Month: November 2013

First World Problems

There are problems that are unique to the first world. For example, a woman wrote Slate to complain about the fact that her husband busted his ass, made a fortune, and was able to retire before he turned 40:

Dear Prudence,
My husband achieved professional success and wealth early in life. His work involved long hours and lots of stress, and by his 30s he decided that he wanted out. His accumulated wealth could easily support our lifestyle indefinitely, so he retired about 18 months ago, shortly after the birth of our first child. He has not found anything to do in that time! We have an excellent nanny 40 hours a week, and outside those hours my husband is an extremely involved father. We split the domestic duties roughly 50–50, as before, but now I am the only one working and he says he shouldn’t be “penalized” by having extra domestic responsibilities. So he spends the week dicking around (gym, squash, books, movies, etc.). It’s making me crazy with resentment, especially when I come home from a hard day at work. He tells me I should just quit if I don’t like it, and that I shouldn’t worry about being dependent because he’s set up a trust fund for me and our son. But I also think it sets a bad example for our son to see a father who doesn’t have some productive purpose in life. My husband disagrees and says he will be “an excellent corrective to the productionist propaganda schools inflict on kids to make them the unquestioning worker bees the economy demands.” He says he doesn’t care if our son grows up to work hard and that work is a lamentable necessity and it is only “false consciousness” to think otherwise. I’m tired of this devolving into a sociological debate! How can we resolve this?

—Do Something

Having a spouse who struck it big and retired early is a problem many of us would be willing to shoulder the burden of. Seriously, if the biggest complaint you can make is that your husband is so rich that he was able to retire in his 30s then life isn’t that bad. Also, as a response to the woman I would simply note that it appears he’s done quite a damned bit already.

Occupy Wall Street Wipes Out $15 Million of Debt

Remember Rolling Jubilee? It was a project started by Occupy Wall Street to buy up outstanding debt just to forgive it. Back when the project was first started organizers were able to buy up $14,000 of debt for $500. Approximately one year later the organization has successfully purchased and forgiven $15 million of debt:

A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans’ personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.

Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy’s Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before “abolishing” it, freeing individuals from their bills.

By purchasing the debt at knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly medical debt, spending only $400,000.

Kudos to Occupy’s Strike Debt group are certainly in order. Freeing people from $15 million of debt for a mere $400,00 is impressive. I hope this project continues on and meets with even greater success.

True Patriotism Must be Forced

Do you love your country? Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio does. In fact he loves his country so much that he’s punishing all nonbelievers in his prisons:

Arpaio said he has implemented an American flag campaign in his jails.

Each cell is getting a sticker of an American flag. Any inmate who vandalizes the flag will be punished with the restricted diet.

In keeping with the patriotic theme, Arpaio has ordered that the playing of God Bless America and the National Anthem be done daily in every jail facility over the public address system and for all the inmates, regardless of national origin, to hear and sing-a-long.

Nothing says America like being kidnapped and caged for possessing a plant, being given a flag that represents the country that caged you for possessing a plant, and being punished for not treating the flag that represents the country that caged you for possessing a plant with love and affection.

In fact, Joe Arpaio is being an unpatriotic pussy communist. God Bless America? The National Anthem? Those songs don’t represent America. This song represents America:

Seriously though, Joe Arpaio is an asshole.

An Engineering Mindset

You know you’re an engineer when you read the following article about the USS George Washington being deployed to the Philippines and your eyes jump to the listed carrier statistics:

infinity-carrier

Really? It has unlimited range? I didn’t realize our carriers could folding space and fucking time. I’m skeptical that a mere aircraft carrier could store enough energy to travel the distance from Earth to Pluto. Either the BBC acquired some very optimistic statistics from the manufacturer or the person who wrote the article has no idea what the word unlimited means.

Words Cannot Describe My View of This Cop

I would call this cop a pig but that would denigrate an animal that wallows in its own filth:

Police officers in the city of Louisiana, Missouri used the stun gun to stop Ryan Miller after he kicked in a front door and tried to enter his house to rescue his 3-year-old stepson, Riley.

Officers on the scene felt it was too dangerous to let anybody go in. Witnesses say Miller was tased three times, then handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car.

The boy’s body was eventually found 12 to 15 feet from the front door.

Disgusting doesn’t even begin to cover it. Imagine yourself in the position of the father. Your child is trapped in a burning house and a cop hits you with a Taser to prevent you from going in and rescuing. The end result is your child burning to death a mere 15 feet from the front door.

I really have no words to describe the actions of that cop. Preventing a father from attempting to save his child, entirely at his own risk, is despicable. Police officers shouldn’t feel as though they have the right to determine whether or not a situation is safe enough for a parent to attempt to rescue their child. That’s a decision only a parent can make.

The United States Government Promoting Poaching

The federal government has amasses a rather sizable amount of ivory. Its intention is to crush the six tons of illegally gathered elephant remains. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS):

We’re sending a message to ivory traffickers and their customers that the United States will not tolerate this illegal trade. We’re standing with nations that have already destroyed their illegal ivory and showing our commitment to working with partners around the world to stop this trafficking and save elephants.

Leave it to the government to think destroying illegally acquired materials will convince people to stop illegally collecting that material. The supply of ivory is quite limited since its sole source is from a very small portion of the body of a slow growing mammal. Ivory’s status as an illegal material and its relatively scarcity makes it quite valuable indeed. So what happens when six tons of it are crushed into useless dust? It becomes more scarce and therefore more valuable. With the potential for higher profits poachers are willing to take higher risks.

