Fans of Ben Goldacre may enjoy this update from danah boyd on the issue of fear-mongering over the Internet. It is all very impressive for politicians to crow about 90,000 sex offenders being removed from MySpace, but unless you understand the data you really don’t know whether that is good or bad or simply irrelevant.
Current Affairs
Court Rules DOMA Unconstitutional
Via Nicola, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional:
The denial of federal benefits to same-sex spouses cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or a desire to deprive same-sex spouses benefits available to other spouses in order to discourage exercising a legal right afforded them by the state
Copy Editor Needed
The Bay Area Reporter reveals that the court case over the validity of Proposition 8 will be heard on March 5th. It says:
The court will address whether Prop 8 was such a wholesome change to the state constitution that prior to being placed on the ballot it needed to be approved by two-third majorities in the state Legislature.
“Wholesome” Oh dear me, I think not.
Iceland Goes Lesbian
Having got fed up with a having their country run by a bunch of apparently arrogant and stupid men, Iceland is now to get a lesbian Prime Minister. This isn’t the result of an actual election, but rather of political wheeling and dealing in the aftermath of the collapse of the previous government. (The sort of thing that hyperactive Canadians call a “coup”.) However, congratulations are most definitely due to Johanna Sigurdardottir, who will doubtless strike terror into the hearts of religious fundamentalist leaders the world over for a few years.
Hat tip to Bob Hole who also pointed out that The Independent‘s headline was an absurd exaggeration.
Oh Dear, Bad Conservatives!
Very odd story from PZ Myers about Conservapædia apparently being offline after one regular contributor posted something that looked awfully like inciting people to murder Democratic senators. Dangerous things, these wikis. They can get you into all sorts of trouble.
The Government Will Sell Your Data
There’s a seriously scary report in today’s Independent. This is the important bit:
Under the proposals, ministers will be able to draw up new information-sharing orders that would allow them to release private data – such as tax returns, personal details or medical records – to any public or private body.
Yes, there are supposed to be safeguards, but how reliable are they going to be?
Attention Librarians (and their friends)
Over the weekend I blogged about a particularly daft piece of legislation that is liable to be used to keep kids out of libraries because they might get lead poisoning from books. Daft though it is, this is actually a serious issue. Neil has just tweeted a link to someone who has information as to how to get a grassroots campaign organized. So if you are a librarian, or you know one, please read this and get the world out.
It is a New World, Alright
From the new White House web site:
President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
There’s lots of other LGBT stuff there as well, including this:
President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Got votes, Congressman Frank?
Science and Politics
There is a particularly sad post on danah boyd’s blog today. Basically danah has run up against the problem that if the results of your research are deemed politically unacceptable you’ll be told to go back and do it again until you get the “right” answer.
I’m used to folks dismissing qualitative work because they don’t understand it, but I’ve never before witnessed so many people reject solid quantitative studies done by reputable organizations that are replicated with different sampling techniques across different studies. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect someone to say to me, “Go find other data.” More frequently, as if in a refrain, folks are trying to reject the studies in this report as “old” and “outdated” even though the report makes it clear that the findings paint a consistent portrait and unreleased data show similar patterns. It’s as if nothing would satiate critics who can’t imagine that the real dangers are different than have been portrayed over the years.
And what are these hideously unacceptable results? That the Internet does not, in fact, get kids into trouble, it just makes it easier for us to see that they are in trouble.
Go read the whole thing yourself. It is a salutary lesson in the way the world works.
Update: Gary Farber blogged about the report last week and nailed what’s going on pretty well.
New Excuse for Banning Books
Because they might contain dangerous levels of lead and be harmful to children, so until they have been tested and proven safe they must be kept out of reach of vulnerable kids.
It all sounds a little whacko, and I doubt that many CongressCritters actually intended this result, but it certainly gives plenty of ammunition to self-appointed protectors of public morality, which I am sure they will make use of until someone stops them.
Here’s the official American Libraries Association statement.
Yay for Europe!
Politicians are not always bad. Kudos is due to Thomas Hammarberg, the EU’s Commissioner for Human Rights, for this public statement released today. The key point is as follows:
There is no excuse for not immediately granting this community their full and unconditional human rights. Council of Europe Member States should take all necessary concrete action to ensure that transphobia is stopped and that transgender persons are no longer discriminated against in any field.
That’s nicely unequivocal.
