A Curious Statistical Anomaly

There are times when good ideas should just be left alone. When you try to implement that idea, especially into law, it often becomes a bad idea. For example: check out the proposed law that South Carolina is considering. Here’s a short snip:

SECTION 1. Article 3, Chapter 15, Title 16 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
“Section 16-15-370.
(A) It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.
(B) A person who violates the provisions of this section is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than five thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

SECTION 2. Article 3, Chapter 15, Title 16 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
“Section 16-15-430. (A) It is unlawful for a person to disseminate profanity to a minor if he wilfully and knowingly publishes orally or in writing, exhibits, or otherwise makes available material containing words, language, or actions of profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.

I can almost hear some legislator thinking to himself. People swear too much and we need to force them to clean up their act. But, look at the link to the law or just the snippet I’ve posted above. Now think about it — because obviously the legislature hasn’t…

Evidently, South Carolina hasn’t realized that once this law passes there goes TV, or at least every channel except the Disney and the Family channels and even some of those programs won’t pass this test. Of course profanity is in the mind of the hearer, so with laws you have to think of the worse case scenario. That means no TV or movies (theaters wouldn’t be able to show any current films). Even one of my faves Quigley Down Under has one swear word in it. You’d have to close all those DVD rental places because they distribute and disseminate profanity.

Then of course libraries would have to cull all those books — like the dictionary — which “make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.” Not going to be much left to read in South Carolina after this bill goes into effect (IF it passes).

Then there’s the problem of what the bill doesn’t cover. If parents buy a film “containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature” and their children see it. Could they be charged? Sounds to me like they could. Golly gosh, sit down to watch Lethal Weapon (minor language) or Beverly Hills Cop (wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap language) and little Billy gets up for a drink of water,  hears something he shouldn’t, and before you know it Mom and Dad get raided and Billy is in foster care. After Mom and Day pay fines and do their jail time, is anyone better off? I doubt it.

Heck under this law you couldn’t even have a copy of the Bible now that I think a bit more about it. Have you ever read some of the sexier parts of Psalms? Woo. Hoo. There’s some hot stuff in there. Now that I think of it — yup, the Bible has to go.

So, what started as a good idea to get people to clean up their language and keep smut out of the state will have ramifications that I bet never occurred to the writers of this proposed change to the law. At least, I’m giving them the benefit of a doubt when I say they couldn’t have thought about the implementation and consequences. But then maybe they did plan for the big excitement for the population of the state would be getting to watch paint dry — they certainly won’t be able to watch TV, read books, watch movies, or use the internet.

I’m really, really, glad I don’t live in South Carolina. Too bad too because it always sounded like a nice place to visit and I had it on my TODO list but guess I can scratch that one off — I enjoy movies, books, and — well I have been known to utter a few words I shouldn’t once in a while…

This is another one of those cases where someone has decided to legislate morality, and that’s always a mission fraught with disaster. First of all, laws should never be passed if you can’t define your terms. What is “profanity”? Aside from George Carlin’s 7 dirty words, there are a wide host of words that some people believe to be profanity, and others do not. Who gets to decide? Same thing goes for vulgar, lewd, lascivious, and indecent. Is a woman in a short skirt sexy, or lewd? Is a wink flirty, or lascivious? Is a woman breast-feeding her child a natural act, or an indecent one?

The Supreme Court once ruled that there was no way to define profanity, and that legislatures would need to tread very carefully.  In the last few years there have been several laws passed to “protect the children”. Every last one of them has been struck down for pretty much the same reason: Protect the children and you deny the adults their constitutional rights to free speech. About the best anyone has come up with are strange compromises like certain things can only be shown late at night, or only on pay channels, although what these “things” are tends to very from location to location, and year to year. But in every case the freedom of speech must be maintained. This law throws the First Amendment right out the door, which is what the courts will have to do with this law, assuming South Carolina suffers from terminal ignorance of the law and actually passes it.

Who was Emperor Norton? Well Wikipedia says:

Joshua Abraham Norton (c. 1819[2] – January 8, 1880), the self-proclaimed His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, was a celebrated citizen of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself “Emperor of these United States” and “Protector of Mexico.” …Although he had no political power, and his influence extended only so far as he was humored by those around him, he was treated deferentially in San Francisco, and currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.

He captured the imagination and thus has been mentioned in many literary works. You can find a list of books that reference the Emperor at http://www.knauer.org/mike/discordia/norton.php. The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco also has a piece on Emperor Norton.

