Building a Better Metric

Net Energy -- A Useless, Misleading And Dangerous Metric, Says Expert - Science Daily

I hadn't realized the false assumption that the linguist concoction of 'fossil fuels' creates when compared to alternative fuels. What Professor Dale argues is, in essence, that we cannot lump all fossil fuels under a category of 'fossil fuels' since each different type of fuels provides a different level of energy. Petroleum provides a different amount of energy than coal or natural gas. So what Professor Dale proffers is a metric that measures how much an alternative fuel provides in service compared to a distinct type of fossil fuel.
The use of such a metric might make it easier to impose a national carbon tax as it would more accurately measure the amount of carbon produced by a particular type of fuel and tax it accordingly. The rhetoric employed against a carbon tax by the business industry would naturally argue that such alternative fuels like ethanol would, using the old metric, create more carbon in its production than normal fossil fuels. The goal then is to use a metric that is both true and useful to expose the linguistic lie of the old rhetoric.

The Fact of the Matter is...

The Trouble with Facts - Matt Yglesias

Yglesias does have a point here. The facts on the ground in Iraq can often support just about any conclusion you want to draw and such conclusions are decided long before such facts arise. Hence the trouble with facts. In and of themselves, facts have no actual value. It's the individual who gives facts their weight and value. Thus it's the individual's personal goals and biases that will determine how certain facts are considered in the larger picture. This is why you can still have some very smart people still support the war and have the facts to back them up. Once you pull back a little from the minutia of the war do you begin to see where everything is going.

Reflections on Violence

Rand v. Utilitarianism - Ezra Klein

I think what Klein misses here is the serious anti-positivist strain in Rand's philosophy. Moreover, I think Rand was attempting to construct a socio-economic policy around Nietzsche's philosophy, of which I think is misguided at best. Nietzsche argued against life-denying morals but he did not deny the need for selflessness. He only stated that when the whole aim of a morality was to deny the self then you miss out on the point of selflessness. Rand, however, seems to think that only by being entirely selfish can one attain a true morality. Fucking utopian thinkers.

Oculus Sinister

The Eyes Have It: What Do We See When We Look At Ads? - Science Daily

What I take from this is not highly concerned with the realm of advertising but with the realm of cultural production and epistemology. This kind of study tells us that the mindset of the reader plays as much into the creation of meaning and recognition as the mind of the author or artist. An ad man might not get what he wants out of an ad campaign simply because he misjudged his audience's goals when viewing his ads. On result might be the rise of more contextual ads, particularly for websites.

Hello Officer Kitty

To Punish Thai Police, a Hello Kitty Arm Band - NYT

I find this idea highly amusing yet very practical. Shaming police officers into behaving better isn't a bad thing. Indeed, I think it is important to remind police officers that they are there to serve the public and do not deserve special dispensation for minor infractions that most other people have to remain aware of. Yes, police officers have a difficult job and I applaud them for it. At the same time, I don't think just because you wear a badge that means you get to run lights and illegally park.

Machine Language and the Brain

How Dynamic Brain Networks Enable Object Recognition - Science Daily

I find it interesting that the brain throws together a temporary dynamic network in order to categorize both the familiar and unfamiliar. What I'd like to know is how temporary this network is and how any lasting effects might affect future object-recognition, particularly of the unfamiliar type.

The Idealism of a Stubbed Toe

Happy Birthday, Charles Fort! - David Pescovitz, BoingBoing.com

Glad to know that there were people still getting themselves involved in the Locke/Berkley debates a couple of centuries after the fact.

Death and Taxes

Re: Republican Alienation - Eric, The Daily Dish

There's an interesting debate going on between the guest bloggers (a liberal and a supply-side conservative) over the issue of taxation in the current political climate. While Eric (the liberal) is making a point concerning the Republican Party's illogical approach to taxation and deficit spending, Bruce Bartlett is arguing that most of the Republican Party no longer understands what low taxation looks like. It may seems as if the two agree but they differ seriously over the solution to the problem. Eric is concerned that whoever is in charge when the coming budget crisis hits will raise tax rates far beyond necessary and naturally wipe out any federal gains made through tax cuts. Bartlett fears the rise of the 'fair tax' people within the Republican Party as he views a national sales tax as seriously misguided and damaging. Instead, Bartlett offers the idea of a value-added tax (or VAT) in addition to a national income tax. Naturally, he argues that both taxes would need to remain low but he does make a persuasive (although I'm not entirely convinced) argument for the VAT. I would like to see lower income taxes for the middle class and I think simplifying corporate taxes and tax breaks would settle the revenue short fall. My biggest concern is that the shape of a VAT bill would not emerge as beneficial to the majority of Americans while still not solving the budget crisis. As Bartlett says, most of such talk right now is purely theoretical but I worry that such an ivory-tower attitude will not result in a feasible tax system when the budget crisis does hit. Still, the whole argument is quite fascinating.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Venezuela's four-legged mobile libraries

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Venezuela's four-legged mobile libraries

"A university in Venezuela is using a novel method to take books into remote communities and encourage people to read. As James Ingham reports, the scheme is proving a great success."

Sobriety Test at 150 Miles Up

Lit Up for Liftoff? - Charles Krauthammer, WaPo

For once, I actually agree with Krauthammer. This is a rare day indeed.

Free Arms!

M.I.A.: 190,000 Guns Given to Iraqi Forces - The Danger Room

Oh yeah, I'm just brimming with confidence over the whole 'freedom in the Middle East' thing. I think I'll go hit a cat now.

What's My Intent?

Defending Intentionalism - Neil the Ethical Werewolf, Ezra Klein

I think our dear ethical werewolf has missed something in his study of literary theory and the philosophy of language. I don't buy into the idea that authorial intent is the be-all, end-all of meaning. Neil takes the attitude that by examining the intent of the author one will find the correct meaning of a word, sentence, or even a whole text. The problem with such an attitude however, is that you don't always have the option of examining authorial intent, and indeed, the author's intent exists primarily within the mind of the author. No one will know what the meaning is until someone asks and then we begin the process of sorting it out from the author's remarks. Intentionalism strikes me as far too limiting as it has difficulty taking in the whole range of reality. Yes, authorial intent is important if one is attempting to deduce the real meaning of a text but that is not the only meaning available. Take one look at the competing interpretations of Nietzsche and you'll see how authorial intent tends to go by the wayside almost instantly. Meaning is contextual and language is a public act. In other words, meaning doesn't exist solely within the author. It takes a reader or a participant in a conversation for meaning to attach. The author uses a language who's meaning has already been generally decided on and fixed to a particular time and place. The language existed before the author so the only thing the author can do is provide new and different meanings for certain words or strings of words. But that meaning won't exist for anyone else until the author tells them, makes it explicit. Otherwise the reader is left to figure out the meaning for themselves. And what the reader relies upon is the contextual evidence, both within the text itself, within the reader's understanding of the author and within the wider culture at the time. Now most of the time the reader gets the meaning right but with more complex texts or intentionally obscure texts, the reader must begin the process of deciding what possible and probable meanings exist. Literature, and particularly poetry, is all about expanding the mind and creating events that would not exist in the everyday world and the everyday language. But the author cannot be there with every reader at the time the reader is reading. So, for the most part, the reader is on their own. So while the real and true meaning might exist only with the author, the meaning as understood by the wider world exists with the readers. Intentionalism misses that point rather blatantly.

Speed Metal and Euopean Politics

EU Talks To Thrash Out New Treaty - BBC

You know, sometimes the headline is better than the story. I can just imagine a bunch of stiff European diplomats gearing up with their amps, torn jean vests and pedal boards to wail on some AC/DC.

Indebtedness

Why I Don't Like Bill Richardson - Ezra Klein

I do have to agree with Klein here and say that a balanced-budget amendment is absolute horseshit. That said, I do think a bill or amendment along the lines of limiting deficits is a great idea. Deficits are a necessary evil of government spending. Even so, the skyrocketing deficits we have seen in the last decade are a mark of unreasonable spending with few of the benefits of such spending actually affecting the economy and improving the lot of the majority of Americans. Responsible people are able to figure out how to run their households every day. Why can't we take some of this knowhow and apply it to the federal budget? At the same time, deficit spending can have positive affects on the economy and the wellbeing of the people. What this calls for is a sense of balance between a tight budget and a deficit budget.

