Redstate

Posted at 9:27am on May 29, 2008 More Political Correctness from Google

The sacrifice of our soldiers gets buried

By blackhedd

Ok, so today is the anniversary of the first ascent to the summit of Mount Everest. (Now aren’t you glad you know that?) And of course Google commemorates the day with a special home-page graphic.

Now the same people kept a stony silence on Memorial Day. Their home page looked stubbornly and icily the way it does on every other normal day. Apparently our remembrance of the men and women who sacrificed for our freedom is not to be mentioned at Google.

So I thought, well, Google is international. Maybe they were trying to be sensitive about the fact that Memorial Day is a US holiday only. And also, many of the soldiers we celebrate died fighting people in other countries, who might not take kindly to being reminded of that fact.

So I looked around at a bunch of their international pages. Sure enough, every page in every country that I checked has the Everest graphic. Except China’s. Now the Chinese are very sensitive about almost anything you might say about them. Do you suppose they have funny feelings about Mount Everest, given that they lay political claim to the territory where the mountain is?

And Google is famous for accommodating the Chinese regime's evil record of human-rights abuses. (Go to google.cn and enter "Falun Gong," just for kicks.) So you think for once, Google might accommodate us and put up a Memorial Day graphic only on their US page? Nah.

Here's what I think happened: like a great many Americans these days, the people who run Google are very uncomfortable with the fact that America maintains a posture of military strength in the world.

And their discomfort blinds then to the fact that the personal freedoms they enjoy on a daily basis were purchased at a great price by brave men and women who deserve our recognition every day, not just once a year.

-Francis Cianfrocca ("blackhedd")

Posted in Culture | Google | memorial day — Comments (10)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:18am on Apr. 22, 2008 Googling Obama's Character

An Algorithm to Illuminate

By absentee

"The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."
- Sir Winston Churchill

One of the most important features of the Google search algorithm is how it uses links to rate content. In simplest terms, the more something is linked to for a particular type of content, the more weight the site carries in relation to that content. In other words, Google judges sites based on the company they keep. That's not a new concept to the world.

It's not a new concept in American politics, either. When it's your side being targeted for their relationships, you call it "guilt-by-association," when it's the other guy, you call it a question of character. In elections, all other considerations duly noted, such things matter. People remember the adage about judging a man by the company he keeps.

Like Google, voters examine link popularity. Much has been written and discussed about Obama's "links." Reverend Wright is the obvious example. Senator Clinton recently linked Senator Obama to Louis Farrakhan. George Stephanopoulos asked the Senator about his link with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. He's been linked with Electronic Intifada. He has many links to slum lord Tony Rezko. Obama has a lot of incoming links.

Yesterday, Erick posted about another link. This one is to Google and Obama advisor Larry Lessig. Larry thought it would be appropriate to show a video of a mostly nude, gay Jesus being hit by a bus to his crowd at Google. He also showed it previously at Linux World. As Erick rightly points out, there is a particularly nasty hypocrisy in Lessig and Google petitioning on net neutrality while using Google's undeniable power to determine what is and is not acceptable online to censor Malkin and promulgate gay Jesus.

Read on ...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Democrats | Google — Comments (34)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:00am on Apr. 21, 2008 Obama and Google's Mutual Adviser: Jesus is gay, wears a diaper, and gets run over

By Erick

Just the other day I posted about the Obama voters at the University of Washington. On their way home from an Obama rally they videotaped themselves ridiculing Christian voters and were kind enough to put it on the web.

Now comes word that Larry Lessig and Google really could care less that so many of us revere Jesus. This time the Lord is not in a jar of urine, but singing "I will survive" in a diaper before being run over by a bus. If you are really curious, you can watch this work of blasphemy here.

Though the Obama campaign is guarded in what connection Lessig has to the campaign, googling Obama's technology policy we can see that tech bloggers are widely under the impression that Obama consulted Lessig first. In fact, Lessig hosts the policy on his website.

Likewise, in his endorsement of Obama, Lessig admits they are friends and former colleagues. Lessig has also been on the campaign trail speaking on behalf of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama's campaign has regularly cited Lessig as a key supporter on technology issues (see here too) and made sure Lessig was quoted when listing Obama's technology endorsers.

Obama's campaign has also used Lessig to reach out to journalists writing about Obama's tech positions.

It's no secret that the Obama campaign does not want to be tied too directly to Lessig. In addition to happily showing off blasphemous images of Christ, Lessig is also known as a digital communist (read the linked article for the substance of why he's called that) Lessig believes there should be no such thing as intellectual property rights -- patents and copyrights should be tossed. Lessig's anti-property theories give businesses and a lot of regular folks the heebie-jeebies. After all, if the government can strip you of your intellectual property, why can't it take away your real property?

Just as importantly as advising Obama though, Lessig is an adviser to Google. And it was at a Google employee event that Lessig showed off a video of an effeminate Jesus who strips down to all but a loin cloth diaper singing "I Will Survive" until getting run over by a bus. Lessig acted bemused and surprised by the reaction of some saying, "This is a little bit touchy to some people. I don't get it, so just chill. The underlying message here is that Jesus does survive."

After the conclusion of the video Lessig says there's a sequel making clear Jesus had survived getting run over. You'd have thought that by the time Lessig showed his video to Google, he'd have reconsidered the Jesus clip considering the last time he'd shown it, people walked out.

You can hear the Google employees laughing.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Google | Jesus | Larry Lessig — Comments (125)/ Email this page » / Read More »