His legend continues to this day as he is remembered far and wide. Personally, I’d never heard of Emperor Norton until The World Science Fiction Convention was held in San Francisco. Emperor Norton was the Ghost of Honor at the convention. They had someone dressed up as him and in character throughout the convention.

This of course made me curious about the man who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and I looked him up. I really don’t know if he was insane or one of those people who just manage to find the right insanity to let them live the life they wanted. When he died, 30,000 people attended his funeral/viewing. He’s been written about usually as a minor character in several books that take place in San Francisco that I’ve read over the last couple of years.

He lives on in the imagination and history of San Francisco and the country. I think he endures because he was one of those rather harmless cranks who spoke his mind and probably said or did things that everyone wished they could do but didn’t/couldn’t. He filled a need for the people of his time and he fills a place in our hearts — you know that place that secretly enjoys a good con as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.

It’s fitting as we come up on January 20th when we (the United States) inaugurate a new president, to remember our only Emperor — Emperor Joshua Norton, may he live in our imaginations and our hearts.

I read today a short quote from Oscar Wilde:

, “A school should be the most beautiful place in every town and village – so beautiful that the punishments for undutiful children should be that they should be debarred from going to school the following day.”

I checked to see that he’d said it and found the quote listed in “The Schooldays of Oscar Wilde”
by David Robertson, Portora Archivist. It seems Oscar Wilde’s school didn’t live up to his belief that schools should be beautiful.

I went to school in the usual picture book schoolhouse — looking a bit like you’d expect a church to look actually. It was a small school with grades kindergarten through sixth grade. Then it was on to junior high (the first year in that school) and then high school (the last class to graduate from that building).

I was an okay student. Looking back I believe I could have been a much better student but I was more interested in learning in general than in learning just what was taught. If I found something interesting in an assignment, I was likely to go to the library or to our set of encyclopedias and look up more information and read on that topic until my interest got caught by something else. So, homework got a lick and a promise, but luckily in such small school I was still a A-B student.

Then came college. That’s when lots of things changed. You see I thought that college was the time to explore, learn, expand my horizons, and check out new areas of study. It took nearly flunking out to make me realize that that’s not what colleges are for. College is to polish the edges of what you already know and add depth to the knowledge that you already have. Taking a subject you know nothing about and studying like crazy and ending up knowing a lot but not as much as the students who came into it already knowing the basics and building on that knowledge usually left you at the C or D level, and that’s not how you graduate. So, eventually, I learned that college was not for learning and settled down to polish my edges and got a degree. I even did most of the studying for a MS before I decided I just couldn’t take the politics and rules for rules sake that made little to no sense to me.

However, looking at school now and talking to teens and younger children — schools are prisons now. There’s guards and police officers. In some schools students go through metal scanners similar to the ones in airports. Their belongings can be searched at any time. Some schools have won cases in court and banned students or punished them for things they did outside of school hours and off school grounds. With budget cuts and a worsening economy text books are getting older and older and more out of date. The buildings are decaying. Many classes are held in trailers set up next to the schools.

I honestly can’t think of an environment that is less likely to encourage learning. Then you add in the unfunded No Child Left Behind which translates into you will learn to pass the tests because we can’t do anything else with our budget. The bullying that children suffer from, that teachers can and will do nothing about — because Zero Tolerance means the victim is victimized twice, once by the bully and again by getting the same punishment as the bully if it’s reported. Zero Tolerance means that the letter not the spirit of all the rules is followed and that lowers students respect for and belief in fairness, justice, and authority.

Schools now-a-days seem more about not offending anyone anywhere rather than teaching facts, skills, logic, science, and how-to find out about a topic. To me it is a wonder that anyone learns anything in schools now-a-days and from some of the studies that show up showing that most American’s think the Sun goes around the Earth, that can’t name the states of the US (or even half of them), and can’t find countries on a labeled map. [Hyperion: Or my own pet peeve: That still think global warming and/or evolution are hoaxes.]

Our schools need help and we need to encourage learning. Schools are not supposed to be just places where sports occur at regular intervals with pep rallies. Schools are supposed to be where learning occurs. Where students open their minds to learn about new ideas, new thoughts, and new ways of putting those ideas and thoughts together to form hypotheses, and to gain skills to help them find jobs and work that will be satisfying to them.

