Indignant Desert Birds

The girlfriend insisted I share this with you.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for waffles. Sundays are for assessing the damage. Sundays might be for playing games and seeing demos of new ones. Possibly, Sundays are for a tarot convention. Sundays are occasionally for hiding in the mountains. And mayhaps– but only mayhaps, Sunday Mornings are for trying not to freak out.

This week: an earthquake hit the East Coast of the US- where there ought not be any active fault lines. A hurricane hit the East Coast of the US- where hurricanes ought not be. This week the War in Libya took a sudden turn for the better when the capitol city of Tripoli rose up against it’s dictator. And Steve Jobs announced his retirement as CEO of Apple inc.

Making copies of digital things is really easy. In fact, without the ability to make copies of digital things, computers and computer networks simply wouldn’t be able to function. In a universe of digital media, piracy becomes very, very easy. The only way to really combat piracy is to give paying customers something that pirates cannot. Fox tried to do it the other way around. And ended up much worse for it.

Gas prices are a function of corporate greed in much the same way that cat food prices are. There is robust enough competition in the petroleum extracting industries that prices do follow basic laws of supply and demand. Gas prices are so high because demand is incredibly high. Stricter American fuel efficient laws would see prices fall. A huge gas tax increase coupled with investment in mass transit alternatives would see gas prices plummet. And, of course, freedom from traffic jams would see quality of life skyrocket.

America’s electoral college system really is fine the way it is. It’s only been different from the popular vote 3 times in over 200 years of operation. Arrow’s Theorem tells us that it’s impossible to eliminate all odd results from a voting system, and so tinkering with the College seems like a waste of energy. The Senate, though. Oh my yes does the Senate need radical change. The “cooling saucer of American Democracy” has caused the system to freeze to uselessness. The usual remedy of “throw[ing] the rascals out” paradoxically allows them even more power. Utterly changing the way States borders are drawn would be of enormous help in that regard.

Data presentation is as- or more- important to shaping opinion than the underlying data. This can cause a major problem- data doesn’t stop being true just because people are wrong about it. Funny thing about the way my brain works: when I saw that puzzle my first instinct was to count the squares. I simply don’t trust my own lyin’ eyes.

In my religion, names are among the most powerful tools. A name- a true name- is identity. The power to name something is to claim ownership over at least some small part of it. Google’s stated aim “is to organize the world‘s information”; this is their bid to be the world’s most powerful entity.

You’ve never wondered what cows sound like in Europe. You should have.

The fact that AT&T thinks they can get away with overcharging every consumer by 10,000,000 Percent should be taken as proof that they do not believe themselves to be in a competition with anyone. If consumers could and did routinely change mobile carriers, we’d either see much better service, much lower prices, or both. Congress or the FCC could simply outlaw long cellphone contracts. Oddly that consumer-focused bit of market restoration is called “interfering with the workings of the free market”.

And then I saw this post. And now I’m a romantic. I couldn’t be (un)manic if I tried.

There is most definitely a brand of feminism that would seek to replace the patriarchy with a matriarchy. I’ve studied under people who held that this would create a more-just society. For the longest time, I thought that this was all there was to Feminism. As someone who actively hates systems of arbitrary distributions of power, I simply couldn’t get behind that vision of Feminism. Sometime in college, I started reading Pandagon, and the amazing work of Amanda Marcotte. I was introduced to a world of Feminism as equality. Yes. Sign me up as an ally in that struggle. In fact, I’ll do it Chicago style, and sign up twice.

Remember way back earlier this week when the East Coast was hit by a huge earthquake? Well. Turns out that we humans are faster than the Earth. That’s a sort of frightening thought, isn’t it?

Apple paid a lot of money and gave up a great deal of power to secure an agreement with the giant record labels over cloud storage. Apple must be gnashing it’s teeth over a recent decision which would allow other companies the right to do what Apple paid dearly for. The record labels’ basic position seems to be that they own the rights to music forever. Apple seems to agree. Google, Amazon, and the US legal system seem to be arguing that consumers purchase some rights when they gain legal access to music. Good news for consumers.

