politics

Would you help an alcoholic by giving him $100 to buy liquor? The US is adicted to oil, according to the president. The proposed solution... to subsidize gas. CNN.com - Senators to push for $100 gas rebate checks - Apr 27, 2006

The Republican religious base is crawling out of its primordial slime to promote its main priorities for the mid-term elections: banning some people from using a particular word to describe their relationship when it is closer to their own ideal of a monogamous family unit and making it illegal to destroy graven idols representing a line on a map. These are important issues after all, when the alternatives are global unrest dues to energy crises and the death of the planet due to environmental catastrophe. The fascinating thing about the social conservative disease is that it requires a view of the world which is not based upon traditional morals or any concept of progress. To demonstrate this, let's use the example for gay rights. Most social conservatives, who aren't criminals, probably agree that someone like Elton John should not be dragged into the street and pelted to a bloody death...

Victor, Parisian student, protesting the job contract that could have been in France: "It means that when I do get a job I will basically have to work as hard as I can to keep it." Now that the French government has capitulated, I guess he won't have to work hard any more. Lets get this in perspective, this was a law that suggested, after compromise, that you could be fired within your first year on your first job, providing there was a reason. - That's all. This is not 19th century style worker exploitation, but stopping the contract will lead to it, because in a globalised economy the fact is that French jobs will now go somewhere where there is genuine exploitation. It was an attempt to help poor people get a start. And think how ridiculous this all sounds if you use being in a band as an...

Lubos Motl (a must read blogger) points out that climate change, is the new religion. First things first - climate change is very real and very worrying, if you look at the empirical data and spread of opinion amongst people studying it. It appears to be more truth than fiction - an idea bolstered by the amusing fact that the poster child (the inadmirable Crichton) of the 'its fiction' camp, is indeed noted for his science fiction. The problem is not that the truth is winning, its that its winning too easily and data is being amplified and distorted as it moves into the mainstream culture, and this does not help in the long term. What are the reasons for this? 1. Darwinism, is being distorted and muted by the negative feedback loop of people who want religious certainty and human primacy instead of evolutionary gradualism and primate-acy. Climate change...

Boing Boing quotes Alan Moore (Creator of V for Vendetta) as saying that the real polar opposites in politics are not right or left but fascist vs. anarchist - i.e. how much government you have. This clearly does make the political scale less abstract, but the problem is that Anarchy is by definition not really a political stance but an apolitical one. As another web bubble brews, there was a definite Libertarian smell in the atmosphere at South by Southwest. By any logical definition of anarchy, Libertarianism is just an erm 'politically correct' term for anarchy. On the right Libertarianism is pretty simple - its about gun nuts. But it seems that on the left, Libertarianism is often the choice of former liberals who have made lots of money and choose a cause which allows them to support rights which don't cost them anything. For 'Liberaltarians', supporting the right to...

After Carter first warned about energy problems in 1977 he installed solar panels on the White House roof. When Reagan took office, he removed the solar panels. 29 years later and the looming energy crisis is finally in the hands of both parties. In last night's SOTU speach Bush said: "To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission, coal-fired plants; revolutionary solar and wind technologies; and clean, safe nuclear energy." Perhaps the solar panels should go back up? As it happens, Carters' original panels were on a roof at Unity College, less than a year ago: "1992 when a Unity College administrator named Peter Marbach drove our old school bus down to Franconia, VA, to liberate them from a General Services Administration warehouse under the government surplus donations program. " In February, they posted a message saying to call them: "If you are...

I watched some of the Alito hearings in awe. Alito is very impressive, a great speaker, coherent and logical - but he is damaged goods since his reason and logic has boundaries. The evidence - the refusal to acknowledge that the constitution is a 'living document'. This is the latest meme to attack the very foundation of American Democracy by people who cannot accept the Constitution unless it is 'Intelligently Designed' and not Evolutionary. Since the constitution clearly does change - there are amendments, the argument against it as a living document is not creationist - i.e. it does not pretend that the amendments are fiction, that would be crazy. Instead, like Intelligent Design it tries to create a mechanism whereby things do change but they change because of an original, divinely inspired and complete design - the original Constitution. This is the exact opposite of what the founding fathers...

I normally beat up right wing incompetence, but time to have a go at left wing paranoia. Unlike stories of outing spies etc., many people in technology know that using tracking pixels or cookies is ubiquitous, accepted practice, i.e. neither unusual or sinister. So the thing that can be learned from the story below, is that if something sounds sinister, people will report it as such and one can assume that this is the case for other accusations against the government. ABC News: U.S. to Probe Contractor's Web Tracking

Wow - Michael Ignatieff, who is a genuinely intelligent person, unlike the vast majority of politicians, is going to run for the Canadian premiership. I've seen him stark bollock naked, because we used the same gym in London - I guess I may have seen the Emperor with no clothes. TheStar.com - No more Mr. Nice Guy

American Rhetoric: McCarthy-Welch Exchange During the Army-McCarthy Hearings

In light of today's attacks and me being increasingly annoyed with both right and left wing 'bloggards', I thought I would pick out a sample piece and fact check it: Instapundit writes: "UPDATE: Here are some interesting observations about the location of the attacks in London. "I have talked to a few people who have pointed out that Edgware, Aldgate (and Moorgate) and King's Cross all are in or adjacent to Muslim communities. King's Cross is the locale of The School of Oriental and African Studies, a highly respected institution teaching and researching Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It is possible that the attacks were as much directed at the Muslim population as much as the city at large." 1. There are many other stations that are near SOAS, such that Kings Cross is certainly not the local tube station to it. Also, SOAS's remit not Islam - hence...

I have been reading political blogs to try and find out what makes particular ones good meme spreaders. One the left I looked at Eschaton and DailyKos and on the right Instapundit and Little Green Morons. Conclusions: The left is full of crop circle paranoids. The right is full of stupid angry people. The sheer volume of information in both does manage to strip things to bare bones facts, but not by virtue of intelligence, just volume - like a colony of bacteria feeding on a corpse. Analysis still seems to be better in MSM - so I'll be sticking to my favorite publications for the moment: The Economist and Atlantic Monthly.