User:Woozle

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I originally created Issuepedia as a way of dealing with the confusion (shall we say) I and a lot of other people felt after the 2004 presidential election. How could a man be so clearly dishonest and still get elected? Or were we the ones who were wrong, and he actually wasn't that bad?

Issuepedia's first project, then, was to collect information relating to George W. Bush, his past performance, his views, the views of his party, the issues upon which I and my friends are at odds with his party, and so on. If we were right, this would make it clear to his supporters just what he was supporting. If we were wrong, it would become clear as the facts accumulated. This methodology could then be used to help resolve (or at least understand) all kinds of contentious issues.

The methodology seems to work quite well; the main problem has been a lack of interest from anyone else. As such, it is still of use to me, as it serves as a filing place for facts and cross-references which I otherwise would be unable to remember, thus making it possible for me to have a reasonable grasp on the issues I've been studying. Hopefully others will soon see the value of it. I have ideas for publicity campaigns ("Issuepedia: no more sound bites"), and will get around to working on that eventually.

My central home page is on The Hypertwins Wiki. Visit early and often. ^_^

Questions

  • 2006-12-21 Does anyone have any information about the demonstrations OSC mentions here? If they actually took place as described, then they're dispicable – but we heard much the same about Vietnam soldiers being spat at, and my understanding is that that was later revealed to be propaganda and not something that actually happened. ("The anti-war sentiments gave reason to those that believed returning soldiers were 'spat on' or otherwise abused." is all I can find in Wikipedia.)
    • The documentary "Sir! No Sir! [W]" examines the anti-war activites of American GIs during the Vietnam war period, has an interview where the spitting on GIs at airports is repudiated as fabrication. The person being interviewed had done research and published a book or article on exactly this topic. What worries me about Orson Scott Card's article regarding the egg throwing is that he has not talked to the family directly rather someone (the soldier on the plane) who knows someone (the brother of the soldier that died). Nor does he supplies the names of the soldiers, so fact checking could be done. It more diligence on his part would confirm these events. Jsrrts 17:43, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Writings

(aside from 99+% of the contents of this site...)

Continuously updated pages:

Dated items:

