Blogs you should be reading: Matt Rolls a Hoover

Matt Morse has a couple of excellent posts from the past few days that deserve to be read and re-read, talked about around dinner tables, and generally praised in an exaggerated and possibly embarrassing manner.

In the latest, he makes an argument that I wish I could convert into liquid form and pour down Jack Valenti’s throat:

My point is that pay per copy model is based on physical distribution. Digital distribution requires a different model. I don’t know if that’s patronage or auction or goodwill or general taxes that get redistributed to programmers based on some measure of their productivity or all software development becomes part of another job description, but the model of charging for physical objects doesn’t work when there’s no physical object. Obviously, the same applies to music (and ebooks, if they ever gain any popularity).

New business models have different implications for copyright. The response of the music and movie industries has been to try to make digital information behave like physical objects, modify copyright law to make that easier, and keep using the same business model. While there is a certain logic to this (from their perspective anyway), it’s utterly backward.

This isn’t a new argument, but saying it the way he has makes things much more clear to the uninitiated than the usual formulations (“intellectual property is non-rivalrous”). And applying it to software development gives us paid nerds a morally-useful chance to eat our own rhetorical dogfood: software is bits; if you get paid for writing software, do you think your non-rivalrous bits are more special, and should be less freely copied, than Britney Spears’ non-rivalrous bits? Are you willing to put your paycheck where your MP3 is?

The day before, while lamenting the death of the composer Luciano Berio, Matt makes a simple and beautiful case for why we IP non-absolutists are IP non-absolutists. Hint: it’s got nothing to do with downloading bootleg copies of Matrix Reloaded from bittorrent.

Creativity depends on past creations. If Haydn had been able to copyright the sonata form in the 18th century, Schubert could not have written the music he did in the 19th century, and Berio would not have had the source for his music in the 20th century. Placing limits on copyright isn’t about theft or getting the results of someone else’s labor for free. It’s about encouraging and rewarding creativity.

This time, without irony: Indeed.

Filed under: copyright

Old news, new ire

From an old Manifesto by the occasionally interesting, but frequently cranky, Eric S. Raymond:

WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Left — the moral blindness that refuses to recognize that free markets, individual liberty, and experimental science have made the West a fundamentally better place than any culture in which jihad, ‘honor killings’, and female genital mutilation are daily practices approved by a stultifying religion.

Ok. Um, how about, instead, you could reject the “idiotarianism” of people who attribute to “the Left” positions, policies, and ideas that have roughly as much to do with the actual positions, policies, and ideas of the left as a ham sandwich has with the Magna Carta?

The “left” doesn’t believe in individual liberty? The “left” doesn’t believe in science? The “left” enjoys and condones religious oppression? Mr. Raymond—I know the left. The left is a friend of mine. That’s not the left. That’s John Ashcroft.

Listen: all that bad stuff you tell me that the left doesn’t care about? Until the guys doing that stuff added blowing up American buildings to the list, the only people who cared about it at all were us nutty wackos on the left. Ok: us, and Jay Leno’s wife.

On the other hand, I wholly agree with this:

WE SHALL REMEMBER that the West’s keenest weapons are reason and the truth; that we must shine a pitiless light on the lies from which terrorist hatred is built; and that we must also be vigilant against the expedient lie from our own side, lest our victories become tainted and hollow, sowing trouble for the future.

"Indeed."

Filed under: politics

Why we fought

Q. Why did we go to war with Iraq?

A. Two flatbed trucks.

Bush, however, speaking to a Polish television network in advance of a visit to Poland on Friday and Saturday, insisted that: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. . . . And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, we found them.”

Breathtaking.

Filed under: politics/war

More good news

Professor Felten writes that Texas’ Super-DMCA has been put to sleep:

Louis Trager at the Washington Internet Daily reports that the Texas Super-DMCA bill appears to be dead, as this year’s legislative session ended without any action on the bill.

But cautions that it may yet rise from the grave:

Apparently MPAA will be patient, in the hope that opponents will tire of the struggle, or maybe in the hope of finding new opportunities to introduce stealth bills. That may be MPAA‘s best hope, since the bills have fared poorly wherever open debate on their merits has been allowed.

Buffy is unemployed now—maybe we can get her on the job.

But seriously, folks, this is a very heartening development. The fact that these laws perish when exposed to the light of day indicates that they may be vulnerable to holy water and the stake, as well. No, I mean, it indicates that the hypothesis that these laws were passed in ignorance, not with malicious intent, is likely true; and that, therefore, constituent pressure may keep them from passing, or even get them rolled back where they already have passed.

