Politics

A street without rules, a safer street?

Samat Jain — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:48:31 +0000

A few weeks ago, I started listening to another podcast: WHY? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life, hosted by philosopher Jack Russell Weinstein.

Listening through the backlog, I found an excellent show, Episode 28: “On Liberty and Libertarianism” with guest James Otteson. In it, Jack and James philosophize about so-called “Libertarianism”, talking about how government should relate (or not relate) to both social and moral issues.

One of James’ fantastic talking points was on traffic. In short, all the rules and regulations that both drivers and pedestrians must follow are dehumanizing. Destroying the human connection between driver and pedestrian takes the social issue of road sharing and turns it into… well, something else, where drivers and pedestrians no longer need to think—it becomes a matter of just reading signs, staying within lines, and blindly following the guidance of blinking lights.

In the show, they discuss a Finnish town with a high number of traffic accidents. The town removed traffic lights, stops signs, and other regulatory sundries and traffic accidents went down.

They’re beginning to do the same on London’s Exhibition Road in the UK:

The idea is that when driving zones are heavily delineated, drivers tend to be on autopilot, focusing on other cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists. That’s why London has so many guard rails on either side of pedestrian crossings, preventing pedestrians from straying into the road where they’re not supposed to. But 10 years ago, Kensington and Chelsea experimented with removing the railings from Kensington High Street and found that the number of pedestrian accidents dropped by 60%. It seems that when drivers are forced to be more aware and pedestrians are forced to take more responsibility for themselves, everyone is safer. Rules, it seems, were counterproductive.

Interestingly enough, The Guardian publishes this in the Arts & Design section and describes the movement as liberal. In my opinion, it’s anything but. Leave it to the Europeans to re-pioneer freedom & common sense.

Topic:

Philosophy

Libertarianism

Politics

New Mexico, slowest Internet in the union

Samat Jain — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:28:20 +0000

PCMag has ranked states according to average Internet speeds (via GigaOM). New Mexico came in last. I can attest to this… my Internet connection in Las Cruces is a crazy fast 144 Kbps IDSL connection, which costs over $120/month. And it’s been the best land-line Internet access I could get for the past 3 years.

Is there a correlation with New Mexico being one of the dumbest states (at 95.7, rank 46 of 50) with regards to IQ? One has to think about these things…

Topic:

Politics

New Mexico

Has the war on spam been lost?

Samat Jain — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:34:23 +0000

O’Reilly Radar has an article written by Dale Dougherty, a roundtable set of opinions on whether the war on spam can be won. Rafe Colburn also has his own response.

Rafe’s solution is to use GMail. In the Dougherty’s article, Paul Vixie mentions that the internet is going to become a “walled garden;” relying on proprietary technology provided from a single company is the same thing in my eyes. There’s no way I’m going to advocate a proprietary solution for something as important as my e-mail.

Eric Allman mentions DKIM, which I think is an excellent weapon in the war on spam. I’m not using it however, as it doesn’t fit in with the way I use e-mail, and MUA (e-mail client) and MTA (e-mail SMTP server, essentially) is extremely sparse.

My unfortunately ineffective and impractical solution to this problem is use of PGP. Besides identity verification via digital signatures, it is also a generic platform for encrypted digital communication, and provides a distributed, robust trust model. Unfortunately, its learning curve is high, and that is why it’s basically been a failure for the past 10 yrs.

Though, lack of user education is why the spam problem keeps getting worse too. It’s users who click links in spam e-mail; it’s users who allow spammers to take over their machines through their negligence in applying security updates; it’s users (sometimes) who allow their identities to be stolen.

Topic:

Politics

Software

India's rejection of the OLPC $100 laptop

Samat Jain — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 05:59:35 +0000

India’s Ministry of Education has said that India will not take part in the $100 laptop project [The Register]. Quoting the news article:

Education dismissed the laptop as “pedagogically suspect”. Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee said: “We cannot visualise a situation for decades when we can go beyone the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools.”

The Playground, as well as many Internet commentators, think this is “fair reasoning.” I don’t see how–who ever said the laptop would replace teachers or classrooms? How exactly would they do that–is this supposed to make any sense?

Yes, the $100 laptop is a “fancy tool.” It is a fancy tool to facilitate a new age of electronic learning. Funds used to purchase these laptops should not be taken away from providing facilities and teachers, but instead on school supplies such as paper, pencils, and textbooks which themselves are generally expensive.

While India and much of the developing world may need more teachers and classrooms, yes, it’s a completely different problem that the $100 laptop isn’t meant to address. I’m waiting to see if there is valid criticism from India’s government in the future.

Topic:

Politics

OLPC

The meaning of prayer

Samat Jain — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:51:31 +0000

I was talking to a friend today, who does not believe in god. She was making a remark that she did not like to eat with her Christian friends, because their saying grace made her feel awkward. She felt awkward because she would feel dishonest if she participated in their prayer.

There are two kinds of “active” non-believers, those who believe religion and issues of god are something are totally meaningless (could be atheists or agnostics), and those who vehemently opposed and offended by anything to do with religion (probably only atheists).

This feeling of “dishonesty” made no sense to me if you fit into one of the above two categories. If you are opposed and offended, you would find the prayer annoying. If you thought it was a bunch of meaningless ritual, then you are just reciting a bunch of nonsense, so there’s no reason to feel dishonest and not participate, as long as it was not offensive.

I’m not really sure if acting like this is offensive to Christians. I don’t mean going to church and acting like a believer; I’m talking about simple everyday things like saying a prayer before a meal. If you’re a Christian I’m interested in your opinion.

I like to think I am the former kind of non-believer, the one just sees it all as meaningless. The latter kind of non-believer, the one who finds religion offensive, are the kind that make the news. Consider the controversy over the removal of the phrase “under god” from the national anthem [of the USA]. My feeling is that it does not belong there: added not even a century ago, it is no way part of America’s history, and is a clear violation of the seperation of church and state. That said, I don’t really care to get it removed because of how much hassle it would be. Basically, I’m glad something is thinking and doing something about these things, but I’m glad I am not paying for it.

Topic:

Politics

Philosophy

President G.W. Bush, a friend of India

Samat Jain — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:30:20 +0000

I was watching CNN today, and they displayed some interesting poll numbers. 66% of Indians consider President Bush a friend of India. This statistic is higher than all numbers of President Bush’s approval rating in the US, which is around 45%.

Topic:

Politics