We Americans like to consider ourselves the torchbearers of justice and democracy. Key to our self conception is the idea that whenever people struggle to breath free, we’ll be there with a oxygen tank. Without dwelling on the oppressive side of our history, we actually have had some successes– Europe (1944), China (1945), Mexico (1866), Cuba (1898), and Libya (?) (2011)- among others. It is therefore both awe inspiring and in keeping with the best traditions of American history that the Syrian rebels are chanting “Freedom!” and cheering for the American diplomat. And yet the Republican Party would like to see that diplomat dismissed. I wonder what their problem is.

Beat cops are an wonderfully fantastic tool for crime prevention. They let officers get a real feel for a neighborhood’s dynamics, understand who the “players” are, and become known to the community they are meant to “protect and serve”. When police hide, and do their work in secret, and only peer into “certain” neighborhoods– you know the ones– they create an alienating fear that makes every cop’s job harder.

No one ever questions their own integrity or competence. When Hoover when against Martin Luther King Jr., he must have honestly believed that he was working in the best interests of America. We today recognize that he was committing a terrible injustice. Along those same lines, when police try to shut down important communications infrastructure, they’re granting themselves extra-ordinary power. Our great grandparents understood the danger of police granting themselves power, and sharply limited their ability to do so- in language which every power-seeking mad person ought to find chilling.

You say “consequence-free fucking” like it’s a bad thing.

America has a big fucking problem. Stagnant wages caused Americans to borrow ever-increasing amounts of money just to stay even. Funky accounting by lenders allowed American households to borrow 100% of 2011′s GDP. The solution to this problem would be a 4% target annual inflation rate (we’re currently at ~1%), and a significant round of government spending. Instead we’re seeing the opposite.

Superman represents Truth, Justice, and the American way. He is also a journalist. As someone who fights for truth and justice, Superman must make a decision about which is the side of truth and justice. Modern American journalists aren’t supposed to do that. For the past 30-40 years, journalists have been telling the world that their duty is to present truth and lies in a balanced manner, giving no preference for either. Perhaps this movie will show superman beating up on his arch-nemesis: Lex Pundit.

Sadly, this headline is pure metaphor.

Someone has come out of his mountain hiding place long enough to insist this link be shared. It’s a late addition, so I’ve got nothing clever to say.

If you click just one link:

Here’s the thing about “those kids today” stories. People have been telling them since the dawn of time. That’s what the word “conservative” means.

This week’s theme has been anecdata. In the comments section, tell us your favorite word that starts with a small N.

Like Marry Ell-EN Carter:

Tags: Sunday by Punning Pundit
1 Comment »

Warning: these are not the real US presidents.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for sleeping past 5:30am for the first time in a week. Sundays are for playing video games and waiting for your partner to get off work so you can… play some video games together. Sundays might be for introspection. Perhaps- just perhaps- Sundays are for watching Disney movies.

This week the US president went on vacation worked from a more scenic office. This week I seem to have acquired a girlfriend. This week NATO-backed rebel forces marched on the Libyan capitol. Also this week: Palestinians launched rockets on Israel- probably in reprisal for Israel doing bad things to Palestinians- Israelis who are pursuing legitimate security concerns stemming from Palestinian actions. And also: People employed by Verizon have agreed to end their strike and resume working under terms of an expired contract while a new one is being negotiated. Fun fact: the only direct quotes newspapers are giving about this Union action seem to be coming from Verizon’s management team. Ah, capitalism.

The news for the past year or so has been awful. War, rumors of war, and class war have dominated the headlines. I do, however, remain fundamentally optimistic about human nature. Any species capable of turning legos into a camera is worthy of respect.

