tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post878446623537338776..comments2024-03-19T05:35:07.296-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Secret (and telling) words in the Inaugural AddressDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-39132493628424938382009-02-02T13:48:00.000-08:002009-02-02T13:48:00.000-08:00I've wondered about the "pardon tsunami" too, and ...I've wondered about the "pardon tsunami" too, and I think I've figured out why it didn't happen. <BR/><BR/>You can bet a trillion dollars that members of his administration expected it. But in the end, they were betrayed by the very attribute that made Bush the perfect fulcrum around which they could work their malignant will: He's stupid and weak. <BR/><BR/>In the end, I think Bush was just too tired, too lame, too emotionally crippled by his massive and undeniable failure, to muster the energy to actually do it.Hank Foxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09122702773419041501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-50480212644085721542009-01-30T20:39:00.000-08:002009-01-30T20:39:00.000-08:00Speaking of the party formerly known as the Republ...Speaking of the party formerly known as the Republicans (sort of like the artist formerly known as Prince), the polling website fivethirtyeight has a fine article titled "The Republican death spiral":<BR/><BR/>http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/republican-death-spiral.html<BR/><BR/> Apparently there are only 5 red states left:<BR/><BR/>http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/just-five-red-states-left.html<BR/><BR/> Maybe because Rush Limbaugh is now effectively the head of the Republican party:<BR/><BR/>http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18067.html<BR/><BR/> With wise advice like this, Republicans may get all the way to zero red states by 2010:<BR/><BR/>http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102408/content/01125111.guest.html<BR/><BR/> Yes, conservatives have got a clever plan for winning back congress -- make sure America stays out of work and broke. That's the ticket! "Vote for homelessness in 2010: Vote Republican. We'll make sure you lose your job!" Sounds like a winning strategy to me.<BR/><BR/>http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/01/27/in-opposing-obamas-stimulus-bill-gop-hopes-to-return-to-limite/3<BR/><BR/> Fun, fun, fun for 2009!<BR/><BR/>http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/01/2009_will_be_a_year_of_panic.php<BR/><BR/> Even more fun for 2009!<BR/><BR/>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/opinion/30krugman.html<BR/><BR/> And even more fun!<BR/><BR/>http://www.cbpp.org/9-8-08sfp.htm<BR/><BR/> And yet more fun!<BR/><BR/>http://blog.norml.org/2009/01/29/will-the-dea-raids-continue-now-even-the-mainstream-media-is-asking-the-question/<BR/><BR/> Wow, fun galore for 2009!<BR/><BR/>http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/01/29<BR/><BR/> Thrilling, delightful fun in 2009:<BR/><BR/>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aYYHKPn4DOe8&refer=home<BR/><BR/> Can you believe it? 2009 is going to be a scream:<BR/><BR/>http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49b1654a-ed60-11dd-bd60-0000779fd2ac.html<BR/><BR/> And at Davos, it's nothing but fun, fun, fun -- time to par-tay like it's 2009!<BR/><BR/>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/28/worldeconomicforum-davos<BR/><BR/> Yes indeedy, 2009 looks like it's going to be a ROMP!<BR/><BR/>http://carlosmiller.com/2009/01/30/photographing-police-could-land-you-in-prison-for-ten-years-under-new-uk-law/<BR/><BR/> I count this as a much bigger failure than David Brin's prediction of a pardon tsunami. Brin has been telling us for years now about how the sane conservatives are going to take back control of the Republican party, but there's no sign of that happening. Instead, the Republicans just keep getting crazier and crazier. By this time next year, the Republican party will be leaping around naked on all fours barking at the moon, judging by current trends. And the Democrats, with their crazy war against drugs and infinite expansion of the unwinnable war in Afghanistan and their limitless efforts to make filesharing illegal (about as sensible as trying to outlaw the rain or passing laws against the dawn), seem like they're vying with the Republicans in the craziness sweepstakes. Yes, they're neck and neck, coming up on the straightaway, it'll be a photo finish...<BR/><BR/>http://media.www.uncmirror.com/media/storage/paper972/news/2008/02/18/Editorials/U.s-Military.Spending.Simply.Out.Of.Control-3216038.shtml<BR/><BR/>In this environment, it's time to...EMBRACE THE CRAZINESS!