Random thoughts

We were watching a Bond movie last night and I got to thinking at one point when Bond was about to get his freak on with one of the many women in the movie. How is it that James Bond has had sex with that many women and not fathered at least a few kids outside of marriage? One would think that if he has had that many, that sooner or later he would have struck out and gotten at least a few pregnant.

The law says that anyone who is a public figure can be attacked by the media. They can be probed and subjected to all sorts of criticism that private citizens are normally at least somewhat immune to. However, if the media can make people into celebrities by focusing resources on them, then doesn't that mean that the corporate media should be somewhat regulated when it comes to some things like criminal cases? Why should they get away with blasting some poor schmuck's face all over the news, making him out to be a monster, then when he's acquitted, not have to run (at their own expense) full page or prime time retractions? There comes a point in time where enough is enough, and I think that the press should be civilly liable if it does not print a retraction to help a man proved innocent get back the reputation that the media was largely responsible for stealing from him.

For those that haven't noticed yet (meaning probably pretty much all of you), I have installed some new blog software that allows you to do replies to specific comments easily. Check it out--by leaving a comment!

Block online ads may not be entirely legal. I'm not sure how that's going to end up working out, but one of the avenues that was tossed around was to use copyright law. The idea is that people are modifying the pages without the copyright holder's permission. That is not necessarily how it actually works, though. That is contingent on a plug-in changing the data transmitted by the server. However, if the browser is designed to not render certain data at all, that is a process of discriminating over data, not modifying data. I understand that that can be seen as semantical, but the legal profession is nothing if not semantical and legalistic.