Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Geez, it's dusty in here. Maybe it's time to clean this place out and put up a fresh coat of paint...

Worse than its bite

Continuing my posting of op-ed pieces I wrote for the Kennesaw State Sentinel, here is the article that prompted the idea.

Assembly proposes dog legislation
Its bark is worse than its bite
Originally published February 9, 2005
Re-printed courtesy of the Kennesaw State Sentinel.

Today we are going to have an object lesson in Libertarianism. We are going to learn about what makes a piece of legislation bad, maybe even vicious. In the Georgia General Assembly, we have a brilliant example. HB-78 as presented by Rep. Earnest Williams [D-89] seeks to make it illegal to "import, sell, transport, carry, own, keep or otherwise possess any live pit bull dog in this state." This is a complete waste of legislative hot air. It is virtually unenforceable and fails to address a real, meaningful issue.

In order to enforce HB-78 in any practical way, police would have to go door-to-door to search for and impound all pit bulls that are not grandfathered in. So now, our already thin police force will have to be trained for the identification of the three bull terrier breeds, which have been identified as "pit bulls." They will also need to become experts in determining the age of a dog. I certainly don't think that Rep. Williams expected this to happen. It is clear that this law is not meant to prevent problems caused by pit bulls, but rather, to create nuisance fines against owners and breeders in the hopes that they will choose not to own or breed pit bulls.

So if we are not going to stop pit bull problems, why generate this legislation? As I see it, there are two possible answers to that question. The least likely is to reduce the incidence of dog fighting, a goal I certainly support, but dog fighting is already illegal. Simply enforcing the existing laws against dog fighting would seem to be a better way to eliminate it.

The more likely answer is a concern for "public safety." We've all heard horror stories about those vicious pit bulls that have mauled and maimed children. Certainly aggressive dogs that are not properly contained or trained can be a public nuisance, but neither of these issues is meaningfully addressed by this legislation. In fact, there are already animal containment and leash laws in most cities or towns in the state of Georgia. In other words, it is already illegal to allow your dog to be a public nuisance, or a threat to public safety. This legislation will not solve any problems that we do not already have laws to solve!

One of the defining characteristics of bureaucracy out of control is the implementation of rules which serve no purpose. This bill is just such a rule. Worst of all, outlawing these three breeds is not going to offer people any more protection from vicious dogs as a whole, only from vicious pit bulls. This leaves several [and some might say all] other breeds of potentially vicious dogs free. Moreover, that brings us to the issue of discrimination.

As the AKC rightly points out, this sort of legislation punishes "responsible owners while doing nothing to address the city's dangerous dog problem." Again, I am not a dog owner, much less a pit bull enthusiast, but those who are assert that the pit bull is a very friendly, intelligent and courageous breed. Pit bulls are highly regarded for search and rescue work, and there are as many [if not more] verifiable stories of pit bulls saving children as there are of pit bulls mauling them. The AKC describes the breed as a "foremost all-purpose dog" citing its quietness and "trustworthy stability." Am I saying that pit bulls are not dangerous? Well, 45 pounds of muscle and teeth certainly can be dangerous, but it appears that this breed may be the victim of bad press and bad individual animals. Some of my more conservative friends might laugh at the notion, but I can see where making an argument for this kind of stereotyping is not that dissimilar from the kind of bigotry we keep struggling, as a society, to put behind us. In fact, it may be exactly the same thing.

So what do you think? Which is worse, a mean dog, or meaningless legislation? Given the two I would rather have the dog. It will respond to care and feeding with love and loyalty. I promise you government will never offer similar rewards.

Bush-whacked

This is a continuation of my reposting of my work at the Kennesaw State Sentinel. Many thanks to Ed Bonza, the director of KSU Student Media for his enthusiasm about this project.

Bush-whacked
Originally published 2/2/2005
Reprinted courtesy of The Kennesaw State Sentinel

