Tim's Bits and Pieces

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), the bane of the Linux "evangelist", is not restricted to anti-Linux materials: Iran Uses Novell and Microsoft Software to Make Bombs. Oh, noes! Microsoft and Novell must be evil!

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Their saying it as she got of murder, but really she's going to jail in China for defending herself against an attempted rape. Now I know almost nothing about the Chinese justice system except that it seems to be pretty harsh (execution for tax evasion for instance), but I suspect Ms. Deng will never leave jail alive. Also the Chinese have no qualms about using prisoners as slave labour, so you can thank Ms. Deng for the donation of her labour to the worthy cause of keeping the price down on your next pair of Nike shoes.

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I've been thinking about censorship some more since I wrote my last post on the subject of "Censorship and Child Pornography". I was also to some extent inspired by an article by Albert Mohler on Pornography, where he quotes Roger Scruton, a British Philosopher, as saying that "[t]he idea that pornography is 'speech', ...and thereby protected by the [American] Constitution, is ...absurd...". Yet, we all naturally seem to refer to it as if it is. The purpose of the US' Constitution's first amendment was not to protect people's "right" to pictures of naked chicks, but rather to protect their right to communicate ideas the government disapproved of. It's purpose is the free flow of ideas, not of pornography, nor of "art" for that matter.

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I remember watching the MythBusters a few years back when they where testing whether having your windows down or having your air conditioning on was better for fuel economy in your car. I immediately wanted it to result in better fuel economy to have the windows down, simply because I prefer to have the windows down to using the air con. I had no logical reason for this reaction, simply knowing would be better then I could make an informed decision, but instead I was automatically looking for reasons why the air con would be less efficient and the extra drag from the windows negligible.

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