My .02 on the Leon County Hearing — I Just Want David Boies to Lose

Until the other day I didn’t really care who won in Florida, and I still don’t — I just want David Boies to lose. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t believe the more I watch this sniveling weasel in practice the more my sympathy for Microsoft increases (Boies was the lawyer responsible for the government’s case in the MS antitrust lawsuit). His mini-confrontation with Judge Charles Burton this afternoon really seemed to annoy Judge N. Sanders Sauls.

As for the case itself, Gore’s people can’t have felt good about things when Judge Sauls called Burton — the Bush campaign’s lead witness — “a great American” when he stepped off the stand. After watching how well Burton came across while describing how the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board determined the intent of voters, I would be very surprised if Gore prevailed in this trial.

The best Boies could do was whine that Burton had originally voted against doing a manual recount, only to have Judge Sauls seemingly share in Burton’s reasoning when Sauls seemed perplexed at what justification the Palm Beach County Canavassing Board had for doing a manual recount in the first place.

Yes!! Speedball 2100 for Playstation

I’d pretty much given up on the Playstation platform. I like the sports games, but most of the other games I’ve tried bore me. Then by accident the other day I read that Bitmap Brothers had recently released an update to one of the best games I’ve ever played, Speedball. Excellent.

Fortunately for me (but not for Bitmap) the game isn’t selling too well — already discounted to $9.95 at the local department store. So since late last night, I’ve been playing Speedball 2100, and the game still rocks.

Speedball was/is simply the best ripoff of one of the best scifi films of all time, Rollerball (yes, I’m serious about that). Two teams face off in an enclosed arena trying to put a metal ball through a goal. The game superficially resembles hockey, except there are no sticks and you can score points for severely injuring people on the other team. Of course you’ve also got power-ups to deal with and a few other ways of scoring, which aren’t really implemented well in this version for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.

It’s still one of the best implementations of a “future sport” for a home console that I’ve seen, but the update of Speedball does have a few problems.

First, although they are a lot better than the Sega Genesis/Amiga graphics of the original Speedball, the Speedball 2100 graphics are definitely subpar for a Playstation game. In addition the instruction manual is horrible (as are most Playstation game manuals, but this one really blows.)

The biggest problem, however, is that the game forces you to play two 90 second halves. I would have liked to have been able to alter this, as some of the alternative ways of scoring — there are a bank of targets that can be lit up as well as a nifty way to multiply your score — are too hard to carry out in only 90 seconds. A two and a half minute period would have allowed for more strategic games.

Also hardcore gamers, this game is probably way too easy. When I can get a good third of the way through a console game, there has to be something wrong (it took me weeks just to figure out NFL Blitz).

Still, if you can find it for $10 like I did, you won’t go wrong with Speedball 2100.

Germany’s Statist Policies Coming Soon to a Web Near You

Wired has one of the better stories I’ve seen about Germany’s laws that forbid the distribution of hate literature. Such laws are coming into conflict with the free wheeling Internet. Germany went after Amazon.Com for selling Mein Kampf to German citizens, and now a Munich prosecutor is investigating Yahoo! sold copies of the book to German citizens.

Some in Germany simply want racist, xenophobic, and/or hate literature to be banned outright on the Internet. Here’s a quote from Michael Friedman, who Wired describes as a leader of Germany’s Jewish population, to that effect.

We believe that the distribution of anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic literature through Internet services has to be forbidden. The case of Yahoo in France showed us that in the next weeks and months there will be a new view in Europe on that. There must be a new legal structure in which distribution of hate literature is not allowed. I believe that this is a global, humanitarian message that hate literature is not distributed.

Now the German state is quick to point out that it does not actually ban the sale of Mein Kampf. Rather, the sale of such books are restricted to the right people. Here’s a German Justice Ministry spokesman explaining how this works,

If you go to a bookshop, the bookseller can have a look at you and decide if you are really interested, like if you are a student. It’s not the book that’s forbidden, it’s selling it to everyone. If you sell it through the Internet, you don’t know who wants to buy the book; you give it to everybody, and that’s forbidden.

Or as another Justice Ministry spokesman told Wired, “It’s a criminal offense to sell it to persons who are interested in Nazi things and symbols. It’s a problem of the different standards. I know that Mein Kampf is sold in the U.S., but it can’t be sold here. The Internet makes it possible for everyone to get it. So you have to talk about standards and find a way of dealing with it.”

So the German state essentially turns booksellers into mind readers. If you look like you might be a white supremacist, forget it — you’re not going to be able to buy the book. On the other hand, if you look like a nice respectable anti-Fascist, no problem.

And some Germans apparently want this sort of standard to apply to the Internet. Thanks, but no thanks.

Putting the state in charge of determining who can and cannot read books in an attempt to combat fascism is absurd. Censorship and the classification of people into “correct” and “incorrect” categories is at the heart of fascism and other totalitarian political systems.

Moreover, the laws clearly don’t work. I can think of dozens of ways to get around this law, as I’m sure right wing hate groups in Germany have. In addition, Germany and France (which has similar laws) have both been the scene of some of the most right wing violence in Europe. The laws against hate literature have done little to prevent a small minority of dedicated hate mongers.

In the long run, the way to stop racism, xenophobia and other irrational ideas is to move toward more openness in a society rather than restrictions and censorship of the “wrong” ideas. Strengthening the state and state control will almost certainly backfire. Europeans seemed in shock at the electoral victory of right wing extremists in Austria, but the right wingers there have the left-liberals to thank for preserving the strong state and keeping Europeans used to censorship.

