Ayn Rand's open letter of 1941 to promote individualism and cry against totalitarian intellectuals.#

The letter is a warning that totalitarians could take over any country if given the opportunity and she supposes that the intellectual attitude in American will promote it.

Who "determines" the future? You're very muddled on that, aren't you? What exactly is "mankind"? Is it a mystical entity with a will of its own? Or is it you, and I, and the sum of all of us together? What force is there to make history — except men, other men just like you? If there are enough men who believe in a better future and are willing to work for it, the future will be what they want it to be. You doubt this? Why then, if the world is doomed to dictatorship, do the dictators spend so much money and effort on propaganda? If history is predestined in their favor, why don't Hitler and Stalin just ride the wave into the future without any trouble? Doesn't it seem more probable that history will be what the minds of men want it to be, and the dictators are smart enough to prepare these minds in the way they want them, while we talk of destiny and do nothing?

Many people at the time, and even today, think that certain things could NEVER happen to them. Drug addiction, AIDs, unwanted pregnancies, and a totalitarian government. But, we all know that to be false at heart.

Don't delude yourself with slogans and meaningless historical generalizations. It can happen here. It can happen anywhere. And a country's past history has nothing to do with it. Totalitarianism is not a new product of historical evolution. It is older than history. It is the attempt of the worthless and the criminal to seize control of society. That element is always there, in any country. But a healthy society gives it no chance. It is when the majority in a country becomes weak, indifferent and confused that a criminal minority, beautifully organized like all gangs, seizes the power. And once that power is seized it cannot be taken back for generations. Fantastic as it may seem to think of a dictatorship in the United States, it is much easier to establish such a dictatorship than to overthrow it. With modern technique and modern weapons at its disposal, a ruthless minority can hold millions in slavery indefinitely. What can one thousand unorganized, unarmed men do against one man with a machine gun?

The power that totalitarians thrive on and that the Americans of 1941 and today offer them is: indifference. The lack of opposition. Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.

The Totalitarians do not want your active support. They do not need it. They have their small, compact, well-organized minority and it is sufficient to carry out their aims. And they want from you is your indifference. The Communists and the Nazis have stated repeatedly that the indifference of the majority is their best ally. Just sit at home, pursue your private affairs, shrug about world problems — and you are the most effective Fifth Columnist that can be devised. You're doing your part as well as if you took orders consciously from Hitler or from Stalin. And so, you're in it, whether you want to be or not, you're helping the world towards destruction, while moaning and wondering what makes the world such as it is today. You do.

Her definition of totalitarianism is incredibly powerful.

What is the primary cause, common to both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and all other dictators, past, present, and future? One idea — and one only: That the State is superior to the individual. That the Collective holds all rights and the individual has none.

Stop here. This is the crucial point. What you think of this will determine whether you are a mental Fifth Columnist or not. This is the point which allows no compromise. You must choose one or the other. There is no middle. Either you believe that each individual man has value, dignity and certain inalienable rights which cannot be sacrificed for any cause, for any purpose, for any collective, for any number of other men whatsoever. Or else you believe that a number of men — it doesn't matter what you call it: a collective, a class, a race or a State — holds all rights, and any individual man can be sacrificed if some collective good — it doesn't matter what you call it: better distribution of wealth, racial purity or the Millennium — demands it. Don't fool yourself. Be honest about this. Names don't matter. Only the basic principle matters, and there is no middle choice. Either man has individual, inalienable rights — or he hasn't.

Not only will this lead to totalitarianism, always, but it will always lead to horror:

Principles are much more consistent than men. A basic principle, once accepted, has a way of working itself out to its logical conclusion — even against the will and to the great surprise of those who accepted it. Just accept the idea that there are no inalienable individual rights — and firing squads, executions without trial, and a Gestapo or a G. P. U. will follow automatically — no matter who holds the power, no matter how noble and benevolent his intentions. That is a law of history. You can find any number of examples. Can you name one [counter-example]? Can you name one instance where absolute power — in any hands — did not end in absolute horror? And — for God's sake, fellow Americans, let's not be utter morons, let's give our intelligence a small chance to function and let's recognize the obvious — what is absolute power? It's a power which holds all rights and has to respect none. Does it matter whether such a power is held by a self-appointed dictator or by an elected representative body? The power is the same and its results will be the same. Look through all of history. Look at Europe. Don't forget — they still hold "elections" in Europe. Don't forget, Hitler was elected.

Final words...

If you believe this, join us. If you don't — fight us. Either is your privilege, but the only truly immoral act you can commit is to agree with us, to realize that we are right — and then to forget it and do nothing.

There is some excuse, little as it may be, for an open, honest Fifth Columnist. There is none for an innocent, passive, subconscious one. Of all the things we have said here to you, we wish to be wrong on only one — our first sentence ["You who read this represent the greatest danger to America."]. Prove us wrong on that. Join us.

The world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. But not without Freedom.

Ayn Rand spoke to a group of West Point graduates about philosophy.#

She defines philosophy as the solution to the questions that every person attempts to answer.

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.

Philosophy would not tell you, for instance, whether you are in New York City or in Zanzibar (though it would give you the means to find out). But here is what it would tell you: Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute--and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? Are the things you see around you real--or are they only an illusion? Do they exist independent of any observer--or are they created by the observer? Are they the object or the subject of man's consciousness? Are they what they are--or can they be changed by a mere act of your consciousness, such as a wish?

Next is the question of what ethics are...

Before you come to ethics, you must answer the questions posed by metaphysics and epistemology: Is man a rational being, able to deal with reality--or is he a helplessly blind misfit, a chip buffeted by the universal flux? Are achievement and enjoyment possible to man on earth--or is he doomed to failure and disaster? Depending on the answers, you can proceed to consider the questions posed by ethics: What is good or evil for man--and why? Should man's primary concern be a quest for joy--or an escape from suffering? Should man hold self-fulfillment--or self-destruction--as the goal of his life? Should man pursue his values--or should he place the interests of others above his own? Should man seek happiness--or self-sacrifice?

She points out that whether we want to be or not we are always influenced by philosophy because it is the science of life...

Now ask yourself: if you are not interested in abstract ideas, why do you (and all men) feel compelled to use them? The fact is that abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes--and that without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed.

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles.

The opposite of logic and living a philosophy is to be controlled blindly by emotions.

A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose print-outs he cannot read. He does not know whether its programming is true or false, right or wrong, whether it's set to lead him to success or destruction, whether it serves his goals or those of some evil, unknowable power. He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world around him and to his own inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own motives, and he is in chronic terror of both. Emotions are not tools of cognition. The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power.

The West Point graduates are honoured greatly by these remarks:

You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you are dedicated to selfless service--it is not a virtue in my morality. In my morality, the defense of one's country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue. Some of you may not be consciously aware of it. I want to help you to realize it.

