Assorted Afflatuses

By the end of this week the US House of Representatives will likely pass a non-binding resolution, which condemns the presidents so-called "Surge," yet supports the troops in Iraq. This does not seem like the action you would expect from a group of politicians dedicated to accomplishing something substantive in Washington.

The simple fact that the resolution does not bind the president, means that the resolution has no guaranteed effect on the nation's Iraq policy. And, as the president has expressed no interest in changing his course of action, it seems unlikely that it will have any effect at all. Furthermore, the resolution's message contradicts itself. It seems to me that you can either support the war and, by extension, the troops, or you can oppose the war and, by extension, not support the troops. Someone cannot take one piece of both positions and still maintain a well-supported position. Once again, the Democrats refuse to take a real position.

But the real problem with the resolution lies, not with the resolution itself, but rather, with the way in which the House plans to debate it. Most people believe that the House will spend this entire week discussing this pointless resolution. They could easily make more productive use of their time. In the first hundred hours of its existence the new Democratic House managed to pass several pieces of legislation that would implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, increase the minimum wage, provide Federal funding for stem-cell research, help reduce the cost of prescription drugs, cut interest rates on student loans and fund the development of alternative energy. With this resolution the house will spend over forty hours debating something, which amounts to nothing. It would be much more prudent to spend time debating something that might have a lasting impact on the country, like an initiative to modernize the nation's telecommunications infrastructure.

Hopefully, at least one presidential candidate will take a real position in the next election. I do not care whether he or she is a Republican or a Democrat and I do not care if the candidate changes his or her position, so long as the candidate has one.

On Tuesday I made my first foray into the world of online peer-to-peer file sharing. It was not pleasant. In fact, I now firmly believe that the MPAA, the RIAA and any other groups that represent copyright holders have no reason to worry about the so-called file sharing threat threat. The countless millions (or perhaps even billions) of dollars dispensed by such organizations to sue teenagers for downloading low-quality pre-release copies of Bring It On 3 would have been better spent trying to make better movies.

At any rate, I tried to download the first season of 24, which took an exceedingly long time. In fact, it took nearly three days of continuous, slow-moving downloading to put the 7.5 GB file onto my hard drive. By my calculations, it would only have taken about ten hours, had the download moved at the full speed of my DSL.

But the fund did not end there. When the download finally finished, I discovered that the file did not contain twenty-four episodes of 24, but rather twenty-two episodes of Gilmore Girls. I will admit that Gilmore Girls was not as insipid as I had imagined, however, it has a certain deficit of edginess.

I have no idea why the movie studios are trying to curb this illegal downloading. If my experience is typical, then anyone who tries it will probably arrive at the same conclusion: spend the $35 and download the season on iTunes.