Saturday, October 28, 2017
Open access bill is before Congress again (FASTR)
Electronic Frontier Foundation has urged the public to
support FASTR, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act,
advocated by Rand Paul (R-Ky), in an article Oct. 27 by Elliot Harmon, link
The bills at issue are S 1701 and HR 3427. There are provisions to allow open access by
the public to documents, typically after six months (NIH normally requires a
year).
Would this be the “Jack Andraka Act”?
I have an important Wordpress posting today on Goldman v. Breitbart and a new threat to embeds, here.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
The role of web designers servings small business; shared hosting issues
Ramsay Taplan (Blogtyrant) discusses the changing role of web
designers in a detailed post, shared on social media, here. (I note that Blogtyrant has gone to https everywhere).
Since Wordpress particularly has made “do it yourself”
easier, the role of web designers, especially for small businesses, may have
become more challenged. Remember when
you needed help with things like Dreamweaver?
But web designers may be needed for advanced security
consultation, and for advanced plugins and themes.
I think the jury is out on SEO optimization, because
rules keep changing. I can remember the
days of coding my own metatags, until I found them not needed. I do think adding taglines to wordpress (as
opposed to categories) does help sites be found, especially with respect to
proper nouns and important concept names.
People using shared hosing can find once in a while
that the webhost has created an error 503, service not available. This can happen because of a spike in the
application pool managed by IIS, and it may sometimes be due to one
customer. Here’s the best link I could
find on the problem. It would sound plausible that this could happen with a DDOS attack on one customer on the server, so this could be a sensitive issue.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
NY Times offers a quiz on Facebook's hate speech standards
The New York Times offers a 6-question quiz on what Facebook considers hate speech, in an article Oct. 13 by Audrey Carlsen and Fahima Haque, link.
The guidelines prohibit slurs against protected
classes, which to include classes defined by sexual orientation and gender
identity. They do not include speech against subclasses, like poor people
within a racial group.
That leads to odd results in what the public views as
hate speech. Many people don’t consider
the statement “white men are a-holes” hate speech, but Facebook does. But limit it to “cis-male whites are …” then
it is not.
Personally, I don’t pay much attention to a person’s
membership in a protected class in my own statements about policy. Even personally, I may be attracted to one
person and not another for superficial reasons, but the class membership is
coincidental (even if probabilistic), not existential, following James Damore’s
ideas.
And I don’t favor making policy by categorizing
people. (Imagine if the draft had
demanded proportional service by race.)
Singapore does just that in who lives in various luxury buildings,
demanding ethnic balance.
Self-publishing companies do "content evaluation" of submissions for "hate speech".
And, "by the way", Michael Smerconish on CNN says he is locked out of his
Facebook page and that the Russians hacked it.
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
When does bringing up a settled issue become hate speech?
Time Magazine’s latest on campus speech codes, by Katy
Steinmetz, Oct. 12, link, seems to be well summarized by this one Cornell student.
“many on
the left argue that some things are no longer open for discussion, that speech
itself can be violence and that trying to question the equality of women or
undocumented people or same-sex couples can amount to harassment. “Ignorance is
hostility in this political climate,” says Cornell student Treviño. “It’s
attacking our mental well-being.”
Would my reviewing the
past military draft gratuitously be viewed as harassment because it might tempt
a politician into passing it again? Same
for filial responsibility laws.
Or what about
revisiting the draconian reaction of some conservatives in Texas in the 1980s
against gay men and the AIDS epidemic?
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Childless men and OPC ("other people's children"); the dangers of populism
Devin Foley has a piece in Intellectual Takeout that,
toward the end, challenges childless men to take responsibility for other
people’s children, specifically, boys.
The title is “Men, they took your NFL, now what?” Is this about the kneeling controversy, or
about concussion risks.
The article is somewhat vari-focused, as it gets into
gender culture wars, where everything can be politicized. Curiously, the black and white picture that
appears to come from an Hollywood spectacle of ancient evenings shows all the
(white) men without chest hair.
The culture war is in part what happens with those
whose gender-related behaviors and capacities don’t conform to the traditional
expectations of the group. Is this about
granting rights by group according to past oppression and intersectionality, or
should it concern individual rights and concomitant personal
responsibility? Yes, people with
privilege have a better chance to learn how to make good choices. Is getting everybody into the responsibility
of family tending (children or not) part of how to balance things out? Any philosophy of individual rights and
responsibilities will start out with some irreducible postulates.
Note well, also, this NBC op-ed by Evan McMullin on the dangers of "populism" -- on a day when Trump threaten NBC stations' broadcast licenses on Twitter.
Monday, October 09, 2017
Jemele Hill case: should private companies discipline employees for off-the-job social media speech on their own accounts?
Jemele Hill has been suspended by ESPN for two weeks
for a second violation of its social media guidelines. She issued some tweets critical of Dallas
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for taking a hard line against his players protesting
police profiling by kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games.
ESPN has apparently warned associates about social media speech, even off the job, that could reflect poorly on ESPN or drive away advertisers.
CNN has the story here.
In September ESPN had threatened to discipline or fire
Jemele for calling Donald Trump a “white supremacist.” But Sports Illustrated provided an article saying that Connecticut law provides that even private employers may not
discipline associates for constitutionally protected speech.
That’s unusual.
When I was working for a company that sold life insurance to military
officers, I transferred to another division and moved within the company to
avoid what was perceived as a conflict of interest when I was intending to
publish a book on gays in the military.
Sunday, October 08, 2017
The Left's "selective" attacks on free speech could backfire
Michelle Goldberg has an important New York Times
op-ed, “The Worst Time for the Left to Give Up on Free Speech”, link .