(And to comply with the EU’s rather odd copyright policy: “Also available at the Commissioner’s website at www.commissioner.coe.int”)
Wedding Bells Again for Tories
A second shadow cabinet member has announced that he is to marry his boyfriend. Presumably this puts the Tories somewhat to the left of the Democrats.
Puritans Return to UK?
There was a rather worrying article in The Independent today about a new UK law that seeks to ban “extreme pornography”. On reading it my mind immediately jumped to issues such as the Christopher Handley case, and I started wondering whether my own comic collection might put me in line for 3 years in prison.
You can find the text of the actual law here. Thankfully it isn’t quite that bad. To start with, the images in question must be pornographic, which is defined as “must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.” The law also sensibly excludes films that have been passed fit for viewing by the censor. And I’m pleased to see that not knowing you possessed the images is a legitimate defense. No one wants to spend 3 years in jail because their laptop was found to contain porn images in spam attachments that they had wisely not opened.
On the other hand, the law is very vaguely worded, and past experience with such laws suggests that self-appointed guardians of public decency all over the UK will immediately start looking for ways in which they can use the law to make nuisances of themselves. In particular it is worth noting that this law makes it a crime merely to possess an image for your own private use. And I suspect that quite a bit of the risque end of anime would fall under the definition in the law. Christopher Handley would almost certainly be convicted under it, if he lived in the UK. [Update: Or maybe not, thank goodness – see Chaz’s comment below.] I suspect that Games Workshop will be looking very carefully at its product line, just in case.
Thank You, Jerry Brown
The Attorney General believes that all men (and women) are created equal, regardless of what religious fundamentalists might say.
The authors of the state Constitution, he said, did not intend “to put a group’s right to enjoy liberty to a popular vote.”
Quite. Not to mention pursuit of happiness.
LGBT at the UN
In a move guaranteed to annoy conservative Americans, the UN is discussing rights abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity. You can read a lot more about the process here, but the thing that really amused me reading it was discovering that there is an organization called the International Day Against Homophobia, or IDAHO for short. – snigger-
Getting Old
One of the lead news stories in the UK today is a report from the Office for National Statistics which highlights the degree to which the population is growing older. Based on current trends, a quarter of the UK’s population will be over 65 by 2032. The fastest growing age group is people over 85.
There are many consequences of this. A fairly obvious one is that the proportion of the population that is in work is falling. Retired people may still be acquiring wealth through investments, but someone still has to do the work on which those investments are based. Perhaps more seriously, while people may be living longer, they are not necessarily able to look after themselves. Dementia, as Terry Pratchett has highlighted, is a very serious problem.
On Sunday I was listening to a podcast that touched on health issues in the UK. Because the company that runs India’s railways is being broken up, the NHS is now probably the largest employer in the world. And health care workers are amongst the poorest paid people in the UK. This sounds very much like a train wreck we are heading into.
More on this story from The Guardian and the BBC. I was particularly struck by the BBC’s map which shows that old people are concentrated in rural areas where, of course, they are harder to look after.
San Diego – Please Report
Hello people – everyone OK down there?
Everyone else, here’s some video of a large, smoking hole that used to be some houses and an F-18 jet.
More Legal Ponderings
The publishing industry is abuzz about a blog post that appeared over the weekend asking whether it is right to read an illegal e-book of a work that is out of print. (Remember, neither the author or the publisher gets any money from the sale of second-hand books.) The post generated a huge number of comments, which I haven’t had time to read through, but quite a few seemed to be variations on this sentiment:
It’s not wrong, it’s only illegal, the two are not the same.
That’s not a healthy view for people to have of their society’s laws, but it is the sort of view you will get if you pass lots of laws that are seen as protecting vested interests or as forcing the views of a minority on the majority.
What Are They Thinking?
Reuters reports that the Australian government intends to remove knowledge of cricket from its citizenship test. Good grief! What sort of people are they planning to let into the country? Americans?
(Note to Aussie authorities: Mr. Obama won the election. You are not going to be swamped by disappointed Democrat supporters seeking political asylum. And the Republicans are not leaving, they are just holing up in bunkers in Montana.)
Avast, Pirates! Deploy The Sonic Laser!
No, seriously. A naval security firm is using a “precise beam of sound” as a weapon against Somali pirate attacks. And it is hooked up to an MP3 player as a source. The idea of repelling pirates with blasts of death metal is rather wonderful, although given the advertised effects of the weapon I don’t suppose the pirates will enjoy it much:
It’s very effective up to 1,000 metres and excruciating if you get within 100 to 200 metres if it’s at full power. It would give you more or less permanent hearing damage.
Urk!