The Armchair Politician

I ran across this article, which contains several interesting points, and refutes a lot of the common perceptions of the Internet’s effect on politics. It’s the belief of most people that widespread internet access will be able to democratize dictatorships and capitalize socialists. The author, however, thinks that this might not end up coming true. Read the article yourself.

As a few of you know, I’ve been active in the Model UN program at Kennesaw State. In a few weeks, we’ll be heading to New York to participate in the National Model United Nations simulation. This year, we’ll be representing Poland in roughly thirteen committees. I got lucky and landed on the World Intellectual Property Committee, which, coincidentally, specialized in intellectual property (IP) concerns. As an even larger number of you know, I love to debate current IP policy, including copyrights and patent protection. For the simluation, we’re required to type up a paper stating our country’s position on the three topics assigned. I’ve posted it below, so let me know what you folks think.

Primarily, our paper focuses on the modern challenges of IP protection (the second topic). However, if anyone has information regarding the first (Patent Protection and Phamaceuticals) or third (Traditional Knowledge and Folklore Protection) topics, I would be so appreciative it would be obnoxious. Especially for the third topic, as it was broadly defined, and difficult to research.
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In the past few years, some people who have no clue about the actual technological makeup of the internet have purported a penultimate solution for stopping UCE and other forms of spam: charging for email. Despite the absolute absurdity of the idea, interest in various variations crops up every few months or so. It won’t work for several reasons, all of which are tightly related with each other.
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I have to say, I’m quite proud of The Economist. They’re one of the few places that’s had the guts to repeatedly, publicly, and unfalteringly defend the free market in the wake of offshoring. I’ve transcribed the article, so I’ll let it speak for itself. Any grammatical or spelling mistakes are probably mine.
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For years, there’s been steam gathering behind movements to convert from fossil fuels to hydrogen-based energy systems. After all, Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, right? Not only that, but its byproducts are harmless, and even beneficial: water and heat. Doesn’t being both clean and abundant make it a perfect energy source? Unfortunately, there are many problems concerning hydrogen, which most people are blissfully unaware of.
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According to the BBC (among other sources), upon takeoff, the pilot of the American Airlines flight asked Christians on-board to raise their hand. He then suggested to those without their hands up that they converse with Christians about their faith, and insisted that “everyone who doesn’t have their hand raised is crazy”.

I think the title of this says it all. Read below for a chat transcript or two.
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In President Bush’s speech this afternoon, he spoke about the current state of counterproliferation measures in the world today. One brief organization he touched upon is the Proliferation Security Initiative, a joint venture between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Japan, Portugal and the Netherlands which aims to prevent the proliferation of “weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, and other related materials worldwide”. It intends to board ships and planes suspected of transferring these materials to countries who are of “proliferation concern”. So far, all they’ve primarily done is conduct training exercises in the Coral Sea, within spitting distance of North Korea.
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Sorry for the flurry of short entries recently–school’s been bogging me down, but I should have more time soon.

Anyways, it seems that illegal immigrants have started taking offense at the label. According to a person mentioned in the article, “the term ‘illegal immigrant’ packs as much vitriol as some racial slurs.”
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Yet another reason to be ashamed of living in the state of Georgia.