The 20th Century was an age of monsters. Stalin. Mussolini. Hitler. Milosevic. Pol Pot. Shirō Ishii. And we might as well add Churchill to that list, for his directly and knowingly causing a famine that killed millions. In addition, the century started with a conflict knows as “The Great War”- until mid-century brought something so terrible that we had to invent a whole new category of crime to describe it. The 21st century has brought with it a more peaceful species, and perhaps the long-dreamed-of peace is nearer than we can imagine.

Humans are, by nature, social creatures. Nonetheless, saying that single player experiences will be “dead” in such a short time frame seems bizarrely wrong. It’s a bit like predicting that the Walkman would never take off because people enjoy sharing music with one another. There simply are certain experiences that can only be had by lone individuals. Those won’t go away anytime soon.

I watched “The Help” earlier this week. It was a rather good movie, though more than a bit emotionally exploitative. I’m not sure how intentional this was, but the movie did a fantastic job of deconstructing the Magic Negro archetype. The women portrayed in the movie are professionals, who know they’re engaged in terrible work, but are determined to do that work as well as they possibly can. Being a professional sometimes means gritting one’s teeth and telling a spoiled white girl that she’s “kind, smart, and pretty”.

Years after I realized that I lacked the essential ingredient required for a person to be Christian, I was invited to a friend’s baptism. Of course I agreed to go. This was a time for him to confirm and celebrate a new relationship in his life. When people are celebrating, it seems fitting and natural to celebrate with them. If my choices are to celebrate joy or cause misery, I don’t need to think very hard. I’m not sure why anyone would chose to create unhappiness if they have a choice.

It almost seems like the Post Office is mandated to run at a substantial deficit. I wonder what the justification for this is?

Last week I linked to an article about a married couple being torn apart by America’s decision not to recognize their marriage. It seems that Obama has ordered anti-immigration officials to start recognizing that families can be created by two people of the same gender. Which is a major advance for human rights.

In a perfect world, big tech firms would be fighting tooth and nail for customers. They would be fighting for customers by creating good, better best, cheap, cheaper, cheapest products. Big firms hate competition. As a result, they take legal action to keep one another from using certain types of technology. In the end, everyone ends up a little bit worse off. The system needs changing.

It makes an intuitive sort of sense that if someone kills a person with a car, they might permanently lose their right to drive. Likewise if they take a life with a gun. Ruin lives with criminal accounting? Never again ought that person have a business licence. Laws that keep former criminals from voting, though? Those were developed in conjunction with laws aimed at black people, to keep black people from voting. They’re anti-democratic, and need to be scrapped.

Buffy can save your soul.

Centuries ago, young men would duel to prove that they were not afraid to die. This was, of course, stupid. During times of actual conflict, duels declined precipitously. It would be interesting to see dueling culture make a comeback. Beats the hell out of lawsuits, frankly.

Los Angles police are notorious. For decades, there was barely contained rage between citizens and police. This has made a dramatic turnaround. A new police chief seems to have figured out that the police must be responsible to and for the community. Once they became active participants in neighborhoods- rather than an occupying force- conditions improved.

In 2011, it’s still common for people to think of feminists as “man haters”, “lesbians”, or somehow thinking that no woman could ever be fulfilled as a wife and mother. For people who think this way, here are a great collection of corrective essays. The “political correctness” essays are highly recommended.

Superhero costumes are absurd.

If you read just one link:

Eric Blair once was part of a machine which attempted to impose English rule on India. While there, he came to understand that he was trapped in the machine as surely as anyone he ruled over. And thus George Orwell was born.

Don’t mess with the Bard.

Tags: Sunday by Punning Pundit
1 Comment »

Mega Man. Mega Man. Does whatever his defeated enemies can!

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for Dim Sum. Or Sundays are for celebratory piercings. Possibly Sundays might be for, you know, doing the work thing.

