FCC spammers update.
01:36 PM # permalink category » media

It turns out that the reason there has been 1000 times more complaints to the FCC isn't just because activists are spamming them in general. It is because a single group - the Parents Television Council - is responsible for 999 out of 1000 complaints.

Activists Dominate Content Complaints

Thanks Nick

- and yes, this may be a shoe on the other foot scenario, but in my opinion its the right, not the left, that tend to be most vocal and indignant online.

Blackadder champions freedom of speech in Europe.
01:09 PM # permalink category » religion

An eloquent argument for US style free speech over European style regulation from Blackadder comedian, Rowan Atkinson.

Current laws prevent 'Incitement of Racial Hatred' it is proposed that they be extended to prevent 'Incitement of Racial or Religious Hatred'

Rowan Atkinson says:

"race and religion are fundamentally different concepts, requiring completely different treatment under the law. To criticise people for their race is manifestly irrational but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas - any ideas"

Atheism Central for Secondary Schools - Rowan Atkinson speaks to the House of Lords on proposed Incitement of Religious hatred legislation:

"I question the inarguable nature of the phrase "religious hatred", afforded by the use of the highly emotive word "hatred". So I thought I would modify the name of the proposed measure, by changing the terminology but retaining the meaning and use the dictionary definition of the word hatred, which is: intense dislike.

Incitment of Religious Intense Dislike. Isn’t it strange how that small change makes it seem a much less desirable or necessary measure?...

What is wrong with encouraging intense dislike of a religion? Why shouldn’t you do that, if the beliefs of that religion or the activities perpetrated in its name deserve to be intensely disliked?

What if the teaching or beliefs of the religion are so out-moded, hypocritical and hateful that not expressing criticism of them would be perverse?

The government claim that one would be allowed to say what you like about beliefs because the measure is not intended to defend beliefs but believers. But I don’t see how you can distinguish between them.

Beliefs are only invested with life and meaning by believers. If you attack beliefs, you are automatically attacking those who believe the beliefs. You wouldn’t need to criticise the beliefs if no-one believed them."

The FCC is being spammed and we are all paying for it.
12:54 PM # permalink category » media

The FCC obscenity complaints stats show:

Number of complaints and fines in -
year: 2000, complaints: 111, fines: $48,000
year: 2001: complaints: 346, fines: $91,000
year: 2002: complaints: 13,922, fines: $99,400
year: 2003: complaints: 202,032, fines: $440,000
year: 2004: complaints: 1,068,802, fines: $7,928,080

There have been 10,000 times more complaints in 4 years and 20 times as much in fines.

If complaints are as representative of Americans' feelings as 4 years ago, and 10,000 times more people really are offended by broadcasting, then the FCC is 500 times less effective (since its obscenity guidelines are governed by popular consensus and fines levied accordingly).

If the fines are legitimate and comprehensive, and that there is therefore 20 times more obscene material being broadcast now than 4 years ago then the FCC has to spend 500 times as much in tax payer money to deal with unwarranted complaints (if it deals with complaints individually).

If, on the other hand, you don't believe that Americans are between 500 to 10,000 times more prudish or broadcasters 20 to 10,000 times more obscene now than 4 years ago, then there is something wrong with the system of complaints.

This brings about a Malthusian problem, where the fines levied grow arithmetically but the population of complaints (and the cost of dealing with them) grows geometrically. In other words, if the FCC were a company, it would bankrupt them.

The real problem is created by the fact that the cost of making a complaint (via their website or email) is far less - and organized religious activists are exploiting this to swamp the FCC in flashmob fashion. It is the equivalent of a spam email campaign, but we are all paying for it.

Like spam, the only solution to this is to either make it more difficult or introduce a cost to send a message to the FCC, or to deal with large volumes of complaints like spam. In the latter case, the number of programs being complained about has only increased 3 times, so the value of an individual complaint, and the time spent dealing with it, should be inversely weighted when there are a large number about a single broadcast.

Google Video search for 'Boing Boing'
11:52 AM # permalink category » trivia

Google Video Search, boing boing :

... Eh-oh! Hee Hee! [Humming] dipsy! Hee Hee! Hee Hee... Whee! Wow! Yay! Ha Ha! Dipsy! Hee Hee! Ooh! Look! Yay, dipsy! Narrator: Circle. [Boing boing] [boing boing] [Boing boing] [boing boing] [squish] [squish] Hee Hee! Laa-laa Ball! Hee Hee! Uh-oh! Hee Hee! Ooh! Oh, dear! Hee Hee!...

Washington Post: Philosophy and History are inferior to Biology and Physics?
09:41 AM # permalink category » darwinism

'Intelligent Design' in the Schools (washingtonpost.com):

"Many school boards are arguing about whether to include "intelligent design" in their curriculums, The Post's editorial said. If they are serious, the appropriate way is not to have scientists trying to discuss intelligent design in classes such as biology or physics...As the editorial said, such discussion is legitimate, however, in a history or philosophy class."

Ford said - 'history is bunk'. If you can relegate discussion of meaningless nonsense away from science to philosophy and history classes, then you prove him right.

(Oscar Wilde described fox hunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. My dad always describes philosophy as the unintelligible in pursuit of the unanswerable.)

Eco friendly MBA
09:22 AM # permalink category » business

My good friend Nick Aster has been doing an MBA with a difference, one that combines business with sustainability, at the Presidio World College.

They are shortly having open days for their MBA in Sustainable Management.

