In yet another sign that the American system of government has gone deep down the rabbit-hole, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has cited the television show 24 as precedent in arguing for the legality of torture:

“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Scalia challenged his fellow judges.

Is there even anything else to say?

Junkiness » Blog Archive » Law and Order: Supreme Court Unit

"I understand their disappointment," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "We raised the bar too high."

This pisses me the fuck off. You raised the bar too high? Fuck you, Harry. Dems took congress because people were fed up with the war, and then on the first major opportunity, a giant funding bill you could have simply refused to pass, you FUCKING CAPITULATED to the president.

I'm sick of this bullshit talk about working together. The Republicans didn't give a flying fuck about working together when they were in power, and they're using current Democratic good will to continue fucking the country in the ass. It's time to stop being polite. It was time about 5 years ago.

Fuck them. Don't pass any more funding for the war, period. Make the public understand that the reason there's no money for domestic priorities like health care, research, roads, or anything else is because Bush and the Republicans refuse to listen to the American public and GET THE FUCK OUT NOW. Stonewall until we get what we fucking elected you for.

God damn congress.

'Voters are going to be mad with us until we end the war.'

Master pranksters The Yes Men crashed the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary this week, impersonating a rep from the National Petroleum Council at a keynote in which they proposed to convert people who died from climate change disasters into fuel.

Hah!

Boing Boing: Yes Men crash oil expo, propose turning corpses into fuel

terratogen wrote:
I agree with his description of the problem, but not his solution. I think reputation of the news agency might be preferable to any sort of official regulation which would be more dangerous than doing nothing at all.

I agree that government regulation of content is problematic and likely untenable.

However, as i say in my response, the free market nature of the media, of News as a business has permitted, not through any fault in the system, but nonetheless by the nature of the system, News to become entertainment. And it is this News as Entertainment issue that Blair is responding to. I do not mean to oversimplify, because this is only one aspect of a much more complicated problem, but it's absolutely a factor.

Clearly it is necessary for people to *want* measured, reasonable and intelligent discourse. They don't right now, or, anyway, not in sufficient numbers for the market to respond. In this sense, "reputation" fails because the criteria people are using (e.g. emotional impact, reinforcement of existing opinions, a distrust of intellectualism in favor of blue-collar populism) have no relationship to the ones Blair (and I) believe should be applied.

So do we ignore the problem, until we get a critical mass big enough for the market to take notice? Is the market necessarily the mechanism we want to determine the nature of our media? Are there better models, or ways that regulation could help? Regulation does not have to be of content, but what of the business arrangements for media companies. This is very much NOT a free market solution, and is thus unpopular in the US, but we can still consider it. I'm not saying i have a solution, but I'm not sure none exists either.

RE: Full text of Blair's speech on politics and media | Uk News | News | Telegraph

Some key quotes :

Things harden within minutes. I mean you can't let speculation stay out there for longer than an instant. I am going to say something that few people in public life will say, but most know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today - outside of the really major decisions, as big as anything else - is coping with the media, its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity. At points, it literally overwhelms.

...

If you are a backbench MP today, you learn to give a press release first and a good Parliamentary speech second.

This is true in america too, and not just because of the need to play the media, but also due to politics. If you blindside your opponents with something in the media, they have a harder time responding.

The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else

Let's bold that out : "Accuracy ... is secondary to impact." We've been commenting on this for years. I've laid some of the blame on the free market nature of the media, but only insofar as it is only capable of responding to that which the consumer wants most, and consumers (american and british consumers at least) want drama and shock and viciousness. Until people demand, with their wallets, accuracy, fairmindedness and rational debate from the media, we won't get it. What depresses me is that I'm not confident that people actually do want that, meaning the market won't respond, and things will continue to get worse. The Right has spent a lot of money carrying out a war against calm, reasoned debate, shrewdly using framing and meta-attacks to make anything less than certitude come off as weakness, to make changing one's mind an indicator of political opportunism and to make everything, EVERYTHING a matter of moral absolutism. The Left has done their part by permitting themselves to be trapped by these tactics, but also by taking stances on media and a technology that make them look hypocritical, even to their ostensible supporters. I see no solutions on the horizon, easy or otherwise.

What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct.

In this I partially disagree with Blair. Mistakes are one thing, misconduct is another. What *really* creates cynicism is when mistakes are covered up, or treated as if they aren't mistakes. Both US parties are guilty of this, though I hardly think I need to point out that this administration in particular can't even... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Full text of Blair's speech on politics and media | Uk News | News | Telegraph

"Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence is a masterpiece from a pioneer in the field of data visualization. His book is brilliant. The Galileo of graphics has done it again. It's not often an iconoclast comes along, trashes the old ways, and replaces them with an irresistible new interpretation. By teasing out the sublime from the seemingly mundane world of charts, graphs, and tables, Tufte has proven to a generation of graphic designers that great thinking begets great presentation. In Beautiful Evidence, his fourth work on analytical design, Tufte digs more deeply into art and science to reveal very old connections between truth and beauty -- all the way from Galileo to Google."

