That’s when we’ll reach Etewaf singularity. Pop culture will become self-aware. It will happen in the A.V. Club first: A brilliant Nathan Rabin column about the worst Turkish rip-offs of American comic book characters will suddenly begin writing its own comments, each a single sentence from the sequel to A Confederacy of Dunces. Then a fourth and fifth season of Arrested Development, directed by David Milch of Deadwood, will appear suddenly in the TV Shows section of iTunes. Someone BitTorrenting a Crass bootleg will suddenly find their hard drive crammed with Elvis Presley’s “lost” grunge album from 1994. And everyone’s TiVo will record Ghostbusters III, starring Peter Sellers, Lee Marvin, and John Candy.For a while now I've made mention of a certain quality of "self-generated-ness" that certain pop-culture artifacts have. Like keyboard cat. It feels like it spontaneously generated out of the primordial soup of the internet...
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The pop-culture singularity
Patton Oswalt:
Saturday, December 25, 2010
What Wikileaks reveals about the US
Says Glenn Greenwald:
As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing. The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them: WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning. A consensus quickly emerged in the political and media class that they are Evil Villains who must be severely punished, while those responsible for the acts they revealed are guilty of nothing. That reaction has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagon's own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence -- zero -- that any of WikiLeaks' actions has caused even a single death. Meanwhile, the American establishment media -- even in the face of all these revelations -- continues to insist on the contradictory, Orwellian platitudes that (a) there is Nothing New™ in anything disclosed by WikiLeaks and (b) WikiLeaks has done Grave Harm to American National Security™ through its disclosures.
It's unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them. Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold. But what's startling is how many citizens and, especially, "journalists" now vehemently believe that as well. In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Wikileaks must-reads
In case you haven't run into it, a seminal piece of commentary on Wikileaks and Julian Assange's mission is here--it's a long essay but well worth the read, and--BONUS--even makes a reference to The Wire (you can read the interesting account of how this obscure blog post came to dominate the commentariat here).
In general, you will want to keep up with Glenn Greenwald, who is the gold standard in civil rights advocacy. I have also found NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen to be insightful.
Also, the Atlantic has a post that contains a general summary of Wikileaks and a timeline of events so far, which you may find useful.
For continuing news on Wikileaks, Assange, and the revelations from the cables themselves, the best place to check is the Guardian.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The DDoS attacks aren't lie-ins--they're tea parties
Here Boing Boing contributor and all-around internet superstar Cory Doctorow talks about the recent DDoS attacks by Anonymous and whether they can be justified:
I think I mostly agree with everything he's saying here, though I would say that, though ultimately anonymous DDoS attacks are not a legitimate and effective tactic for the reasons he describes, it's also true that in rare cases it's more important to take a drastic, imperfect action than no action at all. For all the ethical hand-wringing and negative public reaction the attacks have induced, they have also made the issue of internet freedom and corporate control of political speech front-page reading in newspapers around the world, and the subject of discussion and debate in the blogs.
As Doctorow mentions in the video, supporters of the DDoS attacks have likened them to the lie-ins of the civil rights era, but to my mind a closer historical parallel isn't the calculated, well reasoned lie-ins of the 1960s but the cathartic "fuck you" impetuousness of the Boston Tea Party in 1773. As in today's case, that act of defiance--in which 342 chests of British East India Company tea were dumped into the ocean--was carried out anonymously and, it seems, without a whole lot of forethought:
A further similarity to today's DDoS attacks is that the Tea Party--which involved the destruction of private property--was not readily embraced by supporters of the Colonial cause, and did much to anger and unify the broader British consensus against them:
Like today's DDoS attacks, the Boston Tea Party was difficult to justify and, on its face, harmful to the cause it purported to defend. But its value was not in its academic correctitude or tactical efficacy, but rather in its function as a catalyst of events and the rallying effect that such a sheer act of bravado can have on the hardcore supporters of the cause. Consider the chain of events--of harsh British responses and resulting Colonial escalation--that the Tea Party helped set in motion:
We must remember that when Anonymous launched the attacks, it was not working with the benefit of hindsight. There was no way to know how many people would end up joining the attacks, or if they would provoke the government into some kind of blundering over-reaction, or what. And yet, it was a near certainty that if no extraordinary action were taken, the government and its corporate proxies would continue business as usual and the establishment media would do little to challenge them. So it was a way to shake things up and perhaps introduce a little serendipity into the historical proceedings.
In the end, though of course it is important to dutifully rebuke the DD0S attacks, I would hope that rather than spend our energies heaping criticism on Anonymous and their flawed methods we would instead salute their pluck and turn our attention to a more constructive task: devising an ethical and tactically sound method of internet civil disobedience.
Doctorrow from REC Radiocentrum on Vimeo.
I think I mostly agree with everything he's saying here, though I would say that, though ultimately anonymous DDoS attacks are not a legitimate and effective tactic for the reasons he describes, it's also true that in rare cases it's more important to take a drastic, imperfect action than no action at all. For all the ethical hand-wringing and negative public reaction the attacks have induced, they have also made the issue of internet freedom and corporate control of political speech front-page reading in newspapers around the world, and the subject of discussion and debate in the blogs.
As Doctorow mentions in the video, supporters of the DDoS attacks have likened them to the lie-ins of the civil rights era, but to my mind a closer historical parallel isn't the calculated, well reasoned lie-ins of the 1960s but the cathartic "fuck you" impetuousness of the Boston Tea Party in 1773. As in today's case, that act of defiance--in which 342 chests of British East India Company tea were dumped into the ocean--was carried out anonymously and, it seems, without a whole lot of forethought:
While Samuel Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House and headed to Boston Harbor. That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men, some of them thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded the three vessels and, over the course of three hours, dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water.[59]
A further similarity to today's DDoS attacks is that the Tea Party--which involved the destruction of private property--was not readily embraced by supporters of the Colonial cause, and did much to anger and unify the broader British consensus against them:
In Britain, even those politicians considered friends of the colonies were appalled and this act united all parties there against the colonies. The Prime Minister Lord North said, "Whatever may be the consequence, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over".[63] The British government felt this action could not remain unpunished, and responded by closing the port of Boston and putting in place other laws known as the "Coercive Acts".
In the colonies, Benjamin Franklin stated that the destroyed tea must be repaid, all 90,000 pounds. Robert Murray, a New York merchant went to Lord North with three other merchants and offered to pay for the losses, but the offer was turned down.[64]
Like today's DDoS attacks, the Boston Tea Party was difficult to justify and, on its face, harmful to the cause it purported to defend. But its value was not in its academic correctitude or tactical efficacy, but rather in its function as a catalyst of events and the rallying effect that such a sheer act of bravado can have on the hardcore supporters of the cause. Consider the chain of events--of harsh British responses and resulting Colonial escalation--that the Tea Party helped set in motion:
The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.
We must remember that when Anonymous launched the attacks, it was not working with the benefit of hindsight. There was no way to know how many people would end up joining the attacks, or if they would provoke the government into some kind of blundering over-reaction, or what. And yet, it was a near certainty that if no extraordinary action were taken, the government and its corporate proxies would continue business as usual and the establishment media would do little to challenge them. So it was a way to shake things up and perhaps introduce a little serendipity into the historical proceedings.
In the end, though of course it is important to dutifully rebuke the DD0S attacks, I would hope that rather than spend our energies heaping criticism on Anonymous and their flawed methods we would instead salute their pluck and turn our attention to a more constructive task: devising an ethical and tactically sound method of internet civil disobedience.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The erosion of civil liberties: we have slipped down the slope
Quick thought:
Generally speaking, the pattern for many civil liberties arguments is of the form, "we must protect the rights of X, for tomorrow the government may go after Y", where X is someone or something unsympathetic and universally reviled, and Y is someone or something seen as meriting praise and protection from government abuse. And so we protect Larry Flynt's right to publish filth so that some future muckraker may be protected; we give an undisputedly guilty monster of a human being all the trappings of a trial and due process to insulate some future target of a witch hunt from injustice; and so on. In all these cases, we apply a general prohibition on government power in order to protect against those relatively rare instances (well, hopefully they're rare) when government power really is misused to imprison the innocent or silence dissent.
It occurred to me that perhaps what has gotten me so wound up about the Wikileaks case is that--in my opinion at least--what we're witnessing is a violation of civil liberties against not a reviled X, but a praiseworthy Y. Since 9/11, throughout the Bush years and right on up through the Obama years to today, we as a society--and the political and media establishment--have stood idly by while the government has opened up huge exceptions into the general prohibitions on its powers--the prohibitions whose very generality is the means of protection from government abuses. And now we're seeing those exceptions expand and swallow up the legal system whole, to the point where now a media organization, Wikileaks--who in the case of Cablegate has done nothing different than any other media organization--must struggle to remain online as one corporation after another bows to government pressure and withdraws its services from Wikileaks.