<BR/><BR/>http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/01/07/cardinal-schonborn-links-financial-crisis-to-evolutionism/<BR/><BR/>Maybe if we shave the cat and paint ourselves with polka dots, that will fix things? Huh? Hey, why not? Every other nutty kind of behavior seems to have been praised as "masterful" (Greenspan) and "innovative" (Lehman Brothers' credit default swaps), so we might as well just let it all hang out and do a Hunter Thompson. <BR/><BR/>http://www.hanlonsrazor.org/2008/12/27/unsurprising-suv-sales-rise-as-gas-prices-drop/<BR/><BR/>http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/01/the_true_21st_century_begins.phpAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22123866254299961112009-01-30T09:50:00.000-08:002009-01-30T09:50:00.000-08:00Gilmoure said... If a freaking working class gu...<B>Gilmoure said...</B><BR/><I> If a freaking working class guy like me could recognize bad policy decisions as they were announced (and I blogged about it on my LJ for the last 5 years), how the hell did most of these freakin' movers and shakers miss it? Ah swear, it's like they were all drunk on cheap store brand profits (comparable to a Welsh Claret). Freakin' telephone sanitizers!</I><BR/><BR/>That's what I call 'Selective Cognition.'Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25078504009601041072009-01-30T09:29:00.000-08:002009-01-30T09:29:00.000-08:00Gah! Now the press figures it out:Arianna Huffingt...Gah! Now the press figures it out:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/davos-notes-contrition-pa_b_162290.html" REL="nofollow"><B>Arianna Huffington: </B></A> (Davros) <I>Today, at an off-the-record gathering of international editors and reporters, the contrition had spread to financial journalists. There was the sense that many had missed the boat, failing to ask the tough questions -- and, even when they did, failing to stay on the story until it broke through the static.<BR/><BR/>That sense dominated discussions even after the session had ended. The mainstream media's ADD -- the desire to always look for the new hot story, instead of digging deeper into a complex one -- was deemed partly responsible for the failure.<BR/><BR/>And since there were those who got it right -- including Nouriel Roubini (who was there) and financial analyst Steve Eisman (who wasn't) -- there was the feeling that many more in the media could have gotten to the truth before it was too late. And if they had, who knows what could have happened?</I><BR/><BR/>If a freaking working class guy like me could recognize bad policy decisions as they were announced (and I blogged about it on my LJ for the last 5 years), how the hell did most of these freakin' movers and shakers miss it? Ah swear, it's like they were all drunk on cheap store brand profits (comparable to a Welsh Claret). Freakin' telephone sanitizers!JuhnDonnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06795417373366495092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-40805916415868294402009-01-29T20:08:00.000-08:002009-01-29T20:08:00.000-08:00Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says of the...Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says of the Republican Party: "We’re all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us,"<BR/><BR/>He worries that the GOP is becoming more of a regional party than a national one. If this isn't a rallying cry for Dr. Brin's "Decent Conservatives" I don't know what is.<BR/><BR/>"Logisdit" - A small, not-quite-checkmark marking off an item on your to-do list.Matt DeBlasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17666227904684289223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48712202618204035692009-01-28T21:15:00.000-08:002009-01-28T21:15:00.000-08:00The old administration had a knack for becoming cu...The old administration had a knack for becoming curiouser and curiouser, without ever becoming more curious.Joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16755460714090772432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-78175225240586231612009-01-28T20:00:00.000-08:002009-01-28T20:00:00.000-08:00Brad Hicks: Yes We Can Put Americans Back to Work....Brad Hicks:<I><A HREF="http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/422902.html?format=light" REL="nofollow"> <B>Yes We Can Put Americans Back to Work. We Probably Won't, Though.