8. My Vote

For me, the eight years from 2001 through 2008 was the most depressing period of time in my life. It started with an idiot being elected president when a country gave up reason to change for the sake of change. Then there was 911, two wars followed, and the country re-elected the idiot who could not even manage a straight smile. The complete discarding of reason was stupifying and the ensuing sorrow was intense.

Now we are at that moment again.

There are too much noise in all kinds of media these days, a little bit more from a nobody would not make much of a difference -- making a difference is not my point anyways.

I tried my choices on iSideWith.com -- it turned out that I sided more with Jill Stein. I am not a Democrat and I probably will never be one. But I have decided to vote for President Obama.

I haven't figured out how the Republicans got to label themselves the conservatives. In my mind, they have never been conservative on anything for as far back as I could remember. They gave false testimonies in front the world about weapons of mass destruction to start the Iraq war. They told the country that the Iraq war would pay for itself. They make up laws to force their opinions on people. Their stupidity seems bottomless and their hypocrisy knows no bounds. It just seems to me, that if they like hiking the Appalachian Trail so much, we should put them where they belong: In the wild woods.

The Republicans are radicals -- Let's just call a spade a spade.

I admit that I don't personally hate all Republicans. I'll even publicly admit that I voted for one here in Michigan: Governor Rick Snyder the last time around. But I probably will never vote for another one if the GOP stays its course. Bill Maher is right: When you vote for one Republican, they are getting the whole bag of them almost all of the time. Here in Michigan, even Mr. Snyder has to hold his nose to live along his Republican fellows. So, I am guessing, they probably will not like how I will vote in matters on the ballot:

• I think the people who work to earn a living deserves the rights to collectively bargain with (or, should I say against?) the organized money men;
• I believe a new international bridge to Canada is a good thing for the economy of this region;
• I believe Michiganders deserve quality of life, yes, even those who live by River Rouge.

There are still more homework to do. But I think my vote is fairly clear at this point.

7. "Think Different"

I am sitting in my car reading the Steve Jobs biography, Chapter 25 -- Think Different, which talks about his second coming at Apple and him launching the new advertisement theme.

I smile at the amount of irony in it: Apple may be thinking different, but an Apple user can only use an Apple product the way they are told to; App developers have to follow Apple's rules to make Apple products they run on look good. There is not much of different you can think or do.

Linux, to me, is the real thing when it comes to think different. Using an Apple product does not make one think different.

6. A Tragedy

On this April 1^st, this thread became hot on Google Plus. What's more interesting are the comments that follow: Many say that the truth may never be known. Others blame media for manipulating the tragic case.

We may not know the truth, yet, but from news reports and the published policy reports, audio and video recordings so far, we can get very close to imagining it: A rainy evening, a black teenager walking to his residence from a store, talking on the phone, with his hoodie up, saw a guy in white T-shirt following him. As any reasonable person in this situation would do, he started running away from the follower. He saw the guy starting to pursue him. He hid between houses, but then he was found by the follower. What happened next, happened fast -- People in the surroundings heard screaming and what could be the pursuer yelling help -- which ended with a gunshot and a dead teenager. The entire tragedy completed in less then 20 minutes. But the story obviously could not and should not end there.

At this point, I would not label the shooter a racist as that would deflect the discussion. But I could say, he obviously has strong opinions about those he perceived as bad guys. He probably thought that his life was in danger when he yelled help and then pulled out his gun. All that is not completely unreasonable.

But there are other things that people who defend the shooter seem to miss: He carries a gun in a residential neighborhood. I assume that he has thought about that and he is ready to use it when necessary. I can buy the argument that a law abiding citizen has the right to bear arms and all that. But to use it in a residential neighborhood anytime they perceive danger? I thought the police system is setup to do that, and in this case, the police was in the process of taking care of the situation as reported by the shooter. When the shooter decided to pursue the bad guy who looked like was running away, he obviously put all others in that same neighborhood as secondary to whatever he wanted to do. Listening to the lady on the phone with police with a voice shaken out of her control, I can not imagine the area as a war zone that requires people to carry guns to protect themselves. Neither do I understand the logic (if there is any) that the shooter has to pursue the teenager rather than letting the police handling the situation.

Those who say anything about the hoodie in their arguments, I have to assume that they are not serious or they do not think before they post their opinions. I myself have a few of them and I do see high school students wearing them all the time. I do not buy the argument that, from now on, I should be watching my back when I wear a particular piece of clothing.

I understand that law has no power against stupidity, but we should not have laws encouraging stupidity. The Florida stand your ground law seems to be one of those.

As for media manipulating the case, I would say that hey have not done enough in this case as they seem to have only found out about it almost a month after. This case is one tragedy too many already. But if we do not learn anything from it, more are bound to come.

5. Historical Record

No matter what happens now, this US supreme court case is historical.

This US supreme court healthcare hearings transcript and audio analysis is worth saving as a record of the whole thing.

It seems that the US is not alone in the struggle to balance healthcare and its costs -- Really hope I could find the story on NPR this morning about healthcare in Germany.

I guess the process to make universal healthcare a reality in the US is very much the same like the process to realize democracy in China. Progress always seems to be three steps forward followed by two steps back. Without a super majority in the population going for a tremendous endeavor like that, we all just have to wait and see while doing little bits of good in the hope to push things along. It is probably against my religion to wish the conservatives on the supreme court wise up a bit. But, oh well......

4. Hanging in the Balance

Once again, the whole country is hanging in the balance. The welfare of most of the people is balanced on the nine wise people -- It's like Déjà vu all over again, twelve years later.

