The bottom line here is that the UK has nothing equivalent to US First Amendment protections. Freedom of speech is not considered a basic right in the UK legal system.
It also, in concept, is an imitation of what the nuclear pores do. Maybe the mitochondrial membrane is a better simile, because it maintains a charge gradient.
Thanks for noting this. I've driven a Prius since 2001, and I bought it because it was a SULEV. The gas milage is gravy. Turns out, it's also a great family car, and handles fully loaded trips up to the ski areas just fine.
There is, in my view as a neuroscientist, a basic flaw in the premise of rationality in individual economic decision-making. Preferences are not always rational, and several studies show that short-term gain almost always trumps long-term gain, even when the short-term gain will definitely decrease long-term gain.
For example, there was a neatly done study on preferences that showed that brief exposure to an image - too short for conscious recognition or memory - would result in that image being chosen as prefered by the subject as compared to a new image. (The test images were abstract black and white, symmetrical patterns.)
Another study using a bowl in which a dollar would appear each day, and the total dollar amount would be doubled at the end of the week if the dollar was not taken, showed that people will only slowly learn not to take the dollar each day. This is especially true if it involves cooperation with other people, when everyone has to not take the money for everyone to have the money doubled.
In the first case, there's no rational choice for the preference. In the second, the behavior is clearly irrational if the goal is larger gain. Advertisers have always exploited the first case.
Re:Challenges in translating scripts
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 1
I heard Mr. Gaiman speak to this at MIT a couple of years ago. The gist of it was that he spent the better part of a season with a videotape of the movie and a translation of the script. The challenge in part was to get all the points across in colloquial English using phrasing that matched the already animated mouth movements. Really, it was more of a technical problem than a writing assignment.
I can imagine how limiting that must feel as the writer, and the result, IMnvHO, was an efficient piece of craft that by necessity lacked the 'oomph' of Gaiman's usual artistry. I don't know how much room there could have been for his creative input, given the limitations.
It is noteworthy that he said he wouldn't take such an assignment again.
Immunity is exposed by infection. It isn't created out of thin air as needed.
While in some measure your statement has validity, it doesn't quite get the point.
In the creation of antibodies and other receptors in the immune system, cells literally rearrange their chromosomal DNA to create antibodies with different specificities. That means each cell has a different potential specificity. When the body gets exposed to a new pathogen, it probably has one or two cells that will make an antibody that can respond to it. If it does, it only has a very few cells that make appropriate antibodies -- in effect, at the moment of exposure, the body has no immunity, only the potential for immunity. Those cells have to be stimulated to reproduce and develop into specialized antibody factories before the body has anything sufficient to fight the infection. The immunity gets created based on existing potential.
Immunology works as a metaphor. The analogy in this case is the following:
A virus is released. Several people have the knowledge to patch the security hole exploited by the virus. The larger system of users does not become immune until those with the knowledge write and distribute the patch. The patch doesn't exist before the virus challenges it. It gets created out of existing potential.
The concerns about DDT use aren't from environmental "fears", but from demonstrated environmental catastrophe.
In the 1950s (iirc), the World Health Organization wanted to wipe out malaria in Borneo. They sprayed liberally with
DDT to kill the mosquitoes. The DDT also killed a parasitic wasp that laid its eggs in the caterpillar that ate the thatch
used for roofing. Without a predator, the caterpillar population grew, they ate their natural food, and the people's roofs fell. The WHO replaced
the thatch with tin roofs, and so all seemed well until the locals began to get typhoid and sylvatic plague.
It happened
like this:
Lizards ate the bugs laced with DDT.
Cats ate the lizards and were killed by the pesticide.
Without a
predator, the rat population grew, and the diseases spread.
That's right, the plague, brought to you by the World
Health Organization.
In order to get the rat population back in check, cartons of stray cats were dropped into Borneo by parachute.
I got carpal tunnel not so much from the computer as from other things I do in the lab. I'm a practical biochemist/molecular biologist finishing a PhD in neuroscience. When my right wrist started hurting, I trained myself to do many things left-handed. I've been dealing with CTS in stereo since 1996.
First important point: Not all repetetive strain is CTS. I cannot stress this enough. True CTS involves compression of the median nerve through the carpal tunnel which can be measured in changes in nerve conduction velocity and drops in the peak of the compound action potential. Subjectively this is felt not only as pain but as a loss of sensation and strength in specific fingers supplied by the median nerve(humb, first and middle, plus part of the ring).