</B></A></I><BR/><BR/><I>Ronald freaking Reagan himself briefly campaigned on it, calling it "Workfare:" if you can't find a job, we'll make you one, whether you like it or not. But he didn't even get sworn in before the same pro-corporate Republicans and right-wing Democrats convinced him to drop it, to instead concentrate on cutting taxes for corporations as his only unemployment-fighting measure. No, there is now, just as there was in Franklin Roosevelt's time, a bipartisan consensus of the elites in this country that the way to put Americans back to work is that taxes must be cut on investors and corporations. We are, apparently, supposed to ignore the last thirty years of history, which teaches us that every tax cut we pass and every subsidy we grant to big corporations will be used to hire robots or to move jobs overseas. No, this time we're supposed to believe it will be different and this time they really will use that money to make more jobs. Trust them on this, they say. And just as in Roosevelt's day, the exact same political coalition of big-corporation Republicans and big-corporation Democrats insist that if that won't do the job fast enough, then what we need are even more public-private partnerships. And ironically, even Barack Obama, who very nearly lost his political career early on because he was caught on the fringes of Tony Rezko's financially corrupt public-private partnership, one that Barack Obama had gotten for him, somehow hasn't learned that it's public-private partnerships and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, not government make-work programs or benefits for the unemployed, that are the real welfare cheats. Being a Harvard graduate who grew up under the steady drumbeat of pro-corporate propaganda about how evil the WPA was, he's still talking up the need for more public-private partnerships like Harold Ickes' old Public Works Administration.<BR/><BR/>So I figure the odds at roughly 4 to 1 that he's going to screw up the unemployment situation in America, at the very least doing nothing to help it, and quite possibly making it worse by funding the elimination of yet more American jobs, because that's exactly what the new President and his cabinet officers are talking about doing, lately. Sadly, these are even better odds than we would have had under either Clinton or McCain, neither of whom would have even considered anything but public-private partnerships. Obama will, I think, at least think about it. But I don't think he'll do anything but try to set up another PWA. Which is a damned shame. Because what we really need is another WPA.</I><BR/><BR/>Really recommend ya'll go and read the entire article. Very good.JuhnDonnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06795417373366495092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-46251550969310255352009-01-28T13:54:00.000-08:002009-01-28T13:54:00.000-08:00CIA officer allegedly drugs, rapes women in Algeri...<A HREF="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=6750266&page=1" REL="nofollow"><B>CIA officer allegedly drugs, rapes women in Algeria, Egypt.<BR/></B> <BR/>http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=6750266&page=1</A><BR/><BR/>Quoting a poster on another forum:<BR/><I>Aside from the crimes (allegedly) inflicted on the women themselves, that story is good for a few hundred more Al-Qaeda recruits. I seriously think we should consider treating creeps like this that hand over such stunning propaganda and recruitment opportunities as 'providing aid and comfort to the enemy'. To be clear, I'm talking about the folks who do the stuff, not the ones who report it.<BR/></I>sociotardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11697154298087412934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-44016874038736555852009-01-28T13:52:00.000-08:002009-01-28T13:52:00.000-08:00Dr. Brin,I passed your insight on the "curiosity" ...Dr. Brin,<BR/><BR/>I passed your insight on the "curiosity" sentence to my grad class. They totally got it.<BR/><BR/>Regarding synching PowerPoint slides, audio, and video...<BR/><BR/>I don't know anything about slideshare, but if what you want is something that people can browse online, I use <A HREF="http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp" REL="nofollow">Camtasia Studio</A> and it gets the job done and gives you some decent editing tools. If you have existing video/audio and slides, you can pull them all together. It is relatively cheap at $299 and you can download a demo version for free to see if it will do what you want.<BR/><BR/>The program then renders it into Flash, which will work in any browser. If you want to see what it looks like (rendered at low res for bandwidth), <A HREF="http://www.six-sigma-online.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=11" REL="nofollow">go here</A>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-82959275854825939092009-01-28T10:10:00.000-08:002009-01-28T10:10:00.000-08:00Twinbeam asked why Obama hasn't pushed for marijua...Twinbeam asked why Obama hasn't pushed for marijuana legalization and why both parties seem so afraid of it.<BR/><BR/>To expand on what David Brin said, Obama got elected by a large enough margin to give him real political capital, and he's attracted quite a few former Republicans who are still conservative in the original sense of that word. Meaning, people who care about fiscal responsibility and law and order and traditiional conservative issues, as opposed the crazy stuff people who call themselves "conservatives" today worry about, like gay marriage and flag burning and partial birth abortions.