Even if you disagree with me that Wikileaks is serving a legitimate role, the government's due-process-free campaign to silence the organization should be causing alarm bells to go off. Should the government's campaign be successful, a precedent will be set that could allow it to target (or threaten to target) mainstream publications like the New York Times in the future. Of course, at that point we would have fallen very far down the civil libertarians' slippery slope. But as the Wikileaks case shows, we've fallen quite a ways already.
Generally speaking, the pattern for many civil liberties arguments is of the form, "we must protect the rights of X, for tomorrow the government may go after Y", where X is someone or something unsympathetic and universally reviled, and Y is someone or something seen as meriting praise and protection from government abuse. And so we protect Larry Flynt's right to publish filth so that some future muckraker may be protected; we give an undisputedly guilty monster of a human being all the trappings of a trial and due process to insulate some future target of a witch hunt from injustice; and so on. In all these cases, we apply a general prohibition on government power in order to protect against those relatively rare instances (well, hopefully they're rare) when government power really is misused to imprison the innocent or silence dissent.
It occurred to me that perhaps what has gotten me so wound up about the Wikileaks case is that--in my opinion at least--what we're witnessing is a violation of civil liberties against not a reviled X, but a praiseworthy Y. Since 9/11, throughout the Bush years and right on up through the Obama years to today, we as a society--and the political and media establishment--have stood idly by while the government has opened up huge exceptions into the general prohibitions on its powers--the prohibitions whose very generality is the means of protection from government abuses. And now we're seeing those exceptions expand and swallow up the legal system whole, to the point where now a media organization, Wikileaks--who in the case of Cablegate has done nothing different than any other media organization--must struggle to remain online as one corporation after another bows to government pressure and withdraws its services from Wikileaks.
Even if you disagree with me that Wikileaks is serving a legitimate role, the government's due-process-free campaign to silence the organization should be causing alarm bells to go off. Should the government's campaign be successful, a precedent will be set that could allow it to target (or threaten to target) mainstream publications like the New York Times in the future. Of course, at that point we would have fallen very far down the civil libertarians' slippery slope. But as the Wikileaks case shows, we've fallen quite a ways already.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The corporate enablers--and disablers--of free speech
A few days ago I wrote a lengthy comment responding to a post by Wendy Kaminer called "Wikileaks and the Unfree Market". In that post, she observes that "corporate control over speech is nothing new":
My response, in which I try to make the argument that there is in fact something unprecedented going on here:
I would just add a couple of things. First, interestingly enough it turns out that the New York Times rents its server space from none other than--you guessed it--Amazon. So that comparison turned out to be pretty apt: if the government can get Amazon to kick Wikileaks off its servers, what's stopping it, in principle, from getting Amazon to kick the New York Times off its servers?
Second, it is worth pointing out that, ironically, the leaked cables themselves provide an insight into the ways that large corporations like Visa and MasterCard can be beholden to the US government. According to the Guardian, documents show that the US government was actively involved in lobbying the Russian legislature on Visa's and MasterCard's behalves, to ensure that the card payment companies were not "adversely affected" by some proposed legislation there. This clearly illustrates that for an international corporation to take a stand against a government request--however informally or implicitly made--is to risk political recriminations in the form of losing out to one's competitors when it comes to special favors such as these.
Authors and journalists in the pre-digital age were dependent on publishers willing to disseminate their work -- without publishing support, they were mere street corner pamphleteers.... Still, recent demonstrations of corporate power over WikiLeaks seemed to resonate with the force of revelation, mocking any lingering illusions of the Internet as a frontier free from corporate as well as state control.
Yes, it's true that the Internet potentially offers significantly larger audiences to electronic pamphleteers than they'd ever find on any street corner, even in Times Square; and for better and worse, a few break through, thanks to their demagoguery or thoughtfulness, marketing acumen or luck. But the Internet is an ocean, and without a berth on a corporate or corporate sponsored ship, most people will quickly sink, or swim unnoticed. And, while the street is a public place in which the government's powers of eviction are limited by First Amendment rights, the Internet has always been (pardon the metaphor shift) a gated community. If virtually anyone can enter, the right to remain and speak your mind is generally subject to corporate control, as the WikiLeaks fracas has shown.
...
I'm not dismissing concerns about the threat that corporate control and homogenization of speech poses to the flow of information and dissent. Having worked as a freelance writer for some 30 years, I am only too keenly aware of marketplace censorship. But it's a fact of life, and First Amendment editorial freedoms, which the private press enjoys.... There is no significant political constituency for free speech on the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is right: "Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary." But we the people, not private corporations, are the weakest links in the chain.
My response, in which I try to make the argument that there is in fact something unprecedented going on here:
Wendy, I think you are mistaken in viewing Wikileaks' position as no different in principle than that of a pre-digital age individual "dependent on publishers willing to disseminate their work". Wikileaks is not a single author or publisher--it is itself a media organization, no different in principle (I argue) than the New York Times.
Suppose Lieberman had called for all companies to sever ties with the New York Times, so that the NYT suddenly found nobody could pay them using a credit card; their bank accounts were frozen; their domain name was deleted by their domain name provider; and that whoever they rent their servers from dropped them as a customer, essentially hounding the NYT from the internet. Does this strike you as analogous to a pre-digital age author who cannot find a publisher for his political pamphlet? It seems to me the proper pre-digital age analogy would be if the government told all paper and ink companies to stop selling their wares to a particular newspaper, and took steps (freezing accounts, making it difficult to transfer money) to keep that newspaper from functioning on a day-to-day basis. To my knowledge such a snuffing-out of a publisher, orchestrated by the US government in concert with corporate interests, is indeed unprecedented.
I take your point that free speech has always been dependent on the distribution mechanisms provided by corporate entities. But what has changed is the degree of this dependence, and the higher-ordered-ness of the dependence. In the pre-digital age, you would need money of course to print a newspaper, but political and cultural norms rendered the idea outrageous that the government could suffocate the operation by denying it the raw materials it needs to function or the financial infrastructure (bank accounts, credit transfers, loans, etc.) is needs to survive as a business. In other words, the individual was dependent on a wealthy corporate publisher; but the corporate publisher was not dependent on some higher, more powerful corporate entity. What we are seeing in the Wikileaks case is unprecedented and, I think, extremely alarming: now political speech is at the mercy of entities further upstream in the corporate food chain (Visa, MasterCard, Amazon), handing the government a far more powerful means for controlling political speech than anything that has come before.
My feeling is that large corporations like Amazon and MasterCard--that provide a platform for some general activity that is abstracted from the specifics of the particular activities that take place on the platform--do not like being in the position of free-speech arbiter or government-enforcer. I think their preferred outcome would be a law that ties their hands and prevents them legally from meddling in cases such as these without some kind of judicial court order, thereby protecting them from the possibility of political recriminations for not complying with the government. For example, in the current case, Amazon would have simply said to Lieberman: "Sorry! We legally cannot kick Wikileaks off our servers. You have to get a court order for that."
I would just add a couple of things. First, interestingly enough it turns out that the New York Times rents its server space from none other than--you guessed it--Amazon. So that comparison turned out to be pretty apt: if the government can get Amazon to kick Wikileaks off its servers, what's stopping it, in principle, from getting Amazon to kick the New York Times off its servers?
Second, it is worth pointing out that, ironically, the leaked cables themselves provide an insight into the ways that large corporations like Visa and MasterCard can be beholden to the US government. According to the Guardian, documents show that the US government was actively involved in lobbying the Russian legislature on Visa's and MasterCard's behalves, to ensure that the card payment companies were not "adversely affected" by some proposed legislation there. This clearly illustrates that for an international corporation to take a stand against a government request--however informally or implicitly made--is to risk political recriminations in the form of losing out to one's competitors when it comes to special favors such as these.
Wikileaks awakes me from my blogmatic slumber
Oh hi there.
A little more than a year ago Izott went silent, partly because of a conscious decision to spend less time on the internets, but mostly because I had become disillusioned and bored with politics in general. I had always meant to write a conclusionary post to tie things up properly, but just never got around to it. So Izott has been collecting dust and the odd Chinese spam comment ever since.
Now, though, with this Wikileaks story, I'm motivated to write a few posts so that I can get my thoughts straight about the matter. It's a very important story, I feel, and one that deals with a pretty foundational basic right--freedom of speech--which is not a topic that has really come up in a serious or interesting way since I started blogging. For the first time in a while, there's something new under the sun in politics.
A little more than a year ago Izott went silent, partly because of a conscious decision to spend less time on the internets, but mostly because I had become disillusioned and bored with politics in general. I had always meant to write a conclusionary post to tie things up properly, but just never got around to it. So Izott has been collecting dust and the odd Chinese spam comment ever since.
Now, though, with this Wikileaks story, I'm motivated to write a few posts so that I can get my thoughts straight about the matter. It's a very important story, I feel, and one that deals with a pretty foundational basic right--freedom of speech--which is not a topic that has really come up in a serious or interesting way since I started blogging. For the first time in a while, there's something new under the sun in politics.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
San Fernando Valley REPRESENT
Derek Fisher lives in the Valley:
Q: OK, quick break from questions about your age and whether you're over the hill. I hear you live way out in the San Fernando Valley. What's that, like, an hour to practice every morning? I was born in the Valley and I like it there. But you know, like, there's kind of a stigma to living there.
