Sunday On Monday Morning Reading Material First Monday in July 2011- America’s goin’ Indie edition
It’s Monday morning. Monday mornings are usually about starting the work week. This Monday? If you’re an American, this Monday is for eating hot dogs and lighting stuff on fire to celebrate the day America signed the paperwork for Independence.
This week: NASA’s clever plan to stop sending shuttles into space was crucial to thwarting the asteroid which could have wiped out human life. Also: the fires that ravaged much of the Sonoran desert have begun to be brought under control. This week a governor in Syria was dismissed because he refused to imitate Bull Connor.
When I was unemployed and without income, I started looking for ways to spend as little money as I could. I unplugged my TV, and the electric bill plummeted. A great many modern conveniences drink power to save seconds. Shutting these things off can add a few dollars back into a wallet.
I make a point of reading contracts before I sign them. Never once been asked to give away my first born, but it could happen. Rule of thumb: if the contract is dense with legal verbiage, I assume that I’ll need a lawyer to get me out of it. If the contract as a mandatory arbitration clause, I assume I’m going to get screwed.
Immigration is a tricky thing. On the one wrist, we’re a nation full of tired, huddled masses yearning to breath free. On the other wrist ZOMG! People who speak languages I don’t know, and eat foods I’ve never had! Me? I like hot sauce on my pasta noodles. If the trade off for that is making it harder for me to eavesdrop on people I share a train with, so be it.
Humanity is amazing. If you put a person in society which has a different accent- or language- that person will adapt. Some of us better than others, but that language- or accent- will be incorporated to some extent. This would seem to indicate that we humans are very much used to moving around and mixing with one another. Migration is a survival trait. When lawmakers attempt to block migration, they attempt to dismiss what may be a fundamental human need. That’s never going to work well.
This wasn’t so much over scripted as it was performance art.
America is the third most populous nation on Earth. The first and second most populous nations have extremely impoverished infrastructure. As a result, the US is the richest nation on Earth. This does not mean that US citizens are better off than citizens of other first world nations. In fact, our refusal to pay more to the government means that our extra wealth is sucked away by non-governmental bureaucracies, making us much poorer than we have to be.
In America, we don’t tax the rich, and don’t give social services to the poor. The rich like to whine about their tax rates, but that’s a ploy to keep them low. The argument seems to be that rich people, by virtue of employing non-rich people, have fulfilled their social obligations. This does implicitly deny that the labor “market” isn’t really a market. So there’s that.
There is a reason that the immigrant community prefers to use the phrase “undocumented worker” rather than “illegal alien”. People come to America because it is the “Land of Opportunity”. Everyone knows that if you come to this country, you have to work. And if you work, you pay taxes. Labor pays taxes, but capital doesn’t. That’s why it’s called a “Capitalist” system.
Speaking of Capitalism
There is a reason why, in King Henry the 6th Part 2, the villain says “The First thing we’ll do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. Lawyers, like any tool, can be used for good or ill. In a civil society, they are the last line of defense against abuses by the powerful. There is little wonder, then, that the Republican party is trying so very hard to destroy the sorts of lawyers who sue companies that sell poison.
I stopped using Facebook a few weeks back. Unbeknownst to me, Google was planning on launching it’s own social network this week. So that’s a plus. Google and Facebook have very different attitudes. Google is like being at a party. And I ask my friend about sunglasses. And she takes me around to all my friends and gets their opinions and comes back tome. And then says “oh, BTW, Dude you don’t know paid me to let you know about his shop. I checked it out, and it seems alright.” Facebook, though, is like being at a party and asking about sunglasses, when a dude in a trench coat walks up and is all “You want sunglasses? I got sunglasses right here, in my pocket. What kind do you want? I’ll sell ‘em to you. Here’s a picture of your mom wearin’ ‘em.” Facebook and Google may do similar things with their social network, but style and intent are an important consideration.
The 21st century is seeing everything go digital. Even that most analog of media– books– have been digitized and put into the cloud. It should come as no surprise that signature gathering is going digital. Or would, if the law allowed for it. I do think the court is correct in it’s reasoning. There is no obvious injustice in the lack of electronic signature gathering, and so the court doesn’t need to intervene in a purely logistical question.
The police are armed. The police are public servants. They are, in the most literal and dangerous sense, your tax dollars at work. This suggests that they ought to be recorded at every possible (professional) moment. Any officer who says they don’t wish to be recorded ought to be held in the deepest suspicion.
In order to lose weight, he needed a pair of things. Firstly, he needed a government willing to tell companies to explain what food they were selling him. Secondly, he needed a government to create conditions whereby walking was a real possibility. Those were exactly the conditions which allowed me to lose 100 pounds.
The word of the week? Theodicy. Know it. Use it. Love it. Or bad things will happen to you.
We nerds and geeks are human. Therefore we need love and partnership. Being human, many of us are bad at finding it. Being geeks, our advice columns are awesome.
One of the deciding factors in the case “Brown Vs. the Board of Education” was that separate could inherently never be equal. One arbitrarily chosen group became the default, and the other inevitably becomes lesser. Data showed that black children were coming desire to play with white dolls instead of black ones– they had internalized the racism. How much easier would it be to internalize sexism when playing games from a first person perspective? As with most forms of institutional “isms”, the problem isn’t so much with any given decision, but the net impact of most decisions coming down the same way.
The Geek Girl Bill of Rights mostly boils down to one: Geek girls have the right to demand respect as both geeks and as girls. Interestingly, most of the attached Geek Girl Commandments would be unnecessary were the men to take the Bill of Rights seriously. So Geek boys: don’t be dicks.
Once upon a time I was a bookseller. A dad and his 8 years oldish son came up to me with a copy of American Gods. Dad asked me if it was a good book. I waxed enthusiastic for a while. He then asked if it was appropriate for someone his son’s age. I looked at him for a second and said that it might be a bit mature– not owing so much to sex or violence, but purely thematically. There are lots of things in that book that a child simply won’t have the life experience to understand. I have yet to see a ratings system which captures this distinction in any sensible way. Instead “mature” seems to be a synonym for “puerile”.
The social value of art is the way it can shape public opinion simply by being engaged with. Artists can create memetic conjunction, disjunction, and contrast to mold minds. All power may flow from the barrel of a gun, but art can determine who holds the gun, and there it is pointed. How much more powerful would an art form be if the creators literally determined every faucet of the world being explored? Millions of people have played Fallout: New Vegas. And all of them have experienced a world in which the LGBT spectrum may not always be respected, but is always present. No movie can possibly make a statement that powerful.
It has always struck me as odd when I’m told that women are less interested in sex than men are. I’ve known women. Many of them. I’ve known men. Many of them. And it seems that the reports I get from men and women cover the same spectrum. Seems that 400 years ago, society pretended that women were always horny and men never were.
I’ve been referring to video games as “art” for a very long time. The US Supreme Court agrees with me. As such, video games are covered under 1st Amendment protection’s protections for speech. The specific law being overturned involved selling violent games to children. The court found that violent games do not tend to make children more prone to violent behavior, and that by restricting access to this form of art to a segment of the population, certain political games might never be made. Indeed, Bioshock is Rated-M (mature), and an intensely political game which tends to demolish the idea of Libertarianism. I’m guessing Scalia hadn’t played it, or he might have ruled differently.
If you read just one link:
Companies are doing credit checks before being willing to give people the jobs that will help cover their bills. Class warfare at it’s most raw.
Today’s theme was not being a dick. So let’s enjoy this clip from 1776.
