Society

I define a society generally as a set of values and rules for people.

What makes societies different than other associations is that membership is not entirely optional -- a person who lives in a village is part of the society of the village just by being there. If that person breaks the rules he will be punished or exiled. The historically accepted way to opt-out of a society is to impose exile on oneself and leave. If a person stays then he or she will be held accountable to the society's values and rules.

I think the sharp difference between society and slavery is that a society will allow a person to leave whereas slavery does not.

In our society we value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In our society we value a person's freedom of movement, but we don't guarantee it.

In our society we generally like to shelter people who are escaping other societies that oppress them. However, we need to be clear about one thing:  we can only give asylum to people whose values are compatible with our own society. Anyone else who seeks shelter here must be denied.

A concrete example of this is a person who is known to have criminally murdered someone in another country and has escaped that country's authorities by entering the United States. Forget what you know about international treaties and so on for now. Can we give asylum to this person?

Let's assume the criminal murder is a known fact and not just alleged nor was it self-defense etc. We know the person has murdered someone and we know that our first value is life. Therefore this person's values are not compatible with our own. We have only two according options: to refuse asylum and force the person to leave the country, or to punish the person as if the crime was committed in our own society. The first option, to refuse asylum, will likely be appreciated by the society from whence the person escaped because they will likely take the opportunity to catch him and punish him. The second option may be appreciated by the other society if our punishment for this person is the same as theirs. However, if our punishment is different than theirs, or if they simply want the satisfaction of punishing the person themselves, our choice to keep and punish the person can cause tension between our society and the other society.

What if the criminal murder is not a known fact? It may not have been criminal, or it may not have happened at all. If, other than the alleged murder, the person's values are compatible with our society, we  have two according options: to value the person's life and let him stay without punishment, or to refuse asylum.

Immigration Lines of Defense

An illegal immigrant could be a good person, or a criminal, or worse - an enemy.

Good people generally are willing to jump through the legal hoops to enter the country but sometimes the red tape takes too long and they really need to escape whatever situation they're in so they enter illegally. But even then I think they can ask for asylum if their trouble is political and then they'll be allowed to stay. 

A criminal typically crosses the border to escape the authorities in another country or to smuggle things into this country. I don't think anyone has a moral problem with catching and deporting criminals who are here illegally.

An enemy typically crosses the border in order to attack the United States. Some of our enemies have entered legally in the past so that's frustrating but some of them have entered illegally. I don't think anyone has a moral problem with catching enemies of the United States.  No one can agree on what to do with them once they are caught, though.  Should they be imprisoned? Deported? Executed? 

If we can agree that we should at least try to catch illegal immigrants so we can decide what to do with them, instead of letting them run free and possibly causing havoc in our country...

Then our first line of defense is the national border. The international terminal at some airports is part of our national border. 

Our second line of defense is business. Businesses that check the identity of their customers restrict the movement of illegal immigrants.

I'm not saying that every business must check the identity of its customers.  I am saying that checking the identity of customers has benefits. 

And I think it's ridiculous that California has a law that prohibits landlords from checking the immigration status of their tenants (or applicants).  Is the point of that law to prevent discrimination?  Oops!  

That law actually provides freedom to illegal immigrants while restricting the freedom of citizens. In California, an illegal immigrant could actually use the legal system to sue a landlord and win.  Do you understand what I'm saying?  They don't get deported!  Our government allows them to be here and to participate! 

Of course we still have the famous Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that selectively applies the immigration laws.  Well, they claim they apply the immigration laws uniformly but obviously there is a huge discord in our intentions when other branches or levels of government ignore the same laws.  

I think that if the United States has a law, then it must be integrated into everything we do. If only certain people are allowed to be here, and that's a federal law, then citizens ought to be allowed to ask each other for identification. I'm not saying to require it, as that would be a burden on those who don't care. And I'm not saying to require reporting it, although that could be another law. 

A little analogy. We have a law that minors are not allowed to drink alcohol -- what if the government prohibited people from asking each other's age before serving alcohol, and created a government agency specifically for the purpose of preventing under-age drinking, which frequents elementary schools and churches but ignores the rest of the country?? 

Stolen Valor Act

I just read a disturbing article at military.com, saying that two men who were convicted of lying about military awards (they were never in the military and one said publicly he is an ex-Marine and got the Medal of Honor) are appealing on the grounds of free speech...


It says "Neither man has been accused by prosecutors of seeking financial gain for himself." and then it says "One of the men... had just been elected... when he said at a public meeting that he was a retired Marine who received the Medal of Honor" We must assume that every lie that is told DOES have a financial benefit. Lying about being a war hero at a public meeting might increase his influence over the people present. Without the lie, that increased influence would have cost him something... more time and possibly more money spent trying to acquire it. How do we know he wasn't lying all along to people who elected him? We don't, and since he's a proven liar, we must assume that he got elected with the help of his lies. Without the lies, getting elected would have cost him more... time and money.  


We need to keep the Stolen Valor Act. The amendment for free speech was intended to protect people's right to protest the government peacefully - it was never intended for protecting people's right to fame and benefits they don't deserve.


