I dug out the name and story

I mentioned in the post the other day about California loyalty oaths that I remembered reading about someone who was able to get around it. Many professors had fought this loyalty oath since 1949 when the Regents imposed it. Even graduate students had to sign this oath.

I’m not sure if this is the one I remember but one was James Endres Howell , a molecular biologists at Berkeley. He explains the story here. As he states, it is hard to take it ‘freely’ when it is a condition of employment and could result in termination if not taken.

Another biologist discusses his run-in with he oath here. He got around the oath by finding a novel route to fund his graduate work.

And, you have to sign a new oath if you are re-employed after one year. It is like in that one year, you went and became disloyal but now retaking the oath will turn you loyal again.

The ironic thing is that to actually support and defend the Constitution would also mean fighting against the use of loyalty oaths as a requirement for employment. We fought a Revolution and created the Constitution partly so that Americans did not have to prove their loyalty to the State.

I just wonder what in the world they expect to do with someone who really is disloyal but signs the oath? What determines disloyalty? Has anyone ever been sent to prison for signing this oath and then being found disloyal? Would you get into trouble if you said “I think the 14th Amendment is garbage and needs to be changed?”

Do they really think that a real Communist infiltrator is going to see this oath and simply turn around? The only people this oath seems to trap are people of real conviction about its meaning, like Quakers.

Now if more courts just made sane rulings

Court Says It’s Okay To Secretly Record Conversation If Done For Legitimate Reasons
[Via Techdirt]

While there have been a lot of concerns lately about efforts to misuse “wiretapping” laws that forbid any recordings of people without their knowledge, it appears at least a few courts are recognizing how silly that is. Yet another court has now said that secretly recording a conversation — in this case with an iPhone — is okay, assuming there was no crime committed with the recording, and the recording was for a legitimate purpose. As the court noted:

“The defendant must have the intent to use the illicit recording to commit a tort of crime beyond the act of recording itself.”

That makes sense. The act of recording alone, shouldn’t be a criminal act, as it really depends on what is being done with the recording. And, in an age where not only is recording everything easier, but for some becoming standard, requiring permission to record all audio seems like an outdated concept.

[More]

Making a recording should not be a crime. Doing something unlawful with it should be. But if you have a legitimate purpose, it should be okay.

It is trivial now to use an iHone or iPad to record a business meeting. Under some states, anyone at the meeting could get the DA to charge the owner of the mobile device with a felony, resulting in large prison sentence. All for recording a meeting instead of taking hand notes.

Perhaps the courts will eventually catch up.

Using the iPad to help victims of Gulf Oil Spill

by southerntabitha

Apple’s revolutionary iPad assists poison control for BP oil spill victims
[Via MacDailyNews]

“The director of the Louisiana Poison Center is using an iPad to help manage patients poisoned by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,” Mitch Wagner reports for Computerworld.

“Mark Ryan, director of the Louisiana Poison Center, uses the $29.99 LogMeIn Ignition application on the iPad to log in remotely to his office PC, so he can use the center’s data collection application to coordinate planning with the U.S. Health Department,” Wagner reports. “The Poison Center forwards every report of oil-related poisoning to the Health Department, to help coordinate reacting to geographic clusters, and get early warning of emerging trends.”

[More]

Sometimes government employees can use new technology to speed things along. Here a state employee forwards information on to a Federal department, forwarding the report to the Feds within 15 minutes.

Using his 3G iPad, he can log into his desk from anywhere and download the information, using a $30 app called LogMein Ignition. ANd his eyes are doing so much better using the iPad rather than his iPhone.

See, the government can help, especially when Apple devices are used.

Wow, what a day

So I spent most of today getting my son a nice bed and all the little things that make living in a group house so much fun.

Then I get back to the hotel and find out that this post on study groups that I posted at 10 PM last night has one of my highest 24 hour hit counts.

I can see why for-profit sites want to discuss anything about Apple – the more controversial the better– if their hit rates increase like that.