At the Speed of Thought

I've been watching the Ghost in the Shell series as of late and it has me wondering how some of the technology on display in the series would actually work in real life. What interests me the most is the idea of thought-driven net use. While the idea of using the interior of one's eyes or even hacking into the visual cortex of the brain itself is interesting enough, it's the idea of one's thoughts controlling everything from conversations to searches to what is displayed that fascinates me. For a mind like mine that, if one were to describe it, would look like a rabid squirrel in the park periodically falling into an epileptic seizure, a thought-driven net would have a hard time keeping up or even knowing what to do in the first place. This is what interests me about a thought-driven net. How does this kind of interface know when you are talking, when you are searching, when you are reading and when you are doing all three at once? Would every errant thought turn into a search or even cause one to call that person? Would every daydream become a rabbithole of information? And what of the servers and routers that hold all of this information once it does become a search or a conversation? When your thoughts themselves create an electronic paper trail is there the possibility of privacy? What happens to our sense of self?
A corollary question to this is how does a thought-driven net change the way we think? Given that we would necessarily have to change how we think in order to use a thought-driven net, what changes would we have to make? What commands would we need to access the net and how would those commands affect our conscious thoughts? How would we shape what we think about when we are both on the net and off?
It's a lot of questions with few answers at the moment. I don't know, I like the idea of a thought-driven net but I wonder about its effects on consciousness and identity.

Plastic Gods

Douglas Adams Lecture - BoingBoing

Below is my response to a question posed by a friend about this lecture by Douglas Adams in 1998. She recommended that I post it as is so I blame any murkiness or grammatical errors on her.

You have to remember that science in the old days conflated the questions of how and why into one. So while our scientists today focus only on the question of how things happen, the science of the old days attempted to answer why things were a certain way. So the old myths were the science of the day, god is in the rocks and the thunder and whatnot. The philosophers of old, like Aristotle, were also theologians and scientists. That's why most of Western science started with philosophy. But we've separated the questions which is why someone like Heidegger can ask why there is something instead of nothing without worrying too much about the science (physics) behind it. It's looking at information in a different way, not so much how does information move but why the information exists in the first place. If the fundamental element in the universe is information one does have to ask why this kind of information, or any kind of information at all. Moreover, what does nothingness entail, a complete lack of information? Because when we ascribe the quality of nothingness to something we are imparting some form of information. So true nothingness must necessarily have no information whatsoever. We use the term god to refer to something that exists outside of our logical realm, which is why the science of today cannot grapple with the question of whether god exists or not. It's a way of explaining the world in a full and meaningful way, even if it isn't true.

Novelty Items

I'd like to make a ring of metallic hydrogen.

Till the End of Time

White House Blocking Tillman Investigation - The Danger Room

I'd like to express the same sentiments as the fellows at the Danger Room about this news but honestly, nothing really surprises me about it.

All My Friends

The Melancholy Greatness of "All My Friends" - Hua Hsu, Slate.com

"All My Friends" is probably one of the best Cure songs I've ever heard. That might sound like a slam against the song but it isn't. The lyrics are what makes it. It's all tension and release, like a great night should be. But really it is a reflection on the attitude of the self-aware but not self-deprecating hipster. Love it.

Going Cable

Libby-Palooza - Andrew Sullivan

Sullivan's hopping mad about the Libby pardon. I don't think I've ever seen such a generally calm and reasonable man like Sullivan pull out the knives before. Loving it.

Urban Running

Parkour and Freerunning in the United States - NY Times

I first heard about this from a Warren Ellis comics naturally. The idea behind parkour is to move from one point in a urban area to another in the shortest time possible. That means using rooftops, stairwells, the tops of cars and just about anything that previously looked like an obstacle as a new means of getting across town. The urban runner's style is similar to that of a Brazilian form of fighting that looks more like a dance than a martial art. The whole system is fluid, rolling the body to match the terrain while maintaining forward momentum. If you look at Bruce Lee's style of fighting (which is what the Cowboy Bebop character Spike Spiegel's fighting style is based around) you'll see striking similarities. The whole concept is perfectly supermodern.

Terrorist Special Olympics

London Bombers = Beavis? - Danger Room

I do so love it when security experts ridicule would-be bombers for their ineptitude. There's something comforting in reminding oneself of the incredible stupidity of your average criminal.

Rules or Guidelines?

What Rule of Law? - Andrew Sullivan

Wow, Sullivan is pissed and I like it. I think part of his anger stems from his conservative roots while someone like me isn't all that surprised by the president's actions. So we have a president who doesn't respect the rule of law. And this is new and different how? Actions like the president's pardon of Scooter Libby are exactly the reason why impeachment exists. Problem is though, you have to go for a twofer in impeaching both the president and the vice-president, preferably the vice-president first. The likelihood of this happening isn't all that great however.

Chen-Gang

Quote of the Day - Andrew Sullivan
Honor Amongst Thieves - Matt Yglesias

So the president decided that Mr. Libby's conviction was 'excessive' and thus commuted it. I'd call shenanigans but I'd probably end up in a detention facility for my trouble. It's bunk and we know it's bunk. What's amusing to see is the reaction of the kool-aid right. Defend at all cost, spin no matter how fast you have to go. Part of the reason why President Bush commuted the conviction lies with his polling numbers. The hope is that his numbers among the base will stabilize. Pollster.com has the president at just under 30% so right now everything is on the table in terms of what the president might do. Yet I don't think the half-measure of commuting the sentence will fully succeed. Those in the rightist base who still wholeheartedly agree with the president might take offense to a simple commutation. At the same time, I think the metastasizing effect of a pardon will still occur despite the president only commuting the sentence. Those in the middle who are still on the fence will probably move further against this administration. Personally, I don't see any immediate serious effects but I have the feeling that nearer the end of his term the president will begin to feel the drop-off in support.

Philosophical Musings on Texting

I had a thought this morning while lying in bed and smoking a cigarette. I've seen studies that note the common tendency of people to misinterpret the meaning of words when sent via e-mail, text or various other forms of context-free communication. While I don't believe that such communication is entirely context-free I do think it gets as close as you can to it. Still, what popped into my head this morning stems from my understanding of Wittgenstein's 'meaning-as-use' theory of language and the advent of a culture increasingly based around highly contextless communication. Language is a public act wherein the meaning of words is conveyed in how the words are used in relation to the language-game being played. Much like how a deck of cards are used to play a variety of games with the game itself determining what the meaning of each card is, words are the cards of language. Meaning isn't attached until a word is used in public and that meaning is constantly negotiated. Puns are a perfect example of such negotiation.
Wittgenstein also did something else when he formulated the idea of language as a purely public act--he did away with the idea of a private language. In other words, a language you create in your head holds no meaning, no real meaning, until you use it to communicate with someone else. By making this proposition Wittgenstein overturned about four hundred years of metaphysics by turning on it's head the Cartesian statement, "I think, therefore I am." Descartes used that formula as a way of proving that his mind existed. But if language is a public act and a private language is impossible then the formula is illogical. That "I" of Descartes is a public "I", not a private one. Thus did Wittgenstein prove that other minds exist while removing the one proof that your mind exists.
So what the hell does any of this have to do with the texts and e-mails you get every day? Obviously if language is a public act then it makes sense for one to misinterpret this kind of contextless communication. Yet I think we may be on the verge of something new in our understanding of communication and other people's minds. In order to get the meaning of a text or an e-mail you need a deep understanding of the mind of the person sending the message. What I think is that through the use of this near-contextless communication we may actually develop a heightened sense of context in personal relationships. The required understanding of someone else's mind for text-based communication to work properly would revolutionize how we interact, the ways we express ourselves in our behaviors and convey meaning. The philosophy of language will have to adapt to incorporate the rise of this kind of contextless communication.

The Social Darwin Strikes Again

Two Were Doctors - Andrew Sullivan

What strikes me about the fact that two of the British bombers were doctors is how similar to the proto-fascists this starts to sound. One of the more famed proto-fascist writers, Georges Sorel, was a well-educated engineer turned social critic. Those who argue that the more soul-sucking aspects of modernity were the catalyst for fascism make the point that the fascist leaders came from middle-class backgrounds, were well-educated and generally respected in their fields. At the same time however, class issues became more apparent as the mobility engendered by such an education did not translate into a higher social status. Hence the struggle against modernity that marked fascist ideology. What this means for those who pick the path of the 'great' jihad against the West is that it is possible these well-educated Muslims living in the West have not found spiritual peace amongst the trappings of modernity. This is something we are all struggling with in the West, but fortunately most of us have not chosen a path of destruction as these bombers have.

