Tag: galactically-stupid

“Patently devoid of taste and thought” – a refutation of bad advice

Every once in a while, advice is given that is so patently devoid of taste and thought that I just can’t let it go unchallenged. Well, yesterday morning was that once in a while and a post to the Houston Press Hair Balls blog is the advice in question.

The author is one Fayza Elmostehi, who some of you may have heard of before and may even have met. I only mention her name here because I have a few vague ideas why she would give such incredibly thoughtless advice. I’m not going to go into details on that, this isn’t a personal attack.

Unfortunately, my refutation of this article needs to be so complete that I will probably wind up quoting almost the entire thing, as much as I prefer not to do so. And yes, that means this post will be pretty damned long. I am making a slight edit or two because there are words I still don’t want to publish in my blogs even if I have no problem putting them in my Twitter stream and elsewhere. They are the same words you really can’t say on TV or radio (by which I mean the public airwaves).

Let’s start at the beginning:

It’s over. And you know it. But you don’t wanna deal with the fiery end. You’re a chicken. You’re a coward. And you are simply too much of a humanitarian to go breakin’ any hearts. Okay, that last one was a lie.

My thoughts: If one is too chicken or too cowardly to deal with breakups properly, by which I mean face-to-face, then one have no business dating or at the very least no business letting things get to the “in a relationship” stage.

So, you’ve already decided that you’re gonna be [a jerk] about it. You’re going to ditch your jilted Juliet without a lick of real-time contact. We say, if you’re gonna do it up, you might as well do it up right. Why be a Peter when you can be a Dick?

Don’t we have enough jerks in this world? We wonder why there’s so much war, so much violence, so much hate. Men making stereotypical degrading remarks about women. Women making stereotypical degrading remarks about men. And then we get people writing garbage like this, glamorizing the entire lifestyle of being mean, being a jerk, treating others like they are disposable. Am I the only one that makes any connection between these?

Start at the heart. Pick the initial kicking-your-[rear-end]-to-the-curb wound wide open with a text message. Be blunt or be vague, but either way, keep your purpose at the forefront. “I need to tell you something” goes just as far “It’s over, [dog].” Either way, you’re going to start a digital dialog.

If you need to tell me something, pick up the phone. Often, I will directly respond to a text message with a voice phone call. I have done it before.

One cannot rely on a text message to always make it to its destination. I have had text messages go missing before.

Go cold turkey. You must beware – your phone may ring. Under no circumstances are you to answer it. Turn off the ringer, weakling. So he’s banging down your front door? Engross yourself in the History Channel; you’re not home, dammit. Communicate the break-up exclusively via digital means, or there will be no interaction at all. Them’s the breaks.

There are people out there (particularly men) who are very capable of escalating this type of non-contact to a level beyond what many people (usually women) can handle. Unless you’re ready to change your phone number or move at a moment’s notice, this is a great way to risk becoming a statistic.

So don’t do it.

Take matters into your own hands. Obviously, you must change your Facebook relationship status from “In a Relationship” to “Single.” Immediately. Bonus points if yours said, “In a Relationship with Blake Brown,” and this is the first Blake Brown’s heard of your separation.

This is a great way to get a voicemail or three saying “what the (beep) is this?” Without, of course, the beep. The advice as given goes below every standard of human decency I have known about.

And Ms. Elmostehi has the nerve to use the phrase “bonus points” in reference to this. More like a great way to trigger the tilt switch. Except people aren’t pinball machines; look up the phrase “going on tilt” as it pertains to poker players. It’s not something one should normally do in this type of volatile situation.

You are then obligated to plaster your newfound singletondom all over your status updates for Zuckerbergland – especially your ex and any fresh, untapped meat – to see. Extra credit if you move straight from Paramour #1 to Paramour #2 without missing a beat – and updating your relationship status to reflect it.

This type of behavior is so devoid of scruples I honestly expect Facebook to disallow it via technical means in the next couple of years, if not the next few months. (Hey, if Facebook can totally jack with privacy settings, there’s no reason they can’t fix this loophole big enough to drive a truck through.) I would say a minimum of 24 hours should be allowed to pass before going “in a relationship” to “single” back to “in a relationship” again, possibly even longer if it used to be “engaged to” or “married to.”

Again, doing this without having the decency to tell the former partner it’s over is playing with fire; don’t get burned.

No blow is a low-blow. Ready to be unforgiven? Cite his teeny, lopsided penis as the reason for your breakup on Twitter. Tweet about how she uses abortion as a method of birth control. There’s nothing that seals the deal quite like the public revelation of deep, dark, horrifying secrets. Bonus round: Blog about Romeo’s shortcomings between the sheets, replete with video uploaded to YouTube. Score!

