February 2012
11 posts
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Build yourself a Drone NOW (before they become... →
Build yourself a drone. Before they are made illegal.
Why?
One big reason is that drones/bots make the emergence of police states (as my tech thriller post on this topic shows) more likely since they allow a very small number of people to automate their control over a great many people. So, in order to ensure the future doesn’t careen in that direction, we should democratize the...
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The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician →
In the July/August 2001 issue of the late, great magazine Lingua Franca, James Ryerson published an enthralling article about an anonymous benefactor who was paying professors huge sums of money to review a strange 60-page philosophical manuscript. Slate editor David Plotz talked about “The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician” on this week’s Political Gabfest, citing it as one of his favorite...
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The Digital Path: Smart Contracts and the Third... →
Inadequate and ill-adapted property institutions in the third world prevent the extralegal assets of the poor from serving as capital. In particular, the absence of credible systems of title transfer makes real estate holdings ineffective as collateral for loans. How can this barrier to wealth creation be surmounted? Country-by-country institutional reform is possible, but inevitably slow. New...
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The DOJ’s escalating criminalization of speech →
Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening. The latest episode emerged on Friday, when the FBI announced the arrest and indictment of Jubair Ahmad, a...
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Do You Like Online Privacy? You May Be a Terrorist →
A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity. The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or...
January 2012
17 posts
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“I think the Net generation is beginning to see knowledge in a way that is closer...”
– Internet theorist David Weinberger, in What the Internet Means for How We Think About the World
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“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if...”
– Brian Kernighan
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Rules of American justice: a tale of three cases →
The Rules of American Justice are quite clear:
(1) If you are a high-ranking government official who commits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immunity, both civil and criminal, and will have the American President demand that all citizens Look Forward, Not Backward.
(2) If you are a low-ranking member of the military, you will receive relatively trivial punishments in order to protect...
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The roots of Bain Capital in El Salvador’s civil... →
A significant portion of the seed money that created Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, was provided by wealthy oligarchs from El Salvador, including members of a family with a relative who allegedly financed rightist groups that used death squads during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s.
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“The United States Constitution rests on a handful of closely related premises....”
– Michael S. Greve, discussing his book The Upside Down Constitution
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“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Nature: Marijuana may make your brain grow →
Most addictive drugs inhibit the growth of new brain cells. But injections of a cannabis-like chemical seem to have the opposite effect in mice, according to new research. Experts say that the results, if borne out by further studies, could have far-reaching implications for addiction research and the application of marijuana in medicine.
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“The future isn’t pre-ordained. It is contested and contestable. Science fiction...”
– Cory Doctorow, A Vocabulary for Speaking About the Future
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Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World... →
Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. In his new book, Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, Neuwirth points out that small, illegal, off-the-books businesses collectively account for trillions of dollars in...
December 2011
31 posts
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Alan Moore on Science and Imagination →
“I would prefer a two-state solution. My basic premise is that human beings are amphibious, in the etymological sense of ‘two lives’. We have one life in the solid material world that is most perfectly measured by science. Science is the most exquisite tool that we’ve developed for measuring that hard, physical, material world. Then there is the world of ideas which is...
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Bitcoin Reborn: As a Financial Wire Service for... →
A P2P (person to person) transaction system can be used to for many different things, least of all as a currency for retail transactions. One of the more interesting of these uses is it growing use as a wire transfer system like Western Union for the $10 Trillion and rapidly growing System D, the world’s shadow/black economy. Why is a P2P transaction system perfect for this? It...
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Thank You Anarchists →
At its core, anarchism isn’t simply a negative political philosophy, or an excuse for window-breaking, as most people tend to assume it is. Even while calling for an end to the rule of coercive states backed by military bases, prison industries and subjugation, anarchists and other autonomists try to build a culture in which people can take care of themselves and each other through healthy,...
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Forbes: St. Louis Doesn't Suck! →
St. Louis has its problems like anywhere else, but there’s a lot to like: good schools, nice parks, great public institutions, competitive sports teams, strong corporate base, the world’s largest mustache (Gateway Arch), and plenty of places that make delicious beer.
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LittleSis: a free database of who-knows-who at the... →
LittleSis is a free database detailing the connections between powerful people and organizations. We bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions.