No More Smoking, No More Trans-Fats, No More Liberty

It’s so disheartening how people today have forgotten the fundamentals of liberty and our responsibilities in preserving it.

I was reminded of this once again this week with the news story about New York City considering banning the use of trans-fats. Of course I saw this coming once the smoking ban movement started taking hold. That’s what people keep forgetting—once you start by taking away one freedom, it will eventually spread to many other areas. Smoking one month, trans-fats another, and eventually anything slightly harmful will be prohibited.

At this rate, it won’t be long before alcohol is prohibited in bars and restaurants. Or for that matter, televisions! Imagine when the government realizes that there’s no productive value in watching sports and decides to ban watching sports in bars! It’s not so far-fetched.

Government making such bans is unconstitutional because it potentially devalues the business owner’s property without compensating him. If you tell me I can’t have smoking in my restaurant, I may lose customers, and could even lose my business if enough customers stay away. Business owners should have the right to decide whether to allow smoking in their establishments. Then, customers themselves can decide whether to patronize smoking or non-smoking bars & restaurants. Having a choice is always better.

In my view, smoking bans are legitimate only under one set of conditions: bans that are imposed by state or local governments for public property. By public property, I mean public-owned property, in order words, government buildings and areas. The federal government has no constitutional authority to establish such bans at all. State and local governments may, but only in cases where it won’t devalue private property (including businesses).

But even under these guidelines, such bans should be made very carefully. What you support banning today may tomorrow lead to a ban on something you cherish doing. And beware of propaganda from proponents attempting to make you feel guilty if you don’t support a ban because of all the harmful effects of the activity being banned. The campaign against second-hand smoke has been very effective at this, using flawed research time and again, never providing any clear-cut evidence that second-hand smoke is truly a public health risk.

And for the record, no, I’m not a smoker, but I do value the freedom to become one someday.

Weakened dam stable but 'extremely volatile'

My favorite headline from today, a quote from the Mayor of Mill River, Massachusettes, about their dam that is on the brink of collapsing:

"Weakened dam stable but extremely volatile"

Am I mistaken, or is that completely self contradictory? Stable and volatile, huh?

Keep an eye on this mayor--it sounds like he may have a bright future in politics!

My Lost theory

This fall, my girlfriend introduced me to the TV series Lost and I got caught up by having a viewing marathon with the season 1 DVD set, which I highly recommend--it's the perfect way to watch the show: with DVD-quality picture and sound, and no commercials. I've tried to keep in mind that it's just an entertaining show, but it's so easy to get caught up in trying to figure out the mystery of the island. That's clearly evidenced by the many crazed fans posting endlessly on the many Lost message boards.

By the time I'd finished watching the last episode of season 1, I had come up with a couple of theories to explain the mythology of the show. My favorite was that everyone had actually died in the plane crash and that they're all in some sort of Purgatory, trying to sort out a few remaining issues before moving on to another life. But the writers and producers have made comments claiming that that is not the premise and that everyone is, in fact, alive. Should we believe them?

So that leaves me with my second theory, which, I'm writing about now because it still remains a valid possibility after the first three episodes of season 2; in fact, it even makes more sense now that we've found out more about the hatch...

The island is a research facility to study a mind-altering device. It erases and creates memories. There was no plane crash; it was all staged. In fact, the main characters were probably the ones who set it up. They volunteered or were recruited to be test subjects and took their places in the mock plane crash. An island device then erased their memories and they woke up thinking they'd been in a crash. Part of the experimental device is now planting new memories in each person. The flashbacks are these memories being implanted; the things in the flashbacks never happened. That's why the flashbacks tend to relate to things on the island or to other characters. "The numbers" never really meant anything to Hurley until now. Locke could always walk. And so on.

The memory-altering "device" is probably some sort of virus, which is why Desmond needs to inject a vaccine. Or, it could be done by some sort of nanites (the flying black particles?), or maybe it is related to the big magnet? Maybe a combination of these things? The requirement to enter the numbers in the hatch is a way to signal to a central command facility that things are still working. If the numbers aren't entered on schedule, the central command scientists know the hatch has been overrun, or more likely, the hatch workers have been overcome by the virus. That's why specific numbers have to be entered rather than just pressing a button--if you've been affected by the virus, you won't remember the numbers.

There are still lots of things to be explained, like what is special about the children, how is the island shielded such that it is only ever found by accident, what is the strange mechanical monster, are the "Others" failed experiments, etc.

I suspect over the course of the series we'll find more hatches, more people that have appeared in flashbacks (or at least more connections between them and people in other flashbacks), and I wouldn't be surprised if Claire's baby starts to look a lot like one of the other male characters (conceived before the experiment began). I'll even make a prediction about the series finale: the characters have all figured out what I've described here and realize they need to try the experiment again. So, they stage another accident (maybe even another plane crash)...Jack lies down in the field, his eyes close, fade to black, and we hear the island mind eraser starting up...

