” ‘Shut Up’, she explained”

permalink

Constitutional changes I’d like to see

Like many of you, my idle thoughts often go to how I would like to see the Constitution changed. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s an amazingly well-designed document, and all the praise due to it is deserved. But there’s always room for improvement. Here’s my thoughts:

1. The Vice-President. This is a rather bizarre contraption; basically having a guy sit around waiting for the President to die, and, randomly enough, to break Senate ties. Aside from those two events he has nothing to do. It was designed as a sort of consolation prize to whoever came in second in the Presidential election, which was silly even then, but after we ended up becoming a two–political party system and ratified the 12th Amendment to reflect that, it became completely pointless. Parties nominate VP candidates for all kinds of reasons aside from whether they’d be good to take over when the President died, and we end up with a lot of idiots on the ticket (not to mention that Presidents have an incentive to not pick somebody who might be more qualified and/or appealing than they are).Why are we bothering? Can’t we just have a new election if the President dies? Most Western democracies are Parliamentry systems, and manage to hold national elections on short notice. I think we could handle this too. Just have the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury exercise executive powers between the death/incapacitation of the President until the winner of the new election is sworn in.
2. The Emoluments Clause. I have to admit I always pretty much skimmed over this part, and I never really thought about it until recently; it’s in the news now because it probably disqualifies Hillary Clinton from being Secretary of State. It seems like a rather pointless rule; I guess the concern is that the Congress would vote themselves a bunch of cushy jobs and then get appointed to them. This doesn’t seem like a real problem to me; Congressmen want to be Congressmen, not overpaid civil servants. They’re interested in power, not money; anyway they can always cash out as lobbyists if they lose their seats. It seems to mainly get in the way of the President appointing Congressmen to cabinet posts, which is a bug, not a feature.
3. The Natural-Born Citizenship requirement for the Presidency. This always struck me as vaguely un-American. In no other circumstance that I can think of do we distinguish between native-born and naturalized citizens; why here? What advantage is there to blocking people like, say, Jennifer Granholm (who has lived in the United States since she was four), from being President? Or Schwarzenegger, or Joseph Cao? I wouldn’t have a problem with saying they need to have been a citizen for 20 years or something like that, but blocking Americans just because they happen to have been born somewhere else doesn’t benefit anyone.
4. Repeal the 17th Amendment. I know this will never happen, but I’d still like to see it. I think we get better results when there’s an extra later of elections, and we used to get better Senators before this was passed. Having the House be directly elected and the Senate indirectly elected was a good compromise; the point of the Senate is somewhat lost with direct elections. I’d also like to see states have more power versus the national government.
5. A new anti-gerrymandering amendment. One of the biggest problems with the House these days is that states have drawn districts in such a way that Representatives are virtually immune to being defeated. While this is hardly a new problem, computers have made it especially bad. I’d like to see something to curb this abuse, although I’m not sure exactly how to go about it. Perhaps combining a rule that the ratio of the circumference to the area of a district not exceed x with language taken from Iowa’s constitution about the relationship of districts to counties would do the trick.
6. Truly “limit” terms of copyright. Okay, this is my pet peeve, but what the heck. Since the Supreme Court held in Eldred v. Ashcroft that the “limited” terms of copyright referred to in the Constitution means basically anything short of infinity, I think we need to actually spell it out. I think two terms of 28 years should be more than enough for anybody, but I would say nearly any specified term would be better than the current rule, which is “keep extending the copyright terms whenever it looks like Mickey Mouse is going to become public domain”.
7. Put some teeth in the commerce clause. This would be even harder to spell out than the anti-gerrymandering amendment above, but maybe we could figure out some way to define “commerce” to mean, well, commerce, and not “anything and everything that may ever happen”.
8. CSA import #1: Anti-protectionism clause. This and the next two ideas come from, of all places, the constitution of the Confederate States of America. I don’t approve of the guaranteed right to slaves they had, but there were a few other ideas which I think we should adopt. First is this one: that no “duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry” (from Article I, Section 8, Sub-Section 1). Free trade, like free speech, is one of those issues that is easier to implement as a general concept than it is to adhere to in every specific instance, so it would a prime candidate for a Constitutional amendment.
9. CSA import #2: Anti-rider amendment. Here’s the text of Article I, Section 9, Sub-Section 20:
   

   Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

   This strikes me as a sound goo-goo addition. Let’s stop the sneaky practice of Congressmen attaching all kinds of nefarious pork to unrelated bills by this simple clause.

10. CSA import #3: Close the “recess appointment” loophole. This is pretty straightforward language (from Article II, Section 2, Subsection 4):
    

    [N]o person rejected by the Senate shall be reappointed to the same office during their ensuing recess.

    This would stop a rather obnoxious practice of recent years where the President can ignore the will of Congress by means of recess appointment chicanry (both Clinton and Bush did this, so this is a bipartisan problem).

That should do it for now. I’ll let you know if I think of any others.

permalink

Nothing to see here, move along

A parenthetical aside from Slate:

(Despite a current of thought that insists that Roosevelt’s economic policies did nothing, they in fact helped the economy and improved the lives of millions of needy Americans in both the short and long terms.)

