Blog-Like Short Opinions

• Israel: Negotiate about what? is the most lucid description of what is wrong with Israeli politics regarding the Palestinians. Let's hope that Obama pressures Natanyahu into giving in on these issues. The answers to the eternal crisis seem almost too obvious: It's time to disengage the two sides, and give the Palestinians what they deserve: a peaceful state. Why can't the West Bank PA orient itself more towards Jordan, and Jordan take over the role as a guarantor of a peaceful Palestinian state?
• Was building a liquid bomb feasible? Why is confiscating liquids in airports stupid, even if building a liquid bomb were possible? Even more funny, the TSA: The Things He Carried.
• Organ Shortages: We already have a priority system for organ recipients. Why not include in this priority whether someone was an organ donor (per his driver's license) in years past—and let's explain it to them at the time, too.
• Mark Kleiman's suggestion: DUI violators should not (just) lose their driver's license. They should lose their drinking license. Their driver's license should have a mark on it that prohibits vendors from selling them alcohol.
• Let's decriminalize personal drug possession. Maybe replace it with civil fines; maybe make it legal. There is no reason why we should want to stuff our jails with non-violent drug offenders. It's expensive, it destroys the lives of those who get the criminal record, and it has obviously been entirely ineffectual in stemming the drug epidemic. Instead, let us use the saved resources on going after the real criminals.
• Measures that increases the probability of catching the guilty while exonerating the innocent are good. Everyone should have a DNA fingerprint on file with the judiciary. In a crime in which DNA is recovered, the police can request a judicial warrant to search the data base for a match. Yes, it should require a judicial warrant. What could possibly be the harm to someone innocent to have given a DNA fingerprint?
• All politicians lie. However, the Bush/Cheney administration has exceeded their public allowance many, many times.
• Felony murder is unjust. it is a murder conviction in which the murderer may not have had any intent to do any bodily harm.
• The financial system collapse in 2008 had many superficial causes, but the large failure was the breakdown in corporate governance.
• Infiniti G35: Nice equipment, awful software.

  GPS:

  It is impossible to figure out how to alter a route to take a particular freeway, for example. It is very difficult to figure out how to name stored location-marks. Occasionally, the routing by the GPS is really awful.

  Music System:

  It is impossible to transfer MP3 files to the built-in music box. The ordering of songs on the flash card seems to be based on file transfer time. It is not alphabetical, and afaik cannot be changed. One can also not find a song while another is playing.

  Radar Safety:

  Why can't the darn car at least beep when it is on a clear collision course with an object? (For example, while I am looking down, the car ahead of me is suddenly breaking.) The radar to do so is already built-in and used for adaptive cruise control. It could simply be used for this second purposes.