The House voted Thursday to make it a federal crime to assault people because of their sexual orientation, significantly expanding the hate crimes law enacted in the days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

With expected passage by the Senate, federal prosecutors will for the first time be able to intervene in cases of violence perpetrated against gays.

— House extends hate crime law to cover gays

I hate “Hate Crimes,” but I don’t really get the additional punishment for same. If someone assaults/kills another individual, well, there’s usually some (unreasonable) reason for same. Prosecute the infraction. (Update 10/15/2009: The first four words of my graph may be ambiguous. What I was trying to say is that I hate any crime that is caused by hate/prejudice/intolerance etc.)

Maybe this new push is just extending current law to fall under federal statues (“federal crime to assault people because of their sexual orientation”), but, why?

Is killing someone because they are gay worse than killing someone because they stole your girlfriend?

Punish the crime – not the prejudice that may have led one to commit the crime.

If you commit an armed robbery because your family is starving, you’ll still get the same sentence – if convicted – than if you committed an armed robbery so you could buy an Xbox 360. It’s an armed robbery. Ditto if you committed the crime to feed/get Xbox 360 for your gay lover…

Committing a crime against someone because he/she is gay/minority/whatever is reprehensible.

Committing a crime against someone for whatever reason is reprehensible.

Why does the former require a stiffer penalty than the latter?

Is, for example, a gay life > a straight life (hate crimes give – potentially – greater punishments to killers of gays than non-gays)? To me, either loss is tragic.

Full disclosure: I’m a straight Caucasian male (with no real religious affinity), so I’m pretty safe hate-crime wise.

Yet I have no problems with those who are not what I am.

And I hate the intolerance in this country for those who are different from the mainstream. I dislike the thoughts/beliefs they hold, but – to me – these are not grounds for arrest or additional punishment if found guilty of a crime.

Hate Crime laws help perpetuate the segregation of minorities (religious/sexual-orientation/racial), rather than help trying to meld the pot. They are somehow “different” (hey, different punishment for same crime!).

Punish the crime – not the “why.”

If you’ve never read Clay Shriky’s blockbuster on why newspapers are doomed – Thinking the Unthinkable – well, read same.

On the same subject, there’s a great article by Paul Graham, exploring – in a slightly different way – how we never paid for content (in any format).

Publishers of all types, from news to music, are unhappy that consumers won’t pay for content anymore. At least, that’s how they see it.

In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more?

A copy of Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8.6 cents a page. The Economist costs $7 for 86 pages, or 8.1 cents a page. Better journalism is actually slightly cheaper.

Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics.

Think about it – buy the book as a hardback, $20. Trade (full-size) paperback, $12. Paperback (the 7×4 inch softcover) – let’s say $6. I’m making up prices, but the trend holds true: Same words (content), but consumer cost is marketing/printing/distribution costs. While there is some elasticity here – John Grisham’s novels (in all formats) may be higher than an unknown author’s – but prices quickly stabilize, and we’re (in this example) not paying for content, but for production margin.

I don’t know the answer, but for print publications (or bank teller/travel agents/real estate agents etc), it is not somehow moving the existing business model to the web while (pretending to) protecting the physical world model.

Hat tip to Jeff Jarvis.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m working on getting better thumbnails.

I’ve extended casting this net to “better” icons, as well (the prev/next images in any given gallery).

Slow process, in my spare time (ha!), but I learn as I fix.

Excellent.

I use ImageMagick for my gallery image processing (with PhotoShop help).

I’ve never been satisfied with the thumbnails created; I’ve finally drilled into why my thumbnails sux.

ImageMagick issue (bad set by me); I’ve set stuff moving forward; working to fix bad old stuff.

Main issue:

convert -sample
good for full-sized pics

convert -resize
better for small (downsized stuff – icons; thumbs)

The few items I’ve put this change on are great; ah, lesson (finally) learned…

Took a day off of work yesterday (Friday, 9/4/2009) and went to noodle around Chicago.

Beautiful weather; and it all turned out to be a nice day.

First we hit the Art Institute – Neither of us are modern art fans, but the new modern wing has gotten a lot of buzz, so let’s check it out. Architecturally – inside and outside – pretty impressive (moronic that you can’t take stairs/escalator to the bridge over Monroe that connects to Millennium Park, however). Still don’t like modern art; I guess I’m just not that sophisticated.

Over the bridge to Millennium Park. Sorry, that’s an awesome addition to downtown. Yep, years over budget and over deadline, but it’s there and there is much to commend. Really. I apologize for the weak picture (best of bunch I took, too): I was more in “tourist” mode than “hmm…the light is better here…” mode. Snapshot day.

After Millennium Park, we – as we always do – meandered over to the Cultural Center. After the Rookery, probably my favorite building in Chicago (and it usually has – bonus! – art exhibitions; concerts). I was, again, in snapshot mode, but this building has so much to offer. At every angle it’s interesting, and all the Tiffany domes and inlays make it a landmark.

We then headed back to my old neighborhood – Lakeview/Boy’s Town. Hit the Coffee and Tea Exchange – best coffee beans out there, for my money – and just wandered to see what was new; what was missing.