Even if the rest of this is technically legal, this is a recipe for a slander or libel suit just waiting to happen. For those with no assets, sure, post and tweet away about lacking genitalia or lies about birth control methods.

I’m pretty sure the video bit is actually a criminal violation of the law in Texas at least. I know men have gotten in trouble for this before; I would certainly like to think at least this portion of the law would be applied equally to both genders.

Posts on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs can be archived by others long after the originals are deleted. I recall an instance where someone once sent me a direct message on Twitter, and then conveniently deleted it months later when it might be called into question. (It’s understandable why the sender would do this: the text referred to the sender’s sister as a dog, using the AKC-proper but somewhat impolite term for same.) I had already had the original e-mailed to me, still archived with the rest of my e-mails.

That’s assuming your partner is willing to play by the law, of course. For those that choose to follow Ms. Elmostehi’s advice anyway, it’s a good idea to make sure your life and health insurance are paid up, and be sure there are people that care about you enough to know if you go “missing” whether or not to suspect foul play.

It’s not that I’m one of these people, mind you. But the original article is almost better entitled “How To Risk Violence or a Lawsuit While Breaking Up.” If it’s humor, it’s a very poor example of it; I’m sure as hell not laughing. I believe a reasonable person would take this as real advice, and it is for that reason I’m writing a refutation post to state it should not be followed.

Breaking up is part of romance and dating. The only time it is reasonable to avoid direct face-to-face contact is when threats of physical violence enter the situation. There are several good dating advice Web sites out there and I’m not going to claim to be an expert on the subject because I’m not. Believe me, at times I wish I was. I just know how some people would react to some of these things, and I just don’t want to see anyone get hurt that doesn’t deserve it.

Summary: Too chicken to break up right? Too chicken to date.

The Houston Press is normally a great publication and most of what is published there is quality writing. This isn’t it. Shame on the Houston Press, and shame on Fayza Elmostehi. I hope she or her editor finds the will to issue a retraction.

A victim of his own honesty

What could our justice system possibly be thinking when they prosecute cases like this?

A recent Mashable post chronicles the tale of Matthew White of Sacramento, California. Matthew is 22 years old and about a year ago downloaded what was represented as a copy of College Girls Gone Wild. Let's just say it was mislabeled and I don't doubt for a moment Matthew would have not bothered downloading the file were it truthfully labelled; it contained child pornography.

So Matthew deleted it, and thought that was the end of that. About a year later the FBI shows up at his family's house, and his family lets the agents inside and allows them to examine the computer, presumably without a search warrant.

The investigators recover the "deleted" copy of the mislabeled child pornography and now Matthew faces 20 years in prison. The truly sad part of this is that according to the story, Matthew plans to plead guilty and accept a 3.5 year sentence.

Hopefully someone out there knows Matthew and can relay a copy of this post to him. The last thing you want to do is plead guilty (I've already left a comment to this effect on the original Mashable post). Were I in Matthew's situation I like my chances in front of a jury.

Of course, the best way out of this situation is simply to deny the agents entry to the premises or access to the computer without a warrant. At that point their options are either to come back with a warrant or cease pursuing the case.

I don't know what crime Matthew committed that is worth sending him to prison for 3.5 years and branding him a sex offender for life. If the FBI is looking for people to make an example out of, surely they could pick someone who actually intentionally downloaded child pornography and kept the files instead of deleting them? At the least, Matthew should get a pardon. There is no sense in ruining the life of someone that young who acted in good faith and in all likelihood, was ignorant of whatever law he may have technically violated.

Shame on you, FBI agents that worked this case. Here's hoping your time holding the badge is short-lived.

Squashed like a bug without a trial

A recent Houston Chronicle story details the plight of Scott Yeager. In 2002 Scott was indicted in the wake of the downfall of Enron, where he worked up until the company’s demise.

Scott’s message is pretty simple, direct, and no-nonsense: you don’t have to be guilty to have the government ruin your life. Quotes like this from the article say it all:

[H]e’s had his civil rights curtailed—not allowed to own a gun or visit his grandson in Canada, required most months to report to the federal probation department.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to destroy your life. People need to understand there is no down side for them,” he said of the prosecutors who filed the Enron cases.

and later:

“I was told I might get five years if I would make up lies about people or I could fight this and to go prison for life if I lose,” Yeager said.

and perhaps most damning of all:

“I don’t know … your upbringing, your sense of justice, honesty. It was counter to what I was taught my whole life. I’m an American patriot. This is my country,” Yeager said.

He said he knew the odds were against him but he refused to lie to get a deal.

Despite some of my prior life experiences, I have little sympathy for those who have committed egreious crimes, such as most of those who participated in the fraud surrounding the now-defunct Enron Corporation. However, at the same time, it disgusts me that just being accused of a crime is enough to ruin someone’s life the way Scott’s has been ruined.

