Dang, It's Another Year

Happy New Year. For those of us in the events industry it's usually a slow time. We'll see. I got a laugh from the news. Previously the story had been that a Navy Officer on the USS Enterprise was under investigation for tomfoolery. Facts stated, lead line pitched, story due to be deep sixed the next day. Suddenly a JOURNALIST found that some sailors had opened a Facebook page in the officer's defense. Suddenly, as if by magic, it morphed into a raunchy video, salacious innuendos tumbled out in abundance, and lots of play was given to the newsworthiness of Facebook and the current movie about the founder. One might say that the story became an infomercial about a product. No story about which members of the Board of Directors have a percentage of said product. As is always the case, keeping them honest is a slogan and newsworthy is a relative position. Seems to depend on who's dog is in the ring.

The first set of links are two views of WikiLeaks.

• Stirling on Assange: Instead, he’s very like Jerome Kerviel, that obscure French stock trader who stole 5 billion euros without making one dime for himself. Jerome Kerviel, just like Bradley Manning, was a bored, resentful, lower-echelon guy in a dead end, who discovered some awesome capacities in his system that his bosses never knew it had. It makes so little sense to behave like Kerviel and Manning that their threat can’t be imagined.
• Lanier on AssangeA sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid. Another way to put this is that a lot of information made available over the internet encourages players to think as if they had a God's eye view, looking down on the whole system.

The next one I picked not so much for any political insight, but for the sheer fun the reviewer seems to be having in savaging the book.

• Damn Right: Decision Points holds the same relation to George W. Bush as a line of fashion accessories or a perfume does to the movie star that bears its name; he no doubt served in some advisory capacity. from London Review of Books

Links To the full Report of the Bioethics Commission.

• Link Page for Bioethics Report: Bioethics commission delivers synthetic biology report to President Obama (December 16)

Next is an international story with local implications. SF's transportation system went on the clipper card system. In short, everyone that rides a bus, takes a train, or pays a toll can be tracked by a foreign (Israel) company. And just to put whipped cream on the pie, the local transportation companies have agreed to pay any shortfall. How do you think that will work out? Weak encryption here in hacker central. If you want to try your own hand at it, Fries sells card readers for under $110.

• Smart Cards: Taipei’s EasyCard system has been in place since 2001, largely as a means of paying for the subway, bus, taxis and parking. It has also been widely known to use a smartcard system called MIFARE Classic, produced by NXP Semiconductors, the security of which was publicly demonstrated to be broken by CCC members at their annual congress three years ago. Note: S.F. started the Clipper Card System last year. An election year. I'm sure you know what I'm thinking.

Here's a lament for days gone by.

• The Disneyland Dream: But, for all those inequities, economic equality seemed within reach in 1956, at least for the vast middle class. (Michael Harrington’s exposé of American poverty, “The Other America,” would not rock this complacency until 1962.) The sense that the American promise of social and economic mobility was attainable to anyone who sought it permeates “Disneyland Dream” from start to finish.

The last four are bunched together because they interest me, but don't have any common theme.

• Don't Fear China: The belief that values like democracy and liberalism, rather than geo-strategic and economic factors, affect the competition between global powers tends to reflect a post-Enlightenment western bias that supposes the existence of an ultimate universal truth and assumes that history is a continuous ascent towards progress. That march towards progress manifests itself through conflicts between ideals–enlightenment and freedom vs. their opponents–and the people, groups, and nation-states that represent them. That has certainly been a crucial theme in the narrative about foreign policy advanced by neoconservative and liberal ideologues.
• Mosque as Yesterday's News: There can be no single explanation for why a news story of this magnitude disappears. But, given the timeline here, it seems likely that the electoral calendar played a role. National Republicans who used Park51 as a bludgeon against Democrats suddenly were less interested in talking about the project after the election.
• Dissidents and Foreign Policy: ...and it is possible that public hectoring of the Bahraini government would undermine such efforts by embarrassing the Bahrainis and forcing them to issue defiant demands that the U.S. mind its own business. What seems clear is that publicly denouncing a government’s crackdown will not end the crackdown, could intensify it, and might adversely affect U.S. interests in the process. Unless fruitless moral posturing that harms concrete American interests is the goal, I don’t see the point.
• Shock and Waugh: Auberon Waugh hated war. He loathed the pomposity of Western politicians who thought they had a divine right to go around the world intervening in the affairs of sovereign states. Lots of people are calling for the arrest of Tony Blair for war crimes in 2010, but very few were doing so in 1999, when Waugh was. “The charge against Tony Blair is not so much that he took a very stupid decision … or even that his high moral pose may have been a front for ordinary self-importance and power mania, ....

Ah Well

You Tell Me

Happy New Year. The above picture is a proto-VR module, a tele-(You know what I'm tring to say) unit, or a ....

Seriously Deep

A section of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route: Japan

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. As someone who grew up in the snowbelt, I got a chuckle out of the mess some of our southern cities were in when they got some snow. Upon reflection, I think I was more ammused by the historonics of the weather commentators. Anything to stir up some drama. City governments have come under fire? For what. Not maintaining a fleet of very expensive equipment for something that happens every hundred years and will melt off by morning. Better get the news team to 'vestigatin this dilemma. More on this breaking story when we write it up .. or it rains.