Europe’s Statist Censorship Laws Coming Soon to a Web Near You

Wired has one of the better stories I’ve seen about Germany’s laws that forbid the distribution of hate literature. Such laws are coming into conflict with the free wheeling Internet. Germany went after Amazon.Com for selling Mein Kampf to German citizens, and now a Munich prosecutor is investigating Yahoo! sold copies of the book to German citizens.

Some in Germany simply want racist, xenophobic, and/or hate literature to be banned outright on the Internet. Here’s a quote from Michael Friedman, who Wired describes as a leader of Germany’s Jewish population, to that effect.

We believe that the distribution of anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic literature through Internet services has to be forbidden. The case of Yahoo in France showed us that in the next weeks and months there will be a new view in Europe on that. There must be a new legal structure in which distribution of hate literature is not allowed. I believe that this is a global, humanitarian message that hate literature is not distributed.

Now the German state is quick to point out that it does not actually ban the sale of Mein Kampf. Rather, the sale of such books are restricted to the right people. Here’s a German Justice Ministry spokesman explaining how this works,

If you go to a bookshop, the bookseller can have a look at you and decide if you are really interested, like if you are a student. It’s not the book that’s forbidden, it’s selling it to everyone. If you sell it through the Internet, you don’t know who wants to buy the book; you give it to everybody, and that’s forbidden.

Or as another Justice Ministry spokesman told Wired, “It’s a criminal offense to sell it to persons who are interested in Nazi things and symbols. It’s a problem of the different standards. I know that Mein Kampf is sold in the U.S., but it can’t be sold here. The Internet makes it possible for everyone to get it. So you have to talk about standards and find a way of dealing with it.” So the German state essentially turns booksellers into mind readers. If you look like you might be a white supremacist, forget it — you’re not going to be able to buy the book. On the other hand, if you look like a nice respectable anti-Fascist, no problem.

And some Germans apparently want this sort of standard to apply to the Internet. Thanks, but no thanks.

Putting the state in charge of determining who can and cannot read books in an attempt to combat fascism is absurd. Censorship and the classification of people into “correct” and “incorrect” categories is at the heart of fascism and other totalitarian political systems.

Moreover, the laws clearly don’t work. I can think of dozens of ways to get around this law, as I’m sure right wing hate groups in Germany have. In addition, Germany and France (which has similar laws) have both been the scene of some of the most right wing violence in Europe. The laws against hate literature have done little to prevent a small minority of dedicated hate mongers.

In the long run, the way to stop racism, xenophobia and other irrational ideas is to move toward more openness in a society rather than restrictions and censorship of the “wrong” ideas. Strengthening the state and state control will almost certainly backfire. Europeans seemed in shock at the electoral victory of right wing extremists in Austria, but the right wingers there have the left-liberals to thank for preserving the strong state and keeping Europeans accustomed to censorship.

Some Curmudgeonly Thoughts on World AIDS Day

You know you work at a university when all of the “save the world” events happen a day early. World AIDS Day is today, but all of the related events by activists here were held yesterday. Apparently saving the world from AIDS is important, but you’ve got to fit in raising awareness before the students start their alcohol rituals beginning Thursday night.

Also I have to confess I’m getting annoyed with the “break the silence” and “raise awareness” angles. For example, actor Danny Glover told the Associated Press that, “If I am disappointed with a tape, we shoot it again. But with AIDS, the movie’s over. It’s up to you and me to break the silence.”

Break the silence? Maybe in South Africa or Zimbabwe, but in the United States you can’t avoid AIDS awareness — if I walk a mile on campus I’m sure to see at least 5 or 6 different AIDS-related posters.

Finally, it is interesting to see that today moderate conservative claims that were so controversial in the 1980s have become mainstream. The United Nations AIDS Agency put out a press release saying,

Broadly speaking, men are expected to be physically strong, emotionally robust, daring and virile. Some of these expectations translate into ways of thinking and behaving that endanger the health and well-being of men and their sex partners.

This seems like a veiled way of saying, “Stop having so many different sex partners, you morons.” When some conservatives in the 1980s tried to suggest that maybe gay men should act more responsibly by limiting the number of sex partners, the idea was pilloried as a right wing attack on everything good about life.

Part of the difference is that in Africa AIDS is largely a heterosexual disease, so the attack on reckless promiscuity is no longer directed solely at homosexuals. Still, those who criticized monogamy as repressive or conversely celebrated casual sex with multiple partners as liberating were dead wrong.

British Researchers to Decode Zebrafish Genome

Now that the human and mouse genomes have been decoded, United Kingdom researchers have announced plans to decode the genome of the zebrafish in a three-year projected funded by the Wellcome Trust medical research charity.

Although mice and monkeys get the lion’s share of press when it comes to medical research with animals, the zebrafish has been an important animal in laboratory studies for a long time. The zebrafish’s blood, kidney, and vision systems are very similar to those in human beings and the species has been used as a model in those areas.

The decoding of the zebrafish genome will help researchers better understand what specific human genes do. The human genome is of limited usefulness by itself, but when scientists can compare the human genome to the genome of mice, zebrafish and others, they will be able to get a very good idea of exactly how the genes interact and how things like inherited diseases arise.

Some zebrafish, for example, suffer from genetic blood disorders that are very similar to human genetic blood disorders. By comparing
the genomes, scientists might get a better understanding of what causes these genetic diseases and how they might be treated.

Currently efforts are underway to decode the genome of dogs and chickens, and some scientists are calling for researchers to focus on decoding the genome of great apes, which are the closest living genetic relatives to human beings.

Source:

Zebrafish genome next. The BBC, November 21, 2000.