All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

Democrats United:

Who’s in?

“

(Via Michael Bérubé Online.)

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can’t we just buy a nice middle american country and move there and make our own utopia? it would be cheaper and easier…..

bush secrecy

(Via .)

this outlines the secrecy measures that the current administration is implementing to stop citizens from knowing what the government is doing….. in a representative democracy or republic, government needs to be accountable to its citizens and to do that, it must be transparent.

Amateurs and professionals: “The distinction between professionals and amateurs is one that’s so familiar today as to seem perfectly natural. Professionals are serious, amateurs are dilettantes; professionals know what they’re doing, and have credentials and training, amateurs don’t; professionals get paid, amateurs are hobbyists. Of course, in a few fields there are exceptions to the rule: astronomy, for example, continues to have a place for amateur comet-watchers. —snip—

(Via Future Now.)

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I generally term this the professionalization of leisure in the DIY culture. this theory fits with some of my thoughts though.

Open source’s next frontier: “

Open-source software, increasingly popular with budget-conscious companies, is beginning to expand into a new area: The lucrative infrastructure-software market dominated by industry giants such as Microsoft.

http://news.com.com/Open+sources+next+frontier/2100-7344_3-5460334.html?tag=nefd.pop

“

(Via Information Policy.)

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it has never been clear, other than in the sense of ‘if you buy ibm, no one will fire you’, why companies pay for software. i can see paying for specialty software, hiring someone to write it, or customize something. however, there are huge costs in the purchase of software that can be freely had…. this is nonsensical…..

Bloglines Broken (Not Anymore): “

Like many others, I use Bloglines RSS Reader to both read RSS feeds and provide a blogroll for my blog. Well, the mobile version is now having errors, with seemingly someone forgetting to close a tag:

An error occured:

Traceback (innermost last):
File “cgi.c”, line 1391, in cgi_display()
File “csparse.c”, line 291, in cs_parse_file()
File “csparse.c”, line 438, in cs_parse_string()
ParseError: [/var/bloglines/current/content/web/myblogs_subs.mobile.cs:29] Missing end ?> at evar:Lang.subXNew)

The Lesson Is: Check your code before putting it in production environment.

UPDATE: Five minutes after contacting Bloglines, I received a response that the problem has been fixed. Double checking it, indeed it has. Thanks guys!

“

(Via NetWizard’s Blog.)

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i think that conceptually bloglines has always been broken because it allows readers to make private their blogroll, which they could always do, but i find it more interesting to see blogrolls in public. so for me, bloglines is always broken.

The great Social Security swindle: “”You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house . . .(to one of the men) . . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can.”

Christmas season is “It’s a Wonderful Life” season, and anyone who has seen that movie — which ought to be pretty much everyone by now — will remember Jimmy Stewart’s plain-spoken explanation of banking, delivered to angry customers who have begun a run on the bank where he works.

Today it’s the Bush administration that’s started a run on the institution of Social Security. And so far no one in Washington has had the gumption or the forthrightness to get up, like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, and tell the American people what’s really going on.

Maybe seniors — and the rest of us — should be scared.”

(Via Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment.)

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yes we should be scared, concerned, etc. but you know as a voting block, we are nothing in comparison to the boomers. their policies will govern ours well past the point of no return…. you can see this with the deficit spending. it is not that we have to pay it back, but we do have to pay interest…. it can’t go on forever and it can’t be allowed to outpace our theoretical productive growth, which…. should fall as the boomers retire.

U.S. Forces Using Chemical Weapons On Civilians In Fallujah: “

‘Unusual Weapons’ Used in Fallujah
By Dahr Jamail for Common Dreams.

The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report..

”Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. ”They used everything — tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground.”

Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.

”They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud,” Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. ”Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.”

He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects. ”People suffered so much from these,” he said.

Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the cordon U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.

”Doctors in Fallujah are reporting to me that there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. ”Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.”

Kassem Mohammed Ahmed who escaped from Fallujah a little over a week ago told IPS he witnessed many atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in the city.

”I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” he said. ”This happened so many times.”…

“

(Via On Lisa Rein’s Radar.)

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now… there is probably a bit of excess in this reporting, but…. even if some is true…. then we have a real problem.

Butterflies and Wheels Article: “”

(Via .)

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i’m no fan of derrida, never have been. But here is my issue, Leiter says that Derrida strikes out in American philosophy, etc.(traditional analytic philosophy) This might be true, but from my perspective…. most of what passes for philosophy from leiter’s geographically defined schools generally should not be considered philosophy, but methodology and its application to a set of historically defined philosophical problems(which to me is not philosophy, but yet one more instance of academics making the means to knowledge the ends of knowledge). Now, Derrida is no better in proposing a methodology, but at least he tried to do something interesting and he opened up for some people a way of thinking, and that encouraged their pursuit and love of wisdom. Most current philosophy, go read a highly respected philosophy journal as evidence, does not encourage people to to think, or to love wisdom and learning, contrarily it establishes a territory and viciously defends borders against interlopers….. as all disciplines do…. nothing new there….

The New Yorker: “”

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there is nothing a bit of kindness can’t kill

selkie’s encounter with the tsa. “

tsa needs to know that not everyone handles there intimidation well…. or thinks their humor is funny.