<BR/><BR/>Couple of things to remember. First, even very popular presidents get a short honeymoon. 6 months, tops. And that's pushing it. Right now everyone loves Obama and is willing to cut him slack, but that's going to end real soon. Obama knows this. So he has to make every minute count. Spending this honeymoon period on an issue as marginal as marijuana legalization would be a bad idea, and Obama knows that. He needs to use every second of this brief honeymoon period with congress and the press to get national health care and an effective stimulus package passed through congress. After that, he can worry about the less pressing issues.<BR/><BR/>Second, the funny thing about political capital is that it gets spent by the same amount no matter what you spend it on. Political capital resulting from a blow-out election, like this one, will burn away just as fast if Obama spends it on legalizing weed as it would if he spent it on national health care and a stimulus package and infrastructure rebuilding. Which is more important right now? Once that political capital is gone and the honeymoon is over, it'll be a long tough slog for Obama to get anything done. Want to see him try to push national health care uphill instead of legislation to legalizae weed?<BR/><BR/>There's also the fact that the Republican party now seems to be made up exclusively of crazy people. These guys are cutting their own throats by clamoring for a filibuster of the stimulus package. If they keep that up, the Republican party is history. That's not such good news as you might think, because it will mean lots of fractures in the current coalition of the Democratic party. All those former Republican conservatives will start to get antsy when the trillion dollar deficits begin to hit. Nationalizing most of our biggest banks whole, en masse, which we'll probably have to do within the next couple of years, will also make the true conservatives want to bolt fro the Democratic coalition. Creating a giant new national health care bureaucracy won't please the true conservatives either. So Obama's going to have his work cut out for him holding the current Democratic coalition together. It would become 10 times harder if he tries to push something as relatively far left as marijuana legalization.<BR/><BR/>Arguably Bill Clinton's big mistake was getting embroiled in the gays in the military imbroglio in the first few months after his inauguration. If Bill Clinton had pushed hard on national health care instead of gays in the military, we might have gotten health care reform. No guarantee on that. I can't view alternate universes. But I'm guessing Obama isn't stupider than I am (he's probably a lot smarter), and if I can see the analogy and potential trap, so can Obama.<BR/><BR/>Lastly, marijuana legalization seems to be inching forward on its own. 13 states have largely decriminalized possession of small amounts of weed right now, and more are int he process of doing that. If Obama just doesn't do anything, the states are likely to de facto legalize possession of small amounts over the next few years to the point where the federal govenrment won't have to step in and change the law. Then, after a decade or so of getting used to the new looser attitudes, everyone will have gotten so comfortable with the idea that a full legalization bill can sail through congress. <BR/><BR/>As to why both parties are scared to death of touching the issue, that seems clear. Legalizing weed outright, instead of letting it happen under the radar in the states, opens up a can of worms. The whole issue gets bollixed up with harder drugs like methamphetamine and the morphine-based narcotics and cocaine plus hallucinogens like LSD and MDMA (ecstasy) and peyote. Our society is still intensely confused in dealing with these very different types of chemical substances. If there's anything we don't need right now as a distraction from the big issues like health care reform and getting the economy working again, it's some complex detailed debate about why psychoactive compounds like marijuana are fundamentally different from both LSD and the narcotics. That's why I think both parties are so scared of legalizing weed. Explicit federal legalization opens up a pandora's box of heated controversy involving other substances, and it has way too much potential to turn into a bottomless pit of social and pharmacological complexities. <BR/><BR/>In a perfect world, okay, sure, let's get federal legalization done right now along with everything else. Out here in the real world, we've got bigger fish to fry. Plus I think the country's inching in that direction anyway, and Obama knows all this. Remember: Obama ran as a pragmatic moderate. If you wanted Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, you should've voted for them. We all know why we didn't vote for those people, because they couldn't have won. So now we've got to deal with the consequences of our own pragmatism as well as Obama's. Personally, I'm well pleased. Kucinich, the "boy mayor," isn't somebody I'd want in charge of something as big and complex as the Executive branch. Don't seem to recall he did do a real great job with Cleveland.