Posts from — July 2003

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great- Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

Taboo has been played 4158 times.

Your Moralising Quotient of 0.04 compares to an average Moralising Quotient of 0.24. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are more permissive than average.

Your Interference Factor of 0.00 compares to an average Interference Factor of 0.15. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are less likely to recommend societal interference in matters of moral wrongdoing, in the form of prevention or punishment, than average.

Your Universalising Factor of 0.00 compares to an average Universalising Factor of 0.34. This means you are less likely than average to see moral wrongdoing in universal terms – that is, without regard to prevailing cultural norms and social conventions (at least as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned).

119321 people have completed this activity to date.

You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets.

This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.37 hits and bites 1.10 bullets.
7.49% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.

46.95% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction

Googlitical. Go to Google, type in “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” click I'm Feeling Lucky and see The Result. [MetaFilter]

heh heard about it this morning, its nifty.

The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time÷not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.

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Secret Santa terrorism.

Ottawa Citizen: One of the CIA's secrets — a classified report about a plot by the “Ebenezer Scrooge” terrorist group to attack Santa Claus and his reindeer — has finally been revealed after almost 30 years.

Researchers who recently uncovered the report say the joke memo warning about a potential terror attack on the North Pole, which had been classified “secret” for decades, speaks more about the U.S. government's obsession with keeping information from the public than it does of the black humor of the spies who wrote it.

[The Agonist]

i find this to be silly yet humanizing, i wonder if it was released on purpose.

nodes, or actors, or networks. This is a response to jeremy's comments on actor construction? and a response entry (June 30, 2003) in his blog regarding the relationship of actors and networks as used/presented by the actor-network theory and methodology. Jeremy: “i replied to this on his blog too, but ultimately my position is to… [infoSophy: Socio-technological Rendering of Information]

I continued this conversation on his blog. it is interesting how different people can come to the same theory in different ways. I wrote some of one of the answers to one of my prelim questions on actor-network theory. I think i have a different position than most people on this topic. It is heavily informed by sts literature and continental philosophy.

BOFH and The Engineer. Episode 13 Call out beyond sense of duty [The Register]

new bofh, mmmm, bofh, goooood

TexTales: designed to support mobile public discourse.

Over at the MIT Media Lab is an interesting paper (pdf) entitled Constructing Public Discourse with Ethnographic/SMS ãTextsä.

[Smart Mobs]

this is an interesting text.

McCloud's Micropayments are Here. … and where am I? Yes, Scott McCloud has completed a “mature” new comic called The Right Number, and placed a smidgen of it online for free. The rest can be bought for $0.25 (after you buy a $3 debit… [grandtextauto]

well someone has to experiment with this, i think scholarly publishing and related publishing can't do this as well though, i think it is a different market.