Like I like to say, write your rep.

Filed under: politics

Friday night is also all right

For fightin’. Also, Friday morning, Tuesday around tea time, and alternate Mondays, after 6pm, but before 9.

Ok, really, any time is all right for fightin’.

(They’re the best of friends, really.)

Filed under: cats

Better blogs than mine

Found via NZ Bear’s excellent new tiny lil’ blogs showcase, a new group blog, full of exciting news:

There’s an official pub date for Neal Stephenson’s next book: September 23. It’s called Quicksilver, and is part of his Baroque Cycle.

insightful commentary:

Fewer and fewer workers will be supporting an ever-burgeoning retirement class. Whether we pay for the Social Security disbursements to this group by durect tax payments (in the future) or by purchasing bonds (again, in the future), the bottom line is that a tremendously large share of future income must be siphoned off from the working classes to pay for retirees. This has tremendous implications about the standard of living enjoyed by the current generations of young folks.

more insightful commentary:

Clearly the music industry can’t help itself; no opportunity to alienate consumers escapes its watchful gaze. Good grief, these lyric sites are free advertising for the artists and labels. By all means, shut them down and make your product less accessible. Beyond that, I wonder whether the industry can back up its allegations of illegality. We’re now comparing writing down lyrics of songs to downloading songs in their entirety?

And last, but not least, an endorsement I wish I’d written of the guy who taught me everything I know about cooking:

Just about every time I watch, I end up learning something that pops into my brain a few weeks or months down the road. I have yet to smoke salmon in a cardboard box with my own sawdust, but I could if I wanted to.

GO PARROTS!

Filed under: culture/blogs

Template twiddling

There will be some template twiddling going on for the next little while, possibly resulting in extreme ugliness, things going missing, and the creation of a swarm of micro black holes that I’ve been assured will not destroy the earth, or at least, not the good parts—or possibly just not Cleveland, the message was unclear.

Stay tuned

UPDATE: All done. Twiddles included cleaning up the overall design (all vertical lines removed, for example), and making the archive and category pages more sensible and more scalable to large numbers of posts. Categories will still show the top 2 entries in full, for mysterious reasons to be revealed later.

Filed under: notes

More Rep writing

Pay a visit to the EFF‘s Super-DMCA archive or Professor Felten’s blog and you will see that many states have already passed, or are in the process of passing, versions of these stupid, over-broad laws.

The forces of light had a big victory in Colorado last week, when Gov. Bill Owens vetoed that state’s version of the bill. And a smaller victory—at least, a defeat delayed—in Tennessee, when the bill was stalled in committee, largely through the work of these determined folks.

Unfortunately, the forces of light were a little late to the game. My home state of Illinois passed a super-DMCA law last year. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and Michigan have the same or similar laws on the books, as well.

I’ve put together a letter to my state Rep and Senator, asking them to sponsor repeal of the law in IL. (I’m late to the game myself: Aaron Swartz has a fine letter up that he wrote last month; I stole one of his arguments for mine.)

If you live in a state that is effected by a super-DMCA law, or has one pending, I urge you to write a letter to your state representative, or call and express your polite disdain for a law that appears (at least to me) to make all PCs sold after 1998 or so illegal. Feel free to use anything from my letter that you like. These bills were sold to the legislatures with massively false advertising: they thought they were passing a technical correction to cable theft of service laws. If we educate our representatives, I think there’s a halfway decent chance that they will undo the damage (or choose not to do it in the first place).

Filed under: copyright

Hollings

Kos is happy to see that Senator Hollings will be running for re-election again:

He may be old, but he’s probably the only Democrat capable of winning a Senate seat in South Carolina. Thankfully, he wants to run for reelection.

I’m not. Hollings is a creature of the intellectual property absolutists. The bills he has sponsored over the last two years would destroy open source in the US, make the general purpose computer illegal, hand the smidgen of our culture not already under corporate control over to FOX and Disney; and not incidentally, put me and millions of my fellow nerds out of work forever.

If he’s the best the Dems can do in South Carolina, well, too bad for the Dems, says I. No matter how partisan I may wish to be in the Bush era, I have to draw a line somewhere. No politician who supports this sort of luddite garbage will ever get my vote.