I have two of Tufte's books, and, yes, that Minard print hanging on my wall as well... the difference between a well designed information graphic and the garbage we're used to seeing is quite astounding. I suppose I shall have to add Beautiful Evidence to my purchace list...

Tufte and the Triumph of Good Design

Acidus wrote:
Ok, I'm not sure what this means exactly (and granted this is 2 steps removed from the source). Its a browser with a JavaScript interpreter. Of course it can run Ajax apps. I wonder if this referes to Adobe's Apollo apps which can run external of a browser.

No, i don't think so. It's kind of a cop out for apple, and, truthfully, I'm surprised. Apple's initial nonsense answer to "Will 3rd party devs be allowed?" talked about them not wanting to overload the cell data networks. This announcement belies that statement since now ALL 3rd party software REQUIRES network activity. Want to write a game? Network based. A todo list? Network based. Don't get me wrong, I see a lot of value in this paradigm, and most apps can benefit (e.g. see your todo list anywhere), but at the same time, I think it's silly to not have any avenue for entirely local apps.

And I do worry about security, with either paradigm. I have no doubt that Acidus (and therefore 10 or 20 other people who are far less scrupulous) will find a way to pwn people's iPhones within about 45 seconds. This is going to be Apple's biggest problem with the iPhone, i think.

RE: iPhone + XSS = All your cell networks are belong to Acidus

Earlier today, a judge threw out Genarlow Wilson’s sentence of 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

The judge also amended his conviction to a misdemeanor, not a felony, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I think this should be read as justice being served.

Or not... an appeal is delaying his release.

Creative Loafing Atlanta » Fresh Loaf » Blog Archive » Genarlow Wilson’s a free man

The White House and the Congressional Budget Office oppose the change, arguing that the programs are not true liabilities because government can cancel or cut them.

And cut they will. I've said before that one of my disappointments in the Bush years is that you had a Republican Congress and President and yet nothing could be done about this problem.

[ I'm not disappointed as much as furious... this was purposeful. The Right doesn't approve of social welfare, by and large, but can't easily just come out and say so when it comes to powerful demographics (like the elderly, for example). By creating a situation in which payment will prove completely impossible, they get to dismantle Social Security and Medicare without nearly as much political liability because the hard choice will be left to someone in the future.

I'm not saying everything was peachy before Bush came to power, but it's gotten much much worse, and I do not consider that either coincidental or surprising. ]

Nothing will be done, and my generation will be left holding the bag. When I am an old man there will be tens or hundreds of thousands of people my age who are functionally homeless. Having lots of kids is beginning to sound like a good idea.

[ That may work, I guess. We're pretty screwed in this country, in a lot of unfortunate ways. -k]

Why you'll never retire...

Seconds later, the judge announced his decision: “The defendant is remanded to county jail to serve the remainder of her 45-day sentence. This order is forthwith.”

Hilton screamed.

Eight deputies immediately ordered all spectators out of the courtroom. Hilton’s mother, Kathy, threw her arms around her husband, Rick, and sobbed uncontrollably.

Deputies escorted Hilton out of the room, holding each of her arms as she looked back.

Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

This is obscene. We have a lawless and barely sane president, a hopeless war in which American soldiers and innocent Iraqis die daily, condone torture, hold people without charge or trial, a viciously repressive Right who would utterly demolish the constitution in favor of a religious totalitarian surveillance state, oil companies fleecing the public for billions and this, THIS FUCKING SPOILED BRAT is commanding our national attention?

Her attorneys should be summarily disbarred for having no fucking clue about anything. There's some rumor that they plan to file a fucking writ of habeas corpus. How much fucking nerve can people have, that they think their money truly should mean that they are above the law.

If this had been a poor black kid in Atlanta, or, for that matter, ME, well, never mind, the double standard is just too fucking glaring to need more elucidation.

She should be getting extra days for each fucking ridiculous outburst she makes. You don't get out of jail because it sucks in there, that's the fucking point. And get her off the road, forever, she's lost that "right" in my book.

Every time I think we've hit bottom in this country I realize how wrong I am. We're completely fucked from top to bottom. It's incredible we haven't already collapsed from our own obscenity.

Judge orders Paris Hilton back to jail - Celebrity News - MSNBC.com