From http://oneishy.com/personality/, a temperament test that uses the categories of “sanguine” “melancholy” “choleric” and “phlegmatic” that I am more accustomed to reading.

Luke Schierer,

Your personality is Melancholy Choleric

Melancholy Strength:7 Weakness:9 – 40%:
Phlegmatic Strength:2 Weakness:3 – 13%
Sanguine Strength:4 Weakness:1 – 13%
Choleric Strength:7 Weakness:7 – 35%

You may want to review the definitions

TheFactIS is an incredible publication which I highly recommend. Thanks to its permissive copyright statement, I again choose to quite an article here, in its entirety. This time, we shall look at the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban.

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will hear a case on the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting partial birth abortion. The high court will likely have to decide whether or not to uphold a previous decision that struck down a Nebraska ban on partial birth abortion because the law did not contain an exception for the health of the mother.

When the US Congress passed the partial birth abortion ban in 2003 it did so without a health exception but only after conducting an extensive finding of facts in which it determined that the procedure was never required to preserve a mother’s health. Three separate circuit courts of appeal have struck down the federal law citing Stenberg v. Carhart, the 2000 case which invalidated the Nebraska law forbidding partial birth abortion.

The case will be the first significant abortion case for the new Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who was the deciding vote in Stenberg which was decided by a narrow tally of 5 to 4. The questions raised in the new case will be similar to those addressed in Stenberg in that the court will determine whether a partial birth abortion ban must contain an exception for the health of the mother.

William Saunders, an attorney with the Family Research Council who serves as Senior Fellow and Director of their Center for Human Life and Bioethics, says it will be difficult to uphold the federal ban without also striking at Stenberg. “This is on a collision course with Stenberg. If you uphold the ban you will have to overrule at least part of Stenberg,” he said.

Saunders said the US government will likely put forward a two pronged argument. First they will say that the law should be upheld based on the Congressional finding of facts. Such findings are to be accorded great deference according to previous Supreme Court cases and the government will argue that the appellate courts were wrong to dismiss those findings. Secondly, the US will likely argue that Stenberg was wrongly decided and that it should be overturned.

In Stenberg, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had voted to preserve Roe v. Wade in the past, voted in support of the partial birth abortion ban. In his dissent he argued that O’Connor’s opposition to the Nebraska ban was inconsistent with her opinion in the landmark case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Kennedy was joined by the recently deceased Chief Justice William Rehnquist and justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in defending the Nebraska law. This would indicate that Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas are likely to vote in favor of preserving the federal ban as well. If President Bush’s new appointees, Alito and Roberts, join them, there will be enough votes to keep the federal ban in effect.

A date for oral arguments in the case has not yet been set but they will take place sometime during the next term which is set to start in October.^[1]

1. Mr. Mark Adams. “High Court to Hear Challenge to Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban” Culture & Cosmos Volume 3, Number 29. 2006-02-22. http://www.thefactis.org/default.aspx?control=ArticleMaster&aid=1488&authid=12

It is easy to be upset with the Republicans. There are rumors that they regret the fight to get two pro-life Supreme Court Justices confirmed. They have failed to reform the tax code. They have largely failed to even reduce taxes without reform. They failed to reform social security. They launched us into the war with Iraq, and are now playing brinkmanship with Iran. They support the death penalty. A host of examples.

For now, however, they have had my vote. In my mind our first and foremost responsibility is to work for an end to abortion on demand, and our second priority must be the defense of the family. The Republicans have, by and large, provided the only candidates that will join even half-hearted in these goals.

And so Mr. Cleaveland is correct, the race in Pennsylvania should prove an interesting one, as the Democrats choose to field an unabashedly pro-life, Catholic Democrat.^[1] I do not know that I would vote for him. There are other issues I consider. I also do not know where he stands on my second priority, the defense of the family. But for once I would have to consider. I am no longer convinced that voting for the Republicans is an effective way to combat the growth of government and socialism, and so it might be worth while to vote for a pro-life, pro-family Democrat simply to try to make the Republicans more aware of where their bread is buttered. Too bad that here, in Virginia, I do not really have that choice.

1. Mr. Raymond Cleaveland. “Why No One Asked About Alito’s Faith” National Catholic Register 2006-02-19. http://www.ncregister.com/articulo4.php?artkod=MTky

I thought this “Friday Fax” worth reading.^[1]

Nations with permissive abortion laws do not experience lower rates of maternal mortality compared to nations with restrictive abortion laws according to new data published by the United Nations Populations Division.

Pro-abortion radicals have long argued that the right to abortion should be guaranteed by international law because restricting abortion leads to high maternal mortality. But an examination and comparison of four countries of the developed world tells a far different story. The data are found in “The World Mortality Report: 2005″ which was published by the UN Population Division at the start of this year. Completed over the course of 2005, it “is the first report of its kind produced by the” UN Population Division. It measures mortality, including maternal and infant mortality, for all the world’s countries.

According to the report, Russia, where abortion is legal, has a maternal mortality rate of 67 deaths for every 100,000 births. The United States, where there are almost no restrictions on abortion, has a rate of 17 deaths for every 100,000 births.

Both Ireland and Poland, favorite targets of the pro-abortion radicals for their strong restrictions on abortion, have better maternal mortality rates than Russia and the US. Ireland has the lowest rate of the four countries with only 5 deaths for every 100,000 births. In Poland, which like Russia was recently freed from communism, the maternal mortality rate is 13 deaths for every 100,000 births.

Liberal abortion laws do not seem to decrease infant mortality either even if one does not consider abortion to be an instance of infant mortality. Ireland also has the lowest rate in this category with 6 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Both Poland and the US have an infant mortality rate of 7 deaths for every 1,000 live babies born. Russia has a much higher infant mortality rate, of 12 deaths for every 1,000 live births.