Filed under: copyright

A mascot meets its end

This just in from S/a/O World Headquarters: the Orange has been made into stir-fry sauce! And it turned out pretty well. Perhaps beginning a tradition of monday recipe blogging, here’s a rundown of the ultimate fate of our dear mascot.

Seitan and egg noodles with orange sauce

Simple vegan stir-fry with a cool sauce.

UPDATE: More accurately, it can be made vegan, if you substitute rice noodles for egg noodles; in which case, prepare about 6–8oz, according to the package directions.

Ingredients

• 1 package stir-fry cut seitan. (What the hell is seitan? Seitan is a meat substitute made from wheat protein. It differs from real meat in that it has very little fat, a chewier texture, and of course a wildly different flavor. Still good, though, and very easy to work with.)
• 4 or 5 green onions, cut into 1/2 to 1 inch chunks, on the diagonal
• 1 big handful of raw or roasted, unsalted cashews
• 2 wodges of dried egg noodles
• Any other decent stir-fry vegetables
• 1 website mascot (Oranges are best), juiced—about 2/3 cup mascot juice
• 1/4 cup dark soy sauce
• 1/8–1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/8 cup mirin
• 1 tsp ginger powder, or grated fresh ginger
• cayenne to taste
• 1 tsp corn starch
• canola oil

Procedure

1. Cut everything up first.
2. Juice the juiceables, and combine juices, soy sauce, mirin, and spices; taste and adjust sour, sweet, and salt levels to your liking. The sauce should be very strong in flavor—it’s going to get spread all over things.
3. Boil a gallon or so of salted water and cook the egg noodles until al dente. Reserve 1/4 cup of the cooking water and mix with the cornstarch. Drain the noodles and hit them with cold water.
4. Meanwhile, heat a wok or other deep fry pan over very high heat. Seriously. High.
5. When the wok is very hot, add canola oil. Wait a bit for it to heat up, then add the seitan. You want it to brown a bit, so don’t keep it moving any more than is necessary to keep it from sticking.
6. When the seitan is a bit brown(er) around the edges, throw in the onions and cashews, and stir fry until the onions are bright green (the green bits, that is), and starting to wilt.
7. Throw in the egg noodles and stir to mix.
8. Pour in the sauce and stir to mix.
9. Pour in the cornstarch mixture and you get the idea.
10. When the sauce has thickened and is sticking to everything and gleaming, turn off heat, serve, and eat.

Filed under: cooking

Sunday cat blogging?

Ludicriously cute kittens, with ludicrously cute names, from Henry Farrell. But why two days late? Come on, man, join the movement.

ps. The Professor gives his endorsement, as well. Or at least, I think that’s what he was saying

Filed under: cats

E-voting

Speaking of free speech and its relationship to free software: Slashdot reports that Ireland is no better off than the US—they too have e-voting with no accountability or paper trail, and no access to the source code of the voting control software.

In the US, Professor Felten is leading a charge to convince Congress to institute sensible e-voting practices, including the aforementioned paper trails and open code.

Why is this necessary? You may ask. Well. Did you know that Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel is part owner of the e-voting machine company that made the machines that tabulated 85% of the votes in the last two elections in which Hagel ran? Did you know that:

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company’s computer-controlled voting machines showed he’d won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel’s “Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election.” According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

And

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel “was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska.”

(from Common Dreams)

Sort of creates an “appearance of impropriety,” doesn’t it?

Let me add that I am not endorsing Common Dreams’ paranoid vision of a corporate voting machine control conspiracy. I know of no evidence that supports their implication that the Hagel and Chambliss victories in the 2002 Senate campaign were obtained by voting machine fraud. But the point is, I don’t know. No one knows—because the machines are closed-source and can’t be audited, and they create no paper trail for later review. The opportunity for abuse here should be obvious to anyone.

Write your Rep. in support of Professor Felten’s bill, so that we can put these conspiracy theories to bed, before they do any more damage to the idea that we are a democratic nation of laws and fair play.

Filed under: politics

"They're not a problem"

Inappropriate glee. That’s what comes to mind when reading this Spinsanity piece: Dowd spawns Bush media myth.

My glee at seeing Bush caught in a flush of the media toilet is inappropriate: if it’s not good when silly, sloppy reporting and commentary lead the press to circulate falsehoods about Democrats, then it’s also not good when they circulate falsehoods about Republicans, either.

