"If you are watching this message it is because I have been murdered by President Álvaro Colom.”
http://www.good.is/post/the-twitter-revolution
In related news - if you intend to be a serial killer, move to Guatemala.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Change of purpose
This blog will be for prognostication and social criticism from now on. My new blog, Basal Frustration, will be my attempt to keep track of putting my life back together, and will not be available to just anyone.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Obama administration actually fighting to avoid increasing its own power (in one aspect). Really?
"Sarbanes-Oxley: The [Supreme] court could decide the validity of a part of the Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law, enacted as Congress' response to the wave of corporate scandals that started with energy giant Enron's collapse. The court is considering whether the board established to oversee the accounting industry by the 2002 law violates the constitutionally mandated separation of powers between the branches of government. One irony of the case is that pro-business conservatives who are mounting the legal challenge are arguing that President Barack Obama should have more power to control the makeup of the board, while his administration is defending the law."-Mark Sherman • The Associated Press • October 2, 2009 http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091002/EDIT03/910020382/1019/EDIT/Cases+coming+before+the+court
This is definitely an oddity for almost any administration, and so far as I can tell, the only attempt the Obama administration has made so far in this respect. More details will follow as I have them.
I tend to favor a weak executive branch, but I as yet know few of the details of this law or this case. I can't comment further.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Essays I plan to write
These are just ideas for essays I want to write. Some of them should take book length to describe in any depth, but I'd like to do a short piece on each.
Evolution, economics, counterintelligence, and spam.
Emptiness and the ineffable, unobservable cause. Models as living space - Heidegger's world. Models are maps of experience, experience does not map onto the unobservable. As far as something is directly observable, it is out primary source 0f knowledge -> insofar as it is objective, it cannot be studied or inferred - we can learn nothing. Ever. There will be no gnosis. Insofar as there is an ultimate reality, knowledge of it is unattainable. Full stop.
To make it clear - we live in modelspace. Logic and inference are also models, and only seem to admit internal judgment. It would seem.
Government, large businesses, and power dynamics: implications for the republic.
Individualism and the consequences of multigranular identity. The distributed self and the divided self.
Ethics are a response to where we think we are and what we think we are, from what we are in fact. Morality is only as universal as "human nature" and human circumstances - it is justified by what we are, what we want, where we find ourselves, and what we CAN do about that; "human nature" is elusive and although a few major categories would describe the vast majority, it is highly doubtful that the outliers could ever be exhaustively described. Implications for transhumanism, and for baselines in several such scenarios.
Why I think sadism is more acceptable than retribution.
Evolution, economics, counterintelligence, and spam.
Emptiness and the ineffable, unobservable cause. Models as living space - Heidegger's world. Models are maps of experience, experience does not map onto the unobservable. As far as something is directly observable, it is out primary source 0f knowledge -> insofar as it is objective, it cannot be studied or inferred - we can learn nothing. Ever. There will be no gnosis. Insofar as there is an ultimate reality, knowledge of it is unattainable. Full stop.
To make it clear - we live in modelspace. Logic and inference are also models, and only seem to admit internal judgment. It would seem.
Government, large businesses, and power dynamics: implications for the republic.
Individualism and the consequences of multigranular identity. The distributed self and the divided self.
Ethics are a response to where we think we are and what we think we are, from what we are in fact. Morality is only as universal as "human nature" and human circumstances - it is justified by what we are, what we want, where we find ourselves, and what we CAN do about that; "human nature" is elusive and although a few major categories would describe the vast majority, it is highly doubtful that the outliers could ever be exhaustively described. Implications for transhumanism, and for baselines in several such scenarios.
Why I think sadism is more acceptable than retribution.
Purpose
I plan to use this blog for several purposes:
1) to detail and analyze my attempts to function in society and otherwise, and the extent with which I can do it on my own terms
2) to support and promote the idea of the 336 hour news cycle, an idea whose time for returning has come
3) to disseminate wacky plans and;
4) to contact people who will encourage me to follow through with said plans
5) to speculate on the future of society, with a focus on technology, social organization, and transhumanism
2) to support and promote the idea of the 336 hour news cycle, an idea whose time for returning has come
3) to disseminate wacky plans and;
4) to contact people who will encourage me to follow through with said plans
5) to speculate on the future of society, with a focus on technology, social organization, and transhumanism
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