[ Read this. it's now almost a week old, but it's long and I don't like recommending things i haven't read thoroughly. It was worth it. Certainly, it's not news to anyone who's been paying attention, but it's ever so important to understanding the philosophy that has overtaken the power structure of the Right in America.

If nothing else, scroll to the end and read the last few grafs. The Bush presidency seems really to have been nothing less than an all out attack on the very notion of rational investigation, honest and open discourse and nuanced thought. He's peddled a black and white vision desired by so many who've consumed it in droves... but the world is seldom black and white, and it's escapist to live in that binary world. -k]

The New York Times - Magazine - Without a Doubt

] On Sept. 9, as it must frequently do, the U.S. government
] turned to Wall Street to raise a little cash, and Paul
] Calvetti bet that demand for $9 billion worth of
] long-term Treasury bonds would be "huge."
]
] But at 1 p.m., as the auction opened and the numbers
] began streaming across his flat-panel screens, the head
] of Treasury trading at Barclays Capital Inc. slumped in
] his chair. Foreign investors, who had been voraciously
] buying Treasury bonds, failed to show up. Bond prices
] cascaded downward, interest rates rose, and in five
] minutes, Calvetti, 38, who makes money by bidding on
] bonds at one price and hoping market demand lets him
] quickly resell them at a profit, had lost $1.5 million.

[ I couldn't even pretend to be an expert on macroeconomics, but the things I am able to understand are really quite scary. It's easy to focus on local issues like tax cuts for the rich and vague handwaving about the national debt during an election. I've been reading a lot more lately that points to serious trouble for our entire economy. I'm not seeing a lot of positive indicators for the US and a lot of disturbing stuff.

Here's another article : http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_10361.shtml

And God help us if we're already in the midst of the Peak Oil era -- it'll be bad enough if it comes in 30 years. If it's already upon us, we're completely buggered. -k]

Bearish on Uncle Sam? (washingtonpost.com)

"Tomorrow, I'll go back to being funny... but your show will still blow."

[ Still the man. -k]

Stewart's Post-crossfire comments..

] Audiopad is a composition and performance instrument for
] electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on
] a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music.
] One can pull sounds from a giant set of samples,
] juxtapose archived recordings against warm synthetic
] melodies, cut between drum loops to create new beats, and
] apply digital processing all at the same time on the same
] table. Audiopad not only allows for spontaneous
] reinterpretation of musical compositions, but also
] creates a visual and tactile dialogue between itself, the
] performer, and the audience.

[ Fucking dope. -k]

Audiopad

] Within thirty years, we will have the technological means
] to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the
] human era will be ended.
]
]
] Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
] events be guided so that we may survive? These questions
] are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
] dangers) are presented.

[ I've read this before, but came across it again today and thought it worth memeing. Though a decade old, it's still an interesting read. I wonder how it could be updated today? Vinge is among my favorite writers... one of the greats. -k]

Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

] In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
]
] Neal:
]
] You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let
] me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when
] we did fight.
]
]
] The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came
] out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books
] in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended
] his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce
] Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I
] had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been
] regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had
] crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure
] barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the
] regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had
] been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in
] the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped
] it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos
] pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his
] aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from
] between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He
] deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my
] wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and
] set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I
] dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly
] I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying
] Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique.
] But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get
] out of the place. The streets were crowded with his
] black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of
] locusts and fly back to Seattle.

[ While slashdot "interviews" tend to be dubious at best, Neal Stephenson is always a pleasure to read, regardless of the format or topic. And there are quite a few topics covered here... very entertaining and sometimes enlightening. -k]

Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor

] Why should hackers care especially about civil liberties? Why
] programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or
] landscapers?
]
] Let me put the case in terms a government official would
] appreciate. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or
] a quaint American tradition. Civil liberties make
] countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs.
] civil liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could
] civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an
] effect? I think so. I think a society in which people can
] do and say what they want will also tend to be one in
] which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those
] sponsored by the most influential people. Authoritarian
] countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor;
] and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a
] Laffer curve for government power, just as for tax
] revenues. At least, it seems likely enough that it would
] be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlike high
] tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns
] out to be a mistake.
]
] This is why hackers worry. The government spying on
] people doesn't literally make programmers write worse
] code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad
] ideas will win. And because this is so important to
] hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. They can
] sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as
] animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

[ Interesting read. -k]

Good Bad Attitude

] Don’t write comments. We’ve said it before and
] we’ll say it again: what’s the point of all this? To
] create a program, i.e. code. Non-executable stuff is
] unnecessary and explanations are an insult to a
] programmer’s intelligence - after all, he or she can
] read the source, right?

[ Some good shit in here. Funny. -k]

How NOT to go about a programming assignment

] Tuesday's public dry run had to be postponed until Friday
] because a computer server that tabulates data from the
] touch-screen machines crashed, said county elections
] supervisor Theresa LePore.

[ Color me nervous. -k]

E-Voting Machine Crash Deepens Concerns (washingtonpost.com)

] A trot through the blogosphere suggests that Stewart's
] hyper-sincere Crossfire turn may have cost him a few
] fans, even as it solidified his diehard base. I wouldn't
] be surprised if the news media's recent crush on Stewart
] -- the rave reviews of America, the high-profile
] journalists appearing on his show -- turned a corner
] after this. As America: The Book makes clear, nobody
] likes a civics lecture. But you'd be hard-pressed to ask
] for more entertaining television than Friday's live
] smackdown. Stewart's naked appeal to his hosts to "please
] stop, stop, stop. Stop hurting America," had a loopy,
] apocalyptic power. It burned a hole in the screen, like
] Peter Finch as the crazed anchorman in Network,
] bellowing, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it
] anymore."
]
]
] A while back, I called Jon Stewart the "court jester" of
] this election. But he may be more like the fool in King
] Lear, speaking brutal truth to a king who is already too
] far gone to hear it. Sure, Stewart's job is to make us
] laugh, not to lecture us. But as Lear's fool asked, "May
] not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?"

[ Yep. -k]

Stewart Caught in the Crossfire - Something actually happens on a talk show! By Dana Stevens