But the more significant and less appropriate glee here belongs to Bush. Anyone who saw any of the press conferences where he said things like this:

All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way—they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

knows what I mean. The sidelong glance. The bouncy body-language. The gleam in the eye. The infamous smirk.

Look, I’m just as happy as anyone else who doesn’t want to be blown up or hijacked or forced to live in fear of same forever to see Al-Qaeda operatives killed. But it’s not a gleeful happiness. It is not the kind of happiness that makes a person glitter in the eye and crack jokes. A little sobriety is called for when celebrating the deaths of one’s enemies. If one wishes to appear, at least, to be civilized.

Filed under: politics

S/a/O presents...

Cats in the sun.

A “Sure It’s Cliche, But Ain’t They Cute?” production.

Filed under: cats

Good news of the day

Freedom to tinker reports that the governor of Colorado has vetoed that state’s Super-DMCA bill.

It’s a start. May the Governors of Florida and Arkansas soon follow suit. Visit the EFF‘s Super-DMCA Archive for more information about these lousy laws.

Filed under: politics

Dean from the right

Interesting discussion about Howard Dean at tacitus’s always thoughtful and thought-provoking site. In the comments, CA Pol Junkie sums up my views pretty well:

Even though Dean still has pitiful name recognition, the Democratic primary campaign is revolving around him. What Bush needs more than anything to be re-elected is to control the media and the issues of the campaign. Dean should scare Republicans because he can take that away.

The last few weeks have been very fun to watch, for a long-time Dean supporter like myself. He really has set the tone and content of the coverage. Even after his war position became moot. That’s a heck of a long way from where he started, dismissed as a too-liberal small-state nobody.

The rest of the comments are also instructive; the right side of the aisle seems convinced that Dean is another Dukakis, and they are clearly obsessed to the point of distraction with the civil unions issue. To which I can only say: keep it up, boyos. While you keep punching at shadows, Dean and his very-savvy media staff will be talking to your neighbors about their kids’ lack of healthcare, and the Bush deficits that will put as all in the poorhouse.

Filed under: politics/2004

Well deserved

My extensive lobbying campaign has at last paid off! Spinsanity’s Brendan Nyhan has won a very well-deserved award. Congratulations, Brendan.

Filed under: politics

Free, as in speech

Stuart Robinson has an excellent new weblog, in which he covers a topic with which I am unhealthily obsessed: the relationship, now and in the future, between Open Code and Free Speech.

Stuart writes:

I use almost exclusively open source software. There are many reason for this, the most important being my intolerance of unjustified crapiness (if my computer is pissing me off I want an excuse and a solution).

Another major advantage of open code is the ability to audit the code. Now you can check that, for example, your computer is not CCing your emails to the FBI or your plan(s) for world domination to Bill Gates. Except that unless you’re a programmer, you won’t understand the code and therefore you can’t.

So where is the benefit for non-programmers? A slightly bizarre comparision I like is to a mute man choosing which country he should claim asylum in. He can’t speak so what use is freedom of speech to him? Others will speak for him, helping to ensure his liberty. Others will audit code for you, helping to ensure your security.

To me, a programmer, this argument is both persuasive and obviously true. I’m not sure it would be, though, to the many, many people in the general public who see technology—computer-related technology especially—as, well, incomprehensible magic.

This is not a put-down: there are many perfectly rational, smart people, for whom the behavior of the software systems they see and use will always be mysterious and unpredictable; just like, for example, car engines are for me.

Which is in fact a helpful analogy: the fact that cars are open systems (for now) means that, though I don’t know a spark plug from my grandmother, I have a choice of many who do, and who will lend me that knowledge in trade for money.

In other words, open systems enable free markets. The opposite is also true: closed systems inhibit free markets.

So, why am I an open source user, programmer, and advocate? Every day now, more and more of the systems that run our society—from the TV networks to the airlines to factories to newspapers to, obviously, the internet—are defined and controlled by software. Software is in the middle when we talk to our friends on the phone, when we buy books at the bookstore, when we watch DVDs, when we post blog entries talking about software.

You do the math.

Filed under: technology

Cat owners beware

I was going to post something about the end of Buffy, how Buffy used to be so great and then was so bad, but became kind of great again at the end (but only kind of), but instead, I’m going to pass on a cautionary tale about a brand of flea medicine for cats (or dogs) that you must never, ever buy.

Let me preface by saying: the cat is ok.

