Nathaniel Eliot

How is it that my mom, a self-professed Aunt Tilly, delivers the best web-crack this week? Get working, Internets!

I announced Braingumbo about half a year ago, to a little fanfare.

Unfortunately, First Life intervened. Contracting took forever to find, and then it hit all at once; the money and freedom have taken longer to secure, and neither is optimal. Charlott continues to fight me over Dylan; traveling thousands of miles to see him for scant hours doesn't sit well with me, so I must prepare for court again. Mix in a little heartache and a crosstown move, season with local and far-away events to distract the creative . . .

Reluctantly, and without fanfare, I put the gumbo on the back burner again.

While it's been simmering, some very interesting things have bubbled to the surface. Sculpted prims allow arbitrary shapes in Second Life; they're still in development, but they look very promising. Tool support already includes Blender, the open-source 3D swiss army knife; it's too geeky for many, but able to open just about anything. Which means you can start attaching things like 3D laser scanners to the inputs . . . and maybe home fabbers to the outputs . . .

I'm still stirring the pot occasionally, while I get housecleaning done. Once everybody's back (and recovered) from vacation, I can start dishing it out in earnest . . . I hope.

Thanks for madpiratebippy for this delightfully surreal tidbit:
Says more about the generation gap (and says it more succinctly) than I could ever hope to . . .

Lego. Gatling. Gun.

Evil Stevie, you bring me the greatest web crack.

"Thanks for visiting the Dell Linux Survey webpage. Please answer the following questions to help us determine how to best prioritize our resources for this effort. (Survey will be open March 13-March 23)"

The success of enterprise Linux (and other emergent Internet phenomena like crowdsourcing) may yet put the lie to that central idea of mass marketing: that an elite of producers playing to the subconscious of a mass of consumers produces is the most efficient way to organize the market. This seems an encouraging step in that direction . . . Dell recognizing that one of the first steps to building a Linux computer should be asking "what kind of Linux computer do you want?" of your end user.

I just finished watching The Century of Self, a BBC production which documents the rise of psychotherapy not just as a way to understand unconscious desires, but as a technique to manipulate and control the masses. Most stunning was the demonstration of just how completely business, and shortly afterward politics, responded to and subverted the ideals of self-expression and personal freedom proposed by the flower power generation.

Out of all of the rather disturbing revelation, however, comes a quote which mirrors my sentiments:

There are certain technical words in the vocabulary of every academic discipline which tend to become stereotypes and cliches. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word "maladjusted." This word is the ringing cry of the new child psychology.

Now in a sense all of us must live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophemic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted.

I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob-rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.

I call upon you to be maladjusted. The challenge to you is to be maladjusted—as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream;" as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, in words lifted to cosmic proportions, "All men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the persuit of Happiness." As maladjusted as Jesus who dared to dream a dream of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment.

Martin Luther King, April 25, 1957

Business and politics once used Freud's understanding to play upon emotional vulnerabilities and mass produce desire for mass produced goods. A cultural movement to counteract that dealt a devastating blow to our economy in the seventies. In response, business and later politics found new ways of categorizing and catering to these new "individualists"; the success of both the Reagan and Clinton campaigns hinged on it. Instead of conforming the individual's desires, those in power now conform to them, in name anyway.

This is the bread and circuses, the mob rule, of our time. This is another path by which our modern Rome may fall to internal hedonism, long before it falls to external barbarism. The duty of all who love true freedom, and not merely it's facade, is to return to that state of maladjustment; to see where our basest subconscious desires are appealed to, rather our free and moral will, and to deny those in power the benefit of such duplicity.

In an effort to reduce cognitive load (the mental load average I've mentioned before, I tend to cache and queue various information, such as todo items. I've been working to streamline this; even so, I still suffer from buffer overflow (todo lists getting too full to comfortably manipulate) and stale caches (copies of old, invalid information).

One of the overflowing queues is my del.icio.us todo+post, where I keep links to support my longer musings. Unfortunately, writing like that takes a lot of time, for a relatively low-priority task; when I'm overloaded, I end up not clearing the queue, and the complexity of sorting and correlating links goes up as the number of links do.

