Daz releases Bryce 7 3D suite: Bryce 7 is launched as standard, Pro and PLE editions. Bryce 7 PLE is free and gives you all the features of the standard version for non-commercial work.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Friday, July 30, 2010
Daz releases Bryce 7 3D suite
Fair preparation is in high gear
Fair preparation is in high gear:
The Douglas County Fair is one of the biggest fairs in Oregon, and with so many people in attendance, fair organizers say that preparation for the event is key. Crews are working hard right now to get the fairgrounds ready.
KPIC - News - Local & Regional - http://www.kpic.com/news/local
The rise of the new agnostics. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine
The rise of the new agnostics. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine: You know about the pons asinorum, right? The so-called "bridge of asses" described by medieval scholars? Initially it referred to Euclid's Fifth Theorem, the one in which geometry really gets difficult and the sheep are separated from the asses among students, and the asses can't get across the bridge at all. Since then the phrase has been applied to any difficult theorem that the asses can't comprehend. And when it comes to the question of why is there something rather than nothing, the "New Atheists" still can't get their asses over the bridge, although many of them are too ignorant to realize that. This sort of ignorance, a condition called "anosognosia," which my friend Errol Morris is exploring in depth on his New York Times blog, means you don't know what you don't know. Or you don't know how stupid you are.
I wrote most recently about the problem of consciousness and found myself allied with the agnostic group of philosophers known as the Mysterians, who argue that we are epistemically, flat-out unable to know the nature of consciousness while being within consciousness.
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Porn Industry Aroused by iPhone FaceTime | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Porn Industry Aroused by iPhone FaceTime | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: although it probably won’t actually be called Face Time.
Wi-Fi only, you won’t be surprised at the end of the month by huge and scary charges on your phone-bill
People scoffed at the idea of smut on cellphones until the iPhone made it easy to browse the web and the number of mobile porn sites took off. And the iPad, a device ridiculed for its lack of Adobe’s Flash plug-in, has seen adult video sites rushing to re-encode their catalogs in the iPad-friendly Quicktime format.
Apple somehow doesn’t like adult material on its devices (ridiculous, as Safari on the iPad is probably the best porn browser on the planet).
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How business is putting the iPad to work
How business is putting the iPad to work: Last week, Apple COO Tim Cook announced that 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies are now using the iPad. But how exactly how are people putting it to work? Joel Mathis asked small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
iPad Popular With Aviation Crowd
iPad Popular With Aviation Crowd: Developers and pilots are embracing the gadget, with apps that do everything from tell you the weather to show you the way.
The airplane is modeled on the classic Piper Cub that trained generations of pilots starting in the late 1930s. SportAir has updated the airplane with some modern conveniences, including using the iPad as the glass panel display in front of the pilot.
Sportair’s Bill Canino has flown the iCub several hours now and says the iPad works great for for the light-duty panel needed in an LSA. In addition to using the iPad for GPS navigation, he can also use an app that replicates a more typical glass panel display with an artificial horizon, airspeed indicator, altimeter and compass.
Typically, a pilot would have to carry a few large briefcases filled with notebooks that contained the paper versions for the thousands of instrument approaches across the country. With its new app, Jeppesen says 965 megabytes is enough to have all of its approaches for the entire world.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Thursday, July 29, 2010
July 30, 1935: Penguins Invade Britain, Readers Rejoice
July 30, 1935: Penguins Invade Britain, Readers Rejoice: Penguin publishes the first paperback books of substance, bringing the likes of Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie to the masses. The business model of the book-publishing industry is about to change.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
It's a Scientific Fact: Two's Company, Three's a Crowd
It's a Scientific Fact: Two's Company, Three's a Crowd: Extending an experiment at the foundation of quantum physics confirms that two is company and three is a crowd. In a new twist on the famous double-slit experiment, researchers have verified a basic tenet of quantum mechanics by showing that adding a third slit doesn’t create additional interference between packets of light.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Lawyer: Negatives verified as Ansel Adams' work - San Jose Mercury News
Lawyer: Negatives verified as Ansel Adams' work - San Jose Mercury News: BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — A lawyer says a trove of old glass negatives found in Fresno have been authenticated as the work of iconic photographer Ansel Adams and are worth at least $200 million.
Arnold Peter says a team of experts has concluded the 65 negatives are Adams' early work believed destroyed in a fire decades ago. Their report is set to be released at a press conference Tuesday morning in Beverly Hills.