What follows was sent by an old and dear friend. Read it, be angered, and *never buy Hartz products again. Let’s see that invisible hand of the market slap these irresponsible fucks a good one.
bq. I would like to warn you all against using Hartz flea treatment for your cat. This medication comes in tubes somewhat similar to more expensive medications such as Advantage and Frontline, to be applied at the nape of your cat’s neck. I purchased this after very carefully reading all of the specifications on the back (for cats over 10 pounds, greater than 12 weeks of age) and put it on my cat Delilah. About an hour and a half after application, Delilah started acting very strange. She was crawling around on the ground and moving in a jerky manner, lifting and shaking each paw with every step she took, almost as if her feet were wet (they were not). Her ears were back and her eyes were twitching.
bq. The back of the package warns that “some cats may have adverse reactions to the product” and advises the consumer that if this happens, they should bathe their animal and call the vet. I bathed her and she did not improve, so I decided to take her to the emergency weekend vet clinic. Lucky I did, since they told me she could have died if I had not brought her in. She had to be catheterized and have an IV installed, and they had to treat her with medicine to flush the flea treatment from her system. She persisted in having “tremors” (aka seizures) for almost 12 hours after arriving at the hospital and had to stay overnight for a total vet bill of almost $350. Thankfully, she has completely recovered now and will likely have no long-term effects other than a heightened sensitivity to flea medication.
bq. The reason I want to spread the word about this is that the vet clinic told me they see more adverse reactions to this flea medicine than any other, and here’s why: according to the vet, basically, the way these medications work is through blocking neural processes. The old medications used by companies like Hartz apparently are not insect-specific, with the line of thinking being that since your animal is so much larger than the insect, what is lethal to a flea or tick won’t harm your animal. Newer medications like Advantage and Frontline are apparently insect-specific. In addition, in order to compete with these new medications, which provide a month of treatment (whereas the old ones broke down in about a week in the sunlight), Hartz upped the concentration they were using so that it would last longer.
bq. Amazingly, Hartz (and the EPA) know of this situation and have not recalled their product. Instead Hartz has changed the labelling to have “stronger precautionary statements.” I believe this is a dangerous product and should not be used by anyone.
bq. If you do a quick search online you can read literally hundreds of stories about people whose pets have died or suffered severe neurological damage as a result of this product. I wish I had known this before buying the product. I’d also like to stress that this did NOT happen due to improper usage (i.e., using a dog product on a cat)—I followed the directions exactly and could have killed my cat. So please, forward this information to anyone you know who has a cat (or dog, as apparently this same problem happens to many dogs treated with these products) and urge them never to use Hartz products on their pets.
That’s all folks. As the lady says, don’t buy Hartz, and tell your friends.

 * KT: I’m allowed to call you ‘old’ now that you are a Master. Sorry, them’s the rules.

Filed under: cats

Frustration!

Ok, moveable type. Enough. Not only are you sending ping spams like crazy on every update of the ‘Den of evil II’ entry, but, you refuse to allow me to change that entry’s category from ‘cooking’ to ‘copyright’ (Update: fixed it in mysql directly).

This is obviously some kind of cosmic vengeance, wreaked upon me by the technology gods, for the sins of over-endorsement of progress (Den of Evil I), and hubris (“This MT bug is easy for someone with my m4d p3rl sk1||z to fix!”).

Again, apologies to the ping-spammed. Sheesh.

Filed under: technology

Den of evil II

Sticky update: Wow, how very frustrating. Each update has sent another ping. I am a ping spammer! Sorry, Matt and Prof. Felten.

While I’m on the subject of copyright absolutism, here’s a post from the normally-much-smarter-than-me Matt Yglesias that totally
misses the point.

Which is: finally, Bush’s petulance has done some good.

The trade agreement in question, which we’ve signed sith Singapore but piquefully declined to sign with Chile, has a huge, ugly tumor in its heart: the DMCA.

As Charles Cooper (among others) writes, the agreement obliges all parties to adhere to the DMCA‘s circumvention-device and speech restrictions, effectively:

1. exporting this stupid, awful law to other countries, and,
2. making it harder to overturn, repeal, or amend it here.

So, if the people of Chile are free for a little longer to do cryptography research, to watch DVDs on their Linux computers, modchip their Xboxes, and tell their friends about it—all without being liable for huge civil judgements or jail time—they can thank George W. Bush, and his petty, vindictive, mean little heart. For once, though sheer spite, he’s done the right thing.

