Jason's Log

The Family Disease

It looks like my sister Christa is going to follow in the genetic footsteps of my mother, uncle, grand mother, and greate uncle. She was taken to the hospital last week and it looks like her gall bladder is to blame.

She'll find out more after a doctor's visit next week. Here's hoping that I escape this fate.

Wow. The 'only a tool' argument.

Judge: File-swapping tools are legal: A federal judge hands a stunning court victory to file-swapping services Streamcast and Grokster, dismissing much of the music and film industries' lawsuits against them.

I am completely amazed by this verdict. Just think about it...a judge who understands the difference between a tool (a p2p software application) and it's uses (exchanging files). Oddly enough, this is the same argument that has been used by the National Rifle Association for years now. Whereas the software (or handgun) itself does no harm, certain categories of usage can be considered illegal. Now we get to wait the outcome of the various individual file-swapper court cases to find out what effect the RIAA will have over the amount of illegal file trading traffic.

{from CNET News.com}

A bit too realistic...

Just finished watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding with Young. The parallels to our wedding (large, obnoxiously loud Assyrian family meets quiet reservred Korean family) were frightening at times. It left me asking the question "Was my family really that bad?". Young assures me they were not. I'm not sure I believe her.

One interesting observation: The wedding dancing was very similar to Assyrian line dancing in terms of the dance steps. The Greek music, however, is very different.

Book 1 in the Economics Series

Just completed Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Feedom". Short book at only 200 pages for something considered a seminal work in the field of Economics. Friedman certainly does an adequate job of summarizing the basic arguments against government intervention in economics.

The one "big idea" however, is that economic freedoms are necessary but not sufficient for civil freedoms. You can have economic freedom without civil freedom, but not the other way around. The short argument goes like this:

What good is a civil freedom (like freedom of speech) if you do not have the economic freedom to broadcast your speech? In a centrally planned economy what incentive would the government controlled presses (or internet networks) have to publish subversive speech? None. That's why you need economic freedoms before civil freedoms can be something more than lip service (no pun intended).

Test Entry

Just checking to see if this works.