Benlog

My wife and I were discussing Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons Quarterback who is admitting he set up dog fights and killed some dogs by drowning and hanging. The people defending Vick are a bit out of line, in my opinion, especially those claiming that “dogfighting is just a sport.” Uhuh, right. The guy committed [...]

Republicans in California are trying to split the electoral votes proportionally in time for the 2008 elections. They say it’s “more fair.”
Are you kidding me? Seriously? Is this the level of lying that we’re dealing with now? Obviously, it’s only fair if all states do this. If only “blue states” do this, or if only [...]

In 2004, I appeared on a panel at Harvard alongside Debra Bowen, who was then a California State Senator. I found her to be extremely sharp, and particularly insightful about voting issues at a time when most of the public debate was thoroughly confused (it’s gotten a little bit better since).
Ms. Bowen has since become [...]

Julie Amero is a substitute teacher who faces the possibility of jail time because the classroom computer displayed pornographic popups to teenage kids. Though she tried to stop it, she was somehow blamed by an incompetent and overreaching school administration. Thankfully, she recently obtained a new trial. I hope this one is a bit less [...]

On June 29th, the day the iPhone launched, I posted the following to a private mailing list:

I suspect there’ll also be an ipod/DRM effect. Once the ipod got super hot, you had folks demanding that Apple “make it compatible with other music stores.” What a riot it was to see even the ex-head of the [...]

A few days ago, the Google Healthcare blog carried an entry that criticized Michael Moore’s latest film, Sicko, for not providing a balanced view of the health care world. The reaction in the blogosphere was clearly negative, with folks wondering if Google was shilling for pharmaceutical companies. I haven’t seen the movie, so I won’t [...]

The Supreme Court recently ruled that high-school students’ free speech rights do not extend to allowing them to post drug-related banners. I’m all for free speech, but I guess I don’t have too much of an issue with this decision, because you have to give school administrators some power to control the classroom learning environment. [...]

Nicolas Sarkozy just won the French Presidential Elections by a sizeable margin. In case my fellow US liberals are worried about a “Conservative” victory in Europe, it’s important to note that the US Republican Party and the French UMP are by no means the same. Sarkozy used his first speaking opportunity to declare France “a [...]

Richard Dawkins spoke with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last night. I thought it would be more explosive, but it remained extremely quiet and civilized. That said, the crux of the issue was addressed:

O’Reilly: well, it’s true for me, you see I believe…
Dawkins: you mean “true for you” is different from “true for anybody [...]

Last Friday, Professor David King presented the results of his review of the Boston Election Department at a meeting of the MIT Voting Technology Project. His work has been mentioned in the press, but this is the first time that David has been able to publicly comment on his recommendations.
There are number of interesting changes [...]