UPDATE: D’oh! MT’s magical trackback autodiscovery combined with my copying the trackback URL resulted in Prof. Felten’s site getting 2 identical pings. Oops. That really seems like a bug; why would you ever want to double-ping a single story?

UPDATE 2: Looks to me like MT isn’t being very rigorous about stripping whitespace from ping URLs. There’s an effort at avoiding dupes:

MT/Entry.pm
294 my %to_ping = map { $_ => 1 } @{ $entry->to_ping_url_list };

Both ‘http://foo’ and ‘http://foo ’ will both make it into %to_ping in this case. The whitespace is stripped only immediately before the ping is sent:

MT.pm
597 for my $url (@$pings) {
$url =~ s/^\s*//;
$url =~ s/\s*$//;

Simple fix ought to take care of it:

—- Entry.pm.orig Mon May 19 22:28:15 2003
+++ Entry.pm Mon May 19 22:28:17 2003
@@ -291,7 +291,8 @@
my $blog = MT::Blog->load($entry->blog_id);
if ($blog->autodiscover_links) {
my $archive_url = $blog->archive_url;
– my %to_ping = map { $_ => 1 } @{ $entry->to_ping_url_list };
+ my %to_ping = map { $_ =~ s/^\s*(.?)\s$/$1/; $_ => 1 }
+ @{ $entry->to_ping_url_list };
my %pinged = map { $_ => 1 } @{ $entry->pinged_url_list };
my $body = $entry->text;

And hopefully that will be the end of double-pings from me.

Filed under: copyright

Congress: den of evil

From slashdot comes the news that three of the usual suspects in the House have decided that the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright absolutists just don’t have enough money or power, so they need their own in-House cheer squad.

It’s particularly galling that two of these guys are Democrats. (And don’t bring up Hollings—please!) I just don’t see how this is in any way a Democratic, liberal, or even centrist position. How not? Let’s count the ways.

1. Supports big business and big money over the little guy, independant artists, and everyone else
2. Is anti-free speech; witness the effects of the DMCA
3. And is shockingly reactionary, to wit:

A letter sent to some members of Congress last Friday by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., warned of the threat of “ever-changing technologies” []

I’m sorry—the threat of ever-changing technologies? Someone has been watching too many bad movies.

Filed under: copyright

The New Weird

Via Henry Farrell’s Gallowglass comes a link to a fascinating discussion of the present and future of what is generally known as sf. China Miévlle, one of my favorite new authors, has a particularly good take, also cited by Henry. I’m going to quote a different bit, though:

The problem with lots of modern fantasy isn’t just that it’s repetitive and cliche-recycling, it is that in so being, it is a betrayal of the fantastic.

(emphasis in the original) Yes. YES!

Even my favorite modern fantasy series, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, suffers from this syndrome; though due to Martin’s excellent characterization and deep setting, it doesn’t suffer much. And Martin does magic right—keeps it magical, and mainly off-stage, going laudably light on the eldritch chants, pointy ears, and green-fireball hurling.

But much as I love it, as fantasy, it’s honestly not very “fantastic”. Put next to Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, it looks sadly bereft of wonder.

Filed under: general

Anti-corporatism in Britain?

When I saw this very heartening headline in the Guardian: Firms face corporate killing law, I had hopes that Britain was about to enact a ‘death penalty’ for corporations, an idea whose time I think came long, long ago. But it’s not that: it’s a law holding corporations, and their officers, criminally liable for acts of, well, criminality:

The government is expected to announce tomorrow that it will introduce a new offence of corporate manslaughter in a move which will see companies held to account for deaths caused through gross management negligence.

[] The new offence could mean that a director of a corporation would be guilty of corporate killing if a management failure by the company were identified as one of the causes of death and that failure constituted conduct far below what could reasonably be expected.

That’s pretty neat. Pierce the corporate veil, says I. People make the decisions; and if those decisions amount to gross negligence, those people are just as responsible for the results as, for example, people who decide to drive drunk. (Union Carbide, I’m looking at you)

Filed under: politics

Spinsanity rules

A typically brilliant, in depth piece on Bushonomics by Brendan Nyhan, who really deserves a trophy—probably in the shape of a donkey-mounted knight charging at a windmill.

Excerpt:

President Bush is again being contradicted by CEA and his nominee for chairman of the council, N. Gregory Mankiw, on the date a recession began in 2001, the revenue effects of tax cuts and the number of jobs that would be created by his tax cut package.