This week Western Civilization got ever closer to collapse. The war in Libya continued past it’s 20th (or so) week, making the world wonder how many weeks it does take before it turns into “months”. And human-caused global climate change lead to the thinnest arctic ice shelf in human history. It’s not all bad: Google Plus is letting users play games on it’s service.

Once upon a time there was a TV show called “Junkyard Wars”. They’d take two teams of ordinary people and put them in a junkyard. Those teams were told that 24hrs later, they’d have to engage in a specific competition using whatever they’d built. The hovercraft races sold me. It was while watching that show that I had a revelation: humanity is glorious and endlessly inventive. Any species that can turn junk into an underwater pressure suit, or a minesweeper, or a hovercraft is just alright with me. Along those lines: here is a panoramic view of the control console for a space shuttle. If you’re an American, this is your tax dollars at work.

I’d have to check, but I think most of the last Several Sunday posts have contained something about Monopoly. This version teaches us important lessons about both class warfare and board games.

The function of government is to solve collective action dilemmas, and create situations which enable win/win “games” to be constructed and played. Which is fancy talk for “government threatens to kill us if we don’t get along, which makes us all better behaved”.

The problem is that in order to get us to behave better, government really does have to threaten to kill us. And sometimes they have to carry out that threat. That’s not actually the problem. The problem is that government is run by humans, and Lord Acton was pretty much correct in his assessment of how humans deal with power. Figuring out how to create a government of the correct size is basically the ongoing technocratic struggle.

I have mixed views on American slavery. On the one wrist: I consider the idea that a human can be owned as morally repugnant. Dehumanizing a single person devalues humanity as a whole. At the same time: slavery has been so roundly practiced by so many people– people who otherwise might have been wholly admirable– that it seems impossible to merely condemn it.

Slavery is the issue most often danced around when talking about cloning. There is no reason that a clone ought not count exactly the same as a utero-gestated human. The humanity and potential genetic sequence is identical. Yet the very possibly for creating millions of identical humans seems to short out the part of our brain that assigns value to clones. I hope we figure it out before we get there.

Every now and then I have the terrifying thought that humanity isn’t the only sentient species on Earth. The things we do to apes and chimps would be terrifying if done to humans. I won’t talk about dolphins, though. Fuck ‘em.

Too serious this week? Let’s learn about punctuation.

Until there is a zombie outbreak, guns have a single and sole purpose: to turn living things into dead things. I’ve done target shooting a time or two over the years, and I have no special fear of guns. Nonetheless, the idea that there are a good many people in the US for whom a gun represents a political argument is, frankly, terrifying. There does seem to be an interesting racial undertone to the American history of gun ownership and control. This probably speaks more about America than it does about guns.

This is possibly the most bad-ass person alive.

If you want to have a child in Argentina, the name for that baby has to come from a government approved list. It’s a fairly long list, but if your ideal name isn’t on it, you have to prove that you didn’t just make the name up. Here are all the approved names starting with the letter “A”.

Stereotypically, the worst drivers in America are old Asian ladies. In reality, the worst drivers in America are young white men. Tell people this, and the first reaction is often to deny it. The thing about stereotypes is that they exist more as insults than as actual, living constructs. Americans used to make fun of Mexicans for being lazy. Now we make fun of them for being among the hardest working people in America. Whatever you (or I!) think you (or I!) know about [subgroup of humans] is likely wrong.

It’s ok to be racist against Frost Giants, though. Those fuckers really do want to destroy your soul.

About a year ago, I worked on a case which started out as a simple barbering licence SNAFU, and turned out to be about gay marriage and immigration law. The absolute most I could do for the couple was recommend some good, LGBT friendly, immigration lawyers. Anyone who says that allowing gay people to get married will harm the institution of marriage has to account for the number of marriages that the lack of recognition has destroyed.

Several English cities rioted this past week. This Jackass doesn’t realize that he’s the problem. Here’s a friendly tip: when you’ve got a large part of the population who’s only regular contact with the government is a police checkpoint, there is going to be resentment. When the government’s meager services get cut back, there’s going to be more resentment. And when the police murder citizen, well. There damned well better be some noise.