What Goes On

Obama on a Roll - Andrew Sullivan

I think the basic question a lot of Democrats will have to ask themselves in the coming presidential election is whether they want Sen. Clinton as the Democratic nominee or if they want to win the presidency. I honestly have a hard time seeing how someone who inspires such a knee-jerk reaction in so many people can succeed in a national election. Sen. Clinton is in the same position as someone like Mitt Romney. Sure, they will carry the base if the base has no choice, but votes beyond the base will be hard to come by. Sen. Obama has the advantage of less negative associations while being a liberal Democrat through and through. I think what makes Sen. Obama so appealing to independents and disenchanted Republicans is his ability to state convictions. He's not afraid to voice his opinion, or at least something that looks like a genuine opinion. He has an aura of authenticity that is hard to beat.

Cost-Cutting in the Internet Age

There's a difference between pro-business and pro-corporation. The recent Supreme Court decision on wholesale prices clearly falls in the area of pro-corporation. By removing the price minimum ban on wholesalers, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a dramatic increase of prices for consumers. While I do not think that this will happen any time soon I do think you will start to see luxury goods rise in price as well as less necessary items. But to make it clear, the court decision allows for something that hasn't been allowed since the beginning of the last century. Wholesalers are now allowed to set a certain price minimum on their goods. In other words, a wholesaler can tell a retailer that they cannot sell the wholesaler's goods at less than a certain price. Wholesale prices are traditionally much less than retail, that's just the way it works. In the jewelry business we have the term 'triple keystone', meaning that retail prices are triple that of wholesale prices. With the recent rise of precious metal prices the wholesale price rose as well causing the retail price to rise correspondingly. That's the way it works between wholesale and retail. So any push by wholesalers to raise their minimum price will have an effect on the retailer, who is just as concerned with their profit margin as the wholesaler is. Unfortunately, the effect of the wholesaler focusing too much attention on their profit margin will cause the retailer to either raise their prices thus losing customers, or accept a smaller profit margin thus placing the business at risk of closing. Now for internet business the risk is smaller as they are able to reduce their costs through efficiency and coordination. But for the traditional small business owner with a storefront and inventory even a small increase of their wholesale goods can have a serious effect. What this means is that the place you buy your flowers, gas, picture frames, and knick-knack furniture all face the potential of devastating rises in their cost of doing business, which will in turn affect the customers. In other words, removing the price minimum ban is a terrible idea that benefits only the largest of retailers and the wholesalers. This is what I mean by pro-corporation.

Money often costs too much.

Money often costs too much. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because I like giving peanuts to the monkey(s) in Jordan's brain, I want to talk about today's Supreme Court decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products v . PSKS (06-480), which did away with the 96 year old antitrust precedent prohibiting minimum price setting between manufacturers and retailers, and what that means for the voting, consuming, and deeply in debt public...

It sounds like to me that the Court just permitted manufacturers to require that their goods be sold at a (presumably higher) minimum price, in order for a retailer to sell their product(s). Consumers have enjoyed antitrust protections, against this very behavior, in this country for almost a century. What is the Court doing? Why?

Is it because our politicians/lobbyists like to encourage consumer debt, credit card debts, bank and mortgage debt? Because those shackles tie us to our crappy service-industry jobs and crap wages, so that there's nothing for us to do but work 50 hour weeks and sit in front of our televisions, watching commercials for more $*&% to buy on credit, from the very same people who in essence are running our country?

Sounds like fascism to me...

I guess I was starting to have some sort of thought (or maybe I'm about to sneeze?), but due to the half gallon of dayquil i have consumed today, I'm afraid I'm about to go horizontal. I am interested to see if anyone (Jordan?) wants to comment here...

References
Bloomber.com
ScotusBlog.com
Money Cnn.com
Fool.com

Will v Cunningham

Setback for the Censors - George Will, WaPo

As an addendum to Emily's post on the recent Supreme Court case concerning campaign ads comes George Will, bastion of all things in old conservativism. Naturally, Will takes an opposing view, arguing that the McCain-Feingold bill suppresses free speech by preventing normal organized citizens from putting up a political ad when it was so close to an election. I'm going to cut in the middle of the Gordian knot here and say that both Will and Emily are right in a very distinct way. While Will does have a point that the McCain-Feingold bill does limit free speech when it comes to campaign advertising, I think Emily makes the more salient point about the influence of non-normal citizens in campaign advertising. Will is examining a very narrow circumstance of where the McCain-Feingold bill does not succeed in leveling the playing field of campaign finance. And yet, the larger point here is the continued assumption that money equals speech. If it is true that the Constitution bans any serious abridgment of our right to free and open speech as well as granting us equal opportunity (as it does in the 14th amendment) then one cannot say that money equals speech. Such a formulation defies the idea of equal access and opportunity. Simple because a group can raise the money to put up a campaign ad does not mean they have a greater right to speech than a group that cannot raise the money. It simply doesn't make sense in theory and makes absolutely no sense in practice.

Passion as Vitrol

"Take LeSage, for instance--my friend, my employer, my Rose of Madison Avenue. You think it was his ego that got him in television? Like hell it was! He has no ego any more--if ever he had one. He's split it up into hobbies. He has at least three hobbies that I know of--and they all have to do with a big, ten-thousand-dollar workroom in his basement, full of power tools and vises and God knows what else. Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies." Zooey Glass, Franny and Zooey.

I quote Salinger here not to bump my literary cred but to make a point about passions and the idea of following one's bliss. Most people here the phrase "follow your bliss" and think of some neo-mystic and all too fake guru promising enlightenment and happiness if you would just buy this book and associated dvds. Of course I take a different view. I wouldn't have said anything if I didn't think following my bliss was important. But the phrase is misunderstood. Salinger, through the voice of Zooey Glass, gets it though. Hobbies are excuses to avoid ever having to pursue your passions. As Joseph Campbell said (the originator of the phrase "follow your bliss") to pursue your passions is like walking on the edge of a sword. Yes, you may fail, you may fail horribly. But what else are you going to do? You can live like LeSage, filling your time with hobbies whenever you are off work. You can watch your television, play games, drink, practice yoga, meditation and martial arts. There are thousands of ways you can spend your time to keep the boredom at bay. But none of that, not a single one, matters if it doesn't push you along your chosen path.
Sometimes you need the trivial and banal. There's a sense of catharsis, of cleansing when you engage in activities that ultimately don't matter. Every action you take does not have to hold a purpose. Yet hobbies are an illusion of purposeful action. That's the trick of hobbies. The real ego can't allow for hobbies to distract. If what you purposefully do in your spare time does not build toward the realization of your bliss then you are simply masturbating. And as masturbation is compared to sex, hobbies grant only a brief reprieve from the emotional need to purse something, anything.
I don't believe that we are born with a purpose, at least not all of us. Existence itself is not a purpose. And I also believe that we get the life we have right now only once. Whatever happens after we die we get this life just once. So if we are not intrinsically imbued with a purpose and we only get this existence once then why not do something with it? We get to choose our own purpose and we damn well better choose a purpose that makes us happy. Yes, not all of us get to fulfill our chosen purpose, not all of us get to be happy. That's life, so be it. But to surrender yourself to the soul-sucking experience of hobbies, never making the attempt to follow your bliss at all? I can't handle that.
Don't aspire for anything and don't aspire to be anything. You are either doing it or you are not. If the entirety of your existence is based around the jobs you have and your life is based around the time that you are not at your job and not sleeping then what the hell are you doing? As I said, hobbies are an excuse. They are a blatant attempt to run as fast as you can from acknowledging that you are wasting your fucking time.

Your Money or Your Vote

To comment on Miss Information's post below on the recent Supreme Court rulings, I want to note that one of the biggest mistakes the court has made in the last few decades was ruling that money equals speech. Any effort to reform campaign finance is going to run against this idea. I personally don't believe that money equals speech primarily on the basis that free speech is inherently about the equal access to speech. Yet for the vast majority of Americans we do not have the monies necessary to put up a political ad, provide serious funding to a political candidate or buy the services of a lobbyist to argue our case to a representative. While we do have our ability to vote and make our voices heard through polling we have little recourse beyond that. Unless we actively organize every time an issue of concern to us arose we have little chance of affecting the votes of our representatives. For a lot of people, myself included, such constant protesting is unfeasible and unrealistic, which the more cynical representatives count on.
Such is not the case for corporations, particularly those that have an agenda that requires the services of a representative or senator. Corporations, with their large piles of liquid cash, can easily buy air time to run political ads, offer large campaign contributions or hire a literal army of lobbyists to push their wants and desires before Congress. To make the argument that money equals speech is to say that some people or organizations have more access to speech than others. More importantly, those with more money have greater access to speech and thus have a greater chance of having their voice heard. This is not to argue that there is some grand corporate conspiracy to lock out the voice of the average American (although that is entirely possible) but simply to point out the logical inconsistency between our Constitutionally protected ideas and how the Supreme Court shapes the limits of those ideas. I think that such rulings as money equals speech run counter to our idea of equal opportunity and access, allowing corporations to hold greater rights than that of the individual. This is a fundamental flaw that I do not see going away until the composition of the court changes, and not just in a left/right division.

money, so they say…

Jordan Jordan threatened my kneecaps with a tire iron so I have agreed to guest-blog on this fine syndicated publication, The Oddity Odyssey. I also do something like blogging over at Miss Information. All of it’s true, none of it’s relevant.

