Activism Recap

 Activism Recap
Jul 312011
 

This week on We Stand FIRM, the blog of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine):

This week on Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government:

This week on Mother of Exiles:

This week on the blog of Modern Paleo:

 Posted by on 31 July 2011 at 1:00 pm  No Responses »

Open Thread #287

 Open Thread
Jul 312011
 

Ocean and sky

For anyone wishing to ask a question, make a observation, or share a link with NoodleFood readers, I hereby open up the comments on this post to any respectable topic. As always, please refrain from posting inappropriate comments such as personal attacks, pornographic material, copyrighted material, and commercial solicitations.

NoodleFood’s Wednesday and Sunday Open Threads feature creative commons photographs from Flickr that I find interesting. I hope that you enjoy them!

 Posted by on 31 July 2011 at 11:00 am  No Responses »

Ancestral Health Symposium

 Food, Health
Jul 302011
 

Next week — August 5th and 6th — I’ll be attending the Ancestral Health Symposium in Los Angeles. The schedule looks awesome but grueling. If you think that you might want to attend… too bad for you, because tickets sold out months ago!

Who else will be there?

 Posted by on 30 July 2011 at 7:00 am  No Responses »

Police Interrogations

 Crime, Law, Psychology
Jul 292011
 

In preparation for Sunday’s Rationally Selfish Webcast question on whether police should be allowed to lie to suspects in the course of a criminal investigation, I’ve been researching the standard practices and legal limits of police interrogation. I’ve found that extremely interesting, so I thought I’d share some links before the webcast itself.

First, How Police Interrogation Works from “How Stuff Works.” Basically, police interrogations are designed to exert as much psychological pressure on the victim as the courts allow. This article explains those techniques.

Second, What can the police lie about while conducting an interrogation? from “The Straight Dope.” This article is a fascinating summary of what kind of facts the police are permitted to misrepresent in dealings with suspects — because some and only some kinds of lies violate the suspect’s rights. The basic distinction is between “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” falsehoods. The article says:

Attempting to reconcile [various] rulings [by the Supreme Court], state courts and lower federal courts have come to draw a distinction between two kinds of lying to suspects: intrinsic misrepresentations, or those lies that relate to a suspect’s connection to the crime; and extrinsic misrepresentations, or those that have nothing to do with the suspect’s connection to the crime but attempt to distort his ability to make a rational choice about confessing.

That’s the critical issue here, I think. Police should be able to lie to suspects, but some kinds of lies — such as “you don’t have the right to an attorney” or “we can hold you indefinitely” constitute a kind of fraud, whereas others like “your fingerprints were found at the scene of the murder” and “a witness saw you enter the store” don’t. However, I’m not yet fully clear on the distinction, and I need to do more reading, this time from genuine law sources.

Third, “Don’t Talk to the Police” by Professor James Duane:

Greg blogged about this video back in 2008, but I didn’t watch it at the time. Now that I have, I can agree with Greg’s summary and conclusions:

[James Duane] is speaking to law students, explaining why he uniformly advises his clients (and everyone) that they should they never, ever, under any circumstances, talk with the police — guilty or innocent, a suspect or not, even if they are smarter than Aristotle and Newton combined, articulate as all get out, an expert in the law, and pure as the wind-driven snow. Never. …

He explains how talking to the police can’t ever help, and will in all likelihood hurt even innocents. This last is the part that really stood out: even the most innocuous statements by the most innocent of people could put them in jeopardy — it depends on context they don’t control. An officer misremembering an answer could bring a conviction; so could misremembering the question. Taping interviews is no guarantee, either: even some fuzziness in the contextual information that floated by before the interview could be disastrous!

Fourth, “Don’t Talk to the Police” by Officer George Bruch

In this follow-up lecture, George Bruch completely agreed with James Duane: a person should not speak to the police without his lawyer present.

