Make Your Blog Welcoming

Good tips to make your blog welcoming, for first time and new visitors: 1) have a design that is distinctive (readers judge credibility partially on design) - also for 2nd and 3rd time readers it helps to have something they remember visiting before. 2) A photo of you helps as people connect visually. Which also helps them remember site on future visits. 3) About page that tells them what this place is about. 4) Let them see a list of popular posts, favorite posts... 5) Categories or tags can help - they can see what you focus on and can find more on topics they are interested in 6) Make RSS subscription link easy to see Curious Cat Management blog - About us page Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog - about us page

USA Falls to 47th in Press Freedom Ranking

Reporters Without Borders released the latest ranking of countries press freedom. The United States fell 27 places to 47th due to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests. It is one more indication of the erosion of liberty in the USA. Related: Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans

Money Is Corrupting Our Political Process

I like capitalism.  I support those who provide benefit to society (as expressed by the market) being rewarded with money by the market.

We have allowed our politicians in the USA to focus on money instead of doing the business of the people.  The corruption is fundamental and endemic.  The liberty the founders of the USA gave us an opportunity to enjoy has been greatly impinged upon and the system continues to do harm.

It is hard to appreciate and understand the situation.  Those benefiting from the current system are very effective at using every lever they have to continue the current corrupt system.  Lawrence Lessig provides an excellent review of where we are.



Related: rootstrikers - Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress  - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Health Care System Needs Much More Reform - Lessig Video: Information Revolution

Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress

Written for my management blog blackout in support of those fighting SOPA and PIPA:


This site is participating in the SOPA/PIPA blackout day. Sadly I don't have a simple way to just have this page for the USA and I decided having it show for everyone was better than not showing it.

As this is a management blog, I would like to explain my analysis of this situation. The SOPA and PIPA bills are not special cause results. They are the natural outcome of the current anti-liberty system in place in Washington DC. As such the proper counter-measure is not to band-aid this negative outcome and think you have done well. If you need a band-aid counter measure immediately, that is fine. But if you don't then look at the system creating that result: the bad result will just reappear.

My belief on the systemic cause is the anti-liberty sentiment in congress. This creates the conditions where lots of extremely bad anti-liberty laws are proposed and passed. SOPA and PIPA happened to be so horrible that an huge outcry they couldn't ignore and push through (most likely, it is still possible they might). But that is all. SOPA and PIPA are the natural result of the current system. They are not some special outlier that you can block and then be confident the system is working.

There are a few other systemic issues that contribute to the extremely bad law that SOPA and PIPA would be. A profound lack of basic understanding of technology. A profound lack of understanding of copyright. Those are compounded by a profound lack of respect of knowledge (so ignorance is not seen as any reason to act cautiously or seek expertise). A system where large amounts of cash seem to drive policy much more than anything else. Add those to the anti-liberty agenda of the last decade and you will continue to get SOPAs and PIPAs.

Where we are today
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" - Wendell Phillips
which is often quoted as "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" and attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Richard Jackson (maybe)

Those outside the USA
Several other countries have already had the USA coerce their governments into adopting legislation desired by those who "donated" (in other words gave cash to) American politicians. I am surprised none of those countries has reversed the decision to harm their citizens as a favor to those paying American politicians cash but I don't think any have. If you live in one of those countries maybe you should see about getting rid of the people that do such things to your country. And the State Department may well be pressuring for SOPA like laws right now.

The USA's Anti-Liberty Agenda
Sadly the USA has been on a kick to reduce liberty and increase government and corporate power over liberty of citizens. I have written about the attacks on liberty on another of my blogs.

SOPA and PIPA are the recent outcome of this mindset of those in congress today. The attempts to payoff a few of the lobbyists that give them large amounts of cash has resulted in many bills; SOPA and PIPA being the current examples. They have become so used to egregious anti-liberty legislation being ignored that they allowed the lobbyists to go so far in writing SOPA and PIPA that even the normal apathy was overcome.

It appears they realize the price of their favors to those giving them lots of cash (for their campaigns) is too high in this case. People actually noticed how egregious the attacks on liberty were. And the reactions by those people have made it seem that the consequences to the politicians of passing the law (that they wanted to pass before the consequences to themselves was made obvious) are now too high.

Given past conduct I would expect them to bow to the current pressure and just sneak in most of the bad policy (to pay back those giving them cash) into future bills. They also seem to be trying to say by getting rid of a couple of the most vile parts of the laws that the rest of the payoffs to those giving them cash should be ok.

I was amazed when the politicians were able to withstand the maelstrom of criticism about he security theater/anti-liberty practices of TSA. So how far they are willing to fight in order to pay off contributors and further the anti-liberty agenda I am not sure. But the evidence seems to be pretty far. I would expect they will not learn from this and continue their normal conduct, which will mean continued attempts to pass similar measures.

Until we refuse to elect people that are willing to sacrifice liberty for their personal short term interests we have risks of such laws passing. Only extraordinary efforts seem capable of rolling back small pieces of the anti-liberty agenda currently being pushed by both parties in Washington DC. But it is only because the public lets them get away with it. So it is really our problem. If we want to stop the anti-liberty agenda (of which SOPA and PIPA are a minor, though dramatically flawed example) we need to stop electing those that support it.

There is an App to Help You Avoid Supporting Companies Actively Undermining Your Rights through their support for SOPA and PIPA.