The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest--as the armies of other countries have done in their histories--only as an instrument of a free nation's self-defense, which means: the defense of a man's individual rights. The principle of using force only in retaliation against those who initiate its use, is the principle of subordinating might to right. The highest integrity and sense of honor are required for such a task. No other army in the world has achieved it. You have.

Note: This speech was given in 1974, the last year that Wesley Clark was an assistant professor at West Point. He was probably there? Rad.

Matt May on Dave Winer being against the campaigns becoming open source projects.#

So, the only good protectionism is my protectionism. (See also: the only moral abortion is my abortion.)

This argument is so wrong-headed, I don't know where exactly to start. First off, how is a candidate going to go after the major media during the election cycle? I could swear that the point, at this stage, is to get elected to office. Nobody has the resources to create an alternative network and infiltrate cable carriers between now and when it's important, which makes this argument a red herring. What they do have, and what Dean and Clark have had for months now, is a steady supply of geeky supporters (and I say that with love, and a Palm clipped proudly to my pants).

Point 1: The point should not be to get elected to office. The point should be to be the person who the people want to be in office. Don't convince them, be their voice.

Point 2: A candidate could go against the media companies by refusing to participate in the corruption of our democracy and instead actually engage citizens rather than shout at them and try to propagandize them until they blindly support the candidate.

I think these are the important points that Dave was making, I don't think that he is saying that open-source software is anti-American or immoral, just that there are bigger and better industries that could embrace freedom.

Gregor has a reply to Dave on the point that free software doesn't provide incentives to developers to make their software usable.

dave is ranting about how free software cannot be user-oriented. i bought a license of manila, and tried radio for a while. verdict: Movable Type has a better user interface than both userland products, and costs.. $0

Aaron Swartz joins the fray and points to user-oriented free software.

Min Jung on words and Christmas.#

It's Christmas Eve.

This morning, so far, I've had two Hindu and one Muslim co-worker say to me "Merry Christmas." The agnostic expresses "God bless you." and the lapsed Catholic, with a hug and smile shouts out "Jingle Mah Bells, Mutha Fuckah".

Perhaps it's because I work in a non-hypersensitve, non-uberPC, environment, folks aren't as afraid to have thier candy canes and tanenbaum's out.

Campaigns as Software Companies#

AKMA on colour code systems and TERROR.#

Let's just note for the record that although we have a security spectrum that ranges from blue through green, yellow, orange, to red, the Department of Homeland Security has actually used only yellow and orange through the twenty-one months since the Bush administration implemented the system. [...]

Question: What is the actual function of raising the Terror Threat Alert color under these circumstances, with these instructions to the public?

I resist cynicism, but the whole deal smells to me a great deal as though the Terror Threat Alert serves mostly to cover the posteriors of administrators in case a terrorist succeeds. That's why the Alert color can't go below yellow, and is unlikely to go above orange: letting the color slip below yellow constitutes too great a risk if a terrorist were to pull off an attack; letting the color rise above orange risks raising expectations that the administration disclose or foil an actual plot.

Edward Bilodeau links to Naomi Klein on what runs the White House. (Greed, not ideology.)#

The Kissinger transcript proves that the US gave money and political encouragement to the generals' murderous campaign. And yet, despite its now irrefutable complicity in Argentina's tragedy, the US has opposed all attempts to cancel the country's debt. And Argentina is hardly exceptional. The US has used its power in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to block campaigns to cancel debts accumulated by apartheid South Africa, Marcos in the Philippines, Duvalier's brutal regime in Haiti and the dictatorship that sent Brazil's debt spiralling from $5.7bn in 1964 to $104bn in 1985.

The US position has been that wiping out debts would be a dangerous precedent (and rob Washington of the leverage it needs to push for investor-friendly economic reforms). So why is Bush so concerned that "the future of the Iraqi people should not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt"? Because it is taking money from "reconstruction", which could go to Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon and Boeing.

Metafilter links to Economists on the deadweight loss of gift-giving just in time for Christmas!#

Conventional economics teaches that gift giving is irrational. The satisfaction or "utility" a person derives from consumption is determined by their personal preferences. But no one understands your preferences as well as you do.

So when I give up $50 worth of utility to buy a present for you, the chances are high that you'll value it at less than $50. If so, there's been a mutual loss of utility. The transaction has been inefficient and "welfare reducing", thus making it irrational. As an economist would put it, "unless a gift that costs the giver p dollars exactly matches the way in which the recipient would have spent the p dollars, the gift is suboptimal".

This astonishing intellectual breakthrough was first formulated in 1993 by Joel Waldfogel, an economics professor now at the University of Pennsylvania, in his seminal paper, The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.

The difference between what givers pay for presents and the value the recipients put on those presents is the loss being referred to and, since it's equivalent to tearing up banknotes, economists call it a "deadweight" loss.

It follows from this insight that, if people must persist with gift giving, they should at least minimise the loss by giving money rather than items in kind.

Trouble is, were families to assemble on Christmas morning for an equal exchange of $50 cheques, the pointlessness of the exercise would quickly become apparent.

Via Gothamist is a skinny vs. healthy Reene Zellweger comparison.#

Matt Stoller covers the technopolitical bubble.#

Still, it's clear that regardless of whether the new campaigning style influences Dean's administration, it certainly creates new constituency groups and reduces the power of centralized money. I am reminded of Dick Morris's interview, that the era of participatory politics is upon us. I can tell you that on the local level in Massachusetts, there is absolutely NO internet influence on policy as of yet, but new internet influenced constituency groups are emerging to take on the centralized Democratic Party apparatus. The political fights will need to be fought before the policy changes, but think tank fellowships aside, it doesn't seem like you can separate politics from policy for very long.

Essentially, the Dean community is a new source of political power. As such, it doesn't write policy, but then, neither did unions or party bosses, but they certainly shaped policy, and the political realities that undergird it. The process of electoral politics enables effective governance, and should Dean eschew a two-way dialogue on policy-making, he would find that at least one component of his political power dramatically weaker. Does this mean that commenters write his trade papers? No, but it certainly means that he'll pay attention to them, or suffer the consequences of not doing so with a weaker political base.

The Yeti comments on The Winds of Change and the reality of the war on Terror.#

If you're not following this - and actively seeking out information from those actually involved in making these decisions, then you're listening to blowhards. If Iran is actively working with Al Qaeda, and you have the information now, then the cries of Imperialism if we invade Iran don't pass muster.

This is very serious stuff. The main argument is if we suffer a major terrorist action that costs 10,000 American lives - nukes can very well start flying. At the very least, we will see major military action again - this time without allies and without discussion.

WoC also makes the point that if several small terrorist actions like car bombings or gas station explosions take place, it signifies an extreme degradation of the capabilities of Al Qaeda. Counter-intuitive, but small attacks means we've thwarted their major attempts.