 Posted by on 29 July 2011 at 7:00 am  No Responses »

Video: Why Carry a Concealed Firearm

 Ethics, Firearms, Law, Videocast, Webcasts
Jul 282011
 

In Sunday’s Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed the moral and practical reasons for carrying a concealed firearm. Here’s the 11-minute video, now posted to YouTube:

 Posted by on 28 July 2011 at 1:00 pm  No Responses »

Objectivist Roundup

 Objectivist Roundup
Jul 282011
 

The Objectivist Roundup is a weekly blog carnival for Objectivists. Contributors must be Objectivists, but posts on any topic are welcome.

Parenting Is… hosted this week’s Objectivist Roundup. Go take a look!

You can submit your blog article to the next edition of The Objectivist Roundup using this submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found here. If you’re an Objectivist blogger, you can get weekly reminders to submit to the carnival by subscribing to OBloggers @ OList.com.

 Posted by on 28 July 2011 at 12:00 pm  No Responses »

Best.Comment.Ever

 Abortion, Coalition for Secular Government, Funny
Jul 282011
 

I’ve been blogging here on NoodleFood and elsewhere for nearly ten years now. In all that time, I’ve never gotten as wildly inane a comment as this one on my CSG post on the efforts to impose anti-abortion “personhood” laws on Mississippi. The comment is from “Carol Arens532.” Brace yourself:

Think about it before abortion was made legal, the abortionist had to worry about maternal deaths from abortion, simply because these could very easily lead to an investigation by the FBI, after all if you are going to break the law the last thing that you would want to do is leave behind evidence of your illegal activity so that there can be an investigation. Thus before Roe vs Wade should a pregnant woman be seriously injured from an illegal abortion, she would be brought to a hospital and should she die there, there would be an oddtopisy done to determine the cause of death, the medical personal of the hospital would then be required to report this to the police clearly letting them know that someone is breaking the law, and initiate an investigation. Now however that abortion is legal the abortion can botch as many abortion as he wants without having to worry about there being an investigation, infact he can have a number of women die from abortion at his facility and never have to worry about the police or the FBI investigating his activity. It sure is good to think that the state of Mississippi thinks that it’s women and children are worth protecting from this. Sincerely Carol

When I posted it to Facebook and Twitter, many people noted that they hoped that they’d never have to have an “oddtopisy.” But my favorite comment was posted by Roberto Sarrionandia to Facebook.

This is hilarious. Presumably the same thing is true for all surgery. Paul can get away with strangling his patients, because radiography is legal and thus the authorities aren’t concerned with investigating it.

Similarly, when people are stabbed, nobody bothers investigating because knives are legal.

Exactly!

 Posted by on 28 July 2011 at 7:00 am  No Responses »

Preview: Rationally Selfish Webcast

 Webcasts
Jul 272011
 

Come join my next live Rationally Selfish Webcast! This week, I’ll answer questions on the morality of reverse engineering, atheists singing religious music, this-worldly success of faith-driven people, police lying to suspects, and more.

As always, it’s on Sunday morning at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET. You can watch the webcast and join in the text chat via www.RationallySelfish.com. Greg Perkins of Objectivist Answers will be my audio co-host, as usual.

Each week, I answer questions on practical ethics and the principles of living well. I select the most popular and interesting questions from the ongoing queue of questions. Please submit your questions, as well as vote and comment on questions that you find interesting!

Here are the questions that I’ll answer this week:

  • Question 1: The Morality of Reverse Engineering: Is it immoral to reverse-engineer a product? Is it immoral to reverse engineer a product, make changes to the product (effectively building a better product) and then sell this new product to the highest bidder (or use it for yourself)? Is this considered theft or a legitimate activity?
  • Question 2: Atheists Singing Religious Music: Is it moral for atheists to perform religious music? I love to sing classical music, and that usually means performing with a group that does religious music, including Catholic mass and other religious songs. Some of these groups are secular and perform it for the artistic value alone, but other groups are explicitly religious, such as affiliated with a church. Is it wrong for an atheist like me to join either of these types of groups?
  • Question 3: This-Worldly Success of Faith-Driven People: Why do some people of faith survive and even flourish? If reason is required for life, and faith abdicates reason, then how can anyone who has faith live and prosper? In particular, how do some devoutly religious people manage to be so productive and creative in business?
  • Question 4: Police Lying to Suspects: Should the police lie to suspects in the course of an investigation? Police routinely lie to suspects during the course of an investigation, usually in order to trick them into admitting something or revealing information they would normally not reveal. Note that the people they lie to may not have been convicted of any crime, and are merely “persons of interest” or suspects. Is this routine constant lying moral? What do you think it does to the policeman’s character after many years?

