Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

God, Unicorns, and Spaghetti Monsters

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I have discussed before the reasons I believe in God, and have repeatedly pointed out that no scientifically supported hypothesis on the universe yet proposed precludes the existence of God. There is one common atheistic retort that I have not yet addressed. ‘Well,’ says the atheist, ‘there is no evidence precluding the existence of unicorns either . . . so shall we believe in unicorns too?’

The most amusing variant of this argument is Bobby Henderson’s satirical deity, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), which he created as part of a protest against the teaching of intelligent design theory in Kansas schools. Henderson, writing in an open letter, demanded that his belief that the FSM created the universe be given equal time. Henderson’s point, shared by many in the atheist community, is that the burden of proof ought to lie with the person who makes an extraordinary claim, not with those who doubt that claim, otherwise any claim—no matter how absurd—would need to be held in equal esteem. As the brilliant Carl Sagan once put it, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

In-and-of itself, this seems to be a perfectly logical philosophy . . . but it raises an important question. Which claims are extraordinary?

‘Obviously,’ continues our imaginary atheist, ‘the claim that the universe was created by a god is the extraordinary claim which must be supported by extraordinary evidence, and you have presented no scientifically valid evidence to support that claim.’ Okay, fair enough, except the claim that the universe poofed into existence out of nothing, as espoused by Stephen Hawking and others, is an equally extraordinary claim, and is equally unsupported by extraordinary evidence.

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What To Do With Metro?

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The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), informally known as Metro, operates the rapid transit rail system in the Washington, D.C., area—and they do it very, very poorly. I have a long list of complaints about the system. Here are just a few: The fares are the highest among comparable systems in the U.S., the service has a very limited reach and has not expanded at an acceptable rate, existing service is spotty and unreliable, employees are generally uneducated and unhelpful, station maintenance is woefully poor, a high percentage of system escalators and elevators are always out of service, a high percentage of rail cars have climate control malfunctions at any given time, communication with customers—when it happens at all—is usually inaccurate and misleading, the almost-daily system delays are under-reported and inaccurately reported (e.g., a one-hour delay is reported as a twelve-minute delay), the fare system is unnecessarily complex and confusing, etc., etc., etc.

These are long-standing problems, but just in the last month Metro’s mismanagement has repeatedly made the news.

On July 3, a Green Line train lost power and the over-three hundred passengers were made to wait more than a half-hour in the summer heat on un-ventilated rail cars. According to multiple passengers, the train operator finally instructed them to leave the train . . . but Metro, in a typical ‘blame the passenger’ move, claims that the passengers self-evacuated without authorization. Well, I would have self-evacuated after being forced to sit in a steaming hot rail car for more than thirty minutes against my will too. Even if Metro’s official story is true, the botched evacuation is the problem, not the passengers’ exercise of rational self-preservation.

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Back From the Dead: Senate to Vote on ‘DISCLOSE’ (Updated)

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Back in mid-2010, the U.S. House of Representatives brought forth and passed a law euphemistically called the ‘DISCLOSE’ act. It later failed in the Senate and did not become law . . . but now it is back from the dead. The Senate will be voting on it again this afternoon. It is imperative that you contact your Senators right now and ask them to vote against this dangerous, chilling, anti-liberty law.

Congress crafted ‘DISCLOSE’ in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling earlier in 2010 that the First Amendment means exactly what it says: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” By overturning certain parts of our campaign finance laws, the court restored the civil liberties of many interest groups that had previously been muzzled. But because a number of those interest groups often supported Republican candidates, the more unscrupulous congressional Democrats wanted to re-muzzle them as quickly as possible—with the support of President Barack Obama (D) and the Democratic party leadership in both houses of Congress.

Many Americans decry the sometimes-poisonous influence of money on our political process, and at first blush it sounds like a good idea to limit interest group spending in our elections. But consider, for a moment, exactly what an interest group is. If you join with two of your friends to raise money in support of a local school board candidate that you like, you are an interest group—albeit a small one. Or if you want to join with some of your neighbors to lobby your county board of supervisors for a traffic light, you are an interest group. What makes it so different when you join with a hundred, thousand, or even a million of your countrymen to support a candidate or to advocate on an issue? The reality is exactly what I said back in 2010: “Interest groups . . . are made up of people who willingly support those groups with their time and money. They aren’t some diabolical, nebulous enemy of our democracy; they are democracy.”