Jay Rosen posts a must-read memorial of Sander Thoenes. I want to quote every line.#

On the day he was killed, Sander Thoenes was a Dutchman, educated in the United States, employed In England, published in America, theUK and Holland, stationed in Jakarta, reporting from East Timor. He was fluent in Dutch, English, Russian, and Bahasa, the main language of Indonesia. He also spoke spotty French. He had lived in Moscow and Kazakhstan. He had friends all over the world; and there have been memorial services for him in Australia, Holland, Indonesia, England and now the U.S. The White House, the Secretary General of the U.N.,the Dutch Foreign Minister, officials of the World Bank-- all made statements condemning his death.

That is part of what I mean by a citizen of the world. But it goes deeper. As a matter of law, there is no such thing as world citizenship. Legally speaking, you're a citizen of a particular country, perhaps two, never the globe. But Sander knew how to live anywhere. He could talk to people, anywhere. He could have fun wherever he was. If he found a way to hook up his computer, play his piano, phone his friends, he was home. As a traveler, the opposite of a tourist. He had no fear of the foreign, and no felt need for protection against it. Maybe it's true that he had a gift for learning languages. As likely, he saw other languages as a gift to him.

[...]

One reason Sander got on that motorbike on the day he got shot, then, was that he didn't need to find a translator in East Timor, just a driver. Others had to wait. Another reason: he wasn't willing to parachute in. He wanted to see for himself the damage caused by arrogant men with guns. Maybe it's embellished, maybe not. But they say when his body was found, there was a reporter's notebook next to it.

Sander was doing his job, but the point to remember is how he defined his job: citizen of the world tries to tell the world what goes on in the struggle for an open society. If he looked for the facts on the ground, he lived by some abstract and universal values. To understand his story, you have to see the poetry in that. Feet on the ground, eyes on the horizon.

Joi Ito writes about talking to someone versus about them.#

I've recently had the experience of receiving inbound links from people who write very personal diaries. I struggled when trying to decide whether I should comment, link to them or otherwise shed attention on a conversation or monolog that appeared to be directed at someone other than me or my audience. A lot of people will say at this point that posting on the "world wide web" is publishing to the public and information wants to be free, yada yada... I would disagree. The tools are just not good enough yet. Live Journal has a feature that allows you to post entries that only your friends can see. I would love to be able to add special comments interspersed in my blog posts for only my close friends.

Kristin is too much.#

the christmas break has given me lots of extra time to focus on my two favorite fall/winter sports: football and shopping. because *MY* football team won't be taking the field until january 4th, i've been forced to spend the majority of my break indulging in my second favorite pastime. i can honestly say i've seen the inside of a mall each and every day of christmas break, and while the massive, churning holiday crowds would deter or at least dishearten any other shopper, i only gain strength from the mall's magical powers.

Faré wrote an article on the two challenges facing computing today entitled, Metaprogramming and Free Availability of Sources. Faré is behind the TUNES project that seeks to solve these problems.#

We introduce metaprogramming in a completely informal way, and sketch out a theory of it. We explain why it is a major stake for computing today, by considering the processes underlying software development. We show, from the same perspective, how metaprogramming is related to another challenge of computing, the free availability of the sources of software, and how these two phenomena naturally complement each other.

The core of the argument is that because computers and the problems they solve are getting more advanced and complicated it has become essential to think about computer programs at a higher level. This higher level is the realm of meta-programming, where abstraction is higher and the ability to manipulate other programs is essential. And of course, to be able to manipulate those other programs more completely the sources must be available. This is what ties these two ideas together.

Faré talks about various types of metaprogramming that exist in the real world but are not done very effectively or well understood. Examples: compilers, interpreters, debuggers, checkers, etc.

The core of the power of metaprogramming is making working with computer programs easier and this often means allowing them to be accessed in the most desirable manner.

If we investigate existing applications of metaprogramming, we realize that it is used to automatically manage the transition between several different aspects of same computational objects: for instance, when one compiles a program, one is interested in the ``same'' program, under different forms (source or object code), each suited to its own set of tasks (human modification, or machine execution).

[...]

In this way, a plane will be for a engineer designing the fuselage, a set of curves and equations of which some parameters must be optimized, for a component manufacturer, it will be a schedule of conditions, for the builder, it will be an assembly process, for the maintenance officer, a set of tasks to perform, for the restoration engineer, a set of problems to fix, for the hardware manager, a set of spare parts, for the pilot, a ship to take to destination safe and sound, for the passenger, a disagreement to minimize to get to another place, for the traffic controller, a dot to route among many others, for the commercial clerk, a set of seats to fill, for the commercial strategist, an element of a float to deploy, for the director of human resource, people to manage, for the accountant, a historic of transactions, for the insurance agent, a risk to evaluate, etc, etc.

What it is important then, is that metaprogramming is a tool that can possibly be used to increase the expressiveness of your computing system. Faré makes the point that this is not the same kind of expressiveness as computability refers to--what problems can be solved--but more over what problems can be understood.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that not all Turing-equivalent languages are worth the same from the point of view of the programmer: all those who made the respective experiences will agree that it is easier to program in a high-level language (like LISP) than in a low-level language (like C), which in turn is easier to use than assembly language, which is better than binary code, which is simpler than the transistor-per-transistor design of a dedicated electronic circuit, or the specification of a Turing machine. Actually, Turing's result is but the very beginning of a theory of the expressive power of computing systems, and certainly not the end of it. To stop with this mere result, and say that ``since all languages, in practice, are not equivalent to each other as they are according to Turing, then theory cannot say anything'', would be to abdicate one's reason and to look in a vague nowhere for an unspeakable explanation, it would be giving superstition and ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

And this expressiveness is desired because it reduces the human costs associated with creating, deploying, and maintaining any particular piece of software. Human time is more expensive that computer time these days and processes should respect and realize that.

Thus, the problem is not only technical, it is also economical, moral, and political, in as much as it involves shifting of human efforts. In the development of computer programs, as anywhere else, the process matters. And it is this very process that the popular notions of code reuse, modularity, dynamic or incremental programming, development methods, etc, attempt to enhance, though without a formal rational approach. Similarly, the trend in computer science to leave too low-level languages in favor of higher-level languages is precisely due to human intelligence being a limited resource, a scarce one indeed, that has to be saved for the most important tasks, the ones where it is indispensible (if not forever, at least for now).

Therefore, a satisfying modelling of the expressiveness of programming languages, even though it be abstract enough not to overly depend on ephemeral technological concerns, must take into account the man-computer interaction in a way that includes a notion of human cost (and perhaps also a notions of error and confidence).

So, how does the lack of freely available software sources impede metaprogramming?

We personally find it obvious that barriers to the distribution of sources are as many brakes to the development of metaprogramming. In fact, the very condition for the use of a program-reading metaprogram is the availability of a program to read; the condition of usefulness of a program-writing metaprogram is that the output program may be distributed and used; and these conditions combine when a metaprogram at the same time reads and writes programs, and even more when the metaprogram depends on the long term accumulation of knowledge about programs! Every limitation on the manipulation of programs is as much of a limitation on the feasability or the utility of metaprograms, and a discourages as much their potential authors.

