February 2007
“Require every station that wants to add to its holdings to broadcast a minimum...”
– Eric Klinenberg
Replacing AppleScript with Ruby →
CompUSA Closing More Than 50% of Stores →
55 percent of Arizona residents would support a... →
More Jonathan Coulton WoW Music Videos
Your Brains Skullcrusher Mountain Just as Long as Me Creepy Doll Podsafe Christmas Song
Losing the War in Afghanistan →
Economic Inequality in the US Versus in Sweden →
Not Compassionate, Not Conservative — A political... →
Top 1989-2006 Political Donors in the US →
Whatever became of LSD? →
Tumblr Feature Requests
I love this tumblelog deal, but here’s a short list of feature requests: Ability to resize bookmarklet window. And along with resizable windows, expandable textarea controls to fill that space. Instead of WYSIYG HTML editing, which is overkill for the little snippets posted on a tumblog would like to have the option of using Markdown (or some similar Wiki-style syntax) Code/preformatted...
“In essence, what Jesus imparted to his disciples was that they must strive for...”
– Obery M Hendericks, Jr.
How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged →
“Always, there are people and even entire cultures that try to stop the...”
– Sylvia Paull
Bush Administration Targeted Wilson's Wife Long... →
This Magna Carta for humanity sets a high bar that... →
Studies show the stock market performs better and... →
AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, you connect the breakdown of constitutional government with militarism.
CHALMERS JOHNSON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the signs of the breakdown of constitutional government and how it links?
CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, yes. Militarism is the -- what the social side has called the “intervening variable,” the causative connection. That is to say, to maintain an empire requires a very large standing army, huge expenditures on arms that leads to a military-industrial complex, and generally speaking, a vicious cycle sets up of interests that lead to perpetual series of wars.
It goes back to probably the earliest warning ever delivered to us by our first president, George Washington, in his famous farewell address. It’s read at the opening of every new session of Congress. Washington said that the great enemy of the republic is standing armies; it is a particular enemy of republican liberty. What he meant by it is that it breaks down the separation of powers into an executive, legislative, and judicial branches that are intended to check each other -- this is our most fundamental bulwark against dictatorship and tyranny -- it causes it to break down, because standing armies, militarism, military establishment, military-industrial complex all draw power away from the rest of the country to Washington, including taxes, that within Washington they draw it to the presidency, and they begin to create an imperial presidency, who then implements the military's desire for secrecy, making oversight of the government almost impossible for a member of Congress, even, much less for a citizen.
It seems to me that this is also the same warning that Dwight Eisenhower gave in his famous farewell address of 1961, in which he, in quite vituperative language, quite undiplomatic language -- one ought to go back and read Eisenhower. He was truly alarmed when he spoke of the rise of a large arms industry that was beyond supervision, that was not under effective control of the interests of the military-industrial complex, a phrase that he coined. We know from his writings that he intended to say a military-industrial-congressional complex. He was warned off from going that far. But it's in that sense that I believe the nexus -- or, that is, the incompatibility between domestic democracy and foreign imperialism comes into being.
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate...”
– Paulo Freire
Bush-Appointed FDA Commissioner Pleads Guilty to... →
The True Story of Laura Bush Killing Her Friend →
According to papers filed with the SEC, George... →
Schools should teach deep, strategic computer... →
The Truth About Switching — What It's Really Like... →
I love name tags →
“President Bush’s purge of Ms. Lam and others who honored their posts by...”
– Linda Andros
Pligg CMS, an open source Digg clone. Still in beta, sounds like a good idea, but thousands of identically themed “look and feel” Digg clones in action might not be a great thing… …and the choice for a name is questionable, “runs like a P[l]?ig[g]?”…
“We need to completely ditch the whole free market economy and capitalism. Their...”
– angry.bob
Have you been following the world travels of... →
The Gospel Versus Global Warming →
Windows Vista: I’m Breaking up with You →
Why Can't Programmers… Program? →
“Who is the American leader, in all of our history, who was most impactful at...”
– Oliver Willis
Why I refused to blog for Edwards →
Who's Happy and Why? →
Americans grossly underestimate the number of... →
Digg, a political snapshot →
Confronting Davos: The Class Politics of Global... →
Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center →
Bruce Schneier: Private, for-profit corporations... →
An advertising circular on the windshield
This vehicle is parked on private property. The make, model and license number have been recorded. If this improper parking is repeated a second time, this vehicle will be towed to Klempner Brothers where the interior will be removed by fire and the auto will be compressed into a scrap cube approx. 1-1/2’ x 3’. The cube will be shipped (freight collect) to your home for use as a coffee...
“Traffic flow is a simple mathematical concept (which human drivers complicate,...”
– Craig5530