Since I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse gladly agreed to blog on the interplay between corporations and politics in the US, I’d like to begin with a rant on the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life and McCain v. Wisconsin Right to Life, 06-969 (full-text .pdf of decision is here).

There is one phrase in the majority opinion that I’d like to briefly discuss, in which Justice Roberts, writing for the court, rules that only those advertisements that are paid for by corporations during the pre-election period and are “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate” may be kept off the air. I’m still reviewing the entire decision, but this makes me wonder – shouldn’t any platform issue, political issue, etc. be construed as an appeal for a particular candidate? I mean, arent we supposed to understand what these candidates represent, what they stand for and shouldnt it be blatantly obvious to any “reasonable” person which candidate(s) these corporations’ monies are promoting in an advertisement?

Are we so blind that we really do not see the corporations behind the curtain?

Apparently so, and it would seem that the Supreme Court would like to keep it that way by continuing to find exceptions and protections for financial contributions to campaigns by corporations and private interests. With this "free speech" decision, the Court has continued it's trend and handed our government to private interests and corporations, on a silver platter, then called it a constitutional right!

As usual, John Stewart puts it well...

Guest-Blogging, Or Why We Matter

For the next week I have invited a friend of mine, Emily Cunningham, to guest-blog about the nexus of politics and corporations. Actually, there's a bet I plan to win, but you get the idea. She's almost as opinionated as I am and has a tendency to take unusual and intriguing views. When I first proposed the idea to her she immediately grasped on a plan to write about the influence of corporations in modern politics, something that I have thus far neglected. I will continue to blog as I normally do (i.e., erratically and rant-like) and any comments I have about Emily's posts will appear as separate posts with links to the commented posts. I hope to keep her around for the occasional specialty of the week but for the moment we will see what kind of brilliance she can put on for us. So welcome, Emily.

Power Lying in the Streets

Rioting in Iran - Andrew Sullivan

Comforting news for the revolutionary in me. There are enough dissidents in Iran to overthrow the regime. The problem is getting them to act in unison. Here's to hoping...

Black Devil Disco Club

Black Devil Disco Club - Pitchfork

I found a track by this group on Hot Chip's DJ Kicks comp that I purchases Saturday. Spent as much time as I could tracking down tracks by this group and another defunct group called Gramme. While the track "Like U" by Gramme is brilliant in it's strangely prescient electro-rock stylings, it's the back story behind Black Devil Disco Club that gets me. The music is excellent, whether it was done in 1979 as is claimed or done in the last five years. Supposedly, the original e.p. was kept secret for nearly twenty years until dug up by one of the guys from the Chemical Brothers and sampled in one of their tracks. After seeing a series of vinyl pressings, the tracks finally hit last year in the form of a six-song e.p. It's all a big mystery really, which only add to the haunted aura of the music, stripped down (or futuristic depending on your time frame) and the production is actually pretty good for what is supposed to be a self-produced, small-time act. Any fan of the Knife (of which I have only a partial liking) should listen to this group and hunt down as many tracks as you can. I love it, I love the story and I love the way the name rolls off your tongue. Bands should have names like this more often. It points you in a direction and kicks you when you look.

The Meditative Mind

Meditate...to Concentrate - Science Blog

And twice in one day we have an article that promotes the benefits of meditation.

Intelligent Design Not So Intelligent

UK Gov boots intelligent design back into 'religious' margins - The Register

The greatest obstacle intelligent design faced in gaining acceptance is the ability to test it. The whole 'black box' aspect of intelligent design is the kicker. It's not that you can't falsify results. It's that you can't even explain the process fully. While the current Darwinist iteration of evolution doesn't explain everything the fact remains that one day either it will explain everything about evolution or a new theory will come along to explain more. Intelligent design does offer a full and robust explanation but the problem is you can't examine all the steps. There are moments in the process where you simply say, "the intelligent designer did it," and leave it at that. That's not science as it is traditionally understood and practiced. You have to explain everything and every step along the way. That was intelligent design's failure.

Mindfulness

Putting feelings into words produces therapeutic effects in the brain - Science Blog

All along I've been touting the benefits of meditation and here we have a scientific study proving me right once again. The point of mindful meditation is not to arrive at a solution to a problem but merely to examine a particular aspect of yourself, whether physical or psychological. Putting words to a psychological state is important as it allows you to place it in the realm of logic. Language is inherently logical, which is why it cannot capture everything about the world, yet it does provide us a means to express things about the world. Psychological states are all the more troublesome for language as language only works in public. If you simply exist with your emotions without expressing them then you only have a tacit understanding of those emotions. Once you place those emotions in the public space by putting them to words you have a frame of reference that allows you to examine and understand the emotions. When I meditate I will move from focus on breathing to a particular issue in my mind, whether as banal as politics or as personal as who I am. I'm not looking for answers, simply the effort to concentrate on a particular topic. I tend to feel clear-minded afterwards, even if it's only a ten-minute session. I've actually gone two hours before, which was a bit of a mind-bender.

Conscription

Serving the Servants - Matt Yglesias

Unlike Mr. Yglesias, I think we are coming to a point in our history where a form of conscription is almost necessary. But like Matt, I do think that we need to expand the idea of what conscription would include. Yet the way I think of it is not in terms of rebuilding our armed forces or providing enough bodies for agencies like Child Protective Services and homeland security. I think of it as a means of adjusting the country's attitude toward college and the expectations of our post-grade school teens and twenty-somethings. I believe we should have a 'gap year' between high school and college where teens are allowed to experience the world in a non-academic fashion. I also believe that conscription would take a mass of teens and give them a sense of what is possible for their lives. Conscription does not have to focus solely on military service. Instead we could easily fill the ranks of civil organizations and agencies that commonly suffer from understaffing. CPS is a glaring example of where we need far more people than we get, even if those people are there just to do office work. Police forces, border patrols, emergency services, there's a whole host of public service jobs out there that desperately need more people. Sure, there's a good portion of the conscription classes that would opt for military services, but with a population of our size we would still have plenty of teens left over to fill the ranks of civil service.
I would not be opposed to putting my future children through conscription, nor am I opposed to doing it myself. Say two years for military service or four years for civil service. Such an arrangement would put a lot of post-high school kids in college when they are around 21 to 23. It will have put them through an experience where they must display responsibility right after spending a year without any serious responsibility. It would raise the value of a high school education since a good number of kids wouldn't go on to college afterwards while providing those who do go on to college with the money and attitude to make it through successfully. Certainly there are those kids who will not do well in conscription, just as there are kids who don't do well in college or life in general. We can do what we can for them but at some point either they get it or they don't. But still, I think that conscription would offer the post-high school kids with an opportunity to get their feet wet without pushing them into the world defenseless and unprepared. Particularly for those kids who don't go on to college and never intended to, conscription would offer them the chance to learn about the possibilities. I like the idea and I think there are practical ways of implementing it, even in today's political climate.

The Soul of Drugs

Pharoahe Monch: Desire - Pitchfork

I don't agree with everything Kanye West says nor do I think he is as great as he thinks he is. Still, there's something to be said for socially relevant hip-hop in today's world. Monch seems to believe in the same ideals as someone like Common does. I know it isn't pop rap but I do think that the more artists like Common, Pharoahe and the Roots promote a social conscious the more rap listeners will pay attention. To shift the culture of hip-hop away from the glorification of drugs, sex and money will take as much time and effort as it did with rock. Today we have rock artists who write in a far greater range than previous, but that came after the Rolling Stones, Iggy and the Stooges, Bon Jovi and Oasis. Even still we have acts that romanticize the rock-n-roll lifestyle but it's done in a far more self-conscious fashion. Hip hop will get there too and artists like Kanye will help bring it there. And the thing is, we still need that dirtiness romanticized drug use, sex and money provides for catharsis and to remind us what is possible and the repercussions of such activities.

