23 Sep 2005
The Digital Dark Age

This has been talked about for a while now: this book from 2001 was my first encounter with the whole idea. And it's only getting worse - truly a 'Copywrong', even if no laws (other than those of nature) are involved.

zygan wrote to mention a Fairfax Digital article about the possibility of a digital dark age, as a result of the increasingly short-term lifespan of digital storage. From the article: "It is 2045, he suggests, and his grandchildren are exploring the attic of his old house when they come across a CD-ROM and a letter, which explains that the disk contains a document that provides directions to obtaining the family fortune. The children are excited. 'But they've never seen a CD before - except in old movies - and, even if they found a suitable disk drive, how will they run the software necessary to interpret the information on the disk? How can they read my obsolete digital document?'" (link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Copywrongs | 1 comment | permanent link

Vatican 'to ban new gay priests'

Heathens generally don't have a problem with gays. We do, however, have a big problem with child rapists. And I'll bet we're not too different from Catholics in this respect. The church might get better results if they lost the homophobia, and just banned pedophiles regardless of sexual orientation ...

Gay men will be barred from training as priests even if they are celibate, according to a leaked Vatican instruction.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

00:00 /Asatru | 1 comment | permanent link

USDA moves to close four Montana processing plants

I don't know the exact specifics in this case, but it seems to be pretty typical of the way that food "safety" inspections are done nationwide, on a state or federal basis. For example ...

A certain creamery with which I'm associated sometimes buys milk from another local farmer when their own herd doesn't produce enough for their needs. This farmer had hung a washing hose up on a rack in his dairy backwards (yes, that's right - it was facing the wrong direction) and was slapped by the state inspectors with a violation.

This happened on a Friday, and the violations consequences trickled to the creamery, since they had a tank full of his milk. They were told that any products they produced from any milk whatsoever, not just the milk from the "unsafe" dairy, after Saturday at midnight could not be labeled "Grade A" (fit for human consumption). Until midnight it was just fine ... but after that it was "unsafe" and potentially deadly!!! Curiously enough, all of the milk from the "infected" farm was used up at the creamery before this insane order was even issued - so their was absolutely no risk to anyone from anything (as if a such a silly infraction produced risk in the first place).

I've come to view "random" and "arbitrary" as synonyms for "regulations" in agriculture.

BILLINGS, Mont. - Montana Cattlemen's Association (MCA) is outraged over the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) targeting of Montana beef processing plants for enforcement actions or suspension of operations.

(link) [The Prairie Star]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link