If I were told that I could borrow a million dollars today, and in 5 years I’d only have to pay back $900,000, I’d say that I’m being lied to. But if there were facts, figures, proofs, and documents attesting to this fact, I’d jump on it. A person would have to be crazy not to jump on it. This is the deal our government is being offered. We’re crazy.

You know who else liked the Welfare state? Superman.

Troy has finished the final nation in his series chronicling how various games have quantified national history. This series might honestly be among the finest in game journalism. It says much less about games than it does about humanity’s view of itself as the 20th century has given way to the 21st. I do hope you’ve been reading them.

Captain Morgan’s ship has been found. No word yet on his booty.

Money is a vehicle by which labor can be stored. There is, of course, a lot more to it than that. That’s what has been so fascinating about watching the rise of private currencies. Store gift cards are money issued by a company which trade at 1:1 with the USD. Microsoft/Sony points are a floating currency. Airline miles may be the most abstract of all the corporate currencies– they’re constantly being revalued. No one is quite sure what they’re worth.

If you read just one thing:

I’ve written a lot this week about how governments and citizens interact. Sometimes that’s much less important than how humans connect with one another unofficially.

This week’s theme has been government. How it works and why it fails. In the comments below, let me know about your favorite experience with a government worker.

<"http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6582695&use_node_id=true&fullscreen=1"target="_blank">After all that, I think we could use a cuddle, eh?

Tags: Sunday by Punning Pundit
3 Comments »

Rotate it!

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for Cleaning playing Batman as soon as you get home and can tear yourself away from Catan on your phone. Or Sundays might be for having brunch with a good friend sleeping in. Sundays are occasionally for looking forward to live-altering surgeries. Though perhaps Sundays are for recursively reflecting on the sentence you’re reading right now and wondering how I knew that you’d be recursively reading this sentence. And then cursing again.

This week: The US pushed back the clock on financial Armageddon by setting off a large nuclear warhead in it’s economy. Also this week: the American political world acted surprised by the fallout from this self-inflicted attack. Also: NASA sent some legos to Jupiter. Also also: tens of thousands of Verison workers went on strike.

Let’s start this Sunday off with a Hymn. There’s only one that you ever need to know, and it goes like this Boom De Yata

I almost think this comic was written by someone who knows me.

Over the past several years, many of my fellow progressives have been demanding that President Obama stop being so damned nice, and start going on a left wing tear that will utterly transform America. He can’t. Much as I use the first person when speaking of progressives, most of the country– most of the Democratic party– doesn’t. The failure for this lays strictly with those of us in the progressive community. It is our job to convince people that we’re right. It’s Obama’s job to get away with as much as he can get away with.

The fastest way to piss me off is to express the view that humans are evil, stupid, or in some other way deficient. My general sense is that no matter how odd a tradition might look to an outsider, it’s probably got a very good reason to continue being celebrated.

One of the scarier parts of being an American at the dawn of the 21st century is how badly messed up our system of governance is. I honestly can’t think of a single piece of infrastructure that doesn’t need fixing. Our roads? In need of repair. Congress? People have been advocating that the president become a dictator because Congress is so bad. Our system of promoting the useful arts and science is doing the opposite.

One of the scarier parts of our Intellectual property laws is the way that it inhibits or prohibits anyone other than the Rights Holder from preserving shared cultural heritage. With the current version of IP laws, the Christian Bible couldn’t have been written. The paper would have literally rotted to nothing before anyone would have been allowed to hand copy it.

Tom Lehrer gave up satire because reality was outpacing his cynicism.

In some very real sense, I simply am Punning Pundit. It’s a name I use everywhere; I respond to it when shouted. I do use my own birth name– I have a small bit of bemused pride at having come from a line of men with my same name. Not everyone is so lucky. For some people the ability to hide their real names is a matter of life and death.

