Category — politics

Modesty Survey :: Main:

The Modesty Survey is an exciting, anonymous discussion between Christian guys and girls who care about modesty. Hundreds of Christian girls contributed to the 148-question survey and over 1,600 Christian guys submitted 150,000+ answers, including 25,000 text responses, over a 20-day period in January 2007.

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Paper Daisies and Feministing point out this very strange survey devolving through the Christian community of teenagers and young adults. Some conclusions of this community are things like : Women wearing jeans are immodest. Visible Swimming suit ties are immodest. etc. etc. … I have a problem here… To me, the posters fail to understand what modesty is. Modesty is not about the audience, it is about appropriate respect of oneself, which usually is implied through some relationship with a diety or a tradition. To be modest is not about the affects of your clothes on other people, as the affects of your clothes exist in the minds of others. To be modest, you need to feel comfortable with who you are, in your own clothes in a way that fits with whatever traditional beliefs you may have. Modesty is a ‘virtue’ in some cultures and it exists in the minds of those who are modest, and it is about them being comfortable with themselves . it does not exist in attempting to making men, boys, women, or girls more comfortable. It is not something that you should promote to make people feel bad about themselves or their bodies. It really is just an ideology in the end, but in that it is accepted by some women and men as part of their identity, we should respect those choices, as we are a plural society, but we should not extend those arguments to our own opinion about those people who choose or do not choose the values found in that ideology/tradition. If someone’s clothes makes you uncomfortable… if someone’s body makes you uncomfortable, then I suggest it is your problem and you should look toward the appropriate texts and communities to seek resolution within yourself. However, you should not be pursuing the line that argues that your lack of comfort with your own identity as a man or woman allows you to make claims about the propriety or modesty of other people, as that would be vicious, and immodest.

Why the Religious Right Supports Bush | Diatribune:
I asked him why he voted for Bush. He said, with a cold, straight face, “To bring about the rapture.”

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scary….

Lauren Weinstein’s Blog: Newly Revealed FBI Data Abuses and the Data Retention Red Flag:

Broad abuses of retained data are now demonstrated to be real, not theoretical, as described in .this Washington Post story

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Lauren has a nice post outlining some of his insights and furthering his points about the problems of the governments abuse of information.

The New York Nerd » The Smartest Man:

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this is not as funny as it should be.

Covert History:
1 – You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history – but still call yourself a Christian.

Bush Is Not Above the Law – New York Times:
To allow a president to break the law and commit a felony for more than five years without even a formal independent investigation would be the ultimate subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law. As Judge Taylor warned in her decision, “There are no hereditary kings in America.”

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And it is likely that this president will never be prosecuted… which is a shame.

Largest archive of free culture to be built in the Netherlands:
From the Netherlands, the “Images for the Future” project is building a large-scale conservation and digitization project to make available 285,000 hours of film, television, and radio recordings, as well as more than 2.9 million photos from the Netherlands’ film and television archives. A basic collection drawn from the archive will be made available on the Internet either under CC licenses, or in some cases, in the public domain. The Government of the Netherlands, a long time supporter of the local Dutch CC project, will invest a total of 173 million Euros over a seven-year period. Their aim is to spur innovative applications with new media, while providing valuable services to the public.
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this will be great… free content is the backbone of innovation and production.

Papers, Please! » Blog Archive » “Mother, may I?”:
Should you have to ask for permission from the government before you are allowed to get on a plane or cruise ship?
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed that airlines and cruise ships be required to get individual permission (”clearance”) from the DHS for each individual passenger on all flights to, from, or via the U.S. Unless the answer is “Yes” — if the answer is “no” or “maybe”, or if the DHS doesn’t answer at all — the airline wouldn’t be allowed to give you a boarding pass, or let you or your luggage on the plane or ship.

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Gahhhh! another overzealous program of fictional protections. People do not, should not, need permission to leave the country. This goes beyond the sillyness problem of security theater in airports and elsewhere and drives right down into our fundamental capacity to be citizens.

Politicizing the IRS is a Political Cancer Symptom:
The NYT reports that the admonistration is manipulating the IRS for political gain: I.R.S. Going Slow Before Election,

The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light.

Except that it isn’t routine at all: “four former I.R.S. commissioners, who served under presidents of both parties, said that doing so because of an election was improper and indefensible.”

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I agree, this is indefensible. It is wrong to use tax collection or lack of for political purposes. Tax collection is about supporting the critical infrastructure of the nation, and it should never be made to appear to benefit one party or another, it benefits everyone.

I made it to newark airport… My only hangup of course is that is did something to my back yesterday afternoon and basically haven’t slept much, but eh, that only caused me to walk up and down 34th street for 10-15 minutes wondering where the heck the penn station door was, because I’d never been in before, eventually i just decided to walk against traffic and voila, it was at the end of stream of people. Beyond that, the symposium looks interesting, I’m really happy that I was invited even though… it means flying across the u.s. 2 times in 48 hours so that i can be back in time for the digital archives class.

Governance and conflict resolution in probably a better construct for the Linden Lab meeting, but I think that I’ll easily fit in, and make some of my points. The symposium is all day tomorrow. Tonight I’m trying to meet up with my friend and colleague David Silver, whose teaching until 8pm.