Bragging of fake medals hurts people the same way as writing bad checks... It's basically counterfeit honor. These posers are defrauding people who are looking for the real thing. It doesn't need to be financial in order to be wrong!! Think of the girl who would fall in love with a hero but falls for a lying scumbag instead. Ooops!! He didn't ask her for money so no harm done, right? But what amount would he have needed to spend on a hooker if he wasn't free to lie about his status?  


Bragging about fake medals is wrong the same way that lying about your grades in a college application is wrong. But for some reason, we think it's ok for colleges to verify grades. When colleges find out a man is a lying scumbag their punishment is to not admit him (or expel him if they find out later). When society finds out he's a lying scumbag, it's too late because he's already in, and we have an ongoing aversion to expelling undesirable people from society so we need to have a different punishment. I think community service and fines is just fine.  


An abundance of counterfeits forces people with the real thing to spend more time and money proving they are legitimate (see other comments about VA process that are spot-on). So these posers ARE hurting the real winners of honors and they're also hurting everyone who believes their lies. A punishment is deserved. Lying about military honors must NOT be protected speech, just like lying about being a police officer isn't protected speech.


It's so infuriating to consider even the possibility that some judge would rule that the First Amendment protects these posers.


We have the Constitution and the Amendments because of the Army that George Washington led. The same man also served in a civil capacity as our first president. Does anyone think that if this issue were raised during Washington's presidency it would have even a snowball's chance of being protected as free speech? Hell no!! 


The First Amendment doesn't protect these posers, just like the Second Amendment doesn't protect people convicted of violent crimes. These rights are to protect people from oppression by the government, not to protect criminals from justice.

Humanity loses again: HTML 5 chosen over XHTML 2.0

The W3C let the XHTML 2.0 charter expire on 31 Dec 2009.

This is bad, because XHTML 2 is better organized than HTML 5.  Everything neat that HTML 5 can do could also be done in XHTML 2... on the other hand, HTML 5 includes some big gaffes like reserved style sheet class names (like .copyright, in contrast with the special pseudo-classes like :first), and HTML 5 keeps bad tags around like font and italics, even though these are better represented as style sheets - either inline or separated.

Xhtml.doc nicely summarizes some pros/cons.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger

I'm not homosexual but I do believe that any two or more adults living together should get the same tax benefits or penalties as do married couples. I believe that marriage should be controlled by churches, not governments. I also believe that since church membership is optional, churches should be free to discriminate against anyone; governments should not. When our government upholds laws that enforce the values of a specific religious sect over non-members it is toppling a pillar of our country's foundation. I'm very interested in watching this trial to see the case against the separation of church and state, because like other modern Americans I love to be disgusted. So I signed the petition to televise the trial.

Apple's Hidden Scam

Here is the ugly truth about how Apple scams iPhone/iPod application developers who publish on the App Store:

First, Apple keeps 30% of the gross sales price.

Second, Apple keeps the other 70% of the gross sales price.

That's right - they don't actually forward the 70% to the developer. Here's what they do:

Apple divides the world into 7 regions:  United States, Canada, Europe, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia & New Zealand, and "the rest".  Each region corresponds to a currency:  USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUS, and USD for "the rest".

Apple keeps the developer's 70% until the developer has accumulated $150 in profits PER REGION/CURRENCY.   So having posted an app, the developer can earn up to $1050 in profits before receiving a single cent from Apple.  Some profits may never be paid if they don't reach $150 in a region/currency.

In a world of small transactions, this is just not acceptable. Doesn't $150 seem high? Do you think it might be to limit Apple's transaction costs?  It's not because they can convert currencies in bulk from each region since they have many many developers selling all over the world and overall they are converting a lot more than $150 each month.  But wait, Apple is already taking a 30% cut of the gross sales - they need to pay for that expenses out of their greedy 30%, not by holding on to the developer's 70%.  PayPal, Amazon, and others have already demonstrated they can be profitable by taking a cut of less than 5% and this includes currency conversion fees. They don't have a monopoly on their platform (Internet payments) and that's why they can't charge 30%.  But I'm not railing here against Apple's high-but-tolerable 30%  - I'm railing against Apple holding on to the other 70% too.

The $150 hold per region/currency, that could add up to $1050 of withheld funds is also high compared to a $99 annual developer license fee that Apple collects from developers for the privilege of selling their applications on the App Store.

Opposite Conclusion

I read this quote today, regarding President Obama's decision to deploy MORE troops to Afghanistan (he did promise to get us out of there when he was elected):

"On the other hand, a president facing re-election who pulls the plug on a failing war is going to find himself charged with being an ineffective commander-in-chief."

That is so completely wrong.  ANY president who pulls us out of Afghanistan and Iraq RIGHT NOW is going to be celebrated because those wars are wasting our time, money, reputation, and most of all the invaluable lives of our soldiers.

Re-election should have nothing to do with such an important decision. Any president who puts his career before our nation should be impeached. Even the lowest-ranking soldier in our military puts the nation above his own welfare - we must expect the same selfless service from the commander-in-chief.

Selfless decisions are more likely to lead to better results anyway, and don't better results get politicians re-elected? I don't know. I think they should, but that requires a majority of us to understand what better is.