Recording the Falsehoods

A Law Unto Himself - Andrew Sullivan

It's unsurprising that Vice President Cheney has taken it upon himself to expand the powers of the executive branch but the argument that neither the president or the vice president belong to the executive branch belies a fundamental misunderstanding of our system. I don't honestly believe that VP Cheney does not know which branch of government he belongs to. Of course he does, but that he is willing to make such an argument is all the more frightening with that knowledge. I sincerely doubt that VP Cheney will take this as far as it can go since impeachment becomes an all too real option but he does want to stall as long as possible. If no new law or court ruling is made about the matter of executive branch papers then other presidents in the future still have the option of making this argument. Unless the argument is knocked down in court or through legislation then the informal assumption of presidential prerogative remains. I do believe in the necessity of keeping some information away from the public for the sake of clear advice and national security. At the same time, I do believe that maintaining records is necessary for later scholars to pour over and examine.

Obscure R.E.M. Reference

My mind is powered by love and anger. I have yet to figure out how to use love.
I'm right and you're wrong so shut up and listen.
Peoples is Peoples.
Society and the individual both run on inertia.
Politics is morality without morality.
Everything is connected and that is entirely irrelevant to the point.
Information is the fundamental element of the world.
Seven Kings ruled Rome and we know next to nothing about them.
I like puppies, but I like kittens more.
Books are my shelter and my weapon.
Time is optional.
I'm not going to dumb myself down. I'm going to raise you up.
Great things happen because we say they happen.
History free of bias is impossible, but history free of facts is all too real.
The body must remain as fit as the mind for both to work properly.
Objective advice means seeing the subjective mind.
I like to smoke and stare at things. Sometimes what I stare at bursts into flames.
Anti-depressants are the only thing keeping me from serious, unconscionable acts of violence.
The physical universe makes no sense, which makes absolute sense.
The rebel is preferable to the revolutionary.
Nietzsche is Nietzsche.
I am not deep and profound. I am simple and clear.
The agony of love is only one part of the experience.
You only get this life once so you might as well be happy.
I frequently experience déjà vu.
Man is a social animal who doesn't play well with others.
Blogs are the coffeehouses of the 21st century. I'm waiting for the Even-More-Glorious Revolution.
The electric gods of the 19th century will come back for us.
The nuclear gods of the 20th century are in our closets.
I always have something important to say before I speak.

The Average of the Average

President Bush's Approval Numbers - Pollster.com

Now I'm not one to kick a man when he's down (actually, I am but let's pretend for a moment, shall we?) but with the president now hovering around 31% one has to wonder what he will do? How can a president who relentlessly pursues a course of action that has steadily grown unpopular turn around his fortunes? The problem is that President Bush is in what the chess masters call a zugzwang, or a position from which there is no obvious solution. Of course, there always is but it takes a calculating mind to realize what kind of sacrifices are necessary to save yourself. Trouble is, President Bush would have to realize that he is in a zugzwang first before he can begin to come up with a solution.

Water Shields

Liquid Armor: From "Urban Legend" to Real Defense? - The Danger Room

Well, don't know about the guys at Wired but when I think of water as a defense against bullets and shrapnel I think of the Mythbusters episode that tested just this question. What they found was that the faster a bullet flies the more energy is absorbed by water on impact. I don't know if the system these soldiers have rigged up will work but in theory it should.

Personalization

The Book Inscriptions Project

This is amazingly cool. There's something about book inscriptions that transforms an otherwise unremarkable object into something incredibly personal. That we now have a web site that collects such inscriptions I think will become a huge resource for historians, sociologists and literary critics. It's not so much what you have in your library (while it is important) it also matter who gave you a particular book. There are a lot of questions one can ask of inscriptions and a lot of answers one can glean from the inscriptions.

Desert Mind and Nothing Else

'Learning and Growing' in Jail, Hilton Drops Plans to Appeal - WaPo

The thing I don't think most people realize about Paris Hilton's imprisonment is that she's stuck in isolation for the majority of the day. And by majority I mean nearly 23 hours a day. This is what I would call the 'penitence' of a penitentiary. Being left alone like that, for someone who generally has the mental appearance of the Sahara desert, is probably a new kind of hell. Nothing but the four walls, the door, the bed, the toilet and your thoughts. After the two thousandth time of looking over the items in your room you have nothing left but your thoughts. Every single random thought, little thought, big thought, crazy thought, all of it, running together constantly. Yes, meditation would offer some relief but for the untrained mind it's not much. I would not be surprised if Hilton does experience a sort of transformation during her 40-days in the desert experience. Whether it lasts I don't know but this kind of punishment for someone who relies on constant contact with the world is spot on.

Prosperity My Ass

Democrat's Prosperity Problem - George Will, WaPo

This is bunk, absolute bunk. Will talks about the growing wealth in the country when I can see every day that isn't true. My parents have seen the last few years of tepid income as have the rest of the merchants in the shopping plaza where their store is. It's not that the economy has tanked but the fact remains we're still drawing in mid-90s gross income while we have seen our inventory costs rise. The doubling of gold and platinum prices have caused all sorts of problems for them. While I agree that the tax system is fundamentally broken I don't agree for the same reasons nor to I want the same solutions that Will does. I think instead we need to see a serious effort to simplify taxes while easing the tax burden on the middle class. This means increasing taxes on the rich. This also means flattening out the tax curve, particularly for corporations, as the gift of tax breaks for businesses has led to corporations counting on such breaks. I think it would prove amazingly beneficial if we could remove the majority of tax breaks on businesses while lowering the corporate tax, thus providing the benefits of lower taxes for all. The problem is when you start messing with the tax code you run into the problem of a) powerful corporate interests; and b) the difficulty of providing the same tax revenue to the government while lowering taxes as much as possible. Now I think we could come up with a fairer tax system, even with the current political climate, but I sincerely doubt that such a system would even make it out of committee.

Paper Sounds

Interactive Paper Sounds Exciting - New Scientist

I highly approve of this development. Imagine a newspaper made of this material that announced instant updates. Of course, what this might lead to is a cacophonous noise on the subway, beyond the old woman proclaiming the power of Christ and her need for a few bucks.

Goodbye Kitty

Hello Kitty in NEC's lap - L'Inq

'A' for effort and all that. Still, NEC needs, you know, actual women on their marketing staff or else they're not going to get anywhere. This kind of marketing isn't all that productive if you want to entice the twenty-something female into spending her 'less-than-a-man's-wage' on their products.

A Novel Ecstacy

Historical Edition - Bookporn

Oh god, I love this far too much for my own good. Why can't we have more people like this in the world?

iHate

An iPhone Waiter - Ars Technica

This I find amazingly cool in a strange sort of way. I mean really, waiting in line for an iPhone? Yes, I know it will become the coolest phone on the face of the planet when it's released. And yes, I'd like one too. But unlike the Wii or the Playstation 3, you only have some many things you can do with a phone. A music player? A photo viewer? Mobile net and e-mail access? Yes these are great items but I'm not sure that I'd want to wait in line for something like this. I'm an early adopter but the effort one has to put into being on the bleeding edge of tech ownership is too much for me. For an item that is supposed to make my life easier I don't think expending a great deal of energy to acquire said item really makes all that much sense.

An iPhone Waiter - Ars Technica

This I find amazingly cool in a strange sort of way. I mean really, waiting in line for an i

Weird Converter

Weird Converter


I think my mind just broke a little.

Stealth Cats and their Calls

Mobile Phones Attract Leopards - L'Inq

Oh god, I just had the best image of some rich white girl answering her phone in a store and then getting ambushed by giant cats. I'm going to laugh about that for a few days now.

Lindy Hop

Blame It On the Boogie - Andrew Sullivan
Lindy Hop - Wikipedia

I didn't know about Lindy Hop until the name-drop in one of Sullivan's posts (hence the wiki link). What I find amusing is that one of the more well-known lindy hop groups was in A Day at the Races, which is one of my favorite Marx Brothers movies ("No, you sap!"). I remember reading about Latin American dance and music styles and their deep connection to Africa through the slave trade. Tango and salsa are two kinds of dances that are intimately tied to Africa through the meeting of slaves late at night and during festivals to dance their old god dances. This is the kind of 'real' dance and music that interests me so much. While I love my polished and produced music, there's something about the rawness of this kind of music that you can't find anywhere else.

Particle Man

Why the Rumored Discovery of the Higgs Boson is Bad News for Particle Physics - Slate

I like the fact that scientists hope the $8 billion the EU is spending on the Large Hadron Collider doesn't produce any results. While the thought of the failure of the LHC resulting in a new particle accelerator the size of the solar system fills me with sci-fi glee, I do hope the LHC does find something. Whether it actually fills in the final element of the standard model is not my concern. Strangely, I actually find myself partially siding with the scientists who say that they hope the LHC finds something new or different. Breaking old theories is rather exciting because it means the start of something completely new. The shift in consciousness that such a break in theory would produce is incredibly enticing.