Second important point: True CTS often doesn't go away. I finally complained to my doctor when after an 8 week absence from the keyboard and other laboratory techniques that gave me wrist pain the problems came back just as bad, the first day back in the lab.
Third important point: Not everyone can or will get CTS. Anatomy matters, as do other activities. Just because one person doesn't get it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all.
I'd love to be able to feel my hands all the time, but I can't. Same with opening jars.
I think there was a lot more to Jeri Ryan than the obvious. However, there's a piece of filk written at the time of the introduction of her character that sums up what you're saying.
Sung to the tune of Disney's "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast, "We Need Breasts" has some funny lines on the topic. My favorite:
"if you want the Neilsen rank up, put Kate Mulgrew in a tank top!"
IIRC, there's a good bit of web publishing going on in physics. Also, certain portions of Science magazine (the technical comments, usually serious critiques of published articles) and of the Journal of Neuroscience (the Rapid Communications, which are reviewed) are published exclusively on line.
The problem, though has to do with peer review. To be considered legitimate, at least in my field, having your work looked over by your peers is crucial. For one thing, they're not as close to the work. They often catch errors and suggest better experiments or controls. For another thing, when I read a reviewed journal article outside my specialization, I have more trust that someone within the specialty thinks the work is reasonable.
Someone brought up Pons and Flieshmann -- a classic case of publishing via the popular press without peer review. Direct web publishing carries similar problems.
Didn't anyone else notice that this is much like sampling, which is so prevalent in the music industry? The creative ethic is rather similar -- take a piece of work, use the elements you like, and create a whole different product.
It's not new, of course. People have been re-writing song lyrics for (literally) ages, and even Dead White Male classical composers used popular song as a basis for some works.
But this article is clearly preaching to the choir.
I don't really think it is. There are certainly plenty of folk who seem to react rather violently to the idea of rights as social constructs, or even to the idea of social constructs of reality. They like facts! and things you can crunch between your teeth. I tend to look at it in the following fashion, stealing a couple of phrases. First is this: Physics is what happens when you're not looking at it, whether or not your're looking at it. Second is this: Recall Neisser's dictum: Perception is where reality [physics] and cognition meet. Perception seems to be the stuff we actually work with and use for interacting.
I'd argue that d00dz are just as much creatures of a local reality consensus as the Britney-buying dupes. Both groups appear to me to be equally without critical thought. One likes Britney Spears in part because she's manufactured to be likeable. The other wants to steal software because they've misunderstood some cool-sounding line about how information wants to be free. One group conforms with the corporate-sponsored social norms, and the other conforms with the non-conformists.
I did not read Rusty's Op-Ed as a manifesto invitation to smash the State to get at this issue. He might advocate smashing one's own state of non-critical acceptance.
"I Will Fear No Evil"...is actually a feminist manifesto...
Oh, puhleeeze. I love Heinlein. I grew up reading him, but his women are wet dreams. Smart, funny, bright, daring, sexual (all Good Things), but ultimately serving the males.
Trust me, we're trying, but the hack is more than wiring. There are modulations at almost every connection, connections that change, changes in gene expression that alter connection properties, etc. etc.
Imagine trying to reverse-engineer a Soviet sub built in 2000 if you're in the 1920's. You'd have some clue about metallurgy and electronics, but the whole integrated circuit on a chip would be problematic. You'd have to invent scanning electron microscopes just to see what's there. We're still making better measuring tools for the brain, and integrating the data we have.
Sinister technology for brain hacking? It exists. Look no further than Madison Avenue or a Speilburg movie.
lost_it gave us a quick answer on what this means here, but I don't think that's what you're asking.
Mini molecular biology lesson:
chromosomal DNA is transcribed into RNA
the RNA is a mirror image of one strand of the duplex chromosomal DNA
RNA is spliced and modified before it leaves the nucleus of the cell
The spliced RNA is translated into a protein
These concepts are important because the gene is the whole piece of chromosomal DNA which contains all the information necessary for gene product expression. This includes control sequences which do not become part of the RNA, introns which are spliced out, and the information for splice variants. Coding sequences, which end up in the RNA, are mixed with non-coding sequences, which are spliced out. But different coding sequences can be spliced together, and one gene can actually produce several products based on how the RNA is spliced before translation. In some ways, proteins (gene products) are produced by fairly modular bits of genetic code.
