That's referring to me, not the comic book character.
Anyway, the scene is my Junior year american legal systems class, at my Ivy League university. it is a 150 person lecture. The professor is talking about free speech, decency standards, community standards, polygamy, and child pornography. He is teaching us about Strict Liability-- that is, the theory that applies to certain crimes, that the action is enough, and lack of knowledge or reasonable belief are not defenses. An example of Strict Liability is running a red light. It doesn't matter if you had a good excuse, it doesn't matter if you didn't see the light, and it doesn't matter if you reasonably believed the light wasn't red. If they can show you ran a red light, then you're guilty, automatically.
This contrasts to crimes that have intent components: it isn't murder if you shoot a gun into a wall thinking that there's no one behind the wall and the bullet won't go through the wall, but then the bullet goes through and hits someone.
So another example of strict liability has to do with age of consent laws and child pornography. It doesn't matter if you reasonably believe the girl is 18; if she's 16, then you've committed a crime. period. no defenses.
Shortly before this class, I had been watching VH1, and they did a show about the 80s that mentioned Traci Lord, and the way that she fooled everyone into thinking she was over 18. The entire world was fooled for years and years. a lot of people could have been sent to jail for doing something they thought was perfectly legal and that they did not intend to be wrong in any way.
As we discussed Strict Liability and child pornography in class, I thought to mention this example of a wide swath of people who would have been unjustly punished by a very convincing girl who knew what she was doing. After my soliloquy on the saga of Traci Lords, the class giggled and the professor uncomfortably said "yes, well, I don't know much about that" and he moved on.
It was at least a month later that one of my friends enlightened me to the fact that some people might hesitate to give a long speech about porn to a lecture hall filled with Columbia students. I realized I had failed to cite my story to VH1. Good Job, Barry.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Why Live Green
A good friend of mine who cares too much about personal finance, and therefore about maximizing efficiency in his life, will not live Green.
In Manhattan, living Green has become the new anti-racism. Instead of having token black friends and voting for affirmative action, now everyone tries to buy organic, buy local, buy energy-neutral, recycle, buy recycled, buy sustainable, turn off the lights, take a shorter shower, reuse packaging. ConEd, the power company, pays for ads in the subway recommending power-saving things you can do, like turn off your computer at night (good), close your blinds to help conserve air conditioning in the summer and to help with insulation to conserve heat in the winter (good) and think about what you want before you open the refrigerator or freezer door, so you lose less cold (lame).
My friend points out that personal consumer energy use is such a minute part of global warming, and the standards for Green lifestyle products are so vague and lax, that the impact of living Green is negligible from an environmental perspective, but has dramatic impact on personal comfort and finances.
He's mostly right, although eating organic food is probably substantially healthier than eating factory-farmed food. Nonetheless, there are other compelling reasons to support the Green lifestyle beyond concern for your own personal carbon output. The reasons are predominantly economic, and therefore have a nuanced relationship to the concerns that many have over the personal finance dimension of the Green lifestyle.
The central idea is this: Green technologies are just emerging from the elemntary stage of development to an intermediate stage where they become industrially relevant and economically sustainable. Cheaper, more efficient windmills for wind power generation and cleaner, biodegradable packaging are two technologies that are only just flowering now, after decades of research, development and hysterical advocacy. The development is taking place in part because there are new financial incentives to develop Green technologies, or at least technologies that can make a pass at presenting themselves as Green. These new financial incentives are a combination of government regulatory incentives and consumer trends. Government regulations compelling fuel efficiency in cars (federal) and dictating standards for defining something as organic (state) have both worked to spur research and industry-wide changes that led to the development of hybrid cars and of more thoroughly organic produce. At the same time, the growing prevalence of consumers who seek organic food and fuel-efficient cars has created a financial incentive to produce those products. There is a market for them. Increasing numebrs of consumers facilitate higher volume production, which leads to economies of scale; Green products become less expensive, available to more people, and therefore have a broader effect. Additionally, the higher volume and greater economies of scale create more funding for research, which produces externalities in the form of technologies that are useful beyond the purpose for which they were developed. the ripple effect of increased research brought about by a larger market for Green products results in a trickle-down effect, so that the real polluters, like office building air conditioning, trans-continental shipping and other industrial services, mechanisms and processes benefit from research done for the consumer market. As a result, even if your incremental environmental impact from living Green is low, you are having a larger (though still marginal) impact by participating in the Green economy, which in turn helps advance meaningful environmental impact.
