Will of the People

To briefly revisit a limited issue with postmodernism (spoiler: I think postmodernism is rubbish and the wrong direction to go from the fundamentally right challenges posed by relativism) and "X studies" fields (where X is gender, feminist, black, latino, or a few other things), I have a better criticism of Stanley Fish's criticism of Alan Sokal's prank. ( Read more... )

On a personal note, whenever we see papers, books, and similar that connect radically disparate ideas, we should be very skeptical, even if these ideas are fascinating or the authors brilliant/funny/nice. Yes, perhaps marxist theory and queer theory can tell us something about media consolidation, but more likely we have a few tame observations that cultural creation is becoming more open dressed up in very fancy clothes (if so, Lawrence Lessig says it better and with less questionability). Yes, perhaps cellular automata are teh sekkrit path to understanding all of reality, but more likely we have a bright guy with a few neat ideas who doesn't have enough people around him telling him when he's full of shit or unoriginal.

A further personal note - it's important to tell people when they're full of shit (or unoriginal, or both). It's too easy for people to decide "I will be original and brilliant", write their manifestos/books/etc, and not realise that their foundations lead them to reinvent the wheel for the 57th time, badly, and that there are also some rather well established criticisms for what they're trying to do if only they would look. I've had this happen a few times in my life - where I had to say "dude, go look up anarchoprimitivism", "libertarianism", "christian socialism", "turtle logo", "lisp", to someone who had essentially synthesised it themself (I've also had a number of "original" ideas that turned out to be not so original).

(note that saying "I disagree", "I disagree and find your ideas disturbing", "you're only half-right", "your criticisms are fine but your conclusions are poor", "you're full of shit", and "you reinvented the wheel" are all different things you might say - be sure it's clear in your mind which of these you're actually saying)

Largely unrelated, I am happy to see that Howard Dean is making a comeback. ( Read more... )

This was another lonely weekend, with some mild amusements:( Read more... )

Gamewise:( Read more... )

Obama is a great speaker, but I remain annoyed at how philosophically juvenile almost all good political speeches have been throughout history, including his. When I hear him talking about universal rights and values, ( Read more... )

Every so often I listen to Danny Elfman's 「The Little Things」, an Oingo-Boingo-esque song he wrote for the film 「Wanted」. It's like a 「What if?」 peek into a world of if OB had not broken up. Taking the long view, I think OB is probably my favourite band, better than TMBG and perhaps better than (or at least on par with) Firewater and Zappa.

Importance of and goals in participating in online forii (really rather partisian and a bit philosophic):( Read more... )

(Note: This entry was begun Friday evening, but was not finished or posted until Saturday to give me time to re-sync my gallery to include relevant photos as well as time to rest - odd references to "now" might not have been massaged into anything temporally coherent. Photos are still landing on my media webserver, so a followup post will include an URL once they're there and spidereyeballed)

I decided to go to the G20 protest afterall, even given my nuanced stance towards the protested subject overall (I oppose global capitalism, particularly the closer-to-lassiez-faire sort, and strongly dislike the IMF and World Bank, but think the G20 itself is possibly benign or at least not ill-intentioned (not that we will ever know, given the lack of published agendas/minutes)). I brought my camera, and took a number of nice photos. Overview of today that includes the protest and other things:

( Read more... )

For the whole event, I've been listening to police radio online - I wasn't aware it was legal to listen to it, but it's simple enough that maybe nobody enforces the prohibition anymore (if there was one).