comments

  • The John Locke Foundation blog apparently provides no way of finding out when your comments are responded to (short of opening a new RSS feed for each entry) and no way to keep track of all the comments you've made, so here are all the JLF blog entries I've commented on:
    • 2008-03-30 Why I don’t trust the Obama candidacy: the right-wing phantom attack on Obama, part 2 (much discussion)
    • 2008-03-29 The chickens have indeed come home to roost: the right-wing phantom attack on Obama, part 1
    • 2008-03-28 Religion of Peace strikes again: about Fitna being removed from LiveLeak
    • 2008-03-21 No conservatives in network TV: Jon Ham tries to claim there are no conservatives on network TV; I point out that this is total BS. Ham changes the definition of "network" to nullify my answer, and I again point out that this is total BS, and get in a dig about media consolidation.
    • 2008-03-20 It gets better and better: head-to-head against global warming denial, albeit rather diplomatically
    • 2008-03-19
      • Pigs fly: Jon Ham comments on the upholding of a Michigan law "prohibiting race and gender preferences in government hiring and public university admissions"; I reply approvingly. I hope I'm not overstating the case against "Affirmative Action", but really I've never come across a good argument for it. Sure, even now you have poor black people -- so discriminate on the basis of past income or something, not on race or gender; otherwise people assume "minorities" in a given job may be less competent than non-minorities, perpetuating the ghettoization (aka glass ceiling) which we're trying to get rid of. (I remember hearing/reading that Nixon actually came up with Affirmative Action as a kind of early version of Culture War, but I haven't found any confirming sources for this.)
      • It just keeps getting better: Jon Ham crows over the finding that compact fluorescent bulbs may be bad for the ecology due to the mercury they contain. I wonder aloud what ever happened to the Office of Technology Assessment.
    • 2008-03-10 Chicken coops in Trinity Park?: author writes against the idea of keeping chickens in suburbia, and in favor of making it illegal; I ask how this is consistent with "my propery, my rules". (posted 2008-03-16; no response as of 2009-03-19)
    • 2008-03-06 So much for "Big Brother": author complains about "lefties" complaining about surveillance; I bring up The Transparent Society and mention life documenting; another commenter comes back with Clarke/Baxter's The Light of Other Days. Another poster comments that currently nobody can be dragged off to Gitmo but predicts this will change if Hillary Clinton takes office; this gives me an opening to say something about Bush's elevation of presidential power in a positive way. (I ask incidentally if anyone can explain why conservatives hate Hillary.)
    • 2008-02-26 Clever civil disobedience: tentatively agreeing that selective bans on smoking aren't a good way to solve the problem but pointing out that conservatives endorse the war on drugs using much the same reasoning; much dialogue ensued
    • 2008-02-21
      • More of Messiah’s borrowed rhetoric: Ham is really starting to get to me with this whole "empty Barack" thing; I hope I didn't get too snarky in my response. But I mean, really -- get a life, Jon. Oh, wait, you have a life, don't you -- writing blog entries to reinforce the JLF's party line. Sorry, forgot! That must be the "be happy" part; what do you do for the "work hard" bit?
      • McCain’s press conference: The New York Times publishes a piece mentioning the possibility that a rumored affair might have a negative impact on the voters in McCain's support base (i.e. conservatives who love to jump all over that sort of thing); this is BIG NEWS, because it means the liberal media is being hypocritical. Again, the phrase "get a life" comes to mind -- leading again to the same thought about what these people do for a living.
    • 2008-02-19 Line of the day: author picks up on the whole Obama "line stealing" thing; I point out that he "stole" the line at the suggestion of its author, and ask just what this proves anyway; author says it proves that Obama is an empty shell. I ask what evidence of substantiality the author might accept.
    • 2008-02-18 Trial lawyers and terrorism: author identifies "trial lawyers" as a special interest group to which the Democrats are kowtowing, which explains why they don't want to give the telcoms immunity for cooperating with Bush's illegal wiretaps
    • 2008-02-12 Alamance school board wants ‘04 school calendar law repealed: author Donna Martinez seems to feel that the 2004 calendar law was a win for "the coastal tourism lobby" at the expense of education. I belatedly disagree. (posted 2008-03-19)
    • 2008-01-17 Liberals hate more, says survey: author changes meaning of the word "hate" and uses it to condemn liberal hypocrisy. (I belatedly commented on 2008-03-12, after finally figuring out the distortion.)
    • 2008-01-04 It can’t happen here... or could it?: author comments on the growing tide of Islamofascism in Europe, and suggests that someone needs to write an update of Churchill's While England Slept; I suggest Bawer's While Europe Slept, belatedly followed by some Pat Condell videos and then pointing out that the author is standing up for civil rights, which I thought was lately a discredited concept in conservative circles. Darn it, I should have also pointed out that both Lionheart and Condell are - gasp - dissenting (against the government, no less)! ...makes one wonder how "liberals" and "conservatives" can be so opposed to each other's views when we keep standing up for the same principles.
      • other, more sarcastic retorts: (1) Aren't you going to ask Lionheart and Condell why they hate their country so much? (2) Haul 'em both off to gitmo! They want England to lose!
      • Seriously, though, I think this may reveal how "liberals" and "conservatives" perceive these issues differently. Further conversation on this topic could be useful. Why is it ok for an Englishman to criticize his government, but not ok for an American to criticize the American government? Is it a case of America just being always right while England is one of those lesser, "other" countries? (Can the conservative even see how this won't work as a global philosophy?) Or is it because the Englishman is objecting to an external threat (Islamofascism), while the American's complaint is more subtle ("the Islamofascists are a problem, but the real problem is our own government which is handling the situation badly and making the external problem worse!")? How does the conservative see the dichotomy here?
    • 2008-01-03 Sometimes the press really IS the enemy: the old "dissent is making us lose" meme... I couldn't let that pass uncommented. In case it gets deleted, a copy is here.
    • 2008-01-01 Is Al Gore visiting N.H.?: I decided not to post this (I think I'll try to turn it into a Buzz Clearcut piece):
      • Right. Some places in the world are having record cold winters, so that *proves* global warming is a load of hooey. And don't let those wacky liberal coneheads try to sell you any baloney about "regional deviations from the mean", either. They're just a bunch of sore losers who can't be bothered to look outside the hermetically-sealed windows in their ivory towers and notice that winter has, in fact, arrived on schedule, despite the heat-retaining effect of Al's jet trips and the hot air from his ceaseless campaigning against the few remaining pieces of domestic industrial productivity that once made our country great. (Hey, it's practically an endangered species -- can we get a ruling from the EPA on this?)
    • 2007-12-31 Giving even lefty lawyers a bad name: author shoots fish in a barrel and calls them lefties; also criticizes liberal blogs for their intolerance of the "diversity" of the New York Times hiring neocon mouthpiece Bill Kristol.
    • 2007-12-28 Obama thinks I’m qualified to be president: author takes weak, overstated potshot at Barack Obama; I don't really care, but take the opportunity to make some points about corruption of the political process (and a much-too-diplomatic pot-shot back at GWB)
    • 2007-12-21 Four N.C. Democrats vote against war funding: it's completely not clear whether the author is for or against the war; I tried to make my position clear while agreeing with the underlying accusation of corruption.
    • 2007-12-06 Talk about scary times, these ain’t it
    • 2007-12-05 Walter Cronkite
    • 2007-12-02 To the Left, “power grab” means “reform”
    • 2007-12-01 Inmates have taken over the asylum, part whatever
    • 2007-11-21 Barbarians (posted reply as Buzz Clearcut)

