Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility

For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001

“Our God given unalienable rights are given to us all as individuals. They tell us what me may do for ourselves, and they are the embodiment of liberty. The so-called rights that government gives to some of us are parcelled out to select groups as classes. They tell us what one class of people may require another to do for them, and they are the very essence of slavery.”
— Perri Nelson, February 9, 2010

A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh?

A matter of perspective

Published Fri, Nov 9 2007 6:41 PM

Today as I was driving to work, I turned off the radio for a while to think. Normally, when I'm driving I try to stay within the legal speed limit. There are occasions though when I'll throw caution to the winds and drive a bit faster.

Someone once said that a moron is somebody that is either going so slowly that they keep you from going as fast as you'd like on the road, or somebody that is going faster than you are. It's all a matter of perspective.

I think it's a pretty safe bet that most of us ignore speed limits from time to time. We get in a hurry to go somewhere and rationalize that "hey, 5 miles per hour isn't going to hurt anyone". It's probably even a safe bet that a lot of us ignore the speed limits most of the time.

The people that sell radar detectors aren't really likely to be making their money just because people want to know when the local grocery store is using microwaves to detect when people approach their doors are they? Why spend hundreds of dollars on a radar detector in the first place unless you're going to use it to reduce your risk of a citation due to speeding? Is curiosity really that big a factor?

In most jurisdictions, it's probably safe to say that the police are outnumbered by a wide margin on the roads. There's simply no way that they can catch every speeder. It's also a likelihood that the police aren't interested in the typical speeder who is only going a mile or two (or even five or ten) above the speed limit. They're generally looking for the truly reckless and dangerous drivers.

Anyway, given all of this, it's fun to observe other drivers, and my own reactions to the various ways people drive. For instance, why is it that whenever a group of cars is traveling down the highway, everybody seems to slow down five to ten miles per hour as soon as they see a police car on the side of the road with it's lights flashing? Even when everyone was already obeying the speed limit?

I wonder about that. Could it be that the people in the front of the line are so used to driving over the speed limit that they reflexively slow down whenever they see a police car? "Cheeze it! It's the cops! Better slow down so they don't waste my time with a lecture and a ticket!"

The law in the state of Washington says that generally you must drive on the right half of the road. There are signs on many sections of highway that say something to the effect of "State Law, Keep Right Except To Pass". So why do we see so many cars cruising along in the left lane?

On many of our highways, at least in rural areas there are two separate speed limits. One is for cars and the other is for "trucks", by which is meant commercial vehicles over a certain GVWR. On major freeways (in the state of Washington) the speed limit for cars is 70mph and for trucks it's 60mph. This would tend to explain, at least in some cases why you'll often see cars cruising along in the left lane. It's to avoid having to continually change lanes to get around the trucks.

Unfortunately that means that sometimes there will be otherwise law-abiding citizens traveling in the left lane that are traveling slower than the people behind them, who wish to ignore the speed limit, would like. And so we see people start passing on the right, even though that too is a violation of traffic laws.

These people, and I freely admit to on occasion being one of them are often irritated at the "slowpokes" in the left lane. Some have even been observed to display obscene gestures while passing illegally. Do we honestly need to be in that big a hurry?

I also, and I'm sure that other people as well, get irritated when I'm on a four lane freeway going up a hill and some gigantic semi pulls out into the left lane in front of me and then proceeds to slowly creep past another semi in the right lane. I understand the trucker's desire to get around the slower trucker, but really! It's irritating. The speed limit for me is ten miles per hour faster than for that truck and he just slowed down a whole lane of faster traffic.

What about two lane roads? By "two lane roads" I mean roads where one lane of traffic is dedicated to travelers going in one direction and the other is dedicated to travelers going in the other direction.

That's an important distinction, because there are such things as one lane roads, where traffic going in both directions shares the same lane. One lane roads are rare, but they do exist. They are also the only place in Washington State law where it is occasionally legal to go faster than the posted speed limit.

Anyway, how often do you get irritated by a "slow" driver on a two lane road? Like I said before I like to try to drive within the speed limit. That means if the speed limit is 60mph, I'll be going 60mph. If the speed limit is 55mph, I'll be going 55mph. I also try to keep to the right though.

Invariably that means that I'm going to irritate somebody by going too slowly for them. Like today. Today a woman in a little car was following me down SR 18 Eastbound, coming down Tiger Mountain. The speed limit there is 55mph.

I was going 55mph. She was about ten feet behind my car, swerving to the left side and then to the right side of the lane, flashing her lights at me. At least she had the decency to not honk her horn at me too. As soon as the road widened to three lanes, I moved over into the right hand lane (often referred to as the "truck" lane) and she blew by me, giving me a dirty look as she went past.

