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Freedom Of Speech Compensates for Seldom Used the Freedom of Thought, and Other Expostulations

August 25th, 2009 by cooper

My Tues­day tank­ful of tid­bits and annoyances.

1. Thanks to an anony­mous tips­ter, who for some unk­nown rea­son was loo­king up wonderlandornot/images, I dis­co­ve­red my old Flickr account, tit­led won­der­lan­dor­not. The con­tents are mea­ger —  a cou­ple of shots from Oahu in 2006. I can’t access the account, because it is old, hasn’t been uti­li­zed in years, I have a more recent Flickr account asso­cia­ted with my yahoo account, and every email address I’ve ever had is asso­cia­ted with my current Yahoo account. I haven’t used the account in 3 years, so on the sur­face it not sig­ni­fi­cant. Regard­less, it’s anno­ying that yahoo’s in’s and outs are so bureauc­ra­tic that what should be a sim­ple task beco­mes impossible.

2. Rose­mary Ports, starts a Skanks in NYC blog and slan­ders Lis­kula Cohen — anony­mously. Goo­gle is for­ced to give up the iden­tity of the defa­mer, who as it hap­pens was an insig­ni­fi­cant acquain­tance of the defa­med. For some rea­son Cohen, after the big reveal, deci­ded not to pur­sue further liti­ga­tion. The rea­sons are up for grabs, maybe because she knew the indi­vi­dual, was relie­ved it was someone so insig­ni­fi­cant, or because is would be too time con­su­ming and costly. The defa­mer howe­ver is now is now suing Goo­gle for not doing all they could to pre­serve her anony­mity — “breaching their fidu­ciary duty to pro­tect her expec­ta­tion of anony­mity”. Fidu­ciary, hum­bug­gery, tom­foo­lery, flim­flam­mery, I say.

I’m not sur­pri­sed to see a grown woman acting like a spoi­led, evil, child. I’ve been scro­lling the Inter­net too long not to have seen my fill of this, but I wish peo­ple would take their middle school tac­tics to the play­ground, lea­ving them offline.

I lean toward the opi­nion that ever­yone has the right to know who is doing a cha­rac­ter assas­si­na­tion on them. Free­dom of speech was never meant to pro­tect anony­mous cowards from making false claims about a per­sons cha­rac­ter and repu­ta­tion. It may seem like fun, to call someone you have a per­so­nal beef with a “pro­mis­cuous whore”, among other things, under a cloak of anony­mity, but it is wrong, and I hope they laugh little Rosie whoe­ver out of court. I admit, I’m not sure how a sim­ple­ton would know that this isn’t allo­wed, given the exam­ples set by the current media and jour­na­lism com­mu­nity, but a decent human being, of ave­rage inte­lli­gence, over the age of 7, would know.

3. Last anno­yance, only takes five seconds, our poor basic science know­ledge. Take this test and look at the results of the gene­ral public, though there may be a cou­ple of ques­tions that, on a higher aca­de­mic plane, could be argued, the ques­tions are past sim­ple at best.

title deri­ved from Soren Kier­ke­gaard quote
“Peo­ple demand free­dom of speech as a com­pen­sa­tion for the free­dom of thought which they sel­dom use.”

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25 Responses to “Freedom Of Speech Compensates for Seldom Used the Freedom of Thought, and Other Expostulations”

  1. jakeNo Gravatar says:

    A case where the skank caller is really the skank.…go figure.

    Yahoo and all their little sub­si­diary pro­jects are a mess, if they had a bet­ter sys­tem they might be in a bet­ter place right now.

    Not that they are in a bad place com­pa­red to say, me, but still.

    Glad you like my new look.
    I have an issue with the tsu­nami ques­tion, who do I com­plain to.
    jake´s last blog ..Favre

  2. sauerkrautNo Gravatar says:

    Rosie sued Goo­gle for the unvei­ling of her iden­tity? And she’s suing under some theory of fidu­ciary res­pon­si­bi­lity? Puh­leeze! Goo­gle did not volun­ta­rily pro­vide infor­ma­tion, they were for­ced to do so by court order. The­re­fore, no fidu­ciary duty of the con­fi­den­tial nature exists.

    She shoulda kept her poi­son pen to her­self.
    sauerkraut´s last blog ..Tex­ting while dri­ving, the PSA

  3. gNo Gravatar says:

    I am dig­ging this look girlfriend.

    I have one yahoo account, never use it. I don’t spend much time anywhere they con­trol — too much work involved.

    That crazy girl needs to get a life, she is not a girl, she is almost 30 years old.

    I’m going to bed I’ll take the quiz in the AM.
    g´s last blog ..Don’t Text and Drive

  4. BennetNo Gravatar says:

    Every time I see the girl with the sha­des, I think it’s Jes­sica Alba, even though I know it’s not.
    The page is loo­king spiffed.

    As the the science quiz I did get one wrong. Size of an elec­tron is not sma­ller than atom, but that was a spurt of con­fu­sion. I know the the elec­tron is part of the atom.

