Thursday, June 24, 2004

Jack Ryan v. 7 of 9

charges hypocrisy:



The Chicago Tribune filed the lawsuit to get the papers released,







Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Court lets cops hassle couples





Clinton's stain


Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Low-flying turkey buzzard




The lies of Michael Moore


Webster writes:




Saturday, June 19, 2004

50-50 custody is the only fair way

Michael Newdow is now famous for losing his Pledge of Allegiance case because of having lost custody of his daughter, and now he attacks custody law. He is right. The custody standards used by family court are incoherent and create more problems than they solve. He says:

Gmail is too creepy

If you want to know what is bad about Google mail, check out Gmail is too creepy.

I like the fact that Google has forced competing email providers to enlarge their tiny disk quotas. But it bugs me that Google has chosen to use the same domain name for both search and email, allowing both functions to access the same cookies. (That is, when you connect to, it redirects to So Google could correlate my searches with my email content, and sell marketing services based on what it learns.

A lot of people don't seem to mind because Google has pledge to do no evil. But I think that it is unrealistic to expect any corporation to keep such a pledge, even if there were agreement as to what it meant. Google is obligated to do what it can under the law to yield a return to its shareholders. If you want privacy protection, then either lobby your legislators to pass pro-privacy laws, or take your own preventive measures, such as using another email provider.

(This blog is hosted by Google. Thanks, Google, for the very nice free service.)

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Lens prescriptions

I just learned that Congress passed a law that went into effect this year requiring optometrists to release contact lens presriptions upon request. Good. There was a loophole in California law where optometrists were required to release eyeglass prescriptions, and to release medical records, but they weren't required to release signed prescriptions that an optician could fill.

You can order contact lenses online, but the vendors are supposed to ask for some sort of proof of prescription. I just tried, so I'll soon see how well it works.

Update: The new law is described as a win-win here, but the NY Times explains that the online lens merchants are losing sales. It appears that the online merchants were doing much of their business by selling refills for expired prescriptions, and the new law requires them to validate the prescription. Furthermore, patients in only 8 states are allowed to have 2-year prescriptions, and everyone else is limited to 1-year prescriptions. So the law is actually a big windfall for optometrists, because everyone has to go get an eye exam every year.

Hardly anyone needs a new eye exam once a year. I am considering posting instructions on how to forge prescriptions.

George writes:
That would be forgery. Are you suggesting that people break the law just to some contact lenses for a few buck cheaper?
No, I don't think that it is against the law for a consumer to forge documents in order to get lenses for himself. Here is the 2004 federal law and the similar 2003 California law. Here are the 2003 House hearings for the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act.

The law requires prescribers to issue written prescriptions, and lens sellers to verify those prescriptions. It says that sellers cannot advertise that they are selling lenses without prescriptions. It says that the law can be enforced by the FTC and by California courts. California law says that optometrists and lens sellers have to be licensed, and misconduct can result in discipline or loss of license.

There are other California laws against forging government documents, and against presenting false documents to someone for the purpose of cheating him out of money. But I don't see anything in California or federal law against a consumer buying lenses with false documents. Nor do I think that these laws were intended to impose any penalties on consumers who just want to buy lenses for themselves.

There are several good reasons for modifying a prescription. One is buying replacement lenses after the 1-year expiration. Another is to get more choice. Optometrists do not want to spend the time explaining the many different types of lenses available, and the various trade-offs, so they just write the prescription for what they think is best. By taking control of the prescription, you can get what you want. Third, if you know a little bit about how lenses work, you can bypass the optometrist altogether. Unless your eyes have some unusual problems, it is pretty simple.
There is a lot of speculation about the real story behind Chalabi leaking the interception of Iranian messages. Eg, see Schneier and this BBC column. My guess is that we didn't really intercept Iranian messages as described to the public, but that the spooks had other reasons for telling the story and nailing Chalabi.

The Day After Tomorrow

Phyllis Schlafly trashes the movie The Day After Tomorrow on Eagle Forum and Imdb.

Even tho promotes this movie as anti-Bush propaganda, I didn't see it that way.

Andy writes:
This comment by Roger was particularly baffling: "When did the movie say that man-made emissions were the cause of the disaster?" Does Roger think the movie is about something else?
Yes, I do think that the movie was about something else. The hero of the movie was a scientist who studied ice ages of the past, and had some theories about them. His theories had nothing to do with man-made emissions, as there were no significant man-made emissions at the times of the previous ice ages. Factoids supporting his quick-onset theory were things like finding a wooly mammoth that had been frozen with food still in his stomach. His theory was not that man-made emissions cause sudden ice age, because he didn't even look at man-made emissions. His theory was that ice ages of the past had occurred suddenly from natural causes.

The mainstream scientists and environmentalists had rejected his theory, and so did the VP. The hero didn't even really believe his theory himself, as he had not run the mainframe simulations that would support his theory.

The VP in the movie looked more like Dick Cheney than Al Gore, but he acted more like Gore. The VP acted like he was in charge of all scientific matters, was very interested in scientific questions, and thought that he was capable of deciding which scientists were right and which were wrong. It sounds more like Gore than Cheney.

Based on the publicity, I expected the movie to have a confrontation between a Cheney clone and some environmentalists, with the environmentalists being proven right. But there were no environmentalists who were proven correct. The climate changes are a surprise to everyone, and the VP adapts to the facts and theories as rapidly as anyone else.
There is new stun gun technology that sounds like science fiction. They are like fancy new ray guns that can be used against rioting crowds, and even stop cars.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Marilyn Zielinski writes that she knows lots of eligible women, and lots of eligible men, but it is much worse for the women because they find the men unsuitable. And why are they unsuitable -- it is because they wear out-of-style shirts!

I think that she is trying to say that the women are way too picky. No men are that picky. Can you imagine a man saying, "I don't want to date her; she wears cheap jewelry." No way. After they are engaged, she is going to wear whatever jewelry he gives her. Likewise, men are happy to let wives or girlfriends buy or select shirts for them.

Every time I hear one of these arguments about how all the good men are married, it is always rooted in some extremely finicky female opinions. In reality, there are plenty of good and available men out there.