I've been in her position before too. Like I said, I usually try to stay within the speed limit, but sometimes I don't bother. And quite often during those times I've thought of those drivers that are driving just at the speed limit as morons or worse. Especially when they're blocking my progress. As soon as I've had the opportunity it was pedal to the floor to get around. It's all a matter of perspective.

So why do I drive the speed limit? Well, for one, I don't want to have to pay traffic fines. The typical speeding ticket, for less than 15mph over the limit, amounts to around $100.00. That's not a huge amount of money, but it will buy a couple of tanks of gas and a lunch or two. It doubles in "work zones" too.

Technically that's only supposed to happen when workers are present, but sometimes the police like to "pretend" to be workers. I wonder if when they're doing that if the fines double then too? Anyway there are altogether too many construction zones between my home and where I work, most of which stretch for miles, with only one or two people working, and often none.

I know that the typical police stop isn't going to be for going even five mile per hour above the speed limit, but why risk it? All it takes is just one irritant too many in the policeman's life and what might have been a warning could turn into a traffic citation. And legally, they can pull you over and cite you for as little as one mile per hour over the limit. The fine is still the same.

I'm not afraid of speed. In fact, I like to drive fast. I just do it on the race track instead of the roads.

Driving the speed limit doesn't mean that I'm any better than anyone else on the road either. Once upon a time, when I was younger I thought that it did. Man what an attitude I could develop when other people sped by me as I drove the speed limit. I even recall at times when there would be people getting together (back when the national speed limit was 55mph, and don't even get me started on a national speed limit), and blocking all lanes of traffic by driving 55mph to make a point. Now THOSE people were really irritating.

Self righteousness is a waste of time though, because we're all sinners. And what good does it do to follow one aspect of the law, and a relatively minor one at that if we ignore a different one entirely, at least where righteousness is concerned?

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." Matthew 23:23 via thetithe.org

Yes, there is a judge and He will consider these things. There are also judges appointed by men whose business it is to enforce the laws, or to decide the penalties we pay when we're caught. But the rest of us aught not to be in that business.

That's really where I've been going with all of this. None of us are without flaws, and as long as that's true we have no business judging other people for their flaws. I used traffic and driving attitudes as an example, because it's an example of petty self-righteousness when we judge other people for going too fast or too slow, or for failing to signal a lane change, all the while ignoring our own larger transgressions.

This doesn't mean that it's not appropriate to speak out against things that we perceive to be wrong. It does mean that it's not appropriate for us to judge others that engage in practices we perceive to be wrong though.

For example, I'm personally a pro-lifer. I think that abortion is a horrible wrong. I'm going to speak out against it from time to time as I have. I'm going to try to convince people that there isn't a constitutionally protected right to an abortion, despite what the National Abortion Rights Action League says.

I want to see the issue returned to the states, and I'd like to see those states where the people don't want abortion on demand to be the norm to be able to ban it, or to at least put reasonable restrictions on it.

Does that mean that I think I'm better than a woman that has an abortion? Hardly. I think that it was the wrong choice to make, and I don't support that choice, but it wasn't my choice and it's not my place to judge her.

As another example, I don't believe that homosexuality is normal or desirable. I think that there are a lot of things wrong with it from a social point of view as well as my own moral point of view. I think that homosexual behavior is dangerous, that it exposes people to all manner of diseases, such as AIDs, and that it dehumanizes some people.

Does that mean that I think I'm a better person than someone that happens to be a homosexual? Certainly not. Does that mean that I think that all homosexual people are evil and that their rights should be suppressed? Definitely not. They are no more evil than I am, and their rights aught to be upheld just as I'd expect mine to be.

I happen to have quite a few friends that are homosexual. These people are good people. They care about other people, they give to charities, they work hard and they respect me and others. Why should I treat them any differently than they treat me? It's not my business to judge them, even if my idea of right and wrong is different than theirs.

When it comes down to it, I bet you'd find that a lot of conservatives and religious people think as I do on this. It's quite natural to speak out against an attitude or a lifestyle that you disagree with, but that does not mean that you judge people that hold that attitude or live that lifestyle.

That's what tolerance is really about.

This is what I find so strange about "the left", and about Democrats, or rather the Democratic Party leadership. They're big on multiculturalism and tolerance. They want us to accept other cultures and other lifestyles, and tolerate their beliefs.

That's all well and good. I want them to accept my culture and my lifestyle and to tolerate my beliefs. But, to tell you the truth, I don't think that they do.

I don't think that it really matters where a person is from. That's why I don't understand (well, I do understand, just not agree with) when people insist upon referring to themselves as African-Americans, or Italian-Americans, or any other kind of hyphenated Americans. What's wrong with simply being an American?

Multiculturalists tell us that we have to accept these differences between peoples. I'm all for that. But why emphasize those differences? Why should we separate ourselves into little cliques or enclaves of hyphenated people? If we're really accepting one another why do we need the extra labels?

