that, “After all, Betamax was the better format, but it still lost.”

This immediately suggests to me that Coursey has no clue about what counts as a “better format” for a consumer device.

Coursey goes on to make a number of other blunders such as claiming that, “Microsoft has said it will support FireWire but not USB 2.0, so until Microsoft changes its mind, I’ll be in the FireWire camp.” FireWire is clearly superior to USB 2.0, but all that Microsoft has said is that it likely won’t ship USB 2.0 drivers with Windows XP (largely because of foot dragging by the companies behind USB 2.0).

Lets Help the Activists Burn Out More Quickly

Karen Davis, the founder and president of United Poultry Concerns, recently penned a long whine about how easily animal rights activists become burned out. There are some worthwhile lessons to be learned here.

According to Davis, “It’s easy for an animal activist to become consumed by rage and despair, to grow exhausted and burn out confronted with the horror, each and every day, of our species’ relentless assault on other species.”

Especially when you’re not getting anywhere. Davis quotes Norman Phelps of The Fund for Animals as telling her that he started campaigning against hunting in the mid-1980s thinking it would be outlawed within the decade, and here he still is fighting to get it banned. Closer to home for Davis, she notes that UPC and others managed to stop a popular pigeon shoot, but simultaneously the number of chickens killed in the United States has increased by 10 million a day since her involvement with the animal rights movement began.

Davis herself seems doubtful that the animal rights movement will achieve any real long-term success, writing, “My attitude is not ‘If I didn’t think we’d win, I’d quit,’ to which I would say, ‘Then quit.'”

Davis identifies three reasons that cause animal rights activists to give up the fight,

…the endless omnipresence of animal suffering caused by humans, public resistance to our message, and letdown by other activists. We start out full of energy, we picture victory and a crowd of protesters at every demonstration, we envision reason and compassion taking charge of people’s lives, and then reality erodes our dream.

These are all situations, of course that those of us opposed to the animal rights movement should do our best to encourage.

Source:

How does one survive dealing day after day with a cruel industry?. Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns, Summer 2001.

Activist Hypocrisy Over Eco/Animal Rights Terrorism Bill

Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Washington) recently introduced a bill that would increase the potential sentences of environmentalist and animal rights extremists who engage in acts of violence, explicitly add such acts of terror to those punishable under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and provide funding for a national clearing house for law enforcement to track animal rights extremists. Of course animal rights activists who support such acts of terrorism, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘ Bruce Friedrich are expressing their outrage over the bill.

Demonstrating the sharply honed thinking that can be found in most PETA campaigns, Friedrich actually told United Press International,

To compare animal rights activists to terrorists like Tim McVeigh is scare mongering. Perhaps the most disturbing part is that the federal government would collect information on suspects, which denies the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Furthermore, threats, intimidation and property damage are already illegal so there is no need for it.

I’m not sure which fantasy world Friedrich is living in at the moment, but generally in order to catch crooks, police and government agencies have to collect information about suspects. And if it is absurd to compare activists to McVeigh, why was Friedrich widely reported comparing the Oklahoma City bomber to Gandhi and others for not selecting meat for his last meal? And lets not forget that Friedrich himself has written that burning down a research lab or trashing a McDonald’s is completely consistent with the philosophy of strategic nonviolence as outlined by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

In an extreme absurdity Friedrich compares this bill to McCarthyism saying, “The next thing you know they’ll be calling in artists, actors and anyone else they can think of to ask them, ‘are you now or have you ever been a vegetarian?'” But Friedrich seems to have things mixed up here, as it is the animal rights movement that has targeted its opponents for violence. You don’t see gangs of researchers running around burning down the homes of animal rights activists or targeting vegetarian business for violence.

Source:

Critics say eco-terrorism bill unwarranted. Kelly Hearn, United Press International, June 14, 2001.