The Politic wrote:
I ask this question constantly of my students. I teach history at a community college, no big deal, but it shapes me as much as I shape anything... I ask them if they feel information can be controlled. Their answer is hell no.

I don't think so. Repressive regiems certainly try, but they mostly succeed at creating inconvenience rather then absolutely controlling access. The degree to which information can be controlled largely relates to whether people are willing to accept the controls and how much they are willing to learn or risk to spread the information.

At the root of this, I think, is that there is a symbiotic relationship between the control of information and the management of perception. If, for example, you've managed to convince all of the proles in your dictatorship that the western media is corrupt and dishonest, chances are most of them won't have a problem with your blocking of "libelous and misleading" media. The blocking will keep the seeds of certain ideas from being sewn in people who have been culturalized to distrust such sources from the outset, and so it becomes self reenforcing. A systemic willful ignorance. On the other hand, if freedom of speech is enshrined at the root of your culture, any attempt to control it will be immediately distrusted, and you're going to have a hell of a hard time keeping certain kinds of things under wraps without a long term project of conterveilling cultural programming.

RE: Myspace stumbles

A Texas woman alleges on her blog that her membership of a satirical religious group with very liberal views on sexuality has led to a court forbidding her to have any form of contact with her son.

Apparently being a member of the Church of the Subgenius is enough to get your children taken away!

Bartholomew's notes on religion: Woman looses son for participating in X-Day

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Science and math have zoomed to the top of the nation's education agenda. Yet Amanda Cook, a parent of two school-age girls, can't quite see the urgency.

"In Maine, there aren't many jobs that scream out 'math and science,"' said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but "most parents are saying you're better off going to school for something there's a big need for."

Janelane: Oh. My. God. I think I've just had a stroke and heart attack.

Decius: Oh, so THATS what this place is coming to...

CNN: Parents don't see a crisis over science and math

This is February 15, John Frum Day, on the remote island of
Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of
days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all
over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum.
“John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us
from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he
salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats,
watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful
things.”

The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what
anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”—many of which sprang up
in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds
of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the
skies and seas. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years
in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world,
with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote,
indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’
endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by
magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back
after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers
and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and
planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of
treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles,
canned meat and candy.

In John They Trust

finethen wrote:
Except when he said "human animal hybrids." What a smartie.

I thought about mentioning this in my original post. That was one of the comments that he made that bothered me. I definately hope his reference to human animal hybrids was a win for the Dems, because otherwise its going to be a situation where we're going to loose a lot of valuable scientific knowledge.

The first insulin for diabetics came from pigs. Injecting pig insulin into humans is exactly the kind of thing they are talking about banning, because they have some idea in their head about hollywood monsters. There are definately ethical lines here, but if they draw the line wrong, and they almost certainly will as very little of what is going on right now is a cause for concern, they are really trading our long term medical science in exchange for some religious platitude thats basically rooted in victorian ideas about sex. Not good.

RE: President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address

In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, Mousa Abu Marzook, a political spokesman for Hamas, explains their victory in the recent elections. Can we take this seriously?

Alleviating the debilitative conditions of occupation, and not an Islamic state, is at the heart of our mandate (with reform and change as its lifeblood).

A new breed of Islamic leadership is ready to put into practice faith-based principles in a setting of tolerance and unity.

We do desire dialogue.

The Post describes the author thusly:

The writer is deputy political bureau chief of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). He has a U.S. doctorate in engineering and was indicted in the United States in 2004 as a co-conspirator on racketeering and money-laundering charges in connection with activities on behalf of Hamas dating to the early 1990s, before the organization was placed on the list of terrorist groups. He was deported to Jordan in 1997.

Note, as well, that "Paradise Now" has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

What Hamas Is Seeking

The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.

Vatican paper article says 'intelligent design' not science

Cops in Edinburgh have been holding video-game competitions with troubled kids to keep them off the streets and out of trouble -- the kids seem to take especial delight in kicking the coppers' asses at games.

Boing Boing: Cops organize videogame competitions against troublesome kids

The American Constitution Society and the Liberty Coalition host a speech by Fmr. Vice Pres. Al Gore at the DAR Hall in Washington. Gore speaks about the limits of executive power, the issue of monitoring domestic communications and the authorization of the use of torture in the war against terrorism.

Gore has been doing the speech thing for a while. Sometimes he slips in a good point or two if you can stomach the partisan swipes, but I think the media is growing a bit tired of him. This speech is getting a lot of traction because it really says what a lot of people are thinking. In reading it, it appears to be a clearer, cleaner position then I recall his previous speeches taking. This is good Gore...

Transcript here.

C-SPAN: Fmr. Vice Pres. Gore Speech on Executive Powers

WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary. But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

As Globalization proceeds and more of our regular daily interactions are with foreign parties what good do civil liberties do us if they don't apply? If the fbi was randomly reading mail it would be a constitutional crisis, but if its dhs is all good.... We are going to have to fundamentaly rethink how this works....

Homeland Security opening private mail - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com