todaysheadspace

My lengthy contribution to the discussion of this piece in the Tribune:

A lot of anarchist and libertarian socialists criticized Marx, and Lenin all the more, for creating a dictatorship of the bureaucracy. Republicans don't know what socialism is, but neither do liberals. The socialist spectrum is as or more diverse than the conventional American political party divides.

Bringing up Linux as a claim against socialism is interesting, because the OS must be understood in the context of Software Libre. While under the lens of capitalism, all the developers retain ownership of their code contributions, the open source licenses mean they have effectively ceded that ownership to the masses. FLOSS forms a whole information economy that works according to one of the basic premises of socialism --collective ownership of the means of production. What's interesting is that capitalistic businesses have voluntarily subsumed themselves to this system, operating on services in an environment where copyleft licenses have blurred the idea of property. So you have capitalist subsystems in a socialist node created out of capitalist law. Software Libre works in the capitalist world, often outperforming proprietary models, and embodies the best ideals of bottom-up socialism.

The whole internet runs on open source. It's often referred to as the LAMP stack (linux, apache, mysql, perl/php/python). I like to speculate that as science and technology improve, manufacturing is going to become cheaper and easier until it's effectively a home industry. Information will be the only thing of trade value, and that information will be open source. It will be socialism by default.

I believe in markets, but I believe most in the marketplace of ideas. That means free exchange, not making ideas into commodities. The sciences and arts must be open source. Information wants to be free.

thebigO

No mere president is going to put the country on the right path (whatever you think that is.) To a disturbing extent, elections serve to convince people they've had all the voice and choice they need, deserve, or are capable of exercising, so they'll stop clamoring and let those who already have power get on with using it.

Still, the choice of leader is informative about what kind of society people want to have, which can help you decide how better to share your ideas and ideals with them.
While there are no saviors, a president does have impact, and I think on the whole an Obama presidency would cause less harm and more good than a McCain presidency.

assoandsosays

There are roughly two motives in quoting someone. In one you expect the esteem for the person to lend credence to the words. In the other you expect the words to be judged on their own, and the attribution is merely giving credit where credit is due --and perhaps to affect the esteem for the person.
The first approach is authoritarian. The second is the ideal of rational discourse.

abortionsforall

The whole question of abortion just about goes away if we had perfect birth control. And what's perfect birth control? Something universal and affordable. Something not dependent on external technology. Something so women can accept or suppress pregnancy at will. Something built into the genes so every woman on the planet has it by right of birth and no kings, priests, prophets, patriarchs, commissars or high commanders can take it away.
Then the only remaining circumstances for abortion would be those cases where unexpected complications lead to grievous risks to the mother's life.

The lengths social conservatives in the early 20th century went to suppress contraceptives or even information on contraceptives and family planning advice serves as part of the proof social conservatism is evil. Maybe if the conservatives of today were more willing to openly condemn the evils of the conservatives of the past, I'd be more charitable about assuming today's conservatives are evil as well. But they won't. Learning that lesson would cost their fragile worldview too much to survive.

rateyourblogIQ

TV Reviews

Probably they just have it set to say everybody's is "genius." Makes people feel good and keeps people linking in.

ETA: oh horrors, my nice clean blog now has a picture in it.

littlethings

Batteries and other electronics are being built by viruses. Diesel fuel, or something like it, is being made with bacteria.

preservingelitism

I rattled off this comment to something on the Trib webpage a couple days back. After some thought I've decided I rather like the wording, so I'm putting it here rather than let it simply languish in the forgotten Trib archives.

::
"Elitist," apparently means anyone who thinks the people should put more thought into politics than just cheering whoever buys the most ad time during NASCAR to tell them how great they are just for being born in the USA. "Elitist" is anyone who thinks the people should think more about philosophy than merely internalizing whatever daddy and the preacher told them in childhood. "Elitist" is anyone who thinks people should care more about art and culture than merely deciding which summer blockbuster has the coolest explosions and which country/pop/hiphop star has the catchiest unchallenging tunes.

You're an "elitist" if you think the people ought to be anything more than easily manipulated pawns of the already wealthy and powerful.
::

gettin'elected

It occurs to me that if one is interested in the U.S. presidential elections, their major issues, and likely results, then the least relevant information is what the candidates themselves say. Look to the wisdom of the crowd, such as it is. Hear what people say about what people say about what people say about what the candidates say. Examine the textures of information and try to take the derivative of it all.

I don't think it's yet time to run for the hills, move to Sweden, sign up for Re-Ned-ucation, or wage bloody revolution.

justnicely.youknow

Oy, you know that hyperalert state where you're somewhat drunk and you focus and rebalance your sensory systems 'cause you know you can't quite trust your automatics, and then when you get home you can relax and so then the alcohol effects really come to your conscious attention? Yeah, me too.

Reggae still annoys me on radio, but it makes pretty decent bar live music.

Note to all musicians travelling to Utah: bring a fair sound artist along, 'cause you can't trust the club's sound guy to know shit around here.