"Amok," as I recall, comes from the Malay language and refers to the crazed disregard of danger exhibited by tribesmen in battle against British troops. The condition was attributed to the use of drugs. Maybe the word will experience a new freshet of usage, since it seems to describe certain types of wild behavior we've seen lately, for example, the guy who was shot in Florida while literally chewing another man's face off.
It's not just people who can run amok, though. Organizations can do it too. Today the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is bringing new charges against cyclist Lance Armstrong. I'm no particular fan[atic] of bicycle racing, but I do know that Armstrong has on numerous occasions been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, yet tests have consistently shown no signs of it. The USADA is a new accuser [of Armstrong], yet it just seems that they're out to persecute him. It bothers me that despite the history, they can preemptively ban him from current competition; it bothers me too, that the agency chooses to pursue this beyond the expiration of the statutory limitation, with the argument that more recent evidence still can be adduced to prove old charges. Whether or not the new investigation succeeds in incriminating Armstrong, when is enough enough?
Surely the efforts of NYC Mayor Bloomberg to ban extra-large soft drinks is another case. Whether or not a two-quart soda is good for you (and notwithstanding the smarmy protestations of the companies who make them, I think it's pretty certain it's NOT), most of us, surely, would say the mayor's fanaticism is outrunning his common sense. If people are dumb enough to buy such drinks, let them. Anyway, I'm sure the cup is jammed with ice, so that the actual soda in it amounts to no more than 4 ounces anyway.
Bloomberg's hubris represents a private/government blend. As an entrepreneur-turned-pol, shouldn't he have a better sense of some limits on government regulation? (Trick question: Generally private-sector tycoons seem to feel quite free to impose their personal foibles on their employees and even customers; it's just that we tend not to stigmatize them for that.)
The purely private sector isn't immune, either. I suggested once before that ICANN's plans to widely expand the available "top-level domains" for internet addresses (e.g., ".com," ",edu," .org" and similar) smacked of needless profiteering. What are we to make, then, of the latest announcement regarding plans to create, and sell, entire such superdomains (e.g., ".book," ".grocery," or ".inc")? It seems self-evident that the need for such broad domains disappears if a single company can "own" them. If Amazon acquires the ".book" TLD, doesn't it become a huge empty field with only Amazon parked in it? Or only those authors of which Amazon approves? I can't see anything but overreach here. If justice is truly sometimes poetic, perhaps we'll find that before these superdomains have produced much profit for ICANN (or Amazon), technology will have moved on to a completely different way of identifying web addresses.
Also being posted on Morning Fog.
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