Goldberg writes about the recent disruption of an ACLU
speaker at William and Mary for defending free speech rights of alleged white
supremacists (Oct. 5).
Goldberg points out that many people believe that some
topics should be “beyond the pale” of acceptable conjectures for discussion. She notes that among these ideas are a return
to the belief that women and people of color should have an inferior or
submissive assigned station in life to white men. You could add, gay people or
transgender or gender fluid, to heterosexually married men with children.
I certainly have hit that theme had in the past, as
explaining what happened in my own background.
Perhaps some people would say that my even rehearsing it gives it
potential legitimacy for political enemies to use again in the future.
One could say that about the attention I have given to
the history of conscription.
It used to be said that communism should be beyond the
pale of discussion. That idea was based on a definition of communism as
invoking violence and the use of force to make political change (and force expropriation),
whereas socialism alone was to be achieved by the democratic process (Bernie
Sanders). But communism as subject
matter was different in that it did not normally target one protected class of
people. Even so, people in the past were
barred, say, from federal employment had they ever been members of the
Communist Part (and they could be removed for “sexual perversion” too, until
1973).
White supremacy is obviously very dangerous because it
would propose subjugating a class of people (on race or skin color). Neo-Nazism
is for similar reasons banned today in modern German, as it also can include
people of a certain religion (Judaism) for subjugation. The Left may feel that it barely has less to
worry about than the Right on these matters.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled against
content-specific restrictions on free speech.
But a much bigger issue, which I must keep coming back
to, is the idea that people should speak only through groups.
Friday, October 06, 2017
Why tribalism is unavoidable
David Brooks (the columnist who wants to teach us how to be good) has an interesting op-ed in the New York
Times, “The Philosophical Assault on Trumpism”, which maybe should read, “How
to beat Trumpism”, link here.
Brooks ascribes all the problems that lets Trump bully
everyone to tribalism. And he’s probably
right.
People have a need to belong, and do belong somewhere
whether they want to or not (Martin Fowler’s book in Aug. 2014). People can
belong to nuclear and extended families, to communities of faith, to activist
groups or newly defined identity groups.
On top of all of this the arbitrary idea of nationalism.
I can pause for a moment, a few hours before the
Washington Nationals start the playoffs and finally prove that they, no “we”,
can win a playoff series, what rooting for a professional sports team
means. It’s a kind of tribalism.
I could say there is one individualistic art form that
bridges individualism and tribalism – and that’s music. When my brain and soul learns a repertoire,
it seems to join something, find a commonality with others that is beyond
words. But music also has a way of
getting people to join in to things together.
It’s interesting to ponder how classical, spiritual (like in church) and
rock or hip-hop all work. I’ll come back
to all that again.
The only thing that survives “me” is what is beyond
myself (as well as the historical meta-fact of my life, which always exists in larger space-time). That’s true for all of us. So, at some point, we all have to “join in”
to something for some meaningful existence to transcend us after we are gone.
So some kind of tribalism is necessary. But it takes individual work to solve
problems and make innovations. There is
always this moral tension between individualism and connectivity, between ego
expression and moral equality, between innovation and stability.
But we do have to face the idea that sometimes, one
has to take one for the team.
Thursday, October 05, 2017
Black Lives Matter group disrupts ACLU speaker at William and Mary
Today, the Black Lives Matter Facebook page “Built on
our Backs” shared a one hour video of its disruption (starting at about 4:10) of a speaker from the
ACLU, Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, for what it claims is ACLU support of white
supremacy, at William and Mary. The group claims “zero
tolerance for white supremacy no matter what form it masquerades in.” This demonstration seems to originate from a W-M chapter of BLM.
Inside Higher Ed wrote a story on the protest (Jeremy
Bauer-Wolf), which Rick Sincere from Charlottesville carried today on his “paper.li”.
I have a history with William and Mary, back in 1961,
as my own readers know.
Let’s see if Milo Yiannopoulos carries this story as
an example of the aggressive, anarchist Left.
Sunday, October 01, 2017
A touch of class indignation and maybe a warning of warfare at a church potluck
At a church potuck after the Communion service this
first Sunday, I had an odd conversation. I sat down at a circular table across
from a middle-aged man who looked like he came off the streets.
A conversation started. He rebuked people who had disrespected the
flag at football games, but then suddenly went on a rant as to how Washington
DC used to be 95% black (it wasn’t) but how richer white people had driven them
out with gentrification.
“What if I show up at your house with a gun and take
it back. You leave” he said.
“That’s political violence”, I said. Or maybe it’s
expropriation by force. (The Bolsheviks
did it to people in 1917. But then so
did the Nazis. And then so did Stalin. A friend in Minnesota calls this "purification", without fasting, Lama-style). After which there are no victims, only a new
normal. People who used to think they
were better than others have been reduced to nothing by force. Everyone is brought equally low, by those for
whom civilization, with all its built-in inequalities, makes little sense, So far, this is pure existentialism. I understand the Christian message that then
there is only Grace. And then, I
thought, someone like Clark Kent in Smallville never asks people to drop
everything and follow him. Neither does
Peter Parker. There are no god-kings.
He criticized me for “just” riding the Metro, not
taking the bus (and maybe not volunteering for Food and Friends to deliver in
SE DC). The woman next to me then
intervened and criticized him, as not showing the love of God. He said something
about Joshua being an invader and a dictator.
I said something about the idea that conquests, captivities and forced
migrations happened a lot in the Bible to the chosen peoples. (Babylonian captivity was a “normal” for two
or three decades.) The woman then explained that the two very full plates from
the pot-luck would hold her until the next food stamps. I had contributed my share, from the Harris
Teeter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)