May 2
Back from the Avian Flu Around the Internets
Higher Education Conformity
Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com
Is a college degree really a sign of competence? Or is it chiefly a signal to employers that you've mastered the ability to obey and conform?
- "The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners."
- "It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life."
- "Education... now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and 'fans,' driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves."
On second thought: These would be evil Wal Mart jobs where they don't like unions or costlier long term employees. Here's a crazy idea: could you talk to Costco? The crazy ones that pay 16 an hour and provide healthcare and support the democratic party, individually anyway.
April 26
April 24
1: The Singularity. The Singularity happened when, encouraged by his business backers, President Dick Dibbs sent an eggcase of nants to Mars. Nants were self-reproducing nanomachines: solar-powered, networked, capable of gnatlike flight, and single-mindedly focused on transforming all available material into more nants. In a couple of years, the nants had eaten Mars, turning the red planet into a Dyson sphere of a duodecillion nanomachines, a three-millimeter-thick shell half a billion kilometers across, with Earth and the Sun trapped inside.
The stars were hidden by giant ads; in daytime the ads were a silvery background to the sky. Dibbs’s backers were well-pleased. And behind the scenes the nant swarm was solving a number of intractable problems in computer science, mathematical physics, and process design; these results were privily beamed to the nants’ parent corporation, Nantel. But before Nantel could profit from the discoveries, the nants set to work chewing up Earth.
Its part of online science fiction effort called Flurb.
Jason Lubyk Returns to the Blogosphere
(with an interview with RU Sirius)
Labels: friends, interviews, jason lubyk, mp3s, podcasts, ru sirius
Weekend Around the Internets
April 17
April 16
Monday Morning Around the Internets
April 15
April 15
What Should Be Posted April 13
Harvey Pekar and his Pittsburgh illustrator Ed Piskor will speak and show some work at Slippery Rock University's Kaleidoscope Arts Festival http://academics.sru.edu/HFPA/kaleidoscope/performers.htm on April 20th at 12:30 p.m.. Does anyone at this site have some suggestions about how we can best get the word out to those who'd like to be there. Should be fun.
Well I could mention it here on the frontpage and feature Ed's work. Comics people know Harvey Pekar of course. You might know him from that cool film that came out and which was pretty good.
Imus Is Wrong, and Gone, On Race. What About Friedman and Pollack on Iraq?
At least he apologized and is doing time. What about all the journalists who were wrong on Iraq? The Rutgers women held a press conference saying Imus hurt their feelings. What about all the American and Iraqi families destroyed, torn apart, blown to the wind, etc., by one of the greatest mistakes in history? Hordes of journalists out of desire for influence and status peddled the administration's lies and distorted reality to rationalize attacking Iraq. Tom Friedman saw the war as good because of suicide bombers in Israel. Ken Pollack didn't see any real strife between Sunnis and Shi'as, and neither did Kristol and Kaplan, and none of them thought the Israeli occupation had any bearing on the case. I could go on and on.
At the very least they showed terrible judgment. Last year I watched Pollack rationalize one or two of his errors before the Council on Foreign Relations. George Packer sought to excuse his credulity, wishy-washily, in Assassin's Gate. Don't they owe us a lot more? Don't the New York Times, Washington Post, and WSJ owe us investigations of their conduct and sourcing? The only reporter to suffer professionally for getting us into this horror is Judith Miller. Shouldn't there be more?
April 12
- Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.
- Interview Playboy (1973)
- Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next— and on and on.
- Galapagos (1985)
- I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.
- London Observer (27 December 1987)
- There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.
- Remark of "Kilgore Trout" in Timequake (1997)
- I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.
- God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999): Introduction
- And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
- "Knowing What's Nice", an essay from In These Times (2003)
- We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.
- On Humans, in an appearance on The Daily Show (September 2005)
- …I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy—because we’re experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that’s what’s going on now.
- Appearance on The Daily Show (September 2005)
- I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.
- On Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, on The Daily Show (September 2005)
- (talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
- Interview Public Broadcasting Service (2005)
- The only difference between [George W.] Bush and [Adolf] Hitler is that Hitler was elected.
- "Kurt Vonnegut's 'Stardust Memory", Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press (2006-03-04)
- I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.
- Interview Public Radio International (October 2006)
- People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.
- Interview Public Radio International (October 2006)
- If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
What should have been published April 11
Better Late Than Never Around the Internets
Possible Cure for Diabetes Using (Presumably) Adult Stem Cells. I'll take it. Related: Bob Casey won't back expanded stem cell research. Translation: Vatican shamans have more say over American science policy than scientists. This is also another edition of why Richard Dawkins is a mean ol atheist. Also related but it's not clear to people yet: US no longer number 1 in innovation.
Incredible Solar Cell Breakthrough and yet another incredible solar cell breakthrough. Too bad our country is run by oil barons. Note: Notice these aren't American breakthroughs. Go on. Notice it.
Everything You Wanted to Know About How We Fraked Up Iraq But Were Afraid to Ask
Rad Movie of Green Arrow Breaking out of Negative Zone Prison Green Lighted (So to speak.)
Profile of Spaceports to Come. We hope.
April 8
We, the undersigned, call upon elected and appointed officials to join us in reaffirming America's religious freedom by demonstrating a commitment to the following:
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Every American should have the right to make personal decisions -- about family life, reproductive health, end of life care and other matters of personal conscience.
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American tax dollars should not go to charities that discriminate in hiring based on religious belief or that promote a particular religious faith as a requirement for receiving services.
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Political candidates should not be endorsed or opposed by houses of worship.
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Public schools should teach with academic integrity and without the promotion of religious preference or belief.
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Decisions about scientific and health policies should be based on the best available scientific data, not on religious doctrine.
We join together, as the most diverse nation in the world, to commit ourselves to defending and preserving this freedom.
Related: Sam Harris on Faith vs. Reason.
BRITISH GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS CONFIRM ESTIMATE OF 650,000 IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
RICHARD HORTON, GUARDIAN, UK - Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.
Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report".
Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality".
The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the research was "robust", close to "best practice", and "balanced". He recommended "caution in publicly criticizing the study".
When these recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified. One person briefing Tony Blair wrote: "Are we really sure that the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies?" A Foreign and Commonwealth Office official was forced to conclude that the government "should not be rubbishing the Lancet".
The prime minister's adviser finally gave in. He wrote: "The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".
April 5
Light posting until the weekend, obviously. I have updated my channel though.
Correction: Jeff Simmons, just back from touring in Spain, writes in to tell me that he was never NEVER married to Jill West. My bad as they say. I probably read it on the Internets and thought it was true. More from that email from Joff when I have more time to write...
April 2
April 1
And now: This special message about the dangers of communism.
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