And secondly, metaprogramming introduces a great deal of fuziness over who the author of a newly created piece of software is.

Actually, as long as the only operation that leads to production of code is manual addition, the writing out of the blue by a human mind supposedly inspired directly by the Muses, then it is possible to attribute an ``origin'', an ``author'' to every word, to every symbol that constitutes a program. Now, as soon as is allowed metaprogramming, that is, arbitrary operations that act on code and produce code, as soon as is considered the environment inside which lives the author (man or machine) of a program then this one is no more the inventor of the program, but only the last link of a holistic process of transformation, in which it is not possible to attribute an unequivocal origin to any produced element whatsover.

(Note: Faré, of course, does not agree with the notion of "intellectual property" in any way, shape, or form, but puts this belief mostly aside and focuses on the technical and legal problems from a not judgmental point of view.)

The answer, a system that acknowledges the benefits of both of these tools is a reflective system, wherein the tools some how manipulate "themselves."

The free Unix systems (GNU/Linux, *BSD, etc) as well as some others (like Native Oberon) are as many complete reflective systems: they are freely available, and come with the sources of all the software tools required to their self-development, from the user interface to the compiler and to the drivers for peripheral devices. But their ``reflective loop'' is very long, which identifies programmer and metaprogrammer. If we consider as ``given'' the operating system and its basic development tools (including a C compiler), then, the many programming language implementations written in the implemented language itself are as ``reflective'', and with a shorter reflective loop between implementation and usage; however, these implementations do not constitute complete systems (and do not usually seek to become so), since they depend for their development on numerous external services.

The problem facing any project that seeks to be completely and thoroughly reflective, is finding or developing a programming suitable for a reflective style of development.

Faré has hopes for the future...

Let us then hope that practitionners of computing arts shall free themselves from the flashy but empty slogans like ``multimedia'', ``object-oriented'', ``design-pattern'', ``virtual machine'', ``intelligent network'', etc, that are by-products of a culture of partitioning and loss of responsibility. Shall they rather adopt a scientific attitude, that is open and critical at the same time, with respect to the essential process that underlie their activity, which processes, for technical that they be, nonetheless have economical, political, and all in all, moral implications.

F.A. Hayek writes a warning about letting socialism lead one down the path to tyranny and fascism.#

The character of the danger is, if possible, even less understood here than it was in Germany. The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will, who, by their socialist policies, prepared the way for the forces which stand for everything they detest. Few recognize that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. Yet it is significant that many of the leaders of these movements, from Mussolini down (and including Laval and Quisling) began as socialists and ended as fascists or Nazis. In the democracies at present, many who sincerely hate all of Nazism's manifestations are working for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny. Most of the people whose views influence developments are in some measure socialists. They believe that our economic life should be "consciously directed," that we should substitute "economic planning" for the competitive system. Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

The problem is that socialism requires a highly effective and terribly powerful planning committee that is able to be corrupted. The strength of democracy has always been, and will always be, it's ability to disperse power and coercion in addition to decrease the total amount available.

In every real sense a badly paid unskilled workman in [the United States] has more freedom to shape his life than many an employer in Germany or a much better paid engineer or manager in Russia. If he wants to change his job or the place where he lives, if he wants to profess certain views or spend his leisure in a particular way, he faces no absolute impediments. There are no dangers to bodily security and freedom that confine him by brute force to the task and environment to which a superior has assigned him. Our generation has forgotten that the system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom.

To gain power and support, the socialists first did the things that many are disgusted with the Nazis for,

By the time Hitler came to power, liberalism was dead in Germany. And it was socialism that had killed it. To many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, but in the democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. They do not realize that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable but that to strive for it produces something utterly different - the very destruction of freedom itself. As has been aptly said: "What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."

He clarifies the liberal position on planning,

The liberal argument does not advocate leaving things just as they are; it favors making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts. It is based on the conviction that, where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other. It emphasizes that in order to make competition work beneficially a carefully thought-out legal framework is required, and that neither the past nor the existing legal rules are free from grave defects. Liberalism is opposed, however, to supplanting competition by inferior methods of guiding economic activity. And it regards competition as superior not only because in most circumstances it is the most efficient method known but because it is the only method which does not require the coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority.

The de Tocqueville reference:

Nobody saw more clearly than the great political thinker de Tocqueville that democracy stands in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom," he said. "Democracy attaches all possible value to each man," he said in 1848, "while socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

Why planning, even when compartmentalized in a democracy, will always lead to dictatorship.

To draw up an economic plan in this fashion is even less possible than, for instance, successfully to plan a military campaign by democratic procedure. As in strategy it would become inevitable to delegate the task to experts. And even if, by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem of integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole. There will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual should be given power to act on their own responsibility. The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning. Thus the legislative body will be reduced to choosing the persons who are to have practically absolute power. The whole system will tend toward that kind of dictatorship in which the head of the government is position by popular vote, but where he has all the powers at his command to make certain that the vote will go in the direction he desires. Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible. There is no justification for the widespread belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; it is not the source of power which prevents it from being arbitrary; to be free from dictatorial qualities, the power must also be limited. A true "dictatorship of the proletariat," even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done.

And why socialism and dictatorships will always do wrong even if they propose and claim to be for an honourable cause,

Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves "the good of the whole," because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done. Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity

Similarly, this means that lying will become second-natured and essential,

A further point should be made here: Collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.

Throw away the old lies and build a better future.

TO BUILD a better world, we must have the courage to make a new start. We must clear away the obstacles with which human folly has recently encumbered our path and release the creative energy of individuals; We must create conditions favorable to progress rather than "planning progress. " It is not those who cry for more "planning" who show the necessary courage, nor those who preach a "New Order," which is no more than a continuation of the tendencies of the past 40 years; and who can think of nothing better than to imitate Hitler. It is, indeed, those who cry loudest for a planned economy who are most completely under the sway of the ideas which have created this war and most of the evils from which we suffer. The guiding principle in any attempt to create a world of free men must be this: A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy.

Edmund Furse writes about trying to understand learning and memory, particularly of the mathematical variety.#

The problem with human learning, is that so much that we learn is in terms of what we already know. This makes obvious sense. For example, we learn that Paris is the capital of France, but could not really learn this if we did not have some previous idea of what a capital city was, or a country. This, so called learning of facts, is known by psychologists as "declarative learning" to distinguish it from "procedural learning", a distinction made by amongst others the American Cognitive Psychologist, John Anderson.

Anderson built a large model of human learning, memory and problem solving known as ACT (Adaptive Character of Thought), and it has had many different versions. But, he models the way we improve our learning, and do tasks faster, namely how the things we know become proceduralised. For example, when you first learn someone's telephone number, you dial it very deliberatively, one digit at a time. But with practice, this gets faster, until the skill is completely automatic (automatized is the technical term), and then when you think of the name, you can immediately recall the number and dial it.

