In fact, the Entertainment Software Industry already regulates sales of games to minors. Much like the Motion Picture Association, which rates movies and prohibits minors from watching certain ones, an industry association IS given the power to limit what kids can buy. Though there is not criminal or civil liability for violating the age-restrictions, studies show that it’s harder to buy a mature game than it is to get into an R rated movie.  The Supreme Court did not change that. One might hope they discouraged the writing of vague laws aimed at non-problems that they couldn’t possibly affect even if enforceable, but that seems unlikely.

But if she was suddenly appointed the Boss of Everything, we’d worry.  Hopefully, we think she’d grow up quickly.  Great ideas that were funny at that dinner party will usually cost jobs, money, and lives if you really just ripped down everything and put them into place.  Many jobs, billions of dollars, and millions of lives, if you did it on a national or global scale.  But we know that won’t happen.  Some grown up, somewhere, will take what she says and put it through a common sense filter.  Maybe there will be something left, maybe not.

Image from http://www.eurweb.com/

But what if the grown ups won’t take responsibility?  What if the Republicans fail to put limits on Tea Bagger demands, and the Democrats won’t make clear what’s at stake?  What if too many compromises have already been made, to the point that people have forgotten how to stand up for the country?

But otherwise, yeah.  Most of the anti-immigration rhetoric follows some form of: “we only have _x_  jobs” or “our resources are limited.”  But this is not Kuwait.  We don’t all get a salary from the government based on some natural resource we’re selling to the world.  If you believe in the free enterprise system, a hard-working immigrant who has already gone through the dependent years is net gain to the economy.  This person brings in both skills and additional consumption.  Even if they send money to family at home, that still is a form of trade balance correction, you’re paying the whole family for service exported.  All is good.

But if you think of jobs and resources as a form of limited entitlement, then you’re in the socialist model.  Ergo, anti-immigration based on “scarce resources” = socialist thinking.

Arizona Governor says "F*ck the police."

Think about it.  If you’re a police officer, you are constantly making difficult judgments.  Yes, you have to enforce the law, but you only have a certain amount of time, and every infraction you address means a dozen others that will escape notice.  Of course the department helps you set your priorities.  But even with whatever the latest guidelines might be, you still have to choose.  Many choices will be wrong, but you learn.  If your superiors are supportive, they help you develop.  Most have been in your shoes, and they can give you training and guidance on how to tell when something is worth pursuing.

What if someone decided to add a whole bunch of second-guessers.  If you make a decision, anyone can second-guess it.  You can be sued if you get it wrong.  And what is the guidance on which you have to make these decisions?  ”reasonably suspect of being undocumented”.  How to do you reasonably suspect something like that?  Get it wrong and get sued by an illiterate tea-bagger.  Then, just because, left-wing groups will sue you if you don’t apply whatever standard was established in the last suit to non-hispanic residents.

So, though it may suck to be an immigrant, legal or not, in this Arizona, it’s going to really suck to be a cop.

Those within the church are arguing about  justice and how this might affect the church as a whole.

There are those outside the church who are arguing about justice, crime, and cover-up.  But some have also taken it as a platform to debate the legitimacy and goodness/badness of the church itself.  I think they’re barking up the wrong tree.  I’m not Catholic.  By definition, I guess that means I don’t believe in the legitimacy of the church.  I also think, like any large institution that has dominated the last 2000 years of human history, it’s done a lot of harm and a lot of good.  Currently, I think they are actively working against third-world development with their policies on birth control.

But the Pope argument is completely unrelated.  Contrary to the beliefs of the mis-informed, the Pope is not infallible.  The only exception is when he speaks “ex cathedra”, which does not happen often.  Even if the Pope where infallible, that infallability would not logically extend backwards in time to decisions prior to becoming the Pope.  Also, what would infallability even mean?  That any decision made would be just and moral?  That it would lead to no possible bad outcome?  That it would be in accord with current human laws?  Or should all decisions lean more towards Church values, such as forgiveness and redemption?

The Pope did whatever he did.  Made some kind of decision about some level of information.  We don’t know what he really knew, but it’s natural for critics to apply all that we know now to someone who was described as knowing something at the time.  Even critics who keep claiming the crown of reason as something they own personally make this mistake.  But administrators make decisions all the time based on information they barely understand or can’t really trust.  And he was an administrator, looking at old information, on a topic that he may not have really understood the scope of.  Human beings tend to dismiss things we aren’t ready to deal with.  And administrators do that more than anyone.

