Privacy Concerns With Google

(say it isn't so! ed.)

Via Instapundit, the folks at Volokh have this, Google To Track Flu Searches and Report Them to Feds?:


Yeh yeh, so Google is hanging up its "Big Brother is Watching You" posters again, and everyone is worried. There's just one minor thing that Vololk and potentially the Glenn have overlooked.


Human Perversity.


As soon as I finished reading the article, I immediately opened a tab with Google, and typed in the following searches, "flu", "flu flu", "flu flu flu", "nasty avian bird flu", and finally "nasty avian bird flu with birds dropping out of the sky" (which produced about 36,000 results, and the second one actually seemed to fully fit the search terms.)

Civil Liberties

Kim du Toit notes that the Justice Department wants to build a DNA data base of anyone "arrested, facing charges, or convicted" who gets their fingerprints taken.

Like Kim, I can see compelling convicted felons to give up DNA samples, but to compel it for every person arrested?

So if you get pulled over for speeding, and refuse to give a breathalyzer sample, that's reason to put you permanently in the DNA database. Or how 'bout this, you get arrested because an officer thinks you are someone else. I worried about this once, a buddy of mine and I got pulled over and surrounded by three squad cars, because he was driving a "black SUV" and I matched the description of one of a pair of guys in a "black SUV" that had been doing break-ins that morning. (After the officers looked at our ID, they gave it back and apologized, saying that we were way to old to be the perps.) And of course, your local DA would never issue an arrest warrant for somebody based on flimsy evidence (sudden cough that sounds like "Nifong!").

This is a bad bad idea.

Here is the contact info, where you should let them know, politely that this is unconscionable.

DATES: Written comments must be submitted on or before May 19, 2008.

ADDRESSES: Comments may be mailed to
David J. Karp, Senior Counsel,
Office of Legal Policy, Room 4509, Main Justice Building,
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.,
Washington, DC 20530.


To ensure proper handling, please reference OAG Docket No. 119 on your correspondence.
You may submit comments electronically or view an electronic version of this proposed rule at http://www.regulations.gov.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David J. Karp, Senior Counsel, Office of Legal Policy. Telephone: (202) 514-3273.

Thanks Kim!

But remember, the worst threat to our civil liberties is the evile Bush Administration tapping the cell phones of terrorists...

UPDATE:Bioephemera notes that GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act passed the Senate unanimously. More at Scientific American. So write to your Senators and Congresspersons, they may actually be in the mood to deal with stuff like this appropriately.

Another of the Infinite Number of Reasons Why We Home-School

Student Suspended For Buying Skittles In School

Lets think about this... we'll ruin the school record of a kid, who looks to be pretty bright (honor student, class vice president), negatively impact his chances of getting into top colleges (maybe even impact his chances of getting scholarships), thus potentially lessening his potential career options and/or earning potential...

...all for a bag of skittles.

You know, I don't like Tort lawyers, they're pretty much all vultures and ambulance chasers in my book. But if somebody puts together a class action suit against all these draconian, zero-tolerance, all-kids-must-be-punished bureaucrats, I will stand up and cheer!

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." - Winston Churchill

The first thing I look for when considering a new home is the existence of home owners associations and historic districts.

This is why.

My wife and I want to get out of the People's Republic of Kennedy-Kerry-Catsup.
Badly.
Communities that prevent me from doing reasonable improvements to a house WILL NOT GET MY TAX DOLLARS OR INVESTMENT.


Sorry to shout....

I grew up in a 250 year old post and beam New England farmhouse. In order to heat it (in the middle of the woods with no winter road access for at least a half a mile) my dad used coal and wood. I love old houses, and if I get to buy one, my hope is to return it to its original glory in as practical a manner as possible. 17th or 18th century drafts and entrances for mice and other vermin, as well as smoke and soot belching heating systems are right out.

I'm sorry. If you want to legislate moral behavior, you gotta choose between saving the world from pollution and anthropogenic global warming or keeping your neighborhood a perfect example of 18th century building techniques. You're not going to get both.

Many zoning regulations end up being anti-home owner. You add "historic preservation" and homeowners associations on top of that, and you have (a not very) soft totalitarianism.

No, I don't want a strip mall or a strip joint right next to my house. I don't blame anyone for fighting those in an established residential only neighborhood.

However, I don't want drafty windows and the constant smell of burning oil or sulfur either.



Somebody go out and slap these people, please!

Predictable

Just watched the second episode of "Simon Shama's Power of Art" on PBS. This episode was about Picasso. In talking about the painting "Guernica", Mr. Shama couldn't resist sniping against the Iraq war.



