MuffinBlog

I just took some video of Jaidee cruising and speaking. Enjoy!

I just added some new videos of Jaidee since she’s been walking. She’s even faster on her feet now, but we have yet to get it on tape.

It was both sad and funny when I was grabbing the video off of the camera. Anna had just returned to work after lunch, and Jaidee was in my lap because she had been crying when Anna left. Every time a clip with Anna in it came on, Jaidee would start crying again. She was tired anyway. She went to sleep soon after I finished.

Apparently Congress doesn’t have anything better to do than to get more strict on censorship of broadcast media. A new bill was passed that makes even slip-of-the-tongue “indecent” words or images an offense worthy of a fine. I’ve been trying to figure out my stance on this, and I’ve found it quite difficult.

Take censorship of “bad” words for starters. I believe that if the concern is corrupting children, the real problem is bad behavior not words. Your child telling a teacher to “cram it up your rectal orifice” is just as bad as telling her to “go fuck yourself.” The problem is the disrespect and reprehensible attitude towards expressing that disrespect, not any particular word. It’s also a respect issue if your child is hanging out with friends in public swearing up a storm. They need to be made aware that others can hear them, and it may cause discomfort in others. Kids learn these words one way or another. Hearing it on TV or radio isn’t going to change that, and it isn’t going to scar them for life.

That said, I would consider it a degredation of quality if constant profanity plagued the air waves. It isn’t that the words inherently offend me (I use many of them myself from time to time), it’s that I prefer intelligent language to language littered with expletives. I love listening to George Carlin specifically because he has a wonderful command of the language, regardless of his use of expletives. He knows how much and when to use expletives to enhance his comedy, but he also demonstrates that he doesn’t have to use expletives all the time to present his verbal creation. From this point of view I would have no problem with individual stations or programs self-censoring themselves to maintain quality, but with federal legislation (especially the draconian bill that was just precipitated into law) there is absolutely no room for creative, intelligent use of “bad” words. So while I’ve convinced myself that federal censorship of words isn’t a sound idea, the question still remains whether stations would regulate themselves appropriately as to avoid degrading quality programming. I don’t have an answer to that.

As for “indecent” images, the questions are very similar. My faith in broadcast television to self-regulate themselves is fairly weak, though. After all, most violence isn’t considered indecent by the FCC; and despite research suggesting kids are affected by violence (either on TV or in real life), it is shown on television with little compunction. How do we justify banning nudity (which to my knowledge doesn’t have any harmful side effects) when we allow violent material that does have evidence against it? If explicit sex weren’t considered indecent, would TV stations consider it unintelligent enough to keep it off the air in order to maintain quality? Again, I couldn’t predict what would happen.

I find it tough even to justify complete censorship of images like actual killings or sexual abuse. Certainly with respect to war both should be acceptable to get across the shear horror of it. People have the right to understand what their country is doing in their name. On the other hand, I would consider snuff films or gang rape videos quite distasteful given that they are legally heinous criminal activities. But are my feelings based on taste or the desire for sacrifice to promote the public welfare based on scientific evidence? The latter would necessitate banning even war footage since it could be harmful to children. The former is simply a matter of opinion that I could never justify as a sufficient reason for censorship.

So in some sense I can forgive Congress for cracking down on “indecent” words and images. On the other hand, these politicians are passing blanket legislation without any regard for scientific evidence. I would have no problem if censorship were in place because it is shown with a high degree of confidence that it’s harmful to children. Banning words and images because a politician doesn’t like them, though, has the stink of fascism.

It seems that the leading reason for people who do not support publicly funded elections is that they inevitably are paying for the campaign of someone they don’t agree with. While this is certainly true, it is hypocritical to say the least. We pay taxes all the time that end up helping those we disagree with. My tax revenue in part goes to saving the houses of religious nut cases from burning down, for example. In fact, it even pays for their representation in court if they are poor and end up beating me up because we disagree!

Furthermore, ignoring the argument above, publicly funded elections are about the benefits of having the politicians (regardless of their opinions) owing their opportunity for public service to all citizens. The current situation allows for a huge discrepancy between how much of an election is owed to all citizens and how much is owed to people and corporations with a lot of money. Not to mention, assuming the current two-party system, half the time you are guaranteed to get your candidate! If I had a 50% ROI for my stock funds, I’d probably be one of those people paying for the candidates’ campaigns.

The Washington Post is reporting that they have evidence that oil company execs attended meetings with Chenney to form our nation’s energy policy (despite denying allegations in front of congress). Of course anybody who is reasonably informed knew this years ago. I’m torn between being afraid of loosing interest in our government and becoming a little bit more optimistic.

On the one hand, the shear volume of obnoxious, morally reprehensible behavior that keeps getting exposed about the Bush administration creates a real possibility that I might become completely disinterested in the government until the next presidential election. On the other hand, I find that Princess Leia’s quip to Darth Vader about systems slipping through his fingers the tighter he clenches his fists has an eerie relevance to the current US government. It makes me wonder if something unexpectedly positive might happen.

Now if only we had a rebellion with X-Wing fighters…

I added some more photos. I transfered all the trip photos from my .Mac web page.

I also fixed a problem with the gift registry.

I just changed hosting companies. I was at Yahoo, but then I looked around further and found BlueHost which is 10 times better for over half the price. Fortunately I didn’t have a yearly contract with Yahoo so I can just cancel at the end of the month.

Anyway, it took a bit of work, but I’m back up on BlueHost. I forgot to export my blog entries, but they weren’t that important (summary bellow). Everything else transfered without a hitch. The gift registry is now under gift_registry/ and forces visitors to use https:// (it’s easier just to click on the site index link).

New Jaidee photos are up (compared to the mac.com site). I removed the house tour since I didn’t see much point in keeping it given we’re moving in 3 1/2 months (Oct. 26th to be exact). The reason that the gift registry requires https is because I added a *real* authentication mechanism to it. The next time you use it you’ll have to register a password for your name. That’s about it…