Asking printer manufacturers to stop spying results in Secret Service visit?

The fact that color printers print a pattern of yellow dots on all pages that indicate which printer was used, for the purposes of being able to track the identity of who has printed any page, has been known since the EFF decrypted the codes and publicized the information in 2005.

Now, however, the MIT Media Lab has started a project called "Seeing Yellow" to encourage printer owners to contact the manufacturers and complain, after it has been found that those who do so get reported to the U.S. Secret Service as subversives. (There is one known case, in which someone called to ask a printer manufacturer if there was a way to turn off the "feature.")

(Via Don Lloyd at Distributed Republic.)

DI promotes round 4 for creationism in public schools

They plan to get Paul Nelson's Explore Evolution book used in a Tacoma, Washington public high school biology classroom.

Round 4's strategy is to avoid mentioning creationism or intelligent design, but just present evolution badly, and let the students infer creationism or intelligent design on their own or with the help of materials supplied outside of the classroom.

The successful defense this time may not be through the courts, but by refuting the material and getting schools to abandon it (or better, refuse to adopt it) because it contains errors and doesn't meet minimal standards of accuracy or value for the science curriculum.

Google thinks I'm malware

While looking through multiple pages of results from a Google query that contained some operators like negations and "site:" specifications, Google was periodically failing to give results or displaying raw HTML in my browser, then ultimately came back with:

Google

Error

We're sorry...

... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

But no, there's no malware doing these queries, it's just me.

French market for driver's license points

In France, the penalties for speeding are now so widely seen as unfair that there is now a market for selling and purchasing the deduction of points from your license for traffic offenses.

Each driver starts with 12 points on their license, and loses points for violations. Exceeding the speed limit by 20 kph or less has a two-point penalty, for example. Once you get to zero, your license is automatically suspended for six months.

But if you get a traffic citation, you can pay 300-1500 euros per point to someone who is willing to take the rap for you (either because they don't drive or are sufficiently far from zero that the penalty won't bother them), and they'll incur the points by sending in their information on your ticket. The French Interior Ministry is attempting to investigate means to crack down on this, but the volume of tickets is apparently making it difficult.

More at the Reason blog. I think this mechanism could work well for photo radar speeding tickets in the U.S.

Arizona bans anti-Bush t-shirts

The Arizona legislature and the governor have passed legislation banning the sale of t-shirts that say "Bush Lied/They Died." The Arizona legislature voted unanimously in favor of the ban, which allows for the punishment of a year in jail for using the names of deceased soldiers to sell goods, and gives the families of such soldiers the right to collect civil damages.

This is an outrageous violation of the First Amendment to prohibit perfectly legitimate political speech using factual information in the public domain. Similar bans have also been passed in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, and are in the works in Florida.

In Arizona, this law also violates the state constitution (Article 2, Sections 1, 2, and 6, in my non-lawyerly opinion).

Several Democrats who voted for the bill have now agreed that they should not have, and made excuses for why they did:

"I shouldn't have voted the way I did," House Minority Leader Phil Lopes said. The Tucson Democrat blamed his vote in favor of Senate Bill 1014 on a "senior moment."

Rep. Tom Prezelski, D-Tucson, said he thought problems he originally had with the measure had been fixed. He acknowledged not reading the final version.

And Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, conceded that she wasn't paying attention and was totally unaware of the contents of the bill on which she voted at least twice—once after a proponent of the measure gave a short floor speech explaining the essence of the bill and why he believed it was necessary.

Our governor, also a Democrat, has given an equally lame response when asked why she signed such a clearly unconstitutional bill:

...gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L'Ecuyer said a divided vote would not have resulted in a veto.

"Her concern is for the families who lost someone," L'Ecuyer said.

Asked if Napolitano, a lawyer, believes the measure is unconstitutional, L'Ecuyer's only response was, "The governor signed the bill."

Napolitano cannot be re-elected, and after this, she clearly should not be. Any legislator who voted for this bill should be given the boot, which means cleaning out the entire Arizona legislature. Toss the bums out!

The shirts are being sold by Dan Frazier of Flagstaff, who also offers some different messages on top of the list of names of the fallen soldiers.