St. George Preserve Me

And thus ends another really shitty May. When I rule the West, I'm tossing out May from the calendar. From then on it will be know as Chaos Month where civilization closes up shop until the storms of the gods pass.

Rayguns for the Homeless

Handmade Steampunk Rayguns from the F/X Guys at Weta - Wired

One of these days I'm going to build myself a gun that shoots time.

Atomic Kitty

CIA Recruited Wireless Cat to Spy on Russians - L'Inq

I want one of these. I could take over a city with nothing but cats. Now if only I could use my cat to check my e-mail.

The Infancy of the Stars

Baby Stars Hatching in Orion's Head - Science Blog

Just the words alone have this beautiful ring to them--"baby stars hatching in Orion's head." It sounds perfectly mythological, like Athena and Zeus. It's stories like this one that inspire comic and sci-fi writers. You have new beings erupting into existence through pressure. You have a demi-god birthing the bringers of life out of his own head. New suns in their infancy, waiting to move into adulthood and gain their own planetary systems.

Hungry

I'm going to eat the world.

11 New Senses

Mixed Feelings - Wired

Grant Morrison wrote a fifth-week event for DC called DC One Million, wherein the characters from a supposed 'one millionth' issue of the series interacted with contemporary characters. What was so interesting though wasn't the characters themselves but the telling of new senses opening up to the human mind some eighty thousand years in the future. I've tried to think about what a new sense would be like but I keep translating any thought into an existing sense. What I try to do is nigh impossible for the human mind, to imagine something that has no previous frame of reference. We have trouble imagining a new sense because we rework any data of such a new sense into the framework of our old ones. How do you explain vision to a blind person, or sound to a deaf person? It's outside of their basic knowledge. They can only interpret that kind of information through their existing senses. But just imagine that there is phenomena out there which we can't sense right now but could in the future. God I love this stuff.

Seeing Red

Ceiling Height Can Affect How a Person Thinks, Feels, Acts - Science Daily

I have ten foot ceilings in my house and lots of windows in my room specifically. I like a lot of open space and my mind tends to think that way as well. To top it off, I consciously chose my current wall color (ruby red with a semi-gloss finish) as a representation of my mind. Not that I'm seeing red but that I want shiny fierce thoughts.

Offloading Your Brain

Shaping the Future - Charlie Stross

I'm being lazy and not reading the entirety of Stross's speech but thought it was an interesting tidbit nevertheless. The U.S. has long led the rest of the world in information trading. The idea that we could eventually carry around devices that are customized for our individual way of thinking is quite revolutionary. It's not so much that we could carry around that load of information but that we would have programs that understand how our brains work. I joke about being the back-up brain for a friend of mine, knowing what she is talking about even if she doesn't remember the exact words, but a device like this would become a constant back-up brain. We, as a species, have always found new tools to enhance our natural abilities but we are coming to a point where we are creating tools that enhance our minds in a very direct manner. I like this.

Informational Experience

Web 2.0 Distracts from 'Good Design' - BBC

Part of the problem with Web 2.0 is that there are many people out there who understand the fundamentals of user-generated content design but there are far more who don't understand how to present a web page that takes full advantage of the Web 2.0 idea. Customization is all well and good if it provides a good user experience but when the design is more focused on customization versus content delivery then the user will feel lost. However, I don't think the entire problem rests with web design per se but also with the accustomed way users search and use content. Web 2.0 and the coming Web 3.0 revolution will, I think, produce a series of new ways users interact with content. But this requires as much a change in user perception as it does web design. A lot of site will get this wrong and a lot of users will misunderstand the design. My fear is that if too many sites offer poor designs then users will become disinclined to adopt new search and content manipulation techniques. Web 2.0 and 3.0 have a lot of potential to radically change the way people think about information. But if web designers don't take user perceptions into account then the whole thing could fall flat. If done wrong, Web 2.0 will become just another lost opportunity and I do not want to see this happen.

The Rebel

Revolt on the Way? - Bradford Plummer, The Plank

I think the month of September will prove spectacularly interesting. If the generals on the ground are beginning to realize they can actually ask for what they need then you might have a growing noise coming out of Iraq that reinforces the perception that the war is lost. It's not that I believe the general can't pull a victory out, it's simply that I don't believe the Bush administration will put the necessary resources into such a victory. To ask more from the American public at this point is inviting active revolt.

Comment Abuse

Enabling Hate-Mongers - Tom Gruisich, WaPo

Online anonymity is an interesting issue for the moment. I've noticed a rise in the calls for people to use their real names on message boards and blog comments in recent months. Gruisich here seems to get some of the balancing act that board moderators and bloggers are wrangling with. How does one deal with trolls, sock-puppetry and other forms of comment abuse? Calling for the use of real names is one means but I don't think it is a universal solution. What I think we will see in the future is a informal segregation of boards between those who allow anonymous posters and those who request the use of real names. Personally, I don't see a problem with such an arrangement. I continue to use the analogy of the English coffeehouses of the seventeenth century and their use of posted rules. Each coffeehouse would have their own set of rules that those who entered the coffeehouse had to obey. No one was really prevented from going to as many coffeehouses at they wanted to and if the conversation in one place was dull then they could move on. I think what we will see with the issue of abusive comments is the marketplace of ideas come into full effect. Those moderators who are too persnickety will chase off most commentators while those who hardly moderate at all will invite only the worst of the worst. The market will shift most people into a sort of middle ground while the fringes will still exist and still cater to an extreme element. No one gets locked out but you see a shifting of voices that flattens out the shrill extremes while accentuating the measured center. I don't think I will have a problem with this.

Contradictory Nature

After reading Camus' The Rebel many years ago I was struck by the contradictory balance Camus imposes on the concepts of justice and freedom. Camus was arguing that no one could legitimize murder and used the examples of revolutionaries and rebels to illustrate his point. Particularly with the French Revolution, murder was frequently employed in the name of preservation of the state. Absolute justice is what Camus called it. At the same time, Camus points to the surrealists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to note how absolute freedom leads to the same murderous result. At either extreme you have an absolute Yes or an absolute No. For the man who says Yes to everything he cannot then deny someone the right to murder. For the man who says No to everything murder becomes the best means to ensure that all laws are followed. Of course, Camus doesn't buy any of this. Instead, Camus argues that either extreme leads to a moral and logical fallacy. To say Yes or No to everything is to say its opposite as well. It's a tautology where Yes=No and No=Yes because there isn't any discernible difference between the two at that point. You need the ability to say Yes or No. In other words, you need a value system.
With the concepts of justice and freedom, Camus argues that you must maintain both, for freedom without justice is anarchy where everything is permitted and justice without freedom is tyranny where nothing is permitted. It's this contradictory balance that I find fascinating. For the human condition, this contradiction is one of those subtle ways that I believe one can witness the divine. I don't believe that nature or physics is contradictory. And yet, we have minds that continually uncover contradictions. Our minds hold both rational and irrational thoughts, our lives are filled with logical and illogical aspects, and we are still able to get up in the morning. For physics, there are instances of apparent contradictions but I believe this is simply an example of where our minds can't quite cope with the concept. The wave-particle duality of light, the Schrödinger's Cat question, the very idea of virtual particles, all of these examples are instances of apparent contradictions but they do have rules and logic.
The whole point of these apparent contradictions, the contradictory balance that Camus strikes between freedom and justice, is that our minds can only deal with so much. My personal belief is that such contradictions are necessary in the Wittgensteinian sense of showing the fly the way out of the flybottle. They are ways to break us out of our natural human logic and see something differently.

Mind Bullets

I don't think I've ever had such an intense meditation session. This is what I get for incorporating sigils into my focus. I'm dizzy, sweating, and strangely empowered but relaxed. Like a lion lounging. I've never been able to stop seeing with my eyes but this time I was able to. The effort it took for me to see with my mind instead of my eyes was surprising. I think I can kill with my mind now.

First Position

Rethinking The War, Ctd - Andrew Sullivan

The reader here makes a good point relating to Sullivan's original premise of the war on terror. What I'm more concerned with is not an attack using any sort of mass destruction weapon but one that relies on relatively low-tech elements. There is enough potential among the chemical and industrial infrastructure in America to create a devastating attack. All it takes is the clever use of simple tools. It's what I call 'Oak Cliff engineering' in that you take simple parts and assemble them into a working whole through inventive use. This is what modern terrorism is amazingly good at. While we do need to maintain our efforts to keep WMDs out of the hands of terrorist groups, I think we would be remiss if we ignored the surprisingly simple ways in which an attack could occur. What this requires is getting into the minds of the terrorist, not necessarily outthinking them but looking at things the way they would. Beyond that all we can do is maintain a degree of vigilance.

