Ignoring your constituency

The group behind the recently passed Denver city ordinance that makes it legal to possess 1 ounce or less of marijuana says it's going to put the issue to a vote Colorado-wide. One might say that it's a good next step for those that want to legalize the drug. But there's also the small issue that Denver city officials are ignoring what their constituents voted for and ordering Denver city cops to bust marijuana possession based on state law.

You might think that Denver city officials' hands are tied -- state law supercedes city law. Not necessarily. Denver has "home-rule status" and successfully challenged a state law that prohibits Colorado cities from banning pit bulls. So it now has a law banning pit bulls while the rest of the state can do no such thing. Likewise for gun control. Denver has more restrictive gun laws than the rest of the state despite state laws prohibiting such.

What makes the pot law different? Is it personal distaste on the part of the politicians? Are they playing to the minority that voted against the measure? Are they allowed to do that?

The Colorado state government had something similar a little while back with Amendment 2, which forbade laws that prohibit discrimination against homosexuals. The amendment passed 53% to 46%. State officials defended the amendment all the way to the US Supreme Court (*). Which is what they were supposed to do. I'm sure many state officials found the amendment distasteful. But they are employees of the people and the people spoke.

Now how about Denver city officials start doing their jobs?

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* The amendment, passed in 1992, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1996.

A real bargain cellular phone

The NY Times has an article today titled "A Cellphone and a Plan for Just About Any Situation". Under "The Bargain Hunter", Seán Captain touts different vendor's $40/month plans and notes, "[a]s with all plans, you will spend several dollars extra in taxes and surcharges". (In some cases it's more than several. My brother has a $60 plan that ends up costing $80+ every month even when he doesn't go over his allotted minutes.)

Bah! You call $40/month a bargain? How about if you only use your phone a couple minutes a day on average or want one just for emergencies?

I went shopping for such a phone when my daughter was close to being born and my employer decided I should be "on call" (and did not volunteer to pick up the tab). If you don't mind their young-hipster marketing, the best deal I found in the US was at Virgin Mobile.

Right now you can buy a basic phone for $20 and, if you sign up for auto payments with your credit card, you only have to add $15 to your balance every three months. (Without the auto payment, it's $20). That's $5/month (or $7). Minutes are 25-cents/minute for the first 10 in a given day, 10-cents/minute after. Incoming text messages are free, outgoing are 10-cents each. No taxes, no extra surcharges, no roaming fees. Charges are taken out of your account balance. The account balance rolls over indefinitely (up to some maximum like $150). If you're like me and don't use the phone every day, your balance adds up so even if you use the phone a lot in a given month if you do not drain your balance you don't pay extra.

At the time I was looking there was no competition. Some pre-paid plans had your minutes expire after a short time. Others had a per-day charge (which Virgin offers if you want a lower per-minute rate, but it's not required). Now it seems that some of the other wireless companies are offering similar deals, but I haven't found anything better yet. If you have information about other deals, add a comment!

Update #1: Looks like Virgin is changing its charges for text messaging. Starting 15-Mar-06 14-Jun-06 it'll be 5-cents to send a message and 5-cents to receive a message.

Update #2: Virgin's rates have completely changed. Read my update.

Vatican dropping limbo?

It appears that the Vatican is going to officially drop the theological idea of limbo. Though never an official doctrine, the "theological hypothesis" (as Cardinal Ratzinger described it) has been around since the Middle Ages.

Unlike many issues - the recent emotional debate over homosexuality in the priesthood, for example - limbo seems to garner unanimity that it should exit the church's stage, even if, at the moment, the exact doctrine that will replace it is unclear. (NY Times)

I don't suppose a "we don't know exactly what happens but trust in God's love and justness" would suffice?

Post-christian barrenness

Confronted with all the begetting in the Old Testament, the modern mind says, "Well, naturally, these primitive societies were concerned with children. They needed someone to provide for them in their old age." In advanced Western society, we don't have to worry about that; we automatically have someone to provide for us in our old age: the state.

But the state -- at least in its modern social-democratic welfare incarnation -- needs children at least as much as those old-time Jews did. And the problem with much of the advanced world is that, like Elisabeth, it's barren. Collectively barren, I hasten to add. Individually, it's made up of millions of fertile women, who voluntarily opt for no children at all or one designer kid at 39. In Italy, the home of the Church, the birth rate's down to 1.2 children per couple -- or about half "replacement rate." You can't buck that kind of arithmetic.
[...]
Of the great powers of the 20th century, America's still healthy birth rate, like its still healthy Christianity, is now an anomaly.