Defining things based on past experience leads to a very interesting problem...

The difficult problem in trying to understand the nature of the learning of facts, is how can one possibly learn something new? This is a very old problem going back to the Greeks. Meno's paradox, the 'learning paradox' derives from the ancient Greek sophists who argued that truly novel learning was impossible in that "novel knowledge cannot be derived completely from old knowledge, or it would not be new. Yet the transcending part of it cannot be completely new either, for then it could never be understood."

Also, many smart people seem to acknowledge this when they talk of trying to find the right metaphor to describe what something does or what a particularly situation is like. Many times we look at something and it seems unfamiliar but if someone can impress a particularly model of it on it seems to merge with the rest of your second natures.

So the problem that many AI programs have is that they imbue a few core concepts to the memory system and that drastically restricts what is able to emerge. Furse has a better solution though...

This model of learning and memory, the Contextual Memory System, (CMS), starts with no features and no items in memory. It thus starts as a complete tabula rasa. However, it does have built in perceptual MECHANISMS which given an object in the outside world, it can build very large numbers of features of the object. Thus, the ACTUAL features that are built are purely a function of the objects that the agent encounters in the world. If the agent spends a lot of time looking at birds and rabbits, then he will naturally acquire many features relevant to birds and rabbits. In contrast, if he spends his time studying the business news, then he will build many financial features.

So, you get the question of whether when human minds are born, are they completely blank slates or do we inherent a bit of classification? This model suggests that we don't.

The article then talks about the progress that Furse has made with systems to understand mathematics.

The conclusion!

Learning is vital to understanding the human condition. Freud believed that dreams were the royal road to understanding the unconscious. Furse argues that understanding the nature of human learning is the new scientific road to the understanding of the mind. This understanding will, in time, encompass a broad range of human experience, from the mundane to the sublime.

Edward Bilodeau links to Andrea Ciffolilli in First Monday on Wikipedia.#

The economics behind the power of Wikipedia and it's power against vandalism.

Any transaction involves costs (Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1985). These range from the costs of writing a contract, to the costs of negotiating how to deal with unexpected contingences, from the costs of coordination to the costs of motivation (or commitment). Such costs are determined either by human characteristics (bounded rationality and opportunism), or by the type of transaction (frequency, uncertainty, asset specificity).

Teece (1988) claims that high transaction costs represent one of the main limits to the division of labour in the production and use of knowledge.

Wiki technology in a way literally cancels transaction costs for editing and changing information. Hence, this reduction in transaction costs acts as a catalyst for the development of the community. In turn, these reduced transaction costs means that there is full exploitation of massive collaboration economies. Hence, in the case of horizontal information assemblages, we might argue that any incentive that allows more authors to freely join in a given task, the larger the assemblage of information that is eventually produced (or in the case of Wikipedia, a larger number of articles is possible).

Another secret of the success of Wikipedia is related to the incentives that contribute to a "creative construction" of information, rather than a "creative destruction" of it. As noted earlier, I expected Wikipedia to be engaged in an endless war among reliable contributions and graffiti attacks that would have blocked the development of the Web site. In reality, that has not happened, basically because all changes made to any article are stored; it is possible to undo any unapproved modification with a single click. This makes the activity of littering a page extremely more expensive for an individual (in terms of time and reputation), than it is for anyone else. Therefore, also in this circumstance, it is a matter of costs.

On authority,

Final policy decisions are up to one of the founders, Jimmy Wales [13]. However, if this sort of benevolent dictator attempted to deviate from a neutral and objective policy towards content (for example, in order to push a specific political agenda), then the license [14] provides a strong counter—balance to his power. The contributors may and should, in such a case, take the database and the software and set up a competing project [15].

The reputation system of Wikipedia and how it could be more effective,

The reputation of Wikipedians grows with the number of their contributions. By visiting the previous version pages of each article, it is possible to go back to its author or authors. However, the names or the nicknames of the authors, unlike print encyclopaedias, do not appear at the bottom of the articles. In my view, this is a pity because the possibility to directly show the names of the authors would represent a powerful incentive and a strong gratification for contributors. The current anonymity may represent, in the long run, a threat to retention of members. It is true that many users edit articles, but this does not preclude the possibility to show the name of the majority contributor (for instance the person or the persons that wrote more than 50 percent of a document). Such a possibility may also stimulate competition among users and this can only be healthy when the effort is directed to the construction of a collection of information.

Christopher Lydon interviews Gore Vidal.#

Gore Vidal can't be taken straight, but it's hard as well to shake his scathing contempt. His heroes in conversation turn out to be General U. S. Grant--for writing in his celebrated memoirs that our Civil War was God's judgment and retribution for the cruel folly of our war on Mexico; Benjamin Franklin--for forseeing the corruption of the people; and John Quincy Adams--for the Munroe Doctrine and his warning not to "seek out monsters to destroy" in the world.

Of the living, Vidal speaks nothing but evil. "The cheerleader from Andover" is the worst of a very bad lot. Howard Dean "assessed the unpopularity of the war, but you can't just do anger at the war. For a second act, why not restore the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Take your stand on the recovery of our liberties." Wesley Clark's resume is too long: "I don't like these men of great accomplishment who've accomplished nothing, and who mean nothing." Of Dennis Kucinich: "The hair is deplorable... but it's the only negative thing I can say about him."

The sum of it all is the vanity of Marlowe's Tamburlaine. "I think: 'Is it not passing brave to be a king, and ride in triumph through Persepolis?' This is what you're up against. It's just ambition. King-of-the-Castle is what they're playing. Well, I want a better castle, suitable for a better king. So this system isn't going to give it to us."

He refers to some great quotes of the forefathers of the nation. I think this one was one of the Adams.

America is not a Paladin to go fight for causes across the glober - if it did it would lose its soul and become a dictator of the world.

And George Washington,

Nations should not have friends or enemies, only interests, and they should be concerned with protecting them.

Vidal says some amazing things about the candidates for 2004,

The men don't matter themselves, it is where they got their money that matters.

Check out the Thursday Meetings blog.#

Real Live Preacher posts part eight.#

Kevin Werbach on Cory Doctorow.#

Cory Doctorow: "The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy."

A nice formulation, but, with all due respect, a wrong one. Technology and policy are always intertwined. Both of them always matter. Was the Napster saga "about" peer-to-peer technology, or the current state of copyright law and the music industry? Was the rapid growth of the commercial Internet in the US "about" advances in data networking or enlightened FCC policies? The danger lies in thinking about either element in a vacuum. Geeks and the technology industry love to think they can ignore policy battles, which is just as misguided as policy-makers thinking they can adopt laws without regard to technological reality.

Al3x responds to the same Cory Doctorow.

Being a student of technology policy (or, if you prefer, technology and policy, since there are but a handful of courses that really overlap the two) I'm pretty chuffed by this prediction :-) All humor aside, Cory's is an insight that I've noticed for some time, and what pushed me to ultimately focus more on policy than technology. I like Cory's prediction because it codifies a place for people like - mediators between geeks and government, as new technological possibilities and the code that powers them will inevitably be met with legislation and policy.