What the FWS is doing sounds good on paper but will only exacerbate the problem. It would be no different than the Drug Enforcement Agency capturing tons of cocaine and burning it. All that would do is cause an increase in the price of cocaine and encourage more production and sales.

Poaching, being an illegal activity, can’t be fought by making the value of poached animal remains more valuable. That further encourages poaching, especially in poorer regions where a subsistence farmer could stand to greatly improve his life by selling a single poached animal carcass. Instead of creating incentives to poach animals we should think of ways to disincentivize poaching. The only way to do that is to devalue the materials. Ivory, for example, could be devalued by finding a viable replacement, such as an indistinguishable synthetic, which could increase the overall supply without requiring the poaching of elephants.

Hennepin County Judge Tells Slaves to Shut Up

If you live in Minnesota then you’re aware of the fact that use tax victims have been entered into a dial with the Minnesota Vikings to pay for a new stadium. It’s a pretty sweet deal for the billionaire owner, Zygi Wilf, but a terrible deal for the rest of us. Hell, the people of Minnesota didn’t even get to vote on the matter. This fact was recently challenged in court and, as expected, the judge told the plaintiffs to shut the fuck up and bow down to the glory of their politically well connected masters:

A legal challenge that called for Minneapolis residents to vote on the Vikings stadium subsidy was dismissed today by Hennepin County Judge Philip Bush.

The challenge had been brought in August by Doug Mann, who was one of the 35 candidates running for Minneapolis mayor. He came in 10th last week in the race won by Betsy Hodges.

The decision makes sense. If you let the people who will be forced to pay for a new gladiatorial arena vote on whether or not they actually want to pay for that arena they may decide not to. Therefore it’s far better for the rulers to make the “right” decision and force us to comply with it.

Healthcare.gov: Defenders of Internet Freedom Need Not Apply

Healthcare.gov has turned out to be quite a fiasco. During the first days of operation I tried to access the site and always received a 403 (unauthorized access) error. I assumed this error was being kicked out because of the site’s general instability. As it turns out, my Internet Protocol (IP) address has been added to Healthcare.gov’s list of banned IP addresses. The reason for this was made apparent on the tor-talk mailing list:

I’ve been running a Tor Relay (not an exit node) from my home for quite a while now, and up to this point have not encountered any issues accessing any sites. However, today I attempted to access https://www.healthcare.gov, and received a HTTP 403 response and a pretty standard 403 message. To test my hypothesis, I also tried accessing the site via the Tor network — and received the same message. In the meanwhile, a friend who does not operate a Tor relay was able to access the site. Could anyone else with a public relay confirm this issue — and if confirmed, would someone from the Tor Project be kind enough to contact the appropriate parties and explain why blocking Tor relays is a silly thing? I’d do it myself… but alas, I cannot reach the site to see who the appropriate parties would be 🙂
Thank you.

In February I setup a Tor relay on a Raspberry Pi, which has been running continuously ever since. The operators of Healthcare.gov have decided to ban any IP address operating a Tor relay, whether it is an exit or non-exit relay, from accessing the site.

It’s not uncommon for websites to block IP addresses operating Tor exit relay. Malicious individuals wanting to attack a site anonymously can and have used the Tor network. But I’m unaware of any website that has blocked IP addresses operating non-exit relays. There’s no reason for doing so since anonymized Tor traffic never exits from a non-exit relay. The only function non-exit relays have is to forward traffic from one node in the Tor network to another node.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), and by extension Healthcare.gov, are as much political messages as they are laws. By blocking every IP address that is operating a Tor relay the message is effectively this: defenders of Internet freedom need not apply for health insurance. In all likelihood this decision, like most of the decisions revolving around Healthcare.gov, is the result of incompetence, not outright malice. But I also believe this problem is unlikely to be addressed since the current government (from Congress to the presidency to the appointed bureaucrats) has demonstrated an opposition to Internet anonymity.

Australia Shows Us How a Police State is Done

Listen up. Our friends down under are showing us how a police state is done. So far the United States government hasn’t sunk to the level of prohibiting people from staying in their homes when an “important” event full of “important” people is taking place in the vicinity. But now that Australia has paved the way I’m sure the United States government will be quick to jump on the bandwagon (after all, if there’s one thing the United States hates it’s being out police stated by another police state):

MASS criminal background checks will be used to find and remove potential troublemakers living near G20 summit venues in Queensland, the state government says.

Police Minister Jack Dempsey says people living inside special security zones in Brisbane and Cairns will be barred from their homes and given up to $200 to stay elsewhere if they are identified as a risk by federal authorities.

The G20 bill, passed by the state parliament late on Tuesday, approved payments covering accommodation for those with a criminal background, plus their dependents.

We’ve witnessed similar behavior recently. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has begun a more widespread program of performing background checks on passengers before they even arrive at the airport. But we haven’t seen a case of the feds performing background checks of people living near an “important” event and kicking any potential troublemakers out of their homes. What we have seen is a propensity for police states to implement the polices of other police states. When Britain, for example, implements a new draconian law the United States has a tendency to pass a similar law. Therefore it shouldn’t surprise anybody if a law passes in the future that prohibits potential troublemakers from living in their homes if “important” people stop by the neighborhood.

Descendants of the British Empire and current members of the Commonwealth of Nations seem determined to turn George Orwell’s 1984 into a nonfiction title.