SHAME ON VIRGINIA
Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Government Booze

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In the Commonwealth of Virginia, liquor is only available from state-owned ‘ABC Stores.’ Beer and wine are available from grocery stores and other retailers, and restaurants can be licensed to serve liquor and mixed drinks, but if you want to pick up a bottle of Bacardi Superior for home use your only legal source in the state is . . . the state itself.

Our state liquor stores are a historic anachronism left over from the end of prohibition. When national prohibition was repealed in 1933, whether to permit or prohibit production and consumption of alcohol was left to the individual states. Many states with strong ‘temperance’ (i.e., prohibitionist) movements, primarily led by religious conservatives with a curiously un-biblical position on alcohol, chose to either continue state-level prohibition policies or use a state-controlled alcohol monopoly to limit the availability of strong drink.

So, in an indefensible act of utter absurdity, conservative states like Virginia decided to go into the alcohol business to discourage the drinking of alcohol. As if this weren’t silly enough, they were doing so to kowtow to Christian conservatives who didn’t even understand what Holy Scripture has to say about the stuff (which is, to paraphrase, ‘it’s fine in moderation, just don’t overdo it’).

Maybe this all made some kind of sense in 1933, although I sincerely doubt it. It certainly makes no sense in 2010.

Read more . . .

No-Nonsense Weather 0.6.0 for WebOS (Now Available)

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I’ve just submitted an update to No-Nonsense Weather for Palm WebOS, which will bring the version to 0.6.0. The new version has several new features and improvements to the application:

  • Adds weather alert content in-app (no more needing to click out to the NWS web site).
  • Adds local doppler radar (animated or static, decide in the settings).
  • Adds a refresh button.
  • Clarifies error text (usually errors happen because of NWS web site problems, not because something is wrong with the app).

You can see screenshots of the new version on the app’s information page here on Off on a Tangent.

As I mentioned, I have submitted the app to Palm and it should be included in the App. Catalog some time in the next two weeks (assuming they don’t find any problems). As soon as it’s posted I’ll update the entry here. If you have the previous version (0.5.0), your phone will give you the option to upgrade it once it’s published.

If you’re daring, you can download the source code (it’s open source under the GNU-GPL license) and package and install it using the Palm SDK.

Available now from the Palm App Catalog! Click here.

Why You Should Read Something Horrifying

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I have had a long-standing fascination with World War II because, as I see it, the conflict marked an unprecedented turning-point in human civilization. It was the quintessential ‘good vs. evil’ story on a scale that had never been seen before and, through the incredible sacrifice and dedication of the soldiers of the Allied Powers, the good guys ultimately won. We have never come closer to the forces of evil ruling the face of the Earth.

Every element of the story is interesting to me: The individual story of Adolf Hitler. How the Nazi movement rose to power and how the outcome of World War I and the catastrophic economic policies of the Weimar Republic made it possible. The terrible European policies of appeasement that emboldened Hitler’s megalomania. How the Nazis embarked on the ‘final solution’—the senseless murder of millions of innocent Jews—with the silent assent of an otherwise perfectly civilized people. The technological developments made on both sides during the war in aviation and weaponry—including atomic weapons.

It’s tempting, when faced with the incredible evil that surrounds the World War II story, to ignore it and focus on other things. For many, it’s not pleasant to think of how a liberal democratic republic like Weimar Germany—not much different, really, than our own American republic—gave birth to an evil, murderous dictatorship. It’s not pleasant to think of millions of people carted away into camps and murdered because of their race and religion. It’s hard to imagine that an emaciated, pacified, vanquished nation can turn, in less than a decade, into a military powerhouse that threatens the entirety of Europe. It’s easier to learn the basics from a distance and, in blissful ignorance, imagine that nothing like that can ever happen again.

Read more . . .

Your Tax Money Going to Political Campaigns?

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How would you feel if a federal government agency, funded from a combination of tax dollars and fees, used some of its money to fund political campaigns? You’d be pretty pissed, wouldn’t you? Your tax dollars shouldn’t be going to fund political campaigns!

I agree. Private companies have the right, as free associations, to engage in political speech and make political donations if they wish, but the federal bureaucracy is a different animal. Of course individual bureaucrats can do whatever they want, and can even create their own free associations if they want, but government agencies themselves have a responsibility to serve the American public under the guidance of their elected or appointed leaders. They are not permitted to engage in political campaigns.

Well, according to the Wall St. Journal (as reported on AutoBlog), federally owned General Motors has broken its self-imposed moratorium on political donations and has spent $90,000 on its preferred candidates in the upcoming elections.

General Motors, despite the appearance of being a private company, is 61 percent owned by the United States government, and it’s ‘profit’ of late is probably some combination of tax money ‘investment’ and sale of product. The company’s very existence is predicated on many billions of that tax dollar ‘investment.’ As long as the government owns any of General Motors it is a government agency, not a private company. As such, it has no right to make political donations of any kind. Period.

Mobile Browser Support Notes

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Finally, the universe of mobile browsers seems to be stabilizing. While there are many mobile platforms out there—iOS, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone, and Symbian—almost all of them are settling on a single browser display engine. All of those platforms except Windows Phone use the WebKit engine, or will soon.

RIM’s BlackBerry OS platform switches to WebKit with version 6, which will be coming out soon for a number of newer BlackBerry phones, leaving Microsoft Windows Phone as the last major holdout. However, this is still great news for web developers. We basically have to support WebKit and the mobile version of Internet Explorer, rather than a multifaceted hodge-podge of proprietary and non-proprietary mobile browsers. To add even broader support, just add Opera Mini and Firefox Mobile too. Those four cover pretty much everybody.

Anyway, the main reason for this entry: BlackBerry OS 6 and Windows Phone 7 are both coming out very soon on new phones (and, in RIM’s case, for some old ones too). Both platforms have completely new browsers. I’m pleased to announce that Off on a Tangent already works in the default browsers for bothof these platforms, and will be officially supported in them moving forward (in addition to the wide support I already offer for most of the platforms listed above).

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.