Super Iran
01:19 AM # permalink category » politics

Part of a democracy is to prevent election of the undemocratic which happened disastrously in Algeria.

In December the Associated Press ran this:

Key among its [Iraq's] parties is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, a group closely allied to Iran and led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim...

Al-Hakim's prominence on the list and his close relations with Iran give ammunition to many secular and non-Shiites to attack his coalition, saying Iraq's political future will mirror Iran's Shiite-run establishment if he and his supporters gain power.

Mustafa Alani:

"The nightmare scenario in the region is the election of an Iranian-influenced Shiite government in Iraq will lead to the creation of a 'Super Iran'"

The UIA have two thirds of the votes counted so far.

CTV.ca | Iraq Shiite win may bring 'Super Iran': critics

Google timebomb?
01:15 AM # permalink category » search engines

Tom Foremski on what would happen if someone created a treasure hunt with a large cash prize awarded to a single click of an unpublicised adwords ad. A subsequent clicking frenzy could drain advertisers' accounts, prompting them to ask for a refund.

This hypothetical idea is part of a more serious problem - pay-per-perfomance advertising is open to fraud - when you click something, money drains out of an account - this doesn't happen with TV, print or radio ads. See Adbombing.

In the same way that companies like Paypal spent a considerable proportion of their resources dealing with fraud, so will Google.

If Google succeeds then its anti-fraud measures will be a competitive edge. If it fails there will be a problem.

The moral to all this is that Google's business model landed on their laps via Scott Banister at Idealab, it is a new model and its weaknesses are not yet exposed, let alone tested.

Given the risk (and the fact that the existing behemoths like Ebay are beginning to plateau earlier than thought) a price/earnings ratio of half its current level of 140 would seem optimistic.

Yahoo ads for tourism in Iraq
11:49 PM # permalink category » diary

There was an ad on my site today that read:

Iraq
Visiting Iraq? Compare
hotel prices, reviews,
maps
travel.yahoo.com

There is one genuine looking review from an aid worker, where the Palestine Intl. Hotel in Baghdad, gets one star:

"Nice swimming pool, otherwise a dump
Service and food were terrible, bed was uncomfortable, dirty. The pool, however, was clean and very nice."

The State of the Planet: Global warming timeline prediction
11:34 PM # permalink category » politics

"As present world temperatures are already 0.7C above the pre-industrial level, the process is well under way...

when the temperature moves up to 2C above the pre-industrial level, expected in the middle of this century - within the lifetime of many people alive today - that serious effects start to come thick and fast...

when the temperature moves up to the 3C level, expected in the early part of the second half of the century, these effects will become critical. There is likely to be irreversible damage to the Amazon rainforest, leading to its collapse...

There will be a rapid increase in populations exposed to hunger, with up to 5.5 billion people living in regions with large losses in crop production, while another 3 billion people will have increased risk of water shortages...

Above the 3C raised level, which may be after 2070, the effects will be catastrophic: the Arctic sea ice will disappear."

Global Warming timeline

Hard travel, soft tech. Two new Gawker Media sites
03:14 PM # permalink category » blogging

Alternative travel: Gridskipper - How to go on an urban safari if your're not an SUV driver. Hard and edgy travel guide for people who prefer alcohol to bucolic.

Alternative software: Lifehacker - Wonkette meets Gizmodo, hackette driven guide to stringing together all those useful software bits and bobs into something more useful - softly softly approach to give late adopters the early adopter scoop.

Fishing scam - weird fish washed up after Tsunami email is a hoax
02:46 PM # permalink category » trivia

PFK Fish News | Deep sea fish in hoax tsunami email

"An email containing photographs of bizarre-looking deep sea fish reportedly washed up on Thailand's Phuket beach after the tsunami actually contains images of fish collected during a study undertaken in 2003."

Nonetheless the fish are deeply weird and interesting, check them out.

Another kind of democracy.
01:22 PM # permalink category » science

On a day when the government is preaching the values of listening to the people are they listening to the people who know, when it comes to the environment?

There is an additional kind of democracy, the democracy of ideas, the principal by which superstition or ideology or agenda is avoided by considering evidence.

Current evidence points overwhelmingly to the notion that Global warming looks real, but the evidence is being ignored, like so many 'just a theory' stickers peppered out by brainwashed zealots.

Bryan Lawrence quotes Science magazine on climate change:

There were 982 peer reviewed papers indexed by ISI with keywords climate change in the last ten years, till 2003.

75% dealt with the immediate threat of climate change.

Of these, NONE refuted the idea that climate change is real.

[NB, I was under the impression that the term 'climate change', like 'death tax' instead of 'estate tax' was largely pushed by the Republican party to suit their own agenda. climate change sounds like a normal state of affairs, as if the potential extinction of humankind were like a rainshower.]

(Bryan's blog is the most interesting thing I've come accross in months, highly recommended).

Voting underway in Iraq
09:12 PM # permalink category » politics

Whatever your opinion of the war, lets hope today is as peaceful as possible in Iraq.

3 column, fluid center, css layout is no longer the 'holy grail'
10:52 AM # permalink category » design

Continuing on my anti-CSS rant - 3 columns, with fixed-width left and right and a fluid center column, are ofter referred to as the 'holy grail'.

The problem is that this is an obsolete solution, when people increasingly have massive screens where any fluidity breaks the design if people auto-expand windows - which they do.

Mike Golding breaks the mold and argues the case very well for fixed width CSS layout: notestips.com :: The benefits of a fixed width design