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-19450652143629773062009-01-27T14:15:00.000-08:002009-01-27T14:15:00.000-08:00Chris Heuer said...(I think his somber delivery to...<B>Chris Heuer said...</B><BR/><I>(I think his somber delivery took some of the juice out of it for me) </I><BR/><BR/>Volume makes a huge difference. Watching the speech online, his words didn't have anywhere near the same force and strength that they did listening to them at the mall, standing in front of one of the speakers. The volume of the videos I found online were actually pretty low (I maxed all my volume settings, and it wasn't even remotely painful), and there was some inflection that I didn't hear or could barely recognize, that was clearer at the mall, when the volume was a couple decibels below uncomfortable.Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-15570945168923173282009-01-27T13:56:00.000-08:002009-01-27T13:56:00.000-08:00great post David - watching it I was less then imp...great post David - watching it I was less then impressed (I think his somber delivery took some of the juice out of it for me) but in reading it, I was amazed at what happens when the "one president" we have at a time has the ability to speak truth to power in such an amazingly direct, but nuanced way<BR/><BR/>will call you soon to talk about 2009 - we should try to figure out some things togetherAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-5588546642082849342009-01-27T08:02:00.000-08:002009-01-27T08:02:00.000-08:00The Economist finally opens their eyes: George Bus...The Economist finally opens their eyes: George Bush's legacy<BR><A HREF="http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12931660&fsrc=nwlgafree&source=most_commented" REL="nofollow">The frat boy ships out</A><BR/><BR/>They do a good job of rounding up Bush's high lights as a farkin' tool but nothing new there, if you've been reading Dr. Brin's blog or just about any other blog out there. <BR/><BR/>What really pisses me off about this is all these damned 'institution' level magazines and newspapers, which should have been trumpeting this list of craptacular decisions as they happened, is that by keeping silent or even approving of Bush's actions, they're implicitly part of the problem. <BR/><BR/>Damn, but they piss me off!JuhnDonnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06795417373366495092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21611153808118614762009-01-26T22:34:00.000-08:002009-01-26T22:34:00.000-08:00Peculiar article about the recent human wrecking b...Peculiar article about the recent human wrecking ball who latestly occupied the White House. Gabriel Pauette describes him as "a reactionary radical revolutionary," which sounds right. However, he starts off with a poor choice of words, initially calling the cocaine cowboy in the Oval Office "a curious mixture of reactionary and progressive." Uh, no. "Progressive" is completely wrong. The guy was an extreme radical who tried to overthrow the rule of law and tear up the constitution, but that's not at all the same thing as a progressive. <BR/><BR/>Anyway, it's worth a read.<BR/><BR/>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/26/obama-conservative-progressive-agendaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68194295850951779772009-01-26T22:04:00.000-08:002009-01-26T22:04:00.000-08:00Here's a sort of good news/bad news article from t...Here's a sort of good news/bad news article from the British <I>Daily Telegraph</I> about the eerie similarities of the current financial meltdown with 1931. The goods news is, first, the lucky timing of this financial collapse. It happened only 3 months before a guy who's really competent and imaginative took office. Just imagine if this financial blowup had happened in, say, February 2005! <BR/><BR/>The other good news is that we've got a lot of mechanisms in place to help correct this misfiring global economic engine that didn't exist back in 1930. For example, the Federal Reserve is taking pro-active action to reduce interest rates and inject money into the system, congress and President Obama (can't get enough to saying that! President Obama! Yeah!) are gearing up for a massive stimulus program, and of course we've got welfare and medicare as well as the FDIC that didn't exist back in 1929.<BR/><BR/>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4339501/Bad-news-were-back-to-1931.