In fact, most molecular biology (recombinant DNA) use does not involve changing the cDNA (and thus the protein product) so much as engineering ways to get the cDNA into a situation where protein can be made. That means giving it viral or bacterial expression control sequences.
What is generally called a gene in these discussions is not what I would call a gene. Instead, what is often patented is the complimentary DNA, or cDNA. cDNA is made by reverse-transcription, and is a copy of the spliced RNA, but is not the gene. The cDNA is generally patented, and biotech firms try to cover every possible use or version of it -- viral expression, gene therapy, recombinant protein production, etc. Technically these are synthetic products, made by human engineering and not found in nature. However, the techniques are now in the realm of the bloody obvious to anyone in the field, and what is patented are generally theoretical future applications using known technology.
That's the major bogusness in the whole realm. People can patent sequences which appear to be part of an expresed gene with no known function, based on some possible future benefit.
Actually, I tend to clump much of the (yes, farily meaningless) right wing with a more fascist ideology. I simply believe the outlook generally described as Right is fairly fascist, dressed up as something else in American culture. I hold this opinion based on interactions with my bible belt in-laws. They're all for democracy, as long as everyone believes and votes the way they do.
>It is ethically wrong to force someone to choose something
>because a majority or an enlightened elite believe it is the best thing for you.
I basically agree with this, but the trouble (and thus the need for debate, imo) lies in this quesiton: Where is the line between dictating what is good for you as an individual and what is good for us as a culture (and a species)? I don't think these lines are easily drawn, and I do not claim to have the answers.
Let's try this analogy. I'm perfectly happy to let my neighbor live in a pile of warm shit, if that is what makes him happy. However, if the runoff of his sewage contaminates my drinking water, I have a right to do something about it. That one goes into the "Your right to swing your fist ends at the beginning of my nose" box, doesn't it? The larger and more difficult issues around technolgy and its impact lie, imo, in figuring out where everybody's nose begins.
Yes, I posted my original response as a grump. However, it seems that debate on these issues is important. I won't work for anyone who wants to taste my pee, not because I use illegal drugs but because they can also determine whether I'm diabetic or pregnant. So your life insurance company quite rightly wants a blood test for AIDS, but what if they also decide to screen for propensities to cancer, etc.? This erosion of my privacy rights, my right against unreasonable search, goes away because it serves the free market. Because it is a private company, it is allowed. But companies are corporate entities, and entitled with free speech in terms of political donations. If a neighbor breaks into my house, even just to look around, it's illegal. Not if it's a company sniffing my genes and metabolism.
I think its interesting to call Katz a communist, a socialist, and a fascist, since these are not all the same thing. You have some validity in assuming the three systems could reach a similar endpoint of huge government data bases and stricter social controls. To me, however, it seems our supposed democracy has already moved that way. The "War On Drugs" has done more to erode the Bill of Rights than any sedition law.
As I read the article, Katz didn't say that we should embrace the technology, but that we should discuss the long-term implications of the technology before it is forced down our throats. That more cautious stance seems more in line with what you profess to want. He wants a broad-based ethical discussion (with the net as the New Jerusalem where this could happen), and not a decision by "elites."
However, you don't read it that way. I'm sure one of us has misinterpreted Katz, and we're each convinced it isn't us.
I'm not declaring that I get the point, but I seem to have a different response to this article.
It seems to me that Katz' point isn't so much to declare we should regulate and control new technologies. Instead, Katz' understated point is that given the wide-range of information exchange available on the internet, can we have more civic debate on these issues based on better mutual understanding?
New Jerusalem, indeed.
I like the ideal of the internet as a distributed version of the public square where ideas are exchanged. In many ways, it should be the ideal forum for discussion and consensus building on just such issues as Katz raises here. One might hope that a tech guy could talk to a farmer and each get some clue about how policies and technologies effect each other's lives, just to grab a random thought-example.
But that isn't what happens on the net, and it isn't usually what happens in a public square. People of like mind tend to band together and reinforce their own opinions. We ghetto-ize ourselves on line (even without push technology) in similar fashions.