[...]

"An important note for 2004: stop trying to build an Internet without malefactors, parasites, freeriders and inefficiency. There is no such thing as a parasite-free complex ecology (thank you Kathryn Myronuk for this formulation). Some organisms lamented the existence of mitochondria. Others adapted to exploit them and integrate them. Some lament the existence of spammers. Spammers will always exist: stamping your foot and demanding their nonexistence won't change that: adapt or die."

While hardly near-and-dear to me, this is a fine point as well. Being everyone's "tech guy" they know I get many the spam question: "can I stop it? Slow it? Will it end? Can't they do something about this?!" My answer: no, no they can't, not really. If they (the government, the lawmakers, the G-men, the fuzz, etc.) can't stop physical domestic junk mail, dream on. People who have been sold the Internet as a service fundamentally don't understand it as an ecosystem; they just see a flaw in the service they've been sold. But is it easier to convey the true nature of the 'Net, or try to combat the flaws that plague it with bug fixes and laws? Well, how easy was it to explain email to your grandmother? Case closed. I'll been looking for that Sendmail patch right after I'm done reading this anti-spam legislation.

Dean Allen on bagels and Heaven.#

Not really one for rituals, but on frequent bleary Sunday mornings back in Vancouver I'd journey far across the Burrard Street bridge to the Siegel's on Cornwall, to buy bagels just out of the oven, lox, and tubs of Winnipeg cream cheese.

It is a salient truth that every human should find the bagel to which they are aligned by fate; for me it was plain (sometimes the poppy) at Siegel's. I could foghorn on about texture and crumb and a balance of salt and sweet, but they were just really good. With lox, cream cheese, capers, and red onion they were heaven.

(Note: Check out this funny picture of his home in Pompignan, France.)

Rob likes the same type of woman I do.#

I want a woman who can show good manners in an expensive restaurant and still sit out a thunderstorm under a raincoat on the side of the road with me when we get caught riding bicycles after dinner. I want a woman who doesn't primp for thirty minutes in the bathroom mirror after I told her that she looked good when she woke up in the morning.

I want a woman who likes herself and doesn't feel the need to prove that point to anyone else. I'll pick that virture up right away, when I meet such a woman. They are easy to recognize.

Mike Pence on Kuro5hin interviews Dennis Kucinich.#

Are you frustrated by the national media already discounting your candidacy as irrelevant before the first primary has even been held?

No, I think that the fact that they have done that has now become a story [laughs]. It kind of takes care of itself. After a while people are saying, well, why did they do that? Especially when people hear me. [They say,] "This guy makes sense! Why wouldn't you hear him?" When that happens people start saying, what is the motivation of not wanting this candidate to be heard? It is not the proper role of the media to tell people, these are your candidates, and these are not. It just isn't. This is a democratic society and people have the right to their own choices. Americans are particularly sensitive to stuffing the ballot box, whether it is electronically or with hanging chads. So, we have to be careful about the role of the media in a democratic society. The American people don't want the media telling them who to vote for.

Jane writes about videogaming and how it can be better at Salon.#

Gothamist links to the Times on the Italian nympho book.#

"One Hundred Strokes" has obviously changed her life. She said she was planning to move away from Sicily, which bores her, and had already stopped going to her high school there.

"The obligations of the book do not leave me much time," she said, adding that she also had problems with her teachers after the book's release.

"It wasn't only because they thought the book was scandalous," she said. "It was also the envy. You know, those teachers are the most frustrated people in the world."

Justin comments on the Howard Dean for Iowa game.#

The Howard Dean for Iowa game does remind us that the political process is made up of rote tasks performed by dedicated followers - the earlier in the process the better. So as a political education project, it is rudimentarily successful - recruit early and often. As a game? It's good for about ten minutes. Which ain't bad I guess. The game begs a strategic element - something to give it replay value. Having more detailed modelling of citizens and neighborhoods would have been exciting - playing politics with social networks, targeting hubs. It is the first US political promotion game I can remember playing, so for curiosity it scores points. And points for reaching out to young audiences with a young medium.

[...]

Ultimately I was curious for more - I wanted to stop the rote tasks, and play Joe Trippi, commanding my followers in the political power pyramid. Version 2.0 - South Carolina perhaps?

Outsiders detect the pyramid best.

Don Park writes about learning english "virtually."#

Learning English is a big deal outside America. For Koreans, whether or not you speak English affects your career. English is taught in school but learning English in America is considered to be essential to properly learn English. So kids of all ages are sent to America.

So I started thinking about a cheap solution. I thought about a variation of a Rent-A-Sub idea I had long time ago that lets anyone connected to Internet control a little remotely controlled submarine. You get a little mobile robot with video camera and speakers that a lets Internet users control. Imagine little robots running around town trying to engage in conversation with townfolks. There will be lots of problems, but lots of fun also.

I would talk to a Korean student over iSight and help him/her learn English in exchange for help learning Korean. I think that would be a neat service - like a Match.com for students of languages to find pen pals and video conferencing mates.

Wendy links to a random blog post of disturbing magnitude.#

I need to pass on a very important life lesson. One I learned the hard way. One that you should not continue reading if you're squeamish.

If you need to vomit and you aren't near a toilet, do NOT cover your mouth with your hand. You will only create a spew spray.

Ryan Overbey links to the What kind of postmodernist are you? quiz. I'm a tortured conceptual artist.#

Dave Winer writes about the Dean and Clark campaigns developing open-source software.#

One of the reasons American programmers aren't competing here (in America) is that users expect to get software for free, and in that environment little new stuff gets created, and we have to keep creating to justify the greater amount of money we make (over Indians). But if all we make are commodities, then Indians working for low pay beat Americans working for free. (People who work for free have no incentive to please users, or even create usable software.)

How sad to see two leading Democrats fall for, even feed the lie that they can create user-oriented software for free. Shame on both Dean and Clark. They went after the little guy. Who wants a president who does that. Not me. Still looking for someone worth supporting.

Michael Feldman writes about Philip K. Dick, copyright laws, and media companies.#

Well, what about the publishing company. Aside from the fact that they are a major media corporation, they had nothing to do with the creative or technological process that made these words available to me. They bought the rights to something they probably didn't even read and wouldn't understand or care about if they did, from another company, and now they want to profit from repackaging, binding and marketing the content. Fine, for them and for people who want to pay them for the convenience of a back-pocket paperback. But do they have the right to say people can't access the words in other ways, from other sources.

Plus, these are the same companies that screwed Philip K. Dick during his entire creative life. Dick hated his publishers, even as he depended on them. We owe them no moral obligation for making these words available.

This was a great read. Michael is totally a NBB.

