Prosthetic Conscience

• Lenin’s Tomb: I don’t believe in Harvey Dent
  

  I feel that this review is perhaps not entirely fair, but I can’t put my finger exactly on why. It certainly covers the same ground that my friends did after seeing the movie, but less charitably.

  I think it may be that the movie has a lot of moral ambiguity to it. Even though Batman is the Hero Protagonist, his actions aren’t necessarily moral. In fact, it’s often fairly strongly implied that they aren’t, and that he is at some level personally to blame for the violence and destruction unleashed by the Joker. Maybe it’s too much to expect either reviewers or audiences to read a superhero movie at this level, but I think, or at least hope, that fans of the comic book are used to doing so.

  Some of the comments in relation to the article are about as insightful as anything I could write in response, so please go read them. Karen Elliot, Binh, and R. are the ones to watch for.

• Knights Templars heirs in lawsuit against Pope
  

  The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ, whose members claim to be descended from the legendary crusaders, have filed a lawsuit against Benedict XVI calling for him to recognise the seizure of assets worth 100 billion euros (£79 billion).

• Starbucks unionbusting as it closes shops
  

  Hat tip to Smygo.

• Fascinating article about why Firefox3 self-signed SSL certificate is more annoying than previously
  

  The author is completely right in the technical sense, and also in the sense that the change is completely positive for the vast majority of users. I think what he misses is how bad the CA system is, in that it simultaneously manages to 1) be intrusive 2) be expensive and 3) fail to provide significant guarantees of identity. The failure of the CA system is why people are using self-signed certs.

• Existential risks
  

  Ways the world can end: bangs, crunches, screams, and whimpers.

  Note that some categories of ‘crunch’ are actually seen as desirable by some types of environmentalist, even excluding the extreme fringe who desire human extinction (a bang).

• Possible Dominionist ties of church shooter
  
• Why Free Software and Apple iPhones don’t mix
  
• Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality
  By John Kessel
• Orson Scott Card has always been an asshat
  
• When official truth collides with cheap digital technology
  Wrote about this cop-attack earlier, but it’s worth reading this article about it as well.

This is a reference to the machine intelligence “Aineko” from Charles Stross’s novel Accelerando. Aineko began “life” as a toy robot much like this one, but was gradually and continuously upgraded through the years preceding the Singularity, at one point assimilating the scanned brains of kittens that the military had intended to use unethically for smart munitions guidance.

• Why you should serve cheap wine
  
• An anarchist review of /The Dark Knight/
  
• Brad Hicks brilliant post on the Knoxville UU shooter
  

  Lots of links to other good blog posts. Rich background that can explain why David Adkisson thought that what he was doing was a reasonable thing to do, without forgiving it. And notes how this event progressives aren’t the passive targets that eliminationist right-wingers think they are.

  The comments are also very good — they are mostly disagreeing with Faludi’s point from Stiffed, which is fair. The guy wasn’t reasonable…he just had reason to think he was, if that makes any sense.

• More cops randomly assaulting cyclists
  

  Noo Yawk this time.

  Updated

• It’s so easy being green: McKinney/Clemente
  

  Cynthia McKinney was an awesome legislator, and is a great candidate for the Greens. But after listening to McKinney and Clemente on Democracy Now on Monday, I’m pretty puzzled by the choice of Rosa Clemente as VP candidate. I didn’t have the negative reaction (to her accent and errors she made in the interview) that some of my friends did, but I did kind of go, “huh?”

• Veganism is a Consumer Activity
  

  This is an article by Peter Gelderloos, and I agree with about half of it. To wit, consumption of meat under capitalism, and consumption of meat under a traditional economy are very different things, and veganism under capitalism is more like consumption of meat under capitalism than it is like veganism under a traditional economy. If that’s clear at all.