Yes, there will always be the "should we, just because we can?" argument, just as there will always be the Darwinian response. The thing is -- and I think this thought lies behind much of Katz' writing -- how much we may be (culturally and materially) sacrificing our long-term survival for short-term gains?
Cool. Name calling rom Taufiq and Rand waving from the Dragoness.
Point is, imo, it is more likely that you'll hve to submit your blood samples, etc. under a right wing govt. than otherwise. For our own good. I can't tell you how many nice normal people think that suspending unreasonable search and seizure rights is okay in the name of the war on drugs.
Sure, it's been a Democratic administration behind Carnivore, but don't tell me Republicans don't want exactly the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Putting the turbines that far out to sea is too expensive, because of the depth, and I think the wind may be less reliable.
The bottom line here is that the UK has nothing equivalent to US First Amendment protections. Freedom of speech is not considered a basic right in the UK legal system.
Harvard isn't doing this out of the good of their own hearts. It's a federal mandate. One example is the NIH policy that now requires all articles produced from work funded by NIH to be available on-line to the public, free, within one year of publication. There's an article on it , the second one down on the top stories. Key line: "In accordance with federal law, the NIH now requires the submission of published articles resulting from NIH-funded research to PubMed Central." (emphasis mine) Journal copyright models are going to have to change, because to comply with the law, people will only be able to publish where they can then make the article public.
It also, in concept, is an imitation of what the nuclear pores do. Maybe the mitochondrial membrane is a better simile, because it maintains a charge gradient.
Thanks for noting this. I've driven a Prius since 2001, and I bought it because it was a SULEV. The gas milage is gravy. Turns out, it's also a great family car, and handles fully loaded trips up to the ski areas just fine.
For example, there was a neatly done study on preferences that showed that brief exposure to an image - too short for conscious recognition or memory - would result in that image being chosen as prefered by the subject as compared to a new image. (The test images were abstract black and white, symmetrical patterns.)
Another study using a bowl in which a dollar would appear each day, and the total dollar amount would be doubled at the end of the week if the dollar was not taken, showed that people will only slowly learn not to take the dollar each day. This is especially true if it involves cooperation with other people, when everyone has to not take the money for everyone to have the money doubled.
In the first case, there's no rational choice for the preference. In the second, the behavior is clearly irrational if the goal is larger gain. Advertisers have always exploited the first case.
And this is not new. I blogged about this a year ago.
I can imagine how limiting that must feel as the writer, and the result, IMnvHO, was an efficient piece of craft that by necessity lacked the 'oomph' of Gaiman's usual artistry. I don't know how much room there could have been for his creative input, given the limitations.
It is noteworthy that he said he wouldn't take such an assignment again.
While in some measure your statement has validity, it doesn't quite get the point.
In the creation of antibodies and other receptors in the immune system, cells literally rearrange their chromosomal DNA to create antibodies with different specificities. That means each cell has a different potential specificity. When the body gets exposed to a new pathogen, it probably has one or two cells that will make an antibody that can respond to it. If it does, it only has a very few cells that make appropriate antibodies -- in effect, at the moment of exposure, the body has no immunity, only the potential for immunity. Those cells have to be stimulated to reproduce and develop into specialized antibody factories before the body has anything sufficient to fight the infection. The immunity gets created based on existing potential.
Immunology works as a metaphor. The analogy in this case is the following:
A virus is released. Several people have the knowledge to patch the security hole exploited by the virus. The larger system of users does not become immune until those with the knowledge write and distribute the patch. The patch doesn't exist before the virus challenges it. It gets created out of existing potential.
In the 1950s (iirc), the World Health Organization wanted to wipe out malaria in Borneo. They sprayed liberally with DDT to kill the mosquitoes. The DDT also killed a parasitic wasp that laid its eggs in the caterpillar that ate the thatch used for roofing. Without a predator, the caterpillar population grew, they ate their natural food, and the people's roofs fell. The WHO replaced the thatch with tin roofs, and so all seemed well until the locals began to get typhoid and sylvatic plague.
It happened like this:
That's right, the plague, brought to you by the World Health Organization.
In order to get the rat population back in check, cartons of stray cats were dropped into Borneo by parachute.
First important point: Not all repetetive strain is CTS. I cannot stress this enough. True CTS involves compression of the median nerve through the carpal tunnel which can be measured in changes in nerve conduction velocity and drops in the peak of the compound action potential. Subjectively this is felt not only as pain but as a loss of sensation and strength in specific fingers supplied by the median nerve(humb, first and middle, plus part of the ring).