So instead, I'm gonna just push them out with as little work as possible. This is a little of where my head's been at lately; sorry, I just don't have the time to explain it all:

Personal

• My brother will be training for Blue Man Group! Rock the fuck on, Tim!

Politics

• The Fallacy of Infinite Power
• Iran: U.S. Is in No Position to Attack
• Going to Canada? Check your past: Visitors with minor criminal records turned back at border (nearly happened to me, on my last trip to NH)
• "Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday."
• Was the 2004 election stolen?
• In praise of John Wilkes: how a filthy, philandering dead-beat helped secure British—and American—liberty
• "I contend that approval voting is where it's at."
• Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
• The worst Congress ever: How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts - in five easy steps.
• A M.A.D., M.A.D. World
• Dr. Dahlia Wasfi speaks at Iraq forum
• "You [Marines] are a proud member of what should be the most consummately professional force of warriors the world has ever seen and you are disciplined enough to engage in a firefight under the rules of the goddamned LAW OF GROUND WARFARE"
• Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked
• It's Official: Chuck Rangel is Insane
• Christian Coalition president-elect quits over lack of focus on poverty
• The Responibilities of Being Free
• Will We Win by Losing?
• I Stand With Amanda: "2008 is going to be a fucking knife fight, Johnny, and we cannot afford any more 'Yes sir, may I have another' Democrats in elections. [...] Fill your hands, you sons a bitches.
• Rep. Ackerman: ‘A Platoon Of Lesbians’ Could ‘Chase Us Out Of Baghdad’
• 2002 Barack Obama Interview: Against Iraq proves he's damn near prescient
• Obama's `Netroots' Take On Clinton's Big Bundlers in 2008 Race
• Gonzales: ‘There Is No Express Grant of Habeas Corpus In The Constitution’
• EU considers visa snub against US: "The European Commission has suggested making US diplomats apply for visas, in retaliation for the US's refusal to waive visas for people of 10 EU states."
• Could a New Strongman Help? Far from proving Democracy's value to the Middle East, we have proved, by its absence, how useful totalitarianism was.
• U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

  Health: Physical, Mental & Social

• Drink Those Antioxidants - the upside of coffee addiction
• American Fashion and the Social Construction of Evil
• The Elfland Invasion, or Dr. Atkins Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Well Myself: "No wonder the rest of the world is in a blind panic when they see us coming. We are the God Damned Fairies, foretold in the tales of poor Irish peasants."
• Two Phrases That Destroyed American Culture
• Living in America’s Fringe Economy
• How Thinking Can Change the Brain: "Dalai Lama helps scientists show the power of the mind to sculpt our gray matter."
• Pablo Calculates the True Cost of Bottled Water: "Nearly seven times as much water used to make it than you actually drink"
• Being Poor: "Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs."
• Drapetomania: "with proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented."

Technology

• Our Cyberpunk Present: Script-Kiddie Botnets = Gangster Supercomputers (in three parts: one, two, and three)
• Humanity Lobotomy: Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary
• One-Laptop-Per-Child: "[It's reported that] Libya is getting 1.2 million laptops along with servers and support, etc. for $250 million" (whatever you want to say about Gaddafi, he's got the right idea here, and some gorgeous bodyguards, too)
• Data stored in live cells
• Emotiv’s man-machine melding interface technology: a non-invasive, direct mental interface to computers

Random & Amusing

• History of Religion: "Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds?"
• Guarding Darfur: a virtual Green Lantern Corps is defending a virtual Darfur, in Second Life
• Questionable Content: "FlashLARP PotterSpace", a grand idea if I ever heard one
• Get Fuzzy: "I have decreed that all squirrels are terrorists."
• Narbonic: "Some Oompa-Loompas told me to go to Burning Man" (from an old web comic about Mad Scientists which made a disturbing amount of sense to me)

I'm sorry, who are we protecting here?

Which means that I probably shouldn't waste much time reading the long explanation:

It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is not like ordinary property at all, but constitutes a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necesary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.
Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine

Okay, now the British are just trolling us (and of course, by us, I mean U.S., of course):

"We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'.