Mark Steyn

CA judge blocking video game law

Associated Press is reporting that a California judge is temporarily blocking a new California law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.

U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte said the Encino-based Video Software Dealers Association and the Washington, D.C.-based Entertainment Software Association "were likely to succeed" in their lawsuits arguing that the law violates free-speech rights.

At the least, "serious questions are raised ... including the question of whether there is a causal connection between access to such games and psychological or other harm to children," Whyte wrote in a ruling issued late Wednesday.

[...]

"For the sixth time in five years, federal courts have now blocked or struck down these state and local laws seeking to regulate the sale of games to minors based on their content," said Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association.

Enjoy the "victory" while you can. It won't last for long.

It's not working

America's greenhouse emissions grew to an all-time high (can I say that? ;) in 2004, the most recent year we have data, says the NY Times.

The increases in 2003 and 2004 followed a brief dip in emissions in 2001 and 2002. Government officials said that decline reflected a slowdown in the economy, the departure of some manufacturing industries overseas, and emissions cuts in other industries.

Less than two weeks ago, Bush administration officials at climate-treaty talks in Montreal repeatedly cited the short-lived drop in emissions after 2000 as evidence that President Bush's climate policy, using voluntary measures to slow growth in the gas releases, was working.

No, it's not.

Unpleasant reality

The NY Times reports today that Sunnis in Iraq are challenging early election results. It appears that the Shiites are getting the most votes.

Maybe you're like me, scratching your head and asking, "Well, what did they expect?" Shiites, after all, make up the majority of the Iraqi population. Right? Maybe.

Sunni Arabs are widely believed to make up a fifth of Iraq's population, yet many of them claim they are the majority in this country. That line of thought could help explain their anger over the results. (NY Times)

Wow. Is anything less than Sunni parties getting over 50% of the vote going to provoke accusations of voter fraud? Is that what most Sunnis think?

Game over

Many developers compare the state of Christian video games to the Christian music scene a decade ago: evolving into a flavor that's palatable to more than the faithful.

As happened with purveyors of Christian music, long accused of lacking daring and originality, Bogost wonders if game designers will be inspired to create innovative products or just fill this new niche with derivative entertainment.

If one feels the need to slay a hellspawn, well, they can play "Doom" for that. (IndyStar)

Except, if you did that you'd be sending money to those bad boys at id software and not restricting your milk-drinking to a Christian cow. I imagine for some Christians the morality of the actual purchase -- and how it will affect them spirtually -- ranks paramount, but for others it's more a matter of keeping the money "in the kingdom" and enriching other Chrisitians. Very insular and more than a bit unbiblical.

"What I'd love to see are games that try to explain the rhetoric of religion. What are these beliefs? What is the history? How does your life change in behaving in accordance?" he said. "My great fear is that people get in this business and not do something unique for faith through games."

If the Christian game industry ends up anything like the Christian music industry, I think this great fear will be more than realized.

2005 May Be Most Hyperbolic Year Ever

The Associated Press has a story today titled "2005 May Be Warmest Year Ever". Read down to the third paragraph, however, and you see:

In New York, NASA's Goddard Institute projected that 2005 will surpass 1998 to end as the hottest year globally in the 125 years since reliable records have been kept.

Since when does 125 years qualify as "ever"? I'm as worried as the next guy about global warming, but note to headline writers: you don't help the cause by over-exaggerating.

There is one interesting statistic in the article:

The atmosphere now holds more than one-third more carbon dioxide than it did before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, European scientists reported last month that analysis of ice cores from Antarctica shows that today's level is 27 percent higher than any previous peak looking back 650,000 years.

650,000 years? Now we're talking. Of course, even that's not much compared to the billions of years Earth is supposed to have been around.

Google goes (more) graphical

Ack, it looks like Google will be using and pushing more graphical ads. This is part of the deal Google's negotiating with AOL.

The executives close to the talks said that at AOL's request, Google would begin to test various forms of graphical ads and that it would make the same formats available to other advertisers. Google has started to sell graphical ads for placement on other sites; plans to do so on Google itself were accelerated by the AOL talks

Is this the beginning of the end? Anyone out there remember how nice Yahoo used to look before the dam broke and it became cluttered with graphical ads?