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Washington, D.C.: Backsliding?

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In 2006, the people of Washington, D.C., elected Adrian Fenty (D) to be their sixth mayor since the establishment of the ‘home rule’ city government. I certainly didn’t agree with him on everything—his positions on gun control, for example, were misguided and counterproductive—but on the whole, Fenty had a very positive impact on the city. He and his appointed schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, embarked on a surprisingly successful mission to improve the District’s public schools. He overhauled and reorganized dysfunctional city government agencies. He and his appointed police chief, Cathy Lanier, managed to reduce the city’s homicide rate by over twenty-five percent. In the four years Fenty was in office, D.C. became a noticeably nicer, safer place to visit.

Coming to power eight years after Mayor Anthony Williams (D), a competent if unremarkable leader, Fenty inherited a city on a positive trajectory. Williams had largely dismantled the almost twenty-years of cocaine-encrusted embarrassment left by Mayor Marion Barry (D), and had guided the city into a healthy cycle of renewal and improvement. The budgets were in good shape, crime rates were dropping (though not fast enough), and the schools had seen some tepid improvements. Williams deserves much praise for what he did. When Fenty became mayor, he took all those good things and accelerated them. Williams’s tenure was marked with slow, steady steps in the right direction. Fenty, however, seemed to prefer taking energetic leaps.

Fenty wasn’t (and still isn’t) a ‘politics as usual’ kind of guy. Before becoming mayor, he broke ranks with then-Mayor Williams and opposed city funding for the Washington Nationals baseball stadium, believing that the team should have had to pay for its own playground—a refreshingly responsible, free-market position. Since leaving the mayor’s office, he has publicly supported Governor Scott Walker’s (R-WI) efforts to rein-in Wisconsin’s ballooning budget by reducing the coercive power of government employee unions. The Fenty administration was largely bereft of corruption and controversy; the best his opposition could come up with was complaints about how Rhee dealt with the teachers’ unions, and a big ‘scandal’ that revolved around how he didn’t share tickets to sporting events with members of the city council.

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Thanks for Nothing, Motorola

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When I decided to buy my first tablet computer, I played around with the available machines and settled on the Motorola Xoom ‘Family Edition,’ or mz505. Android devices were the best option since I already had an Android phone and would have a big head-start on apps. The mz505 seemed to be the best balance of performance and price among Android tablets at the time—mid $300’s and enough horsepower to avoid any lagginess. Most importantly, Motorola had made an explicit promise that the mz505—then running Android 3.1—would soon be upgraded to the new and improved Android 4.

That was in January 2012, and Android 4 was already three months old. Motorola had implied (though hadn’t promised) that the update would come in the first quarter—before the end of March. When they eventually announced their upgrade schedule, I was disappointed to find that the mz505 was scheduled for upgrade in the second quarter—which ended this past Saturday. But a month or so ago, Motorola updated their schedule and moved the mz505 upgrade to third quarter—by the end of September. That will be almost a year after Android 4 came out. Thanks for nothing, Motorola.

Motorola’s miserable failure to provide a basic level of software update support for their products is inexcusable, especially since they promised that support for the mz505 before I bought it. I plan to stick with the Android operating system for now, but from now on I will only buy Google’s flagship ‘Nexus’ devices. They are all-but guaranteed to get timely software updates for as long as the hardware can handle them. I’m tired of being artificially locked out of the new features, bigfixes, and improvements of my chosen platform.

For my phone, a Motorola Droid 2 Global that has also been artificially blocked from updates, I’m not eligible for an affordable upgrade until the end of the year. But Google, partnering with Asus, has announced their own Nexus tablet: the Nexus 7. It is a seven inch tablet that ships with Android 4.1, and it costs only two hundred dollars. I ordered one on the day it was announced, and as soon as it arrives my mz505 goes up on eBay. Maybe it’ll get the Android 4 update someday . . . if Motorola ever awakens from their stupor. I wouldn’t count on it though. It’s bad policy to trust liars.

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.