jonathan butz

Lower Merion is watching their students a little too closely. Software installed on District-issued laptops for theft recovery managed to capture a student eating Mike & Ikes candies, which led to his questioning by school officials over assumed drug use/distribution. His parents have sued; the FBI and County DA are investigating over privacy concerns and potential violations of Federal Law.

Whether the laptop was assumed stolen at the time the images were captured is not yet known due to the ongoing investigation.

“You’ll be riding along in an automobile. You’ll be the driver perhaps. You’re a Christian. There’ll be several people in the automobile with you, maybe someone who is not a Christian. When the trumpet sounds you and the other born-again believers in that automobile will be instantly caught away — you will disappear, leaving behind only your clothes and physical things that cannot inherit eternal life. That unsaved person or persons in the automobile will suddenly be startled to find the car suddenly somewhere crashes…. Other cars on the highway driven by believers will suddenly be out of control and stark pandemonium will occur on … every highway in the world where Christians are caught away from the drivers wheel.”

– Rev Jerry Falwell, in his pamphlet, “Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ,” quoted from Ronnie Dugger, “Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?” in Washington Post Outlook (April 8, 1984)

Adieu, crazy man.

Article in WSJ on RFID.

The RealID Act was passed 20050511 and goes into effect 20080511.

This law defines the minimum standards a state-issued driver’s license must meet to be considered valid for any Federal purpose including entrance to a Federal building and travel on an airline.

The law states that cards must contain: “A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.” The selection of the technology is delegated to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

There are three technologies that can be used to store information on an ID card: magnetic strip, smart chip, RFID tag.

Magnetic stips are widely in use now to store ID card information according to standards defined by the AAMVA. Cards must be swiped to access the information.

Smart card chips have very high capacity compared to magnetic strips and also require being fed into a reader. Information can also be encrypted and tied to a PIN to prevent unauthorized access.

RFID technologies allow the easiest access to information stored thereon. The core is similar to smart card technology. But instead of feeding the card into a reader for access, information can be read passively from a short distance using a radio frequency device.

Opponents of RFID technology are concerned that RFID will be the technology selected, and they fear that information about an individual could be read passively without his knowledge, possibly at greater distance than intended. Security methods employed on existing RFID cards has been compromised by hackers, and scanning distances have been proven at as much as sixty feet with modified equipment.

Magnetic strip and smart card technologies meet the needs of this proposed NationalID card without the security risks associated with RFID.

In a 6-3 ruling (Justices Roberts, Scalia and Thomas in the minority), the Supreme Court has found that the US Controlled Substances Act does not permit the Federal Government to prosecute in matters of assisted suicide, specifically in cases where a physician prescribes a lethal dose of a controlled substance.

An amended CSA would eliminate this right nationwide and force terminally ill patients to seek alternative exit strategies, most of which are far less pleasant.

Some Indians in India barred themselves in their homes as a community member reported dead in prison returned home. Family and friends alike fled in fear, and the village council demanded that he prove he was not a ghost, unwilling to take the word of a possible specter.

November 1: the US Patent Office granted patent 6,960,975 to Boris Volfson for a space drive that generates propulsion by altering space-time.

This marks a turning point in patent law. In the future, patent litigation will cover not only non-obviousness and originality but also whether inventions obey the laws of physics.

Last month a North Carolina student was investigated by the Secret Service for a school project on the Bill of Rights. He took a photograph of his own thumb pointing down next to a photo of Dubya, to illustrate our right to dissent. He had it developed at Wal-Mart, and an employee turned the photo over to the local police who gave it to the SS.

The SS conducted interviews at the boy’s school, taking the poster from the classroom and questioning the teacher. “You didn’t think this was suspicious?”

I love it when respected people start telling it like it is (or at least as they truly see it) at the end of their careers. It’s usually a big surprise that causes half the people in the room to nod in agreement and the other half to scowl and walk out, like when Bill Cosby told African Americans that they were responsible for their own socio-economic status.

Such is the polarizing nature of honesty.

Walter Cronkite recently told students at USC that Americans were simply not educated well enough to cast their votes wisely. Story.

This notion provides an interesting hypothetical relationship: because education is controlled by the state, if an elected group receives more votes from an undereducated population, it has absolutely no incentive to improve education; it instead has incentive to [i]reduce[/i] the quality of education so its claims are less likely to be challenged, thus securing its role as the source of ‘truth’.

Oregon’s Death with Dignity Law is going to be reviewed by the high court on October 5. Since its passing in 1997, only 208 patients have taken advantage of the legistlation that permits a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to suffering patients who wish to end their lives on their own terms.

A group of doctors and the Church have filed opposing briefs in the matter, arguing that the law reverses the primary role of the doctor as a healer and that it sends a negative message to sick people: that their lives aren’t worth protecting, that their suicides aren’t worth preventing.

We’re talking about a very small group of terminally ill patients (1 in 1000 deaths) who want to say goodbye to their families. How would taking this choice away from them improve their lives or anyone else’s?

In the US in 2000, 16,586 people chose firearms as the means to take their own lives. Those are the suicides to prevent.