No CD for You!

Used CDs? - Ars Technica

This is absolutely ridiculous. I frequently sell back old cds that I won't listen to anymore and are taking up space in my collection. It isn't that I necessarily want the cash, although that is a perk of the deal, but I want to put that music back into circulation for someone else to buy it. The used cd store is also a place to find cds that have long gone out of print and won't see another pressing for the foreseeable future. But what these states here have done is anathema to such pleasantries. Just makes me sick.

Slow Motion Sexual Relief

Please Stop Doing That to the Cat - Second Life Sketches, Warren Ellis

I had forgotten that Ellis was writing a column for Reuters but now I have found it and blissful happiness abounds. I do like the points he makes about how the sex in Second Life will eventually get the whole things in trouble (if you don't believe me then talk to the Belgian police). Ellis is no prude but he is looking out for the online community by noting the dangers of acting without any regard for propriety whatsoever.

Barak the Magic Negro

Classy Obama - Eve Fairbanks

While complete wrong in many many ways, I must admit that I'm happy something like this can go on in America. Still, how long before Sharpton finally gets someone like Limbaugh off the air for good? That would be a blessing.

Clitorial Lovin'

Sex Toy = Military Threat - The Danger Room

Wow, I'm amazed on many levels by this.

It's In the Array

DARPA Studies Launching Satellites in Pieces - DefenseNews.com

What I find interesting in a proposal like this is the potential for space terrorism. Say you have a satellite array in orbit and all someone needs is a booster that will deliver a small package into space. The package doesn't have to weigh that much since whatever you are launching is not intended to do a great deal of work. The launch occurs but what can anyone do about it at that point? The package logs itself into the satellite array and starts broadcasting video or attempts to hack into government systems (scary thought, hack into nuclear agencies). You, as the operator of the array, are left with few choices such as shutting down the array, reprogramming the whole damn thing or taking potshots with missiles or lasers at the array in hope of hitting the viral component. No matter what you do, it will take some time and any video broadcast will have aired. All a space terrorist would need is a few minutes to broadcast or gain access into whatever network it wanted. I see future movies about this.

Condoms for Everyone!

Marital Sex Biggest HIV Risk for Women Around the World - Science Blog

This actually strikes me as not all that surprising. The biggest problem with HIV in Africa isn't that women are sleeping with multiple partners but that husbands are. The issue is marital infidelity and how men in much more macho cultures are given tacit permission to seek sex outside of marriage. So in one report you have the conjoining of both women's rights and health issues. On top of that you have the renewal of the call for men to use condoms. It's an interesting issue where you can either have a culture that accepts infidelity but promotes the use of condoms or you promote women's rights and ditch the condoms. Personally, I prefer both as men need to learn some sexual responsibility while women should have greater rights to go out and divorce the cheating bastard if they see fit.

A Little Phobia for You

Chicken-eating Spider - Boing Boing

Okay, this just freak my shit right the fuck out. Do not like spiders.

The Alcoholic's War

Re-Thinking the War I - Andrew Sullivan

This is a good piece of re-evaluation, or at least the start of it. But in reading it I was reminded of something I concluded not long after all the pundit-speak about giving the surge a chance. I could only think of it as an alcoholic's promise. That one last chance the alcoholic begs for, even though we know the promise, while well intentioned, is false. To the alcoholic, there will always be that one more chance. Not to say that the alcoholic should simply give up, or that we should simply give up, but the chances of success are mighty slim and putting too much stock in such a promise is almost foolhardy. Until the alcoholic changes the way he looks at things, until we change the way we look at the war, we will not succeed. The problems we created will not be solved with the same mindset that created the problems in the first place. We are not superheroes, we cannot simply 'will' our way to victory. While having a strong will is important, will alone will not conjure up victory. It only gives us the strength to do the hard work necessary.

On the Bleeding Edge

New Ideas - Matt Yglesias

I don't necessarily support John Edwards as a president but, as Yglesias points out, he does have a decent grasp of what we need to do to tackle poverty. But the bigger issue for me here is not Edward's ideas on poverty but the point that Yglesias makes on the different between new ideas and good ideas. While the newest, freshest ideas make for great campaign promises, they rarely prove workable. What Edwards has done here is take some ideas that have shown promise in the past, or have actually worked in the past, and built an anti-poverty platform around them. This is good planning and thought on the part of the Edwards campaign. There's nothing wrong with picking up on old ideas so long as the ideas work. Just the same, there isn't anything wrong with new ideas either, so long as they work as well. Good governance doesn't have to rely on being first among ideas but being the best among ideas.

The New French Revolution

Sarkozy Takes French Presidency - BBC

This is just sad, really. Royal was my political girlfriend. I was going to have her babies. Lots and lots of little socialist babies.

28%

Newsweek Poll, 5 May, 2007 - MSNBC

It's only one poll and Pollster's rating average has President Bush at 34% and rising, but this still is an amazing number to consider. What happens when a president loses all support from the general public beyond the hardline base? As Josh Marshall likes to point out constantly, the public is not behind the president despite the attempts by the media to play it the other way.

You're a Woman, I'm a Machine

Virtual Rape is Traumatic, but is it a Crime? - Wired

I'm coming from a male perspective so the issue of rape is more of an abstract thing that a potential reality for me (although I do know that rape can happen to men too). So for me the issue is more about civil liberties and personal dignity than anything else. What the idea of online rape represents for me is another example of the anonymity of the internet allowing people to act in ways they never would have in public. Yet, the psychological effects are very real and with the deep psychological scars that rape causes it is too much of a stretch to say that online rape is just as traumatic as physical rape? If so, then shouldn't the laws extend to criminalize online rape in the same way as physical rape?

DIY Process

Just a Part of the Network - WaPo

I think what is so interesting in the transformation of the PC into a tech hub is the atomization of the computer itself. I've built and rebuilt my own computer multiple times over the last seven years. The selling point for me is the ability to upgrade only what I need for the tech devices I need. Need more USB hubs? Buy a USB card. Need a better graphics card for photos? Buy the new card. The key for me is the motherboard/cpu/memory platform. You can't buy one generally without buying all the rest. What I pivot my decision on is whether the platform will serve my tech needs for the next few years. More to the point, I have to decide what kind of tech I will want for my desktop. CD burning, DVD burning, music, Ipods, cellphones, photos, whatever. The whole point is maintaining my ability to fully utilize whatever comes along on the internet or in the general tech world.

When Funny isn't Funny

Naked Man Superglued to Exercise Bike - Reuters

When I first saw the headline I was prepared to for something hilarious but this is actually pretty sad.

Doth-iness

A Blog Doth Not a Journalist Make - The Inquirer

In the debate between blogging and journalism it is sentiments like this one that I give a good deal of credence to. The greatest obstacle to genuinely good blogging is the lack of editorial and economic pressures on any blog writer. While the free-wheeling nature of blogging has its own natural high, the considered, calculated articles and op-ed pieces one reads in proper journalism has far more longevity. This is the core of the debate. Blogs are by nature of-the-moment. Newspapers need something that will stand the test of time and a quickly written piece with little authorial control does not do the job. Even this blog doesn't stand up to the journalistic standards of a George Will or Frank Rich piece. And it's not supposed to. While I may argue that I have some sense of objectivity it's not crucial to anything that I might write. A blog is simply the opinion of someone, usually someone you don't know, who is accountable to no one and nothing. While that makes for some fun for the blogger, it usually doesn't lead to the best journalism out there.

Reaganomics

Even Think Tank People Play Debate Drinking Games - Wonkette

Absolutely brilliant. After reading all the articles on how the GOP is looking for the next Reagan to save them and how much such sentiments mirror the Democrats efforts to find the next JFK, it's refreshing to hear someone make light of it all. “'If this debate were a drinking game, and you had to imbibe every time you hear the word ‘Reagan,’ you would pass out before the closing remarks,' predicted Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University." This is exactly what is wrong with the GOP right now. If they have to go looking for the next great president in the mold of some past president then they won't find it. Reagan wasn't Reagan until he became president.

Attorneygate, Category 2

Monica Gooding's Lawyers - TPM

So it's tidbits like this that drive the whole Attorneygate storyline. Gooding is being smacked with a Justice department investigation while receiving immunity for any incriminating testimony she might give to the House Judiciary committee. It's a perfect moment for the whole damn storm of a story to come blowing in. Pay attention people, it only gets better from here on.