Schools should be beautiful places of learning, knowledge, and exciting ideas. Punishment should be denying us the ability to attend schools. Of course, right now your economic ability to pay impacts your ability to attend school more than any other factor. Education should rest on ability to learn not ability to pay.

Just some thoughts…

Here it is days after the elections and I’m still wondering….why? Why do so many people want to take away a fundamental right from others? I’ve heard that allowing same-sex marriages takes away from the sanctity of marriage. I’ve truly pondered that one for a long, long time and I don’t get it. What does anyone else’s marriage have to do with mine? Sorry, but what other people do in their marriage hasn’t got anything to do with me. My marriage is strong enough to take the fact that half the marriages in the U.S. end in divorce — we’re still okay.

So, when I got a link to Keith Olbermann speaking about Prop 8 in California. I listened and I realized that he’s asking the same questions that I’ve been asking since the issue became a major one several years ago. Only Mr. Olbermann is far more eloquent than I’ve been.

Please listen and think about what he’s saying. And if anyone can tell me why gays marrying in any way can effect their marriage I’d like to know — because I still don’t get it.

Well, it’s been a wonderful day for me. I stayed up last night until after Obama gave his speech. I thought it was extremely well said — spurring the nation on to the work that must be done over the next several years. McCain’s concession speech was also very well done — I think if the tone and sentiments of that speech had been the same throughout his campaign there might have been a different result last night. But I’m happy with the results we got.

On another note, I haven’t done a knitting post in ages and ages. I’ve got about four projects just sitting in their corners waving their needles and whining piteously when I walk by. I really got to get some time to sit and knit. But since I haven’t I’ve been feeling a bit at loose ends. My wonderful husband reads online comics and this evening had me read Questionable Content, it was a knitting related comic today.

I’m trying to imagine a nine-dimensional hypercardigan — hmmm. If one of those dimensions is time does that mean you could wear it from the moment you cast on or from the moment you think of casting on instead of waiting until it’s finished. It made me giggle anyway so thought I’d share.

I’m also coming down with something. I haven’t got it but I’m on the edge of getting it — cold or flu or something. I’ve got this wimpy cough — sort of a cross between a polite throat cleaing and a hack. It sounds so fake it bugs me but I can’t help doing it. Got a big jug of orange juice and some tea with echinacea. I’m hoping to get over this whatever sooner rather than after it gets worse. This will teach me to skip getting my flu shot

Well, finally the campaigning is over and it has been one of the longest bitterest campaigns I’ve seen in my lifetime. Towards the end, well, lets just say the Republican candidates were getting ridiculously negative. About they only thing they didn’t claim is that Obama’s mother wore army boots and his dog was ugly — otherwise they hit just about every innuendo and near-slanderous remark they could. What were they thinking? Nothing evidently, because the lower they sunk the lower their numbers got and they still didn’t catch a clue.

I voted early this afternoon. I don’t know how it is going to turn out and I’m following the early returns but I figure we won’t know anything until tomorrow sometime. This election has so much riding on it. Our country’s economy is in the toilet. We’re in a war we never should have started. We have no moral high-ground left after all that our current administration has done. Our constitution has been filled with bullet holes from the present administration and Congress couldn’t find a spine if they all chipped in to make one from what is left of their backbones. We need some change and we need some hope that the next leader of the country will work to bring that positive change to our problems. We also need to mend fences with our allies and with the world.

Tomorrow will tell us — who the people of this country chose to make move us forward. The choices were pretty clear — someone with a new vision or someone who wanted to continue with the policies that got us into this mess. I’m hoping for the guy with the funny name because the maverick certainly has never done anything to deserve that nickname.

As I was deleting my spam today — well yesterday and the day before too. I got to thinking about the spammer that finally got arrested and went to trial in Virginia. They let him go because the judge didn’t think it was fair, the law was too broad, and so on and so on. Well, as I’ve been clearing out the spam not caught by my filters — usually around 1,000 per day — and remember, that’s not counting the spam caught by my filters on my PC or the ones that the ISP catches before it even gets to me. I have to wondered about this double standard.

Well, we all know that the security at airports is just security theater. It causes people discomfort and inconvenience so they think it must be keeping them safe — when in fact it doesn’t make anyone a bit safer than they were before. It’s all just for show. If they keep telling us we’re safer and we’re all in long lines and it looks like they’re actually doing something somehow we’ll believe it.

