Sign of the times

If you are an anti-government activist it's important that you not shoot your mouth off to undercover federal agents even if you are just blowing smoke. Even if what you are saying is constitutionally protected political speech. But be that as it may, the US attorney's office in Detroit is making as much adverse information available as possible to the media in order to thoroughly poison the potential jury pool against the so-called Hutaree militia group. And as for any due process rights, well as some famous prosecutor once bragged that he could get a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich" if he wanted to.
The trouble with this whole case is that the feds seem to have facilitated and encouraged these guys every step of the way. I just hope their lawyers make that fact clear to the jury that is gonna try this case, and that it helps. Angry talk isn't the same as terrorism.

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Wall Street big-shot says desperate unemployed may start rioting soon - Detroit News
"We have a history of being very law-abiding, being governed by the rule of law," he said. "But at some point, if people become desperate enough, laws won't make any difference."

California to require porn actors to use condoms - LA Times

Austin TX hacker disables more than a hundred cars - Wired
Wikileaks leaks classified report about Wikileaks - Ars Technica
Oh the irony.

Five years or less is all the USA has left - Fred Reed

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Thought experiment: What if the U.S. Senate was apportioned by income? - Brainiac.com

"Under such a scenario, 8 senators--the same number, of course, who now represent California, Texas, New York, and Florida-- would represent Americans with zero income (!). Sixteen would represent the interests of those making less than $10,000 a year. Meanwhile, 34 would represent the broad, middle-income band of $30,000-to-$80,000." The senate is often called a millionaire's club, a reference to the wealth of current members, but, in Lowrey's restructured senate, millionaires, as an interest group, would not even receive a full complement of two politicians. At best, they'd get one. (Lowery proposes Michael Bloomberg for the thankless role.) Might battles over bank regulation and health care take on a different cast if the upper house looked like this?"

Yes it would. but I for one would be willing to give it a try.

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The Case Against College Education - Time
"The benefits of putting more people in college are also oversold. Part of the college wage premium is an illusion. People who go to college are, on average, smarter than people who don't. In an economy that increasingly rewards intelligence, you'd expect college grads to pull ahead of the pack even if their diplomas signified nothing but their smarts."
Cyborg classical composer is as good as Mozart?-Miller-McCune
Samples of the music on this site too. It ain't half bad. But let's see write a folk song or some blues. Then we'll see.
More foreshadowing of the coming race war - Taki's Magazine
U.K. edition.

Losing the culture war.- NY Review of Books
"The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible."
I surely hope not. We are moving (some of us anyhow) to libraries that are merely stored, licensed, DRMed, copies of media, books, and data sets that technically are owned not by the possessor but by corporations in perpetuity. So we'll always be needing to upgrade our hardware, software, and re-buying licenses for stuff we already have. And any time some monopolist publisher or government bureaucrat wants to, they can make whatever we've obtained already, (I won't say purchased, since we don't actually own it in the real sense of the term) unreadable whenever and for whatever reason they want.
The results are in on Cuba's revolution - Telos
"A superficial overview of social behavior however, raises the question of whether the Cubans—after decades of forced-fed altruism—have not lost their appetite for solidarity as well as the initiative for entrepreneurship that East Asians managed to retain. Travelers from Brazil to Cuba these days report that, although the two populations live in the tropics, Brazilians exude and exalt life, but Cubans seem numb." Sad. It could have gone a lot better.
Orwellian headline of the year- NY Times
Originally it was:"Gates Calls Europe Anti-War Mood Danger to Peace." The Times later changed it to a more palatable "Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace".
GM kills off Hummer - BoingBoing
"This car was like the high-fructose corn syrup of automobiles, something that concentrated everything bad about motoring until it underwent a phase-change and somehow became an object of desire." Too bad. For a special use land vehicle it wasn't so bad. But as an everyday form of transport, not so much.
Lawmakers blow off workplace safety law they write - The Hill
70 percent of them too.
World's Coral Reefs Could Disintegrate by 2100 - American Scientist

Some really fast bolt-action rifle shooting. - YouTube
So maybe I don't have to have a semi-auto after all? But then again I wonder what his target looks like. Heh.

