Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

The Seahawks have a win handed to them.

The Seahawks won! They didn't play as well as they could have, but they still won. Randy Moss played poorly. Mo Morris ran for a career high. The Raiders couldn't score on Monday night again. Seneca Wallace went 18 of 30 for 176 yards. He ran 49 yards in the first half.

Probably the most outrageous thing that happened during the game was an unnecessary roughness call near the end of the game. Tyler Brayton was ejected from the game for throwing a knee to the groin after a play. Robbie Tobeck retaliated so the penalties offset, but Tyler Brayton was ejected from the game.

Come On! A knee to the groin? That's low, even for the raiders.

The Seahawks move to take sole possession of the lead in the NFC West.

Update: Reduce Idiocy has commented on Brayton's knee...

Monday Night Football

It's time for the 50th meeting between the Seattle Seahawks and the Oakland Raiders, tonight at 5:30 PM Pacific Time. Shaun Alexander and Matt Hasselbeck are still out, and the Seahawks defense was nowhere to be seen last week or the week before.

The field is wet, and it's likely to be a muddy game because it's natural grass. One of my favorite things about football when I was younger was the muddy games.

It's also going to be somewhat cool in the stands. The temperature is around 62 degrees, and it's been raining off and on all day.

One of my friends won a set of four tickets to the game. I hope she enjoys it. Me, I'm going to watch it on television.

I hope the Seahawks manage to get it together, or it's going to be a long, disappointing season.

Malicious code planted in Wikipedia

November 06, 2006 (IDG News Service) -- Malware writers have used a Wikipedia article and special storage features to attempt to plant malicious code on unsuspecting users' systems, the online encyclopedia's organizers have confirmed.
The incident took advantage of Wikipedia's policy of openness, which allows anyone to create and modify articles. The attackers created a Wikipedia page that promised a Windows security update for a supposedly new version of the Lovesan/W32.Blaster worm and pointed to an external site with the seemingly authentic domain wikipedia-download.org.

...

In August, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, addressing the Wikimania conference, acknowledged growing problems for the encyclopedia around accuracy and malicious edits, and promised to improve quality...

Source: Malicious code planted in Wikipedia

I seem to recall something about the accuracy problems and malicious edits. I remember a few topics having to do with the republican form of government being rather controversial. The current entry for "republic" is under dispute and protected from editing. It's a much more extensive topic than the current entry for "republican democracy", which just barely gets the notion of  "its emphasis on law and rule of the people through elected representatives".

More to the point, that entry defines a republic as a system of restricted democracy, and even it is likely to disappear as it gets merged into "constitutional democracy." Even that entry is significantly less extensive than the "republic" entry.

It seems like some of the editors of Wikipedia don't particularly like the form of government we have. They dislike it so much that they are trying to suppress the information about it that has been available on Wikipedia for some time, and to distort the meaning of it.

This shouldn't be too surprising, Wikipedia is the ultimate "open source" encyclopedia. Anybody can edit it. Even hackers can edit it and point it at malware. Personally, I don't trust Wikipedia. I'd much rather use an encyclopedia with a longstanding print reputation, such as Encyclopedia Britannica or Encyclopedia Americana, even though their content isn't as freely available.

This incident gives me even less faith in Wikipedia. About the biggest advantage they have is that their content is free. Sadly, that's also one of their biggest disadvantages.

Doctors Advocate Murder!

LONDON -- A leading British medical college has called on the health profession to consider euthanasia for seriously disabled newborns.
    The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has said that "active euthanasia" should be considered to spare parents the emotional and financial burdens of bringing up such children.
    "A very disabled child can mean a disabled family," it says in a formal submission. "If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome."

Source: Disabled newborns face verdict - World - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

I don't think it can be much plainer than that. These doctors are advocating the murder of the newborn simply because of disabilities.

The proposal has been supported by several leading geneticists and medical ethicists.
    Joy Delhanty, a professor of human genetics at University College London, said: "I think it is morally wrong to strive to keep alive babies that are going to suffer many months or years of ill-health."
    But John Wyatt, a consultant neonatalologist at University College London hospital, called the proposal "social engineering."
    "Once you introduce the possibility of intentional killing into medical practice, you change the fundamental nature of medicine," he said.

How right he is. Years ago it became a common, accepted practice to deliberately take the life of an unborn child for the convenience of the "mother". At first, it could only be done under dire circumstances, then it became a right. It's still nothing less than an intentional killing, but we've come to accept it.

Now, a woman can get an abortion in the State of Washington, for any reason she wants to, up through the sixth month of pregnancy. Of course, the argument goes that it isn't a baby until it's born. Instead it's just a clump of foreign cells growing in and feeding off of the woman's body (we can't call her a mother, that would imply that it's a baby). So naturally, it can be removed without any moral objections at all.

We've become so used to this form of casual killing that the next step is obvious. The Royal College knows what it is. They have a pretty euphemism for it to make it less objectionable. They call it "active euthanasia".

I call it murder.

Linked to Basil's Blog, Wake up America.