Well okay then! Glad that’s cleared up.

permalink

Random election night thoughts

So this is a weird feeling; I actually wanted Obama to win (at least, more than McCain) but now that it’s happened I’m feeling worse about it than I thought I would. I guess it’s mainly the reaction that is getting on my nerves. My friends on Facebook are saying barf-worthy things like “going to bed with joy in my heart” and “Breathe in the air. Isn’t it sweet?” He’s a politician, people. Yes, for a politician, he seems to be a decent guy—but that’s a pretty big caveat there. Politicians are not nice people. Obama got to where he is by screwing over and double-crossing a lot of people, and you never would have heard of him if he hadn’t. And he’ll double-cross you too, and break your heart if you’re in love with him. So just calm down.

For my part, I’m mentally accessing the damage. He probably won’t pass the Fairness Doctrine, so I don’t need to freak out there. He was actually better on health care than Hillary, so hopefully we won’t end up with single-payer, at least. Net Neutrality probably will go through with Obama-appointed FCC commissioners, which sucks, but there are worse things. He made noises about mucking with NAFTA but I assume he’s lying about that. So overall I guess I’m cautiously optimistic. Of course he won’t do anything I like, but at least he’ll be ineffective in doing most of the things I dislike.

I note that National Review Online’s “The Corner” is being surprisingly gracious. Far more than, say, Daily Kos was four years ago. Take what you will from that.

permalink

Something I’ve Noticed About Web Comics

I read a lot of web comics, and I’ve noticed something which strikes me as odd. Dinosaur Comics, Cat and Girl, Diesel Sweeties, Scary Go Round, Goats, xkcd, and Wondermark all basically link to each other… but none of them link to Sluggy Freelance, which is as just as important and well-known. I wonder why? I’d say it’s because Sluggy Freelance doesn’t have a links page with which to reciprocate, but neither does Achewood, and they pretty much all link there… so what’s up? Do they just all not like it, or did Pete Abrams did something to piss everyone off?

permalink

Ten Artists I’d Like to See Illustrate Harvey Pekar Stories

1. George Perez
2. Ralph Steadman
3. Lynda Barry
4. Bill Sienkiewicz
5. Gary Trudeau
6. Cathy Guisewite
7. Steve Ditko
8. Larry Marder
9. D.T. Devareaux
10. Peter Bagge

permalink

Correct and Incorrect Sources of Profit

Okay, so according to Obama, only profits gained because of “management skill or investment decisions” are legitimate; profits due to fluctuation of demand and supply are bad and must be confiscated. Good to know that our next president will vet the moral purity of your business’s income.

Of course, never mind that ExxonMobil’s current 8.5% profit, a peak after 20 years, is about equal to most industries’ average profits, as Coyote points out. And also never mind that when it’s farmers attempting to profit due to changes in supply and demand, Obama wants to subsidize them instead of taxing them.

permalink

Just a Thought

If you think that the heavier something is, the faster it falls, then maybe you shouldn’t be writing science articles.

permalink

My First-Ever Political Donation

I’m sure I disagree with this guy about a lot of stuff, but I was sufficiently amused by his request for donations that I ponied up the $8.34. I also love the idea of this fat old mossback—who, I’m sure, expected to keep his seat for the rest of his life—being thrown out by some young punk because of this internet thing.

permalink

A better tinyURL bookmarklet

TinyURL.com provides a bookmarklet you can put on your toolbar which you can use to make a “tinyurl” of whatever page you’re currently viewing. It’s really handy, I use it all the time… however, a problem with it is that it doesn’t make tiny URLs with anchors, even though that is supported if you submit the URL at their page. This has been annoying me for some time, and I finally figured out a fix. Instead of using their bookmarklet, use this:

javascript:void(location.href='http://tinyurl.com/create.php?url='+location.protocol+'//'+location.hostname+location.pathname+escape(location.hash))

That will render a redirect to the URL with anchor. You’re welcome.

permalink

WTC conspiracy theories

So I just got a MySpace bulletin from an old friend going on and on about some new evidence about the WTC conspiracy, etc., etc. I’ve more or less accepted that otherwise intelligent people are going to go off on these bizarre paranoid rants—I suppose it fills a need for most people that would normally be taken up by religion. But here’s what I don’t get. Most of the JFK wackiness is at least logically consistent in theory: if there really were a lot of people in on the assassination plot, then there’s a motive to alter evidence if you want people to think it was one person. Of course, it’s still a load of crap, but at least you have to look at the evidence to a certain extent to understand why.

But the WTC conspiracy theories, at least the ones I’ve heard, mostly seem to involve somebody planting explosives in one of the buildings. I don’t get this. If the government was really behind it, why would they plant explosives in addition to having people hijack planes? Presumably whatever nefarious motives these shadowy folks were up to would be equally served by just planes hitting the Towers; what would be the point of having explosives go off at the same time? All that would do is make it more likely you’d be found out, and also have more people involved. And if for some reason you had to plant a bomb, why not just say that the “terrorists” planted explosives in addition to hijacking airplanes, just to cover yourself?