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Why it's all falling apart - Herbert Marcuse
"In the affluent society, the authorities are hardly forced to justify their dominion. They deliver the goods; they satisfy the sexual and the aggressive energy of their subjects. Like the unconscious, the destructive power of which they so successfully represent, they are this side of good and evil, and the principle of contradiction has no place in their logic." (Eros And Civilization, 1966)
Are literary review journals doomed? - Mother Jones
NY Times in yet another plagiarism scandal. - Salon
Two Chinese schools linked to the army are said to be tied to online attacks. - Cnet
"Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh says he wasn't drinking and didn't do anything wrong when he crashed his city-issued car, drove home on a flat tire and waited three days to file a police report." - Detroit News
Nothing untoward going on here. Move along citizen. Move along.
Undercover CEO - CBS Television
WTF were they thinking? Just because your boss is nice guy doesn't mean capitalism is good or that being a wage slave is cool.
What MBA thought of this idea of "customer loyalty"? - Wall Street Journal
"Now, customers must spend $250 to get the same $5 offered by the old $100 plan. It was reminiscent of frequent-flier programs where the 25,000 miles required for an upgrade suddenly became 50,000. An added blow: The points from my old card—I'd accumulated 97—didn't transfer." Sucker!
Cold Steel® Latin Style Machete - 24 inch
Seems like a nice product for a very good price. And a good machete is handier than most would imagine when you really get out there. Handy on boats too. $12.99 + S/H @ Smoky Mountain Knife Works...

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White House Press Secretary's Tweets To Be Archived- USA Today
The Poor Are Better Off Renting - Wall Street Journal
It helps the poor from becoming homeless, you see. As their incomes inevitably fall they'll never be able to make the mortgage, pay the taxes, insure or maintain a house anyhow.
Asian Carp Battle - Chicago vs Michigan - Michigan Public Radio
"Wednesday's public hearing on keeping Asian Carp out of Lake Michigan turned into a forum on the threat to the financial health of Chicago's tour boat industry."
Pop Nihilism - AdBusters
"[By the 1960's] Advertising agencies had mastered the ability to sell the American consumer products that they had never heard of and had no real need for."
ACTA Treaty's secret negotiations - BoingBoing
"...a naked bit of crony-capitalism that has so much more at stake than mere copyright."
Can cops look through your cellphone with a warrant? -Cnet
Special Ops Gunships To Get Pain-Inducing Weapons - Popular Mechanics
The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown.-Matt Taibbi @ Rolling Stone
Army looking at using cockroaches to find hidden nuclear materials - Wired
No stupider than other stuff they've wasted money on over the years.

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Virtual suicide: Delete your "social networking" memberships and get real again. - AdBusters
"...virtual suicide sites like seppukoo.com and suicidemachine.org have started a counter movement, provoking users to kill their online selves and reclaim their real lives."


Feds allow prison cell phone jamming test- AP
"Testing" for what? I don't like where this line of experimentation is heading.
Dean Baker critiques David Brooks economic analysis - Beat the Press
"Working class men are ill-prepared to deal with the effects of incredible economic mismanagement that has made them its primary victims. It has been conscious policy of David Brooks and his peers to weaken welfare state supports, making income and well-being almost entirely dependent on employment. Now, because David Brooks' highly-educated peers are incompetent economic managers, millions of working class people (disproportionately men) are facing extended periods of unemployment. And, naturally Brooks sees their difficulty in dealing with this crisis as a failure of working class culture."
Human genome researcher gives God a failing grade in bio-engineering. - New Scientist
"The reason? Our genome is an unmitigated mess."
People don't become serial killers because of Dungeons & Dragons. - Boston Phoenix
They kill because they're murderous sociopaths with poor impulse control.
"America is on its way to becoming a country of serfs ruled by oligarchs." - Paul Craig Roberts
Waddaya mean "on it's way"?
Small spinning asteroids are piles of rubble and dust that ought to fly apart but don't. - Technology Review
NASA wakes Endeavor crew with Serenity theme song - Topless Robot
Considering that Obama is killing the manned space exploration program soon it's darkly appropriate.
A layman's observations about the junkie populations of Europe and the US - Rick Steves @ Seattle Post-Intelligencer
How Darwinian natural selection works. - ABC News
"Bohlig took off his backpack and a layer of clothing then decided to pose for pictures near the rim of the crater. He was backing up when the snow gave way and he fell."