February, 2015 archive
Putting the “Fun” in “Dysfunctional” 0
Gary Younge:
“The Republicans are like Fido when he finally catches the car,” the Democratic senator Charles Schumer told the New York Times. “Now they don’t have any clue about what to do. They are realising that being in the majority is both less fun and more difficult than they thought.”
Read the rest.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Get a leg up on politeness.
(snip)
When questioned, police said the victim and a man were handling the gun when it discharged.
“The Consciousness Fallacy” 0
A researcher in artificial intelligence explains why he does not fear “the singularity,” because intelligence and consciousness are not the same thing. Here’s bit:
Science fiction is partly responsible for these fears. A common trope works as follows: Step 1: Humans create AI to perform some unpleasant or difficult task. Step 2: The AI becomes conscious. Step 3: The AI decides to kill us all. As science fiction, such stories can be great fun. As science fact, the narrative is suspect, especially around Step 2, which assumes that by synthesizing intelligence, we will somehow automatically, or accidentally, create consciousness. I call this the consciousness fallacy. And if it is false, it means we should look at AI very differently.
If you fear that your Roomba will one day revolt, you might find this an interesting read.
A Modest Proposal . . . 0
. . . from a letter-writer to my local rag.
“All You Say Are Belongs to Us” 0
While you watch your television, your television may be watching you.
“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition,” the policy said.
The story goes on to say that Samsung claims this is to improve television performance and that it takes privacy very seriously (takes it right away from you and keeps it for itself, that is).
Do read the rest, then get a dumb TV. If do you get a smart TV, remember, no canoodling on the couch in the TV Room; some Samsung tech might be canoodling right along with you.
A Bit More Hope 0
See the full-sized image
. . . an anonymous donor just buoyed it (the S. S. United States–ed.) with $250,000.
“We’re singing from the rooftops – or whatever a maritime version of that would be,” Susan Gibbs, executive director of the SS United States Conservancy, said yesterday.
The massive ship (it’s as long as the Comcast Center is tall) remains docked at Pier 82 on the Delaware River. The owners constantly stave off the threat of the ship being scrapped. The monthly maintenance costs stand around $80,000.
Gibbs believes that donations like this could spur more of the same.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Demonstrate your politeness to your neighbors.
Officers spoke to 25-year-old Mark Hayes, of Sparta, who stated he was handling a pistol when he accidentally discharged the firearm. Luckily, the victim was not home at the time the shooting occurred and no one was injured.
This story is notable in that the gun was not reported to have fired itself.
The Galt and the Lamers 0
In the Bangor Daily News, Bloomberg’s Noah Smith exposes Rand Pauls ignorance of accounting. He cites three points on which Paul gets stuff exactly backwards. Follow the link for his explanation of each point.
Paul’s first error was in his understanding of leverage.
(snip)
His second error was his definition of bankruptcy.
(snip)
The senator’s third error came from his calculation of the size of the Fed’s liabilities.
The Snaring Economy 0
Robert Reich asks,
Meanwhile, human beings do the work that’s unpredictable — odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours — and patch together barely enough to live on.
Follow the link for his answer.
The Actualization of Potentialities Manifests Itself in Imperative Fashion 0
In my local rag, Bernadette Kinlaw takes on corporate doublespeak. A snippet:
CNN provided us with a wonderful yet horrifying example of gobbledygook.
Management had plans “to leverage internal efficiencies by enlisting external resources, thus driving a reduction in operating costs, thereby enhancing shareholder value.”
How would you interpret that?
We’re laying off people to save money and please our stockholders.
I worked in corporate America for a long time and I learned that long words and convoluted language meant one or both of two things: emptiness and treachery.
Do read the rest.
Afterthought:
You can rephrase the title of this post loosely as “git ‘r done.”
The Climates They Are a-Changing . . . 0
. . . but you didn’t hear about it on your telly vision . . . .
The Doctor Is (Almost) In 0
This should be fun:
So he is maybe possibly thinking about throwing his hat in the ring.
On the bright side, he would be a better candidate than Donald Trump. So far as I know, he hasn’t gone bankrupt four times, at least not monetarily. “Intellectually” is another matter.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
I’ve seen a number of articles and blog posts claiming that Brian Williams’s fantasies of being embattled in Iraq don’t matter because, as the reasoning usually seems to go, “Who cares?” I disagree.
I gave up on television news three decades ago, when broadcast news morphed from being a “service” to being a “profit center.” I long before had realized I could read four times as much information in half an hour as I could passively have poured into me from television (and without the commercials). Nevertheless, Williams’s perfidy, intentional or not, matters greatly.
At Psychology Today Blogs, Denise Cummins discusses this; here’s a bit:
We already have one major “news” network dedicated to spreading propaganda and falsehood to poison public discourse. We need trustworthy–not error-free, which is an impossible goal, but given in good faith–reportage so as to make informed decisions.
Otherwise, the country will go to hell even faster than it already is.