I apparently missed the big, interesting nastiness in Oakland after the main protest - there was another march that went outside where the police wanted it to go, and they used pepper and tear gas and a new sonic weapon to disperse the crowd. Is this appropriate? First, we should examine the issue of permits and plans for marches - Is the state ability to require this in the public interest? I think the core reasons they might be able to argue that it is in a society that defaults to being libertine are:

• Traffic - requiring registration allows for effective rerouting of traffic around affected areas
• Police presence and neighbourhood knowledge - allowing police and residents to take appropriate precautions to prevent property damage (moving cars, getting stuff out of the way
• Litter - ensuring adequate cleanup is done after an event
• Liability - If an event gets way out of hand, those who registered it would act at least as a point of contact, possibly more

Are these good enough reasons to require registration? Should the state retain the ability to say no? I think the first two reasons are the strongest - at the very least it's not a great idea to have people march into a busy street and take it over on a whim, and things sometimes are broken by a crowd that feels the onus of personal responsibility lessened. All of this does add up to what constitutes a weak yes for me - that registration should be required, but it should not be a huge deal if it is not done and penalties and restraint should be light provided no violence or property damage is being done (iding people and issuing a single small fine for being present in such an assembly should be the most done in peacable but nonregistered assembly). Should the state retain the ability to say no or literally stop a march that is already ongoing? Only based on either strong security concerns, significant damage or violence, or if the group itself is prohibited (I am comfortable with an absolute prohibition on racist marches, e.g. Klan rallies, neo-facists, and the like). In the general case, permits should be easy to get, free-or-inexpensive, and should be a rubber stamp yes in the majority of cases. From what I understand, the Pittsburgh police have denied a number of reasonable permits for marches and gatherings, and that taints their restraint of this one. Were the tools used appropriate? I believe not - tear gas and sonic weapons on a nonviolent crowd are not appropriate, and in fact their demand for the march to disband was illegitimate. In the circumstances, direct action against the police would have been appropriate (regretful as that is - the actual police on the street were (probably) not involved in the poor decisions that would justify direct action). Such direct action should be limited to disarming and restraining the police involved and destruction of the sonic weapon and tear gas. Beyond being necessary for avoiding undue restraint of civil liberties, such actions should be considered less problematic because the individual police, like the military and others in hierarchial or non-hierarchial structures of humanity, have an obligation to the public good and should not be excused for their actions by the fact of those social structures. That said, this direct action should be highly functional rather than symbolic and emotionally charged - it differs from direct action against people and organisations that have deep human flaws and would have no place in the better world we would like to build. The moral failing of saying "I will do whatever is ordered from above" is a much smaller one (and categorically different) than many others that might drive us to conflict with people and organisations.

Obama commented on the protests suggesting that we might've been pleased at the results of the G20 meeting if we had bothered to pay attention. Perhaps that would be easier if the G20 were more of an open event - I may be tooting my own horn a bit in saying that I am both very liberal and pretty open-and-independent minded about these kinds of things, but it is hard not to be suspicious when a number of bankers and government types have a big summit with private agendas, private meetings, and it includes organisations like the IMF and World Bank for which we have legitimate loathing. If the G20 is not in fact an instrument promoting and protecting a lassiez-faire corporate capitalism, it is not easy for us to know and trust that. I am willing to assume that Obama believes he's serving the people, but consider him to be only moderately better than Tony Blair - leagues better than BushJr but still committed to a kinder version of an economic system that we hold to be ultimately bad for humanity. Obama's failure, in our eyes, is that he is not a socialist, even if he is full of good will and intelligence.

(Mohammad Khatami on the left, Mohammad Ali Abtahi on the right)

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former reformist government minister under Mohammad Khatami, was recently arrested in Iran, according to a guest-blogger on his blog.

I have long enjoyed the candid commentary by Abtahi over the years I have read his blog, and wish him, Khatami, and Mosavi well in the ongoing political mess over there. I feel like I have a personal stake in this now as I've exchanged a mail or two with Abtahi and respect him. (In politics, you don't always get to design the people or the circumstances you like from scratch, but some people, regardless of how they would move things relative to where you are, are good people).

You may do a google news search and find your own story on him.

(I am still without power)

For what it's worth, I endorse Mir-Hussein Mosavi for the president of Iran in the (currently running) election.( Read more... )

Was a bit late to work today - one of the cats insisted on playing tag with me through the shower curtain. I could've sworn I already talked about this here, but grep says no - my blog is unfortunately at least partly my substitute for social interaction and a handful of the ideas that go through my head - when I express them somewhere, I easily forget where.

