Uncategorized

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The Societal Stigma of Sex Offender Registries

In response to Match.com’s recent implementation of sex-offender screening on its website, Tracy-Clark Flory wrote about why its proposed security measures would be ineffective. In a follow-up, she writes about why overly broad sex offender registries may further place a burden on those trying to recover:

Our registries desperately need to be reformed, and we could greatly benefit from better data about recidivism for different sex offense types — but that’s a much bigger task than simply screening on Match.com. On that front, maybe I am making perfect the enemy of good. Eliminating some high-risk predators from the online dating pool is better than nothing. Still, Match.com’s approach of banning all registered sex offenders — even those who are low-risk or who committed minor offenses — strikes me as unjust. In the case of Georgia, the site’s ban means restricting access to 95 percent of registered offenders who are not “clearly dangerous” and two-thirds who are low-risk. That seems an inept way to screen out men who pose a serious danger to women — especially when you consider that most assaults go unreported and most sex crimes are committed by those without a sex crime record.

The Misguided Attack on the Online Poker Industry

MSNBC has a horror story about poker players who’ve had thousands of dollars frozen due to recent federal action against online poker companies:

The government has blocked U.S. gamblers from logging on to the offshore sites, which are accused of tricking and bribing banks into processing billions of dollars in illegal profits. Now gamblers who dreamed of enormous prizes in Las Vegas, or even used online poker to make a living, can’t access online bankrolls that in some cases reach six figures

This war against the online poker companies is stupid in every respect. First of all, there’s the blatant hypocrisy of allowing actual, legalized gambling in the U.S., yet penalizing the online component. How can that possibly be justified, except out of some severely misguided sense of morality? Furthermore, there are billions worth of untapped revenue that the U.S. government could make simply by explicitly allowing online poker to operate in this country and then taxing the services.

The always-fascinating Nate Silver also has a great analysis of this issue at his NYTimes blog.

How One Man Transformed The Photography Industry

Steven Weiss has written a brief profile of David Hobby, the man whose blog, The Strobist, has changed the face of the photography industry. With the amount of information Hobby was able to dole out to amateurs, amateurs started taking pretty darn good photos on their own. The growing number of skilled photographers has had unforeseen effects on the industry:

[P]rofessionals who are outraged at photographers like Lam or at sites like iStockphoto miss the point. Neither Lam nor iStock would have had such an impact if their photography didn’t meet the market’s demand for quality. What’s diluting the market for elite photography is the transfer of professional skill to amateurs—the work David Hobby is doing. Though his blog is entirely about how to light photographs at a professional level, his reader surveys reveal that 86 percent of his readers are amateurs.

As someone who’s just breaking into professional photography myself, these words ring true. But they’re also indicative of the transformative power that the internet has across industries. Film critics can’t make $60,000 per year writing reviews anymore, because mouth-breathing yahoos like me are willing to do it for free, while thousands turn up to hear it.

In the days ahead, I’m going to plan on focusing this blog a bit more on my photography. I’ve just gotten enough gear to the point where I feel ready to shoot/cover any event, and I have some accessories coming in that I’m actually kind of excited about. Expect more photo sets, as well as reviews of cool photo products. As always, your constructive comments are appreciated.

Don’t worry: I’m going to keep sharing the cool links and attempt the full-length blog post every now and again, just as I’ve been doing for the past 5-6 months. But for the near future, photography will be one of my main focuses, and I’ll hope we can learn about this stuff together.

There Will Always Be Something Else Out There

Linda Holmes, on “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That You’re Going to Miss Almost Everything“:

It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

Faneuil Hall Street Performer Auditions, March 2011

I was able to attend and photograph the street performer auditions at Faneuil Hall this year. Dozens of hoping performers gathered here to compete for a chance to be an official street performer in front of popular Boston landmark/tourist trap Faneuil Hall. The rewards are great, but so is the danger. In particular, Bob at Large, the guy balancing on five cylinders, really took my breath away.

Drew Mcweeny’s Review of Thor

Drew McWeeny has published his review of Marvel’s upcoming Thor. In addition to being one of the first published reviews of the film, it also (as usual) contains some pretty smart insights about superhero films and film criticism in general:

[I]t’s both very funny and a nice humbling reminder that critics are defined by their overall diet of movies. We are only ever as good as the movies we are given to write about, and when I’m done with all of this in the future, will the sum total of my work be varying opinions about how well people crafted movies that primarily deal with dudes in funny costumes beating the hell out of each other?