Literally incorrect

One of my pet peeves is the rampant incorrect use of the word "literally." It has become the standard adjective for emphasis, and in general use today, is almost always used incorrectly and just as filler, not adding anything to what's being said. People have forgotten that "literally" is intended to modify an idiomatic phrase when it describes something in a literal sense, rather than its usual figurative sense.

For example, the only correct interpretation of the sentence "The woman literally lost her mind" is that she misplaced her brain. If she went crazy, then she figuratively lost her mind.

These incorrect uses, especially in the professional media, bother me so much that I now try to find the humor in them by mentally picturing what the literal translation would be.

Here's another: the sentence "John is literally dying to see the new movie" could be correct if John is on a hunger strike because his parents won't let him go to the movies.

I would start tracking down and pointing out more of these abuses, but I was very happy to find that someone has already started a blog dedicated to this subject.

Problems with movie ratings

I am bothered by the current state of affairs of the content ratings for movies handed out by the Motion Picture Association of America. You know, the PG, PG-13, R thingys. The PG-13 rating may have sounded like a good idea, but I think it's turned into a terrible thing. These days, it seems all studios point their aim very strongly toward achieving a PG-13 rating; they say it generally leads to the widest audience for a film.

But the problem is that parents often automatically assume a movie rated PG-13 is appropriate for teens; however, films with a PG-13 rating can encompass such a wide range of content. The rating is really quite useless and contradictory regarding what content is permitted. For example, one utterance of "one of the harsher sexually-derived words" (generally meaning the "f" word) is permitted. If you allow it once, what's the difference to allowing it multiple times?? Do they think if you say it only once, it might not be noticed??

Violence is permitted in a PG-13 unless it becomes "too rough or persistent." The problem is the definition of violence--it seems to require harmful human to human action to qualify. I have seen so many PG-13 movies that have had such an intensity and "fear factor" that it concerns me that teens are regularly being exposed to these films. A good case in point is this summer's War of the Worlds: sure, humans weren't generally being violent to others, but geez, aliens were vaporizing humans! I was emotionally exhausted after that movie; what's it doing to our teenagers? There are many other examples of films with this sort of intensity that still managed a PG-13 rating.

I miss R-rated movies. A common theme heard on DVD commentaries is how the director ended up very frustrated at how the movie had to be chopped down to achieve a PG-13 rating rather than just sticking with the R it really deserved based on the script.

I wish studios would just stop using the rating system. Instead, upon release of a film, publish a content guide for parents that describes the questionable elements. Let's not try to fit everything into neat ratings categories--just tell us what's in the movie and let us decide what's appropriate for us and our children to watch.

I'd like to think that as movie viewing continues to shift from the theater to home, the standard ratings system will become less important and eventually go away.

UPDATE 9/13/2005: I found a very interesting article describing a study analyzing the MPAA ratings in correlation with those from a couple of online ratings systems (Kids-in-mind and ScreenIt.com). It found "ratings creep" in the MPAA ratings, meaning each year, more and more violence, sex, and adult language is permitted in a particular rating so that a PG-13 movie released today probably contains more potentially inappropriate content than one released ten years ago. This was particularly true with the violence category. The other significant finding is that there is a huge variability in content within each MPAA rating. Some PG-13 movies are tame while others have more violence than many R-rated movies. It was also seen that a lot of violence is allowed in G-rated movies as long as it's animated. If you're interested in this subject, check out the article on the study.

More reading on the Katrina entitlement issue

It seems I'm not alone in my thoughts about how Katrina has exposed the horrible effects of our entitlement society in America (see previous post). Here is a list of some additional articles and blogs on the subject:

Robert Tracinski: "An Unnatural Disaster"
Lex E. Libertas: "Poverty Kills"
Fred Butler: "The Horde of Lies"
Jonathan Leffingwell (quoting Rush Limbaugh): "The Failure of the Government Entitlement Mentality"
JMS: "New Orleans a Model of Liberal Ideas Among Minorities"

The FairTax Book

I just finished reading The FairTax Book by Neil Bortz and John Linder. It gives a pretty good overview of the FairTax plan (see previous blog entry) and is a fun and quick read. I've been excited about how well the book has been selling (was #1 on both the New York Times and Amazon.com bestseller lists). I'm hoping that means there's a lot of grassroots support for a national sales tax just waiting to explode into action.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book, read it, and then carry it around visibly as a conversation starter. The more people we can make aware of this plan, the better its chances of succeeding. There is really not much bad to be said about the plan once you understand it.