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

Two Articles by Other People on American Force

The American Conversative article - No Exit

And the commentary.

Security Mindset

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/how-safe-is-safe-enough/
A great essay on the security mindset - which doesn't totally disparage those working to keep us safe.

Transhumanist Link roundup - Dr. House, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson

Pathology Procedes Potential?

Elvis Presley, Transhumanist?

Paul Graham

I just found Paul Graham online - I don't really understand what he's all about yet.

However, he has written an excellent essay on moral fashions.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Income Inequality Over Time

Via Daily Kos

There are a large number of people, among whom I number, who believe that extreme income inequalities are not good for society. A large part of that, for me is the power disparity - after a certain amount of wealth money begins to transition from stuff to status and then to power over others.

The idea has been advanced that disparities of wealth stimulate the economy by providing incentive, but I wonder to what degree this scales with increasing wealth - must everyone have a 15-20% larger carrot dangled in front of them for motivation?. While I dislike redistributionism in its purest forms, the richest of the rich can only obtain their extreme wealth by skimming off the top of large numbers of people - either through the monopsonistic powers of their company as employer, or their monopolistic powers as sellers.

PS
I don't wholeheartedly feel that is the governments job to do this. It is my strong suspicion that CEOs don't really have the effect on their companies that Boards of Directors seem to feel that they have, and think that they should be the ones to address that first. Color me crazy - but they seem like an insulated group that mostly trust the opinions of others like them - so you have the strong possibility of intellectual incest. Also, consider three factors - that success in business is often deeply affected by unknown (both known and unknown), that Boards are comprised of people used to having power, and that people in general (except when avoiding blame) don't like to admit to having little power. I think what they are paying for is the external and internal illusion of control.

It remains my contention that many of the problems to which government solutions are sought can be addressed by people doing their jobs more conscienciously. Barring that, I really don't mind the idea of 70% marginal income tax for the highest tax brackets.

Wolf in sheep's clothing ad

This one is pretty weird.
via Salon

Karen Armstrong

Blame it on Nietzsche

Karen Armstrong's A History of God blames Nazi anti-semitism on Nietzche, characterizes Nazi's as atheistic rather than as Christians (an strange form of Christianity mixed with elements of Germanic mythology, but still Christian).

Of course, this isn't new - but you'd hope it would die out eventually. Really, Karen?

Link Roundup

The Web and The Orchard - Dangers of Apple's Rise

The Turtleneck Hairshirt

Man asks volunteers to carry him up Manhattan for 9.4 miles

In Times of Crisis (Or International Scrutiny), Police Corruption Wanes

Miraculous Conception (or Just Very Improbable)

Prop 8 Case: Defense Witness Argues For the Prosecution (near the bottom of the article)

Jesus Makes Things So Hard On Me

More Praise of Jimmy Carter: It's About Time

The Slow Death of Due Process: The Forfeiture Racket

Decline of an interesting voice

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Trials-of-Tony-Judt/63449/
(via Marginal Revolutions)


An interesting and frequently controversial voice in history, international politics,
and political science is in slow decline.

Excerpt follows:

"If the state was held at a safe distance," Judt said, "then extremists of right and left alike would be kept at bay." Public responsibilities have been drastically shifted to the private sector. Americans and, to a lesser extent, Europeans have forgotten how to think politically and morally about economic choices, Judt warned, his fragile, British-accented voice growing louder. To abandon the gains made by social democrats—the New Deal, the Great Society, the European welfare state—"is to betray those who came before us as well as generations yet to come."

The lecture, which lasted nearly two hours, yoked together a few themes that have long preoccupied Judt: the role of intellectuals and ideas in political life, and the failure of both Americans and Europeans to understand and learn from the past century. (We live, Judt has written, in an "age of forgetting.") He concluded his remarks on a pragmatic note. "It would be pleasing—but misleading—to report that social democracy, or something like it, represents the future that we would paint for ourselves in an ideal world," he said, carefully pronouncing each word. "It does not even represent the ideal past. But, among the options available to us in the present, it is better than anything else to hand."

...

"We have watched the decline of 80 years of great investment in public services," he says. "We are throwing away the efforts, ideas, and ambitions of the past." It is plainly difficult for him to speak, but he is doggedly eloquent. His eyes, forced to do the work of his entire body, are strikingly expressive; when he gets excited, he arches his brows high and opens them wide, which he does when he says, "Communism was a very defective answer to some very good questions. In throwing out the bad answer, we have forgotten the good questions. I want to put the good questions back on the table."

How to Report the news, Charlie Brooker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4

via Boing Boing

This is a rather vacuous title

This post contains a link a generic incendiary blog post, (via of bOING bOING).

http://faultline.org/index.php/site/item/incendiary/

They Live, and Health Care

http://www.bigfatwhale.com/archives/bfw_418.htm

Webcomic uses "They Live" imagery to dramatize the fact that governments can
do some things effectively.

Corset Reacts to Carbon Dioxide Levels in the Air

This is smart clothing with only novelty and artistic value. Still, an amusing statement.
Article at Wired.

Is this the end for campaign finance reform?

http://www.slate.com/id/2242209/

No more limit on corporate contributions to PACs. I'm not happy about this.

Unfortunately, the bugginess of the human mind tends to respond well to repetition,
unless there is already outright hostility. The money to buy repetition, and reduce airtime
of other views bodes not well. Of course, with a de facto control of major media sources
already, I'm not much more worried - except that this precedent discourages many kinds
of potential future reforms.

This makes net neutrality all the more vital. Or strong, socially integrated ad hoc discussion.

I am displeased.

Problems of Transhumanism, John Hughes

Problems of Transhumanism: Introduction

Problems of Transhumanism: The Unsustainable Autonomy of Reason

Problems of Transhumanism: Atheism vs. Naturalist Theologies

Massage Pants - A good time was had by all

http://www.tradekey.com/product_view/id/492783.htm

Everyone should have these - clearly.

Football - it's no surprise

This is why I've not liked the sport of football since I was a child.

It is also why drinking makes it tolerable.

Only 11 minutes of onscreen action per game. Spot on.

American football, waste of time, television, time, TV, waste

First thing, we get rid of the marketers

Well, no not really. There is the benign work of marketing which seeks to assess what customers really want in a product - there is nothing wrong with that.

Nor is there anything wrong with entertaining prospective customers, in hopes that they will talk about you and remember you. That is nothing more than trying to be charming.

It is creating a deceptive or pretentious image that I object to.

The unfortunate reality is that it is difficult to create or maintain strong emotions, especially in a large number of people, on purely rational grounds. Symbols then enter in, to facilitate such reactions towards abstractions which may or may not reflect reality. And without a truly deep scrutiny, the kind that consumes your life, how would you know?

Anyway, I like this article from The Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/16/naomi-klein-branding-obama-america