"The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement."
Sir Ken Macdonald

Nine Assumptions of Schooling

1. Social cohesion is not possible through other means than government schooling; school is the main defense against social chaos.
2. Children cannot learn to tolerate each other unless first socialized by government agents.
3. The only safe mentors of children are certified experts with government-approved conditioning; children must be protected from the uncertified, including parents.
4. Compelling children to violate family, cultural and religious norms does not interfere with the development of their intellects or characters.
5. In order to dilute parental influence, children must be disabused of the notion that mother and father are sovereign in morality or intelligence.
6. Families should be encouraged to expend concern on the general education of everyone but discouraged from being unduly concerned with their own children's education.
7. The State has predominant responsibility for training, morals and beliefs. Children who escape state scrutiny will become immoral.
8. Children from families with different beliefs, backgrounds and styles must be forced together even if those beliefs violently contradict one another. Robert Frost, the poet, was wrong when he maintained that "good fences make good neighbors."
9. Coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power.

-- from Nine Assumptions and Twenty-One Facts of Schooling

You know what? I recently found out the girl singing "I'm Bringin' Sexy Back" is . . . Justin Timberlake. Kinda disturbing and pathetic at the same time. It makes the line a "I'll let you whip me baby I'm your slave" a little less polically incorrect than if a black woman were singing it.

This demo of the ruggedized TDS Recon linux handheld, however, is sexy. That's right, take the abuse. You know you love it. Anybody feel like buying me a birthday/Christmas present? GLEEEEEE! holly_as_mom (aka Mom) rocks!

New York Times: Senate Passes Detainee Bill Sought by Bush

The Senate approved legislation this evening governing the interrogation and trials of terror suspects, establishing far-reaching new rules in the definition of who may be held and how they should be treated.

Making Light: Attention US Military Personnel

If you are ordered to violate Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, it is your duty to disobey that order. No “clarification,” whether passed by Congress or signed by the president, relieves you of that duty. [...] You will almost certainly face disciplinary action, harassment of various kinds, loss of pay, loss of liberty, discomfort and indignity. America relies on you and your courage to face those challenges.

New York Times: Pirates of the Mediterranean

The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.

The Smirking Chimp: In Case I Disappear

It seems, perhaps, that the people who warned me were not so paranoid. It seems, perhaps, that I was not paranoid enough. Legislation passed by the Republican House and Senate, legislation now marching up to the Republican White House for signature, has shattered a number of bedrock legal protections for suspects, prisoners, and pretty much anyone else George W. Bush deems to be an enemy.

Washington Post: Legislating Violations of the Constitution
Blog from the Capital: The Public Expression of Religion Act

Nadler: Under this bill, what would stop a recalcitrant governing authority in a local government from violating a federal court order?
Stern: Nothing . . . It is an open invitation for people to defy the Constitution in the interest of political convenience at their will.

International Herald Tribune: U.S. Senate majority leader calls for efforts to bring Taliban into Afghan government

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.
Editor's Note: What happened to "we don't negotiate with terrorists"?

The Morning News: Betting Wrong

And they knew we didn’t really care. We wanted to see them duke it out, week after week, and we wanted our team to win. And let’s not forget the point of the show: The corporate sponsors who financed the whole thing just wanted to make a buck, and a good way of accomplishing that was to entertain the audience with carefully orchestrated but ultimately meaningless battles, so we’d go out and buy whatever product they were hawking.
Which brings me to the U.S. Congress.

Flyertalk Forums: I was detained at the TSA checkpoint for about 25 minutes today

He grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know "What is this supposed to mean?" "It could me a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine." "You can't write things like this" he said, "You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn't apply here?" "Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down) was his response."

The Infamous Brad: Dean's "You Have the Power," and Rage

People were weeping quietly. Some were openly sobbing. Others were screaming. Standing on their chairs and stamping their feet. Outside in the corridors, people were spontaneously writing checks and throwing them at my staff. They lined up, they mobbed us as we tried to make our way through the lobby. Some came away crying again, my aides later told me, because they'd been able to touch my suit. My old $125 JCPenny suit. ... What was happening in that room had very little to do with me. I'd been the catalyst for an eruption of feeling that was much deeper, more powerful, and, I would learn, more powerful than I'd ever imagined. It was a low-burning fire of resentment and rage. All it needed was a simple spark in order to explode.

