May 6, 2008
Yes, it exists and it’s called “A Force More Powerful”. Found via a comment at A Tiny Revolution. I, of course, find it quite silly. Roderick Long is wrong, and force has ruled the day for centuries for a reason. For those interested in a slightly more clinical sociological perspective, keep up to date on the latest from OrgTheory like this roundup.
May 5, 2008
Way back when a website I had just discovered and took great interest in went down. I copied all the files I could and created a tripod site to host them, which you can still find at teageegeepea.tripod.com/AgainstPolitics
Now Aschwin de Wolf informs me the new transhumanist site, Depressed Metabolism, will begin hosting the most important pages from AP here. Not all of the Anthony de Jasay material will be there, as he has his own website now.
May 4, 2008
Starting with a thread the Agitator (incidentally, the IndyBay site he links to sucks and deleted all of comments after the first), I got into an argument with La Rana over Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”. Now via BlackDogRed comes this review of the book from Left Business Review. Interesting stuff.
May 4, 2008
I came across this video at IranMilitary.Net.
The first segment (taking place in DC) is in CGI, with the Iranian portions using live actors. Apparently John McCain is a “senior White House official” rather than a crazy old man elected by voters. Their perception that George Soros has repeatedly attempted regime change through the use of opposition groups engaging in civil disobedience is accurate (though mostly for former Soviet countries), but the idea that the guy who thought preventing Bush’s re-election was the most pressing concern of his lifetime would be meeting with McCain or any current White House official is pretty funny. The domestic Iranian subversives are even harder to take seriously. Their ulterior motivation for serving as pawns of Uncle Sam is, get this…visas to enter the U.S! I know the cat might be out of the bag, but if you were in charge of Iran wouldn’t you not want to remind people of how much more pleasant life is in the U.S and how desirable it would be to go there? You would think people would learn after the communists mistakenly aired Dallas in the hopes of making capitalism look bad (no, I’m not going to link to that Washington Post op-ed, instead read Charles Paul Freund’s In Praise of Vulgarity). Fortunately the wayward youth involved in the nefarious plot (apparently involving a handgun in a duffel-bag) sends off troubled-teen rays to his mother, who is worried about who he’s hanging out with at late hours. She alerts the Stasi helpful authorities who let him off easy and all is well. I joke, but it is true that Iran has terrorism problems. There were some bombs planted near polling places around election time. My guess is that it was MEK (who our government continues to support even when Iran offered to turn over al Qaeda members in its custody in exchange for us selling MEK out) or separatists, who George Soros would want nothing to do with. UPDATE: Iranian propagandists have learned from the best.
If that isn’t enough Iran for you, enjoy some Iranian rap & rock and a half-hour preview of Persepolis.
May 3, 2008
If you’ve heard about this “dissonance” stuff but don’t know what it is and would like a video of a hot psychology professor explaining it, look no further. I experienced dissonance as I both enjoyed the diavlog and remembered this critique of the monkey M&M study which is brought up. Another subject discussed in loss aversion, which I would strangely experience to a great degree when I played video games that I could always reload/replay with no permanent consequence. Mrs. Santos’ future plans include advertisements directed at monkeys, which I would really like to see.
May 2, 2008
The founder of the Pica Studies blog alerted me a while back that Pica told him to shut it down. I didn’t bother to inform you because I figured, “Who cares?”. Well, now I have a way to tie it in to something else, as I’ve found a pretty good substitute. (more…)
April 30, 2008
It’s the end of the month, and that means it time to release something that’s been sitting around rotting since February. Some of the links might no longer work, that’s the downside of the every-changing nature of the internet.
Last time it started with Henley and led to Hayden. So naturally, the next round began with Tom Hayden. (more…)
April 29, 2008
April 29, 2008
Will Wilkinson and I got into an argument stemming from the FLDS raid that came to center around competent agency, brainwashing and “false consciousness”. Now Will has made a post dedicated to those issues. Join the fun.
Hopefully Anonymous and I were also arguing a little while back (not counting all the arguing we did before then) on the subject of “consciousness” (another term I do not find very meaningful/well-defined!). I assure you I had more respect for HA even before he said I had a good comment, so it is not mere confirmation bias. It’s an old thread that I’ve been delinquent in linking to, so I should also add that he responded to my first comment with this post on “zombies” and this catch-up post. His latest on the subject is a thought experiment aimed at people who claim: something passing turing test is conscious, but corporations are not conscious.
April 28, 2008
The man is, of all things, a Hillary Clinton supporter. Yet even when he’s matched up at Bloggingheads against a righty (including an according-to-Frum anti-Iraq one like Heather Mac Donald) I find him far more sensible. I thought it might be because he’s an economist, but so is Robert Reich, and he came off looking similarly fuzzy-headed. I recall hearing that Krugman (another Barack-detractor) used to complain about Reich’s economics back in the 90s, so maybe he’s not a good example, but I may have to reconcile the fact that despite his choice of candidate Loury is just smarter than the av-er-age bear.
One point of dissent: Loury says “realism is not cynicism”. I say it is.
April 28, 2008
I mentioned earlier that I had been banned from A Stitch in Haste for unknown reasons. I also said my last comment had not been deleted. That is no longer the case. All my comments there appear to be gone. I’d reproduce what I can here, for the benefit of posterity, but Google does not appear to have cached any of those posts (though they do still show up in search results). For evidence that I didn’t just imagine posting there, here’s a comment that mentions me and responds to something I said. Here’s another.
April 28, 2008
A good cruel joke at the audience’s expense.
April 26, 2008
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April 26, 2008
I found this link via Fark. Some violent criminals have attempted a defense based on their genes predisposing them to violent anti-social behavior. Some variants mentioned are MAO-A and AVPR1a, which you may be familiar with if you read Gene Expression. At least on one occasion the defendant got off on the basis of his act not being a result of “free will” due to his genetic condition. I of course find the entire concept of “free will” to be incoherent and a blemish on our justice system. A sensible take on the issue is in Greene & Cohen’s “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything“. If you really are hard-wired to kill, all the more reason to get rid of you as we might a rabid dog.
April 26, 2008
Shortly after I got re-instated at EconLog, I tried to make a post at A Stitch in Haste and found my IP address had been banned. Judging by his responses, Kip did find me annoying, but I’m not really sure what did it. My last comment was here and received no response, nor was it removed.
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