Matt Stoller posts a guest post from a Clark supporter against Dean.#

In a recent debate, John Kerry was asked the question, "what has Howard Dean done right?" The simple answer to that of course is that he hired the right campaign manager. Joe Trippi has run the Dean campaign with Karl Rove like efficiency and has run a very effective campaign, for the wrong candidate.

[...]

In Dean's speeches he often states that his success thus far is because of the people, telling them that they did this, they can take our country back, they have the power to bring change. They do, and it's good to see a candidate say these things, but Howard Dean is exploiting that. He is exploiting the inherent desire in each of us to bring about change in this world. He is exploiting it because his grassroots effort, through their own house parties and blogs, have created a candidate in their imaginations that Howard Dean is not and Howard Dean is too afraid to tell them that.

[...]

So why is all of this attention surrounding Dean? [...] Because of the great grassroots support that he has raised? If you are going to base it on that then cast a vote for Joe Trippi. You aren't voting for a campaign, you are voting for a candidate. I would hope that we should all be intelligent enough to vote for the candidate who has the best leadership qualities, diplomacy skills, foreign policy experience, and domestic ideas that fit in most with our own beliefs about the environment, civil liberties and the economy without being duped into the hype of the size of a campaign.

Dean supporters have been misinformed about their candidate and the media has eaten it up. Dean is an empty shell of a candidate who relies on his anti-Bush stance for support but with no real vision of how to deal with our country once Bush is out. He wants regime change without any clear set of goals as to what to do once the current leader is out. Where have we heard this before?

The Yeti has a revelation.#

TheYeti: I don't mind the compliments. I like them. I may be a big strong man, but I still have a fragile male ego.

Yetiette: Have you noticed what the initials for male ego come to? ME!!!!! Pay attention to ME!!!!!

Update: All of a sudden, this makes a lot of sense. Young men are all about sex. Older men are all about attention. Young women are all about attention. Older women are all about sex.

Richard writes about blinding yourself with Partisanship.#

Partisanship gets the better of everybody, even Josh Marshall, but at least he's skeptical when he reads information that would tend to confirm his partisan leanings. It bothers me when people read news that confirms their already-held beliefs (e.g. that Bush lies—as if to suggest that those opposing Bush don't lie) and dismiss out of hand information that would go against their partisanship. I would be interested to see Lisa Rein (and others) link to and critically evaluate (which doesn't mean you have to reject) what they read in the newspaper and even more importantly, on the Internet.

I try to link to stuff I don't necessarily agree with but that is argued forcefully or eloquently. Most of the stuff that gets linked here is linked without endorsement, and although it would be safe to assume that I agree with unendorsed quotations, it's not necessarily always the case. A truly nuanced weblog links to things that challenges the weblog writer's leanings, not one that merely reinforces them.

Richard Tallent asks us to think this holiday season.#

Something to think about over the Christmas holiday: how much of your present money went to imported finished goods? Where were these presents manufactured? How are those countries doing on the global scale of civil rights, healthcare, education, and the environment? What contribution, other than cheap assembly lines, has their society given to the rest of the world? Where will displaced American workers get the money to buy their kids' presents? Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh for the holiday, but if we are going to collectively put hundreds of thousands of Americans on the street this year by closing factories and offices and telling them their degrees and training are useless, I think a quick mental accounting is the least we could do.

Charles Miller has great gift buying advice.#

If on a major holiday or birthday you buy a girl a gift from The Body Shop, you may as well be writing "I didn't have the faintest clue what to get you, so I ended up taking the path of least resistance" on the wrapping paper. Because that's what the gift be interpreted to mean, and lets face it guys, that's exactly why you ended up in The Body Shop in the first place.

James Robertson links to Anomalistic History on John Hanson, the first President of the United States.#

The Articles of Confederation only allowed a President to serve a one-year term during any three-year period. Hanson served in that office from November 5, 1781, until November 3, 1782. He was the first President to serve a full term after the full ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Why then does he not hold a more prominent place in U.S. history? Like so many of the Southern and quasi-Southern Founders, he was strongly opposed to the concepts of a strong central government that was to be eventually implemented under the new Constitution of 1787. Until his death in November 1783, he remained a confirmed Anti-Federalist having stalwart apprehensions about the Federalist vision of a dominating federal government.

Winners write history. The Federalists prevailed over President Hanson and the Anti-Federalists. The once feared centralized government emerged with the new constitution and the powers of the individual states guaranteed under the Articles of Confederation gradually eroded. Unfortunately, the erosion of state's rights ultimately culminated into the Civil War in 1861.

Seven other Presidents were elected after Hanson - Elias Boudinot (1783), Thomas Mifflin (1784), Richard Henry Lee (1785), John Hancock (1786), Nathan Gorman (1786), Arthur St. Clair (1787), and Cyrus Griffin (1788) - all prior to Washington taking office. Why don't we ever hear about the first eight Presidents of the United States? Besides the truism that victors write history - The Articles of Confederation didn't work as well as it should have. The individual states had too much power and disagreed on numerous issues. To make the states more conciliatory toward one another the articles needed to be revised. A Constitutional Convention was first convened in 1786 to consider altering portions of the Articles of Confederation; however, what followed after numerous meetings and months of heated debate was a complete revision. An almost completely new constitution, which is still utilized today, began its path to augmentation. For some inexplicable reason the implementation of this new Constitution also seems to be the starting point for United States Government history taught throughout this country. The American education system has sadly neglected this critical period in American history, an era in which the very nation itself was shaped from the sword to the plowshare.

Kaye Trammell advises us to let our audience know what is going on.#

No matter what some bloggers say, we all know that there is an audience out there. A few days ago Will linked toPat's take on the difference between writing & publishing. Blogging is about publishing. Publishing is about audience.

But what happens when real life takes over & you can't give your audience that content they so desire? What happens when you -- gasp! -- know you won't be able to blog for a bit?

Joi Ito replies to Marc Canter who says he'll eventually start drinking again.#

Marc Canter:

Well maybe those days are over, but there's one thing for sure - Joi will have a drink - again. Maybe on New Year's Eve - maybe 20 years from now - but once an addict, always an addict. I mean that in a nice way.

We can try and intellectualize our way out of our problems, manipulating our actions and behavior to suit our health - mental, physcial or economic - but you'll always go back to being - just you.

I would beg to differ on this point Marc. Since I announced that I wouldstop drinking, I've been contacted by a lot of people who have chosen to stop drinking and that was the end of that. I realize that it's quite difficult and you can't go back to NOT being addicted, but that doesn't mean you have to end up drinking again or that you don't have a choice.

It is strange to define yourself by what you don't do and think about that a lot. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, eat meat, eat dairy, etc. I wonder at what point you stop 'recognizing who you are' and start hiding who you are?

I think Joi, and anyone, can do what they put their minds to. And Joi seems to have put his mind to it.

Bentley posts an adorable picture.#

I asked Bentley if he had anything he wanted to post before Christmas. He ignored me but magically this photo appeared on my desktop.

Who knew Phoebe could use the camera? She apologies for the redeye.