Mr. President, I have a few questions.  In your inaugural address you mentioned a few things that I am having a little difficulty understanding.  You spoke about the “policy of the United States to seek and support the growth democratic movements ... with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world”.  I am curious about how that can be policy given our long standing political alliances with the governments of known human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Israel.  Are they on your list of nations for whom you plan to “persistently clarify the moral choice” between oppression and freedom?  When was the last time you made it clear to these countries that “success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people”?
You told us that “America’s belief in human dignity will guide our policies,” and yet it remains our policy not to allow the Iraqi people to count their own dead, and for the prisoners in Guantanamo to have no legal redress after having been held in prison for up to four years without judicial review, access to lawyers, or any kind of independent monitoring.  Should one of those persistent clarification memos be left on your desk as well?  You told us that we “will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling” and yet that appears to be exactly what we are doing, the only difference being that you, having failed to convince us that this is a war of self-interest, now seem determined to convince us that it is a war of liberation.  All of this makes your use of Lincoln’s “those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves” bitterly ironic.
Finally, you told those living under tyranny’s thumb that “we will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors.”  But apparently we won’t do anything about the horrors going on in Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, or Nigeria, despite the profound evidence that terrorist operatives are moving about freely in states such as Nigeria and Somalia.  Perhaps even more disturbing is that, while there was never any credible evidence of a connection between Al Qaeda and the government of Iraq, there IS a credible link between Al-Qaeda and the former president of Liberia(*).  So, why are we spending billions in Iraq, while the Liberians languish in abject poverty?
America may be “speaking anew to the peoples of the world,” but unfortunately what the world is hearing sounds like the same half-truths and empty promises we have been handing out since the start of the Cold War, only now greed for oil seems to be our only motivator.  You are right, sir, no human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.  But who is using their strength to impose their singular will upon the world?  Who are the bullies here?

* Africa and Threats of Terrorism - Olayinka Oyegbile
Daily Independent (liberal)
Lagos, Nigeria
December 6, 2004
As presented in WorldPress.org: http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/1989.cfm

Stump Removal

Defining political integrity

A project I am working on had me digging through the archive of Op-Ed pieces I wrote for the Kennesaw State University Sentinel. None of the stuff I've written is available on their website now (although you can find it using the wayback machine if you're really interested and turn javascript off after you get to the snapshots screen). Anyway, it struck me that some of this material is still relevant, so I thought I'd share it somewhere I know it will stick around for a while.

I'm hazy on the rights to this material, but I'll assume for the moment that it is ©Kennesaw State University Sentinel until I have word back from the director of student media.
This material reprinted courtesy of The Kennesaw State Sentinel.

I'll also add this caveat: these articles were mostly written while I still believed I was a libertarian. Don't judge me too harshly for my idealistic naivete. ;-)

Stump Removal
Published: Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Jonathan Edman
I will be honest. I can be a difficult person to please. I am very picky, almost to the point of snobbery. I'll be the first to tell you that I am a coffee snob, a beer snob, a ... perhaps I should just cut to the chase and tell you that I am, in fact, a snob. Of course, I don't really look at it that way, I think of myself as having very discerning tastes. I also understand that the world will not always conform to my standards. Nevertheless, that doesn't keep the occasional nit from really sticking in my craw. During the Student Government campaign debates last week, just such a nit arose amongst the issues discussed.
No, it wasn't parking. You all need to get over yourselves and understand that getting to school a little early and walking across campus is part of the deal. We really don't have a parking problem. It wasn't football either. Personally, I don't care about football at KSU. If I wanted to go to a football school, I would go to a football school. No, this is more systemic.
It started with someone talking down the current administration. I'm not sure who said it, or what exactly they said, but it amounted to, "instead of taking care of the students, Student Government has been consumed with fighting amongst themselves."
Now, I'm not going to tell you that this statement isn't true. The problems with this statement, within the context of a campaign debate, are that it's misleading and isn't helpful. The implication is that the person complaining is going to behave differently from those in office. Are they?
While it is valid to point to the failure of SG to coalesce effectively, in this context it is done only by aggravating the problem. It's like me saying, "the biggest traffic problem we have is excessive speeding," while I'm driving 90 miles hour down I-75. Is it true? Maybe. Am I helping? No. By bringing this topic into the debate I am left with the impression that there are those who aren't ready to pick up the reigns and start us moving forward again. Instead they are itching to roll up their sleeves and get into the fight. We'll call them the "Bloody Nose" party.
After this issue was touched on, another candidate said something along the lines of "the people currently in office have done a good job given what was going on." This is where my snobbery begins to show, because I don't think this is a valid argument either. The fact is that there has been a problem, and patting the SG officers on the head and saying "There, there" isn't going to help. [Not that I think they need to be punished or beaten up for what has happened.]. We'll call this side the "Mother Love" party.
The problem on this side of the fence is that by handing the current office holders a ready-made apology we overlook the importance of their failures. Several key things happened this last year, and, to be blunt, SG wasn't able to respond to them proactively or effectively because of the bickering and infighting. By failing to really look at the problem and address it honestly, we run the risk of never learning from the mistakes that were made and being doomed to repeat them.
Somewhere in between the extremes of the Bloody Noses and the Mother Loves there is something else. It isn't something easy, but nothing good ever is. Now that the campaign is over, I'd like to describe it in the hopes that our newly elected representatives might see something here that they can relate to, or maybe even strive for.
"It" is honest enough to admit that there were mistakes. "It" is strong enough to dig where it hurts to find those mistakes, even the ones that are deeply buried. "It" is brave enough to let everyone else see them, and to make meaningful apologies for them. "It" is disciplined enough to let those wounds heal once and for all. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, "it" is resolute enough to keep looking forward and upward, resisting the temptation to look back.
In a nutshell, that's what this political snob would love to see.

