NewsLogik

Apparently, the National Rifle Association has hired moles to try to pry up dirt in the leadership of their diametrically opposed groups. The plan, I suppose, was to try to discredit, disband or remove these threats to their mission of protecting American’s rights to own guns.

Fair enough.

While it’s easy to impugn the character of the NRA for doing such an act if you disagree with their core mission, or likewise protect them if you feel they serve a vital role in protecting your firearms, the bigger issue is whether or not lobby groups should be spending money spying on other lobby groups. And by spying, I mean twisted, down and dirty, face-to-face spycraft.

Nasty.

For those of you too close to the whole affair to decide objectively whether or not this kosher, just think if the tables were reversed, and Ceasefire was trying to find evidence that NRA members were buying illegal weapons. Escalation in these matters isn’t pretty, and it sure doesn’t do anyone any good.

If these organizations are dangerous, which I don’t see anyone accusing CeaseFirePA of being, the efforts to investigate them should be either 1. handled by law enforcement, if they are dangerous or 2. be transparent and part of civic due dillegnece.

But I imagine you didn’t come here for the lesson in performative ethics. Fair enough.

I leave you with a quandry, a thought experiment if you will. Those who argue vehemently against the intrusion of big brothers in our daily lives, are themselves mustering significatn resources to intrude in the lives of smaller organizations. Is this hypocrisy?

I think the people over at CeaseFirePA better start looking for some libertarian advocacy groups to try to lay the conservative hammer down on the NRA.

Clothes are starting to do things other than hiding our shame.

From the humble fig leaf, to the nanite treated dockers that repel stains, they’ve come a long way baby.

The latest turn in clothing, probably the most significant since someone invented those sweet pants with the zip away leg that could become shorts, is smart clothing that can do things like detect cancer cells. That sounds swell, and I mean that with no sarcasm.

There are some interesting issues to discuss, but the thing that I find interesting is clothes are actually besting us at our own game.

But I do reserve the right to be a little scared that we are incorporating technology into clothes that are literally our second skin. Can’t we just add an application to the iPhone that detects cancer cells. What’s that? Cell phones might cause cancer? Ok, forget the iCancer widget. We’ll stick to the underwear.

But what to bring this whole idea back to the nanite-stain fighters. I do want to point out Eric Drexler’s theory that nanities might one day consume the entire world, converting us all into a massless goop of a carbon atoms. Just hope keeping that teriariki sauce off my pleated chino’s was worht it.

Who am I kidding. It was.

If trials hinge on the jury’s sympathies, and if these jurors got their duty notices at their homes, then tried-to-be Eric Montanez, 22, is as good as guilty. And he is very guilty. The prosecution has footage of him feeding homeless people, in intentional, repeated violation of an Orlando law.

The city ordinance has stood for over a year, presumably by dint of the city’s checkered indifference and support. Outside of Mr. Montanez, his alleged group Food Not Bombs, and blanket do-good media magnets like the ACLU, Orlando residents just haven’t shown enough dissatisfaction, even at the polls. Not even the homeless themselves–and this is telling–, as they refuse to buy homes where to receive their voter registration papers.

Montanez’ flagrancy commands a swift response. He was not only feeding undesirables en masse; he was doing so at a public park frequently used for picnics. Picnics with little children. Would you take your children to eat delicious sandwiches at a place crawling with homeless? Would you take them to a hospital that treats the uninsured? The bottom line is, visibly homeless people are a thorn in the city’s paw and a threat to its soaring property values ["Housing prices in Greater Orlando went up 34% in one year, from an average of $182,000 in August 2004 to $245,000 in August 2005, and eventually to a record $255,000 in February 2007. They are tapering off, however, down to $241,900 in April 2007."]

Instead of seeking the common good, Montanez is hellbent on his own twisted personal crusade to “feed the homeless.” What’s next? “House the homeless?” Follow this slippery slope, and it’s only a matter of time before the Homeless Indulgence Virus bursts the public park cell membrane and infects such profitable industries as condo development or–Disney forbid–regional tourism.

Look, we’re not inhumane here. Spare us the junior high Swift references. No one is talking about eating the homeless, but we owe it to the children to make sure they don’t eat us.

There has been an uproar about the use of “video news releases” paid for by corporations, politicians, and special interest groups to further their agenda. The beauty of these productions is that they look so much like a regular broadcast, and they are presented by the news media, that hardly anyone doubts their authenticity.

That is, of course, until the FCC threatens to fine broadcasters that don’t make the sponsorship clear.

There is another angle that the wonderful article in The Independent doesn’t touch on. Many of these releases are aired, not for sponsorship, but because small markets can’t afford to produce their own stories. Given something that looks good and costs nothing, broadcasters will air it (provided it seems possibly legitimate).

The job of journalists isn’t easy, and they are facing increasing competition from industries that are far newer and less ethically constrained (bloggers?). To compete, they cut corners. Instances like these are the result.

So long as the ads, because essentially they are, aren’t sponsored, the broadcasters don’t have to say they didn’t produce them by themselves. The practice will continue and grow, while average media consumer’s education about these practices will not. The result of this practice: reality is up for sale, and those with the most money to buy nice cameras and fake newscasters have the market cornered.