-Good-news-its-not-1933-yet.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41822806413430740972009-01-26T21:54:00.000-08:002009-01-26T21:54:00.000-08:00SWAT team raids Washington State University dorm o...SWAT team raids Washington State University dorm on reports of underage drinking:<BR/><BR/>http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m1d26-SWAT-raid-for-underage-drinking-at-Washington-State-University<BR/><BR/>Woman convicted of "terrorism" under Patriot Act, loses custody of her children for spanking one of her kids on a plane flight:<BR/><BR/>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-airline-felonies20-2009jan20,0,5468299.story?<BR/><BR/>Supreme Court rules passengers in car can be frisked by police even if they've done nothing to indicate they committed a crime:<BR/><BR/>http://www.sacbee.com/838/story/1573881.html<BR/><BR/>White House had no case files on accused Guantanamo "terrorists," just pieces of paper dumped on desks at random. More proof that most of the so-called 'terrorists' held at Guantanmo Bay torture chambers were just innocent bystanders like the cab driver Dilawar who got sold to the Americans by an Afghan warlord as a scam to make a quick $50,000 on the bounty for "terrorists":<BR/><BR/>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/24/AR2009012401702.html<BR/><BR/>Traigc story of Dilawar here. His case was the subject of the 2007 film "Taxi to the Dark Side," a film worth seeing if you have the time:<BR/><BR/>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html <BR/><BR/>The evidence now suggests that most of the prisoners in Guantanmo were guilty of nothing more than being innocent bystanders fraudulently sold to the U.S. Army in Afghanistan by corrupt Afghan pols. The Afghan warlords saw an opportunity to make a quick buck with phony accusations of terrorism to supplement their income from the heroin trade, apparently. Some of the Gitmo detainees were genuine terrorists, but at this point they seem to be a distinct minority.<BR/><BR/>Woman arrested for overdue library book in Iowa:<BR/><BR/>http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/01/26/Woman_arrested_for_overdue_library_book/UPI-94651233014734/<BR/><BR/>Misleading headline here -- "DEA's medical marijuana raids continue under Obama administration." More likely this offers proof that the federal government is not a monolithic institution and the members of power blocs jockey with one another for ascendancy, with the federal narcotics bureau trying to go over the head of the Executive branch by continuing with these kinds of rais until they're explicitly ordered to stop. I'm guessing that the federal narcotics cops think won't give an explicit order to stop the raids because that would open him to charges that he's "soft on crime," but I think they may be misunderestimating Obama's willpower, as well as the mood of the country.<BR/><BR/>http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2009/jan/22/dea_s_medical_marijuana_raids_co<BR/><BR/>An asteroid is stalking us! Call the galactic police and file a restraining order!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-5580458704989256652009-01-26T19:48:00.000-08:002009-01-26T19:48:00.000-08:00We'll let you off this time David.The Slideshow To...We'll let you off this time David.<BR/><BR/>The <A HREF="http://www.slideshare.net/tour" REL="nofollow">Slideshow Tour</A> mentions that it is possible to sync podcasts with slides. This would be better than video taking up real estate (unless you had something more than a talking head in mind)<BR/><BR/>'produs' - a goad to waken the slumbering masses. (David's next post announcing the publication of his next novel would be a 'produs' ;-)Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43718979090597091122009-01-26T16:47:00.000-08:002009-01-26T16:47:00.000-08:00@David Smelser - I tend to agree. A market in CO2 ...@David Smelser - I tend to agree. <BR/><BR/>A market in CO2 (or any pollution) sounds cool, but both sides in such a transaction are motivated to collude to cheat. So it ends up requiring an impractical level of monitoring.<BR/><BR/>But Obama's agenda specifically includes <A HREF="http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/energy_and_environment/" REL="nofollow">a call for cap and trade.</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-36056966191427230212009-01-26T16:02:00.000-08:002009-01-26T16:02:00.000-08:00I'm more in favor of a tax and rebate than a cap a...I'm more in favor of a tax and rebate than a cap and trade.<BR/><BR/>With the financial crisis as an example of market failures when individuals can game the system, I'm afraid of creating new markets and financial instruments that corporations/individuals can get "creative" with.