In Manhattan, living Green has become the new anti-racism. Instead of having token black friends and voting for affirmative action, now everyone tries to buy organic, buy local, buy energy-neutral, recycle, buy recycled, buy sustainable, turn off the lights, take a shorter shower, reuse packaging. ConEd, the power company, pays for ads in the subway recommending power-saving things you can do, like turn off your computer at night (good), close your blinds to help conserve air conditioning in the summer and to help with insulation to conserve heat in the winter (good) and think about what you want before you open the refrigerator or freezer door, so you lose less cold (lame).
My friend points out that personal consumer energy use is such a minute part of global warming, and the standards for Green lifestyle products are so vague and lax, that the impact of living Green is negligible from an environmental perspective, but has dramatic impact on personal comfort and finances.
He's mostly right, although eating organic food is probably substantially healthier than eating factory-farmed food. Nonetheless, there are other compelling reasons to support the Green lifestyle beyond concern for your own personal carbon output. The reasons are predominantly economic, and therefore have a nuanced relationship to the concerns that many have over the personal finance dimension of the Green lifestyle.
The central idea is this: Green technologies are just emerging from the elemntary stage of development to an intermediate stage where they become industrially relevant and economically sustainable. Cheaper, more efficient windmills for wind power generation and cleaner, biodegradable packaging are two technologies that are only just flowering now, after decades of research, development and hysterical advocacy. The development is taking place in part because there are new financial incentives to develop Green technologies, or at least technologies that can make a pass at presenting themselves as Green. These new financial incentives are a combination of government regulatory incentives and consumer trends. Government regulations compelling fuel efficiency in cars (federal) and dictating standards for defining something as organic (state) have both worked to spur research and industry-wide changes that led to the development of hybrid cars and of more thoroughly organic produce. At the same time, the growing prevalence of consumers who seek organic food and fuel-efficient cars has created a financial incentive to produce those products. There is a market for them. Increasing numebrs of consumers facilitate higher volume production, which leads to economies of scale; Green products become less expensive, available to more people, and therefore have a broader effect. Additionally, the higher volume and greater economies of scale create more funding for research, which produces externalities in the form of technologies that are useful beyond the purpose for which they were developed. the ripple effect of increased research brought about by a larger market for Green products results in a trickle-down effect, so that the real polluters, like office building air conditioning, trans-continental shipping and other industrial services, mechanisms and processes benefit from research done for the consumer market. As a result, even if your incremental environmental impact from living Green is low, you are having a larger (though still marginal) impact by participating in the Green economy, which in turn helps advance meaningful environmental impact.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
stray thoughts
The best way to get a message out there into the zeitgeist would be to have a short video presenting the idea, and then to hack into the Tivo and Time Warner DVR system and just have the video falsely label as a new airing of a selection of, say, two or three very popular shows. you could have the DVR machines falsely believe your video is a fresh episode of, say, '24' or 'heroes' or 'dancing with the stars', and then have the thing be recorded at night (the way these DVRs work is that they automatically search for tags indicating a particular show and whether it's a first-run of the episode) so nobody notices the recording happening. then, when people go to see what's stored intheir DVR, they'll see that there's an extra entry and they'll get curious and watch the video you've put up.
Pop Iris and I haev a running list of fake words. This includes things like "secondly"(hers-- shoudl just be "second") and "existing"(mine-- real word is "extant"). I have a new one. "purposely".
The word people mean when they say "purposely" is "purposefully".
Pop Iris and I haev a running list of fake words. This includes things like "secondly"(hers-- shoudl just be "second") and "existing"(mine-- real word is "extant"). I have a new one. "purposely".
The word people mean when they say "purposely" is "purposefully".
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