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In today’s news, a landmark court case is being set. A man from Alaska is being charged with second-degree murder in an automobile accident where he slammed head-on into an oncoming car and killed its two occupants. It’s being pressed as murder because he was allegedly watching an in-dash DVD (“Road Trip”, of all movies) at the time of the accident, causing him to drift over the center line and hit the other vehicle.

Although he claims to have been listening to music and not watching the DVD player, in a telephone call from the hospital to his ex-wife that night he admitted that he was “distracted by the movie” he and his front-seat passenger were watching. Furthermore, his DVD player had been custom-installed in order to bypass the safety feature that will prohibit it from playing unless the vehicle is parked.

Regardless of whether he was actually watching the movie and whether it caused the accident, it raises an interesting question and point of law: when does manslaughter (accidental killing) become murder (intentional killing)?

Typically, drunk drivers are charged with manslaughter if they kill someone in an accident, because it’s assumed they didn’t have “malice aforethought” which is one of the prerequisites for a murder charge. However, the prosecutor in this particular case insists that since the defendant bypassed the safety system in an effort to make it possible to watch movies while driving, he was showing a blatant disregard for human life. In other words, because he would be in control of a ton of high-speed steel certainly capable of killing someone, and elected to place the importance of his entertainment above the importance of paying attention to his driving, he should not only be held responsible for the deaths but shouldn’t be able to claim it was an “accident” at all.

If convicted, this would create a powerful precendent for holding people responsible for their actions if they are being knowingly careless while doing things that could endanger others.

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

— Sir Arthur Eddington

Today’s Iraqi puzzler: Who’s Dumber?

1) The Filipino government, for caving into the demands of the Iraqi extremists who threatened to behead a Filipino guy unless the Phillippines pulled out of Iraq.

2) The extremists themselves, for now kidnapping men from India, Kenya, and Egypt and demanding their respective countries pull out of Iraq as well. Note that none of the three countries have troops in Iraq.

I guess it goes to show that giving into the demands of terrorists is a universally bad policy, no matter how ugly the consequences of not giving in may be…

It looks like this year’s federal budget is going to follow two fairly unsurprising trends:

1) Defense spending up.
2) Science and technology spending down.

Whee! It’s sure to keep America a global leader…

The tedium of spam is really starting to annoy me. Although I’ve got great spam filters running, I still download a couple hundred messages every day and have to sort through them to get the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately everything dumps into a single folder, and I can quickly scan subject lines (“Vi@gra”? What’s that?) and delete all the crap. There’s maybe one legitimate message each day– someone who isn’t in my address book, or is using an alternate account.

Although I love the ability to have a “catch-all” mail account– which lets any address at my domain deliver to me– I think that’s a big part of the problem. These spammers pick random names (and even sequences of numbers) and just fire away. Since everything gets routed to my “jeff” account, I get all the spam. Whee.

So last night I turned off the catch-all, and left only the handful of legitimate addresses I actually use. I didn’t expect a dramatic difference, but imagine my surprise when the spam load dropped by about 70%. Woo hoo! Now I’ll only have to sort through 40-50 messages…

I’m presently reading Eric Drexler’s famous book “Engines of Creation”, which discusses nanotechnology and how its development will undoubtably change our world and our society in dramatic and largely unpredictable ways.

As a fan of nanotechnology, it’s always interesting to learn more about it and ponder how it might affect the world around me. What’s particularly noteworthy about this book is that it was written in 1986– almost two decades ago– and is still considered by many to be not only the seminal work on the subject, but a good overview of the science. Considering how much the world of technology has changed in the last twenty years, that’s a fair accomplishment.

Amazing what they can do these days. And what they might be able to do tomorrow.

Last night La and I watched “The Last Samurai”. It was a good flick, although when it all boils down, it’s just “Dances with Wolves” all over again. We even had Kicking Bird, played by a constantly weepy Taka, and of course the gradual realization by the main character that the “savages” aren’t really so savage after all…

As rumors of the “Return of the King : Extended Edition” DVD begin circulating, there’s much speculation about whether it’ll be shown in theaters before being released to video (which would be both cool and frustrating), and of course about which scenes will be added.

But on Slashdot, the source of all knowledge, there was a great alternate plot:

Gandalf: That ring is bad news, Frodo, it must be destroyed.

Frodo: How so?

Gandalf: It must be placed in the fires of Mount Doom.

Frodo: Oh well, I guess that means a lot of walking, camping and then running away from monsters, lots of death and almost losing all my friends?

Galdalf: Nah, I know some big eagles that can fly us straight to the mountain and we can drop it in the lava. We’ll be home by tea.

Frodo: Nice one!

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

— Ernest Benn

The Chinese government never ceases to amaze me. In today’s news, they’ve announced a plan to filter text messages sent between their citizens via cell phones. This is a monumental task, as Chinese people send and receive more text messages (some 200 billion per year) than the rest of the world combined. Not deterred by the sheer magnitude of such a project, the government thinks it has a right to intercept and block communication between its citizens.

Not surprisingly, this goes hand-in-hand with their stringent filtering of the internet– something I would think is a lost cause. Apparently text messages containing certain key words, or even special numbers in proximity to one another, will be blocked by the filtering software.

Although I feel the Chinese government is monstrous for pulling stunts like this, I’m also constantly appalled by the way the U.S. government– and American corporations– continue to treat China like they’re our best friends. They retain their Most Favored Nation status, and as long as the flow of crappy plastic toys continues to flow across the ocean I’m sure they’ll remain our most beloved trade partners. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that the next Olympics will be held in Beijing: certainly a demonstration to the world that it doesn’t matter how repressive you are to your own people, as long as you manufacture cheap consumer goods.