An unfortunate set of events accompanying the generally positive presidental election of 2008 was a set of plebiscites in some US states, namely Calfornia, Arizona, and Florida, banning gay marriage. These were all successful, in theory pushing back recent decisions by some courts that not registering gay marriage is a violation of civil rights.( Read more... )

I also recently was reminded about how I was fairly certain, when speaking with someone I used to know that aimed to be a future US President, that America was not yet ready to consider people who break the mould that much, our society only recently having given blacks and women rights now considered fundamental, and still having issues with those shifts in society not being completely stabilised/accepted. The recent elections make me realise how wrong I was on that front - while there obviously are a fair number of people who hang behind on these issues, it's possible for the mainstream to push past their objections - given that we have a black president-elect with a Roman Catholic VP, and had a republican female VP candidate, I had misjudged the staticisty of our political system, believing that only when generations closer to mine come into their prime would we see the system open up a bit. Of course, the radical increase in new voter numbers helped (which I also did not believe likely).

A quick additional reason the United States needs a nuanced stance towards Israel( Read more... )

With Obama's election being a major move against racism and old boys networks in our country (where people were still willing to go on TV saying that they're unhappy about voting for a black man but did it for sake of the economy), I am very concerned for his health - the substance of the blow for a number of people with racist sentiments will land during the first two years of his presidency as people accept that they have a black president. I understand that the FBI has already defused a number of plots that would end up with his death - I hope none make it through - among the more strongly racist elements in our society he's wearing the biggest bulls-eye in the world.

We should take to heart on the gay marriage issue as well as Obama's presidency (albeit on different timescales) how public opinion adapts to new realities - every time a major civil rights accomplishment was made (from the end of slavery to voting rights for women), there was a rapid shift of public approval from nearly 50-50 to deep support within a very short time.

Not feeling well today, not likely to be very productive. I don't think it's related to the voting thing.

Who does "rock the vote" help?( Read more... )

After voting, while on campus I saw an exhibit "Your Town, Inc." in the gallery. It was a mix of (relatively uninteresting) ad-hoc construction and some interesting photographs taken in small towns across the US that had Wall-Mart and similar set up shop, drive out local business, and then move out leaving large, ugly buildings - some of the things these towns did with the abandoned buildings were rather creative, and I thought for a moment that maybe the small towns got the better end of the deal... apart from three things:( Read more... )

"I want to make the world a bitter place""Don't you mean...""I know what I said"

I find it incredibly irritating when people can't manage to talk about divisive topics without reverting to a mental age of 12. A difference between friends and SOs is that it's pretty tacky to try to tell friends how to be - they're more of a take-me-or-leave-me type of thing. It's also not cool to return the rudeness. When people are rude enough though, it's not fun fighting the urge to just leave, or alternatively being pissed for a fair time after that. Sigh.

It's amusing that almost every unused storefront in SqHill has been rented by the Obama campaign - I wonder if they've taken into account that some slices of liberals take individualism to the point where they (irrationally to the extent that it goes against their clear interests) will be inclined to jump off of a bandwagon that's oversold. A variant on that is perhaps noble (not being inclined to jump on a bandwagon one doesn't believe in/know enough about for the sake of being there with everyone else), but maybe overselling is risky. Or perhaps not - maybe people who are like that are not common enough to be worth worrying about. McCain supporters are fairly rare in town (as far as I can tell, only a handful of the Frummers in SqHill and very few others are visibly for him here, by the house signs).

In the literature particularly targeting SqHill, there's some mention of his support for Israel as a Jewish state - ( Read more... )

Saw someone who looked a bit like Lizza at the 61c today, heart skipped a beat and made my mood much worse... which reminds me of when I was in my hotel room in SF last week and nearly fell over from shock when I saw myself in an unexpected mirror while I was not very clothed. There's something interestingly involved in those first fractions of a second of seeing another person - a "HEY! MENTAL ADJUSTMENT!" type of feeling that's interesting to try to capture the flavour of.