In Piranha II, you were likely to get killed by a carnivorous flying fish if:

• You are female and naked.
• You have sex unconnected to romance.
• You’re a somewhat ridiculous older woman.
• You are an ethnic side-character.

Also, if you’re ex-military, you’re instinctively evil, even when you try to be good.  if you’re a corporate person, you’re stupidly evil.

Things have gotten a lot better for naked or semi-naked women/aliens in Avatar, and only good people have sex, which is romantic as heck.  On the other hand:

• Military is still evil.
• Corporations are stupidly evil.
• Michelle Rodriguez? Dead.
• Sigourney Weaver? Dead. (well, she does get instantly recycled into a giant tree, so that’s something)

Me and High Blood Pressure

I don’t manage risk well.  If you give me a bunch of facts and stats and ask me to change my behavior, good luck.  For the past couple years of been treating my high blood pressure by inconsistent attempts at diet, sleeping better, and getting some exercise.  Anything but medication.  It’s a bad decision, and I know it pretty well because my job is health information outreach.  I’ve optimized articles on hypertension for the Web.

What did it take to get me back on medication?  I think my cardiologist actually threatened me.  Also, he woudn’t sign off on something else I needed, (ADD medication).  My sister had a similar experience.  She’s taking her high blood pressure meds because, as she says “I think the doctor said he was actually going to give me a stroke if I didn’t.”

Arguably, since I am only managing my own risk, I’m morally superior to the parents who won’t get their kids vaccinated.  But the moral element isn’t what I’m after today, it’s the thought process and how it might be changed.  My daytime job is basically health outreach.  Getting good information about health into the hands of people that need it.  Often I think we’re too timid.  We don’t want to offend anyone.  This keeps us from telling stories in a way that works.

Kids Dying in Swimming Pools

But first, let’s back up.  Swimming pools kill people.  So do guns.  If you let your kids play at a house a swimming pool you increase their risk.  If you let your kids play at a house where there are guns, you  also increase risk for your child.  Stasticaly, the swimming pool is FAR more dangerous.  But we feel more outraged by the guns.  Why?  We’ve accepted drownings as part of life.  Unfortunate accidents.  We think of them as something that happens passively.  An accidental shooting is active.  Someone DID something.  There is more guilt, some of which will always splash back on the parents.

Just imagine two headlines, without any other facts:

Child Dies in Swimming Pool (add sub-head about tragic unfortunate accident)

Child Killed While Playing With Gun (add sub-head about “could have been prevented” or “poor supervision” maybe “charges pending”)

Both could actually be prevented with about the same level of safeguards and attention, but one we process as passive and one as active.

Now to the vaccines.  Injecting a child with something is active.  Infectious diseases are, like swimming pools, a passive threat.  They are an unfortunate reality.  Tragic, but it happens.  Dying from a vaccination is an active event.  No matter how “correct” the decision may have seemed, that death will feel like the fault of the parent.

But passive and active are constructive, like foreground and background.  It all depends on how the story is told.  Instead of timid recitations of facts, here is how I would do a campaign to encourage parents to vaccinate their children:

Parents Letting Kids Die

Two kids, sitting across the table from each other.  Between them, a gun.  Yes, they are playing Russian Roulette, and Yes, we do show them taking turns and putting the gun to their head, while the parents watch.  Finally, the gun goes off and the kid collapses with the symptoms of swine flu.

Final message? “Take the gun away, get your children vaccinated.”  See? We’ve now converted swine flu into an active risk, and responsibility splashes back on the parents.

If anyone steals this idea, I hope they put it to good use.

1) Perez Hilton is an annoying idiot who suddenly claims some kind of political relevancy?

2) Some 21 year old bimbo can’t walk a political tight-rope?

3) Beauty contest are basically displaying and rating female flesh, with a patina of respectability, and yet trashing the ones who’ve shown a millimeter more flesh?

