December 2009
“The greatest transformation of our society will occur only once lie-detectors...”
– Sam Harris
“We have now shown that DNA is absolutely the information-coded material of life...”
– J. Craig Venter
Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the... →
Ray Kurzweil, a prolific inventor who is best known for his prediction that machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045, still has a few things to offer carbon-based life forms. Kurzweil has introduced new e-reader software, called Blio, that approaches e-reading from a completely different angle than the current E Ink-based devices like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble...
The best films of the decade →
And this reflection: All of these films are on this list for the same reason: The direct emotional impact they made on me. They have many other qualities, of course. But these evoked the emotion of Elevation, which I wrote about a year or so ago. Elevation is, scientists say, an actual emotion, not a woo-woo theory. I believe that, because some films over the years have evoked from me a physical...
“The same sort of public relations wizardry that once convinced a sizeable...”
– A Convenient Delusion
Stiglitz: 6 Harsh lessons We Failed to Learn →
1. Markets are not self-correcting, and without adequate regulation, they are prone to excess.
2. There are many reasons for market failures. Too-big-to-fail financial institutions had perverse incentives: Privatized gains, socialized losses. .
3. When information is imperfect, markets often do not work well – and information imperfections are central in finance.
4. Keynesian policies do...
Night →
“To convert! This great word has been diluted. The people of the third century...”
– Jacques Ellul
Why do so many terrorists have engineering... →
A paper (PDF) released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen,...
“If you really read the fairy-tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one...”
– G.K. Chesterton
After Branding →
If this is a little too abstract, let me dress it up in a numbered list, just like a self-help book title: Ten Steps To Online Success In The Post-Branded Future.
Get yourself some Web space. It’d be nice if the URL included your name; easy if you’ve got a low-frequency name, tough for Bill Smith and Sue Brown (but consider bill-smith-from-tulsa.net and similar dodges).
While having your own...
“The measure of cultural literacy today is not whether you can “read” all the...”
– Three Tweets for the Web
Establishing Christian America →
Despite the number of religious fanatics who landed on our shores early on, America has never been a Christian nation. Conservative evangelicals are fond of saying that the Founding Fathers were all pious Christians, but few of the men who led the Revolution or drafted the Constitution could be described as pious or even orthodox. George Washington was an ordinary Episcopalian who showed no...
“…religious charisma is always routinized and bureaucratized as the generation...”
– Lonnie Frisbee and the Non-Demise of the Emerging Church
Why the health care bill is worth passing →
Politicians on both sides of the aisle overwhelmingly believe, likewise, that insurance companies should be prohibited from taking preëxisting conditions into account when setting prices or extending coverage. Both the House and the Senate reform bills include language banning this. Even Republicans have been vehement on the subject: Senator Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, has said that “everyone...
“This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks...”
– Win Ben Stein’s mind
“Our current response to terrorism is a form of “magical thinking.”...”
– Bruce Schneier
Taxes: Let’s Just Go Back To A Simpler Time →
Are you concerned about the country’s large budget deficits? Are you wondering how we are going to pay for two wars, bank bailouts and economic recovery projects while continuing to maintain our roads and bridges and pay for our schools and police and firefighters? Are you wondering what we can do about the great concentration of wealth and income into the hands of a very few at the top?
...
“If the health care bill written by the Senate is passed, middle class Americans...”
– Jane Hamsher
“For every holiday party I attend, partygoers speak of job losses they’ve...”
– Berkeley Blog
Next Door Rant
Located right down the street from my home address is a fabulous coffee shop. There you may enjoy an excellent espresso. Or even, on some mornings, partake in tasty composition from an omelette/waffle bar. Or maybe a Mexican coke (with real sugar!) or a cold frothy alcoholic beverage.
A few months back a Next Coffee barista provided me with a rewards card, a mini-card keyring attachment so I...
“Nobody eat animals — not the whole things. Most of us eat animal parts, with a...”
– Austin Dacey
Panasonic’s new home battery could store a... →
Panasonic is charging into the green space headlong — first with deals to supply batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles — and now announcing that it will launch a massive lithium-ion storage battery capable of powering an average home for up to a week, the company says.
“I think there will always be a gulf between the haves and have-nots, so far as...”
– Neil Postman
“The Wikipedia of today is not the same entity it was 5 years ago – everything...”
– Jason Scott
10 FICTIONAL books that will f**k up your reality... →
Vice Magazine Interview with David Simon
VM: Why does reform seem so impossible?
DS: We live in an oligarchy. The mother’s milk of American politics is money, and the reason they can’t reform financing, the reason that we can’t have public funding of elections rather than private donations, the reason that K Street is K Street in Washington, is to make sure that no popular sentiment survives. You’re witnessing it now with health care, with the marginalization of any effort to rationally incorporate all Americans under a national banner that says, “We’re in this together.”
VM: But then the critics of a system like that immediately cry socialism.
DS: And of course it’s socialism. These ignorant motherfuckers. What do they think group insurance is, other than socialism? Just the idea of buying group insurance! If socialism is a taint that you cannot abide by, then, goddamn it, you shouldn’t be in any group insurance policy. You should just go out and pay the fucking doctors because when you get 100,000 people together as part of anything, from a union to the AARP, and you say, “Because we have this group actuarially, more of us are going to be healthier than not and therefore we’ll be able to carry forward the idea of group insurance and everybody will have an affordable plan...” That’s fuckin’ socialism. That’s nothing but socialism.
VM: It is, literally.
DS: So the whole idea of group insurance, which of course everyone believes in, like that fellow on YouTube, “Don’t let the government take away my Medicare…” You look at that and you think there’s only one thing that can make people this stupid, and that’s money. When you pay people to change their votes on the basis of money, the wrong shit gets voted for. That’s American democracy at this point. And you get to the Senate and you’re looking at 100 votes, which don’t represent anything in terms of popular representation. When 40 percent of the population controls 60 percent of the votes in the higher house of a bicameral legislature, it’s an oligarchy.
“Then there are the politicians. Even now, it’s hard to get Democrats, President...”
– Paul Krugman
“When I buy an audiobook on CD, it’s mine. The license agreement, such as it is,...”
– Cory Doctorow
“Most user-generated content is created as communication in small groups, but...”
– Clay Shirky
7 Tipping Points That Could Transform Earth →
“The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what...”
– Donald Miller
“The mass media of the 20th Century were based on control: monopolistic and...”
– Dan Gillmor
“Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100...”
– Seth Godin
“Most of the evidence is classified, but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is...”
– Jeanne Theoharis
“One wild card is how angry the American people might get. Unlike the 1930s, we...”
– James Howard Kunstler
“Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of...”
– Schneier on Security
World's Largest Solar Powered Creations →
“Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the...”
– Neal Stephenson
“If you want to defeat the right, we must defeat corporatism. This is a truth I...”
– The 1990s Are Over. Has Anyone Noticed?
H-1B Bodyshop vs. U.S. First Amendment: The Case... →
The blogger who goes by the nickname “Tunnel Rat” has the status of a folk hero for American computer/IT and engineering professionals. He is celebrated for his acerbic commentaries on his website, ITGrunt. At least a portion of Tunnel Rat’s mystique derives from his persona as a geeky Lucha libre-type masked hero. The internet has been rife with speculation by both by his fans and detractors as...