”Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. ”It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.
Cynical, they call me cynical.
"the copyright lobby never gives up."
- http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/ifpis-child-porn-strategy/ (view on Google Sidewiki)
"With so much invasion of eroticism, sometimes it’s not easy to stay celibate or to respect children. If on television and on the Internet and in so many media outlets there is pornography, it is very difficult to stay pure and chaste.
He added:
Obviously when there is generalized sexual freedom it’s more likely there could be cases of pedophilia."
But this takes the cake, the biscuit and the entire trolley:
"Bishop Bernando Álvarez said that there were children who wanted to be abused.
Bishop Bernando Álvarez
There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you."
"Bishop Bernando Álvarez said that there were children who wanted to be abused. Bishop Bernando Álvarez There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you."
- Mexican bishop blames ‘eroticism and internet porn’ for clerical child abuse (view on Google Sidewiki)
"But more than anything, this election offers a new opportunity: beyond expecting our politicians to follow the evidence, we can be evidence based ourselves, in our voting decisions, and hold ourselves to the same high standards. VoteMatch can match your views against the party manifestoes. SkepticalVoter knows if your MP believes in the homeopaths’ magic beans. Using TheyWorkForYou I can see that my last MP (Andrew Smith, Labour, Oxford East) voted very strongly in favour of the Iraq war, very strongly against an inquiry into it, very strongly in favour of ID cards, and so on. It’s grim reading. PoliticsPosters will print that on a poster, so you can make sure your neighbours know too."
Science, evidence, and the Internet.
"What can science and evidence bring to an election?"
- Evidence based voting – Bad Science (view on Google Sidewiki)
"The task of running a cellular network has usually been reserved for major carriers. But now an open-source project called OpenBTS is proving that almost anyone can cheaply run a network with parts from a home-supply or auto-supply store. Cell-phone users within such a network can place calls to each other and--if the network is connected to the Internet--to people anywhere in the world.
The project's cofounder, David Burgess, hopes that OpenBTS will mean easier and cheaper access to cellular service in remote parts of the world, including hard-to-reach locations like oil rigs and poor areas without much infrastructure."
"Just about anybody can create an inexpensive cellular base station that routes calls all over the world."
- Technology Review: Build Your Own Cellular Network (view on Google Sidewiki)
"The government's Large Budget Screen Production Grant offers a 15 per cent rebate on production spending in New Zealand above $15m. The Government grant scheme was set up in 2003, and since then movie and television makers have received grants of $199.4m from the Government, after spending about $1.49b, latest figures show.
The makers of science fiction blockbuster Avatar spent more than $307m in New Zealand and qualified for a grant back of almost $45m. Avatar created jobs for up to 900 people at the peak of production in New Zealand."
Versus $2B spent funding productions locally. Either they're both too large, or neither is.
"The Lord of the Rings was a huge money spinner for film-makers New Line Cinema and its parent firm Time Warner shareholders. It is the best-selling trilogy ever, grossing US$2.9b since the first film came out in 2001."
- Taxpayers' bill $200m for blockbusters | Stuff.co.nz (view on Google Sidewiki)
"Over the subsequent three years, the university has claimed that it did not have to supply the data because it would be too time-consuming; because the data does not amount to environmental information; because the research is unfinished; because the data is private property, commercially confidential and of "negligible" public interest – and because Keenan would not understand them.
But Smith says the university, one of the world's leading centres for tree-ring research, is wrong on each count."
If the collection of data was paid for, we can lose the trudging over bogs and fields rubbish. For that they were paid and not under an exclusive arrangement AFAIK.
""a direct, and unpleasant, off-shoot of the information revolution. It now appears that research data can be demanded, and indeed obtained, by anyone.""
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/20/climate-sceptic-wins-data-victory (view on Google Sidewiki)
"Successful promotion of a scare requires that some interest group benefits. Sometimes this is the scare-promoters themselves. Scientists have learnt that exaggerated claims are a route to a media profile and research funding. There is little downside in predicting disaster: if it does not materialise they can claim to have been instrumental in staving it off. Scares that thrive, such as the millennium bug and swine flu, have commercial interests that benefit from their propagation. Naysayers in the credit boom, by contrast, were trampled in the rush to share the riches available to those who denied or disregarded the dangers."
In a nutshell.
"The political and regulatory incentives are either to downplay risks or exaggerate them – or to do each at different times."
- http://www.johnkay.com/2010/04/21/how-our-leaders-get-to-grips-with-a-scare-story/ (view on Google Sidewiki)