Jay Fienberg wonders how the Peter Principle interacts with weblogs.#

At a certain point, if the competency that attracted readers to the blog in the first place get lost, does the blog author not notice this because their past status is persisting into the present? In particular, for a blog with a mass audience, can incompetence be realized and the blog author not notice (e.g., because so many people still read it and seem to like it)?

This may be simply comparable to popular fame which often seems to surround, say, an artist with "yes-men" who infect the artistic perspective with a status-concerned perspective. And, with artists or blog authors, obviously, when you have "someone whose opinion you can really trust and who is willing to kick your ass" that you listen to, that maybe makes all the difference.

You have no idea how often I type <blockquote> when my outliner is broken. I seem to recall that <bq> used to work in some earlier HTML... bring it back... please.#

Norman Geras replies to Ken MacLeod's criticism of supporting the Iraq War.#

The ending of the Baathist regime is not just an incidental side-effect of what happened. It is the main story. I therefore don't accept that the war was 'overall reactionary'. I think that the freeing of the Iraqi people from a decades-long political darkness was - as Ken himself appears to allow - 'progressive'. It was a boon, a great release for the Iraqi people, a national liberation, no less; and then, more than this, an opportunity for the region and the world. Therefore, I don't regard support for the war as 'abstracting these effects from their context' - as if the context was already pre-defined by something else more general, with the progressive 'bit' being merely by the way. It's a skewed version of what the war was about, WMD and all the rest of it notwithstanding. I would hold this view even if I thought (as in fact I do not) that George Bush and Tony Blair fought the war for wholly cynical reasons. To give a crude analogy here: if someone burgles a house and her only motive in doing so is greed, I will approve of her action if, in order to bring off the burglary, she finds she has to release a terrified family from the grip of a bullying, violent and child-abusing patriarch. I will not think that what happened was overall bad because it was - 'in essence' - a burglary; or worry, in my approval, about the burglar going on to burgle others. If she does, we can disapprove of - and oppose - that.

Ken also makes the point that 'the occupation itself could be the catalyst for a slide into a worse situation than that before the war'. I'm not going to engage over it, because he doesn't know that this will happen, and I don't know that it won't. It's relevant to say that supporters of the war will have reckoned that the baseline for comparison about better and worse was such that it was improbable that the war would make things worse.

I suppose the most that can be said is that while maybe the result of the Iraq War was good, it may lead to worse consequences. We don't know that those things will happen, but we do know with reasonable certainty that it will be harder to stop the "bad burglary" after we've allowed the tools to be developed for the "good burglary."

The Binary Circumstance on the government's fear mongering.#

If they keep this up, their warnings will cease to be credible. We've had these warnings based on "chatter" before and they haven't turned into anything. Like in story of the boy who cried wolf, too many warnings about threats that don't materialize desensitize people to warnings. Then when there's a real threat, people won't believe it. Maybe that's al-Qaida's plan; increase the amount and detail of the chatter to force the government to issue warnings. Once people start to ignore the warnings we would become very vulnerable.

It's getting to the point that as horrible as a flu epidemic, a mad cow panic, or another terrorist attack would be, if something like that happened at least we would know that the government wasn't just making this stuff up to create a psychological need for their promises of protection and their increasing assaults on our civil liberties. We would know that the threats are real and this "chatter" can be trusted as a source of intelligence.

Tom White on the same.

And the impression left with me is this. There is a terrible and real danger of a terrorist attack somewhere in this giant land, or perhaps in several places. Nothing new there. But now that we have this Alert is it fair to ask, What places? Don't know. So what to do. Nada. What is anybody going to do? Nada. Change travel plans, if any, to Portland Oregon, Portland Maine, Sioux Falls South Dakota, Houston Texas, New York City? By no means, says the President. Go about your business as if nothing were up. All this is precisely where we were before the Alert went out.

But then why the Orange Alert? Think. So we've got Orange Alert, and I go to Portland, Oregon, and blooey, Madame Muhammadine or somebody blows up the city by some new and highly creative means. As I speed to the afterlife, will I have been better off in any eensy teensy tiny way for having known of Orange Alert? No.

So what was the point of the whole thing? Announcement: Be scared to death. Next Announcement: Don't mind us. Next announcement: For heaven's sake, go right ahead to Portland, Oregon, or wherever; that's your duty as a true-blue, red-blooded Amurrican. And of course I go to Portland and nothing happens, and Akron, Ohio, is leveled in a blast of some kind. All the people in Akron should have cleared out and gone to Portland, but how could they have known?

Dan Darling writes about why the terror alert is warranted and goes into detail about terrorists threats.#

His theory of why there have not been attacks focus on internal problems in al-Qaeda and the success of the War on Terror.

In any case, I think that one of the reasons as to why the US has yet to experience a second wave of terrorist attacks since September 11 is due in large part to three unique factors: al-Qaeda's grandiose visions of death and destruction, the arrest and later detention of Ali Saleh al-Marri, and the fact that US law enforcement has finally gotten their act together. Let me go through these one-by-one to show you what I mean.

1. The Downsides of Meglomania ...

For better or worse, by carrying out attacks like 9/11, the Bali bombings, the Poshipnikov Zavod Dubrovka theater seige in Moscow, and more recently the Istanbul suicide bombings sets a very high bar for the terrorist network as far as its operational planning goes, which is one of the reasons as to why there is such a lengthy gap between major al-Qaeda attacks. While smaller organizations like Hamas or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are generally content with killing only a handful of civilians in reasonably simple attacks such as suicide bombing a bus, al-Qaeda favors sophisticated simultaneously mass casualty suicide attacks designed to inflict a massive amount of damage as well as to spread a maximum amount of fear to the civilian population. More to the point, al-Qaeda leaders such as Abu Salma al-Hijazi have previously promised the network's supporters that the next major attack on the US will kill as many as 100,000. Chopping that figure down by a factor of ten by filtering out the hyperbole, we arrive at ~10,000 casualties, which would be well within the network's capabilities of achieving - Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing originally hoped to kill over 100,000 in his plan to cause one tower to crash onto the other, creating a kind of giant "domino effect." However, by committing itself to such astronomical figures, the network cannot easily resort to Hamas-style suicide bombings inside the US because to do so would be to grant America a tacit admission that its capabilities have become extremely degraded since 9/11.

This was sent by me by one of my favourite bloggers and now that I know the site I'm subscribed. Woo!

Gina Smith posts a great quote.#

"As long as people continue to believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities." Voltaire.

Seth Gordon points to Sean Collins who says "what everyone else is too polite to say about Strom Thurmond."#

The revelation of Thurmond's fathering a child with a black woman makes him even more loathsome in my eyes, if that's possible; to him, black people may not have been good enough to go to the same schools or eat at the same counters or drink from the same water fountains and probably even to vote, if that were possible, but they were good enough to fuck and then discard.

Joey deVilla calls me Boston's deepest blogger and I call him very lucky and haught.#