Librarians Standing Up to the Madness

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me."
Martin Niemoeller



SOPA/PIPA resources:


PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

• How PIPA and SOPA Violate Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation

• Letter from people that understand the internet about the huge problems with SOPA/PIPA

App to Help You Avoid Supporting Companies Actively Undermining Your Rights

Use the power of the internet to avoid supporting companies that actively seek to take away your rights: Android app to scan bar codes and reveal if the company supports taking away your liberty via SOPA. I am all for these kind of transparency initiatives. Shinning the light on the dirty dealing going on is a way to clean things up. Given that we chose to elect people that are more concerned with pleasing those that give them cash that protecting liberty it is more important that we act on our beliefs (or we will see them sold away). With transparency we can then choose what we want to support. I believe, with transparency many will decide they don't really care about principle and can more about whatever is cheapest or easiest. At least we then get the society we chose. I may well not like some of the choices, but I would rather have transparency let people make the choices than the lobbyist written legislation we have slipped into the last few decades. If there turn out to be consequences for trying to remove basic rights from people, companies will stop. Otherwise they will continue. Related: Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Liberty Again Denied, It is Sad How Little We Care - Freedom Increasingly at Risk

Liberty Again Denied - It is Sad How Little We Seem to Care

When I was growing up I knew the world wasn't perfect.  The government had plenty of problems.  And politicians were often more concerned about their egos than the good of the country.  And things like the McCarthy which-hunts, Japanese internment, denying voting rights to blacks, Watergate were not far in the past.  But I never imagined how far the government would move to eliminate liberty.  I remember thinking how sad it was that perfectly fine books were banned in the past.  And yes, some silly little town here or there would remove books from libraries or schools.  That was sad but fairly minor.  But it seemed to me we now had finally learned how horrid our actions in things like the Japanese internment and McCarthy which-hunts were.

Watergate was something plenty of politicians did to some degree or another but they had the sense to be ashamed and hide it.  That is different from endorsing and pushing policies to deny liberty to people.

I remember thinking how strange it was how concerned our founding fathers were with protecting us from government.  I understood why historically.  But it seemed like those days were long past.  Yes, occasionally government would overstep but that was getting cleaned up or just some corruption that is likely to always exist to some extent.

The sad fact is, today I am in the position of our founding fathers and much more worried about what the government will do to us that inspired by what the government provides us.  This is sad.  The types of behavior Homeland Security has been engaging in can be stopped if we elect people that care about liberty.  I am much more disappointed in the last 10 years than Watergate.  We are currently on par with Japanese internment and the McCarthy which-hunts.  That is in extremely sad place to be.  I think we are probably a step below those embarrassments but we are not far from them.

We need leaders that can steer us away from the path we have been taking.  I am scared for where we will be soon, if we don't find them.

Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. 

Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that's a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that's been in the making for over a year, and which we're exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year -- with the only difference being that, rather than "a printing press" and a "magazine," the story involved "a domain" and a "blog."

This type of behavior (ignoring liberty, acting like citizens are the constitution don't matter, acting like the governments our founding father's were afraid of) makes it extremely hard to give the government the benefit of the doubt in cases where the issues are more debatable.  I'll agree some issues the government has to deal with are challenging.  But if you want to have our understanding on the difficult choices and tradeoffs the government has to make you can't consistently trample on our rights for no reason.

Denying the first amendment rights should be an action the government takes in only the most extreme circumstances.  But instead we have a government that believes it should be free to deny first amendment rights consistently and if people fight really hard maybe the government will give in after awhile and no-one in government will care about the complete abdication of the bill of rights that is suppose to protect us from a government that could seek to act on the principle that might makes it right.  How any politician accepts seeing the constitution shredded like this is beyond me.  But then again it seems we don't elect people that care about what our founding father's did.  That is our fault.  And it is very dangerous.

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me."
Martin Niemoeller

Related: Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Bikinis For Liberty - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment

Most Popular Post on the Curious Cat Comments Blog

One of the updates, with the suite of updates earlier this year by Blogger, was to show you the number of views for each blog post (I haven't even bothered to add Google Analytics to this blog though maybe I will soon).  Here are the 11 most popular posts on this blog (based on page-views since May 2009 - the latest data Google seems to use):

1. New President's To Do List (2008)
2. Designing Cities for People, Rather than Cars (2007)
3. Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results
4. Programmable New York Times On the Way (2008)
5. More Evidence of the Bad Patent System
6. Wordpress Plugins: Super Cache and Bad Behavior (2009)
7. How to Install Anything in Ubuntu! (2007)
8. Davidson Students Get Free Sweet Sixteen Trip (2008)
9. Last Google Toolbar PageRank Update of 2008
10. Watch the Full I Have a Dream Speech (2009)
11. They Will Know We are Christians By Our Love (2010)

It is sometimes odd what posts are most popular. Sadly several of these are not the most useful posts (in my opinion - but I guess the oracle of Google thinks otherwise, I would imagine greater than 80% of traffic is from searches on Google). The traffic has actually been building lately (which is nice). I think the post in the last couple of years are significantly better - many of the previous posts were largely just to post a link so I could find it again when I wanted it. Last month had 16% of total page views (in just 3% of the time period). There is a bit of spike last month, but it is mainly just an upward trend over the last 6 months. Popular posts on other Curious Cat blogs: popular management blog posts - popular investing blog posts - popular engineering blog posts