For late lunch, we hit a little cafe on Clark between Addison and Belmont, Classic Thai. Awesome food, actually. Pot stickers (steamed; not fried) were great, the cabbage soup was almost refreshing, and the tilapia and red curry (pictured) was alone worth another visit.

Ah, last night (picture) and tonight the Peregrine Falcon has been trolling around for dinner.

Awesome looking bird (click the picture to view larger image; the thumbnail doesn’t do it justice); check out the eyes and beak. Killing machine. (Scale is impossible in this shot, but these falcons are roughly the size of somewhere between chickens/crows. Big ass birds.)

We have two bird baths, one bird feeder and a Shepard’s hook with two different finch feeders. Birds/squirrels/raccoons/opossums love it.

So do the falcons, looking for their flavor of the Backyard Buffet….

Wired.com had an interesting article about Craigslist and its founder, Craig Newmark. The online article was from the actual Wired magazine.

I’ve been following the whole Craigslist saga for years, so much of it was old news to me, but I was struck by the following passage:

Craigslist gets more traffic than either eBay or Amazon.com. eBay has more than 16,000 employees. Amazon has more than 20,000. Craigslist has 30. …. Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at craigslist. There is no business development, no human resources, no sales. As a result, there are no meetings. The staff communicates by email and IM.

And the article mentions a consulting firm that tracks Craigslist’s paid ads, and the firm estimates the site’s revenue for 2009 will probably exceed $100 million.

I understand that Ebay and Amazon have larger revenues, but look at the headcount disparity. Wow.

Update: Sorry, had this written last night and never got around to posting.

For some reason – I guess it’s the sped-up media machine powered by cable news and the internet – we seem to be celebrating 40th Anniversaries (such as the moon landing) these days, instead of waiting for the Golden (50th) Anniversary.

Today, it’s the 40th anniversary of Woodstock making the news.

Ah yes, three days – Aug. 15, 16 & 17, 1969 – of peace and music. 1967 was the Summer of Love; August 1969 made it, in some ways, the keystone of a summer of peace, music, love, hippies and drugs.

I was only 10 years old at the time – just getting ready to enter the 5th grade. I think I recall seeing some stories of it on the news at the time (yes, I’d watch the news with my folks occasionally), but nothing really sticks with me. The moon landing – less than a month earlier – had a much more profound effect on me.

Today, of course, I truly wish I could have been there. Wow – look at the talent: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, CSN&Y;, the frickin’ Who! Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Canned Heat (Going Up the Country) and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

And the list goes on and on (who can forget Joe Cocker’s rendition of I’ll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends?).

Best. Concert. Ever.

And a pretty damn good documentary, as well. And – of course – now reissued in a special 40th Anniversary edition. I have the original album from the documentary (circa 1975 or so), and if I recall correctly, Janis Joplin wasn’t on same (legal issue). Maybe she’s on earlier reissues/Directors’ Cuts, but she certainly appears to be here now. Excellent.

• Sonia Sotomayor won Senate confirmation for the Supreme Court. She’ll be sworn in Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009. She’ll be the court’s first Hispanic justice, and only the third woman (Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
• John Hughes, director of 1980’s classics such as “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” died of a heart attack in Manhattan today. He was only 59 years old.
• 64th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Let’s never – no one – do this again. And let’s not “celebrate” this anniversary, OK?

I wrote yesterday about the Microsoft/Yahoo alliance, and my update to that entry (earlier today) sorta sums up what I feel: Yahoo is circling the drain.

But don’t take my word; here are couple of good snippets about the MS/Yahoo deal by folks way smarter/wired than me:

Make no mistake, Yahoo’s out of the search game. I know the spin. Better user interface, new ways to innovate, a winning play. Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re done. Not today, not necessarily in a year, but down the line at some point. Done.

And it’s sad, because they were one of the originals. There was a time when the mighty Yahoo roared above all other search engines. When people were so worried about being listed in Yahoo that they pondered lawsuits over the issue, because not being in Yahoo was like not being on the internet at all.

Sound familiar? Yeah, Yahoo was the Google of its day. Funny to write that — it should be Google is the Yahoo of its day, but that’s how the tables turned in the search space.

— Danny Sullivan, A Search Eulogy For Yahoo

Yahoo committed seppuku today.

The once proud warrior of the internet space laid down its sword, knelt at the feet of Microsoft and gutted itself today. There was no honor in this death, it was one brought by the shame of losing to Google and a lack of faith in one’s ability to compete in the space they created. To be clear, Yahoo didn’t need to do this deal, Microsoft did. Ultimately Yahoo will look back at this moment as the second–and perhaps fatal–mistake in their epic history.

…

Microsoft’s massive investment into video games, mobile operating systems and search are clear indications that Sony’s Playstation, Google’s Andriod, the iPhone, Google and Yahoo are very important companies.

Nintendo didn’t give up when Microsoft came into the video game space–they innovated. Now the Wii outsells the mighty XBOX 50 million to 30 million. That is how you fight Microsoft: you innovate. Steve Jobs knows this, Nintendo knows this, and Oracle knows this. Yahoo, apparently, did not get the 40-year-old memo.

— Jason Calacanis, Yahoo committed seppuku today