Government: April 2006 Archive Page

When people drink they become totally different people and I do not feel that I should put myself in that situation because if something were to happen, I would mostly likely have no chance to protect myself from a 200 pound kid, who isn't even thinking rationally. Next thing, I'll wind up dead in a ditch. Now do you see why I think I have a problem? hah

I do not feel that people should be as paranoid and protective as I am, but I do think that there are precautions that people should take. I feel that I should be aware of who lives around me and I reguarly check my state's sex offender registry website. It is called Megan's Law and I think that it is important for people to log in and see who their surrounding neighbors are. --Gina Burgese --PA Megan's Law Website Info (GinaBurgese)

Gina is not currently taking a class with me, but from time to time she uses her blog as a soapbox. This entry really impressed me.

In his decision, Spooner wrote: "It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work."

He added: "For this reason, city agencies permit workers to use a telephone for personal calls, so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance. Many agencies apply the same standard to the use of the Internet for personal purposes." --Judge: Web-Surfing Worker Can't Be Fired (Yahoo!|AP (will expire))

This sounds reasonable. An employer certainly has the right to discipline workers who are not doing their jobs, but simply the act of using the internet shouldn't be a terminal offense.

The saccharine sweet family shows of the 50s and 60s gave way to harder biting social commentaries like All in the Family. In 1967, the same year that CBS television ended a 17-year blacklisting of folksinger Pete Seeger, President Johnson signed legislation to establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), asserting that "we have only begun to grasp the great promise of the medium and noting that noncommercial television was reaching only "a fraction of its potential audience -- and a fraction of its potential worth. As part of the legislation, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was to launch major research on instructional television in the classroom. The $9 million investment in CPB in 1967 (about $47 million in today's dollars) has grown to over $300 million in annual funding today. Unlike television, the meteoric rise of computer and video games over the past decade has gone largely unnoticed except by the digiteratti and cultural anthropologists cruising web zines and blogs. This may be because games are not a technology per se, but applications that slip into our lives on the backs of existing technologies, from computers, to televisions and cell phones. They are less hardware and more software. Like many mass culture phenomena, games are understood more on the basis of prevailing myths than reality. Few people realize that the average gamer is 30 years old, that over 40 percent are female, and that most adult gamers have been playing games for 12 years.

One reason myths shape public perceptions is because few universities have seen computer games as worthy of serious academic study, robbing the discourse around games of robust data on their use characteristics, effects, and potential value. There is, of course, the annual Congressional attack on the game world and its denizens, calling for more control of violent games and, like our TV-addicted forebearers, warning of dire consequences to mind and family. Politicians have conveniently made computer games a target of derision rather than a pedagogical ally or tool for public engagement.

The best kept secret in the world of computer and video games is the rise of a movement -- now in the thousands -- of gamers dedicated to applying games to serious challenges such as education, training, medical treatment, or better government. The Serious Games movement is in many ways today's equivalent of yesterday's advocates for non-commercial, educational TV, who knew that the potential of the medium was unrealized and went far beyond pure entertainment. --David Rejeski --Why We Need a Corporation for Public Gaming (Serious Games Source)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. --The Bill of Rights: Amendment I

The First Amendment, among other things, prevents the government from arresting or silencing a citizen for expressing an unpopular or offensive opinion that powerful people may not want to hear.

It is also popularly misunderstood as a magical powerup that protects authors from the consequences of exercising free speech.

My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. Or, as the Ninth Amendment puts it, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Thus, your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness takes precedence over my freedom of speech.

The owner of a theatre has a right and obligation to other patrons to eject someone who falsely shouts "fire," just as an airline has a right and obligation to single out for extra security screening someone who makes a joke about carrying a bomb.

If an employee makes a racist or otherwise insensitive remark, the employer has the right and obligation to discipline the employee. Even if that employee remark does not amount to libel, the livelihood of co-workers who are not responsible for the employee's remarks may be affected if customers see the company as permitting insensitive behavior.

If a football player insults an assistant coach, the head coach can order him to run laps. If the player isn't willing to do the punishment, then he's free to quit the team. The coach is free to order the team to wear pink tutus and ballet slippers, and the NFL is free to discipline the coach, or give him a raise if they want to. But whatever happens, it's not a First Amendment issue, because the laws of Congress have nothing to do with the matter.

The First Amendment does not require that a citizen be furnished with a platform from which to speak. Thus, if group X invites Sally to speak at a meeting, and Joe shows up with a bullhorn to interrupt Sally's speech, Joe's rights are not being violated if the police show up and escort him out of the building. The First Amendment is also not a shield behind which one can hide after publishing libel, defamation, or threats against specific individuals or small groups. It does not insist that owners of private property permit protestors to camp on their front lawns, or spray paint graffiti on their walls. It does not require that city authorities stand by idly while marchers tie up traffic. It does not prohibit schools from disciplining students who post vulgar or offensive MySpace entries.

There are many good arguments for why tolerance and open-mindedness are the best default practice, particularly in educational communities where people need to be free to make mistakes in order to learn from them. However, in no case does the First Amendment protect the speaker from the consequences of the choice to speak freely. Those consequences might range from losing an election to losing your job; from losing a friend to losing your good name.


It's purely a coincidence that I'm blogging on the First Amendment the day after some Seton Hill students launched a petition to cancel classes on the Monday after Easter. That calendar had been set over a year in advance -- almost two years, really. I know both the students who spearheaded the petition, and think of them both as upstanding citizens. I have no sense that the administration can, will, or even might respond with sanctions.

The First Amendment protects their right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances," but since the Seton Hill administration is not "the government," the First Amendment would have absolutely no relevance.

None.

But if those students had chosen to libel, harass, threaten, or make personal attacks, the university would be perfectly within its rights to respond with sanctions.*

If you want to say something that violates a contract with an employer, jeopardizes your enrollment with an educational institution, or flaunts the conditions of membership in the local treehouse club, the government won't arrest you. But your employer, your institution, and your clubhouse president are likewise free to apply whatever sanctions they feel are appropriate.

* Just in case any student is worried that I've gotten inkling of some administrative crackdown, let me repeat -- I'm not actually blogging this First Amendment piece out of concern that there was anything wrong with the petition. (I signed it, by the way, and told my class that as long as they do the work that's due Monday, and participate in a discussion via their blogs, that's fine with me.)

One of our administrators pointed out that she actually proposed the Friday/Monday plan that the students want, but was pressured to change that to Thursday/Friday because, as a Catholic college (so the argument went) we should be more sensitive to the liturgical significance of Holy Thursday (the day Jesus shared the Last Supper with his apostles) rather than the Monday after Easter (which is.. I don't know? the day the apostles showed up to work late because they didn't make it back from Jerusalem in time).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? --Bob Carter -- There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998 (Telegraph)

I'm not really sure what I think. Certainly recycling and avoiding waste are sensible, but when well-meaning activists use bad science to back up their claims, reason suffers.

The complex choices facing leaders in the Middle East have long confounded observers. But two graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University are hoping their video game based on the conflict will help players find solutions _ and raise capital for their new company.

Asi Burak and Eric Brown, along with a team of fellowr students, have spent more than a year building PeaceMaker, a computer game that attempts to simulate the violence and political turbulence of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. --Daniel Lovering --Students hope Mideast video game will produce insights, investors (OhmyNews)