The negatives were bought 10 years ago at a garage sale in Fresno for $45 by a local painter, Rick Norsigian.
Norsigian noticed the negatives resembled Adams' famed photographs of Yosemite National Park and hired Peter to assemble a team of experts.
Adams is best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, mainly images of the landscape. He died in 1984 at 82.
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Redesigning the New York City subway map
Redesigning the New York City subway map: Maps are one of the most basic data visualizations that we have; we've been making them for millennia. But we still haven't perfected them as a tool for understanding complex systems -- and with 26 lines and 468 stations across five boroughs, the New York City subway system certainly is complex. The KickMap is the result of my quest to design a more effective subway map, and ultimately to encourage increased ridership.
O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/
Apple unveils new iMac, including quad-core model
Apple unveils new iMac, including quad-core model: Apple on Tuesday updated its iMac line, sporting new processors up to a quad-core and more powerful graphics chips.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Apple announces new Mac Pro with up to 12 cores
Apple announces new Mac Pro with up to 12 cores: The new Mac Pro, due in August, can be customized with up to two 6-core 3.33GHz CPUs, a 512GB solid-state drive, and new ATI Radeon video cards with dual Mini DisplayPorts for running dual LED Cinema Displays.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Apple unveils multitouch Magic Trackpad
Apple unveils multitouch Magic Trackpad: Apple on Tuesday unveiled its long-rumored Magic Trackpad input device, a standalone version of the trackpad built into recent MacBook Pros.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Apple introduces new 27-inch LED Cinema Display
Apple introduces new 27-inch LED Cinema Display: Apple's new display provides great resolution, built-in iSight and speakers, and a powered USB 2.0 hub.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Apple updates iMac line, intros Magic Trackpad
Apple updates iMac line, intros Magic Trackpad: Besides bringing Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7 processors to its iMacs, Apple also releases the Magic Trackpad, bringing the power of gestures to the Mac.
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Apple intros Mac Pro with 12 processing cores
Apple intros Mac Pro with 12 processing cores: The new Mac Pro, due in August, uses quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors with speeds up to 3.33GHz.
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Apple unveils 27-inch LED display, nixes 30-inch model
Apple unveils 27-inch LED display, nixes 30-inch model: The new 27-inch Cinema Display, priced at $999, replaces the currently available 24-inch and 30-inch models.
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Monday, July 26, 2010
RUMOR: New Mac Pros, revised iMacs, new 16:9 27-inch Cinema Display, Magic Trackpad coming tomorrow
RUMOR: New Mac Pros, revised iMacs, new 16:9 27-inch Cinema Display, Magic Trackpad coming tomorrow: New Mac Pros, speed-bump iMacs, the gorgeous new 16:9 27-inch Cinema Display...
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Camera Software Lets You See Into the Past
Camera Software Lets You See Into the Past: Researchers at MIT create software that compares the scene in front of the camera with an historical photograph. You can then see the old shots lined up over the new, like a window into the past.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Good Connection Really Does Lead to Mind Meld
Good Connection Really Does Lead to Mind Meld: Brain scans of a speaker and listener showed their neural activity synchronizing during storytelling. The stronger their reported connection, the closer the coupling.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Four ways IPv6 will save the Internet
Four ways IPv6 will save the Internet: The world is running out of the IPv4 addresses that IT admins and users are most familiar with. Fortunately, IPv6 has been developed to exponentially expand the pool of available IP addresses while also providing a few other benefits.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Men more emotional in relationships?
Must be right. Sounds just like some people I know.
Men more emotional in relationships?: The latest "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" declaration from sex researchers: Young men are more emotionally influenced by the quality of their relationships, while young women are affected by whether they are single. The takeaway: Men's happiness depends on having an emotionally-supportive relationship, while women's happiness depends on not being alone, period.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The WikiLeaks Afghanistan leak
The WikiLeaks Afghanistan leak: The most consequential news item of the week will obviously be -- or at least should be -- the massive new leak by WikiLeaks of 90,000 pages of classified material chronicling the truth about the war in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2009. Those documents provide what The New York Times calls "an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal." The Guardian describes the documents as "a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency."
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Saturday, July 24, 2010
She Said It
I like the way he uses a sentence fragment to say, "In complete sentences."
