Current Events Rants

• Though the results of the OJ Trial are disappointing, particularly in their implication for victims of domestic violence, I do see a couple of potentially positive outcomes.
  • If police departments want to get convictions in the future, they're going to have to clean up their acts, and eliminate the most obnoxiously offensive officers.
  • I think that the trial results will help more and more people realize that those who are rich or famous are subject to a different set of rules than the rest of us (and can "get away with murder"). Hopefully, this will lead to some more massive social changes.
  The worst result that might come of the trial outcome would be a public movement to eliminate defendents' rights. Make no mistake: OJ wasn't acquitted because the criminal justice system coddles defendents; he was acquitted because he's rich and famous. (And secondarily, he was acquitted because domestic violence is not taken seriously.) Another positive outcome is that soon we'll be freed from the media circus surrounding the trial; if he had been convicted the media would be feasting upon the appeals for years.
• The V-chip is a figment of Congress' imagination. They want to make something that controls Internet access to violent (and probably eventually sexual and other contraversial) material. Nothing like this even exists, but they're talking like it does. In any case, developing it would lead to forms of censorship, and "dumbing down" of accessible information to a "least-common-demoninator". Internet acces may start to resemble network TV.
  • V-Chip: A Bad Idea whose Time Has Come, by John Carman, San Francisco Chronicle, August 8, 1995
• Much of the argument against Affirmative Action assumes that there are objective unbiased selection tools, and that Affirmative Action interferes with these. This argument just doesn't hold water.
  • In employment, it is unusual to find a completely objective measure of ability. Employers tend to favor candidates who resemble themselves in terms of socio-economics, race, and gender. As most employers are white middle-class males, eliminating affirmative action will tend to foster discrimination in favor of white middle-class males.
  • In education, many of the tools used to select the "best" students (such as SAT or GRE scores) have shown a clear bias against students who do not come from white middle-class households. (see 8/12/95 SF Chronicle article) Eliminating affirmative action in education is likely to create bias towards those from white middle-class households. In addition, part of the "education" that a University provides is exposure to different viewpoints and cultures. The elimination of affirmative action is likely to reduce this exposure and diminish the educational experience of the entire student body.
  • A discussion of the University of California Regents' July 1995 vote against affirmative action.
• The July 1995 closing of New York Newsday by Times-Mirror Inc. was the latest in a trend that has been happening for some time: Newspapers and other forms of electronic communications are just businesses. They are increasingly being bought out by large multi-national corporations. Their only allegiance is to their bottom line. There is less and less coverage of items of local interest. Gone are the days when newspapers had some tie to their community, and journalists were motivated by a desire to serve that community. Movies like Front Page and even Citizen Kane nostalgically refer to a type of journalism that has died. (see electronic newspapers and newspaper strikes)
• For many years the Unabomber was called a "bomber" by the news media. Why did the media suddenly begin calling him a "serial killer" as soon as he distributed a lengthy tract outlining his Anarchist views.
• The discourse over pornography on the Internet is full of inaccuracies and mis-characterizations (such as the poor scholarship in the study that Time Magazine focused its recent cover study on). This is part of a larger attack on net pornography and freedom of speech in general.
• Though the threats to free speech on the Net are serious problems, these threats are fairly easy for Net habituees to recognize. A problem that is less apparent is the threat to privacy. Government control of cryptography (such as the attempt to outlaw software like Pretty Good Privacy and the promotion of a national wiretap plan for the Net) have received quite a bit of publicity. Corporate attempts to track not only your buying habits, but your browsing habits as well (by capturing your "clickstream") pose severe privacy threats. (see Electronic Privacy Information Center)

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