Month: November 2008

Through A Lens Electronically

Danielle Citron imagines the cultural implications of newfangled contact lenses:

Electronic contacts lenses gives rise to interesting questions about their potential use. Could a zoom function and connection to the Net allow drivers to record and transmit the license plates of reckless drivers to insurance companies and local police?

Lior Strahilevitz’s superb article "’How’s My Driving’ fro Everyone (and Everything?)" contemplated the use of technologies to report driver misconduct to assist the police in combating dangerous driving, reduce information assymetries in the insurance market, improve the tort system, and alleviate driver frustration over the current feeling of helplessness in the face of reckless driving. As the article demonstrates, the virtual anonymity of drivers magnifies dangerous behavior on the road because drivers do not suffer social disapproval for poor driving and have a profound sense that they will never get caught. These lenses could fundamentally alter that sense of anonymity on the road and could deter antisocial behavior. The bionic eye could play an important role in altering behavior and may raise privacy concerns worth discussing.

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XXI: “Correcting The Record”

Just to get back to her looniness. A classic quote from the KTUU interview:

A. Regarding information regarding my record, that is now out there, much of it that was based on misinformation was a very, very frustrating thing to have to go through when the record was never corrected. And we would try to correct the record and too many in the media chose not to make those corrections. I felt too often that we were a bit defenseless, with so many things reported wrongly that could have easily been corrected based on facts.

Q. What misinformation are you talking about?

A. Some of the goofy things like who was Trig’s mom. Well, I’m Trig’s mom (raises her hand) and do you want to see my medical records to prove that? And days would go by before the mainstream media would even correct that … well you know it’s proven that she is is Trig’s mom.

Proven? Where? And where in the MSM did anyone report that Trig was not her biological son? All I did was ask questions – and never received any proof of anything. In fact, there was virtually no attempt to correct the record with Palin’s series of increasingly unhinged lies about her own record during the campaign – of all the lies I chronicled, not one was rebutted with facts from the McCain campaign. On the Trig question, I tried for two months to get some kind of basic, evidentiary proof. I asked publicly; I asked privately; the McCain campaign simply refused to give any actual records and attacked the press merely for asking questions. The quote above is therefore another total lie.

Give us some records of the last pregnancy: maybe a record of the amniocentesis, or doctor visits clearly about a pregnancy, or an interview with the doctor who delivered Trig, Catherine Baldwin-Johnson. Palin has a press avail on Wednesday. Ask for the records, please. She just asked if we wanted them. We do!

Anime In Real Life

Cindy

Chris Scarborough’s photography sits somewhere between fantasy and horror. We are born with nearly adult-size irises that we grow into with time. It’s why babies appear to have such large wonder-filled eyes. Scarborough’s series obviously comments on Japanese animation, but it is also a return to childhood facial characteristics. This disjointed reality is welcoming yet disturbing.

Paranoid, Party Of One

Drum doesn’t understand why GOP acolytes are huffing and puffing about the Fairness Doctrine:

So why are conservatives in such a tizzy about this? It’s a mystery. There do appear to be a few members of Congress who think it’s a shame we got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, but as near as I can tell, "few" equals four or five in the Senate and maybe a dozen in the House. There are probably more Republicans who believe in a return to the gold standard than there are Democrats who seriously want to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine.

An unhealthy longing for victimhood? Or pure paranoia? Neither explanation is encouraging.