Spider man? He wears a mask because he catches criminals just like flies. Also: He’s a young black/Latino man. Or, rather, he will be going forward. The fact that superhero ethnicity is so plastic is a huge sign of how far things have come.

There are certain things that everyone “just knows” about how ridiculous certain events are. For instance: the lady who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonalds. Or Van Halen’s bowl of Brownless M&M. The thing that everyone “just knows” about both of those stories is wrong.

Epic headlines.

Congress passes a lot of laws. Most of them are actually fairly pointless, but every now and then they do important work. Sadly, though, congresspeople are human- and so laws have unintended consequences

In serious onion news, labor won the right to collectively bargain against capital- an entity that always bargains collectively in it’s own interests. Remember kids: you don’t have to write for free, work for cheep, or fight alone. Only your enemies want you to.

Maybe if DC writers were unionized, they’d have a better understanding of how to treat their female characters. Probably not. But the work environment for their female staff might be less hostile.

Bob Dylan once said that “Money Doesn’t Talk, it Swears“. More importantly, I think, is that money makes politicians swear fealty. This can actually be good- I feel very comfortable helping city council members swear that they’ll stand up for the iron worker’s union. And if a state legislator kneels before the Chamber of Commerce, I want to know that, too. This new ability for unlimited bribery where only the recipient and giver know who’s interests are being served, though, is scary.

This story line needs a small amendment: 2009: progressives give up on Obama.

Sometime before humanity settled down into villages, we traded genetic evolution for memetic evolution. We humans haven’t reached the top of the food pyramid by being fast, strong, or sharp-clawed. Instead, we’re smart and inventive. Memetic evolution, though is as path-dependent as it’s meat-based counterpart. I wonder what sorts of advancements we would have made had we taken a very small left turn down some other technological path?

My argument is invalid

I’m not merely a gamer, I’m a PC gamer. Not for any reasons of snobbery, but I simply spend most of my time in front of the PC and so it makes sense that I’d game there as well. For some reason, big lable game developers hate me. Which is a weird way to try and get my money.

To summarize points 1-4: Don’t be a dick. Which reminds me: I need to write a post about how to insult people.

If you click just one link:

Beta Earth.

This week’s theme was a short prayer for the zombie Apocalypse. It might actually be the only thing that saves the economy. In the comments, let me know if you read this weekly missive for my writing, or for the links themselves.

Maybe you’re a shitty cameraman, I don’t know!

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
2 Comments »

Classes about International Relations are mostly theory. Lacking a TARDIS, or similar device, it’s impossible to run a statistically valid study on occasions when nuclear war did not break out, and contrast them against times when it did. Science can still be done; mostly by constructing elaborate models (called “games”) and seeing how they can approximate real-world conditions. All of which explains why I know how to win a game of chicken: the winning player is the one who throws away their steering wheel.

Seriously. that’s what I was taught in class. The professor was talking about nuclear conflict, telling us that if both sides knew they were both equally trigger happy (ie: neither side could move their own car), neither would let things get bad enough to press buttons. In practice, this worked- spectacularly- once (the Cold War) and failed- spectacularly- once (The Great War).

Since roughly 1980, America has been going slightly crazy. We call it the culture war; most Americans hate it. We hate it so much that in 2008, we elected a guy President on the basis of a four year old speech in which he agreed with us that he, too, hated it.

In 2008, America elected a steering wheel. Watch that speech. Barack Obama is promising to be a steering wheel. In 2010, progressives stayed home on election day. Because of that, a whole hell of a lot crazy people got in office. The Republican party took the House with a specific promise to throw away the steering wheel.

There is, in my mind, no question why the last month of American politics played out the way it did. Both sides showed up ready to do the job they were elected to do. The deal that Congress reached was the inevitable result of those dynamics.

The damnable part is that a different president couldn’t have gotten a much better deal through Congress. That’s a different post.

Tags: Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
No Comments »