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June 21, 2011
Intellectual Boneshops
- The Technium: Screening
When I touch my chair, my room knows me, and all the screens in the room and on the table are ready for me. The eyes of the screens watch me closely as I conduct my day. After 16 years of watching me work, they can anticipate a lot of what I do. The sequence of symbols on the screens make no sense to anyone else, just as my colleagues' sequence baffles me. When we are working together we screen in an entirely different environment.
- What most people don’t want to realize is that in a poor neighborhood, the entire economy is funded by the government.
If the government put the Korean grocer on a state salary to operate a store on 63rd and MLK, the American public’s eyeballs would explode, but that is exactly what is happening anyway. And if the government sent a liquor store owner a monthly check to offer St. Ides at affordable prices, there’d be riots. But that’s what’s up. I haven’t looked through the financials, but I can say with confidence that all of the revenue generated by Popeye’s chicken is a wealth transfer from the U.S. government. -- Staggering Thought of The Day | Partial Objects
- The Fourth Checkraise: Upstairs, downstairs, basement, closet
I have noted before that in practice, white men are far more tolerant and open-minded than white women, yet they rarely get any credit or acknowledgement for this. For example, white men are less racist than white women in that they will, for example, happily pair up with Asian women, whereas white women tend to frown upon the idea of dating and marrying Asian men.
- Regarding the troublesome subject of gay marriage,
which is lately up for debate in the legislature of New York State where I live, making it the public's business. I have an unpopular view of it for men of my demographic (Democrat, Boomer). I'm not in favor of it. I don't think it is a good idea. I don't have empirical proof, but I suspect that unsettling such an age-old and fundamental social arrangement will produce strange unanticipated consequences that we are not prepared for. I don't believe gay marriage is a genuine social justice issue. I think it is a bid for a kind of broad social approbation which does not require ritual enactment in law, and would be socially mischievous to pursue. Civil unions would cover the necessary legal issues. Otherwise, it is a case of unwarranted relativism, a Boomer weakness. Not all conditions or states of being in this world are the same. Some things are on the margins because they are marginal. -- Man Down - Clusterfuck Nation
- baldilocks: Sarah Palin Pwns The Media--Again
The one big advantage Sarah Palin has over everyone else in the 2012 presidential field is that there will be no surprises. Every rock has been turned over. If she runs for the White House, you can be sure the media will keep digging into her past. You can also be sure that Palin will beat them more often than not. In a race that is certainly going to be a media-driven death march against whoever the GOP nominates, being a proven MSM slayer is no small thing.
- And Lo! "a new work, Nexus Vomitus,":
There is, after all, a difference between shock and awe, and a difference between wonderment and tedious disgust. Those who don’t know the difference, or who’ve chosen to forget in the name of transgression, are left with little to do besides screaming at passers-by and begging for attention. -- davidthompson: The Arts, They Ennoble
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
”From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future–that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder…are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable. And they are richly deserved.” -- Why Race Matters | FrontPage Magazine
- Attention Musicians: Please Stop Using a Font Called Bleeding Cowboy
- An idea whose time has come:
I don't really understand why the cops don't bring snipers to these riots with the order to simply shoot anybody who is lighting up a Molotov cocktail, the same way they would shoot someone who is aiming a gun at cops and is ready to fire. -- The Fourth Checkraise: Smash and grab
- "America is not going to hell in a hand basket.
We have a few basket cases, for sure, but the sky is not falling. We are simply enduring some hard economic times, and we have a dud for a leader who is making it worse than it should be. With a decent leader and some common sense, this nation can be as great as it ever was. Choose good conservative leaders, not just at the federal level, but all the way down to the dog-catcher and you will see America prosper again. Banish the liberal nut-cases from your social circle and quit glorifying those whose only attraction is to spout profanity or some idiocy designed to shock normal minds in order to gain attention. Learn to admire Joe or Jane Smoe who get up every day and go earn an honest living for they are the real heroes; disdain those who do otherwise by taking advantage of public gimme programs or living off criminal activities. Demand decency and we shall have it. -- 18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating
- Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » World Without Web
The divergence point for this history is in 1983-1984, when the leadership of DARPA lied through its teeth to Congress about who was being allowed access to the Internet. The pretense being maintained was that only direct affiliates of government-sponsored, authorized research programs were being allowed on. DARPA knew very well this wasn't true; they had a broader vision of where the Internet might lead, one that wouldn't be realized for another ten years. They viewed the yeasty, chaotic culture of casual use by all manner of "randoms"(unauthorized people including, at the time, me) as what would later be called a technology incubator -- a vast Petri dish from which amazing serendipities would spring in due time.
Posted by Vanderleun at June 21, 2011 1:07 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Many Hosannas and give me an AMEN.
Posted by: Peccable at June 21, 2011 4:51 AM