Whistling in the Dark: Rant of despair and rage, with string accompaniment.

Is Olympia Snowe a good person? Maybe. I dunno.
It doesn't matter.
Olympia Snowe is part of the problem. And as long as she gets returned Maine is contributing to the degradation and decimation of the ideals, rights, responsibilities and principles of the United States of America.

"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

Bill Clinton recently got a rash of news for blasting Chris Wallace on Fox News. Reactions, understandably, range from conservative criticism that it was a crazy outburst or a calculated move to liberal cheering at his slam at the Bush administration.

Me? I'm bifocal.

Clinton is a shrewd politician. Nobody's happy about how Iraq is going, and elections are coming soon. He can afford to loose control and speak his mind a bit; it's not going to cost him an election, because he's not running for anything. He's also got tons of charisma, which left Chris unprepared for the moment when all of that personality suddenly came gunning for him. He was in perfect position to lay an opening salvo in the memetic battlefield over "the War on Terror", and he did so with expert timing.

Note what isn't likely to be discussed in this whole shebang: whether this whole "War On Terror" is a good idea. No room for discussion there; it's down to strategy, maybe of the exit type.

Because we're committed, for better or worse. We've stuck both our feet in the hot sands, and we are now mired. The Patriot Act has been renewed, giving the President (and the rest of the Executive Branch) vastly increased powers, most of which no longer need renewal. We've made a whole new generation of enemies, turning Iraq from a place hostile to both our pipelines and Al Queda into a place that welcomes both. Here at home, we have political dissent, but only in proper amounts and times. Clinton lashed out at Wallace over a question about his administration's handling of terrorist threats; the battleground is "who will handle this War correctly?", not "how is this reducing Terror?" or "how does this protect our Freedom?"

There is little chance that we, as a country, will look back at this in regret until it is far too late to correct it. The children of the terrorized and subservient in Iraq and Afganistan will rightly hate us; their faith will likely carry them to fruitless vengance as it has this generation's suicide bombers. Our descendants will live with yet more restrictions on their freedom, and find it perfectly normal, while piles of their money and bodies are thrown into the latest War against the latest Terror.

Because when the chips were down, we let the fearmongers win. We let them sell us a story of an incessant threat which our armies must chase to the ends of the earth to catch. They convinced their followers that the solution to all the ills their enemies caused was a prolongued war of attrition, demanding bloody sacrifice from their patriotic youth. And for the job well done, we reelected them, and kept watching their news shows.

And I say we, because in the shaken days after the towers fell, the only solution I could jokingly suggest to my girlfriend was fleeing to New Zealand. When it mattered, only sixty-seven Congressmen were willing to dissent. Few people, then or now, are willing to say that in the War on Terror, we are all siding with the Terror. Fewer still can find any way to join the other, losing, side.

Nudity!

surprisal bits: base-2 logarithm of the inverse of an event's probability; roughly, a measure of how surprising that event is. A coin toss is only good for one bit of surprisal; a six-sided die gives you two and a half.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled mad computer scientist freakout, already in progress:

Fully de- and re-composable websites/web applications! Transparent object database with FTP, WebDAV, and browser interfaces!! Fine-grained user permissions!!! Built-in search and caching engines! A templating language designed to work well with arbitrary web authoring tools! All written in a powerful object-oriented, open-source scripting language with a simple and clear syntax!

Zope: Pythons on a Motherfucking Plane!

. . . and on my computer. Wheeeeeeeee!!!!1!

Kennedy rocks the (White) House, and presentiently pimp-smacks our current administration.

"So," says my Imp of the Perverse, "how'd you like to be known as the guy who got everybody to hack the election for Daffy Duck?"

"Not so much," responds Responsibility. "The government takes a dim view of such things."

"Aw, come on. Plausible deniability. They can't prove you did it, just that you suggested it," says the Imp.

"Haven't you ever heard of conspiracy charges? Do you really think PD and the Robin Hood excuse will keep the Feds from coming down on you like God's Own Hammer? What good would that do your son?"

"Fuckin' A, man. You used to be fun."