For that matter, it seems to me that a lot of what I've heard about multiculturalism and tolerance really aren't about accepting one another, even as equals. It really amounts to denigrating what one race and culture (white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian) is in order to elevate another (black, African, Muslim). Some multiculturalists even go so far as to say that only white people can possibly be racist.

It seems to me that the Democratic leadership's idea of multiculturalism only leads to self flagellation rather than tolerance and acceptance. It seems to me that rather than focusing on what makes us different, we really need to focus on what makes us the same. We are all imperfect human beings, each of us with our own flaws.

Democrats are known as the party of tolerance. When you think of "gay rights", which party comes to mind? Why then were they so gleeful when they outed Mark Foley? Could it possibly be that Mark Foley was a bit of a hypocrite?

"³Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye." Matthew 7:3-4

Mark Foley was well known for his stands on morality. Then he was caught in a scandal for having sent suggestive messages to a House page. The Democrats were gleeful and quickly denounced him for his immoral "gay" behavior. He was forced to resign in disgrace over mere words. Interestingly enough, Gerry Studds was also a gay Congressman. The difference between them? Gerry Studds actually raped a House page, plying him with liquor to facilitate his crime, while Mark Foley only sent suggestive messages. To this day, Gerry Studds is honored as "the first openly gay member of Congress". Mark Foley is merely reviled, although rightly so for his hypocrisy.

We are, each of us flawed. That doesn't mean that we can't take a stand against what we believe to be wrong or evil. I honestly believe that it is better to have high standards and occasionally fail to meet them than to have no standards at all and revile others for not meeting them.

This is, to me the big difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Republicans often have high moral standards, and often fail to meet them. I know that I have high moral standards and that I often fail to meet them. I try again and again though to get back up and reach for them. By doing so, and with God's grace I've overcome a lot of my weaknesses and moral failings. I still have a long way to go though.

Certain Democrats (by all means not all of them, nor even most of them) on the other hand have low or no moral standards. They don't fail to meet them, because the standards are so low. Call them out on it though and they'll attack you for any moral failing you might have.

To me that's not tolerance, it's depravity. It's the pot calling the kettle black. Never mind that they're both covered in soot.

It's all a matter of perspective.

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Automation is error prone

Published Fri, Nov 9 2007 9:43 AM
Technorati Tags: Software Development, Blogging, Annoyances, News

That's something to think about as we rely more and more upon automation in our modern society. People make mistakes. When those mistakes are automated they can happen with more frequency.

That's one of the problems with automating processes. Of course we try to avoid doing things like that. That's why programmers run unit tests when they write a piece of code. We want to make sure that the code does what it was designed to do and that little mistakes haven't crept in.

Software and modern computer hardware are incredibly complex things if you look at them. They start off pretty simple though. At the bottom, a computer is nothing more than a complex arrangement of automated switches, similar to the light switch on your wall. What makes it a computer are the number of switches and how they're wired together with switches controlling other switches and so on.

If you'd like a good explanation at a relatively low but very approachable level of just how a computer works then I'd recommend Charles Petzold's book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. It's a very understandable book that starts from simple concepts and leads you through how to build a computer from relays.

Not that you'd ever want to do such a thing. Even a barely functional computer with a tiny amount of memory (64kb) would cost several million dollars to build from relays and wires, and it would consume huge amounts of power and space. It would be made from several million relays and miles upon miles of wire.

Computers are simple though compared to dealing with people. People are intelligent in many many ways. Consider for a moment the simple thing that you and I enjoy doing — reading blogs.

A blog is basically a journal. Bloggers write about what interests them, whether it's politics, celebrities, software, themselves, or something else entirely.

Most blogs use a pre-built software platform like Blogger or Wordpress. These packages provide the blogger with the ability to do a bit of customization, so one person's blog doesn't look exactly like another's. They also provide a few automated features.

One popular feature that blogging platforms provide is comments and trackbacks. OK. that's actually two separate features, still, these features are automated for the most part. The part that's (usually) not automated is the human on the other end of the process.

When a blogger elects to use the comments feature, it's typically because they want to allow feedback on what they write. After all, the blogger is human too, and blogging is, for some of us at least, a chance to exchange ideas and grow.

So naturally bloggers hope that the comments that are posted to their articles are relevant to what they've written. If for example, I'm writing a post about the pitfalls of automation, it's a reasonable assumption that I'm really not interested in comments that tell me how to make that certain organ larger or how to obtain prescription painkillers online without a prescription. I'm sure that someone wants to know that sort of thing, but count me out.