She Said It: "If I am going to write to someone, I am going to write to them. In complete sentences. With punctuation. I am going to use the English language like Shakespeare and Milton by-gawd intended for it to be used, and I am damned well going to make it sit up and jump through little flaming hoops while I am at it! I am not going to be reduced to poking at buttons on a cell phone with my thumbs, turning out crap that looks like it was disgorged by an illiterate devolved protosimian fifth grader! "...
Zeta Woof - http://grdurand.com/blogger/
Snell: Will iTunes replace your local comics store?
Snell: Will iTunes replace your local comics store?: Jason Snell checks in from Comic-Con International, where comic book retailers are facing the same issues from the digital revolution that music sellers had to deal with a decade ago.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Friday, July 23, 2010
VNC: the universal remote control
VNC: the universal remote control: Using VNC software, you can connect from almost any kind of computer to almost any kind of computer. The only hitch: You have to know what you're doing, or be able to figure it out.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
The Struggle for the (Possible) Soul of David Eagleman < Killing the Buddha
The Struggle for the (Possible) Soul of David Eagleman Killing the Buddha: Eagleman rejects not only conventional religion but also the labels of agnostic and atheist. In their place, he has coined the term possibilian: a word to describe those who “celebrate the vastness of our ignorance, are unwilling to commit to any particular made-up story, and take pleasure in entertaining multiple hypotheses.”
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Death of Film: Last Roll of Kodachrome Processed
Death of Film: Last Roll of Kodachrome Processed: What do you know about Dwayne’s Photo Service of Parsons, Kansas? It is the place where the very last roll of the Kodachrome was processed
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Meteor Crater Discovered With Google Earth
Meteor Crater Discovered With Google Earth: Researchers poring over Google Earth images discover one of Earth’s freshest impact craters -- a 45-meter-wide pock in southwestern Egypt that probably was excavated by a fast-moving iron meteorite no more than a few thousand years ago.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Arts & Letters Daily (23 Jul 2010)
Arts & Letters Daily (23 Jul 2010):
Materialist vs. mystic. Does the brain imagine a soul to take the sting out of mortality? Maybe the soul just allows the brain to pretend to be in control... more
"The American character" as a phrase sounds rather antiquated. Yet it still has life in it, or so sociologist Claude S. Fischer sets out to demonstrate... more
Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Is it a gift from God? From innate human reason? Moral naturalists take a different approach, says David Brooks... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
"Grassroots" Karl Rove group funded almost entirely by billionaires
"Grassroots" Karl Rove group funded almost entirely by billionaires: Virtually all of the $4.7 million raised by Karl Rove's new conservative outfit was contributed by just four billionaires, three of whom are based in Dallas, Texas, and two of whom made their fortune in the oil and gas industry.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Darth Vader robs bank at gunpoint
Darth Vader robs bank at gunpoint: Not so long ago (Thursday morning), in a place not so far, far away (Setauket, N.Y.) a man in a Darth Vader mask and cape robbed a Chase Manhattan bank, leaving with an undetermined amount of cash.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Shrimp on Prozac are killing themselves
Shrimp on Prozac are killing themselves:
I have friends who are always talking about happy pigs and happy chickens -- left to roam freely, eating real food instead of weird commercial food pellets, given the occasional backrub. But pity the poor shrimp! No one is raising happy shrimp ... on purpose anyway. But all the Prozac we've been taking may be doing the work for us, and marine biologists at the University of Portsmouth in the UK have found that enough of the drug passes through our bodies directly into the wastewater to seriously change the behavior of shrimp who swim in it: They're killing themselves. But do shrimp even have emotions?
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Voters asked to expand Oregon's medical marijuana law
Voters asked to expand Oregon's medical marijuana law:
Oregon voters will decide in November whether to allow pot to be sold at dispensaries to people with a medical marijuana card.
KPIC - News - Local & Regional - http://www.kpic.com/news/local
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Katy Perry strives for naked world domination
Katy Perry strives for naked world domination:
Redefining what it is to be "overexposed," the girl who chastised Lady Gaga for "blasphemy" is stark raving naked on the cover of her new album. Katy Perry debuted the image this week, chatting up fans on Ustream and cooing over the record's cotton candy clouds. Not one to rest on her laurels, Perry dropped a new single, "Teenage Dream," today too, and the only place to find it (legally) is Perez Hilton's site. Her first song from next month's album just got bumped from the Billboard top spot by Eminem, so kudos to Katy's people at Capitol Records for the savvy marketing.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Hyperfast Star Kicked Out of Milky Way
Hyperfast Star Kicked Out of Milky Way: New Hubble observations suggest a dramatic origin story for one of the fastest stars ever detected, involving a tragic encounter with a black hole, a lost companion and swift exile from the galaxy.