Good reporting, good stuff.

Filed under: politics

Shame ||: "Odyssey of Frustration"

The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman continues his series on the amazing unseriousness of our “search” for WMDs in Iraq.

Like Kevin Drum, I wonder if there is anything in the world that the Bushistas take seriously, aside from their own pursuit of power and the good life.

How long will Bush go on like this, lying about the most serious of issues, and paying no price for it? Clearly, if Iraq did have significant WMDs, Bush did not believe they did; the resources directed to the search for these weapons had but a miserable shadow of adequacy. If he was seriously concerned that Iraq would give WMDs to terrorists, if that was—as he said—our casus belli, would not finding and locking down the WMDs be the primary mission of the war? The only plausible explanation for what Gellman has reported is a lack of attention to the problem at the highest levels. Which, if Bush was telling the truth about why we went to war, would be an incomprehensible dereliction of duty. He lied.

So, given all of that, my question is: where does it end? Is there anything that Bush could do that would shake the press from its coma, and make them question the “honest but simpleminded” storyline that has given him a free pass to dissemble at will? What will it take? Another war? Another 2 million jobs lost? What?

Filed under: politics/war

Write your Rep re: DMCRA

Hey kids! It’s letter writing campaign season again. Rick Boucher and Zoe Lofgren have both introduced good bills, each of which goes a long way to redressing the harm done to copyright balance by the hideous DMCA.

With enough pressure, maybe one the bills will even get a vote. So, write or call.

Here's my letter -- use what you like. Warning: contains some ass-kissing, but Jan Schakowsky is in fact pretty cool, so, deal with it.

Filed under: copyright

Monkeys in plastic balls

Well, E3 is basically over, with no announcement of Super Monkey Ball 3. It’s not unexpected, since amusement vision is working on the new f-zero. But still, I live in hope. Nintendo in general had such a lame showing this year that I secretly think they may be secretly secreting the best stuff away, to spring out as summer and fall surprises.

Why yes, I do make a habit of kidding myself. Why do you ask?

Filed under: culture/games

Shame

The washington post reports that Iraq’s apparent lack of WMDs is not a problem for Bush.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this sort of thing. I mean, it’s not like it’s unusual for America to fly off to war on a wing and a lie. Tonkin gulf. The Maine. I am aware of the precedents.

But I am suprised, and ashamed.

I’m ashamed to live in a country where we have a press that is in principle free, but in fact is utterly cowed by proximity to power. I’m ashamed to call myself a Democrat, when the “leaders” of my party are spouting garbage like this, from Nancy Pelosi:

"I salute the president for the goal of removing weapons of mass destruction."

Yeah, ok. And I salute Flash Gordon for his dogged pursuit of Ming the Merciless. Whatever. This is not the appropriate response when a President leads the nation into a war, killing hundreds if not thousands, damaging our national security, and ultimately giving aid to our true enemies, under clearly deceptive pretenses. The appropriate response is to impeach him. Or at least, you know, be annoyed.

I’m ashamed that I didn’t do more to prevent Bush’s election. I won’t make that mistake again. Voting is not enough. Pick a candidate you like. Give money. Give time. Write stuff. Get involved, and maybe, maybe we can get back to our sadly interrupted long national nightmare.

Filed under: politics/war

MT F1r57 p057

First post with MT. Sorry, Nucleus authors, but the polish just ain’t there yet. Had to switch.

UPDATE: fully moved over, all posts exported and imported. Boy howdy, is MT a great deal smoother than nucleus, thus far.

Filed under: technology

Mozblog ... hot or not?

This is a test post using mozblog. Is mozblog cool? Well, mozilla is certainly cool. Mozblog jury is still out. Points will be added if this post actually appears.

Update: So-so. Post was added, but post title was missing, and post category was wrong.

Filed under: technology

Friday five

My first friday five. Second attempt. Thank you, nucleus, for eating the first one. Grr.

1 . What drinking water do you prefer -- tap, bottle, purifier, etc.?

Refrigerated tap.

2. What are your favorite flavor of chips?

Cape cod brand regular-old salted potato chips. Or Del Rey tortilla chips.

3. Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most?

Wow, hard. I am a cooking nerd. I cook lots of things. But if I have to pick a favorite, I’ll pick macaroni and goat cheese—recipe below.

4. How do you have your eggs?

Omeletized.

5. Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out?

