In The New York Times, Nicolette Hahn Niman proposes five things the government can do to help stop cruel and abusive animal practices in the US. All are excellent suggestions, but the last we find most interesting:

The United States should launch a domestic Peace Corps for farming. America needs to repopulate rural America and stimulate beneficial jobs for young people. Our nation struggles with unemployment, and yet traditional farming is disappearing partly because it is more labor intensive. Training the next generation in sustainable agriculture and assisting them to start new farms could be a brave president’s boldest and most lasting initiative.

Combined with the first four examples, this idea is a fantastic one. The problem, of course, is that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is subject to the lobbyists who promote big business, and are woefully negligent on sustainability in agriculture, and even nutrition. A government-funded Farmers Corps would have to work alongside the USDA, but a non-profit, non-government organization (NGO) could work contrary to USDA recommendations (corn subsidies, et al) and yet still help boost the economy and environment.

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God forbid Apple enforce its app store rules and pull the controversial WikiLeaks application. It’s not like the site isn’t available on the web. But let’s address the app store rules for a moment, and dismiss the silly notion that Apple is necessarily taking sides in this silly WikiLeaks debate.

The app store rules state that any app providing charitable donations must be free. Further, that any charitable donations be done via a web site or SMS. The WikiLeaks app, however, was not free, though the author explicitly stated that half of the app proceeds would be given to WikiLeaks. The author presumably split the proceeds on his own end and sent them in to WikiLeaks. So, no donations were done via the web, or SMS, by the app customer.

This alone is grounds for removal, but there’s another breach to the app store rules.

8.5 Use of protected 3rd party material (trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, otherwise proprietary content) requires a documented rights check which must be provided upon request.

It’s a simple argument to make that WikiLeaks is hosting proprietary content, and issues of over-classification aside, the fact remains that there is classified information accessible via the WikiLeaks that is not meant for release in the public domain. Even if you’re a WikiLeaks supported, you have to realize that this is no different than an eBook app being pulled which republishes a leaked, yet copyrighted manuscript. Simple because a leak occurred does not render the contents of that leak public domain.

Amazon pulled the plug on a WikiLeaks server under similar grounds, and though there was backlash against it, it’s not as though Amazon didn’t respond to a policy it already had in place. People can get as angry as they want about companies not supporting WikiLeaks, but in these cases, it’s not an issue of endorsement or support, it’s a matter of enforcing existing policies. Why should Amazon and Apple make an exception for WikiLeaks but enforce their policies for everyone else? By Apple enforcing it’s app review policy, it’s not taking a side, and isn’t being neutral in this matter an appropriate position for Apple to take?

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On a daily basis, it seems that the media wants everyone to believe that the American way of life has ended. There are even comparisons, frequently so, about the state of the U.S. today and the state it was in during the Great Depression. There are even some who are convinced that we’re in a depression, and not a simple recession. Meanwhile, even grasping that the economy has turned down of late, we still wonder what the majority of the fuss is about. There are no bread-lines, people, and we are not living in a dust bowl!

Fortunately, more eloquent sense comes from Trent at The Simple Dollar, who agrees that the media is not the best source for information about the financial crisis they keep shouting about. When one breaks down the numbers, things certainly seem less scary:

…the actual unemployment rate changed from 4.9% to 7.2% from December 2006 to December 2007 – a difference of 2.3%. In other words, out of every 100 people I know, two more should be unemployed right now than a year ago – and that’s pretty accurate.

What about consumer spending? Most accounts have consumer spending dropping about 4% during 2008, which makes it appear to be a truly terrible year. However, what’s being left out of that picture is that 2008 had virtually no inflation – almost every other year has at least 3% inflation, which artificially boosts that consumer spending number. In a year with normal inflation, the consumer spending would have appeared unchanged and thus there would be little or no panic about it.

Our experiences are similar to Trent’s: those we know who, during the period of this purported financialpocalypse, lost their jobs, managed to find new ones rather quickly. At present, only a couple people we know haven’t found gainful employment, but that’s not necessarily because jobs don’t exist. Rather, jobs they want don’t exist, but that can be true even when the economy is doing well. (For example, one friend quit her job because she wanted to find a better one on the opposite coast. One friend who lost his job found a better paying one within a couple weeks. And another friend who remains unemployed has turned down a number of admittedly shitty jobs, but has still received job offers.