Because the state of record keeping and the regularity of government censuses is not uniformly advanced throughout the world, the report warns that “it is important [for readers] to be cautious about the comparability of the mortality estimates presented [therein]… for different countries.” All the above figures quoted from the report are from tabulations recorded from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2004. In all cases, the report uses the most current data that the UN Population Division was able to obtain at the time.

1. Mr. Bradford Short. “UN Data Show Banning Abortion Doesn’t Increase Maternal Mortality” TheFactIs.org 2006-02-17. Friday Fax Volume 9, Number 9. http://www.thefactis.org/default.aspx?control=ArticleMaster&aid=1485&authid=11

This^[1] is incredibly cool. It reminds me of the interface used in the movie Minority Report

1. Mr. Jefferson Y. Han. “Apple’s Multi touch screen movie” 2006-02-09 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774&q=apple+touch

Personally, I am not much of a CD player. I find that about the only time I want to listen to the contents of just one CD is when I am listening to classical music, where a single work may be multiple tracks. Nor are the multi-disk changers an optimal solution. There is a noticeable delay as the disk is changed. As a result, I prefer to rip my CDs, shuffle the songs up in mpd, and listen to them in that form. Sure, I am aware that both mp3 and ogg formats are lossy, but I really cannot notice the difference, and it is worth it for the convenience.

Sounds reasonable right? The RIAA does not think so.^[1][2] They have retreated from their statement that rip CDs you own for use on the computer or on an mp3 player. Now, they do not even think you should be allowed to create a duplicate of the CD to save one as a backup in case the disc gets scratched. They would rather you buy multiple copies of each song (one on CD and one as mp3), and listen to them only when and in ways they envision.

1. Mr. Ken “Caesar” Fisher. “RIAA et al. says CD ripping, backups not fair use” ars technica 2006-02-15. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6190.html
2. Mr. Fred von Lohmann. “RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use” Deep Links 2006-02-15. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php

Today, ars takes a look at Trusted Network Connect (TNC).^[1] This is the next step in the progression of Trusted Computing, and follows along in the shadow of the deployment of Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) in computers. In short, TNC allows computers on a network to query the state of their fellows and determine what they are running, and what they should be running. If the two do not match, the computer can be banned from the network.

Used by companies to secure their network, this is all well and good. In fact, it promises to deliver a non-trivial improvement over the existing situation. The problem is that it is not only going to be deployed and used in corporate, government, and school environments. It will be deployed in personal computers, and used against the owners. I do not take the trusting view of this that Mr. Pollack does, I highly suspect that some of these companies look forward to having tighter control over what software you run. They would just love to lock you out of websites if you are not using Internet Explorer. They would be ecstatic if not only did you have to use Internet Explorer to reach their content, but you had to not have competing software installed at all. The fact that this sort of control of our decisions is within the scope of the work on TNC and Trusted Computing in general is a significant cause for concern.

1. Mr. Peter Pollack. “The next step in trusted computing makes its debut” ars technica 2006-02-16. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060216-6202.html

Ars takes a look at the hard drive encryption option slated to be in Microsoft Vista in light of the fact that talks between the United Kingdom and Microsoft have occurred on the subject of backdoor access.^[1] In short, the UK is concerned that its police forces might not have access to hard drives when they seize computers as part of an investigation. As Ars notes, this is a concern that other governments are going to have similar concerns, if they have not initiated talks with Microsoft on their own already. It should be noted, however, that it is quite likely that any back door installed for a government will be discovered by someone else, and used against consumers, as well as by one government against others. Such a backdoor would render the hard drive encryption idea worse than useless, it would become a false sense of security.

1. Mr. Nate Anderson. “Britain wants access to encrypted Vista hard drives” ars technica 2006-02-15. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6185.html

If a Catholic Hospital is truly concerned about money collection to the point of neglecting its mission to save lives regardless of the financial state of its patients, then something is clearly wrong. Equally obviously, any such wrong should be addressed and fixed. Something does not add up however. The bill being pushed in Illinois would push those Catholic hospitals not already running deficits into deficit spending, and would cost them over $158 million a year.^[1] When the ads supporting this bill specifically target the Catholic institutions, which provide 25% of the free car in Illinois, you have to wonder about the motivation. Is this really about some flaw in the hospitals, or more about attacking the Church?

1. Mr. Alejandro Bermudez. “Just a bad toenail or is about money?” Catholic Outsider 2006-02-14. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/blog/?p=160

It has been a while^[1] since I last wrote about RFID. The most recent article I have read on the subject is substantially more of a concern than the others that show up in the recent history if you search “Random Unfinished Thoughts.”^[2] This is because I now read about tagging people, not products or even documents.^[3] This takes the idea of biometric authentication to a new and highly disturbing level. Notably, it combines the worst aspects of biometrics’ hard-to-deny with RFID’s easy-to-covertly-read. Thus if it ever does prove forgable, as is rather likely, as it would be a purely technical matter of reverse engineering the chip inside, you will have a particularly nasty sort of identity theft.

The pluses for those wishing to secure facilities and monitor workers are as considerable as the risks are, so I expect that this sort of monitoring will become more prevalent.

1. Mr. Luke Schierer. “200505-04-1118″ Random Unfinished Thoughts 2005-05-04. https://www.schierer.org/~luke/log/20050504-1118/20050504-1118
2. Mr. Luke Schierer. Search of Random Unfinished Thoughts for “RFID.” https://www.schierer.org/~luke/log/index.php?s=RFID This will naturally change with time.
3. Mr. Richard Waters. “US group implants electronic tags in workers” Financial Times (online) 2006-02-12. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ec414700-9bf4-11da-8baa-0000779e2340.html