He related how a copy of Guernica, arguably Picasso's greatest masterpiece, was covered up during the press conference after the US made its case before the UN that force should be used to overthrow Saddam. The reason being that the painting would have been "too disturbing." (It actually sounded to both my wife and I that Mr. Sharma blamed the press corps for this request.)
Mr. Sharma finished up with something to the tune of, you may be the greatest power in the world, capable of toppling dictators, but don't mess with great art. (paraphrased, ed.)



I don't know, but maybe somebody from the US delegation should have asked that it stay uncovered...





...I think the Kurds of Halabja would have thought it an entirely appropriate backdrop to an announcement of the plans to topple the fascist who had killed them.

Suppression of Freedom

Puppet Show and Islamism, Heretical Librarian discusses how an ancient art form is being slowly forced out of Malaysian society.

After the Danish Cartoon Controversy a long but worthwhile read on the genesis of the brouhaha in Europe, at the Middle East Quarterly. (H/T LGF)

See-Dubya, guest blogging at Michelle's, reports on Iran's arrest and holding of a number of Christian converts, apparently to suppress their Christmas celebrations.

These are only three examples of the strangling nature of radical Islamism, not to say anything of the honor-killings, beheadings in public squares, the killing of homosexuals, the fatwas calling for the death of Muslims who convert to other religions et cetera.

Meanwhile, books are being published warning of the eminant takeover of America by Christian Fascists. That's because, as R.J.Dunn points out, the tens of millions of people who died in the 20th Century under the fists of Pentecostal dictators or in Evangelical gulags.

Bruce Thornton uses the reactions to Saddam's execution to illustrate the vacuousness of the modern Left.

Read, and be assured that there is some sanity in the world.

Children's Lessons for Adults



Dr. Suess political cartoon August 13, 1941


For those who think that there is no real fascist threat from the minority radical strains of Islam, a lesson of history from the good Doctor.

Appealing to the good intentions of those who have admitted their goals of wiping Israel off the map and killing as many Americans and other westerners as they can is impossible. Those who choose to believe such an appeal is possible need a children's author to explain reality to them, since they seem unwilling to listen to adult sources.

H/T Charles Johnson via Sissy Willis.



Dr. Suess political cartoon July 3rd, 1941

Thoughts for today...

Today, everyone has been talking (with good reason) of the foiled terror plot in Britain.

I have nothing to add. If you want information see Michelle Malkin or Charles Johnson for roundups, links and commentary.


With the president of Iran making repeated existential threats towards Israel, and the Jihadis' view of the US as the Great Satan to Israel's little satan, I would like to bring your attention to the artist Samuel Bak.

Bak has been an artistic hero of mine since I first ran across his work at Pucker Gallery almost fifteen years ago. His work is intensely spiritual, and revolves around his Jewish heritage and his survival of the Shoah (the Holocaust). He was only eleven at the end, when the Soviets liberated the 200 survivors of the 70 - 80,000 Jews that had been in Vilna before the Nazis came. Now he lives and paints in Boston.

















(images and text from the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies)

Now to a few thoughts about my "ongoing journey" through the difficult terrain of art that stems from, and relates to, the Holocaust. Years ago, when my art had reached something of its present form, I was nonetheless plagued by an incessant feeling of contradictions and shied away from admitting a direct connection with the Holocaust.

I feared that a Holocaust-related interpretation would narrow the meaning of my work. After all, I am trying to express a universal discomfort about our human condition, and the experience of the Holocaust, which sheds such a cruel light on the entire catalogue of human behavior, is specific, despite the vastness of its lesson. Wouldn't it become a factor of limitation? Being a survivor, I was familiar with the world's reluctance to listen to our harrowing stories. People needed time to study the Shoah and to grasp all its implications.

This reluctance to expose ancient wounds might also come from a fear of being thought to solicit commiseration. We live in a society that hungers for sentiment – worse, sentimentality. And sentimentality perverts truth. Furthermore, most of the art that I then encountered on this theme, art produced in the sixties and seventies, was to my eyes less than acceptable. Surely, some powerful works must already have existed, but I was unfamiliar with them.

Fortunately, the situation has changed. At present, the challenge of anchoring art in meaningful themes does not scare away talented artists. And the present conference is proof of a substantial change of attitude.