Exiting the pool

So, when you decide to abandon facebook and start making your own social network, where do you begin? To me it was quickly obvious that the open-source Diaspora project was the place to start. It's fairly well on it's way, has links into several other social tools such as facebook, twitter, and tumblr, and has nice features well suited to some of the goals of our project like the ability to subscribe to hashtags. Oh, and, yes, I'm being intentionally cryptic about what our project is. As soon as we launch I'll be willing to talk more about that. Anyway...
Finding development space was a different challenge. Until recently I've always managed my own ISP provision, but that has changed so I don't have the ability to set up my own development server, punch a few holes in the firewall, and do whatever I please. In hindsight I'm glad of this because it allowed me to discover the Amazon AWS free usage tier. A free micro instance of several server images (including Windows Server 2008) along with elastic IPs, plenty of storage for snapshots and backups, server monitoring and alerts, and lots of other great features. How did I miss this? Within minutes of signing up for the service I was building a new Ubuntu server and walking through the Diaspora setup. But, if you thought that was going to be as easy, you should go check out my rant about open source software a few posts ago...

Okay, I need to get back to the countdown. More to come.

When social networking breaks

I have a dear friend who is very active in a particular social cause, and she has a problem. She, and the others who are busy working and advocating have become very dependent on facebook to get news, updates, information, and messages to the rest of their network. They're a very passionate group and they cross-post and tag each other like crazy. And facebook keeps banning them as spammers. Never mind that they are all friends, that they only tag and post to friends, that they are trying to do important work.
In several ways this points to the profound impact that social networking has changed the landscape for so many people. As Jeff Jarvis noted on TWiT.tv's Triangulation (show #28), we all crave social interaction, and the explosion of topical social networking demonstrates the power of easily connecting with people who share our passions but who we might never have met in meatspace. But what do you do when the very social network that you need (and that you are supporting through their ability to aggregate and sell information about your passions and needs) arbitrarily decides that they don't really want you, or at least that particular part of you?

Perhaps you go out and start your own social network dedicated to the cause you support?

Yes, I think that's exactly what you do. Watch this space, and I'll share the steps along the way.

The Secret....

One of the things that bothers me about using open-source software is the tendency of the open-source community to ignore questions which creates severe problems for those of us who are trying really hard to use open-source tools. There seems to be an attitude that if you don't know enough about apache to parse the httpd.conf you really don't have any place breathing the rarified air that surrounds the folks who can answer you. I am sure I don't have to point out the inherent contradiction there.

Anyway, for the last 10 days or so I've been fighting with 404 errors with my CakePHP server when I was trying to access pages by server/controller/function. Before I go any further, let me point out that there are a LOT of posts on message boards from people with either this or similar problems, but there are NO answers.

I suspected it was a mod_rewrite issue, but I wasn't quite sure, especially because the main Cake page comes up correctly which the Cake docs state is an indication that mod_rewrite is working, and since there are no screen shots in the Cake docs there was no clear indication of what sub-pages should look like. So, when I found that I could access the page by server/index.php/controller/function I just figured that I had been being stupid. Never mind that the sub-pages were all super ugly. So, when I was reading through Cakephp Application Development and happened to see a screenshot of a sub-page with a background and graphics, and... well, no ugly, and then I KNEW I had a mod_rewrite problem. So I started digging for mod_rewrite solutions.

The setup section of the book and it says to make sure that the mod_rewrite module is loaded. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an easy way to tell, so I decided to assume that it wasn't loaded. So, after a lot of futzing around with my apache2.conf file (which in an Ubuntu server kind of takes the place of the httpd.conf file) I still wasn't getting anywhere, other than getting confused about where directives were supposed to go. So then I found a wonderful post on an Ubuntu message board explaining how to enable mod_rewrite on an Ubuntu/Apache 2 install. Why mod_rewrite isn't loaded by default is a different question that I'll just raise and walk past. Anyway, there is a post here explaining how to turn on mod_rewrite in the Ub/A2 environment.