A: I think it's just a certain lifestyle that I think is important for when you have a family and kids. Then again, even before I was married, I was in the Valley, too. I think being from Little Rock, Arkansas, it's important for there to be grass and trees and a little bit of a slower feel to where I live as opposed to being in the city in a penthouse-townhouse kind of place.
Q: Would you still live there now if you didn't have the family?
A: No, Even though I'd be drawn to that area I've learned a lot more of how important it is to manage your rest and your body and your time. So two to three hours out of the day in the car wouldn't be at the top of the list, but for them it's more than worth it.
I wonder if he hangs out at Twain's.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Prices come to parking in SF
I was really excited to discover today that San Francisco is implementing a plan to build an integrated system of "smart parking meters" that will be able to track parking capacity in real time, and also adjust prices depending on parking demand. So not only will you be able to see online how many and which parking spaces are available, but higher prices in peak periods will ensure that there is always parking spaces readily available (and in slow periods, lower prices will ensure that parking capacity is being used efficiently).
The program is in the pilot phase right now, and will come online in a few neighborhoods around the city this summer (including the Mission, between 16th and 24th).
Generally speaking I'm in favor of any and all policies that do something to set a proper price on driving--whether that means a carbon tax, tolls, market-priced parking, etc. So long as we continue to subsidize driving by offering cheap gas, free roads, and free parking (including the government mandated building of parking structures and parking lots), we'll be stuck in sprawling, trafficky cities that don't work very well. Setting a price on these scarce goods--parking space, road space, etc.--will change people's behavior, encouraging more carpooling, more public transit usage, more biking, and more off-peak usage of the city's roads.
Or at least, so the theory goes. It will be interesting to see what the data from the pilot program ends up telling us.
The program is in the pilot phase right now, and will come online in a few neighborhoods around the city this summer (including the Mission, between 16th and 24th).
Generally speaking I'm in favor of any and all policies that do something to set a proper price on driving--whether that means a carbon tax, tolls, market-priced parking, etc. So long as we continue to subsidize driving by offering cheap gas, free roads, and free parking (including the government mandated building of parking structures and parking lots), we'll be stuck in sprawling, trafficky cities that don't work very well. Setting a price on these scarce goods--parking space, road space, etc.--will change people's behavior, encouraging more carpooling, more public transit usage, more biking, and more off-peak usage of the city's roads.
Or at least, so the theory goes. It will be interesting to see what the data from the pilot program ends up telling us.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
is/ought
Generally speaking, I'm sympathetic to Sam Harris. I read The End of Faith, and found it to be pretty well thought-out and argued--a useful book.
However, recently he did a TED talk in which he argued that science can answer moral questions, and I must say I find his main argument and especially his responses to critics to be pretty underwhelming. You can read one such response here.
Something especially troubling is his insistence that there really are huge moral stakes attached to this philosophical dispute--so much so that he believes people who he disagrees with should be characterized as amoral monsters who condone the hypothetical blinding of innocent people:
(Indeed, I think proof that Harris did not understand the point of his interlocutor's questioning is given by the fact that he doesn't include enough of the conversation to understand what the interlocutor was getting at. Rather than turn on his heel, Harris' next question should have been: but that is a counter-intuitive answer; you would think you would be able to make a moral condemnation of the society in such an extreme case. Explain to me why you find such a condemnation is problematic. I will be charitable and assume that you do indeed substantively believe it is wrong to blind people for no good reason.)
I find it hard to believe that Harris' interlocutor is truly a "moral relativist"--that she gives an uncomplicated shrug of the shoulders to cruelties perpetrated by foreign cultures. I also find it hard to believe that Sam Harris truly believes his interlocutor has such a set of beliefs--which makes his pretensions of horror and outrage so tiresome. The truth is, there is quite a lot of distance between someone's avowed philosophical beliefs on a relatively esoteric point in analytic philosophy and someone's actual substantive positions on the various political and moral questions of the day. I'm sure there is someone out there who considers themself to be a proud "moral relativist" or something along those lines, but who nevertheless has a substantive set of beliefs that are not very different from Harris'--I would not call this person any less moral for staking out that philosophical position. Nor would I consider someone who naively doesn't think at all about the validity of their moral claims less moral than someone who thinks a lot about it, all else being equal. Harris is caught up in the melodrama of his own intellectual quest, and is forgetting that real actions and political beliefs make moral monsters, not esoteric philosophical claims.
Of course, Harris' intent seems precisely to infuse his project to science-ize morality with a fierce moral urgency--he wants results, dammit! There are women forced to wear sacks in Afghanistan! All true enough. But if he really cares about those substantive issues--and they are of course serious issues to think about and take action on--then he must know that arguing for a philosophical grounding of morality in science has to be the most ineffective, roundabout way of addressing them of all time. It's not like on Monday you come up with a knock-down argument of Hume's is/ought distinction, submit it to Philosophy Today on Tuesday, and by Wednesday the US government is meticulously implementing your program. Philosophy in general is an ivory tower activity. Thinking it's not is exactly the sort of thing that someone in an ivory tower would think. So Harris' fierce moral urgency shtick is truly misplaced.
I acknowledge this hasn't been a substantive critique of Harris' main argument so much as griping about the way he has conducted himself. But I do think there is something very much awry when someone comes away from a philosophical tiff believing that the person they just spoke to was History's Greatest Monster, when in fact it was probably just a nice lady with lots of advanced degrees.
PS: I'm sure Sam Harris is very smart and all, but I'm also sure that David Hume was probably about a hundred times smarter. And unlike scientific fields such as physics, philosophy doesn't "advance" in a Kuhnian way that renders important conclusions quaint and invalidated years later. It's not like Hume was theorizing about humors in the body or something that a school child could refute today; his epistemological arguments are actually alive and kicking still, and difficult to get a full and complete understanding of, even for dedicated scholars. Philosophy is hard! And yet from this obnoxious passage, you would think that philsophy was a relatively straightforward exercise, and Hume some sort of obscure crank:
However, recently he did a TED talk in which he argued that science can answer moral questions, and I must say I find his main argument and especially his responses to critics to be pretty underwhelming. You can read one such response here.
Something especially troubling is his insistence that there really are huge moral stakes attached to this philosophical dispute--so much so that he believes people who he disagrees with should be characterized as amoral monsters who condone the hypothetical blinding of innocent people:
At the conclusion of my talk, I fell into debate with another invited speaker, who seemed, at first glance, to be very well positioned to reason effectively about the implications of science for our understanding of morality. She holds a degree in genetics from Dartmouth, a masters in biology from Harvard, and a law degree, another masters, and a Ph.D. in the philosophy of biology from Duke. This scholar is now a recognized authority on the intersection between criminal law, genetics, neuroscience and philosophy. Here is a snippet of our conversation, more or less verbatim:I think Harris is confused here about what function a philosophical argument like this serves--specifically, the sort of skeptical argument offered here by his interloqueter (in this case, skepticism about universal morality/grounding for cross-cultural moral claims). The point of a skeptical argument isn't to argue that such skepticism is justified or that we should walk around actually believing it; rather, it's to draw attention to an inconsistency or lack of explanation in our way of thinking about things. One of my favorite philosophers, Barry Stroud, likened it to Meno's paradox: the point isn't to seriously contend that two objects can never touch (since the closing distance needs to be infinitely halved), but rather to draw attention to an apparent contradiction--or at least bit of weirdness--in our conceptions of numbers, distance, etc. Here Harris being horrified at his interlocutor's skepticism regarding the ability to morally condemn his hypothetical cruel society would be like someone responding to Meno by saying, "I refute it thus", and knocking two rocks together--in both cases, they are missing the point of the exercise.Such opinions are not uncommon in the Ivory Tower.She: What makes you think that science will ever be able to say that forcing women to wear burqas is wrong?
Me: Because I think that right and wrong are a matter of increasing or decreasing wellbeing—and it is obvious that forcing half the population to live in cloth bags, and beating or killing them if they refuse, is not a good strategy for maximizing human wellbeing.
She: But that’s only your opinion.
Me: Okay… Let’s make it even simpler. What if we found a culture that ritually blinded every third child by literally plucking out his or her eyes at birth, would you then agree that we had found a culture that was needlessly diminishing human wellbeing?
She: It would depend on why they were doing it.
Me (slowly returning my eyebrows from the back of my head): Let’s say they were doing it on the basis of religious superstition. In their scripture, God says, “Every third must walk in darkness.”
She: Then you could never say that they were wrong.
(Indeed, I think proof that Harris did not understand the point of his interlocutor's questioning is given by the fact that he doesn't include enough of the conversation to understand what the interlocutor was getting at. Rather than turn on his heel, Harris' next question should have been: but that is a counter-intuitive answer; you would think you would be able to make a moral condemnation of the society in such an extreme case. Explain to me why you find such a condemnation is problematic. I will be charitable and assume that you do indeed substantively believe it is wrong to blind people for no good reason.)