There should be some way to hold prosecutors accountable for proceeding this far with cases that wind up not having merit. Otherwise, they’ll continue to wreck lives that don’t deserve it. The unjustly accused deserve more than a “sorry, we screwed up, you’re free to go now.”

I don’t care what anyone else says. Mark my words: Scott Yeager is a hero for those who face unjust accusations by a so-called “justice system” which often fails to dispense justice and sometimes isn’t much of a system.

The evil Side(wiki) of Google

It took me a while to get to this one (most of a month), but I finally did. And I’m wishing I had dropped a few things to get to it sooner.

A recent Talkbiz.com blog entry details the dark side of Google’s new Sidewiki application. This real life example is perhaps the most shocking abuse of a technology with Google’s name on it ever recorded (and yes, this quote is a bit long):

A gentleman I know is a really hard working guy, who’s busted his butt for more hours in a day than I ever want to work, for years, to provide a good living for his wife and daughter. I mean, 14 hours a day in the long term, building a business that’s based on providing value to his customers.

This guy has a medical condition that results in one eye pointing off at an angle that’s not even with the other. The picture he uses on some sites makes this obvious.

Some ignorant, malicious, psychopathic, deranged, bored, sadistic bastard of a man-child (sorry, but that’s the most polite description I can use and still convey the merest surface of my contempt) used that as the basis for a “wiki-note” implying that this guy was a pedophile.

On Sidewiki, right next to the guy’s own business web site.

If there’s any lie a person can tell online that warrants having a 6-inch hole put in them that the sun will shine through, that’s the one.

This… mindless, soulless, stupid creature told that lie for nothing more than his own amusement. Because his victim has one eye that didn’t track right in a photograph.

Google got rid of that one pretty quickly, but how much will their response time slow down as the service grows?

Lessons to be learned from this:

  • I would opt all of my domains out of Sidewiki were such a thing possible.

  • That not being possible (yet), I believe my readers are intelligent enough to realize that Sidewiki is a separate site which I do not control.

  • Since this was written, it’s now possible to use a bookmarklet to view Sidewiki entries. So, at least you don’t actually need to install Google’s toolbar and thus agree to the obnoxious EULA. That said, I still may not be aware of some or even most Sidewiki comments. I may soon take advantage of the comment from the site owner which stays on top. (Though, I shudder at the implication that indeed, in order to do even this, one must have a Google account and register the Web site with Google. This really should be opt-out at minimum, and it should not require the creation of a Google account to do so.)

To be fair, the bookmarklet does make it a bit more obvious that the comments are not hosted on the same site. Google needs to make this clearer to the toolbar users of Sidewiki. It’s one thing to allow someone to post comments about other sites; it’s another entirely to not make it obvious the comments are in fact on a third party site. I don’t think Google is the first to implement something like this, but Google’s implementation is clearly the most dangerous of all.

The article goes on to express grave, perhaps deserved, concern that Google Wave will fuel widespread adoption of Sidewiki. The only reason I am remotely excited about Google Wave is that I have been told this will not remain proprietary to Google, that one can set up their own Wave server instead of using Google’s. Of course, this may be like Microsoft telling us that .NET is cross-platform, when the reality is it’s completely portable across any OS Microsoft makes, and if one wants .NET for anything else one must port it themselves. But, that’s another rant for another day.

I’d like to think Google is a little less evil than Microsoft or Apple, if only because the thought of a truly evil Google is terrifying. I’m not sure how much benefit of the doubt is left.

Getting railroaded

A bit dated, but I didn’t come across it until now.

A law.com article details a very unusual settlement. Settlement of the case Klein v. Amtrak, during the appeal phase after a $24 million judgment in favor of the plaintiff was handed down, included a provision for the trial judge to vacate his published opinions. The vacation of his opinions also includes their removal from Lexis and Westlaw.

What may be most disturbing is that the defense lawyers were allowed to seal their motions. From the article:

Robert C. Clothier of Fox Rothschild, who has handled access cases for The Legal Intelligencer, said he was troubled by the court’s decision to allow the defense lawyers to file all of their motions under seal, including the motion that asked for permission to seal the other papers.

To justify sealing any document, Clothier said, the courts have consistently held that it is necessary to “articulate on the record” the extraordinary circumstances that justify secrecy. As a result, he said, the motion to seal itself cannot be under seal.

And I’m inclined to agree here. This is clearly improper. I don’t know what the judge could have been thinking here. Is it any wonder we have so much contempt for lawyers and the so-called “justice system” when such clearly improper decisions are made?

I’d like to know what was so damning about these vacated opinions Amtrak wants to disappear. Hopefully, someone out there kept a copy. Sunlight really is the best disinfectant, and I think it’s time the rest of us see what Amtrak is trying to keep in the dark.