Golem

I Want It All - Spencer Ackerman

What's notable about Ackerman's post here is the growing pressure inside Iraq to impose a quasi-strongman. The idea of 'reconciliation' is a bit laughable if you didn't have to look past so many bodies. Still, any effort for reconciliation will have to deal with the fact that the man who can get the Shiites to calm down will only infuriate the Sunnis, and vise versa. What we may need is a Kurd who won't instantly split Kurdistan off from the rest of the country. Either way, reconciliation at this point is going to come with a body count, what matters morally is how high of a body count we are prepared to deal with to get what we want out of Iraq.

Kirchik and Stupidity, An Ode

Take That Anti-War Liberals! - Matt Yglesias

I do so love the line that Arabs and Muslims are incapable of achieving a truly democratic society. Not in the least because the EU is currently trying to work Turkey into their organization. No, what bothers me the most the idea that a simply military cue will bring about the 'flowering' of democracy. We've had two instances in the last sixty years where a military toppling of the government has ended with stable, lasting democracies. But in both instances, in Japan and Germany in 1945, we imposed a strongman to hold things together until the newly installed governments could get on their feet. We didn't just blow shit up and then blame them for the mess.

Luke's Binoculars

Binoculars that Tap the Brain - The Danger Room

And to add to the idea of plugging the brain into something comes DARPA with their brain-interfacing binoculars. Utilizing research into the way the eyes and the brain interact, these binoculars highlight sensory data that would otherwise have gone unnoticed by the conscious mind. For the purposes of war this kind of technology would alert soldiers to oncoming threats that previously they would not have seen or paid attention to. This is another example of using a tool to offload our sensory information and present it in a new way. I love it.

The Atomic Yogi

Quantum Tantra - Warren Ellis

"Modern physics is a fully erect science. Quantum tantra is physics on all fours."

This sounds a little too granola for me but hey, it's 'physics on all fours' which gets me going. In some ways it sounds like the kind of chaos magic Grant Morrison spins out, what with it's twisting of the world using organic means. The idea seems to be that we can tap our brains into some sort of cosmic server of other minds. Don't know if I necessarily believe that but the idea is interesting enough. My question then is, what happens when the 'cosmic server' becomes sentient?

The Statist Mindset of Terrorist Activities

Perle's Comments to Tenet: True or False? - The Danger Room

My concern is not with Perle's comment necessarily but the mindset behind them. The belief that the only way an attack like 9/11 could have occurred was with government support, whoever that government may be, is a holdover of the old belief that systematic genocide could only occur through state sanction and action. Now it is well know that the government of Afghanistan at the time did support Al Queda but their government was both rather small and ineffectual in affecting world politics. The most important thing the Taliban provided was the space and freedom to train and organize. A government like Saddam's Iraq could have provided such aid itself but Saddam didn't pull the trigger anymore than the Taliban did. Certainly the U.S. should move against those states that tacitly support terrorism through their inaction against terrorist groups but to say that the host nation bears the same responsibility is pushing the envelope some, to say the least. It's a little different to say the Taliban is the same as a nation such as Iran who has known financial and military ties to Palestinian terrorist groups. In one instance you have a nation who is actively funding and training a terrorist group using government means while in the other you have a nation who isn't doing anything to prevent it. In the world of foreign policies and foreign affairs you cannot treat other countries like an opposition party. It simply doesn't work. You can't just throw some pissant country against the wall and expect everyone to suddenly fall into line. You take down the biggest motherfucker on the block then people will respect you.

Webb's Web

Senator Webb on The Iraq War Bill - TPM

See, this is the thing, Sen. Webb can make the distinction between occupation and war yet few, if any, of the other pundits have caught up with the language. What we have in Iraq is an occupation and, despite all our wishing otherwise, acts like an occupation. The best way we can deal with the insurgency and the militias is to treat ourselves like occupiers and do the damn thing right. I wasn't in favor of this war and I haven't changed my mind yet but still, if you're going to do it then do it well. Wars are important things and performing poorly in a war reflects in world opinion and, more importantly, in the relations between nations. It doesn't matter what the press says or how the administration spins it. What matters is how other nations will treat us afterwards, particularly when we want something from them. We put ourselves in a weaker position due to poor performance. And the kicker is that it isn't the soldiers fault or even the generals per se. It has always been the fault of the civilian leadership.

Meta Meta

Metadata as a 'filing system' - Nick Santilli, Lifehacker

I find this kind of use of metatagging as an intriguing direction OS makers could move in. The intuitiveness of the design is appealing in the era of portable multimedia players, computers and devices. The ability to maneuver data in a way that makes sense to the human mind is something of a holy grail for UI designers. This is what the whole Web 2.0 concept is all about.

The Good Prince

Smells Like Team Spirit - Matt Yglesias

Yglesias does have a point here. A good conservative or a good liberal should tend to stick with other conservatives or liberals. That is to say, bucking the ideology doesn't seem to enhance the solidarity of the ideological group. However, if your purpose were to improve the ideology then bucking the trend is exactly what you should do. More to the point, an ideology cannot stay static, it must move with the times and the culture. Certainly there are aspects of any ideology that can apply to almost any period of time but one should worry about which aspects those are. If they last then they last, otherwise you are attempt to graft an ideology of a different time onto the modern world and that just doesn't work too well. Ideological purity does have its advantages but standing the test of time is not one of them. So the division is really between the good conservative or liberal and the person or ideas good for conservativism or liberalism.

The IRS and Federal Contractors

Pentagon Contractors Owe $7.7 Billion in Unpaid Taxes - Thomas Williams, Truthout (via The Danger Room)

I distinctly remember a post by Matt Yglesias over the issue of federal contractors and the worst of both worlds aspect of the federal contracting system. The basic idea is that private companies can do a government job better and with a lower cost since the laws of free market economics come into play. However, what we have here is another instance where federal contractors are significantly insulated from the free market by the contracting system. So you end up with companies that, due to insufficient oversight and a lack of economic pressures, are slow in paying taxes, providing the requested products and generally mismanaging the whole damn thing. I still believe in the free market, although I don't hold to the ideal of the 'invisible hand' anymore than I hold to the idea that communism can work. But this system as is has left us with huge and growing debts while providing substandard services and products, or not providing them at all. What we need is reform of course, but how we can achieve true reform is a question I'm not able to answer at this time. The difficulty lies in the nature of the lobbying system and how legislation is passed.

Dead Hookers, Live Boys

DC Madam - TPM

It's disappointing that the Hookergate scandal of last spring didn't take off the way it should have. But now we get Hookergate part two with DC Madam and the ex-head of the Foreign Aid department. Nothing better than a dead hooker or a live boy for politics.

Dead Horse College

A World of Diplomas - Ezra Klein

"This demonstrates how rigid the credentialing mentality has become in higher education, trumping three decades of undisputed good work. It wasn't always that way. When Ludwig Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, they simply accepted his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a doctoral thesis. The knew that forcing him to go through a formal course of study to earn a credential would be absurd. They were acting in their role as certifiers of learning, which is (see the post below) not necessarily the same thing as being a provider of learning."

Not to beat a dead horse, but I thought this quote of Kevin Carey via Ezra Klein deserves some notice, not least because of its mention of my favorite philosopher Wittgenstein. The point is that since Wittgenstein had already proven himself he didn't need classroom education. The purpose of college education is to further an already fruitful mind, not simply certify this person for a particular set of jobs. But the way college degrees are treated it has become the high school degree of thirty years ago. Now graduate school has become the arena for pushing the mind further while undergraduate work has become an extension of high school.

Elitism of Education

Creditialism - Matt Yglesias

Now I have two parents who don't hold college degrees and they have done fairly well for themselves. My grandfather made to the ninth grade and then went to work. College degrees are not the be-all, end-all of creditials. I have two bachelors and one master's degrees but that doesn't mean squat when it comes to jewelry work. And I have many friends who never went to college but are doing well for themselves. They don't see a need for it.
But the way most education systems are set up now, college is the ultimate goal. I think this is wrong. There are some kids who simply don't belong in college. Whether it's due to college not being their thing, college not being the place they can learn or, and sit down before you read this, they simply don't have the aptitude for it. And this, I think, is the key for why college has taken this glorified place in American minds. We are afraid of telling someone that they are not smart enough for college. The problem is, there are people not smart enough for college. Not to say they aren't smart but that their intelligence doesn't work on the college level. They can do a lot of other things very well but taking college exams, writing papers or conducting lab experiements is not one of them.
Now I'm hesistant to say that we should introduce a tracking system ala Japan and England. But we might at least consider it instead of continuing the lie that all minds are equal. The key here is ensuring that everyone has equal access to quality education, but education that will actually help them once out of school.