Off By One

Volunteerism is one of those interesting ‘isms’.  It’s probably one of the most well-regarded ‘isms’ by more people, but I admit that much like my reaction to charity, I have a decidedly contrary view of this practice.

And, it appears, I’m not the only one.  Here’s “To Hell with Good Intentions by Ivan Illich,” a transcript of a speech given in 1968 to a volunteer organization.  I came across this by way of, as always, Metafilter, where a discussion on the validity of volunteering was taking place. This was spurred by an interesting article decrying modern celebrity aid programs as development porn and calling out volunteerism as paternalistic behaviour… which is how I have always sort of felt.

Poke about. It’s a good debate.

In contrast to my last post, this one is a bit less perky.

The fact that this happens at all is nearly enough to make me physically ill. The fact that I’m probably never going to encounter it, simply because I’m not brown-skinned…

Well, by this time I’m sure that all of us have heard of, and been outraged by, the story of Sandra Bergen, the Saskatchewan woman who sued her dealer when the methamphetamines that she overdosed on left her in a coma.

(She’s got a website, by the way: Meth Today. Very… irritating web design, leaving aside any other cause for complaint.)

My initial reaction was a resigned disgust so intense that I couldn’t even get disgusted by it. I saw the headline, blinked once, and went on with my day, secure in the fact that at least I am not so pathetically stupid nor incapable of taking responsibility for my actions. Nor, in the main, has that sentiment changed; this sad individual made bad choices that led her to pain. However, I’ve questioned this a bit today, enroute to that final conclusion, and I thought I’d share my thoughts, such as they are.

There’s a lot of questions about addiction and its position as an illness; whether an addict is responsible for their actions, or if they should be treated as being sick and preyed upon. I fall on the former side of the fence, and have for most — if not all — of my adult life. Coming from the other side in this, however, is the argument that there are already criminal responsibilities in this matter, and that this woman was guilty of those crimes, but that the civil responsibility should be shared between her and her procurer.

So, I thought about this for a while… in fact, I was thinking about it as I started this post and even then I was waffling in the other direction — until I started framing it as responsibility in the second paragraph. It’s seductive, though, this idea that the blame for this kind of choice can be ‘shared’ somehow, as though we’re not really in control and so how can anyone really point a finger at us if we do something catastrophically stupid. But that seductive call is a siren, luring one onto some metaphorical rocks… (here I stop with the attempted classical metaphors). The sad truth of the matter is that, irrespective of the criminal acts being perpetrated, Sandra is no less responsible for her actions than any other person that harms themselves in the pursuit of pleasure. If I jump out of a plane and injure myself, I’m not going to blame the pilot of the plane, nor will I blame the instructor who ‘gave me my first hit.’

And that’s what’s happening here. And it shouldn’t.

Two articles in the Wall Street Journal, one titled Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful of Men? and its sequel, Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators.

I’m just going to let these speak for themselves.

Found via MetaFilter.

I am, as Char will no doubt agree, occasionally a bit on the negative side. This isn’t always a good thing; I need to learn to tone down my vitriol in situations in which it does not advance my needs, and in those in which it is not necessary or constructive.

There are times, however, that merit a vigorous negative response.

I’m taking two project courses in school this semester; Cmput 414, which is a graphics and multimedia course with a heavy algorithmic programming component, and Cmput 401, a software engineering course and the focus of this rant.

Software Engineering is, according to Wikipedia, “is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.” Among other things, it requires the application of good design practices to the development of code, and following beneficial design standards.

So, I have to ask, why is it that people taking this fucking course cannot do something as basic as grok that it is fundamentally bad practice to add public methods to hidden implementing classes instead of using the goddamned design?! I spent three days nailing down, and countless hours tuning up, the data model for our project application, only to have one of my fellow team members simply come along and, instead of reading the goddamned documentation, which I provided as a first step, add new hooks into the mechanism, just to get at the information in a way that is not only wrong, but disables some nice and (I thought) needed functionality.

I have spent the last hour looking over his code, marveling at the glorious unification of layers that, according to good design practices, should ever remain separate — the intermingling of UI code and logic that I’d already written elsewhere, better was a real high point for me.

Gods.

I cannot wait to get back to full time work with people who know more than I do, so that instead of raging at the pathetic efforts of people whose skills are not even up to the level of an academic programmer, I can instead find faults with my own approaches, be told that I’m doing it wrong, and learn how to do it better.

This is a two-pronged posting:

Domain name change

First, as you probably failed to notice when you clicked into the comments on the pages, there’s a new name for this site, in terms of ways to get to it: www.offby1.net. The old offlineblog.com address won’t stop working, so worry not, but offby1.net is now the preferred URL, and all links on the site will point to it, as soon as I figure out how to walk my MySQL database and convert all of the old URLs.

Anti-scientific idiocy

Second is a pointer to some more ludditism: The New Internationalist, a newsmagazine recommended to me by Char is a mostly-interesting alternative view on the world; not one with which I agree on most points, but nonetheless a refreshing perspective, but subject to some of the common flaws of its kind, including this example of total technological paranoia, calling for a small, but scary, symbol for nanotechnology, and demonstrating a complete inability to distinguish means from ends. This mini article is analogous to calling for a warning label on all products made with screwdrivers.

Why can’t people pull their heads from their asses and ensure that they know what they’re protesting? I want to ask if it’s too much to ask for people to inform themselves, but the ‘protest movement’ is an adequate demonstration that I needn’t bother; it is too much to ask.