I find it hard to believe that Harris' interlocutor is truly a "moral relativist"--that she gives an uncomplicated shrug of the shoulders to cruelties perpetrated by foreign cultures. I also find it hard to believe that Sam Harris truly believes his interlocutor has such a set of beliefs--which makes his pretensions of horror and outrage so tiresome. The truth is, there is quite a lot of distance between someone's avowed philosophical beliefs on a relatively esoteric point in analytic philosophy and someone's actual substantive positions on the various political and moral questions of the day. I'm sure there is someone out there who considers themself to be a proud "moral relativist" or something along those lines, but who nevertheless has a substantive set of beliefs that are not very different from Harris'--I would not call this person any less moral for staking out that philosophical position. Nor would I consider someone who naively doesn't think at all about the validity of their moral claims less moral than someone who thinks a lot about it, all else being equal. Harris is caught up in the melodrama of his own intellectual quest, and is forgetting that real actions and political beliefs make moral monsters, not esoteric philosophical claims.
Of course, Harris' intent seems precisely to infuse his project to science-ize morality with a fierce moral urgency--he wants results, dammit! There are women forced to wear sacks in Afghanistan! All true enough. But if he really cares about those substantive issues--and they are of course serious issues to think about and take action on--then he must know that arguing for a philosophical grounding of morality in science has to be the most ineffective, roundabout way of addressing them of all time. It's not like on Monday you come up with a knock-down argument of Hume's is/ought distinction, submit it to Philosophy Today on Tuesday, and by Wednesday the US government is meticulously implementing your program. Philosophy in general is an ivory tower activity. Thinking it's not is exactly the sort of thing that someone in an ivory tower would think. So Harris' fierce moral urgency shtick is truly misplaced.
I acknowledge this hasn't been a substantive critique of Harris' main argument so much as griping about the way he has conducted himself. But I do think there is something very much awry when someone comes away from a philosophical tiff believing that the person they just spoke to was History's Greatest Monster, when in fact it was probably just a nice lady with lots of advanced degrees.
PS: I'm sure Sam Harris is very smart and all, but I'm also sure that David Hume was probably about a hundred times smarter. And unlike scientific fields such as physics, philosophy doesn't "advance" in a Kuhnian way that renders important conclusions quaint and invalidated years later. It's not like Hume was theorizing about humors in the body or something that a school child could refute today; his epistemological arguments are actually alive and kicking still, and difficult to get a full and complete understanding of, even for dedicated scholars. Philosophy is hard! And yet from this obnoxious passage, you would think that philsophy was a relatively straightforward exercise, and Hume some sort of obscure crank:
Many of my critics piously cite Hume’s is/ought distinction as though it were well known to be the last word on the subject of morality until the end of time. Indeed, Carroll appears to think that Hume’s lazy analysis of facts and values is so compelling that he elevates it to the status of mathematical truth:And:Attempts to derive ought from is [values from facts] are like attempts to reach an odd number by adding together even numbers. If someone claims that they’ve done it, you don’t have to check their math; you know that they’ve made a mistake.
This is an amazingly wrongheaded response coming from a very smart scientist. I wonder how Carroll would react if I breezily dismissed his physics with a reference to something Robert Oppenheimer once wrote, on the assumption that it was now an unmovable object around which all future human thought must flow. Happily, that’s not how physics works. But neither is it how philosophy works. Frankly, it’s not how anything that works, works.
I must say, the vehemence and condescension with which the is/ought objection has been thrown in my face astounds me. And it confirms my sense that this bit of bad philosophy has done tremendous harm to the thinking of smart (and not so smart) people. The categorical distinction between facts and values helped open a sinkhole beneath liberalism long ago—leading to moral relativism and to masochistic depths of political correctness.Look Sam Harris: it's obviously just fine to challenge arguments made by great thinkers. I mean, that's what you're supposed to do. But have some effing respect. "This bit of bad philosophy"? And when you launch a big argument about how science can be a grounding for morality, and you don't call your argument, "My Controversial Argument Against Hume's Is/Ought Distinction", shouldn't you expect the first words out of everyone's mouth to be, "what about Hume's is/ought distinction"?
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Meanwhile, Google continues to be awesome
A while back, I sent some feedback to Google regarding their Google Maps bicycle directions. Apparently a "preferred route" that the algorithm selects in SF is Caesar Chavez, which is actually a terrible street to bike on. Here is their response:
Google: so good. All the time.
Hi David,
Your Google Maps problem report has been reviewed, and you were right! We'll update the map soon and email you when you can see the change.Report history
--
Problem ID: D0F8-9BDD-28BA-A469
Your report: Cesar Chavez St. in San Francisco is marked as a preferred route (dotted line), but this is a fast, busy street that sucks to bike on. 26th St. a block up is a much better street for biking.
Thanks for your help,
The Google Maps team
Google: so good. All the time.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Adventures in corporate communication
Here is an email I just sent off to Virgin Atlantic:
I'll let y'all know what ends up happening.
*************************************
* VIRGIN ATLANTIC GENERAL ENQUIRY *
*************************************
Details
Flying club number:
Name : David Morris
Email :
Address :
City :
County :
Postcode: 94110
Country : US
Enquiry Type: Flight Info/Reservations
Flight Number: None
Flight Date : -1/None/-1
Feedback:
Very frustrated here.
I'm trying to change the date of my flight. Apparently, according to the FAQ, you can only do that over the phone. I waited on hold for 30 mins. calling the American number; I tried calling the UK number but I guess my phone can't make international calls.
Anyway, my confirmation number is XXXXXX. I'm flying roundtrip from SFO to Heathrow. I need to change the return flight from May 30 to Sunday May 23. Ideally I'd also like to change the outgoing city from London to Dublin, but if that's not possible/too expensive then I'll just settle for flying out of Heathrow on May 23.
Well, that's all I'm trying to do. I heard Virgin Atlantic is supposed to be super awesome and modern but so far it's been like trying to settle a dispute with the phone company (I don't know how phone companies are in the UK--hell you probably don't even call them phones over there, you probably call them something weird like 'bothams'--or no we need an extraneous 'u' in there, so let's make it 'bouthams'--but here in the US they are not known for their customer service savvy).
Ha--ok, enough of me. I've had a long day. I hope you can help me out.
Hey here's a joke to lighten the mood: what do you call a pig who can only see out of one eye? Give up? Well, you shouldn't give up. Quitter.
That's the joke. It's not very good because I made it up AS I WAS TYPING IT.
Thanks,
David
PS: Stay real. You know what I mean? Stay YOU. Yeah you know what I'm talkin about.
I'll let y'all know what ends up happening.
The size of food portions in depictions of the Last Supper over the centuries
This is pretty rad:
My brother—a religious studies professor at Virginia Wesleyan College—and I indexed the sizes of all of the entrees, loaves of bread, and even plates in the 52 most famous Last Supper paintings from the past millennium featured in Last Supper (2000, Phaiden Press), based on the sizes of people's heads. Through plagues and potato famines, the average size of entrees increased by 69 percent, plates by 65 percent, and bread by 23 percent. (The only thing that didn't continually increase with time was the number of wine bottles on the table—that peaked in the apparently party-happy 16th century.)The idea is that, since the kind and amount of food during the Last Supper is not specified anywhere, artists would insert whatever seemed natural to them in their culture and time period. So this would reflect humanity's growing bread basket...
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Beatles observation
Here's a Beatles observation for you: anytime there is non-lyrical melodious filler, you can be sure it's Paul, and never John. Any whistling, or "doo do doo", or humming--always Paul. I don't think there's even one instance of John doing this (or George, but I'm not as sure about that).
Examples:
Anyway, if someone knows of a John song (or John part of a song) with similar melodious filler, I'd like to hear it.
Examples:
- Mother Nature's Son ("doo do doo do doo do...")
- Your Mother Should Know ("da da da..")
- Fool On the Hill (instrumental verse; "oh oh oh ohhhhhh round round round...")
- Hey Jude ("na na na na na na naaaaaaaaaaaa...")
- Rockey Raccoon ("da da dada da daaaa"; "do doo do do dooo do")
- Honey Pie (instrumental segment/"I like this kinda, kinda muuuuuusic"; "oh ho ho ho ho hoo ho")
- I Will (humming)
Anyway, if someone knows of a John song (or John part of a song) with similar melodious filler, I'd like to hear it.
Health care reform: see how you're affected
Input your insurance status, income, and marital status, and this handy tool will tell you how the new legislation affects you.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
RIP Alex Chilton
I'd never explicitly heard of the Box Tops, but this song has been wending its way through my brain for the last couple of days:
I think as a rock n' roll pop song it's kind of perfect: 2 minutes. Catchy melody. Straightforward lyrics about some girl. Badass vocals.