I don't deny that there are possibly some sincere people who are against the Affordable Care Act, but I have a hard time following their logic. Driving home in the evening, NPR reporting on the day's supreme court drama said one man actually suggested one could buy health insurance in the ER, or when health insurance is needed. That, to me, just shows the nutty-ness of the people arguing against the law.

Here is a paragraph from the NPR reporting:

Justice Scalia disagreed, suggesting that the health care regulations here were defined too broadly. "It may well be that everybody needs health care sooner or later, but not everybody needs a heart transplant, not everybody needs a liver transplant," he said. "...[e]verybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market. Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli."

I have heard that before. To put it delicately, I find that conclusion completely absurd. How does everybody is in the market for food lead to you can make people buy broccoli? Since when does broccoli become synonym for food?

Hard to believe that I actually finished listening to the entire session. I didn't expect it would be so much fun to listen to the supreme court either. The justices are pretty impressive, especially Chief Justice Roberts. He sounds very much balanced and composed in his questioning and statements. I do think some times they pretend to be old and dumb.

The arguments back and forth about whether the penalty part is or is not tax. It's funny to hear the government Solicitor General defending people who don't want to call it a tax, but in the mean time they are in fact exercising Congress' taxing power.

The real irony is that, many who are against the Act, who want the government out of their healthcare, like the woman in the NPR report, are actually on Medicare or Medicaid.

"Stupidity is a preexisting condition." -- Bill Maher

I guess he is right.

3. Super PAC'ing

The term Super PAC has been everywhere since the Supreme Court's decision on the "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" case. Stephen Colbert's jokes on the whole saga has also been all over the Internet. I just watched this bit («Slow Jamming the News») on Yahoo! Video warning President Barack Obama.

Personally, I like the idea that corporations are allowed to spend money on elections. I know it is a dangerous thing. But look at where they are spending their money: staffing their champaign, boat loads of ads on TV and print media. I think this is a great way for the money to be pumped into the economy. Don't you?

Here is a little secret: I don't watch TV. No one watches TV in our household. I don't have a phone in the traditional sense either, so I am not taking their calls. So I want them to spend more money on those things: The more the merrier. A billion is far from enough.

(I have not visited Yahoo! for some time. They seem to have got some pretty good stuff up there, even Bill Maher.)

2. A Helping Hand

Today is the Michigan primary. I walked into the polling station, there were no other voters. I was informed that I had the choice of picking a ballot for the Democrats or one for the Republicans. I looked at the sample, the Democrat one was really boring: It had Barack Obama as the only candidate for president and Joe Biden as his running mate. So I looked at the Republican sample, which was much more interesting: It had more than a dozen names on the sheet. So I went for the Republican one.

I actually thought long and hard between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: Romney seemed to at least want to appear to be somewhat moderate that he deserved a bit of sympathy; On the other hand, the Republicans as a whole seemed to want to go to the extreme that they deserved a hand to help pushing them over the edge. These days, the Republicans seem to bend over backwards to get everything their way. I am getting sick of them all by the day. In the end, the evil side of me got the upper hand. So I decided to land a helping hand.

I admit that I am a  heavily biased (against stupidity) independent. But that doesn't mean I am never stupid myself. Now I'll wait and see: I will be against whoever that gets the nomination. If this one does, then I will have to work harder to defeat him.

1. Why "Internet Access Is Not a Human Right"?

Reading a post from Tim O'Reilly on Google+, I posted a comment against Vint Cerf's argument in his New York Times article:

Vint Cerf is certainly a respected figure in the Internet world. I respect his view but I am not sure where that article is going.

I also have a question: If I were to follow his logic, then why is the right to sit wherever you want in a bus a "human rights" issue? After all, having to sit in the back of a bus does not affect your ability to move from point A to B.

I think the point that "Internet access is a human right" should be looked at from the point of "access", not "Internet".

I got this comment back:

Dan Kozlowski  -  +Wei Wang +Rafiki Cai The problem with comparing the "Right" To access to the internet to the "Right" to sit where you want on the bus is totally different. The right being infringed upon by forcing people to sit at the back of the bus was the right that people have to not be treated differently because of the color of their skin. The bus was a sympton of their right being violated. Likewise in this instance the right is not access to the internet but access to information. The goverment should not be able to tell you what you can and can not know. However They are under no obligation to provide you with access to the internet. They are under obligation to not prevent the free flow of information, be that internet newspaper or street corner preacher.

I think Dan Koziowski missed this in my post: If I were to follow his logic. Here is the logic in Vint's article I followed:

But that argument, however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it. (Emphasis added)

So I think my question remains, because, not being able to sit wherever one may want to in a bus does not seem to be an issue that rise to the height of being among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. I, of course, could be wrong in that judgement.


Back to the original article, and Dan's argument above, I think I see their point. What they are arguing seems to be that Internet service providers have no obligation to provide universal access to every human being, which I don't disagree completely. Yet even at that, I believe their arguments are flawed. Even in the case of the right to a horse, I would believe that I have the right to a horse because I am not asking a horse be provided to me -- If you believe that I am trying to split hair here, I think it is anyone's obligation to point out the flaw in Vint's argument when he uses such a blanket statement like "Internet Access Is Not a Human Right".


My concern is not so much on what the ISPs do in this country. I believe there are plenty of watchful eyes on them. When I read the article, my thoughts almost immediately went to China, where ordinary people's rights to access the Internet is mostly under the mercy of the government. Please note that I am not even mentioning access to information. I do mean access to technology that may in anyway enhance an ordinary person's ability to communicate with others. If access to the Internet is not a human right, then we may not call what the Chinese government does a human rights violation. That is what I must disagree. I may risk barking on the wrong tree here. But I do think the Internet has ceased to be an American-only issue long ago.