It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

President Obama has done a number of objectionable things during the six years of his presidency so far. Some things have been mere continuations, or slight expansions, of pre-existing objectionable policies (eg: domestic spying by the NSA, unauthorized and unconstitutional foreign military interventions, etc.). Others have been more substantial escalations of previous bad policies (eg: more expansive power grabs through executive orders, formulation of a legal opinion to allow arbitrary assassination of Americans, increasing the national debt at a historically record rate, etc.). Still others have been new, more creative attacks on American systems and long-term prosperity (eg: Obamacare, designed to be so expensive, arduous, and crippling to the health care system as to necessitate the adoption of socialized medical care). Obama is now finally regarded by Americans as the worst president in American history, and there's still [at least] two years of additional disasters to endure...

It would be fair to say that at times, I have been somewhat critical of President Obama, as well as Democrats in general, on this blog and elsewhere. As it happens, I find myself in frequent disagreement with his/their policies, pushes, and general philosophies on how government should work. However, I like to think of myself as having [strong] opinions on issues, and sometimes on ideology, but not on partisan political groups per se, despite the frequent overlap. In that sense, I'd like to espouse the following opinion: I have no issue, whatsoever, with how Obama has handled our military interactions with Iraq since he took office, and I don't feel he should bare much, if any, blame for the ISIS uprising there. It has been opined that the US should have persisted in Iraq, establishing a long-term presence to deter aggressive forces, as we have in other regions of the world. It has been opined that the Iraqi military was not ready to stand on its own, and needed more traini...

So Mark Cuban is being criticized for some comments  he made recently, tangentially related to the Donald Sterling controversy. Essentially, what Cuban said is that he would be cautious around people he perceived as potentially dangerous, and that perception could be based on many factors: area, race, clothing, tattoos, general appearance, etc. Then he characterized those perceptions as based on stereotypes... which is true, in a certain sense. In another sense, though, we might call that behavior by another characterization: common sense. People (as well as animals in general) have evolved to be cautious of things they perceive as potentially dangerous, and for good reason. Dangerous things threaten us, and it would be foolish to ignore potential signs of danger, or wander through life intentionally ignorant of your perceptions of your environment, and the people and things in it. You wouldn't wander across a busy freeway, intentionally ignoring the cars whizzing by in some absu...

So there was an EU court ruling recently, in which google lost an appeal to remove links to someone's information which was deemed to be "out of date". Without getting into the specifics of the case or the ruling (both of which were dumb), the aftermath raises a few interesting points. Among them: how should google comply with the ruling, and what should google do to prepare for similar future rulings in other jurisdictions. One publication, for example, suggested that google should modify its core search algorithm to generate results which were more compliant with the EU court rulings. I think that idea is absurd and unworkable, and I have a better idea for them. See, one of the problems google faces with complying with this ruling is the verification issue. Not only is verification of "outdated" data time consuming and expensive, but its also highly subjective. However, since fines in the EU can run as high as 5% of gross revenue per day , non-compliance is...

This blog post caught my attention recently: http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/businesses-should-stand-up-to-climate-change-deniers In it, Richard Branson (of Virgin Everything fame) espouses a view that more corporations should do what they can to invest in renewable resources, and encourage people to not support the corporations if they do not agree with their [essentially] political views. He ends the post by encouraging people who are not Global Warming (the religion) believers to "get out of our way". And, despite not sharing his opinions on global warming and such... I wholeheartedly support the approach. The idea that people should not impose their beliefs on others is enshrined in the US Constitution, as well as much of the common idealism of the country. That goes both ways: in the same way the people who believe in Global Warming should not be allowed to force their views on others, so should the people who are more skeptically and/or scientifically minded n...

So if you're not living in an internet-disconnected hole, you've probably read some of the information stemming from the Snowden disclosures (the biggest, and bravest, disclosure of clandestine government abuses since Watergate, by a good margin). Recently, the largest US tech companies chimed in with an open letter, requesting that the US do something to change course, before their business interests are more irrevocably damaged (I appreciate the stance, but let's not pretend it was magnanimous; they see the writing on the internet message board, so to speak). Unfortunately, I think they, like many other people, do not yet grasp the real problem with the expansion on unconstitutional government surveillance in the US, and why it's far worse than most people currently think. The real problem, which most have not grasped yet, is how to address the issue of a government which is more than willing to defy the law (and indeed, the Constitution itself, the basis for the r...

The Swiss are voting on a referendum to limit executive pay to 12x the pay of the lowest paid employee of the company. It's a popular socialist position recently, to attempt to keep compensation levels from getting too imbalanced, and encourage corporations to raise minimum wages. In the US, for example, CEO's can make well more than 100x the amount of the lowest paid workers in the same company, and that creates large wealth disparities. Somewhat surprisingly, I find myself in cautious agreement with the concept. I've been thinking about a similar thing recently, and here's what I would propose for the US. First, we'd need to establish some definitions of compensation. To that end, let's say that compensation includes all salary, benefits, bonuses, and other indirect compensation mechanisms (eg: stock options) given to an employee. Furthermore, let's say that for part-time employees, annual compensation is calculated to be their effective compensation ...