Would you let that happen to you?

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/12/how-buttsecks-works.html
Ridiculous comment by a legislator.

There's a big difference between banning something, and choosing yourself.

Linkstorm: Part 1

How Macroeconomics Lost Its Way - Charles Rowley

Well, gentlemen, I should like to ask whether you have ever contemplated the possibility that the central postulate of each of your models – rational expectations – is the problem. Should not models whose predictions are consistently falsified by the evidence be discarded in favor of alternative models? Is that not the logic of scientific discovery?”

Efficiency and the Utilization of Space - Space is Still a Frontier

Power corrupts those who think they deserve it. Doesn't have as strong an effect on those who feel undeserving of it.

Prop 8 Lawyers Have No Idea How Same-Sex Marriage Could Harm Anything.

The $28 Foot
Cheap artificial foot.

Coordination is hard.

The key thing to understand is: governance is hard, especially in a democracy. Fundamentally, this is because coordination is hard.

Shallow voter cures. I'm not convinced these are good ideas, but shallow voters are a problem, and these proposals are interesting food for thought.

The Critical Nonexpert's Dilemma

In the fields in which we lack expertise, we must defer to the opinions of others, but we would be foolish to throw away our critical thinking skills. This applies especially for policy questions in which experiment is either not possible, or far too costly.

Below is a link to idea about how to deal with this dilemma. I don't really like it, but it looks a lot better than going into an unfamiliar field without a plan.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/weighing-scientists.html

Don't You Want to Become a Cult Leader?

Via Play This Thing
There is also an essay on free video games as cults - but the video is definitely worth checking out.

Both Sides

SMBC Theater presents: Both Sides

One of the Pitfalls of Casting Yourself as a Hero

In life, we all have to create a story to describe what we do, and why we do it. This imaginative act is required for motivation and meaning in life. Casting yourself as a hero can be a very profound experience, but we should take a lesson from Quixote.

Most of us have forgotten about the Satanism scare of the 1980's which continues to influence fundamentalist Christianity, weaving in global conspiracies and Black Masses. Mike Warnke gained a following by claiming to ex-Satanist high priest, converted to evangelical Christianity.

In Selling Satan: The Evangelical Media and the Mike Warnke Scandal, Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott write about Warnke's audience ignoring:

... the nature of evil as a banal mystery, profoundly meaningless ... Instead it was a grand chess game with Christian and Satanist scooting about the board, a cartoon version of the demonic which left actual evil, a personal as well as corporate matter, virtually untouched.

Via Slacktivist

Stewert Brand's 4 factions in the climate debate

Stewert Brand's 4 factions in the climate debate