It turns out that the reason there has been 1000 times more complaints to the FCC isn’t just because activists are spamming them in general. It is because a single group - the Parents Television Council - is responsible for 999 out of 1000 complaints.

Activists Dominate Content Complaints

Thanks Nick

- and yes, this may be a shoe on the other foot scenario, but in my opinion its the right, not the left, that tend to be most vocal and indignant online.

An eloquent argument for US style free speech over European style regulation from Blackadder comedian, Rowan Atkinson.

Current laws prevent ‘Incitement of Racial Hatred’ it is proposed that they be extended to prevent ‘Incitement of Racial or Religious Hatred’

Rowan Atkinson says:

“race and religion are fundamentally different concepts, requiring completely different treatment under the law. To criticise people for their race is manifestly irrational but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas - any ideas”

Atheism Central for Secondary Schools - Rowan Atkinson speaks to the House of Lords on proposed Incitement of Religious hatred legislation:

“I question the inarguable nature of the phrase “religious hatred”, afforded by the use of the highly emotive word “hatred”. So I thought I would modify the name of the proposed measure, by changing the terminology but retaining the meaning and use the dictionary definition of the word hatred, which is: intense dislike.

Incitment of Religious Intense Dislike. Isn

The FCC obscenity complaints stats show:

Number of complaints and fines in -
year: 2000, complaints: 111, fines: $48,000
year: 2001: complaints: 346, fines: $91,000
year: 2002: complaints: 13,922, fines: $99,400
year: 2003: complaints: 202,032, fines: $440,000
year: 2004: complaints: 1,068,802, fines: $7,928,080

There have been 10,000 times more complaints in 4 years and 20 times as much in fines.

If complaints are as representative of Americans’ feelings as 4 years ago, and 10,000 times more people really are offended by broadcasting, then the FCC is 500 times less effective (since its obscenity guidelines are governed by popular consensus and fines levied accordingly).

If the fines are legitimate and comprehensive, and that there is therefore 20 times more obscene material being broadcast now than 4 years ago then the FCC has to spend 500 times as much in tax payer money to deal with unwarranted complaints (if it deals with complaints individually).

If, on the other hand, you don’t believe that Americans are between 500 to 10,000 times more prudish or broadcasters 20 to 10,000 times more obscene now than 4 years ago, then there is something wrong with the system of complaints.

This brings about a Malthusian problem, where the fines levied grow arithmetically but the population of complaints (and the cost of dealing with them) grows geometrically. In other words, if the FCC were a company, it would bankrupt them.

The real problem is created by the fact that the cost of making a complaint (via their website or email) is far less - and organized religious activists are exploiting this to swamp the FCC in flashmob fashion. It is the equivalent of a spam email campaign, but we are all paying for it.

Like spam, the only solution to this is to either make it more difficult or introduce a cost to send a message to the FCC, or to deal with large volumes of complaints like spam. In the latter case, the number of programs being complained about has only increased 3 times, so the value of an individual complaint, and the time spent dealing with it, should be inversely weighted when there are a large number about a single broadcast.

Google Video Search, boing boing :

… Eh-oh! Hee Hee! [Humming] dipsy! Hee Hee! Hee Hee… Whee! Wow! Yay! Ha Ha! Dipsy! Hee Hee! Ooh! Look! Yay, dipsy! Narrator: Circle. [Boing boing] [boing boing] [Boing boing] [boing boing] [squish] [squish] Hee Hee! Laa-laa Ball! Hee Hee! Uh-oh! Hee Hee! Ooh! Oh, dear! Hee Hee!…

‘Intelligent Design’ in the Schools (washingtonpost.com):

“Many school boards are arguing about whether to include “intelligent design” in their curriculums, The Post’s editorial said. If they are serious, the appropriate way is not to have scientists trying to discuss intelligent design in classes such as biology or physics…As the editorial said, such discussion is legitimate, however, in a history or philosophy class.”

Ford said - ‘history is bunk’. If you can relegate discussion of meaningless nonsense away from science to philosophy and history classes, then you prove him right.

(Oscar Wilde described fox hunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. My dad always describes philosophy as the unintelligible in pursuit of the unanswerable.)

My good friend Nick Aster has been doing an MBA with a difference, one that combines business with sustainability, at the Presidio World College.

They are shortly having open days for their MBA in Sustainable Management.

Part of a democracy is to prevent election of the undemocratic which happened disastrously in Algeria.

In December the Associated Press ran this:

Key among its [Iraq's] parties is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, a group closely allied to Iran and led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim…

Al-Hakim’s prominence on the list and his close relations with Iran give ammunition to many secular and non-Shiites to attack his coalition, saying Iraq’s political future will mirror Iran’s Shiite-run establishment if he and his supporters gain power.

Mustafa Alani:

“The nightmare scenario in the region is the election of an Iranian-influenced Shiite government in Iraq will lead to the creation of a ‘Super Iran’”

The UIA have two thirds of the votes counted so far.

CTV.ca | Iraq Shiite win may bring ‘Super Iran’: critics

Tom Foremski on what would happen if someone created a treasure hunt with a large cash prize awarded to a single click of an unpublicised adwords ad. A subsequent clicking frenzy could drain advertisers’ accounts, prompting them to ask for a refund.

This hypothetical idea is part of a more serious problem - pay-per-perfomance advertising is open to fraud - when you click something, money drains out of an account - this doesn’t happen with TV, print or radio ads. See Adbombing.

In the same way that companies like Paypal spent a considerable proportion of their resources dealing with fraud, so will Google.

If Google succeeds then its anti-fraud measures will be a competitive edge. If it fails there will be a problem.

The moral to all this is that Google’s business model landed on their laps via Scott Banister at Idealab, it is a new model and its weaknesses are not yet exposed, let alone tested.

Given the risk (and the fact that the existing behemoths like Ebay are beginning to plateau earlier than thought) a price/earnings ratio of half its current level of 140 would seem optimistic.

There was an ad on my site today that read:

Iraq
Visiting Iraq? Compare
hotel prices, reviews,
maps
travel.yahoo.com

There is one genuine looking review from an aid worker, where the Palestine Intl. Hotel in Baghdad, gets one star:

“Nice swimming pool, otherwise a dump
Service and food were terrible, bed was uncomfortable, dirty. The pool, however, was clean and very nice.”

“As present world temperatures are already 0.7C above the pre-industrial level, the process is well under way…

when the temperature moves up to 2C above the pre-industrial level, expected in the middle of this century - within the lifetime of many people alive today - that serious effects start to come thick and fast…

when the temperature moves up to the 3C level, expected in the early part of the second half of the century, these effects will become critical. There is likely to be irreversible damage to the Amazon rainforest, leading to its collapse…

There will be a rapid increase in populations exposed to hunger, with up to 5.5 billion people living in regions with large losses in crop production, while another 3 billion people will have increased risk of water shortages…

Above the 3C raised level, which may be after 2070, the effects will be catastrophic: the Arctic sea ice will disappear.”

Global Warming timeline