That’s not to say that very fundamental lifestyle changes shouldn’t take effect in the U.S. To the contrary, Americans are consumers of the worst degree, with absolutely no comprehension of sustainability or future impact. That’s in great part because for the last hundred years, Americans have managed to piss away money on consumer goods, and live a disposable lifestyle that simply cannot exist long-term. This goes hand-in-hand with financial sustainability, and why we urge the new Presidential administration to pimp, quite severely, a green infrastructure. While such an initiative is certainly no magical bullet, it would certainly steer the U.S. in the right direction, and with firm lifestyle education beside it, will ensure we don’t succumb to our man-made cancers.

In the meantime, stop comparing today with the Great Depression. It’s just… depressing.

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After Wired hosted a video tutorial on how to install OS X on an MSI Wind notebook, they received a cease-and-desist letter from Apple. The step-by-step instructions were apparently too explicit for Apple, who felt threatened enough to take legal action. Ultimately, Wired took the video down, though would-be hackers can still find the video hosted at Gizmodo.

We’re not sure what legal ground Apple has to demand that a tutorial video be taken offline, since the act of hacking a netbook isn’t illegal. While the receipt of a pirated, modified copy of OS X is questionable in the legal arena, it’s doubtful that Apple can enforce the distribution of a video tutorial. They’re not, after all, going after Pirate Bay here, which is a more genuine source for the warez required. Instead, Apple is going after knowledge, and for that, they should be ashamed.

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The New York Assembly is considering legislation that would prevent underage gamers from buying video games that perpetuate racial stereotypes, reports Kotaku. Talk about unfairly targeting video games. We wonder if the NY Assembly is considering the same type of ban on music videos, rap songs, television shows, movies, et al. Or, how about setting up a task force to hit the streets and prevent people themselves from perpetuating stereotypes? Ticket bad Asian drivers, baggy-pants-wearing black teens, beer-drinking Germans, Camaro-driving southerners, vegan Californians, etc.

The very idea of restricting media based on its portrayal of certain characters is painfully ignoring the reality that individual groups perpetuate stereotypes on themselves every single day.

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When Hillary Clinton was elected U.S. Senator out of lovely New York, I got the hell out of Dodge. In fact, I moved way the hell out of Dodge, across the country to Phoenix, where I hoped the desert would quell my rage for having to hear more about her political career. Hillary’s one of those million politicians who do what they do because they want recognition and a fancy career, not because they really care, or really want to do what’s best for the country. No, Hillary represents pretty much everything I hate about politicians – going with what’s popular, caring more about themselves than the country, and spinning subjects up to terminal velocities without bothering to do a minute of real research.

Enter Hillary’s latest bit of paranoia, ironically mirrored by conservative rednecks across the country: violent video games are the devil, and should be banned. Never mind that parents should take some responsibility for once, and admit that they don’t actually watch what their children buy in stores. Never mind that little kids, too young to have jobs, shouldn’t be running around with pockets of cash, alone in a store, to buy whatever suits their fancy without parental supervision. No, let’s place the responsibility on the retailer, and fine them when some kid’s parent is incapable of raising their child properly. Hillary, you’re the queen of brilliance.

The bottom line is that video games with truly pornographic and violent content is being marketed to our children,” Clinton said. “As parents and advocates for children, we have to draw the line.”

Hillary, name three video games sold at a major video game retailer that has “truly pornographic” material out-of-box. Can’t do it? Okay, name two? Can you name one? Naturally, Hillary’s latest tirade is based upon the recent hubbub concerning Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which a modder in the Netherlands claims to have unlocked a mini-game wherein the game’s main character has sex with women. This “Hot Coffee” mod, as it is known as, either exploits a bit of code that the developers decided shouldn”t be linked from the main game for obvious reasons, or is a full-fledged add-on written by the mod community. Fact is, it doesn’t really matter how it was made or who made it. Fact is, the sex-game, while pornographic in nature, isn’t part of the game you buy. No one can purchase the PC version of the game (the only version Hot Coffee works on, despite the lack of such reporting by the media), and play porno mini-games without first downloading and configuring files from the Internet. And, the mod isn’t downloadable from any official Rockstar web site. This means two things: one, parents should be monitoring what their kids are downloading in the first place, and two, Hillary (and the media) is incapable of dealing with the real facts, because the spin is far more interesting.

If the material is imbedded in the game and available by a few simple steps, Clinton said she will call for a nationwide recall of the game so that all who bought it believing the M rating can be reimbursed.