notes

  • Darwin's Dangerous Idea: eventually to be organized into critique page
  • /2007-07-03 chat on the subject of why atheists might avoid trying to de-theize their friends
  • At its best, religion seems to provide a shield against cynicism. This seems to be the real reason why any intelligent people become religious at all; they care about other people, so they want to be "good", and in their experience only religion offers any guidance on that topic. This seems worth an essay, or at least some discussion inside an existing essay.

Petitions I've Signed

(a partial list)

Dialogues

John Locke posting

  • response to Barbarians (2007-11-21) and the one other reply

Yes, the culture is barbaric and there are barbarians who help maintain the status quo, and we owe it to ourselves (and to all civilization) to stop it.

What I’m wondering is whether the use of torture isn’t doing more harm than good towards that end.

My admittedly limited reading on the subject has found little or no evidence that torture has a high rate of success at extracting accurate information, and runs considerable risk of obtaining information that is just plausible enough to convince the HWT (hydrated washcloth technician) and yet remains, somehow, inaccurate and hence useless — a senseless waste of a perfectly good washcloth.

Intuitively, as well, it would seem obvious that if a certain percentage of wet washcloth encounters involve a person who is not in fact in possession of the needed information, the sheer agony of non-consensual facial cleanliness might be sufficient to inspire — shocking though it may seem — a momentary, unthinking lapse into falsehood. I know, it seems difficult to imagine that even hardened jihadis fully deserving of a complete rubdown and massage-with-facial — never mind a little washcloth action — could stoop to such depths, but these are of course terrorists we are dealing with… and we know how they are.

But seriously… where might I find more data on torture effectiveness? If nothing else, we should be sure that America uses only the very best, proven and state-of-the-art interrogation techniques. It wouldn’t do for our position as leaders of the free world, the beacon of liberty and justice, to be seen using outdated or ineffective methods for anything, much less the time-honored discipline of hurting people to get information. If we can’t even get *that* right, surely we deserve to lose. (And don’t let any of those wacko liberals try to tell you that there are better ways of getting information. I don’t care how “accurate” the data you might get by any namby-pamby alternatives; there is simply nothing as satisfying as information you get after hearing someone scream for mercy. …oh wait, did I say that out loud? Sorry, I sometimes say things I hear everyone thinking.)

