the nice part about going offline for more than 4 hours at a time is that there is a lot more to read…
this morning i got to read more of Lawrence Lessig’s thoughts on how the Internet is going to be controlled by a small elite. i agree with his idealism, but i can’t see how the internet is any different than anything else in our globalized world – the powerful just keep getting more powerful and the internet is just another sign.
so, apparently MIT is starting to filter email to stop the KLEZ.E worm. now, i’m definitely an avid hater of this worm (and i’ve been getting 40+ messages with it per day and it was the cause of my latest email switch), but i can’t say that i’m thrilled that my mail is being filtered at a higher level. i really believe that some mail systems should filter (and i would like to get my mother on one of those systems), but i want the choice. i want to be given the option between “unfiltered mail server” and “filtered mail server.” as someone who knows how to deal with viruses on my end, i want to see all of them and filter for myself; that’s why i don’t /dev/null any messages – just bounce and copy a version for me to see what’s up. if you aren’t as savvy with email, join a mail server that filters for you. somehow, i just think it’s a bad sign that MIT is not giving us that choice, MIT of all places.
i still feel really badly for bill maher. his show is called politically incorrect and yet he is still being punished for making a rather poignant sarcastic remark because it was utterly politically incorrect. ::sigh:: that is never a good sign for those of us who want to criticize what is going on. but this returns to the power problem: you have to have power to have a voice and in order to get power, your voice must be inline with all of the other powerful voices.
gone are the days when you have to worry about showing up dead due to database errors; now, you can simply be wrongly presumed a terrorist. oh, how i love this database nation.
apparently, my roommate is having a lot more fun with random strangers on the ‘net (and even jesus related). oh, speaking of which, we passed by the jesus house yesterday and our religious christmas tree offerings are still adorning the outside tree! how exciting!

Lacking a bias-free source of information, people turn to the Internet. For the most part, every opinion can be found there, and every possible “truth.” Yet, that’s the scary part – not everything online is remotely true; the Internet is a feed to both the most reputable academic research and the digital Enquirer. Yet, as one oped writer noticed, the populus doesn’t have the critical awareness to separate fact from fiction online. We are building a worldwide community of hatred through our supposed “unbiased” media. Fabulous.

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Given the controversy over race-based medical profiling, i can’t help but wonder when it’s good or bad to use stereotyping, both in medicine and beyond. Could you imagine a doctor that didn’t ask if you were a (fe)male? Could i imagine having a colonoscopy for equality’s sake? Hmm… On the other hand, the joke at MIT is that the doctors will always ask if you are pregnant – i wonder if they ask the boys that…
I guess i really don’t have a problem with being treated differently for having different body parts, or for fitting into different risk categories. At my age, they have a list of possible failures that they look for. Based on my historical health, my sex, my family’s previous health, my age, etc… they create a list of stereotypes that they check for when dealing with my health. That seems reasonable, even if i despise the medical industry. Why not race?
The problem that i see is not whether or not they use stereotypes to give me better quality services given good statistics; the problem occurs when i am treated unequally or not given services or charged more or not given insurance or … Stereotypes are not inherently evil; it is their uses that we must evaluate.

[cypherpunk login for nytimes: c1ph3rpunk/c1ph3rpunk]

i remember long hours of sitting by the campfire telling mental puzzles…. my favorite:
a man is driving down a road. something on the radio startles him. he drives off the road and kills himself. what happened? (a slight version of #16)