The funny thing is, Hillary, the people who bought the game believing the M rating got exactly that: a mature game. Not a game with accessible pornographic content, not a game mislabeled, just a mature game with content similar to many titles out there. I can cut’n paste nude breasts onto the scantily clad pictures in Maxim magazine just to look at porn. That doesn”t mean Maxim, which displays mostly nude women, is suddenly exposing full-on pornography. But here we are, yelling at Rockstar for selling something that isn’t what Hillary is making it out to be.

“The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder,” Clinton said. “I am announcing these measures today because I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.”

Making the job of being a parent even harder? Jesus Christ, Hillary, how did you raise your daughter? Did you think raising a kid was supposed to be easy? God forbid something comes up where a parent needs to make a responsible judgment call, and God forbid your kid gets angry at you because you told them that they can’t buy the video game they wanted. No, let’s put that responsibility on a third party, all because you’re a weak parent.

As to the issue of violence taking away our children’s innocence, have you watched the news lately? Are you aware that our children are being raised in a society where war is touted as patriotic? Despite the fact that you and other politicians aren’t able to differentiate Iraq from terrorism, some fourth graders are, and they’re being told it’s not okay to buy violent video games until they’re 17, but that it’s more than reasonable to start thinking about joining the Army at that age, so they can be patriotic and kill insurgents in a country that hasn’t been firmly linked to the attack on the World Trade Center.

Oh, but kids these days are supposed to be free from violence immediately around them. Just like the kids of the ’30s who didn’t grow up to be obsessed killers despite the fact that they watched people around them get killed on a daily basis, hearing mortars and bombs and some watching their family toted away to be killed in camps. And kids back in Rome, we all know that watching the games in the Colliseum, ripe with death from the gladius or a lion, all grew up to be crazed killers.

What Hillary doesn’t understand, maybe because the land of politics has blurred her common sense, is that kids lose their innocence. That’s what makes them become adults. If it’s not killing a buffalo, going to war, or going through some other rite of passage, kids lose their innocence and become adults. What kids see these days, on TV, in video games, or what they listen to in music, isn’t going to make them mad murderers any more than our forefathers who witnessed strung up pirates on local fisherman’s docks, the beating of blacks in the South, or the massacre of Native Americans. And if those same kids who live in happy Pokemon-land start to think that virtual, simulated violence in video games is akin to the real thing, then your kids either already have problems, or you need to start talking to them.

Research has, for years, confirmed a link between exposure to violent video games and aggressive behavior in children. A new study by researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine show that playing violent video games triggers “unusual brain activity” among aggressive adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders, said Dr. John Walsh, founder and director of the National Institute on Media and the Family.

Yeah, unusual brain activity in already aggressive adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders. Sure there’s a link between disturbed kids and violent video games, but that link is linear; kids with violent tendencies will inherently be attracted to violent video games. That doesn’t mean violent video games make kids have violent tendencies.

Clinton’s soon-to-be-proposed legislation will call for a $5,000 maximum penalty for retailer caught selling or renting violent and pornographic video games to minors. Much like the way cigarettes and alcohol are sold, M- and AO-rated video games would be kept out of minors’ reach by being placed in locked cases and behind counters, only to be retrieved with ID, she said.

And I, Hillary, would like to propose that any parent found purchasing such a game for their 9-year-old child, be sentenced to same. Silly? Yes, exactly.

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According to Indymedia, four activists have been banned for life from the Parliament House of New South Wales for making out in the gallery.

On the 14th and 15th of November, the World Trade Organization met in Sydney, Australia. As usual, the WTO can’t meet anywhere in the free world without drawing throngs of protestors.

Heavy handed police reaction to these events is perennially justified by the dangers posed by the protesters. For example, in Sydney, some protesters planned “militant spin the bottle.” The New South Wales Police Minister, the Honorable Michael Costa, was furious about this mysterious and dangerous activity. He even lambasted local Green Party legislators for not joining him in publicly condemning the “spin the bottle” strategy.

Despite the Minister’s paranoia, the “spin the bottle” consisted of little more than you’d expect. Upset about the confiscation of their six foot chickenwire bottle, the defiant protesters vowed to kiss each other again in the face of “unaustralian” police opposition. That “action” is what brought about the permanent explusion from the Parliament House.

While claiming their latest spin the bottle activities as a sucess, the protesters have said some unkind things about Minister Costa. But, honestly, who wouldn’t want to make out with this guy?I hope things don’t get out of hand when the WTO meets next in Cancun, Mexico.

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