Monday, March 5, 2001
Anti-choice activists have a new weapon in their war against a woman's right to choose. Last week the Supreme Court, without comment, refused to review the decision of a federal court of appeals concerning state regulations of abortion clinics. In 1996, South Carolina passed a set of regulations designed exclusively for medical clinics that offer abortions. They apply to any clinic that perform five abortions a month during a woman's first trimester of pregnancy, or a single abortion a month in the second trimester. The licensing requirements are 27 pages long. Among a host of other requirements, these new regulations set standards for the width of hallways and doorways, temperature standards and air flow. They require a registered nurse to assist in all abortions. They require testing for sexually transmitted diseases regardless of whether it is deemed medically necessary. They also require alarms to be installed in all bathrooms! These regulations specifically target abortion providers in an effort to make it more difficult for these clinics to provide this legal procedure. Many of these new regulations apply only to clinics that provide abortions, subjecting them to regulations that are not imposed on clinics that do not provide abortions, but perform comparable medical and surgical procedures.
Clinics in Greenville and Charleston challenged these new regulations on the grounds that they specifically target abortion providers and threaten a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. A federal judge agreed with the clinics, saying the regulations violated due process and the right to equal protection under the law. The state then appealed this decision to the federal appeals court who overturned the decision of the lower court. In upholding the regulations, the court argued that they served a valid state interest in guaranteeing the clinics provide adequate health care, and claimed they did not strike at the abortion right itself. But by specifically targeting providers of abortions and forcing them to abide by stringent regulations not required by other clinics that do not provide abortions, some clinics will likely reconsider their decision to provide abortions.
These new regulations also threaten the privacy of those seeking abortions. They require that clinics provide state inspectors access to patents' medical records. This is particularly disturbing since abortion is such a difficult decision for women to make, and the risk of losing the confidentiality of the abortion may make some women choose other, more dangerous methods of abortion.
This case will most likely affect separate challenges currently taking place in Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas. Anti-choice activists will no doubt see these developments as a new opportunity to attempt to make abortions unavailable for women.
In other news... The Supreme Court today upheld the Missouri Klu Klux Klan's right to adopt a section of highway to clean. Interesting. I think it may be quite a dangerous decision... I know if I was driving down the highway and saw a bunch of Klansmen on the side of the road I'd be hard pressed for a reason not to swerve.
And when will it end?... I'm sitting here in school. There's just been another school shooting. This time it's in San Diego. It happened only an hour or so ago. They're reporting a freshman opened fire outside of a boy's bathroom. They're saying two kids are dead and 14 wounded. When are we going to learn to listen to our children? It's a scary world my friends.
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
It ain't just email anymore... (forgive me as I lapse into a bit of geek-speak)
It always seems to come in the name of convenience, but the cost is our privacy. The companies say that the information they gather about us will be kept private, but why should we be asked to trust them? Here's a new development that I find a bit disconcerting. It's based on HTML-based email. Here's how it works.
A company like DoubleClick or Barnes & Noble gets a hold of your email address and other personal information (such as sex, age, location, and purchase history). You should know by now that this information is readily available in any number of ways. It stores the address in its Customer Relationship Management of (CRM) system. The CRM system uses this information to generate customized email solicitations. Okay, so far it's not so sinister. But each of these emails also contains an IMG tag embedded in the HTML code. Each of these tags corresponds to a particular marketing campaign, and may even be made unique to your personal profile. When you open the email in a program such as Outlook or Eudora, you automatically request a tiny 1x1 pixel image from the company's server. So you're contacting the company server without even knowing it. The company's server then sends back the image to you, as well as a cookie that heads straight for your hard drive. The cookie contains a specialized ID that corresponds to your email address that's contained on the CRM system on the company's server. In this way, any time you visit the company's server, you will be recognized. Now that the company's server "knows" your computer, the company can track your online behavior and respond with emails specifically targeting this behavior. The company can also sell your address and the information they've gathered to other companies, who can then send you even more emails containing more IMG tags and on and on and on...
So what can you do about it? A couple of things. You can use a mail program that's not web-enabled, like Pine or turn off the HTML features in your email software. Or you can disconnect from your connection to the internet before you open the mail. For more information on this and other online privacy issues, check out the Privacy Foundation website.
Sunday, March 11, 2001
Happy Birthday to Me!! Another year gone and I still don't know what it all means. Perhaps I'm supposed to reflect on what this past year has brought, or maybe take a measure of my life. But, I'm not going to. It's simply another day, pretty much like any other, and to somehow decide that "from now on" I'm going to do this or that or anything else differently is arbitrary. But I suppose everything starts somewhere. It just seems to me that whenever I try and start something new I dive into it wholeheartedly but it normally doesn't last. I need to ease into changes. Try and do them a bit at a time, every day until they become a part of my daily routine. I don't care if it's going to the gym or taking my vitamin every morning. Once something becomes part of my routine, I don't have to think about it, or cross it off my omnipresent to-do list. But I must say it's been a pleasant and low-key day. I've enjoyed myself. I slept in this morning, then Molly and I ran some errands. My birthday party was on Friday night. I had about ten people over and we all just hung out for a few hours. Later in the evening some of us headed for the Mad Planet to dance to some 80's music. Happy Birthday to me.
Saturday, March 31st
I want passion. I want to share experiences. I want to open up myself and share it with others who are willing to do the same. I want to inspire and be inspired. I'm tired of the same tired conversations and I'm tired of the same excuses coming from myself and others. I want to cut through all the polite bullshit and get right to the communication. I went to a show yesterday. I enjoyed myself. I was able to see old friends and catch up. But the show itself was disappointing. Somehow I feel we've become a mockery of ourselves. Perhaps I'm naive, or asking too much, but one of the reasons I've kept going to shows for so long is that they have been a source of inspiration. They've been a place where I can become motivated to stay passionate about the activities in my life. But that doesn't happen much anymore. More often than not the bands have nothing to say or engage in self-mockery. Sometimes I feel as though we've become so jaded and so cynical that we feel as though we can no longer take ourselves seriously. We don't show our hopes or share our aspirations. We no longer vent our rage or share anything of ourselves. And this isn't just about between song banter of bands, I've also seen it in the conversations that I have with friends. Perhaps we've become too complacent. Perhaps we're afraid of being called hypocrites. Or maybe we're just tired of putting our hearts on sleeves and then seeing it get torn to shreds. But I'll keep trying. At least I'll try to try. I'll keep taking myself seriously, and I'll keep dreaming and my heart will remain affixed to my sleeve. Bruised, battered, and torn, but still beating.