Second important point: True CTS often doesn't go away. I finally complained to my doctor when after an 8 week absence from the keyboard and other laboratory techniques that gave me wrist pain the problems came back just as bad, the first day back in the lab.
Third important point: Not everyone can or will get CTS. Anatomy matters, as do other activities. Just because one person doesn't get it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all.
I'd love to be able to feel my hands all the time, but I can't. Same with opening jars.
Sung to the tune of Disney's "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast, "We Need Breasts" has some funny lines on the topic. My favorite:
"if you want the Neilsen rank up,
put Kate Mulgrew in a tank top!"
The problem, though has to do with peer review. To be considered legitimate, at least in my field, having your work looked over by your peers is crucial. For one thing, they're not as close to the work. They often catch errors and suggest better experiments or controls. For another thing, when I read a reviewed journal article outside my specialization, I have more trust that someone within the specialty thinks the work is reasonable.
Someone brought up Pons and Flieshmann -- a classic case of publishing via the popular press without peer review. Direct web publishing carries similar problems.
Didn't anyone else notice that this is much like sampling, which is so prevalent in the music industry? The creative ethic is rather similar -- take a piece of work, use the elements you like, and create a whole different product.
It's not new, of course. People have been re-writing song lyrics for (literally) ages, and even Dead White Male classical composers used popular song as a basis for some works.
I don't really think it is. There are certainly plenty of folk who seem to react rather violently to the idea of rights as social constructs, or even to the idea of social constructs of reality. They like facts! and things you can crunch between your teeth. I tend to look at it in the following fashion, stealing a couple of phrases. First is this: Physics is what happens when you're not looking at it, whether or not your're looking at it. Second is this: Recall Neisser's dictum: Perception is where reality [physics] and cognition meet. Perception seems to be the stuff we actually work with and use for interacting.
I'd argue that d00dz are just as much creatures of a local reality consensus as the Britney-buying dupes. Both groups appear to me to be equally without critical thought. One likes Britney Spears in part because she's manufactured to be likeable. The other wants to steal software because they've misunderstood some cool-sounding line about how information wants to be free. One group conforms with the corporate-sponsored social norms, and the other conforms with the non-conformists.
I did not read Rusty's Op-Ed as a manifesto invitation to smash the State to get at this issue. He might advocate smashing one's own state of non-critical acceptance.
I would love to mod this up.
Not much, sorry to say. I'm at home working on my dissertation. At least I got my diary posted before this happened.
iGrrrl
Oh, puhleeeze. I love Heinlein. I grew up reading him, but his women are wet dreams. Smart, funny, bright, daring, sexual (all Good Things), but ultimately serving the males.
I am a neuroscientist...
Trust me, we're trying, but the hack is more than wiring. There are modulations at almost every connection, connections that change, changes in gene expression that alter connection properties, etc. etc.
Imagine trying to reverse-engineer a Soviet sub built in 2000 if you're in the 1920's. You'd have some clue about metallurgy and electronics, but the whole integrated circuit on a chip would be problematic. You'd have to invent scanning electron microscopes just to see what's there. We're still making better measuring tools for the brain, and integrating the data we have.
Sinister technology for brain hacking? It exists. Look no further than Madison Avenue or a Speilburg movie.
Mini molecular biology lesson:
These concepts are important because the gene is the whole piece of chromosomal DNA which contains all the information necessary for gene product expression. This includes control sequences which do not become part of the RNA, introns which are spliced out, and the information for splice variants. Coding sequences, which end up in the RNA, are mixed with non-coding sequences, which are spliced out. But different coding sequences can be spliced together, and one gene can actually produce several products based on how the RNA is spliced before translation. In some ways, proteins (gene products) are produced by fairly modular bits of genetic code.
In fact, most molecular biology (recombinant DNA) use does not involve changing the cDNA (and thus the protein product) so much as engineering ways to get the cDNA into a situation where protein can be made. That means giving it viral or bacterial expression control sequences.
What is generally called a gene in these discussions is not what I would call a gene. Instead, what is often patented is the complimentary DNA, or cDNA. cDNA is made by reverse-transcription, and is a copy of the spliced RNA, but is not the gene. The cDNA is generally patented, and biotech firms try to cover every possible use or version of it -- viral expression, gene therapy, recombinant protein production, etc. Technically these are synthetic products, made by human engineering and not found in nature. However, the techniques are now in the realm of the bloody obvious to anyone in the field, and what is patented are generally theoretical future applications using known technology.