How sad. I feel for you, buddy. (A "blue straggler" is what they call it. How apropos.)
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
CCI: Whedon Confirms He's Directing "Avengers"
CCI: Whedon Confirms He's Directing "Avengers": During his and JJ Abrams' Comic-Con panel, Joss Whedon confirmed for the audience that he is indeed directing Marvel's upcoming "Avengers" film. SPINOFF has the details.
CBR News - http://www.comicbookresources.com
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
July 21, 1911: Media Messenger McLuhan Born | This Day In Tech | Wired.com
July 21, 1911: Media Messenger McLuhan Born | This Day In Tech | Wired.com: The world has become a computer, an electronic brain…. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time…. In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture.
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The extraordinary resurgence of Jules Verne - Science Fiction and Fantasy - Salon.com
The extraordinary resurgence of Jules Verne - Science Fiction and Fantasy - Salon.com: And with some justification, since this book is an illuminating rarity among Verne's output, a Gothic-steeped romance whose scientific aspects are kept hidden till the climax. And so, yes, we have here Verne's very own pioneering entry in what the invaluable TV Tropes website identifies as the "Scooby Doo Hoax" mode of storytelling: "The characters investigate a site with reported paranormal activity. By the end of the episode, they discover that the supposed supernatural activity is nothing but an elaborate hoax taking advantage of local lore to frighten off the curious from discovering and interfering with their main criminal activity." Verne's villain even manages to satisfy the "You Meddling Kids" trope well known to fans of Scooby and Shaggy's adventures: "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
The theme of a superior outside power deranging the isolation of an obsolescent backward enclave is prime SF matter — see Samuel R. Delany's archetypal "We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line."
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Playboy redefines "safe for work"
Playboy redefines "safe for work":
If you spend your days wondering a) how get laid at work, b) what strippers look like when they're cage fighting or c) whether the words "tit" and "piñata" can successfully form a descriptive phrase, fear not, Playboy has a new website just for you. From the folks who have been bringing you their luscious mix of nipples and long-form journalism since time immemorial (er, 1953), comes The Smoking Jacket, a new venture that contains neither of those things.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Twitter Strangers
Twitter Strangers: Over at Gizmodo, Joel Johnson makes a convincing argument for adding random strangers to your twitter feed:
I realized most of my Twitter friends are like me: white dorks. So I picked out my new friend and started to pay attention.
She's a Christian, but isn't afraid of sex. She seems to have some problems trusting men, but she's not afraid of them, either. She's very proud of her fiscal responsibility. She looks lovely in her faux modeling shots, although I am surprised how much her style aligns with what I consider mall fashion when she's a grown woman in her twenties. Her home is Detroit and she's finding the process of buying a new car totally frustrating. She spends an embarrassing amount of time tweeting responses to the Kardashian family.
One of the best things about Twitter is that, once you've populated it with friends genuine or aspirational, it feels like a slow-burn
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Time Travel Without the Grandfather Paradox
Time Travel Without the Grandfather Paradox: Any theory of time travel has to confront the devastating "grandfather paradox," in which a traveler jumps back in time and kills his grandfather, which prevents his own existence, which then prevents the murder in the first place. This theory simply outlaws grandfather-killing.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Set Up Your Speakers for Better Sound
Set Up Your Speakers for Better Sound: You paid big bucks for a boomin' system, so why does it sound like doo-doo? Improper speaker placement is usually to blame for poor sound. Solve that problem with this advice.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Apple Reports Profit of $3.25 Billion in Q3 2010 on Record $15.7 Billion Revenue
Apple Reports Profit of $3.25 Billion in Q3 2010 on Record $15.7 Billion Revenue:
Apple today announced financial results for the second calendar quarter and third fiscal quarter of 2010. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $15.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion,...MacRumors - http://www.macrumors.com
Classical Music's New Golden Age by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Summer 2010
Classical Music's New Golden Age by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Summer 2010:
Music records the evolution of the human soul. To hear how the elegance of the baroque developed into the grandeur of the classical style, which in turn gave way to the languid sensuality and unbridled passion of Romanticism, is to trace how variously human beings have expressed longing, desire, triumph, and sorrow over the centuries.
