A Glass of Water
Trey Givens writes about the economic and ecological effects of a dying fur industry closed down by PETA.#
If we abolish the fur trade first lots of people would lose their jobs and businesses would close. It is likely that those animals used for fur would become endangered.
That we can own these fur-producing animals gives their owners a reason to make sure they breed and are healthy. For example, have you noticed a shortage of chickens or cows? If it becomes illegal, no one will be looking out for those animals but to poach them. Notice how many endangered whale species there are.
Of course, I don't really care that they are poached, but if PETA is really concerned about making sure those animals continue to thrive, they'll make sure it's legal for us to raise them for slaughter.
Richard links to LightEighteen...#
I told a girl in commons that we should drop everything right now and be together forever. I told her that we should operate on the assumption that the two of us are the only people in the world who matter. That in our world, in the world we will create together, newspapers will only talk about us. That gravity and time and distance will only be fictional concepts that won't pertain to us, not in our world. In our world, we'll float and fly and feel nothing but each other. She couldn't hear what I was saying, though, because I didn't say it out loud. But I think she got the idea.
Catallarchy on what radicalism seems like from the outside.#
Think about how crazy democracy must have seemed to people living under a monarchy, or how outlandish abolition was to those living with such a "peculiar" (and, I must add, absolutely disgusting) institution as slavery. If blogs had existed back then, I'm sure a majority of bloggers would have ridiculed those who advocated such radical proposals. This should give pause to those who believe that our current society is not in need of radical change, gradually achieved.
Michael Feldman links to mutant frogs.#
Experts are amazed at the discovery. Children in a nursery were shocked when they spotted a three-headed frog hopping in their garden.
The creature - which has six legs - has stunned BBC wildlife experts who warned it could be an early warning of environmental problems.
Ted Leung explains why the disappearance of some journals is not a bad thing.#
I don't believe that this is a problem. Actually I think this is a huge step forward, at least from my experience as a computer science researcher. What do the journals really provide? They assemble an editorial board, which decides who is going to review what. The reviews get written and the papers get published. Then universities get charged heaven and earth (those are your tax dollars, or my tuition dollars) for these things. The journals don't make information more accessible, which is necessary for science to advance, they restrict it by pricing it outrageously. But as we all know by now, scarcity of information products is a myth, and those who control choke points of information are loathe to give it up. Researchers need to publish or perish, so they have a vested interest in doing peer review -- plus it's how people find out about interesting results before everybody else. I don't think that peer review will collapse without Elsevier, Kluwer, or the other journal publishers.
Chip Gibbons on the Martha Stewart guilty verdict.#
I just think about how O.J. Simpson is running around free, how much real harm was caused by the Enron and Worldcom executives who destroyed people's pensions and their savings and became billionaires in the process. I think about what Congress has done to the Social Security system and that none of them are in jail. I think about how George Bush has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians, crippled children and how he's siphoned billions of dollars out of taxpayer's pockets and put it into the pocket of his friends. George Bush has not been charged with any crimes, he's running for president and will probably win.
Martha Stewart sold some stock when the government didn't like it. She probably lied to the government. She did not steal other people's money or kill anybody. The government's actions have cost the taxpayers millions and have cost investors in Stewart's company billions. Many more people have been injured by the government's actions than by Martha Stewart's actions.
Mark Bernstein is going to Rome "next week." Does that mean 7th to 14th or 14th to 21st? I'm going the 14th to 21st! We should have dinner sometime if we're there at the same time!#
But that points to one of the tremendous aspects of this film, its strength and its weakness: Gibson has wrought a cinematic artifice that almost entirely escapes his intentions. I said at the beginning that Gibson has achieved what may be an unsurpassable illustration of innocent suffering, but how many viewers will take up their crosses? How many others will look at Pilate's lackeys and go and do likewise? Gibson has disclaimed responsibility for the harm this movie may cause to Jews, to relations between Jews and Christians, to the Christians whose self-hatred succumbs to a spirit of destruction and mortification, since he did not intend those effects. He did undeniably intend, however, to sow the wind that has stirred up more-than-merely-human forces already. Who will reap the whirlwind — and who will cash the checks that flow to Icon Productions?
His son, Josiah comments as well:
First off, I disliked the ending scene. I think it would have been a more effective ending to have left off the resurrection, or at least made the resurrection scene be not quite so "staunch-hero-standing-upright-for-the-good-guys". Secondly, some of the technicalities in the crucifixion process bugged me. Thirdly, I couldn't have moved that cross that far in peak condition, let alone half flayed, let alone up onto the rocky lump that was Golgotha.
Michael Feldman on the un-bloggability of the Shorenstein report.#
It is available as a free download .pdf from the Shorenstein. The weird thing is the extent to which the authors have gone to make sure this milestone article in the academic history of the Blogosphere is unbloggable. Excerpts or selections of the text cannot be saved, or copied and pasted. The document cannot be converted to another format or saved as anything else. The words "Not to be Copied" in 92-point faded-shit brown watermark letters are splayed diagonally across each and every page.
Will Baude writes about the libertarian end-game.#
Look. We're so far from Libertarianism, so far from even moderate government-rollbacks, that practical-minded folks don't need to argue about this stuff at all. As Ms. Waring says, " . . . it resembles nothing so much as a debate over some fine procedural point of end-stage communism, after the state has withered away." True enough. When people ask me whether there will be any social safety net in the Will-Baude-run ideal society, or whether I can justify a government-provided national defense, or how we will collect taxes in the perfect Libertarian state I want to say-- "Look. We're so far from there, why don't we just start the ball rolling down the cliff and worry about stopping it later? I promise that this stuff will be the least of our worries for a long, long, time."