Day: January 18, 2012

What Will SOPA Take From You?

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

This is a cool meme from Shakesville:

What would you miss most on the internetz if the supporters of SOPA/PIPA get their way?

I will miss the possibility to quote stories, link to them, and discuss them. It will feel really weird to write a post saying, “I read a story today that said some interesting things that I can’t share with you and whose provenance must remain shrouded in mystery to protect us all from something undefinable.”

I will miss Wikipedia, too. Today, while it was down, I missed it. I wanted to research Sen. Dick Durbin who supports SOPA, and where was I supposed to go? To his official site? He sounds better than Jesus on his site (seriously, check it out.) Besides, his site is set up in a way that prevents you from leaving it easily. Is there really a person around who doesn’t use Wikipedia at least once a day?

I will miss letting people comment on the blog freely, exchange links, discuss things without me having to vet every comment before letting it through.

I will miss Craigslist because it’s a wonderful website that serves a multitude of useful purposes.

I will miss all those blogs I read and that keep me informed about the news.

What will you miss if we allow this to happen?

Republicans Are Smarter Than Democrats on SOPA

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

“I’m withdrawing my co-sponsorship for the Protect IP Act,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican.

Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, “will be withdrawing his name as a co-sponsor” of Protect IP, a spokesman told CNET today. Fellow Protect IP co-sponsor Sen. James Risch, an Idaho Republican, said today that he wants “more time to re-examine the legislation before going to a vote” and has asked staff for a detailed briefing, a spokesman said.

And Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who has long been a close ally of Hollywood on copyright and is up for re-election this year, said on Twitter that “I will not only vote against moving the bill forward next week but also remove my co-sponsorship of the bill.” […]

Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican who is listed as a SOPA sponsor, “reserves judgment on the final bill,” a spokesman told CNET today. “He’s certainly not saying pass the bill as-is — there are legitimate concerns in this bill.” SOPA sponsor Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, now says: “I will not support a bill unless my constituents are comfortable with it.”

If you keep reading that story, the Democrats listed all remain adamant that they’ll remain co-sponsors of the legislation but work to “fix it”. . .

Those goddam Democrats would rather keep collecting their Hollywood checks, than heed the will of millions of Americans who have lent their online voice in an unprecedented manner.

Are they really this stupid? Can they really be this idiotic?

Yes, they can. The most recent whooping that the Dems got in the 2010 elections apparently taught them nothing about the need to listen to their constituents. And then they will be publishing endless articles trying to solve the mystery of why they are losing their voter base. Truly, who can solve this enigma?

Idiots.

Things You Don’t Know About Me

~ Clarissa ~ 15 Comments

(Unless you are my sister or N., of course.)

After 3,300 posts, you’d think you know all there is to know about me. Well, guess again. I’m full of surprises, folks. Here are some fun and weird things about me you still don’t know. I think. Because who can remember everything they have written in 3,300 posts?

1. When I was 20 years old, I made a solemn vow never to do any ironing ever again no matter what happened. N. almost destroyed our relationship in its very first week by mentioning ironing to me. I still bring up this huge gaffe of his to bug him about once a week. To retaliate, he recently bought an ironing board.

2. I’m terrified that an airplane will fall on my head.

3. I am completely mesmerized by the opening lines of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men:

To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires. . .

I’ve been reading and re-reading this passage for over 20 years now and it is still magical.

4. I adore boiled eggs. Everything about them is hypnotic: their shape, their smell, their texture, their taste.

5. I was such a spoiled child that I would come from school at age 7, plop down on the couch, and raise my legs to let somebody remove my pants from me. The idea of changing my own clothes was alien to me. I also had no idea how to tie my shoe-laces because there was always somebody to do it. I actually started tying my own shoe-laces full-time at the age of 22, after I got divorced.