Four short links: 20 July 2010
Four short links: 20 July 2010: The Most Prescient Footnote Ever (David Pennock) -- In footnote 14 of Chapter 5 (p. 228) of Graham’s classic Hackers and Painters, published in 2004, Graham asks “If the the Mac was so great why did it lose?”. His explanation ends with this caveat, in parentheses: "And it hasn’t lost yet. If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.
O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/
Monday, July 19, 2010
Out My Office Window
Out My Office Window: In the late afternoon I whimper and chafe at the leg irons that bind me to my desk. Idly I lift my camera and snap at nothing. Nothing! Nothing? Half the working world would dearly love to look out their office window and see what I see. What an ungrateful wretch I am, and how lucky could I but see myself through others' eyes.
Zeta Woof - http://grdurand.com/blogger/
The Real U.S. Government - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
The Real U.S. Government - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance -- literally -- occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. . . . Secrecy is the religion of the political class, and the prime enabler of its corruption. That's why whistle blowers are among the most hated heretics. They're one of the very few classes of people able to shed a small amount of light on what actually takes place.
Virtually every fact Priest and Arkin disclose underscores this point. Here is their first sentence: "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work." This all "amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight." We chirp endlessly about the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Democrats and Republicans, but this is the Real U.S. Government: functioning in total darkness, beyond elections and parties, so secret, vast and powerful that it evades the control or knowledge of any one person or even any organization.
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When it comes to comics, you just can't beat a drunken, violent aardvark | Books | The Guardian
When it comes to comics, you just can't beat a drunken, violent aardvark | Books | The Guardian: Alan Moore, talking about Watchmen last week, thinks not: "There hasn't been a more sophisticated comic released in the 25 years since, which I find profoundly depressing, because it was intended to be something that expanded the possibilities of comics rather than what it has apparently become: a massive psychological stumbling block that the rest of the industry has yet to find a way round."
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Five ways to access a remote Mac
Five ways to access a remote Mac: There are plenty of ways to access one Mac from another. Each has its own pros and cons. Glenn Fleishman explains the options and helps you figure out which one is right for you.
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
The Real U.S. Government
The Washington Post's Dana Priest demonstrates once again why she's easily one of the best investigative journalists in the nation -- if not the best -- with the publication of Part I of her series, co-written with William Arkin, detailing the sprawling, unaccountable, inexorably growing secret U.S. Government: what the article calls "Top Secret America." To the extent the series receives much substantive attention (and I doubt it will), the focus will likely be on the bureaucratic problems it documents: the massive redundancies, overlap, waste, and inefficiencies which plague this "hidden world, growing beyond control" -- as though everything would better if Top Secret America just functioned a bit more effectively. But the far more significant fact so compellingly illustrated by this first installment is the one I described last week when writing about the Obama administration's escalating war on whistle blowers:
Equally understated is the observation that we have become a militarized nation living under an omnipotent, self-perpetuating, bankrupting National Security State.
But as I wrote many times back then -- often by interviewing and otherwise citing House Intelligence Committee member Rush Holt, who has been making this point repeatedly -- the more secret surveillance powers we vest in the Government, the more we allow the unchecked Surveillance State to grow, the more unsafe we become. That's because the public-private axis that is the Surveillance State already collects so much information about us, our activities and our communications -- so indiscriminately and on such a vast scale -- that it cannot possibly detect any actual national security threats. NSA whistle blower Adrienne Kinne, when exposing NSA eavesdropping abuses, warned of what ABC News described as "the waste of time spent listening to innocent Americans, instead of looking for the terrorist needle in the haystack."
The Government did not fail to detect the 9/11 attacks because it was unable to collect information relating to the plot. It did collect exactly that, but because it surveilled so much information, it was incapable of recognizing what it possessed ("connecting the dots"). Despite that, we have since then continuously expanded the Government's surveillance powers. Virtually every time the political class reveals some Scary New Event, it demands and obtains greater spying authorities (and, of course, more and more money). And each time that happens, its ability to detect actually relevant threats diminishes.
The article details how ample information regarding alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hassan and attempted Christmas Day bomber Umar Abdulmutallab was collected but simply went unrecognized. As a result, our vaunted Surveillance State failed to stop the former attack and it was only an alert airplane passenger who thwarted the latter. So it isn't that we keep sacrificing our privacy to an always-growing National Security State in exchange for greater security. The opposite is true: we keep sacrificing our privacy to the always-growing National Security State in exchange for less security.