In 1978 a retrospective of my work was planned to take several years and to travel through a number of German museums. I was torn between two opposing feelings: my willingness to grant permission to show the work, and my reluctance, or rather my total unwillingness, to bring myself to revisit Germany. I never made it to Heidelberg's museum to attend my show's debut, and it took me months to decide to come to the festive opening in Nuremberg in the German National Museum. Nuremberg, a city in which the ghosts of my murdered father, grandparents and decimated family clung to me with an uncanny force. It wasn't an easy task, but this time I made it!

The day after the opening, when revisiting my show and stumbling on a visit of high school youngsters, I learned something of value. Listening to a capable instructor and to the young people's interaction with him, I understood how important it had been to bring my art to that place. I was witness to a process of their coming to terms with a terrible past. It was a courageous course. Not too many people in other European countries have been up to it. Suddenly, letting my work be seen explicitly in the context of the Holocaust made a lot of sense. To my personal view the walls of the German National Museum transformed my paintings, and I realized that my artistic choices "worked."

As you have seen, my work refrains from imagery that is overly explicit. Everything in it is transposed to a realm of imagination. This transposition must have echoed in the souls of the young Germans to whom -- as I have described -- it gave access to a past that was loaded with guilt. To a painter who creates in the solitude of his studio, such an expression of solidarity is a blessing.



What an irony, and at the same time what an emblem of the extremes of human behavior –and yet also of coming to terms, of accepting change, even, if you wish, of redemption. (speaking, I believe, of the cross in the painting)







The Jewish People faced one genocidal threat in the last century from a tyrannical philosophy bent at dominating the world. Now we have the Mad Mullahs and the Jihadis.


Mark Twain said "The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

Those who do not learn history are forced to repeat it.

"In these troubled times, when political and economic misunderstandings are erecting barriers between nations, as effectively preventing the interpenetration of ideas as if war had closed the frontiers, it is more than ever important that nations should think of each other in terms of some enduring aspect of the spirit which remains constant and free from the transitory confusion of current problems."

Thus begins the foreword of the exhibit catalog for "German Art From the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century, an Exhibition of Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings Held Under the auspices of the Oberlaender Trust (and) the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, 1936-1937." which I recently aquired. Though I haven't found definitive information, I strongly suspect that at least one of the works in that show had been aquired by one of the participating German museums through a forced "Jew auction" (where the Nazis forced Jewish citizens to sell off their art and antiques at bargain prices).

I would love to find out that this exhibit was 'lilly white and pure' but given the history of that time, I have my doubts.

Even with the growing evidence of Nazi excesses, ill treatment of the Jews, agression and violation of treaties, inflammitory rhetoric from Hitler, the exodus of Jewish people and intellectuals, and the Nazi envolvement in '36 and '37 in the Spanish Civil War, there was still a great portion of the West that wanted only to "think of each other in terms of some enduring aspect of the spirit."

The result of that wilful blindness was over fifty million dead across Europe and the Pacific.

Will my grandchildren look back at some of the things written now about the need to 'understand and cross cultural barriers' and wonder how we could ignore the religious facism of Radical Islam?

Yes, Germany in 1936 had a long and glorious art history which had contributed greatly to the culture of the world. That art did not save the millions who died as a result of Hitler's madness.

Yes, Islam and muslims have done many beautiful and meaningful things in the arts, in mathematics, and many other areas. Dwelling on such things will not defend us from a Nuclear Iran or from 'home grown' Wahhabist terrorists.

I hope that there will be grandchildren to look back and wonder at how foolish we were.

Read The American Thinker for insight and ideas. No country should be forced to censor its own people to please another country's religion.

UPDATE: Vive La France!

Dean Esmay has an interesting post called Art's in The Eye of the Beholder, BUT...

Go read the whole thing, and the comments.

A couple of notes, in my opinion Mr. Esmay is not correct in saying that Dada "showed its greatest contempt" in Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain." Another Duchamp piece holds that position, LHOOQ. The following description is from Wikipedia (in its listing on the Mona Lisa):

"The avant-garde art world has also taken note of the undeniable fact of the Mona Lisa's popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential Dadaists, made a Mona Lisa parody by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription LHOOQ, when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" (translating to "she has a hot arse" as a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability). This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modeled on Duchamp's own face."

LHOOQ shows Dada's contempt not just for the art viewer and the art world of the time, but for art as history and tradition.

Another thing to note, Dada came from the Post-Great War era, where nihilism and cynicism were central in European thought, especially in the Arts and the intelligentsia. This nihilism and its concomitant apathy were part of the cultural forces that allowed (and overlooked) the rise of Fascism in Europe.

Considering some of the strains of current culture, and the historical forces at work in world politics, the history and results of Dada and its times worth studying today.