6. I almost never listen to music because I have such intense emotional response to it that I can’t function afterwards.

7. I have had mystical experiences. There were only two but they were very powerful. They were completely non-sexual in nature, in case there are annoying idiots who link mystical experiences to sex hanging around my blog. Also, if anybody wants to make an argument that they were induced by somebody’s propaganda, I will make you look like an idiot, so beware.

8. I used to write poetry in Russian, English, and Spanish. I think it was very bad but I once brought tears of appreciation to a reader’s eyes with a poem of mine. I wrote my last poem in 2006 and then destroyed them all as a personal tribute to good literature.

And there are many more.

The SOPA/PIPA Protest Is Working!

~ Clarissa ~ 12 Comments

We need to keep pushing because:

The whip count against PIPA now shows 24 senators opposed, and 36 in favor. This time last week, five were opposed and forty were in favor. Nine of the nineteen new opponents announced their opposition during today’s protest.

The stream of senators who keep flipping on this issue should give hope to anyone who doubts that elected officials listen to them. Please, keep sending emails to your senators, telling them to oppose PIPA. Through strength in numbers, we really are making a difference.

12:35 PM PT (Joan McCarter): Add one more to that list of Senators withdrawing support. Sen. Orrin Hatch, an original cosponsor, says that the legislation “is simply not ready for prime time and both sides must continue working together to find a better path forward.”

I guess the Senators need their Wikipedia as much as anybody else, eh?

Now let’s imagine the depths of despair the Senate would plunge in if Google went completely dark, too.

Stop Internet Censorship!

~ Clarissa ~ 36 Comments

We are all opposed to the egregious Stop Online Piracy Act, right? We all want me to be able to do what I did in the previous post, for example? I included in my post a small quote from a freely available online publication, linked to it, and engaged in an analysis of the quote. Does anybody see any problem with me doing this? Is anybody morally opposed? If not:

Let’s stop SOPA (and PIPA, which is its name in the Senate.) Our Federal government is planning to sink another huge amount of taxpayers’ money to persecute independent bloggers, to thwart our online searches and to police out Internet activities in order to serve the needs of the money-hungry entertainment industry. Do you want this to happen? Do you need the government to protect you from whatever it is you do online? Do you welcome the idea of the government messing with your online experiences? Do you want your screen to look like this:

Do you?

 

If not, join the protest here.

 

Barbarity Thrives in Canada Under the Guise of Multi-culturalism

~ Clarissa ~ 45 Comments

This is the so-called multi-culturalism taken to such an extreme that complete insanity has been unleashed:

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada said . . . Kale [ a doctor who advocates for stopping the abortion of female fetuses in Canada] fails to acknowledge cultural values that lead some people to seek pregnancy termination based on the sex of the fetus and does not take into account biochemical testing products that can give expectant parents a highly accurate fetal sex determination as early as eight weeks into pregnancy.

Got it? We now need to get behind the right of vile freakazoids who abort fetuses based on gender because such are their cultural values. Cultural. Values. Not a horrible thing to do that should make every sane person spit on them. Not evidence of complete and utter barbarity that no civilized society should tolerate. It’s just their culture. So we should respect it. Even though our values of considering women in no way inferior to men are being trampled on in this egregious way.

The article I quoted engages in all sorts of blabber about rights, values, legislation, and so on. Here is a direct quote from the SOC of Canada:

The SOGC feels strongly that it is the cultural values and norms in specific segments of the Canadian population that must change to ensure that females are not confronted with procedures and intolerant environments before or after they are born.

And how exactly will these horrible acts be stopped if we dance around them “tolerantly” while referring to these atrocities as “cultural values and norms”? Isn’t it obvious to all but the completely brainless preachers of the mind-numbingly stupid “all cultures are equally valid” ideology that these “values” will not change until we start referring to them as acts of barbarity perpetrated by vile woman-hating jerks who do not deserve the name of human beings? Does anybody really think that these vicious “communities” don’t engage in any other ways of persecuting and discriminating against women in their midst?

In the meanwhile, we are sitting by, swooning in our impotent delight at how tolerant we are.

Here is a good post from which I discovered that this was going on.