I'm going to start the link-dump with an essay on Americanism, then punch on through pretty quickly. The sun is out for the first time in days and the remainder of my to-do list can be set aside for a few hours.

• What is American: After two hundred years, our democracy appears beleaguered and in need of revitalization. It is expressly the magnitude of our problems that make it possible for some to long for apparently better systems that haven’t a prayer in America. However, revitalization, if it is to occur, must take advantage of resources native to our tradition and, what is just as important, to do so in a native idiom.
• Was Washington a Christian: These founders were most emphatically not modern secularists, and Washington was not an exponent of modern democracy. Our first president was a man of the eighteenth century, who believed in the benefits of property relations and gender-specific education, and, perhaps above all, as he tells us in his Farewell Address as president, in the public need for religious beliefs. In these respects he was little different from the English monarch his countrymen broke from during the Revolution.
• The Evil Empire: What the Obama administration has delivered, of course, is not only the continuation of the policies of the previous three administrations but a profound exaggeration of them. If anything, we suffer more violations of our privacy and civil liberties now than at any time during the Bush administration, all in the name of a national-security state that keeps the populace in its place while perpetuating war abroad.
• Judicial Activism: ones that touch on the broad competing visions of the proper role of government. Striking down a law passed by a democratically-elected legislature is not necessarily “activism.” Nor is upholding a law necessarily “restrained.” It depends on whether or not the law violates the Constitution (and the primary failing I note in left-wing resort to the phrase “judicial activism” is that they ignore this rather significant distinction).
• Iron Dome: The defense establishment is still weighing the balance between the number of radars for the systems to the number of intercept missiles necessary. Different estimates suggest that each intercept missile will cost $40,000.
• What was the Saudi Arms Deal About:A look at the remainder of the Saudi deal indicates that Riyadh has other concerns in mind. The Saudis are also acquiring 190 helicopters. These include 70 Apache Longbows, an upgraded version of the U.S. Army's highly successful attack helicopter which carries, among other weapons, a powerful 30 MM gun and anti-tank missiles. Riyadh is also purchasing 36 AH-6i "Little Bird" light helicopters, which are often used by Special Forces. Finally, the Saudis are buying 72 UH-60 Blackhawks, which are ideal for moving troops into and around combat zones.
• Revolver: The libertarian/conservative rejoinder is that less regulation equals less opportunities for politically-connected firms to hijack the system. As a safeguard against future financial meltdowns, I find this unsatisfying for a number of reasons: First, attempts to describe the roots of the financial crisis solely through the lens of government intervention sound pretty silly. And second, if the regulatory and administrative superstructure of government is fatally compromised by insiders and corporate lobbyists, are we sure we can successfully deconstruct that system from within.
• Start Treaty: A link to the Naval Institute and a subsequent link-through to the text itself. Why bother having some goofy-goober tell you what it means, when you can see for yourself?
• Dirty Underwear: I find it interesting that, despite the furor over the Wikileaks disclosures relating to the military's activity in Iraq, the U.S. government did not come down on him full bore, nor did they assign a team of government lawyers to scour the statute books looking for a way to criminally charge Assange, until it was the State Department and, by extension, the political leadership of the nation that was being embarrassed.
• Two States - No Solutions: At the same time, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Gen. David Petraeus have stated publicly that the ongoing failure of the peace process constitutes a threat to American national security. The despair the Palestinians now feel, and the anger among broader Arab publics, is very dangerous for the United States. Not only al Qaeda, but Hamas and Hezbollah feed on the anger in the Islamic world over the plight of the Palestinians.

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Added Mon 27, 3:00 PM: I flipped on the news to eat my lunch with, and was treated to a BREAKING NEWS STORY. (yes, the onscreen graphix were all capped) It seems that the wind was blowing snow onto roads that had already been plowed. Great googly-moogly, that must be why they called it a snow storm. Better images are promised for the 5:00 show. I can't wait.

That Swag Attitude

NY Daily News

Inventor Andrew Lewis, 43, of Hamilton Heights sez:

"Sagging is a huge issue in my community," he said. "I spent a lot of time observing and I noticed that even for saggers, there is a point which even they're not comfortable with how their jeans were falling."

So he did something about it, at $36 a pop. Why loose that jailhouse look when, for a few extra bucks, you can get a special guy in a jailhouse accessoire. The odd thing is you can get the same thing cheaper from a tool catalog. Linemen, and others I'm sure, use something similar to keep their tool belt stable when they're off the ground. You don't want your tools around your ankles while leaning out of a scissors lift. Sort of a blue-collar fashion statement.

Via: BoingBoing

Born for Trouble

Blind drunk driver falls flat on face in front of judge:

A reported legally blind man arrested on Sunday night for driving while intoxicated, has been re-arrested for public intoxication after allegedly coming to court drunk. Mark Alan Watson, 41, of Bartlesville, was about to be arraigned on Monday on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, leaving the scene of an accident, driving under suspension and assault on a police officer when he fell on his face in front of Associate District Judge Russell Vaclaw.

The remainder of the story is at Nothing to do with Abroath. Some folks just don't have a plan.