A choice quote:

Yet invisible nanomaterials are already being used in our food, cosmetics, pesticides and clothing, even though they are not labelled and we do not know what their health and environmental impacts might be.

Uhm…

You do know that your “invisible nanomaterials” are completely indistinguishable from atoms, right? It’s almost like (gasp!) matter is entirely made up of some “invisible nanomaterials” whose characteristics are not completely understood.

Don’t mind the name; it’s kind of an inside joke.

So, being typically a couple of days behind the curve on the Daily Show viewing, I just got around to seeing the episode that aired on 28 Feb, and it had a “Back in Black” segment that dealt with — among other things — Daniel Radcliffe appearing in Equus, which includes a full-frontal nude scene, and is not a play for the kiddies.

So, some dumb bint on a news program referring to this event trotted out the same old crap I hear every time any connection — however tenuous — is made between the world of media for children and things that adults are ostensibly capable of understanding: “her young son saw these pictures televised, and he was really confused. Isn’t there a danger here?”

My response: Stop Breeding.

Seriously, just bloody stop, already. If the mechanics of reproduction are confusing and dangerous, stop using them. We don’t want more of that bloody attitude anyway, and really, you’re probably too insecure to be good in bed anyway. Here’s a tip, though: If the idea of an actor stepping outside of your comfort zone is dangerous, you need to grow the fuck up. I can’t emphasize this enough.

God damn, this angers me. Your confusion, you pathetic excuses for parents and human beings, should not be projected onto your children, whose only confusion comes from wondering why their parents are all flustered whenever they ask about any part of their bodies in between the tops of their thighs and their navels.

Grr.

Okay, I’m just being incoherent here. I’ll stop now.

Nothing on internet censorship (note: If you’re on a Canadian ISP and reading this, there are now sites blocked for all Canadians. Right now they’re kiddie porn only… but it’s a short step from that to deciding other sites are objectionable and blockable. Your ISP — the one you pay to provide you with internet access — is doing this. Respond as you will).

What I’m actually posting on is an excellent interview with Maynard James Keenan (of Tool) at the Onion AV Club.

The quote that really got me is this one:

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don’t know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how [I feel about it]. But I couldn’t responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I’m just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.

He’s quite a guy, one with whom I’ve no doubt that I could argue for days.

How to steal an election by hacking the vote, from Ars Technica.

The next two weeks, I’ll be posting unadorned links of interest. Enjoy!

One might be led to wonder whether there is any real expectation of privacy, out in the wilds of the internet. Certainly, it’s clear that people typically act in such a way as to minimize this. An example, and one with more than a few facets to be examined, is the incident provoked (and prodded… and …) by a blogger by the name of Jason Fortuny.

Fortuny, looking at Craigslist, observed this, and made a decision that is — at best — unethical, and at worst actively sociopathic. He posted an explicit ad to a casual encounters section of a Craigslist site (a section devoted to hooking up for no-strings-attached sex) and waited for responses. Those, he got in spades. Having accumulated a fair number of responses from all walks of life, containing personal information such as phone numbers, names, e-mail addresses, and photos — many of which consisted of nude or semi-nude shots — he proceeded to post this information to the web.

At waxy.org, there are at the very least two fairly serious potential legal ramifications to Fortuny’s actions (Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist), having to do with the exposure of private information, and deliberate attempts to cause distress. These pale, however, beside the ethical and moral ramifications. Fortuny’s stated aim with this was to “push buttons”, and at this he’s succeeded. He’s also succeeded in causing at least one separation (no citation, sadly, except a peripheral mention in the Waxy article) and no small amount of distress to parties involved. Moreover, he’s spawned a copycat already.

So, the question that’s worth asking — and is well asked at the Wired blog that pointed me at this — is, for those who are thinking… “well, they got what they deserved, trolling for sex on the internet”, is this thought experiment:

What if it the Craig’s List posting was about:

• A 25 year-old woman looking for a sugar daddy?
• A depressed woman looking for a fellow depressed guy?
• A dom woman looking for submissive men to humiliate?
• A gay man looking for ‘straight’ guys?
• A ‘straight’ woman looking for a butch lesbian?
• A butch lesbian looking for a ‘straight’ woman?
• A lesbian looking for a lesbian?
• A closeted gay man looking for another closeted, discreet man?
• An overweight, not attractive straight guy looking for a date?
• A 21-year-old hipster looking for another hipster into?
• A goth woman looking for a goth guy into leather and trenchcoats?
• A couple looking for a third person to watch them have sex?
• A Christian woman looking for a Christian man?
• A furry looking for another furry?
• A Cos-Player looking for someone to dress up with them?
• A middle aged woman who doesn’t know she has terrible taste in poetry looking for a man who will buy her flowers, take her for walks on beaches and compose saccharine poems that rhyme?

Which of these do you feel superior enough to that you would want to see their private notes and photos displayed illegally on the internet? And what’s your justification for choosing what kind of people are reprehensible enough to you that their private lives should be splayed on the internet for anyone, from family to friends to co-workers to acquaintances to their bosses, to see?

—from Wired 27B Stroke 6

So, tempest in a teapot? Violation on a par with rape? Just short of? Sadistic action of a man-child? Sociopathic cruelty?

What do you think? There’s a fair number of starting points for thought on Metafilter, where this is presently being hotly debated.