F. cooked some excellent roasted root vegetables with tempeh the other week, and it was, uh, excellent.

Macaroni and Goat Cheese

Ingredients:

8oz soft goat cheese
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup asiago cheese
8oz elbow pasta
1 small white onion, diced
2 or 3 small roma tomatoes, diced
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
olive oil
salt and pepper

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 375.

Heat olive oil in heavy medium-large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and fry until very lightly caramelized. Reduce heat to low and add cream and tomatoes. When cream is starting to warm up, add goat cheese and 1/2 asiago. Cook, stirring, until they are thoroughly melted in, and the sauce is somewhat reduced. It will have the viscosity of a yogurt drink, and be nice and shiny. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in salted water for about a minute or two less than the lowest number on the package—you want it very al dente, but not crunchy. Drain, and mix into sauce. Check seasoning.

Pour into baking vessel (I use corningware), bake for 15–20 minutes. Meanwhile, mix breadcrumbs with liberal amout of olive oil and remaining asiago cheese. Spread breadcrumb mixture onto macaroni. Increase oven temperature to 425 and bake for another 15–20 minutes, until the crumbs are brown and crunchy.

Serves 4 easily, 2 if you are pigs.

Filed under: cooking

Friday is cat day

Linus poses with the orange.

Filed under: cats

I'm a AAA

Since everyone else is talking about Matrix Reloaded, I am compelled to rant, briefly, about how much I disliked the original. As Kevin Drum hints, it’s the batteries. I’m sorry, but I have a lifelong affection for the second law of thermodynamics, and I don’t like to see it with it’s pretty face pressed into the mud, crying to heaven for merciful release.

People take in more energy than they give out. We use this energy for things like walking to the theater, transporting popcorn from bag to mouth, gaping at the stupidity of a very popular movie, and steeling ourselves once again to endure the scorn of our nerd friends who think we are nit-picking twirps. Thus, logically, the super-intelligent evil AI of the future will be constructing not a giant hyperreal SIMS Online populated by popcorn popping pod people, but instead, a giant, regularly real corn field. Bonus reason: corn is not as good at martial arts as Keanu Reeves. Extra bonus: it is just as good at emoting on screen.

Filed under: sf

Yo La Tengo >> audio

Hey kids! Check it out. One of the best bands in the world is giving away a very, very small number of MP3s on their website. Go get some!

Ok, maybe it’s not that exciting. But it’s better than another story about the RIAA suing college students. At least somebody out there gets it, a little. There’s a big day coming

Filed under: culture/music

Malevolence, or: Brad is wrong, too.

The estimable Brad DeLong writes:

[ list of Bush administration misdeeds ]

Now none of these are cases in which the Bush administration’s view of the national interest and national welfare of the United States is different from mine All of these are cases in which the incompetence of the Bush administration is truly breathtaking.

(emphasis mine) But Brad is wrong. Bush is not incompetent. The aura of incompetence does for him what Reagan's 'teflon', or whatever it was that allowed Clinton to pluck himself from the jaws of the right-wing smear machine again and again, did for them. It provides a neat story for the press, and a never-expiring get-out-of-jail card for the man. Bush doesn't lie: he's just a doofus. He's not evil: he's a boob. He doesn't deliberately stage photo-ops that make it look like he's promoting programs that he's actually working to destroy: he probably doesn't undertand the complexities of the policy he signed off on, poor thing.

He didn’t lead us into a war of conquest and occupation on now demonstrably false pretexts: he was duped by those nasty intelligence people.

Don’t believe the antihype. Bush policy shows entirely too much internal consistency to be the result of incompetence. We would do well to stop underestimating him just because he can’t speak well, in public, off the cuff. Bush is not Chauncey Gardener. He’s a formidable, malevolent politcal manipulator.

This administration has shown it will do anything, up to and including bankrupting the nation and starting an unnecessary and illegal war, for political gain or to pay back its plutocratic allies. And as long as we keep giving the Bushistas implicit credit for good intentions gone wrong, keep calling Bush a moron and not a liar, keep ridiculing him instead of fighting him, he’s going to keep winning, and the damage to our nation, our culture, our civil society, and the world, will continue.

Filed under: politics

Once again: Worst. Episode. Ever.

What exactly is the point of a Simpsons episode that features two lousy songs, two pointless celebrity guests, one good joke, and not a single lick of sense?

Please. Gentlemen. Quit. Stop. Enough already.

Filed under: culture/tv/simpsons