  Peter is a very, very smart guy, but belongs to a tendency in anarchism I generally disagree with (to use the vulgar label, lifestyle anarchists). I’ve read his book, How Nonviolence Protects the State, and found it interesting and important, but very flawed. One day, I’d like to produce a critical response to this book focused on nonviolent strategic theory, but I can’t put the amount of work into it that would be needed to do it justice right now.

  There’s an extended review/response to the book at Our Tragic Flaw, but I don’t know yet how closely this response would be to my own. My feeling is that the failures of nonviolence are strategic failures, not tactical ones, and a “diversity of tactics” will not help you if your movement is fundamentally lacking in strategy.

• Harry Potter and the Eagle of Truthiness
  

  A fanfic in which Hogwarts gets the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor it truly deserves.

• The New Anarchism, David Graeber
  

  Author of ‘Towards an Anarchist Anthropology’.

  “Three word chant! Three word chant! Three word chant!”

• Paranoid Linux
  The gap between fiction and reality gets shorter and shorter every day.
• “Comfort capsules” on planes for military brass
  

  Washington Post, via Cryptogon.

  Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be “aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule,” with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

  This was to have been payed for out of “counterterrorism” funds.

• Rare medical condition gives toddler super-strength
  

• The Night Sessions sample chapter
  

  Yay, a new Ken MacLeod book in August.

• Left Opportunism & Crackpot Realism
  

  Kevin Carson writes about the consensus in American politics, and the real difference between liberals and radicals. Excellent article for opening liberals’ eyes.

• Sprezzatura and gentlemanliness
  
• Write In Bush
  

  George W. Bush: God’s candidate for 2008. Third term’s the charm.

• Exit Mundi
  

  A collection of end-of-the-world scenarios.

• Comfrey as a fertilizer
  2008-07-11 Fri 13:39
  

• Sustainable Energy – without the Hot Air
  

  Physicist David J.C. MacKay injects some numbers into the discussion of renewable energy. It’s UK-centric; in the US our picture is a little better because we have regions better-adapted for solar than Britain, but the same basic messages apply (especially given our hoggish rate of consumption relative to the Brits). Scale is a killer: the most comprehensive totally-green scenario that doesn’t involve significant reduction in demand also involves offshore wind farms twice the size of Wales.

  Excellent article at El Reg. Dr. MacKay doesn’t want to be known as pro-nuclear (he considers himself weakly anti-nuclear, I guess), but his numbers tend to favor nuclear over just about everything else.

  The bulk of serious criticisms to this article seem to be along the lines that his calculations are based on the inefficiencies of present-day technology (in generation of power, transport of power, and end-usage). Which is fair, but at least he’s giving reasonable worst-case values.

• The Washingtonian Empire
  

  From Social Memory Complex, an alternative way of looking at US politics. Rather than seeing the US as projecting force overseas, but troubled at home, consider domestic political turmoil as the rogue city-state of Washington projecting force into the 50 states. Consider the US as an occupied territory.

• State ownership of the means of reproduction
  

  When home births are outlawed, only outlaws will have home births.

  Closer-to-the-source link at Feministing, and quite a bit of interesting commentary.

• Bob Conley, Ron Paul Democrat?
  

  Via The Left Conservative.

  Not so keen on his anti-immigration policies, but at least he puts the blame in the right place (employers and trade agreements). His campaign is kind of sloppy and goofy, but he’s surely better than Graham.

• Rhizome: Cutting oil subsidies won’t cut demand
  

  It’s an interesting argument, but he’s focusing mainly on countries that use much less oil than the US does. The effects of their subsidies are, like the effects of their oil consumption in general, marginal in any case.

• Metthew Yglesias is the Establishment
  

  Hillarious comments thread. The best:

  My ideas really are basically the ideas that were at the core of the bipartisan, establishment consensus throughout the Cold War years.

  Haven’t read your book (yet), MY, but my problem with that lone statement is …

  … that said consensus was nuts. I mean, Planter’s Mixed Nuts nutty, with the cashews all gone.