I want to say, lay off the girl.  And I would, if she had gone back home, quietly stating that she didn’t think her beliefs should matter in a beauty contest.  But she didn’t, she signed on with “National Organization for Marraige”.  National Organization for Marraige is the worst kind of hate group, it goes all emo over people disagreeing with it.  Hating minorities and disempowered groups is a long-standing tradition in this country.  Probably in any country.  Our high schools are still permeated with it.  But the bullies used to at least have the guts to be consistent.  NOM is part of a new movement among conservatives.  They spew hate.  When they get a negative reaction, they act injured.  Victimized.  It’s pathetic.

So at least I have one bad guy in the mix.  I hate NOM.  Not for being bullies, not for perverting religion to their own hate, but for being all emo.  And I can give up my sympathy for Carrie Prejean because she signed on with them.  But still, digging up nude pictures from when she was seventeen?  Sure, it proves she isn’t absolutely morally pure, but that has never been the position the evangelicals take.  They all flirt with with sin, and if they get caught over the line, they repent.  It’s practically required.

I started out being mad at Perez Hilton.  That’s easy, because I’ve never liked him.  He can be funny, but mostly he’s cruel in a kind of “I can say whatever I want and then act harmless” way.  And, what kind of person tries to trip up beauty queens with complex moral questions?  That’s like Kramer beating up the third-grade Karate class.  But then I asked myself: Who picked him as a judge?  The same person who thought Roseanne Barr should sing the National Anthem?  What, exactly, did they expect?

I guess what I really hate is the politico-entertainment-industrial-complex.  It’s this machine that delivers something like Carrie Prejean through talk shows, commentators, entertainment shows, and the internet as if she can really be the focus of an important national debate.  These are the people who filled our living room with Joe the Plumber.  And the problem is, they guys on my side are as in on it, as guilty as the guys on the other side.  Bill O’Rielly, Keith Olberman, both eat this stuff up.  Each from his own moral high ground, but they both let a 21-year-old bimbo become the focus of their respective wrath/understanding.

• Giant balls of twine and three-story lava-lamps, huge fiberglass dinosaurs in the middle of nowhere.  A ranch of Cadillacs half-buried.
• Religious fundies who hate the “War on Christmas”.  Other religious fundies who believe Christmas is a tool of the devil. (Satan/Santa)
• Gun-toting rednecks
• Hippie chicks with un-shaved arm-pits
• Courses in multi-culturalism that reduce each culture to pop spiritualism
• Courses in home management in college
• Republicans who have integrity and really believe their economic religion helps more poor people than any other method
• Exploiters of every stripe who whip up American sincerity and make a buck
• Democrats who served honorably in every branch of the military
• Chickenhawk politicians who sound righteous as they send people off to war, having never served themselves (this started long before the current Neo-cons)
• Strident athiests
• Flag burners
• Get-off-my-lawn old veterans
• Illegal immigrants
• First, second, and third generation immigrants
• Racists
• People who claim not to be racists, but always find other reasons to hate people from other cultures or ethnic groups
•  People who you assume are racist, but turn out not to be
• Dennis Hopper
• John Wayne
• Martha Stewart
• American Idol

The exact mix keeps changing, but it’s still my country and I always want the best for it.  When President Bush decided to invade the wrong country, resulting in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, I wanted something better.  But, like most people, I did not root for failure.  I wanted the war to be over quickly, I wanted stability to return.  I wanted few casualties.  Because, though it was a bad decision, the best thing for our country was an easy resolution.  I also knew that was not likely.

A lot of sock-pundits on the right accused liberals of rooting for the failure we eventually felt.  No, we just foresaw it.  Nobody wanted it.  But, they project thoughts into our head.  We can play that game, maybe THEY were rooting for failure so then they could prove that we were rooting for failue!  Who knows what dark threads take hold in the human soul?

Now Rush Limbaugh is openly rooting for failure.  Why?  Because he doesn’t love America.  Not all of it.  He has picked the parts he likes, and will only love an America if it fits that model.  That’s sort of like only loving your kid if he goes to the same college you did.  Rush believes in “Individualism and Capitalism” and whatever.  As if those things are going away.  We haven’t been the capitalist country he espouses since before WWII.  And we aren’t any closer to pure socialism than we were eight years ago.  But the diseased economic religion of tax cuts and minimal regulation has produced a huge bill.  If we don’t pay it now, it will only get bigger.  Rush is apparently rooting that our efforts to save the economy will fail.  That is the most unpatriotic thing I’ve heard in a long time.