Oh well. I suppose it’s a waste of time to try to apply logic to stuff like this, but I still find it interesting, like an anthropologist researching cargo cults.

permalink

Charles Mudede, scumbag

I had never heard of “cultural critic” Charles Mudede before, but now that I’ve read this stunningly vile blog post I think I’ll remember his name. It’s really amazing how much sleaze he managed to pack into just four sentences: a completely unfounded accusation of murder, based on nothing but racism; a suggestion that ethnically-Chinese people are not “American”; and the suggestion that adopted siblings aren’t really siblings (at least when they’re of different races).

Stranger editor Dan Savage lays into him in the first two comments, which is a good sign. I almost never want to see people fired over something they wrote or said; I think that happens far too often, chilling discourse. But at some point you really can cross the line, and it has been crossed here. I hope Savage cans this vicious turd.

permalink

On Twitter

Am I a late or early adopter? Well, either way, I’m on Twitter now. So please add me for all your exciting Kim-related news.

permalink

Unix complaint #5,737,215

Yes, you’d think I’d remember to check this after a billion FreeBSD & Linux installs, but… how come when the install process asks you if your BIOS clock is set to UTC, it doesn’t show you the current time? How hard would that be? I never can remember how the damn hardware clock is set up. Maybe some distro does this, but FreeBSD and CentOS don’t, which are pretty much all my installs these days.

permalink

English-to-English translation

I don’t understand why when an English writer has an American character, he doesn’t show the draft to an American before publishing. It seems like an easy step to avoid some howlers. Last night I watched Bunny Lake Is Missing, and the lead character, an American woman, says she’s about to go “marketing”. I didn’t know what on Earth she meant until the next scene in a grocery. I remember reading an English murder mystery in which a Miami police inspector described a suspect, saying that he “usually speaks English with an American accent, but can shed any trace of an accent if he wishes and can even pass for an Englishman”.

Even Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore will make mistakes like this. The Joker referred to a “ghost train” and “softbacks” in The Killing Joke, and in an issue of Sandman an American girl visiting England for the first time says she’s from “the States”. I know they have lots of American friends, so why won’t they do some basic sanity checking?

Of course, this works the other way as well. See this list of goofs in Frenzy for a couple Americanisms; apparently Hitchcock had been away for so long at that point he didn’t notice, although it’s odd the Brit actors didn’t point them out.

permalink

How to batch extract images from ID3 tags

I wanted to extract all the cover images from my MP3 library, and it was surprisingly difficult, so I’m noting it here for future reference, and perhaps for Googlers in the same situation. I’m on OS X, FYI.

The hardest thing was finding a CLI program that reliably extracts the image from the ID3. After much searching, I found just the thing: Image::Exiftool. I just did a CPAN install, which worked fine.

Now, when extracting, I only wanted to do it for one song per album so I wouldn’t have zillions of duplicates. I also wanted each image to have the name of the album, not the song. After a bit of trial and error, I ended up with this:

cd ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music &&
find . -mindepth 3 -name 01\ \* |
while read X ;
do exiftool -B -Picture "$X" > \
~/Documents/Projects/covers/"$(basename "$(dirname "$X")" | sed s/\ /_/g).jpg" ;
done

Ugly! I know, but it works. The find assembles a list of the first song in every album directory, then the list is sent to exiftool to grab the image, which writes it to your chosen directory with as “ALBUM_NAME.jpg”.

There are two small problems. There’s no real way to test ahead of time if an MP3 has an image embedded (exiftool gives the same exit code regardless), so this will create an empty file for each album without an image. So you’ll want to delete all the zero byte files (although you may want to make a list of them first so you know what images you need to find). Also, this script assumes the embedded image is a JPEG, which is usually true but not always. You can just do file * | grep -v JPEG (after you’ve removed the empty files) in the directory to find PNGs and GIFs.

Of course, this assumes that all your cover images actually reside in the ID3s. If iTunes has downloaded them for you, then that’s not the case; they’re stored externally. See this article for a fix for that.

permalink

Adaptation Overload

The punchline to this post reminded me of something absurd I saw for sale at a used bookstore a couple months ago: this. An audio tape of a novelization of a movie of a comic book. Maybe someday there’ll be a musical comedy based on the tape.

permalink

Cuss-o-Meter

Had to try this:

Created by OnePlusYou

Not too bad. However, Dinosaur Gardens is another story:

Created by OnePlusYou

Heh. This post from Trademark G probably put us over the edge.

permalink

What the Hell?

Does the Treasury have an annual prize or something given to whoever can make the money uglier? Every new revision looks worst than the last. I thought this was a joke when I first saw it:

Yes, that is a giant purple Helvetica 5 in the corner there. What’s next, getting the guy who designed the Murray’s Discount Auto logo to redo the Lincoln portrait?

permalink

Songs I’d Like to Play in “Guitar Hero”

1. I Heard Her Call My Name
2. Interstellar Overdrive
3. Last Fair Deal Gone Down
4. Sex Bomb
5. Blank Frank

permalink