Congress talking about protecting children from pornography on the internet is the same. They talk and the pass laws and they make things inconvenient for everyone — yet they don’t do anything to protect anyone from pornography, let alone the children. How do I know? They won’t pass any legislation to protect us from spam. We need a Can Spam law with teeth but when it’s proposed then they start saying we can’t have that because it will restrain trade and yadda yadda…

I’ve been using computers for years, and the internet before it had webpages — I know hard to believe but back in the early years you had to put in these really long addresses to route your email to the places and people you wanted to reach. In comparison to today, we carved our messages on rocks and threw them in the direction we wished them to go and crossed our fingered that they’d get to the one we wanted to communicate with.

In all the years I’ve been on the internet, I’ve never come “accidentally” on pornography. It is out there, I know that it is, I’m just saying I’ve never accidentally stumbled upon it unaware. The closest I came was when I offered to look to see if I could find a prosthetic breast for my mother after her mastectomy for breast cancer. Seems a good place to buy a breast is at sites for transvestites, cross-dressers, costumers, and sex sites. Who knew? So while it wasn’t pornography, it’s as close as I’ve come in close to 40 years of active internet/computer use.

Now back to spam — that’s where I’ve been subjected to pornography. Blatant, disgusting images of body parts. Before you ask, I’ve got my machine set to not display photos unless I tell it to, but the spammers get around that — as you well know. I get propositions, offers of videos of the act and all its variations, and some that just aren’t right….ick…all with coming into my inbox without my permission or consent, and with no way to stop it.

So, I say to Congress if you really want to protect children from pornography on the internet — do something about spam — you know, unwanted, unsolicited email. My experience of 40 years of internet use with lots of searches and miscellaneous website browsing has resulted in no porno. But everyday on my PC without my permission, I get spam with lots of porno. So, lets not have “protect the children” theater. Let’s get rid of the spam.

PS: I happen to like the canned stuff and hope that the unwanted, unsolicited junk that fills our inboxes each day doesn’t put you off. As a student, spam was a food staple — you either acquired a taste for it or your food budget didn’t last very long. Today it’s gotten a bit pricey but it’s the same hearty meal stretcher.

I just finished watching the third and final presidential debate. As far as I’m concerned Obama won it again. It seems, based on the early polling, that most of the people who watched thought Obama won also. He won overall and then on several of the other questions they asked.

It was clear throughout that Obama was calm, cool, collected and very presidential. He didn’t get rattled even when McCain attacked him. Obama even took the high ground when asked if he thought Palin was qualified to be President — unlike McCain who attacked Biden as being unqualified to be President.

For those of you who didn’t watch the debate, parts of it or even all of the debate will probably be up on YouTube very soon. One of the things that I notice listening to the pundits after the debate is how our personal filters affect what we see and hear. It seems that unless a candidate says what you want them to, then they didn’t say anything substantive — this isn’t really a party thing but a people thing. I’m sure I’m as guilty as the next person of allowing my filters to affect what I hear and see. Some people said Obama was aloof and cold while McCain was open with his thoughts on his face, then some said McCain seemed ill-at-ease, tense, or at times angry while Obama was calm and collected. Each viewer needs to decide for themselves what they saw. I understand that some stations didn’t show the split screens so that you could see both candidates — watching the one answering the question and the other reacting to what was said. To me that was the key in this debate–watching the reactions of the candidates to each other.

Now, while the debates didn’t change my vote — it did confirm that I’d made the right choice. We get to vote on November 4th. I hope every citizen of this country will take their citizenship seriously and vote in the election. Democracies are only as good as the people who make it up and the responsibility they take to fulfill their part of the bargain. We need to serious consider the candidates and decide who will be best, not for the short term or for our party but for America right now. This country is in dire straits and we need a leader who can help us solve these problems and set us up for the future. For me, that’s Obama because I don’t believe we can stand four more years of the policies that have gotten us into the morass of economic problems we currently face. We need change, and frankly — while he talks of being a maverick, I haven’t heard McCain say one thing that he would do differently than what is being done now.

The image at the top of the post — Independence Day. A great science fiction movie where aliens invade the Earth and the US helps to coordinate an attack that save us. The President (Bill Pullman) in that movie faces some hard decisions and realizes that he’s made some mistakes. Even thought the country is being destroyed, he keeps his values and moral compass and tries to rectify his errors and do what’s best for all the citizens and the world. The speech before the big battle is very emotional and stays with you. So if you haven’t seen it — take a look. Amazingly enough Hollywood has given us some strong presidential role models (along with the ones I hope never to see in real life).