The winner of the Freakonomics contest is: “Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay.” All of the leading entries cling to such a naive faith in an ideal of democracy which, to my way of thinking, is little more .than a fairy tale. And, yet, yes, most of the time I prefer to stay.
Daily Archives: 28 Feb 08
Mission Accomplished Dept (cont’d)
Kabul government controls just a third of Afghanistan (Wired Dispatch)
Obama and The Wire
![//www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/05/09/nosplit/ix600wire.gif' cannot be displayed]](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/05/09/nosplit/ix600wire.gif "The Wire") |
“In a recent story in The Nation, Chris Hayes used 2,200-plus words to argue why progressives should back Sen. Barack Obama. I’ll use only seven: Obama’s favorite TV show is The Wire. It’s certainly true, as Hayes noted, that Obama, like every presidential candidate, won’t be saying one word about the prison-industrial complex or the disastrous consequences of the ‘war on drugs.’ But it’s heartening to think that at least he’s tuning in to one of the few public forums that fiercely drags such issues into our consciousness.” — Brian Cook (In These Times)
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"One thing I’ve demonstrated often in 16 years is you can do this job without asking a single question…"
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Thomas silent as Supreme Court talks on and on: “Two years and 142 cases have passed since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last spoke up at oral arguments. It is a period of unbroken silence that contrasts with the rest of the court’s unceasing inquiries.” (CNN)
I have long thought that Clarence Thomas is one of the most monumental embarrassments of our judicial system, and I certainly hope his demeanor is not mistaken for that of an impressive silent deliberator. |
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Mortgage Note Issues Help Debtors Avoid Foreclosure
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Want to keep your home? How about stopping paying your mortgage? If, as is increasingly common, your mortgage has been sold many times since you took the loan, it is possible, as this homeowner found, that the current noteholder can’t actually find the documentation of your debt. If that’s the case they may not be able to foreclose on you. [via boing boing] |
Susan Blackmore
Mark Frauenfelder’s summary of what Blackmore, the author of The Meme Machine, said at TED 2008:
“History of life is a history of replicators.
Language is a parasite we’ve adapted to. It may have started out being harmful, but we’ve developed a symbiotic relationship with it.
First replicators were genes. Then memes. We now have temes (tech memes) are a third repliciator on our planet.
Don’t think of intelligence, thinnk of replicators.
New Drake equation. Start with number of planets — what fraction of those get a first replicator, a 2nd replicator, a 3rd?
Getting a new replicator is dangerous. We need to pull through each time. The 2nd replicator (memes) was dangerous -= big brains are painful: kills a lot of mothers and babies. Brains uses 20% of body energy for 2% of body weight; it may have nearly killed us off.
temes are just information — they use humans to suck up planet’s resources. Don’t think we created the internet to benefit us; we are being being used by temes. It convenient for temes to piggyback on us because we replicate. But when temes can replicate without us, they will carry on without us.” [via boing boing]
WorldWideTelescope
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“…a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.
WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.” (Microsoft Research)
Coming this spring. [Lest you think this sounds like an ad for Micro$oft, it is just that this seems charming.]
