June, 2011 archive
Libertarian Vacation Tour 0
Aside: I might have posted this before, but it’s worth a reminder, so I’m not going to check.
Via The Richmonder.
Facebook Frolics, Transparency Dept. 0
By their status updates shall ye know them.
Science 2.0 reports that how persons behave on Facebook (and likely on other social media sites) betrays whether or not they are narcissists. A nugget:
Untrained observers were able to detect the narcissists also. Observers used three characteristics – quantity of social interaction, attractiveness of the individual and the degree of self promotion in the main photo – to form an impression of the individual’s personality. “People aren’t perfect in their assessments,” Buffardi said, “but our results show they’re somewhat accurate in their judgments.”
The Dodecadialectics of Pakistan Politics 0
Asia Times interviews Sebastian Gorka, a military affairs analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy regarding the complex politics of Pakistan. As is normally the case with Asia Times stories, the article is long and wonky.
It’s also worth at least a skim to provide a frame of reference to the cross-currents and internal contradictions of Pakistani politics.
Here’s a nugget (RFE/RL stands for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty):
Gorka: I think this is a wonderful example of why one cannot talk of Pakistan as a unitary nation. After Bin Laden was killed, the immediate comment one heard in the American media and internationally was, “Clearly Pakistan must have known. Or if Pakistan didn’t know, they were incompetent.” This is a misunderstanding of the reality that is today’s Pakistan. There is no one political elite in Pakistan.
You can quite easily imagine, for example, that the political leadership – the civilian leadership in Islamabad – had no idea that Bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. But at the same time, you could imagine, for example, that the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] or that members of the military were well aware of it because, let’s be honest, he was within a block and a half of the equivalent of the [US Military Academy at] West Point for Pakistan.
Facebook Frolics 0
One more time, the internet is a public place.
Arthur T. Donato Jr., a Media lawyer, said Zaidee S. Harrison, 18, of Wayne, did not send anything to a public or school official, faculty member, or any other public employee.
Donato said she posted on her best friend’s Facebook page a video of herself reciting the poem. Her friend was not threatened by the poem or its images, Donato said.
More at the link, including excerpts.
By these standards, someone might report somebody for “Who Killed Cock Robin.”
Aside:
This is not just a case of overreaction on the part of the authorities. It is a logical result of Facebook’s default position to strip every user’s data naked on the net.
There is an old joke that a negligee is something you think you can see through, but can’t.
Facebook “privacy settings”* are something you think others can’t see through, but they can.
It’s this kind of stuff that’s going to kill Facebook and Twitter.
_____________________
*It is to laugh.
SWAT 0
I would be disqualified from the jury. I’ve already decided for the plaintiff:
The Pittsburg Tribune-Review reported that FBI agents used a battering ram to enter Gary Adams’ rented home in search of a former resident who was charged with being part of a drug gang.
According to the story, the person the Feds were looking for had been gone for two years. Homework, anyone?
On television, these raids never go wrong.
In real life, not so much.
(Link fixed.)
Dustbiters 0
I was busy last night, so I missed the banks that went missing.
Two more assemblages of responsible fiduciaries bit the dust.
We need to stop treating banksters as pillows of the community.
They are more like the bedbugs of the community.
We Need Single Payer 0
Not payola payers.
Bait Byte Car
0
The Nissan Leaf is tracking its drivers.
I doubt that Nissan is being evil.
Rather, it is being stupid. American companies do not have a monopoly on dumb.
The moral of the story is that doing stuff on the internet for no other reason than because you can may not be a good idea (this website excepted).
The latest news, cited at the link in the first paragraph, is that location data is no longer being published.
Via GNC.
Toll House Cooties 0
In Delaware, hitting ’em where they live:
Enviromental Whackos 0
Not who you think they are. Steve Chapman discusses this in the Chicago Tribune. A nugget:
During last year’s campaign, the National Journal reported, “Of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers who have taken a position, 19 have declared that the science of climate change is inconclusive or flat-out incorrect.” (The exception: Mark Kirk of Illinois.)
Conservatives fear liberals will use climate change to justify heavy-handed intrusive regulation and wasteful subsidies, and they are right to worry. But that’s no excuse for pretending global warming is a myth or refusing to do anything about it. It’s an argument for devising cost-effective, market-based remedies that minimize bureaucratic control.
If today’s Republican attitude had prevailed four decades ago, Americans would not have such vital measures as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Then, many people worried that environmentalism would strangle economic growth and personal freedom. But both have survived and even flourished.
Conservatives once understood that corporations are not entitled to foul the environment, any more than individuals have the right to dump garbage in the street.
I remember my first trip to Los Angeles, thirty years ago.
The sky was a glorious orange; from my hotel in Little Toyko, I could barely see Dodger Stadium about two miles away; breathing was an exercise in filtering hazardous waste from each breath. At the time I lived in northern Virginia, where we had regular pollution alerts and orange skies of our own.
It’s much better now, though from Burbank in the hills east of downtown L. A., you can sometimes see the orange cloud down in the valley.
Republicans clearly long for those good old days when you couldn’t breathe air in Pittsburgh or eat fish pulled from the Delaware River (well, actually, you probably still shouldn’t [pdf], but it’s better than it used to be).
Stray Question, First-Person Shooter Dept. 0
How many on-target drone strikes must a CIA agent direct before he levels up?
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Republicans cooked up the “voter fraud” thing because they fear voters.
They fear voters because they know that their policies are inimical to the general well-being.
Cynthia Tucker explains:
(snip)
It’s no accident, then, that Republican governors and lawmakers in more than a dozen states are following the lead of Georgia — an early adapter of modern methods of voter suppression — by setting in place strict voting requirements that insist on a driver’s license (or some other state-sponsored form of photo identification). They want to make it inconvenient — preferably impossible — for some of those faithful Democratic voters to cast their ballots, giving the GOP an edge in close elections.
They’re going after young folk, too — especially college students. While Reagan-era college kids tended to be faithful Republicans, the current generation heavily favored Obama in 2008. That has led some Republicans to look skeptically at the 26th Amendment.
Endangered Species? 0
The Philadelphia Daily News offers a theory about politicians behaving badly.
It’s absurd, but so are they.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
All joking aside, this may be one good side effect of the bust. Every silver lining has a cloud and all that.
I’ve always had a gut feeling that “reverse mortgages” were more predatory than propitious.
(snip)
Reverse mortgages allow retirees to create a lifetime stream of income by tapping the equity in their homes. Lenders are repaid from the sale of the home when the borrower dies or moves. Bank of America Corp., the second-largest U.S. home lender, said in February it was retreating from the business because of “competing demands and priorities” at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company.