Tag Archives: asinine

A Letter to AT&T

Dear AT&T Wireless people:

As seems to be standard practice for companies these days, you do not provide an obvious or easy method to give direct feedback on your products and services. So, after rummaging around the AT&T Wireless website for a while and finding no ways to “contact” you except when I need “support,” I decided instead to write a blog post, hoping that you, like Comcast, have minions that track these kinds of things.

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This is Why I Can’t Vote Republican

From the New York Times, on the future of Sarah Palin:

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative group, called it a “top order of business” to determine Ms. Palin’s future role. “Conservatives have been looking for leadership, and she has proven that she can electrify the grass roots like few people have in the last 20 years,” Mr. Bozell said. “No matter what she decides to do, there will be a small mother lode of financial support behind her.”

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Profanity is Useful

Profanity is useful. People need those words to express things that cannot otherwise be expressed. There are times when the artful use of non-profanity works better and there are times when you simply must have the quick punch of a “bad” word. And to have profanity, you need to maintain at least a loose taboo on certain words.

But this is ridiculous:

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As If Traveling Weren’t Bad Enough Already

The Department of Homeland Security is looking into requiring all airline passengers to wear a special bracelet that would allow the crew of a plane to cause an “electro-muscular disruption” (EMD) to immobilize disorderly passengers.

What about people with pacemakers? What about the small percentage of people with undiscovered conditions who may be killed by such a device? And who decides the sufficient level of disorderliness to justify the use of EMD? What about particularly paranoid airline crews? What happens if somebody is immobilized and mass hysteria breaks out among the paranoid passengers, who then beat the living daylights out of the immobilized person, causing severe injuries or even death? And if you’re worried about terrorists on airplanes, does this just invite them to figure out a way to immobilize people easily to avoid another one of those “Let’s roll” incidents?

As the legal threshold for government detainment and infliction of force against citizens seems to be falling, things like this do not bode well for freedom.

State Religion

A blogger syndicated here, Peter Wall, is upset that an atheist soldier has been the recipient of harassment by Christians in the military. While I agree that such behavior poorly represents Christ to the world and is inexcusable, I’m more frightened and annoyed by this quote from Michael Weinstein, a retired senior Air Force officer and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation:

“Our Pentagon, our Pentacostalgon, is refusing to realize that when you put the uniform on, there’s only one religious faith: patriotism.”

The State giveth and the State taketh away. Blessed be the State!

*shudder*