Pseudo-ethical Rhetoric and Illegal Immigration

Today, Jerry Johnston went on a rant in the Deseret News about Arizona's tough new immigration law, essentially accusing anyone who disagrees with him of being a grossly immoral and unethical person. He's dead wrong, though.

Let's apply Johnston's anti-Arizona rhetoric to other areas of the law, like investor fraud. Rewriting Johnston only a bit, "Utah has thousands of active LDS members who have conducted investment frauds. Many have children who did not participate in the fraud. The thought of one group of tithe-paying Mormons going after another group of tithe-paying Mormons is too unsavory. It flies in the face of Christian ideals."

See how that works, Jerry? Situational ethics and in-group favoritism can cover up any crime. By your logic, Utah should never prosecute any Mormon fraudsters. Fortunately, in this state we Mormons do take on the "unsavory thought" of prosecuting Mormon criminals, or the Deseret News would be a much thinner paper.

And make no mistake about it, illegal immigration is a knowing, voluntary crime. The illegal immigrant knows he is unwanted, and comes here without permission in order to take something of value (a job) that otherwise would go to one of the 10% or more of Americans (citizens and law-abiding immigrants) who is unemployed. If that is not theft, then the word has no meaning.

The New Testament tells me not to sue my fellow-religionist in Caesar's courts, but does not tell me to hide another's crimes from Caesar.

You cloak your sympathies with high-flown rhetoric, so your friends can steal bread from my neighbors. Thanks Jerry.

Mac - Get rid of Dock folder preview icons

So in Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"), if you put a folder in the Dock, then the folder's icon gets replaced with the icons of files inside that folder. The most common place to see this is the Downloads folder.

I find this feature useless and ugly. My Downloads folder has dozens of items in it, and the preview algorithm is not helping me at all. So with some digging around, I found out how to make my Dock display simple folder icons rather than the icons of contained files.

Simple approach:
1) Command-click the Dock icon for that folder, and select "Folder" under the "Display As" area.

Geekier approach (and the one I first found):
1) Open the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist in the Property List Editor program.
2) In the Editor, open the entry "persistent-others/Item 1/tile-data/displayas" and change its value from 0 to 1.
3) Repeat Step 2 for all items under "persistent-others" that have a displayas entry (only folders in the Dock have this entry).
3) Save the changes in the Editor.
4) In a terminal, issue the "killall Dock" command (or log all the way out and then log back in, or restart your Mac).

Voila! Real, simple folders in your Dock! The only downside is, whichever method you use, you have to do separately for each folder in your Dock.

Great SF and Great Comedy

I like Schlock Mercenary. Howard Tayler, the author/artist of that webcomic, does two difficult things well -- science fiction humor, and "hard sf" storytelling.

Now, people often disagree on humor; I know sf readers who would balk and then gag at Howard's sense of humor. But even so, if you like SCIENCE fiction or cracking good storytelling, you owe it to yourself to read a few weeks of Schlock ("basic training" is a good place to start).

Hard sf -- sf where the science really matters -- is difficult to write well. In Schlock, for all the color and all the wisecracking, the science matters to the story. Dueling FTL techniques, artificial intelligences, nanotechnology, high energy physics--Howard covers them all and makes them his own, deftly and with an eye towards their humorous aspects.

Howard is up for a Hugo award this year, and I hope he wins it. Like John Scalzi, he's one of the few sf authors to appear in the past decade who even attempts to play in the hard sf space; the shelves are filled with far too much "fantasy with rivets."