The Arizona Civil Liberties Union has already filed a lawsuit to overturn the law (PDF).

If anyone in Phoenix is interested in purchasing some of these shirts as part of a group purchase (or as my resale at cost to you, so I can work some civil disobedience of an unconstitutional law into it), please let me know.

UPDATE (August 24, 2007): Dan Frazier has gone to court to get an injunction against the law, but it looks like the legislators wrote the law not only in ignorance of the Constitution, but in ignorance of what Frazier is doing--the law doesn't ban the sale of items using the names of fallen soldiers, it bans advertising using the names of fallen soldiers. The names are not legible on Frazier's website, so he may not fall afoul of the law. That doesn't change the fact that it's a bad, unconstitutional law, however.

A difference between Christians and atheists

Atheists, who see prayers in Congress as unconstitutional superstitious appeals to a fictional deity, have fought against them with arguments and lawsuits, observing that the First Amendment prohibits government establishment of religion.

Some Christians, on the other hand, when they see unconstitutional superstitious appeals to a fictional deity that they don't believe in, attempt to disrupt and silence the invited speaker doing the praying.

These individuals apparently think that there already is an established governmental religion of Christianity. It does seem like we've moved a long way in that direction under the Bush administration.

And whatever happened to Matthew 6:5-6? Has it been removed from some Christians' Bibles?

"And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you." (NASB)

(Also see Pharyngula's take.)

Quarter billion dollar bank robbery--in Iraq

Yesterday's New York Times reports that two or three guards at the Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad successfully engineered the theft of $282 million in U.S. dollars from the bank. It's not been explained why the bank had that much money in U.S. dollars.

Messianic Jew issues death threats to Colorado University biologists

For over a year, an individual has been harassing several evolutionary biologists at the Colorado University at Boulder about their "devilutionism," and has now crossed the line into threats. The Discovery Institute claims that whoever is doing this is clearly not a Christian, a creationist, or religious (of course, only atheists are capable of doing anything unethical or crazy, right?), but the identity of this individual is known to the people being harassed.

The Panda's Thumb, Pharyngula, and Dispatches from the Culture Wars have more.

UPDATE (July 13, 2007): The specific kook responsible has been identified as Michael Korn:

Menacher “Michael” Korn is a 49-year-old Israeli national and former Messianic Jew who says he was baptized into Christianity in the Sea of Galilee seven years ago and is now on a mission to convert Jews and Muslims. His blog, JesusOverIsrael. blogspot.com, references CU-Boulder specifically and says he lives in Denver, although he has a North Carolina area code.

See Pharyngula for links to Korn's website and other information.

Bush doesn't care that his staff leaks the names of CIA agents

Originally, he said that he would take action if he found that someone on his staff was responsible for leaking the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA covert agent to the press. Then, he said he couldn't comment because an investigation was underway, then, that he couldn't comment because a trial was underway. Now that the trial is over and he can comment, he pretty much comes right out and says he doesn't give a damn.

Man on religious mission struck by lightning

From WSVN-TV (Miami/Ft. Lauderdale):

Miami-Dade Air Rescue transported Hailu Kidane Marian, 40, to Jackson Memorial Hospital Sunday after he was struck by dry lightning while selling religious books. According to one customer, a lightning bolt struck as he walked door-to-door selling books along Northwest 199 Street and 78 Avenue Sunday afternoon. "I was buying a book from one of these guys, and there was one thunderstorm and thunder and then the second thunder, which was the lightning," explained Maria Martinez. "It was like a gunshot, and, when I turned around, I saw like a cloud of smoke and this one guy jumping, like basically being slammed on his feet. I guess he just fell back."

The man, a Seventh-Day Adventist on a summer missionary trip, went into cardiac arrest but was revived by Miami Dade Fire Rescue. The lightning strike was a case of "dry lightning," when lightning strikes when it is not raining.

The leader of the missionary group is described in the cited news article as saying "the group trusts God to provide a miracle" for Hailu Kidane Marian's recovery. (Why do they assume the lightning strike wasn't the miracle? As usual, God is given the credit for anything good, even if it's mere recovery from something bad that he's unaccountably not given any blame for.)