Well, anyway. I think a bonus is that everyone looks pretty damn cool in the above video. GO 60s
I think as a rock n' roll pop song it's kind of perfect: 2 minutes. Catchy melody. Straightforward lyrics about some girl. Badass vocals.
Well, anyway. I think a bonus is that everyone looks pretty damn cool in the above video. GO 60s
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Not since Bill Clinton's star appearance in NBA Jam has a president been more associated with the game of basketball
In all the hubbub about Obama being the first black president, you sometimes forget that he's also our first president who's into basketball:
Pretty rad. Politics aside, how fun would it be to play a pick-up game with this guy and, like, Reggie Love?
Pretty rad. Politics aside, how fun would it be to play a pick-up game with this guy and, like, Reggie Love?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Quote of the day
"[Conservatives] have used a skepticism of change, to mask a defense of institutional evil." - TNC
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Rainy day memories
I don't seem to be able to embed it, but here is one of my very favorite Sesame Street moments, where Oscar the Grouch recounts the time he first met Slimey on a rainy day in the park. Seems appropriate since we're coming to the end of the rainy season and all.
I'll also add that there's nothing like dozing off with a friend when it's pouring out and you're cozily tucked away somewhere. I remember when I was a kid and used to hang out with my grandpa a lot, that when it rained it would make a nice, loud sound on the corrugated aluminum overhang just outside, and we'd take afternoon naps like that. It was nice.
I'll also add that there's nothing like dozing off with a friend when it's pouring out and you're cozily tucked away somewhere. I remember when I was a kid and used to hang out with my grandpa a lot, that when it rained it would make a nice, loud sound on the corrugated aluminum overhang just outside, and we'd take afternoon naps like that. It was nice.
Bike news
Item 1: You've probably already heard this, but Google maps now has bicycle directions that take into account hills, bike paths, avoiding busy streets, etc. It doesn't work too well yet, though--for example, to get to work, it suggested a zigzag path down Ceasar Chavez, up Harrison, cutting across 22nd to Potrero, then on up to the Division/Townsend roundabout. But that's nutty! Caesar Chavez is a horrible and dangerous street to bike on, and you end up going right through an unnecessary hill. Which brings me to my second item.
Item 2: It turns out there's plans in the works to totally redo Caesar Chavez into a bikable, walkable, green non-hellscape! Currently there's 8 lanes: one parking lane on each side, and six traffic lanes in the middle (3 in each direction). The renovation will keep the parking lanes but add bike lanes and a 14-foot median strip with trees, leaving 4 total lanes for traffic. Once done, it will make that street look about a thousand times nicer.
Of course, if I had my druthers, if they're going to make the street walkable I'd also like to see more commercial frontage, especially since it's still in walking distance from BART (though just barely). It'd be great to see it take on more of a 24th St. character. But all in due time, I guess.
(Photo by Ian Sane)
Baseball and the law
Via Josh, an interesting article pointing out that it is far more accurate to say that a Supreme Court Justice is a commissioner of baseball, rather than an umpire:
The Supreme Court hears only a small number of cases. Most of its work consists of providing guidance to lower courts, rather than correcting all judicial errors on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, the Commissioner of Baseball relays instructions to the umpires regarding how to interpret the rules of Major League Baseball, rather than reviewing their every call.
In a related note, I always thought that it would be funny to try to change California's Three Strikes Law by way of changing the rules of baseball to increase the number of strikes needed for an out.
In yet another related note, baseball analogies are alive and well in our current political discourse. Here's Harry Reid, talking tough on filibuster reform:
For now, the process seems to be proceeding from the premise that Senate Democrats are fed up with the filibuster. "In baseball," Reid said in a clipped tone, "they used to have the spitball. It originally was used with discretion. But then the ball got wetter and wetter and wetter. So soon, they outlawed the spitball." The same, he said, had happened to the four-corner offense in basketball. "And just the way the spitball was abused in baseball and the four-corner offense was abused in basketball," Reid said, "Republicans have abused the filibuster."What the hell is the "four-corner offense"?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A truly poignant moment
If you've got 6 minutes to spare, you might want to take a look at this old Colbert Report interview with one Neal Katyal, who is a lawyer who defended some Gitmo detainees in court. I only post it here because of this little moment at the end, where--since apparently Katyal helped Al Gore's side in the fateful Gore v. Bush case--Colbert asked him "how that went".
Katyal responds that he kicks himself, thinking that if only he had tried to help Bush, Gore might have become President. To me that was just so heart-rending. This is a guy who obviously loves his country and the fundamental principles its based on (what is this country based on?), and who feels like he failed his country as a defender of those principles.
Katyal responds that he kicks himself, thinking that if only he had tried to help Bush, Gore might have become President. To me that was just so heart-rending. This is a guy who obviously loves his country and the fundamental principles its based on (what is this country based on?), and who feels like he failed his country as a defender of those principles.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
A Captain and Tenille flame war for the ages
Of course, I fully realize that by the time you're reading a YouTube comments flame war, you really ought to have gone to sleep. But: in this one the stakes are so high:
It seems that poor Debra--who I'm sure is a very nice, ordinary person--hasn't learned not to get lured into YouTube comments flame wars with people named "BagofRats".
Toni Tenille now wears a calostmy bag, being a druggie is never smart@Bag0fRats y do u know this@vicnored it's well known. Didn't ever hear of the concert she gave in the late 80s in LA when she dropped her colostomy bag on stage ?That is not nice of you to spread falsehoods. Toni Tennille and her husband did not do drugs. And she looks very health to me.
They have a website. Google Captian and Tennille.
Shame on you...
Debra J.M. Smith
of
Informing Christians@InformingChristians Falsehoods ? I suppose you could tell the thousands that saw her perform in LA in the late 1980s that saw her drop her colostomy bag on stage are all lying and coincidentally made up the same lie. Oh, and all the morning radio shows must have lied too as well as all the callers who were joking about it.@Bag0fRats
I never heard anything about it. And even if a situation happened that she had such a health issue, that would not mean that it was from drug use.
I never heard of her doing anything mean to anyone. Why go after her in such a hurtful way? It makes no sense. She has feelings too.
Debra...@InformingChristians how is pointing out a fact hateful ? She did drop her colostomy bag on stage in LA back in '89. Maybe you didn't hear because you live in the east or whatever. If you did live here you would have known about it because it was the joke of every morning radio show in the morning. so again, how is that hateful ? Please explain.InformingChristians (3 days ago)@Bag0fRats,
If that did happen, then it is very cruel that people would have joked about it. And it does not mean that she was on drugs.
Debra...@InformingChristians Cruel maybe, juvenile yes.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Work naps
I've been saying this for a while. After lunch you're typically pretty sleepy and a short nap would be the perfect pick-me-up--but since sleeping at work is taboo, everyone is forced to resort to drugs (read: coffee, which is of course provided to everyone for free). The American siesta: LET'S DO THIS.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Haiti-capitalism bruhaha
There should be a term for when your comments on a blog post are orders of magnitude larger than the blog post itself. "Overstaying your welcome"?
PS: The Sword and the Ploughshare--no doubt an obscure Magic: The Gathering reference--is the old Target Practice, just with a face-lift and a name change.
PS: The Sword and the Ploughshare--no doubt an obscure Magic: The Gathering reference--is the old Target Practice, just with a face-lift and a name change.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
It's the way of the world, son
The other day when I was, er, occupying a stall in the restroom at work, I overheard this adorable conversation between a father and maybe his 4 or 5 year old son:
Boy: Hey! It smells like lemons in here.
Father: Just stand right there, ok?
Boy: Ok.
Father: Hey! No no no! Don't touch that. It's dirty.
Boy: Dirty?
Father: It's filled with dirty pee.
Boy: (incredulous) But it smells like lemons!
Father: They make it smell that way, so that you don't smell the pee.
Boy: Wow!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Government stimulus impossible?
I usually try to stay away from The Corner, but this (via Yglesias) strikes me as pretty egregious:
This, in a word, is bullshit. The concept of "borrowing money out of the economy" is a non-sequitor--if anything, money is borrowed into the economy, in the sense that every dollar borrowed is a dollar spent (in other words, people don't borrow money just to stuff it under a mattress--they borrow money with something to buy in mind, like a house, car, etc.).
In fact, normally the main mechanism by which the economy is regulated is by manipulating the amount of borrowing going on. This is accomplished by the Federal Reserve, which has its finger on the interest rate--lowering the rate makes borrowing cheaper, and so more borrowing--and therefore more spending--takes place. And more spending==increased demand==stimulus (these are just semantically equivalent terms).
The problem these days is that the Federal Reserve can no longer increase demand amongst the private sector by lowering the interest rate because the interest rate is already at zero (or near zero--I think it's like 0.25% or something). And so the federal government has stepped in to shoulder the burden, borrowing--and spending--hundreds of billions of dollars on its own. I have a feeling Riedl wants to say something like, "yes, but this demand is canceled out by the fact that the money will have to be repaid later via taxes", but this is no different in principle than the fact that the car or house-buying private citizen needs to eventually repay the loan that was taken out. Obligation to pay down debt later doesn't negate the fact of money being spent now, whether you're talking about a private individual, a company, the government, or whatever.