So bloggers typically resort to some sort of automated anti-spam measures to prevent junk comments from being posted to their blogs. Some bloggers use a device called a CAPTCHA image. This is an image that contains some text, but the text has been distorted a bit. The entity posting the comment is supposed to read the text in the image and enter it into an additional field in the comment form. The idea here is that a person can read the text, but an automated process (which is why I said "the entity posting the comment") can't.

This isn't foolproof though. What happens if the person posting the comment is blind? Then they can't read the text in the CAPTCHA image. Blind people read blogs too. They often use a device called a screen reader, that reads the HTML and uses a synthesized voice to speak to the blind person. Some of these screen readers are quite sophisticated, able to use different intonations to indicate when text is emphasized (using the <em> tag rather than the <i> tag for example).

The algorithms that are used to distort the text in CAPTCHA images vary as well, with some doing more to distort the text than others. Why bother distorting the text? Well, there's another device called the optical character reader. The Post Office uses them to help sort mail.

I suppose if someone were really interested in distributing their spam they could build a sophisticated program that was designed to look for CAPTCHA images and pass them through a character recognition algorithm so that they could defeat the process.

And that's just one of the reasons why relying upon automation isn't always a great idea. If you put a lock on a door, some unscrupulous individual is just bound to try to pick the lock, if they don't just break the window to get in. A CAPTCHA image is a form of lock, and so it's a temptation for talented, but unscrupulous people.

Trackbacks are a bit tougher to block using CAPTCHA images. After all, the trackback process is meant to be automated. The only way I know of to block trackbacks with CAPTCHA images is to use them to block the presentation of the trackback URI. That will typically only work once though, unless the relationship between the post permalink and the trackback URI defeats working out a pattern. Once a spammer has found the pattern used, they never need to get past the CAPTCHA image again. They just go around it.

So bloggers resort to spam filters. AKismet is a good one. Remember though, we're dealing with people, and AKismet is just an automated filter. A clever spammer can still find a way to get past it. Worse, if the filter is too aggressive, it will filter out legitimate comments or trackbacks. We don't want either of these problems, and so the blogger has to monitor the filter.

You'd think that I'm a Luddite trying to make the case against automation from the arguments so far. I'm not. I make my living automating things. I'm just aware of the shortcomings of automation and the fact that people have a tendency to both make mistakes and to be malicious.

Automating mistakes makes them happen at a faster rate. Ignoring the malicious nature of people causes our automated processes to fail at times.

I don't trust automation, but I have to rely upon it all of the time. Relying on automation makes my life much easier. Trusting it opens me up to all manner of problems.

Let's step back for a moment. All of what I've written so far is just a prelude. What really inspired this post was an article from the Daily Mail. It's another story about the pitfalls of automation.

A baffled mum was told by police to pay up or face court after her two-year-old daughter was fined for speeding.
Cute toddler Ayesha Khan was apparently clocked driving 65mph in a 40mph zone by South Yorkshire Police.
Despite mum Sharna's protests, dozy police insisted someone would have to cough up or they faced a court appearance.

Imagine that, a two year old girl driving a car, and speeding at that! Now that's certainly a case of reckless driving isn't it? But wait…

Ayesha was allegedly flashed by a speed camera in on the A638 near York Road, Doncaster.
Police finally admitted they had made a mistake after Sharna proved she was in Huddersfield as the time and the car's registration didn't match their car.
Mrs Khan said: "At first I assumed someone had been caught for speeding and just give a false name, but the ticket was issued from a speed camera.

The ticket was issued from a speed camera. It was issued thanks to an automated system.

Chief Inspector Ian Blint, head of roads' policing, said: "There has been an ambiguity in the information supplied to us that caused the notice of intended prosecution to be issued to Ayesha Khan.
"This is beyond our control and we apologise for any inconvenience and distress caused by the Khan family.

As more and more communities use stop-light cameras and automated radar guns with cameras to issue tickets to drivers, we need to be ever vigilant. These systems are, like any automated system, prone to error. Most of them rely upon a good image of the vehicle's license plate, and issue the ticket to the registered owner of the vehicle.

The problem is, sometimes the information is wrong, and other times, someone else may be driving the vehicle. If my son is driving my car and gets an automated speeding ticket, I'm the one that would be charged, but he is the one that should pay the fine. Even worse, if the wrong license plate is read, someone totally innocent, like Ayesha Khan could be hauled into court for something someone else did.

On West Lake Sammamish Parkway, here in Washington between Issaquah and Redmond, there are two radar-based speed signs. It's interesting to watch them when there's a bit of traffic on the road. I've seen them flashing numbers wildly, as cars come around a corner, some obeying the speed limit and others not. These particular signs aren't equipped with cameras, but imagine if they were. If the camera is focused on the lead car, which is obeying the speed limit, but a trailing car is approaching rapidly and triggers the camera, who's going to get the ticket?

Automation is a wonderful thing, but it's not to be trusted.

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