<BR/><BR/>It seems much simpler, straight forward, and transparent to just tax the carbon as it is used.David Smelserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08596446730839038592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-60943698369684032982009-01-26T15:17:00.000-08:002009-01-26T15:17:00.000-08:00@Some Kinda WonderfulI think that his weekly addre...@Some Kinda Wonderful<BR/><BR/>I think that his weekly address is actually part of his trying to clean up the mess. <BR/>After all, he promised to treat us like grownups and keep us in the loop. <BR/>Bush was big on photo-ops, but he didn't seem to do much by way of explaining the whats and whys. <BR/><BR/>"oodou"<BR/><BR/>That Voodoo that you do so well... with your mouth full.Matt DeBlasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17666227904684289223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83232686269801003912009-01-26T14:49:00.000-08:002009-01-26T14:49:00.000-08:00I have set up several slide shows at http://www.s...I have set up several slide shows at <BR/> http://www.slideshare.net/davidbrin/ <BR/><BR/>What someone might help me with is whether it is possible on slideshare to have a two-pane presentation. One pane showing my video of me presenting a talk and another pane showing the slides (preferably advanced by the watcher himself.)<BR/><BR/>Oh, btw... pleas for help from the group mind don't count!David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-12084850786481203642009-01-26T14:24:00.000-08:002009-01-26T14:24:00.000-08:00Sometimes scientists choose odd, even amusing word...Sometimes scientists choose odd, even amusing words to describe the phenomena they observe. For example, astronomers notice a little bitty asteroid in near earth orbit. It never gets closer to earth than the moon, but it never gets more than 0.1 AU away from earth either and its orbit is almost identical to earths.<BR/><BR/>The word the astronomers used to describe the asteroids behavior? Stalking. Its stalking us. :)<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.universetoday.com/2009/01/25/strange-asteroid-2009-bd-stalks-the-earth/" REL="nofollow">Strange Asteroid 2009 BD Stalks the Earth<BR/>http://www.universetoday.com/2009/01/25/strange-asteroid-2009-bd-stalks-the-earth/</A>sociotardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11697154298087412934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64830248589125282122009-01-26T14:08:00.000-08:002009-01-26T14:08:00.000-08:00If Obama is going to push for carbon Cap and Trade...If Obama is going to push for carbon Cap and Trade, maybe he'd better make sure it's limited to domestic trades we can monitor and regulate...<BR/><A HREF="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090125/ap_on_re_as/china_s_golden_dams/print" REL="nofollow">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090125/ap_on_re_as/china_s_golden_dams/print</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-77713099826108521452009-01-25T13:53:00.000-08:002009-01-25T13:53:00.000-08:00The AMA has done a careful study of "Bush derangem...The AMA has done a careful study of "Bush derangement syndrom," a malady that many liberals were supposed to have been suffering from over the last eight years.<BR/><BR/>They have discovered that it is an actual phenomena, but in the interest of accuracy have urged the adoption of a new name for it, "Actually knowing what the f$%# was going on."<BR/><BR/>'trepti': Notation found on old musical scores. Fast? Slow? No one remembers.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-50489346079577151992009-01-25T10:58:00.000-08:002009-01-25T10:58:00.000-08:00Anonymous said...Here's a neat article that questi...Anonymous said...<BR/><I><BR/><BR/>Here's a neat article that questions how a spider can perform all sorts of complex intelligent behaviors with only 600,000 neurons. The answers seem to be providing computer scientists with some new paradigms for artificial intelligence.<BR/><BR/>http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html<BR/></I><BR/><BR/>Mien Gott, is everything on this planet chalked full of Uplift Potential?<BR/>Tread carefully; you don't know whose ancestors you might be stepping on!<BR/><BR/>I cheered at curiosity, too. And responsibility. And transparency. If recovery.gov is instituted as planned and the rest of Obama's administration is a flop, it might be worth it for the precedence alone. For government to actually have to reach out and explain where, exactly, the money has gone. Tripling the number of science fellowships is an excellent bonus and early proof that he's putting his money where his mouth is. <BR/>If the rest of the country can learn from Detroit's stoic optimism, we all might just get through this.<BR/><BR/>clutorc: Clthulu's new line of Celtic-themed accessories.Tyler Augusthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14171092329566960436noreply@blogger.com