  The paranoia about International Communism, the idea that “credibility” was worth any price, the deluded belief that America could do anything it set its mind to (cf. “Green Lantern theory”) … that was NOT the fenced-off hunting preserve of the GOP, sir.

  That was Truman’s administration, that was Kennedy’s, that was Johnson’s. They weren’t just scared of being painted as “pink” (Johnson may be a partial exception). They BELIEVED in the Cold War.

  The fundamentally fact-free nature of CW paranoia is in no way better demonstrated than by its wholesale mapping onto to the Global War Against Islamofascism.

  So for those of us whom you are trying to draw into reading your book, please don’t say how the liberal CW establishment was right on foreign policy. Because they weren’t.

  Brilliant.

• US Special Forces Counterinsurgency Manual
  

  Via Wikileaks. Summary: How to train death squads and quash revolutions from San Salvador to you

• Portland cops beat and taser cyclist for biking without a headlight
  Via Rad Geek People’s Daily

  This is just ridiculous. The point of bike safety regulations like requiring bikes to have headlights at night is to protect the safety of the cyclist. Those cops messed that cyclist up well-nigh as much as if he’d been clipped by a car, for “resisting arrest”, when his original offense wasn’t even arrestable. But the police department has closed ranks around the offenders.

• More money from the poor to the rich: Clinton campaign edition
  

  From the Infamous Brad.

  The chutzpah of the Clinton team never ceases to amaze me.

• Book review: Rebirth of American Industry
  

  Kevin Carson gives an amazing in-depth review of what looks like a remarkable book, Rebirth of American Industry: a Study of Lean Management, by William Waddell and Norman Bodek. Basically, it contrasts the Toyota model of manufacturing and management with the American model of management, and shows how the Toyota model could form the nucleus of a future local, sustainable manufacturing industry.

You may rejoice in the fact that I will not be voting for the Libertarian Party candidate in the 2008 presidential election. At their May 25 convention, they chose their second worst candidate (from my perspective), Bob Barr, for their nominee, and the absolute worst, Wayne Allyn Root, as their vice presidential nominee. Mike Gravel would, of course, have been my first choice, and George Phillies my second.

It’s interesting for this reason. The US libertarian movement has been moving rapidly left since 2004 because of several factors: the extent to which conservatism has been discredited in the public mind by the Bush administration, the collapse of the historic libertarian-conservative fusion (due again to the Bush administration), the rise in availability of information on the Left roots of libertarianism thanks to the internet and a growing net-based left-libertarian movement, and the aging and moderation of the Seattle generation of anticapitalist anarchists, many of whom are settling into left-libertarianism. But the Libertarian Party has, if anything, moved right since 2004. Is it because the hard-core right-libertarians (who have always dominated the LP and US libertarianism generally) feel threatened? I suspect so. The center of gravity of net.libertarianism these days seems to be somewhere around the left-Rothbardians (I am, of course, much further left than that), and the LP are trying to pull back. I think the end result will be to make the LP less relevant to the libertarian movement than it already is.

Side note: in the Green Party primaries, Cynthia McKinney is leading by a significant margin over Ralph Nader, and both are far ahead of any other contenders, but neither has enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Sadly, Elaine Brown has withdrawn.

• Who are conservatives?
  

  An excellent definition of conservatism as legitimism: the support of established institutions no matter what they might happen to be. It’s a much better explanation of what the things we call conservative have in common than any other standard definition, and it goes a long way towards explaining why libertarians are not conservatives, and why the libertarian-conservative fusion was doomed from the start.

• Parecon & Anarchism
  

  An excellent article distinguishing between a productive, admirable anarchism, and a counterproductive, unadmirable anarchism, largely along the same lines as Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism or Brian Oliver Sheppard’s Anarchism vs. Primitivism.

