If you’re not aware, Congress has pretty much removed any right to privacy you might’ve thought you had. And while I think that’s a pretty bad thing, I was never really prepared for one of the easy core arguments against thinking it’s a big deal: “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.” I mean, it just feels instinctively wrong, but I couldn’t think of a good reason why, and I tend to mistrust my own feelings like that, as they might just be bourne of personal bias.
But the other day I had an epiphany, which is that the statement “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about” is false. Here’s the correct statement:
If you haven’t done anything that someone else thinks is wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.
When you work through the implications of that statement, losing your privacy seems like a much more worrying issue.
Got this in email from a friend today (or, more specifically, from a friend’s email account):
From: Gary (xxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com)
To:
Subject: Emergency Help
Hi,
I’m in a hurry writing this mail. I had a trip to Nigeria visiting the Tinapa opening ceremony. Unfortunately all my money has been stolen at the hotel where I stayed, by some armed robbers and since then I’v been without any money and I’m even owing money to the hotel here. So I have only access to my emails,my mobile phone can’t work here so I didn’t bother bringing it along.
Please can you lend me $2,500 so I can return back and settle the hotel bills I will return it back to you as soon as i get home.You can have it sent through Moneygram money transfer.
I have already spoken to the hotel manager, please let me hear from you so i can collect his full name and address where you can send the money tomorrow please or if possible today. I am waiting for your reply
Consult your doctor if you elect a bonehead for more than four years.
The Republicans are working on “rebranding” themselves. This concept amuses me already, because it’s clearly based in marketing. They’re working on changing their image, rather than themselves, because clearly their underlying assumption is that they’re the Right Buncha Folks To Get Work Done, and the only problem is that the public misunderstands them. I mean somehow disregarding the fact that they’ve been running the country for the last seven years and it’s gone to shit, really anyone who buys gas or dies in a bridge collape or lives in a formaldehyde trailer can tell you how well they’ve done, but whatever.
Here’s a piece of the “leaked” message about the rebranding details, which really, my jaw just drops:
Washington is broken, the American people want it fixed, and Democrats in Washington have proven unable or unwilling to get the job done. Republicans will. Americans have seen first-hand the change Democrats are making, and it is moving America in the wrong direction. To the American people, we say that Republicans will deliver “the change you deserve.”
Uch. Yeah, the change we deserve. The change we deserve away from you. It’s just so…I mean, the change in the country because of Democrats? The part of that the Dems are actually responsible for is when they couldn’t find enough backbone to prevent the Republicans from doing whatever they wanted, ugh I just can’t even keep that in my head without getting all pissed about it.
But the fun part is, there’s some entertainment in building their brand around “the change we deserve”:
This is what the Republicans in the House have become. First they raise a bill about how great Moms are, and then it’s unanimously passed earlier in the week, and then somehow they bring it up for vote recount, and then they vote against it. For some reason.
I mean the overall reason is because they’re stalling. They’re pissed they don’t have control of the House and now the mortgage bill and the war apprpriations bill has been pushed to next week. I think they consider this a “win”. But after all that, why even vote against a fluff timewaster at all? Why not just ring up another unanimous vote?
Maybe they’ve had a change of heart and decided they don’t like moms anyway. Hell, they’ve already voted against nuns, maybe next week they’ll pass HR1157, “Finding adorable, precocious orphans shining shoes on the corner and taking their money and pushing them in the mud.”
edit: Oh, okay, I get it. They had the original vote, then Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) had a motion to reconsider the vote. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) moved to table his revote request, which itself needed a vote, and that’s the one that the Republicans voted against. So it seems like sloppy reporting to this point, I mean, they didn’t vote against mothers exactly. Irritating that I had to go make sense out of that myself.
These days I understand that trying to correct people’s spelling is like trying to sweep back a badly-spelled ocean with a broom, but I couldn’t resist on this one:
Goes in the “no way of telling whether this is for real or not” pile, but I want to believe it is.
fred our anniversary’s coming up let’s make a video to send it to your dead eyeballs with an infinite emptiness behind them [stare into the vacuous existence we all share in this vale of tears]
You know how someone makes a cheesy remake of a childhood show or cartoon (I’m thinking the Grinch movie here), and someone says “they’re raping my childhood”?
Well, now, through the miracle of modern technology, your childhood memories can be pre-ruined for your convenience.
The classic God paradox: “Can God make a rock so big, He can’t lift it?” This one was always easy for me: yes, he can. And then he can lift the rock. You’re starting with the idea that God is omnipotent, so the fact that we don’t understand how he can do both things is irrelevant. Can God do X? Yes. I don’t care what X is.
But today I thought: the more interesting question would be whether God could entirely destroy himself. I can’t comfortably answer “yes” to that one. Because if God could remove His own existence, then how could He do anything after that?
Then, online, Aliasn followed up with a more intriguing question: Could God accidentally destroy himself? Omnipotence does mean the ability to do anything, after all, and it seems like that should include unplanned actions.
On one hand it still seems like the same question: “can an omnipotent God do this thing you can’t understand?” And the answer is yes, because saying “omnipotent” has already stacked the deck. On the other hand, I can’t get my head around it.
<bob> “In Luke 10:18, Jesus said he watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. This may have been the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs.”
<Freyja> hehehe
<Freyja> man, I really envy the crazies
<Freyja> science is so much easier when there’s only one textbook
<bob> gah, here’s one for you, mark
<bob> [If God gave us the KJV as an inspired translation, why would God not repeat the process again in modern language in each language?]
<bob> The question assumes that the A.V. was written in common or Elizabethan English. It was not. The English of the A.V. was specifically designed to receive the words of God in a language that could be understood by English readers. It is a pure language, untainted by secular meanings.
* zompist boggles
<zompist> not that it matters, but i wonder how they decide this stuff
<raven> I think it’s a bit much to suggest there’s actual decision-making.
<zompist> i mean, they just pull it out of their ass, but doesn’t anyone say “er, but why is that?”
<bob> heh rave
<bob> yeah, you kinda have to figure whatever voice tells them this stuff, they don’t ask back about the details
Seriously. One guy’s audio is like 250% of the other guy’s audio, so I could hardly bear to listen to the conversation–and for the most part that’s what it was, because only occasionally do they actually comment on the episode they’re watching.
Though it was kinda fun listening to the guy who does the Dr. Venture voice. The character’s voice is essentially his. In fact I heard him doing a Shell radio commercial once, that was kinda entertaining.