After that, we’ll do a round of totally impromptu “Rapid Fire Questions.”

If you can’t attend the super-fun live webcast, you can listen to these webcasts later as audio-only podcasts by subscribing to the NoodleCast RSS feed:

However, I hope that you’ll join the live webcast, because that’s more exciting and lively than the podcast. People chat merrily amongst themselves while watching the webcast. And I love the immediate feedback of a live audience — the funny quips, serious comments, and follow-up questions. So please join the live webcast when you can!

Finally, you can support the Rationally Selfish Webcast (and Podcast) contributing to our tip jar. We suggest $5 per episode or $20 per month, but any amount is appreciated. If you would prefer to send a check, please send it to “Diana Hsieh; P.O. Box 851; Sedalia, CO 80135.” Please write “RS Webcast” in the memo field.

I hope to see you on Sunday morning!

 Posted by on 27 July 2011 at 12:00 pm  No Responses »

Open Thread #286

 Open Thread
Jul 272011
 

Glowing Bar City Street Night Lights

For anyone wishing to ask a question, make a observation, or share a link with NoodleFood readers, I hereby open up the comments on this post to any respectable topic. As always, please refrain from posting inappropriate comments such as personal attacks, pornographic material, copyrighted material, and commercial solicitations.

NoodleFood’s Wednesday and Sunday Open Threads feature creative commons photographs from Flickr that I find interesting. I hope that you enjoy them!

 Posted by on 27 July 2011 at 11:00 am  No Responses »

The Bizarro Online Market for Stolen Credit Card Numbers

 Business, Ethics, Technology
Jul 262011
 

The NPR show Planet Money recently aired a fascinating story about the underground online market for stolen credit card numbers. (Click on the link to listen to the audio file.)

Basically, this underground market has many features of legitimate online sales websites (such as eBay or Amazon), but with some curious inversions.

For instance, you can’t get an account unless two other current members (who are also criminals) can “vouch” for you as also being a fellow criminal.

However, to do any kind of “business” they still have to rely on some of the same mechanisms that honest marketplaces use. For instance, there are rating systems for buyers to give feedback on sellers of these stolen credit cards. Getting a good A+ rating as a seller is critical to this sort of “commercial” success. Many sellers also have FAQ’s (“Do you offer discounts for bulk purchases?”, etc.) that mirror the sorts of FAQs one sees on eBay.

Of course, the transactions are conducted not via credit card (heh), but through other forms of secure digital currency.

Other funny/bizarre tidbits:

  • The site moderator warns users not to use ALL CAPS in their posts, otherwise, they’ll be banned.

  • To get in, you also have to click on a “Terms of Use” box that states you’re not a journalist nor a law enforcement officer. In other words, they are relying on the “honesty” of the bad guys. (Of course, the story was aired by an NPR journalist working with an FBI agent who quite appropriately “agreed” to those terms without any moral qualms.)

    (Update: SteveD points out that the Terms of Use are relying on the honest of the good guys, not the bad guys. Yes — quite right!)

  • Many of the big operations end up functioning like real businesses, hiring employees, etc. In other words, they “successful” bad guys have to work hard for their ill-gotten gains — which makes one wonder why they don’t just get honest jobs.

As I listened to the story, it really struck me how the bad guys were in so many ways parasitical upon methods and practices of genuine honest producers.

The full story lasts about 30 minutes and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing! (Download the audio file.)

 Posted by on 26 July 2011 at 7:00 am  No Responses »
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