I'm a bit weirded out that I've found a bug in ATI drivers for Xorg that results in artifacts that can be captured with xwd (and other screen-capture programs). Hardware acceleration is sometimes weird.

I got a good chuckle out of this. I'm also amused (mostly unrelated) that if one can still think with a black hat on, eventually one's good ideas for what one would do if one were actually a spammer or otherwise malicious will be figured out and applied by actual spammers, completely independently. Convergence in action...

As a kind of sequel to this entry, the reasoning behind my support of Barack Obama as US President and expectations for him:( Read more... )

On another note, I'm somewhat weirded out to recently notice some voices I never noticed before in songs I've heard many times before (same music file, even). I am also very tired, but will probably spend tonight at the 61c café anyhow unless something better turns up.

The event wasn't too different from what I expected in some ways. ( Read more... )

Currently, I'm also kind of amused by the enthymology of the word "jeopardy", and the idea that the game show's title is a slightly more elaborate play on words rather than a simple one.

Part of my job involves working with people in the engineering department in the bowels of Roberts Hall - the cultural differences are pretty interesting. ( Read more... )

Scott Adams (of dilbert)'s most recent blog entry describes a dilemma that relates to some irritants I have when conversing with people. In another entry, he expresses some disdain for learning for learning's sake though, which bugs me.

Hopefully Mohammad Khatami will run against Ahmadinejad in the upcoming Persian presidential election.

All I seem to want to do in my spare time is be asleep.

Later tonight, I'm going to see Jerry White of the Socialist Equality Party talk about the recent economic woes (UPitt, Cathedral of Learning Room339, 19:00). I expect it to be mostly rubbish, but possibly interesting rubbish. ( Read more... )

Colin Powell has been big in the news recently - a long-term moderate Republican, he made waves by (as a kind of mirror of Joe Lieberman) endorsing Barack Obama (because he felt the other team was bad for America in a non-value-difference way) and for statements on race and religion in society. ( Read more... )

Also interesting, but a bit more general - Wikipedia (hooray for "no original research") has enumerated aspects of a "Powell Doctrine" of foreign intervention, comparing them with other recent and historical notions of when/how the US should intervene.( Read more... )

One more little sigh - I have failed to rediscover the magic set of things to pass to the Linux kernel to tell it that my i8042 (keyboard/busmouse controller in my laptop) is lousy and to both ignore the trackpad and treat the keyboard delicately. The trackpad is indeed disabled, but the keyboard randomly repeats keys (maybe I had to tell it not to poll the battery very often?). At work, it is a joy to use a USB keyboard instead. I would be thrilled if in the future even the builtin pointers and keyboards on laptops are connected to the system "via" USB. I've seen the i8042 misbehave on a wide variety of laptops (even on windows sometimes), and am convinced that that chip needs to be laid to rest. I really don't want my next laptop to have these same issues.

I'm not exactly looking forward to the Palo Alto trip this coming week, and am still trying to decide if I want to drive to ColumbusOhio for Halloween as soon as I get back or whether I will be tired from a week's travel. My personal life still is painfully empty, and my reactions to it don't interact well with any hope for improving it. Blah. At least California will be warm, I think, and it'll be at least a bit amusing to see HP's headquarters.

The debate was largely as suspected:( Read more... )

The coldening weather reached the point where my hands and feet are cold all the time now and I spend an extra minute whenever I'm in a bathroom warming my hands up (temporary bliss!). I'm not looking forward to that coldness creeping inward (as I know it will) and I'm sure seasonal depression will not stack well on my already fragile mental state.

Suitably inclined people might want to dig through Palin's history and adapt the above-noted "When I Was a Lad" G/S song for her.

Was at 61c this evening, overheard an old guy who I've often found irritating for his very traditional/regressive values talking about sexuality, he speculated that all non-straight sexual preference derives from some sort of trauma: prison, childhood abuse, etc, and hoped neither he nor anyone he knew would have that kind of a "terrible" existence. Afterwards he went on to reminisce about how everything was better in the old days, etc etc. It's sometimes an interesting exercise to simply listen to perspectives one so strongly disagrees with and dislikes.

