Today is Tax Freedom Day. Finally.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 5:10 PM EDT

No Comments »

Stephen Pollard points out everything that’s wrong with the idiotic Make Poverty History campaign:

According to Make Poverty History: “We need trade justice, not free trade . . . ensuring poor countries can feed their people by protecting their own farmers and staple crops.” With that, the campaign destroys any claim it might have to serving the interests of the poor.

The point is that it is precisely free trade that makes poor countries rich. Read the whole article.

I commented on this last year when I first encountered it at the Glastonbury Festival, and later when it was the subject of a BBC sitcom.

Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 1:45 PM EDT

1 Comment »

Scott Burgess quotes Chris Martin from Coldplay saying that “the greatest evil of the modern world” is shareholders.

If Martin thinks investment for personal gain is evil, he must logically think that all personal gain is evil and that the only legitimate use for money is for altruism, making him a character from an Ayn Rand novel.

Alternatively he sees shareholders not as investors but as people who simply take profits that would otherwise be spent on making railways safer or feeding starving children. It’s the same mindset that is disgusted when companies announce record profits. They see money flowing towards rich people but fail to understand what happens to the money after that. What do they think rich people do with their money? I’ll tell you what they do do: Rich people spend it, which employs people, or invest it, which employs people and creates more money.

Shareholders aren’t even just rich people. Most shares are owned by banks who are investing money from people’s savings accounts and pension funds. So nearly everyone is shareholder. Does Martin think we’re all evil?

No, Martin is not really saying that shareholders are evil because he doesn’t understand what shareholders are or what they do. He doesn’t realise that shareholders provide the money that makes large scale ventures possible, and thereby help to increase the total wealth in the world, making us all richer. He’s just another celebrity using his position to spout off nonsense about subjects he does not understand.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 9:01 PM EDT

4 Comments »

Today’s USA Today has on its front page a story about a new X-Ray machine for use in airports that can see through clothing. The machine apparently generates images that, “paint a revealing picture of a person’s nude body”.

The first thing I thought was, “cool! Where can I get one? And when will the technology be put into specs?”

But I can see why people might be upset at this development. Is there to be no privacy at all in airports? I was offended enough when the security at Heathrow decided to have a good old rummage in my luggage, now I have to put up with giggling security personnel leering at my scrawny, inadequate body?

The article does not discuss the need for these machines. Are not current metal detectors adequate for preventing people from getting on an aeroplane with firearms?

If an airline says it wants me to walk through this machine as a condition of getting on one of their planes, that is one thing: it’s a private company deciding that this is a necessary measure to protect its customers or keep down its insurance costs. It’s their aircraft, they can quite rightly refuse to allow on anyone they feel like for whatever reason.

But if the government mandates the use of these machines, then that’s the government forcing airlines and airports into doing something they and their passengers likely don’t want to do. It’s governments yet again abusing their power to achieve nothing of value to anyone except politicians who want to look like they’re doing something useful.

…Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a Senate subcommittee last month that he wants to employ the technology and doesn’t want an “endless debate” over privacy issues.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 8:49 PM EDT

1 Comment »

As I type this, my fellow Brits are going to the polls. But I won’t be, partly because I agree with Perry de Havilland that it only encourages them, but mostly because I’ve been out of the country since March and far too lazy to arrange postal or proxy votes.

I might have voted for UKIP as a kind of protest against the inexorable European integration but there’s plenty about UKIP that I dislike, such as their immigration policy, so it would have been a half-hearted vote at best.

What strikes me is how tedious the whole charade is. The main difference between politicians is how they will share out the spoils, so until there is debate about the size of the state, political parties will seem the same to me. (That’s really the appeal of UKIP: protesting against Brussels is protesting against the growth of the state.) And everyone knows that Labour will win again anyway.

I think most people realise this, most people are disillusioned and see the vote as a Hobson’s choice, not agreeing whole-heartedly with any one party line. I’ll make a prediction: we’ll see the lowest voter turn-out ever this time around. Politicians will bleat that it’s a disaster for democracy and that Something Must Be Done. But a low turn-out will at least show them that they’re not as important as they like to think they are. A lot of us just wish they’d go away.

Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 5:39 PM EDT

2 Comments »

With its clever use of Javascript, Google Maps is extremely useful for finding your way around the USA. This is how Javascript should be used: not to popup windows and animated buttons that serve only to complicate navigation, but to cache map tiles so that the map can be freely sized and scrolled. It certainly beats the annoyance of trying to work out a route to a place that’s right on the edge of the map.

But best feature is the satellite view. This is not only useful for getting an idea of what the area you’re driving to looks like, it’s also endlessly fascinating. It’s quite easy to waste an afternoon looking up the place where you work, the hotel you’re staying in, and anywhere else that might look interesting from space. Other map sites have satellite or aerial views, notably the UK’s Multimap, but Google’s scrollability makes exploring easy. You can find out interesting things, such as that if you live at 10340 Yukon Ave, Inglewood, CA, you’re right in the flightpath of planes landing at LAX!

For more interesting places to look, try The Edge of I-Hacked where you can find, among other things, a Saturn V rocket on its side, or this list of places on Perljam.net which links to an image of Magic Mountain, a theme park with many scary rides that I visited last weekend (the rides don’t look so scary from this angle, but they are).

Google Maps now also covers the UK, which is handy, but the satellite view does not yet zoom in very far. I look forward being able to view the entire world at such high resolution.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 6:37 AM EDT

1 Comment »

I was in an Italian restaurant in West Hollywood tonight, and the restroom had a sign by the sink that said, “State Law requires that you wash your hands before returning to work”.

It sounds reasonable enough, but it’s an utterly pointless law.

It’s un-enforcable without putting CCTV in the bogs or having cops do random checks; it’s pretty much a state of the art practice for restaurants anyway; it’s enough incentive for an employee that he’ll be fired if his boss catches him not washing his hands; and no restaurant makes money by poisoning its customers.

This law has precisely no effect on the health and safety of restaurant patrons. The only reason it exists is so that some politician can take credit for introducing such an obviously sensible law.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 6:24 AM EDT

1 Comment »