  Personally, I find Parecon to be unnecessarily complex, at least as it’s been explained to me, but it’s nice to see people actually thinking about what egalitarian modern social relations would look like.

  Also, a side note. It’s interesting to see how the anthropology of smale-scale societies is abused by both primitivists and their opponents. Opponents of primitivism often feel compelled to deny that small-scale, forager societies have any desireable features compared to modern society (or historical agricultural societies), which is simply not true. Primitivists tend to both deny the undesireable features of forager societies, and attribute to them characteristics from primitivist fantasy (absence of technology, absence of language, ideology, and symbolic culture) that probably aren’t true for chimps or extinct hominids, much less human foragers.

• Listen, Anarchist!
  
• Substitute teacher fired, accused of wizardry
  

• Sorry Absinthe Trippers: Scientists Say You’re Just Really Drunk
  

  This isn’t really new news — it’s been proven that neither thujone, nor any other component of wormwood oil has no significant psychotropic effect. But the new aspect of this study is that they tested antique bottles of absinthe, and found that the thujone levels of original absinthe were within the range of modern absinthes.

  The paper itself.

• XEmacs is dead, long live XEmacs
  
• The Emacs Problem
  

  An oldie but goodie from Steve Yegge. I’ve read it before; I may even have posted the link before. But I was just reading over it, and this paragraph seems to boil down all the problems I’ve ever had at my job:

  What would you rather do? Learn 16 different languages and frameworks in order to do “simple” log-file and configuration-file processing? Or just buckle down, learn Lisp, and have all of these problems go away forever?

  It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is patently obvious at this point: Lisp is evil, and you’d damned well better write all your code in C++ and XML and JavaScript and PL*SQL and CSS and XSLT and regular expressions and all those other God-fearing red-blooded manly patriotic all-American languages from now on. No more of this crazy Lisp talk, ya hear?

• What kind of Dungeons & Dragons character would you be?
  I Am A: Chaotic Good Human Wizard (4th Level)
  
  Ability Scores:
  Strength-13
  Dexterity-13
  Constitution-14
  Intelligence-17
  Wisdom-13
  Charisma-11
  
  Alignment:
  Chaotic Good A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he’s kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. However, chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment because it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.
  
  Race:
  Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
  
  Class:
  Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
  
  Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)
  
  Chaotic good human ranger was the next closest, which I thought was reasonable.
• Holy crap, electronics revolutionized.
  

  The long-sought after memristor–the “missing link” in electronic circuit theory–has been invented by Hewlett Packard Senior Fellow R. Stanley Williams at HP Labs (Palo Alto, Calif.) Memristors–the fourth passive component type after resistors, capacitors and inductors–were postulated in a seminal 1971 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory by professor Leon Chua at the University of California (Berkeley), but their first realization was just announced today by HP. According to Williams and Chua, now virtually every electronics textbook will have to be revised to include the memristor and the new paradigm it represents for electronic circuit theory.

  …

  “This new circuit element solves many problems with circuitry today–since it improves in performance as you scale it down to smaller and smaller sizes,” said Chua. “Memristors will enable very small nanoscale devices to be made without generating all the excess heat that scaling down transistors is causing today.”

  …

  As Chua predicted, Williams is already thinking about creating new types of devices with HP’s crossbar architecture beyond a simple memory device. “If we push current through it hard and fast, it acts like a digital device, but if we run current through it gently and slowly it acts as an analog device,” said Williams. “We are already designing new types of circuits in both the digital and analog domains using our crossbar architecture. In the analog domain, we want to build memristor-based devices that operate in a manner similar to how the synapse works in the brain–neuron-like analog computational elements that could perform control functions where decisions must be made involving comparisons as to whether something is larger or smaller than something else.”

  Hello, Skynet!

• What is wrong with our thoughts? A Neo-Positivist Credo
  

  A really fascinating article by David Stove on the proposition that the problem with human thought is generally worse even than the Logical Positivists or the Popperians thought.