The truth is, environmentalists are just not attractive. They’re not winning, engaging, amusing or empathetic. They are ranty, repetitive, patronising, demanding, deaf, weirdly bonkers and smelly. Environmentalists are the nutters with degrees in composting who sit next to you on the bus. But that’s not their real impediment. The real killer thing is the schadenfreude: the naked, transparent, hand-rubbing glee with which they pass on every shame, sadness and terror. No disaster is too appalling or imminent that the green movement can’t caper and keen with a messianic glee. Take George Monbiot, the Malvolio of the green movement, who, as I’ve pointed out before, would be a geography teacher if it weren’t for the amazing good fortune of imminent apocalypse. Every week, he sifts the minute details of demise, like a jolly self-congratulatory Scrooge. Most of us would rather drown with the polar bears and Bangladesh than get in a lifeboat steered by Monbiot.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/a_a_gill/article6225761.ece

It’s political correctness gone mad.

More examples abound… but I’m sure you get the point.

CodeTech – Thanks, I was actually serious – but I get what you’re saying.

Cheers G

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

In the future, we will all be shielded from any possibility of the least sort of mental or physical harm. How incredibly tedious the future is going to be.

And all in the name of ‘saving the children’. We are saving them for a future of unending boredom.

Barry: Help! Help! I’m bein’ distressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!

Graeme Rodaughan (22:35:24) :

How about training children in Cyber-Self-Defense.

Why create a new law when you could simply empower citizens with the capability to distinguish threats from non-threats and therefore look after themselves.

I nominate this as one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time. We live in a culture specifically designed to keep us unable to distinguish threats from non-threats, where airliners full of people flown into buildings is somehow nothing to be too worried about and yet the un-measurable effect of a trace gas in the atmosphere is something to panic openly in the streets about.

More examples abound… but I’m sure you get the point.

One plausible cause for the bill came to mind. Have any of you heard of Kathy Sierra? She was a prominent figure in IT and web marketing circles up until a couple years ago. She decided to cease those activities due to harassing, menacing, and threatening messages about her were posted on her blog (in comments) as well as other blogs. So I think the bill has some merit, though I agree that “emotional distress” is an ominous “catch all” provision that would leave the door wide open to abuse of this bill.

If bloggers concentrate on the issues in question, rather than the personalities, then I cannot see how they could fall foul of the law.

Personal attacks are always unnecessary, and often counterproductive. Of course they are not so counterproductive if you have anonymity because no one knows who you are.

The real point of the law is to stop people using the web to ‘bully’ people. We are not talking bullying the Al Gore’s of this world here, we are talking about the small people. Say an ex-spouse, subject to pernicious and vile hatred due to the twisted mind of a sorry and relentless individual.

Of course there is latitude for such a law to be misused, but the courts are pretty good at distinguishing between wholesome intellectual debate and downright evil.

The latter does exist, and those who dont like the law, have to say how they would counter the occasional evil actions of others on the internet.

My guilt over my carbon footprint causes me emotional distress. I’m not sure if it rises to the level of “substantial”. Who decides? Me?

The Sanchez bill doesn’t seem to mention “harm”. Should we prohibit behavior which “could cause harm”, or limit ourselves to “did cause harm”? If the former, how likely? Who decides? Mann or Hansen? :)

Best,
Frank

Why create a new law when you could simply empower citizens with the capability to distinguish threats from non-threats and therefore look after themselves.