The idea that government spending creates jobs makes sense only if you never ask where the government got the money. It didn’t fall from the sky. The only way Congress can inject spending into the economy is by first taxing or borrowing it out of the economy. No new demand is created; it’s a zero-sum transfer of existing demand.
This, in a word, is bullshit. The concept of "borrowing money out of the economy" is a non-sequitor--if anything, money is borrowed into the economy, in the sense that every dollar borrowed is a dollar spent (in other words, people don't borrow money just to stuff it under a mattress--they borrow money with something to buy in mind, like a house, car, etc.).
In fact, normally the main mechanism by which the economy is regulated is by manipulating the amount of borrowing going on. This is accomplished by the Federal Reserve, which has its finger on the interest rate--lowering the rate makes borrowing cheaper, and so more borrowing--and therefore more spending--takes place. And more spending==increased demand==stimulus (these are just semantically equivalent terms).
The problem these days is that the Federal Reserve can no longer increase demand amongst the private sector by lowering the interest rate because the interest rate is already at zero (or near zero--I think it's like 0.25% or something). And so the federal government has stepped in to shoulder the burden, borrowing--and spending--hundreds of billions of dollars on its own. I have a feeling Riedl wants to say something like, "yes, but this demand is canceled out by the fact that the money will have to be repaid later via taxes", but this is no different in principle than the fact that the car or house-buying private citizen needs to eventually repay the loan that was taken out. Obligation to pay down debt later doesn't negate the fact of money being spent now, whether you're talking about a private individual, a company, the government, or whatever.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
All the conventional wisdom that's fit to print
Remarkably, there is an entire article in the NYT about "party gridlock in Washington" that doesn't even contain the word "filibuster", let alone any explanation of its historically unprecedented abuse. It's "analysis" like this that prevents me from feeling all that bad when I hear that newspapers are going under.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Femme fatale
I think one of my favorite things about this Age of the Internets that we live in--and YouTube in particular--are all the covers of songs by amateurs sitting around in their living room. Even songs I've listened to a million times seem to come out fresh and new. I could watch 'em all day.
Anyway, here's Femme Fatale, sung by a beeyootiful lady:
Anyway, here's Femme Fatale, sung by a beeyootiful lady:
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Quote of the day
“Give me whereon to stand”, said Archimedes, “and I will move the earth.” The boast was a pretty safe one, for he knew quite well that the standing place was wanting, and always would be wanting. But suppose he had moved the earth, what then? What benefit would it have been to anybody? The job would never have paid working expenses, let alone dividends, and so what was the use of talking about it? From what astronomers tell us, I should reckon that the earth moved quite fast enough already, and if there happened to be a few cranks who were dissatisfied with its rate of progress, as far as I am concerned, they might push it along for themselves; I would not move a finger or subscribe a penny piece to assist in anything of the kind.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“Archimedes”
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Terms of abuse?
Via some guy on Twitter, it seems as though Burning Man enforces some pretty ridiculous restrictions in the fine print of the ticket:
However, though it might make sense in this particular case, it does seem to set a troubling precedent. It doesn't seem right that a company can use a contract to arbitrarily limit what a person can say or do with content collected at an event (although some limits I think are pretty reasonable to enforce). But, really, I'm completely unfamiliar with the thinking on this issue.
PS: It's a pet peeve of mine when causes resort to using silly insults to refer to their targets. For example, this organization keeps substituting "terms of use" with "terms of ab(use)". Not only is this grammatically wrong--it should be "terms of (ab)use"--it just makes the organization look petty and impotent, like they're so powerless to stop what's going on and are so infuriated that the only thing they can do is stand on the sidelines and uselessly sputter in rage. It's like when people use "U$", or "Amerika"--or, for that matter, "Stanfurd" (something I've always been against).
Last year we noted how the Burning Man Organization (BMO) used online ticket terms to require participants to assign to BMO—in advance—the copyright to any pictures they took on the playa. Tickets for the 2010 event went on sale in mid-January, and we hoped the new terms would acknowledge the concerns we had expressed. Sadly, the new terms are just as onerous as before.It's hard to say where I come down on this. The thing is, at Burning Man there are a lot of respectable people doing things that are normally not very respectable, like strutting around in the nude. So there's a big danger to people's reputation if some wise guy decides to snap a bunch of photos and post them online without permission. This gives Burning Man the authority they need to immediately take down any such photos.The "assignment in advance" clause is not the only burdensome provision. The BMO ticket terms limit participants' rights to use their own photos online, obliging them to take down any photos to which BMO objects for any reason and forbidding them from allowing anyone else to download or copy the photos. This means participants cannot donate their works to the public domain or to license their works, even through Creative Commons—no matter what is depicted or whether a use is noncommercial.
Even the notoriously protective Olympics allow spectators to take their own pictures or videos under their Ticket License Agreement, requiring only that the images "not be used for broadcast, publication, or any other commercial purpose." It is disappointing that the BMO cannot be at least as flexible.
Burning Man also continues to strip ticket holders of their right to make perfectly legal uses of its trademarks, forbidding participants from even using the (trademarked) term "Burning Man" on any website. In other words, participants who’d like to blog about their experiences at the event can’t use the words ”Burning Man.” Thus Burning Man uses contract law to do what it cannot under either copyright or trademark law—exert extraordinary control over participants' speech.
However, though it might make sense in this particular case, it does seem to set a troubling precedent. It doesn't seem right that a company can use a contract to arbitrarily limit what a person can say or do with content collected at an event (although some limits I think are pretty reasonable to enforce). But, really, I'm completely unfamiliar with the thinking on this issue.
PS: It's a pet peeve of mine when causes resort to using silly insults to refer to their targets. For example, this organization keeps substituting "terms of use" with "terms of ab(use)". Not only is this grammatically wrong--it should be "terms of (ab)use"--it just makes the organization look petty and impotent, like they're so powerless to stop what's going on and are so infuriated that the only thing they can do is stand on the sidelines and uselessly sputter in rage. It's like when people use "U$", or "Amerika"--or, for that matter, "Stanfurd" (something I've always been against).
They do it their way
Apparently, singing Frank Sinatra's version of My Way at karaoke in the Philippines can get you killed. Which is, you know, ridiculous.
Juking the stats
Life imitates The Wire.BONUS SECTION: I just learned yesterday that there is, indeed, a The Office-The Wire connection. It seems that Office producer/actor B.J. Novaks is a big Wire fan, and so he's been giving Wire alums bit roles. What's funny, though, is that the actors invariably end up playing basically the same character in the Office as they were in the Wire. So, for example, Stringer ends up playing the hardass corporate boss; Beadie ends up playing the mellow love interest (Holly); and in a recent episode, we had the wormy Managing Editor from the Baltimore Sun, Thomas Klebanow, play the wormy fact checker from the new parent company.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Extra extra read all about it
Monday, February 1, 2010
Sweet budget proposal interactive graphic thingy
The NYT does it again. Check it out if you want to know what the federal budget is like.
I don't know whether to slap my forehead or rub my temples
From a front page NYT article:
Arrrrrggggggg! This is just not true. Health care insurance reform was projected to reduce the deficit by, among other things, raising revenue and cutting back somewhat on existing Medicare entitlements for seniors. And if the liberals had really had their way, and included a robust public option, the deficit would have been cut far more substantially. (All this according to the CBO!)
Meanwhile, it has been the Republicans who have been promising not to cut Medicare, not the Democrats. And it is the Republicans who passed the unfunded expansion of Medicare, the unfunded tax cuts, and financed the unfunded wars of the Bush years.
So the real story is that it is the Republicans who are overwhelmingly responsible for the unsustainable levels of debt that our nation finds itself in. But in the mainstream press you always get the "both sides are to blame" narrative.
Mr. Obama has published the 10-year numbers in part, it seems, to make the point that the political gridlock of the past few years, in which most Republicans refuse to talk about tax increases and Democrats refuse to talk about cutting entitlement programs, is unsustainable.
Arrrrrggggggg! This is just not true. Health care insurance reform was projected to reduce the deficit by, among other things, raising revenue and cutting back somewhat on existing Medicare entitlements for seniors. And if the liberals had really had their way, and included a robust public option, the deficit would have been cut far more substantially. (All this according to the CBO!)
Meanwhile, it has been the Republicans who have been promising not to cut Medicare, not the Democrats. And it is the Republicans who passed the unfunded expansion of Medicare, the unfunded tax cuts, and financed the unfunded wars of the Bush years.
