Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Periodic Link Dump, number 1

The list of links in my RSS feed that I keep wanting to follow-up on is getting too long. Time to dump them somewhere more permanent before they expire. Maybe someone else will find them interesting too.

Energy
Climate
Economics
Security
Politics
  • Lawrence Lessig, the professor who's been at the forefront trying to reform digital copyright law (even arguing before the Supreme Court against the extension of Micky Mouse's protection) has now turned his focus to the nature and elimination of corruption. Here's a summary of his plan for reforming congress (first his diagnosis, and then his recommendation)
  • Book review: the wrecking crew. How conservatives got us where we are.
  • A careful article laying out the argument that corruption this bad was not an accident.
  • Can you tell the difference between Bush and the old 50's era Batman from reading quotes?
  • Does selecting Biden make Obama seem more like the candidate of change again?
  • Alternatively, does it mean Obama is acknowledging that the "change" argument hasn't been made yet?
World

Monday, August 25, 2008

Animals Plus Fermentation



Campy as all hell, but, I couldn't resist. They're drunken animals!!

Friday, August 1, 2008

“read Kant, JS Mill, Bentham, Singer, etc. Noobs.”

I know I'm sometimes draggin' down the party here with serious moral questions, most of them geeky in some form or fashion, but this one was just too good to pass up.

An excellent article from the NYT on a modern techo-moral topic I've thought about a lot the more time I've spent with online "communities". It concerns the practice and eithics of "Trolling", defined by Wikipedia as "someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."

Harmless fun, or the sign that anonymity brings out the worst in human nature? And if so, why? For the lulz, of course ... but is there more to it then that?

Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html