As George Carlin put it several years ago, in an amazingly succinct summary of so many things:
And now, they're coming for your Social Security money - they want your fucking retirement money - they want it back - so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later. Because they own this fucking place. It's a Big Club: and you're not in it.
That's really the only relevant question: how much longer will Americans sit by passively and watch as a tiny elite become more bloated, more powerful, greedier, more corrupt and more unaccountable -- as the little economic security, privacy and freedom most citizens possess vanish further still? How long can this be sustained, where more and more money is poured into Endless War, a military that almost spends more than the rest of the world combined, where close to 50% of all U.S. tax revenue goes to military and intelligence spending, where the rich-poor gap grows seemingly without end, and the very people who virtually destroyed the world economy wallow in greater rewards than ever, all while the public infrastructure (both figuratively and literally) crumbles and the ruling class is openly collaborating on a bipartisan, public-private basis even to cut Social Security benefits?
Baker quotes Democratic strategist Chris Lehane as follows: "Politics in D.C. have become Seinfeldesque. Fights about nothing."
But Sarah Palin's Twitter malapropism from yesterday will almost certainly receive far more attention than anything exposed by the Priest/Arkin investigation. So we'll continue to fixate on the trappings and theater of government while The Real Government churns blissfully in the dark -- bombing and detaining and abducting and spying and even assassinating -- without much bother from anyone.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
"True Blood" recap: Love is in the air
"True Blood" recap: Love is in the air:
Trouble. It's the name of this episode and of the classic board game invented in 1965. Sometimes it feels like "True Blood" might just as well be a venture between HBO and Hasbro. It's like they've taken the best of all their most popular shows -- the loopy carnality of "Sex and The City," the unflinching violence of "The Sopranos," the underworld politics of "The Wire," the morbid bent of "Six Feet Under"and the perversity of "Deadwood" -- put it all into the Pop-O-Matic and let it roll.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Facebook reaches a staggering 500 million users | TG Daily
Facebook reaches a staggering 500 million users | TG Daily: There are now more Facebook user accounts than there are Windows 7 licenses, people in the United States, and the number of daily Twitter posts, combined!
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Small marijuana businesses fear pro-weed proposal
Small marijuana businesses fear pro-weed proposal: California's medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the "Wal-Marting" of weed.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
One more thing about that netbook...
Ah, that's clearer. Personally, I'd like a netbook so I could lie in bed and watch anime on Hulu. And just for the record, what is this marvelous text editor you use?
One more thing about that netbook...: I didn't give my readers any background, and Dave scoffed at the idea of my trying to do any "serious" work on a netbook. I agree with that 100%. Let me clarify. This is my wife's netbook. I'm just planning to borrow the use of it during the week we spend in Alaska. For that I require the bare minimum, and nothing more. Blog and surf, check email and crop photos. That's all I need.
Zeta Woof - http://grdurand.com/blogger/
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Zeta Woof: The Dream and The Nightmare
A netbook?! For serious work?! Seriously?!
Zeta Woof: The Dream and The Nightmare: The Dream: Maybe we can buy one of those new fangled netbooks, and maybe I can teach it to do everything my faithful old valet has done for me all these years.
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Friday, July 16, 2010
Jay Bybee's sociopathic self-absorption
Does 'sociopathic self-absorption' count as Narcissism?
Jay Bybee's sociopathic self-absorption:
The New York Times has an article today on Jay Bybee, the torture-authorizing Bush OLC lawyer and current judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The focus of the article is Bybee's recent Congressional testimony that several of the torture tactics used by the CIA were never approved by the Justice Department -- which means they should fall outside the scope of the Obama DOJ's immunity shield from prosecution -- but it was the last passage that I think is most noteworthy (h/t reader rg):
These are individuals who destroyed the lives of countless innocent people with gruesome and lawless "policies." Not only did they never suffer for it, they have been richly rewarded with wealth and life-long job security. And still, the only tragedy they see from everything that happened is their own trivial "suffering," i.e., the fact that they're criticized in some quarters for what they did. The term "sociopathic self-absorption" should have a huge picture of them next to it in the dictionary.
That's what happens when you create a society where elites can engage in the most wretched and destructive acts with total impunity: it engenders a blinding, empathy-free, effete sense of entitlement whereby they see themselves as the only ones who matter and their own plight as the only one worthy of consideration.
Salon - http://www.salon.com/rss/all_salon.rss
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