So the real story is that it is the Republicans who are overwhelmingly responsible for the unsustainable levels of debt that our nation finds itself in. But in the mainstream press you always get the "both sides are to blame" narrative.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Quote of the day
"The GOP is as interested in restraining spending as I am in wanting to have sex with women." - Andrew Sullivan
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The broken Senate
Via Yglesias, a nice chart that demonstrates that the current abuse of the filibuster is historically unprecedented:
Though today's Republicans are really taking it to the next level, I'd say that the use of the filibuster has been problematic since the 1990s. Not coincidentally, there has not been any major tax increase or entitlement reforms (with the possible exception of Clinton's welfare reform) since that time. Those are the politically difficult laws to pass that will simply never get through the Senate so long as the minority party can block it with a mere 41 votes.
Though today's Republicans are really taking it to the next level, I'd say that the use of the filibuster has been problematic since the 1990s. Not coincidentally, there has not been any major tax increase or entitlement reforms (with the possible exception of Clinton's welfare reform) since that time. Those are the politically difficult laws to pass that will simply never get through the Senate so long as the minority party can block it with a mere 41 votes.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Why Ariana Huffington is a hack
I don't make it a habit to delve too deeply into the cable news/HuffPo daily news cycle vortex. One of the reasons why is interviews like this with Ariana Huffington. In it, she says that the defeat of health care reform is a "blessing in disguise" for Democrats because it was a politically unpopular bill, and ditching it will better position them for the 2010 races. She does not mention anything substantive about the uninsured Americans that the bill would have aided, or how the legislation would have prevented insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. For her, the highest priority is that Democrats stay in power, and that they don't find themselves on the wrong side of a Zogby poll. It's pure politics, devoid of any substance whatsoever.Me: I would happily give the Republicans Congress if it meant passing health care and other vital reforms. The proper pattern should be something like this: one party gets a bee in its bonnet. It eventually attracts enough centrists to seize power. It enacts legislation which, due to the sausage-making process, is significantly watered down, thus alienating the original base. But it gets something through which is good enough. Now the party in power no longer has any pressing reason to stay in power. So it treads water, becomes increasingly corrupt and unprincipled, until it loses to the opposing party. And the process repeats.
So, really, staying in power for long stretches of time is inherently a problematic goal for a political party to have. The attitude should be: "let's get the best possible legislation through before they kick our asses out", rather than "let's be sure to circumscribe our agenda so that we can remain in power indefinitely".
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
We're effed
Well: health care reform is dead. Coakley's loss means that the Democrats have one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority, which is giving centrist Democrats an excuse to run for cover. Democratic support for the bill is caving as speak, as Jim Webb volunteers that there will be no more votes on heath care until Scott Brown is seated, and no less a Massachusettes liberal than Barney Frank rules out this possibility as well. Senator Evan Bayh is already acknowledging the election as a rebuke to the Democratic agenda.
But this whole experience proves something more than a failed attempt by Democrats to reform health care insurance: it shows that the United States government is incapable of passing major legislation that will solve our biggest problems. Health care needs to be reformed, one way or another: its costs are spiraling out of control, and the ranks of the uninsured keep growing. If costs continue growing apace, the federal government will go broke paying for Medicare in the next fifty years.
Of course, broadening health care insurance isn't the only way to solve the looming budget problem; you could go the Republican route, and cut entitlements. The problem is: no Republicans are seriously advocating this. Scott Brown ran on a platform of not reducing a penny of Medicare spending, and he supports Massachusettes' own universal health care program. Indeed, the fact that the Dem's reform package would have resulted in Medicare spending cuts was used by Republicans as a talking point against the legislation. And of course, it was a Republican President and Congress that last decade passed Medicare Part D, the largest expansion of entitlements since the passage of Medicare itself--all of it funded with deficit spending (which is to say, none of it was funded at all).
Now, ultimately this failure is attributable to the rules of the Senate--specifically, the recently adopted practice of requiring a 60 vote supermajority to pass any legislation whatsoever. If a simple majority was all that was needed to get something through, the legislation would have passed in the middle of last year. But so long as this supermajority requirement remains, it will be impossible for either party to pass any legislation that is capable of solving our nation's biggest problems. I think it would behoove the leadership in both parties to agree to abolish the filibuster in a set period of time from now (6 years, say, when it is unknown which party will be in power). Otherwise crucial legislation--whether it is coming from the left or the right--will continue to crash on the shoals of arcane procedural votes in the Senate.
But this whole experience proves something more than a failed attempt by Democrats to reform health care insurance: it shows that the United States government is incapable of passing major legislation that will solve our biggest problems. Health care needs to be reformed, one way or another: its costs are spiraling out of control, and the ranks of the uninsured keep growing. If costs continue growing apace, the federal government will go broke paying for Medicare in the next fifty years.
Of course, broadening health care insurance isn't the only way to solve the looming budget problem; you could go the Republican route, and cut entitlements. The problem is: no Republicans are seriously advocating this. Scott Brown ran on a platform of not reducing a penny of Medicare spending, and he supports Massachusettes' own universal health care program. Indeed, the fact that the Dem's reform package would have resulted in Medicare spending cuts was used by Republicans as a talking point against the legislation. And of course, it was a Republican President and Congress that last decade passed Medicare Part D, the largest expansion of entitlements since the passage of Medicare itself--all of it funded with deficit spending (which is to say, none of it was funded at all).
Now, ultimately this failure is attributable to the rules of the Senate--specifically, the recently adopted practice of requiring a 60 vote supermajority to pass any legislation whatsoever. If a simple majority was all that was needed to get something through, the legislation would have passed in the middle of last year. But so long as this supermajority requirement remains, it will be impossible for either party to pass any legislation that is capable of solving our nation's biggest problems. I think it would behoove the leadership in both parties to agree to abolish the filibuster in a set period of time from now (6 years, say, when it is unknown which party will be in power). Otherwise crucial legislation--whether it is coming from the left or the right--will continue to crash on the shoals of arcane procedural votes in the Senate.
This story will be buried
Scott Horton--one of the few actual journalists left on the planet, it seems--has a new piece in which witnesses step forward to question the official account of the deaths of three inmates held in Gitmo. According to the Navy, the inmates all committed suicide. Simultaneously. And bound their legs and hands together and stuffed rags in their mouths before hanging themselves. A fact which could not be medically verified after the fact because the bodies were returned to their families with the necks removed.
I'll have more to say later. But you really should read the whole thing.
I'll have more to say later. But you really should read the whole thing.
Friday, January 15, 2010
The anti-Leno revolt
The internets have not been kind to Mr. Leno. Via Phil, some folks got wise and started using Hulu tags to comment on the situation:
You can click on the image for a closer view.
You can click on the image for a closer view.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Google in over it's head with the Nexus One?
Seems like Google underestimated the amount of business infrastructure that is required in order to be in the cell phone game:
New owners of the Nexus One, the latest touch-screen smartphone to run on Android, Google’s mobile operating system, have found themselves at a loss when it comes to resolving problems with the handset. They cannot call Google for help, and the company warns that it may take up to 48 hours to respond to e-mail messages.I think they're going to have to pony up for tech support--which is one of the most costly expenses for the big carriers.
...
...Google, more accustomed to providing minimal support for its free services, has been unprepared to deal with the higher service expectations of customers who are paying as much as $529 for its high-end smartphone.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The diner in its natural habitat
Randomly I was looking at a site that had a bunch of tips for waiters, and laughed at this:
I just like the idea of diners as these harmless critters that amble in, eat and talk, and then when done just kind of start looking around blankly. Awwwwwwww...
When their good food and conversation is over, they will start looking around at other diners or the walls. This can tell you when to clear plates, offer desserts or drop the check.
I just like the idea of diners as these harmless critters that amble in, eat and talk, and then when done just kind of start looking around blankly. Awwwwwwww...
Monday, January 11, 2010
“Hi Nikola, Al Gore wants you to change the numeral one in Brioni.”
Via Ezra Klein, a pretty great story involving Al Gore and fonts.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Simpsons
The Simpsons turns 20 today. Jonathan Chait tries a bit of analysis:
In the world of the Simpsons, people are capable of bottomless cruelty, greed, and hypocrisy -- indeed, these traits are so widely shared that they go unremarked upon. In this case, Barney is not only launching a competitor to his best friend's livelihood, he's savaging his character on television. And he's attacking him in terms that not only apply more to Barney himself, but utterly define his character -- the only things Barney ever does are be a loser and a boozer.The show doesn't make a joke about, or even highlight, this violent hypocrisy. It's just accepted. That's how people are. That's why it was such a deadly satire.
I don't know if I buy that. To me, the denizens of Springfield were never ultimately cruel, greedy, or hypocritical--they always redeem themselves in the end. Even in the episode that Chait cites, Mr. Plow, Homer and Barney eventually make up and become friends again. So I kind of don't know what he's talking about.
Moreover, in my opinion, the satirical bite of the Simpsons came not from some cynical portrayal of how "people really are", so much as an irreverent send up television itself and its central place in American society. Recall that when the Simpsons debuted it was pre-Seinfeld, pre-South Park, and during the heyday of the Cosby Show. TV characters never exhibited true dysfunction, did not exhibit the now-familiar American pathologies of overeating, laziness, and basic ignorance. Most importantly, unlike real Americans, the Americans depicted on television never watched television. Whereas the typical American was watching an average of 4 or 5 hours of TV a day, Bill Cosby was spending 5 hours a day kibitzing with Rudy in the living room. The Simpsons was the first to portray Americans as the true television-watching, fast-food eating, pop-culture consumers that they are.