    ANYWAYS. Yes, I’ve been com­plai­ning about the lack of inte­rest in science with the gene­ral public for a long time.
    I still am. Peo­ple (IMO) seem to be inte­res­ted in non­sense such as: Reli­gion, Latest Cellphone crap, Cele­brity gos­sip, UFOs, Ghosts, Get­ting drunk on the wee­kend, and point­less poli­ti­cal debate without any understanding.

    All of those are worth­less, mostly fake. Science really chan­ges the world. Science should be the most impor­tant pur­pose to all of us but it isn’t. I know too many peo­ple sca­red to think too much. Maybe they’ll rea­lize how fake everything is. I don’t know. I can’t pull the horse to the water of science to drink, & learn, but I try.
    Bennet´s last blog ..I like that I’m not the only per­son thin­king about these ideas

  5. mojo shiversNo Gravatar says:

    I used to help run and write an under­ground jour­nal called The Amethyst Exchange (AE) while in high school. We did the whole kit and kaboodle – pen names (mine was Ver­mi­llion), scathing edi­to­rials against the admi­nis­tra­tion and other stu­dents, and artic­les poin­ting out the arbi­trary nature of each and every deci­sion made regar­ding our edu­ca­tion. It wasn’t very cou­ra­geous and it wasn’t very effec­tive in brin­ging about change.

    And you know what else, Miss Coo­per? I have a lot more fun wri­ting on-line now as myself expres­sing opi­nions that are fully 100% my own without fear of some­body fin­ding out who it is saying all these things I say on there. It’s way bet­ter to have opi­nion and have it be recog­ni­zed as your own than state an opi­nion and not have the cou­rage of cha­rac­ter to stand behind it without a mask on.
    mojo shivers´s last blog ..When You’re Young You Find Ins­pi­ra­tion, In Anyone Who’s Ever Gone, And Ope­ned Up A Clo­sing Door

  6. DougNo Gravatar says:

    Well, I got 12 of 12 on the science quiz and had no earthly idea who Lik­sula Cohen was. But I hear she’s easy.

    I don’t know whether Goo­gle should give up the real names of anonyma. I sup­pose it depends on what their terms of ser­vice say and I’ve never read them. The price of being an anony­mous cre­tin is you might get caught and the price of going into a public pro­fes­sion has always been stran­gers asper­sing your morals.
    Doug´s last blog ..Arra­yed

    • cooperNo Gravatar says:

      I would expect you to get at least 12 out of 12 if not 15 our of 12. ;)

      The terms of ser­vice for blog­ger clearly sta­tes they will give you up in a minute if they are legally orde­red to do so, no men­tion that they will fight for the rights of some little twerp who post defa­ma­tory com­men­tary anonymously.

  7. johnNo Gravatar says:

    I wouldn’t say if it were other­wise, but I was 12/12 on the quiz. The stats on who knows what are alar­ming, did you read the part about the peo­ple who did the best on it being age 30 to 49?

    I’m not sure if Goo­gle tried hard enough to pro­tect but I don’t know the whole slander/libel law situa­tion either. It looks like blog­ger has some dif­fe­rent (extra) terms of ser­vice than Goo­gle as a whole.

    She’ll lose, what a waste of time.
    john´s last blog ..World Cup Soc­cer – 27 Cities Left

    • cooperNo Gravatar says:

      It’s because our gen is weak in the scien­ces, but good on things they see on the telly. They knew the GPS relies on a sate­llite, aspi­rin for heart attacks and car­bon dio­xide cau­ses the earths temp to heat up — things they would likely see on some popu­lar telly show, nothing they would have had to learn in a basic science class.

  8. piaNo Gravatar says:

    If I ever defame you, I pro­mise you will know :)

    It’s so easy to espe­cially if you know or have ever even pas­sed on the street peo­ple of fame. It makes peo­ple a lot of money. But that’s blood money and I hope they choke on it
    pia´s last blog ..Clim­bing metapho­ri­cal moun­tains

  9. BoneNo Gravatar says:

    I agree. Anony­mity should be for­fei­ted when it comes to per­so­nal attacks. I hate rude anony­mous com­ments on blogs.

    By the way, I mis­sed the stem cell ques­tion. So 11/12. Ummmm, I didn’t wanna show off?
    Bone´s last blog ..Four card­board boxes

    • cooperNo Gravatar says:

      Well, you won’t miss it next time. I am clo­ser to the age where I lear­ned that stuff(10), making it easier to get them all right.

  10. ChrisNo Gravatar says:

    I got 9 ques­tions correct. Don’t know if that’s good or not. It says I sco­red bet­ter than 56% of the public. Not sure that sounds too good.
    Chris´s last blog ..Make Them Own It

  11. I’m not sure what I think about the pre­ce­dent set by Goo­gle being for­ced to dish here, but Cohen at least acquit­ted her­self well.

    I’m just won­de­ring who they’ll have to give up next.
    EsotericWombat´s last blog ..The Obama Death Panel: An Autopsy

  12. YobachiNo Gravatar says:

    Well I got 11 out of 12 on the science test; but I feel so sha­med for the one I missed.

    I put that elec­trons where sma­ller than atoms. But you have elec­trons and neu­trons char­ging atoms, so elec­trons would have to be sma­ller, duh.