Archive for June, 2006
Democracy in chains
Excellent article/editorial from the Guardian. Why do we have to go overseas to get decent (vs. superficially balanced and disemboweled) electoral coverage?
Comment is free: Democracy in chains
I think that’s enough politics for today.
Political Compass
Political Compass
If you haven’t tried it, it’s worth 10 minutes of your time. My score was -6.13, -4.05, which was like a lot of people reading Digg, around where Ghandi or Mandela would be–not that this means much for my non-career in politics.
It does mean a lot, however, for the end of a two party [...]
To Cure or Not to Cure
Following a lengthy and interesting exchange on my previous post (Brownian Emotion » But What About the Jews? see comments), I think it’s worthwhile revisiting the issue.
Background: The question came up after I’d rather callously used the word "autistic" in a semi-humorous post–of all the things that could be offensive about that post, this one [...]
The Tollbooth
What is the death toll from 9/11?
According to Wikipedia:
…at least 2986 people killed: 265 on the four planes, 2595 in New York City in the towers and on the ground (including 343 New York City Fire Department firefighters, 23 New York City Police Department officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers), and 125 civilian [...]
The War on Stupidity
Did you see the story about yet another terrorist plot exposed by the FBI, this time to blow up the Sears Tower?
Well, it turns out this is yet another FBI sting operation, meaning there were no actual explosives, no actual al Queda, only people the FBI may have lured into becoming terrorists. See here: FBI [...]
Ownership of Information
Since AT&T has claimed that all customer data is owned by them, and since a good deal of general Internet traffic passes over their backbone network, we now face the possibility that AT&T will claim that anyone using their network in passing is an indirect customer. They can therefore conceivably claim ownership of anything passing [...]
Read More..>>Big Banker
White House Says Tracking Bank Data Deters Terror (New York Times)
I think the administration is counting on us feeling "scandal fatigue" at this point and they’re dribbling these programs out one at a time. They seem to think that Americans want the government to spy on us, or at least that’s what they claim. [...]
But What About the Jews?
Reading blogs like Lauren’s, one comes to realize how hard it is for certain segments of our society to make it in certain fields. Speculative fiction is certainly no exception, due to tradition, tastes, or perhaps a dose of autism lack of human affect in certain markets. And women aren’t the only minorities (well, they’re [...]
Read More..>>The Speculative Past
Wow. It looks like you’re in good company, as Dr. Stephen Hawking apparently reads my blog. I mean, it was just a week ago that I was posting about those people who see time in reverse spatial notation and how it’s possible that the past exists to explain the present — that the past is [...]
Read More..>>Review of “The Core,” or a likely script for “The Core 2 : Judgement Day”
Our heroes are traveling deep within the planet earth, on a mission to detonate seven more nuclear weapons to counter the terrible effects of the first movie — the molten core of the Earth has started spinning so fast that the entire planet has gone "super-magnetized." The very irony in our blood has pinned humanity [...]
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