Of course, this is also what made The Simpsons a uniquely post-modern affair. Whereas characters on the Cosby Show and Cheers seemed to live in an idealized alternate reality free of consumerism and pop icons, the characters in the Simpsons traded in them as a matter of course: pop cultural references were the show's trademark. There were parodies of Patton, of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and countless other movies; the characters, too, were often parodies of famous people in the old Warner Bros. cartoon style, such as Mayor Quimby standing in for a generic Kennedy (right down to his wife always being shown as dressed in the pink dress and pillbox hat--which is actually pretty morbid now that I think of it) or Karl having a Sly Stallone inflection, or Ranier Wolfcastle as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Part of the game of watching the Simpsons was seeing if you could catch all the references being made.
In any case, personally it feels a little awkward to analyze the Simpsons all academic-like, because it's such an organic part of who I am, and who my friends are. When the Simpsons began, I was 10 years old. Though obviously I didn't understand all the subtle layers of humor at work, I did understand that this is what funny was. I was fluent in the language of Simpsons quotes, and the day after a new episode aired, conversation with my friends before homeroom would consist almost entirely of quoting the best parts of the episode from the night before. It was a universal language, too: everyone from ever click and group had at least a basic knowledge of the Simpsons. And as we all developed our senses of humor, it became clear that we owed a tremendous debt to that show, which traded so much in pop cultural references and absurd tangents.
On a final note, I'll just add that my favorite episode of all time is Homer the Heretic, the one where Homer skips church and ends up having the best day of his life. Off the top of my head, I can think of these choice jokes from that episode:
- God saying to Homer, "I have to go now. I have to appear in a burrito in Mexico."
- "We interrupt this political roundtable to bring you: professional football." The graphic being shown while this is said is two pundits battling on what appears to be a mesa somewhere, one of them brandishing a suitcase and the other, a mace.
- Everyone freezing their butts off in church and reveling in the imagery of hell.
- Homer relecting on the best days of his life, including one of him dancing in a fountain of beer emanating from a crashed beer truck.
- "Rich, creamery butter..."
- Moon waffles, including liquid smoke
- Communing with nature, various birds and forest critters light on Homer's head and shoulders; later, when he's taking a shower, they're still there.
Fallows on the brokenness of the Senate
Again, it all really just boils down to the Senate:When the U.S. Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the intricate compromise over regional, economic, and slave-state/free-state interests that went into the Constitution. Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it’s unchangeable. Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is in effect a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes. This converts the Senate from the “saucer” George Washington called it, in which scalding ideas from the more temperamental House might “cool,” into a deep freeze and a dead weight.Of course, the present-day version of the filibuster--where a supermajority of 60 votes is required to get any routine thing passed--is a relatively recent development, emerging only within the last 15 years or so. Still, though, the Senate is almost single-handedly responsible for America's inability to tackle any of its major, long-term problems.The Senate’s then-famous “Gang of Six,” which controlled crucial aspects of last year’s proposed health-care legislation, came from states that together held about 3 percent of the total U.S. population; 97 percent of the public lives in states not included in that group. (Just to round this out, more than half of all Americans live in the 10 most populous states—which together account for 20 of the Senate’s 100 votes.) “The Senate is full of ‘rotten boroughs,’” said James Galbraith, of the University of Texas, referring to the underpopulated constituencies in Parliament before the British reforms of 1832. “We’d be better off with a House of Lords."
The problem with bank bonuses
An article in the NYT explains how Wall Street bonuses work:
Though Wall Street bankers and traders earn six-figure base salaries, they generally receive most of their pay as a bonus based on the previous year’s performance.Of course, the problem isn't so much that they are paid millions of dollars when they make lots of money; it's that they aren't penalized millions of dollars when they lose lots of money. It's all upside, never any downside for those guys. And that's what pisses everyone off.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Forget it Jake, it's Iraq
In a NYT op-ed today, a reserve soldier explains that one of the most frustrating things about her time in Iraq was not knowing whether her efforts were having any impact:
As an aside, I always thought a cool idea would be to make a show--on HBO, say--about Jake Gittes' days on the Chinatown beat (that are only obliquely alluded to in the movie).
In the fantasy, you know exactly what you’ve done, what impact it’s had, and you’ve put smiles on peoples’ faces. But in reality, you don’t necessarily ever get to find out the true impact of your actions. You’re left with questions instead. Did rebuilding all those schools over there have any kind of lasting impact? Did the Iraqis we tried to assist believe that we were sincere in our efforts?In my hero fantasies, there are no such loose ends or doubts.
Fog of war and all that, but it also reminds me of Chinatown:
EVELYN
Tell me something -- does this
usually happen to you, Mr. Gittes?
GITTES
What's that, Mrs. Mulwray?
EVELYN
-- Well, I'm only judging on the
basis of one afternoon and an evening,
but if that's how you go about your
work, I'd say you're lucky to get
through a whole day.
GITTES
(pouring himself
another drink)
-- Actually this hasn't happened
to me in some time.
EVELYN
-- When was the last time?
GITTES
Why?
EVELYN
Just -- I don't know why.
I'm asking.
Gittes touches his nose, winces a little.
GITTES
It was in Chinatown.
EVELYN
What were you doing there?
GITTES
(taking a long drink)
-- Working for the District Attorney.
EVELYN
Doing what?
183 Gittes looks sharply at her. Then:
GITTES
As little as possible.
EVELYN
The District Attorney gives his
men advice like that?
GITTES
They do in Chinatown.
She looks at him. Gittes stares off into the night.
Evelyn has poured herself another drink.
EVELYN
Bothers you to talk about it,
doesn't It?
Gittes gets up.
GITTES
No -- I wonder -- could I -- do
you have any peroxide or something?
He touches his nose lightly.
EVELYN
Oh sure. C'mon.
She takes his hand and leads him back into the house.
184 INT. BATHROOM - MIRROR
Gittes pulls the plaster off his nose, stares at it in
the mirror. Evelyn takes some hydrogen peroxide and some
cotton out of a medicine cabinet. Evelyn turns Gittes'
head toward her. She has him sit on the pullman tile
adjacent to the sink.
EVELYN
Doctor did a nice job...
She begins to work on his nose with the peroxide. Then
she sees his cheek -- checks back in his hair.--
EVELYN
(continuing)
-- Boy oh boy, you're a mess
GITTES
-- Yeah --
EVELYN
(working on him)
-- So why does it bother you to
talk about it... Chinatown...
GITTES
-- Bothers everybody who works
there -- but to me -- It was --
Gittes shrugs.
EVELYN
-- Hold still -- why?
GITTES
-- You can't always tell what's
going on there --
EVELYN
... No -- why was it --
GITTES
I thought I was keeping someone
from being hurt and actually I ended
up making sure they were hurt.
EVELYN
Could you do anything about it?
185 They're very close now as she's going over a mouse very
near his eye.
GITTES
Yeah -- make sure I don't find
myself in Chinatown anymore --
wait a second --
He takes hold of her and pulls her even closer,
EVELYN
(momentarily freezing)
-- What's wrong?
GITTES
Your eye.
EVELYN
What about it?
GITTES
(staring intently)
There's something black in the
green part of your eye.
EVELYN
(not moving)
Oh that... It's a flaw in the
iris...
GITTES
... A flaw...
EVELYN
(she almost shivers)
... Yes, sort of a birthmark...
Gittes kisses her lightly, gradually rises until he's
standing holding her. She hesitates, then wraps her arms
around him.
As an aside, I always thought a cool idea would be to make a show--on HBO, say--about Jake Gittes' days on the Chinatown beat (that are only obliquely alluded to in the movie).
Thursday, January 7, 2010
NBC continues its "screw the guy in the 12:30 slot" strategy for late-night
Many years ago, NBC screwed David Letterman--who occupied the 12:30am slot after Carson--out of the Tonight Show. Now, it looks like they're going to similarly screw over Conan O'Brien, by pushing the Tonight Show to 12am and putting Leno back at the 11:30 slot with his own half-hour show.
If I were Conan, I'd say "to hell with this" and go grab a proper 11:30 slot at Fox or something.
If I were Conan, I'd say "to hell with this" and go grab a proper 11:30 slot at Fox or something.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Down the slippery slope we go
Sullivan talks torture:
Notice again how far down the slippery slope we have gone. Krauthammer's first position was that torture should be restricted solely to ticking time bomb cases in which we knew that a terror suspect could prevent an imminent detonation of a WMD. His position a few years later is that torture should be the first resort for any terror suspect who could tell us anything about future plots. Those of us who warned that torture, once admitted into the mainstream, will metastasize beyond anyone's control now have the example of Charles Krauthammer's arguments to back us up.
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