Buzz Clearcut

I was going to refer to torture as "AMPKR (aversion-motivated personal knowledge research)", but decided it would be lost on the audience... even if the rest of it isn't also lost. The blog post was regarding this article: Husband of Saudi gang-rape victim: “You could say she’s a crushed human being”, about a Saudi Arabian woman who was sentenced to 90 lashes for being the victim of a gang-rape, and then threatened with having that raised to 200 lashes for complaining. I found it admirable that the blog author called this barbarous, but ironic that this is much the same behavior exhibited by the Right here in the US whenever anyone disagrees with them (dissent is treason, and traitors should be shot!). I didn't want to assume the blog author agreed with the Right on that particular topic, so I didn't address it. You have to wonder how anyone can criticize this sort of thing and still proudly call themselves right-wing.

Notes to Myself

  • Need to write: war on the extended family
  • This is bound to be related to something.
  • Critique Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization (again); use this as a model for format.
  • Finish this
  • Make The Authoritarians Google Group page and add these links: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] (possibly condensed if there is overlap)
  • File this somewhere: Run for President of the US
  • Respond to: Sermon for Matins: 'Dawkins and The God Delusion' by Dr Nicholas Sagovsky, Westminster Abbey
  • Need to respond to this
  • For transparency article: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Brandeis
  • Interesting quote from Jimmy Wales: "...one of the interesting things about Wikipedia is that people assume ... particularly on controversial topics that the big debates within the Wikipedia community would be somehow roughly the party of the left versus the party of the right. It turns out on those types of topics it's actually the party of the thoughtful and reasonable people and the party of the jerks. And those aren't left or right, they can come from all sides." [8]
  • Need to write a backgrounder article on how web sites always had the potential to allow cross-referencing of news articles and thus to become more like a library, how news web sites (e.g. CNN, Slashdot) fail to use this potential, and how wiki sites enable it. article arguing that wiki is superior to the e-forum model
  • Perhaps a page on lessons to learn from history, starting with how Hitler rose to power in a Democratic country even though his party were very much in the minority
  • http://www.davidbrin.com/neocons.html has a number of opinions on other issues regarding which I didn't happen to be working on pages at the time I was reading it, but which should later be mined (yes, I use a lot of Brin quotes and links on this site -- because he's one of the few really rich sources of cogent arguments I've been able to find, on either side of the political spectrum -- though I do plan to pay Orson Scott Card (and The Ornery American) a visit, when time permits.)
  • A KDE developer joins the US military: http://funkyshizzle.com/?q=node/114 (dead link)
  • Notes for eventual essay related to affordable housing and the real estate industry:
    • The real estate loan industry is basically an arms race – or a Sneetch-race, to be more light-hearted about it.
    • The home buyers are the Sneetches, and the bankers are Sylvester McMonkey McBean.
    • Everyone wants to buy a better house than they can afford, and Sylvester makes it possible.
    • The resulting competition for a scarce resource (housing) drives up the price far past its intrinsic value, and gives developers incentives to buy up more and more undeveloped land... thus driving up value of neighboring land or land in "desirable" areas, thus driving up property taxes for the remaining undeveloped land, thus making it less and less affordable to own undeveloped land, thus making it easier for the developers to build more and more overpriced housing.
    • Sylvester drives away with a load of cash, and homeowners are left in debt for the rest of their natural lives.

Morality Quiz Notes

A deadly natural disaster (hurricane, tsunami, whatever) is about to strike. A man goes swimming in the ocean, despite all warnings to leave town and especially to stay away from the water. He is arrested by the police. Is this right, or wrong? (Source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007328)

Same natural disaster. A teenage boy steals a bus, picks up refugees, and drives them to safety. He is arrested. Is this right or wrong? What should the boy have done? What should the police have done?

...I wanted to have a scenario involving missionaries, but I find it difficult to phrase in a neutral-ish way since the concept of missionarying bothers me all by itself.

2007-02-25 update: Although I came up with those questions independently (in 2005 or 06), they are very similar to the questions used in the surveys described in The Authoritarians.

Links to File

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