General outlook on politics, spark of life, and aging (CAUTION: moves into politics):( Read more... )

We consider the following as reasonable starting points for definitional discussions for these movements:( Read more... )

Unrelated:

• I recently learned that ancient SUN optical mousepads are one of the best surfaces around for modern optical mice.
• I want to trace though how HOSVDs work (and make sure I really understand SVDs). Unfortunately, I am well beyond rusty in math related to tensors, and (as always) I loathe standard mathematical notation (just as frustrating for music)
• Still thinking about some news events that happened a bit ago - will probably eventually post about them
• I'm pretty sure I want to learn the Persian language. Starting to look for a good textbook...

Thinking about political frustration, inspired by recently watching Wag the Dog and Bulworth too close to each other. As they're both films that prod playfully at political problems in the USA (and accidentally other cultures - these are human problems rather than being specifically American ones), ( Read more... )

To tiptoe a bit further into politics in this post, I think this guy's criticism of Libertarian thought, at least the kind that I was involved in when I was younger, is mostly on par. It's unfortunate that he chose such an inflammatory title - it probably descends from internet tradition (flaming that is not flaming)..

Recently I've been playing a bit with searching public political campaign donations of people I know..( Read more... )

I would be very pleased if CMU would talk to me about some of the jobs I've applied for soon, although I'm starting to apply for jobs at MIT now too (and probably will at UTAustin, should I see ones that look particularly cool (incidentally, I discovered that TAMU has a branch campus in Mexico. Life is sometimes strange)). I am also weirded out by how little money I seem to spend - it seems that my current savings/spendings might permit me to go jobless for another year or two if I wanted to. That would probably be a terrible idea though.

I should spend some days at the Beehive...

Geek culture distribution: ( Read more... )

Onto news and thoughts daran: ( Read more... )

Strange daydream - really old butterflies with long beards. Do butterflies really get old?

Returning to an old question in political philosophy: Does the world need idealists? ( Read more... )

Lightly related, sometimes it's really interesting to see heated debates between various groups or perspectives one dislikes - one has the interesting sensation for feeling empathy for positions one might not initially be inclined to like when one is only comparing them to one's own position. This sensation is one of my favourite in philosophy - it is one of the things that leads, I think, most directly to a broader perspective (brief aside: Illinois' State Representative Monique Davis appears to dislike broad exposure to different perspectives). In this case, Bill O'Reilly squares off against Ron Paul.( Read more... )

Perhaps also interesting:( Read more... )

Obama recently gave a speech on race issues in America that I thought was rather good - it brought into the public eye a number of realities that are not commonly discussed by politicians. In some ways it's reminiscent of Bill Cosby's famous Pound Cake Speech. For those of you who have not yet seen Obama's speech, it's available in four parts here:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four

Breaking radio silence to suggest to my American readers that for the primary elections, y'all vote for Barack Obama if you're a democratic and John McCain if you're a republican. My advice is naturally based on my values, YMMV. Slightly more detail:( Read more... )

Jayne is gone, back to 2 cats, job ended, still in a mentally ugly place.

The "power inversion" (or power shift, or decentralisation, or democratisation of markets or hobbyist social replacement of markets, or birth of the information age) is a trend in progress in our society, fueling and fueled by the internet. With the tools and collaboration potential our middle classes have combined with the spare time some classes of society have attained, hobbyist efforts can be used to create things of traditional value, and because we tend to think of these things as hobbyist, our decision not to charge for them combined with the potential for higher quality (with some kinds of information age "products") leads to the destruction of several traditional markets, a burst of social creativity/activity/fluidity, and following from those two, a feeling of empowerment and liberation from tradition. With the opening of media, anyone has the potential to reach an audience and traditional media sources are heavily threatened.

What are the risks of this, and what are the risks to this?( Read more... )

I wonder if the Parrot Virtual Machine could catch on big.. Also, does Rob Pike's "A Concurrent Window System" seem a reasonable approach to doing graphical programming for desktops?