Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

Child porn victims can never get full restitution

4/30/2014

“Amy,” whose real name remains hidden in court documents, described what it’s like to be an unwitting victim of child pornography because of her uncle:

“Every day of my life I live in constant fear that someone will see my pictures and recognize me and that I will be humiliated all over again. It hurts me to know someone is looking at them — at me — when I was just a little girl being abused for the camera. I did not choose to be there, but now I am

Cliven Bundy makes solutions to lands issues harder

4/29/2014

The vocabulary word for the day is “metonymy.”

Simply put, it describes a figure of speech in which a word that becomes associated with a thing is used in place of that thing. Wikipedia uses “Hollywood” as an example. Literally speaking, it is a city in California. But when people say “Hollywood,” they often are referring to the film industry, or to decadence in general, not to the city.

Utahns, and other people in the West, had better hope “Cliven Bundy” doesn’t become a metonym for legitimate issues involving public lands.
But it may be too late.

Bundy, whose battle against the Bureau of Land Management over where his cattle may graze in southern Nevada, has been a reminder of how the free spirit of many Westerners is always just a tossed cow pie or two from open rebellion against authority.

Predictions of the future often miss the obvious

4/23/2014

The future isn’t what it used to be.

Ask people to predict the future and chances are they jump right into science fiction, gadgets and remarkable new inventions. That’s no surprise. We’ve been conditioned that way … by a steady stream of remarkable new inventions, gadgets and science fiction.

But those things are fairly easy to see coming, even if we tend to get the details wrong. It’s the other trends, the ones we’re not

Utah's jailhouse hotels may be getting cheaper

4/22/2014

As hotels go, jails make for lousy accommodations. The food isn’t that great and the atmosphere is a bit too captivating. And the worst part is, even if you can’t pay the tab, no one is going to evict you.

All kidding aside, that last sentence has been elevated to some degree of importance in recent days because of a ruling by 2nd District Judge Michael Allphin. He ordered an end to Davis County’s practice of charging inmates $10 for every day they stay

Trying to understand why a mother would kill six babies

4/15/2014

The clinical term is neonaticide.

Beyond that antiseptic-sounding name, however, there is little to grant any comfort; little to explain; little to provide a clue as to how it could have been prevented.

For many along the Wasatch Front this week, questions have been swirling like the wind, and answers have been just as difficult to pin down.

How could someone neighbors describe as a great person, someone they let babysit their kids and who made cookies for them, be a monster who killed six of her newborn babies, which she reportedly carried in secrecy, and disposed of their bodies, along with a seventh allegedly stillborn, in boxes she kept in the garage?

This is just one of the questions surrounding the case of

Federal income tax — is this any way to fund government?

4/9/2014

A little more than 100 years ago, this gem appeared in the Chicago Tribune under a Washington dateline:

“After weeks of study of the complexities of the income tax law, treasury officials today issued a 90 page booklet, christened it, ‘Regulations No. 33,’ and sent it forth to collectors of internal revenue in the expectation that it will clear up many of the misunderstandings concerning the law which have arisen throughout the country."

Drones are one step ahead of governments

4/8/2014

You knew it was just a matter of time.

Earlier this month in Australia, a runner in a triathlon was hit in the head by drone that fell from the sky.

What’s worse, according to Cnet.com, is that the drone’s operator, who was trying to film the event, claims someone nearby hijacked the thing, possibly with a cell phone.

And there, in a nutshell, is the embodiment of the procedural, ethical and technological challenges facing the new world of flying things.

Utah has taken the first step toward bringing order to the brewing chaos in the skies. Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law last week that keeps police from using any “unmanned aerial vehicle” without a warrant. It also regulates the type of data a police department can collect and store from such vehicles and for how long.

It’s a good move, especially as police departments nationwide become more militant, but, as usual, the political process lags a bit behind what’s really going on out there.

Public ignorance leads to outbreak of old diseases

4/2/2014

You have to be of a certain age to remember what it was like when childhood diseases hovered in the air like fallout from a weapon of mass destruction.

Parents lived in constant fear that a simple trip to a public pool could end with a crippling polio infection. Measles was so common you were expected to contract it at some point, but hopefully late enough in childhood (after age 5 was best) to be able to withstand its fury.

Has the time come for Internet voting?

4/1/2014

Are we finally ready to begin choosing our political leaders on the Internet?

Is it time to do our civic duty in our pajamas? Will we at last be able to message our friends, watch a Youtube video and cast a ballot at the same time, trying hard not to accidentally “like” a presidential candidate and “vote” for “Charlie bit my finger,” instead of the other way around?

It’s been nearly 14 years since I first wrote about this. That was in the context of the 2000 presidential election, in which rooms full of Florida election judges tried to decide the fate of the presidency by examining punch cards that hadn’t been punched very well. At the time, I interviewed Scott Howell, a Democratic state senator who worked for IBM. He predicted Internet voting would be a reality within two years.

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