That's the major bogusness in the whole realm. People can patent sequences which appear to be part of an expresed gene with no known function, based on some possible future benefit.
It's a good thing I have some red maples. Will I owe less for variagated varieties?
Of course he posted AC. He threatened treason and spoke sedition, for which he could be arrested and deported. He's angry, not stupid.
>It is ethically wrong to force someone to choose something
>because a majority or an enlightened elite believe it is the best thing for you.
I basically agree with this, but the trouble (and thus the need for debate, imo) lies in this quesiton: Where is the line between dictating what is good for you as an individual and what is good for us as a culture (and a species)? I don't think these lines are easily drawn, and I do not claim to have the answers.
Let's try this analogy. I'm perfectly happy to let my neighbor live in a pile of warm shit, if that is what makes him happy. However, if the runoff of his sewage contaminates my drinking water, I have a right to do something about it. That one goes into the "Your right to swing your fist ends at the beginning of my nose" box, doesn't it? The larger and more difficult issues around technolgy and its impact lie, imo, in figuring out where everybody's nose begins.
Yes, I posted my original response as a grump. However, it seems that debate on these issues is important. I won't work for anyone who wants to taste my pee, not because I use illegal drugs but because they can also determine whether I'm diabetic or pregnant. So your life insurance company quite rightly wants a blood test for AIDS, but what if they also decide to screen for propensities to cancer, etc.? This erosion of my privacy rights, my right against unreasonable search, goes away because it serves the free market. Because it is a private company, it is allowed. But companies are corporate entities, and entitled with free speech in terms of political donations. If a neighbor breaks into my house, even just to look around, it's illegal. Not if it's a company sniffing my genes and metabolism.
I think its interesting to call Katz a communist, a socialist, and a fascist, since these are not all the same thing. You have some validity in assuming the three systems could reach a similar endpoint of huge government data bases and stricter social controls. To me, however, it seems our supposed democracy has already moved that way. The "War On Drugs" has done more to erode the Bill of Rights than any sedition law.
As I read the article, Katz didn't say that we should embrace the technology, but that we should discuss the long-term implications of the technology before it is forced down our throats. That more cautious stance seems more in line with what you profess to want. He wants a broad-based ethical discussion (with the net as the New Jerusalem where this could happen), and not a decision by "elites."
However, you don't read it that way. I'm sure one of us has misinterpreted Katz, and we're each convinced it isn't us.
I'm not declaring that I get the point, but I seem to have a different response to this article.
It seems to me that Katz' point isn't so much to declare we should regulate and control new technologies. Instead, Katz' understated point is that given the wide-range of information exchange available on the internet, can we have more civic debate on these issues based on better mutual understanding?
New Jerusalem, indeed.
I like the ideal of the internet as a distributed version of the public square where ideas are exchanged. In many ways, it should be the ideal forum for discussion and consensus building on just such issues as Katz raises here. One might hope that a tech guy could talk to a farmer and each get some clue about how policies and technologies effect each other's lives, just to grab a random thought-example.
But that isn't what happens on the net, and it isn't usually what happens in a public square. People of like mind tend to band together and reinforce their own opinions. We ghetto-ize ourselves on line (even without push technology) in similar fashions.
Yes, there will always be the "should we, just because we can?" argument, just as there will always be the Darwinian response. The thing is -- and I think this thought lies behind much of Katz' writing -- how much we may be (culturally and materially) sacrificing our long-term survival for short-term gains?
Yes, this is pretty much the same old thing, and Phloighd is right about the money (and the Good, if I may) being in solutions.
But who has the impetus to look for solutions unless the conversation brings up the idea that the solutions need to be looked for?
Cool. Name calling rom Taufiq and Rand waving from the Dragoness.
Point is, imo, it is more likely that you'll hve to submit your blood samples, etc. under a right wing govt. than otherwise. For our own good. I can't tell you how many nice normal people think that suspending unreasonable search and seizure rights is okay in the name of the war on drugs.
Sure, it's been a Democratic administration behind Carnivore, but don't tell me Republicans don't want exactly the same thing.