Cool is a relic of an earlier era which we are thankfully shedding. It was the product of the electronic media culture colliding with traditional culture. Cool was born as a way to signal to others that someone was tuned in, awake, aware of themselves, engaged and creative, an individual. These electronic values competed against the traditional values of a much harsher and punitive cultural system that emphasized responsibility, loyalty, conformity, and the importance of the group over the individual.
The battle has been fought, and electronic values have won. This can be seen by the fact that the uncool has nearly disappeared. Napoleon Dynamite can be seen as an example of electronic values consuming traditional values, of cool consuming even the uncool. The reassertion of the uncool is the last gasp of traditional culture. It seeks domination and control of others by assigning shame, embarrassment, humiliation, and fear.
Those who describe others as "old" or "embarrassing" are merely attempting to reassert the uncool. But they are on the losing side, and most will eventually realize this. The beauty of the victory of the cool is that it frees us from the cool/uncool dichotomy altogether. It allows us to spend our days pursuing our own interests, being ourselves instead of a cookie cutter mold of who we feel we're supposed to be.
The past is dead. No one has to be old anymore.
If you'd like a sense of how well the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking works, watch this this video. [Quicktime.] It's actually quite impressive, much better than it was when I tried it last. Best wishes for your Mom.
If there are breakthroughs in embryonic stem cell treatments for various lifethreatening diseases, fundmentalists will have to decline their benefits on moral grounds. That alone could even the score.
Googlezon is the worst company name ever. Except for Newsbotster. They would make great Godzilla nemeses, though.
I love this sort of blue sky futurism, even if it doesn't always make sense. I mean, if EPIC assimilates and summarizes news articles so well that it drives the newspapers offline and into bankruptcy, then it no longer has free news articles to assimilate and summarize. Not much a business model there.
There will always be a market for insight and accuracy. Any news organization that consistently shows both will thrive.
This was no debate -- it was a blowout. John Kerry was unbelievable. Forceful, articulate, with a powerful command of the facts, he lit up the stage and showed America what a president is supposed to sound like.
Bush, in contrast, was frighteningly bad. When confronted by tough questions (and even some easy ones) he often could only stare at the camera and blink. On a sheer physical level, the guy just looked bad. Slumping, blinking, staring, mumbling, humorously mispronouncing everything in sight ("moo-lahs", "pe-nin-shoola", etc.), and looking annoyed, angry, and defensive throughout, the contrast between the two couldn't have been greater. Kerry looked every inch the president, and spoke with the authority of one.
Even if the undecided voters don't know anything about the issues, they know presidential when they see it, and Bush wasn't. Some of his longer blink-and-stare pauses (and calling terrorists "a group of folks") were enough to make even a Freeper cringe.
Bush had his ass handed to him. Kerry was outstanding.
The real question following this debate is whether the mainstream news media have the integrity report what all America saw, or if they'll continue praising the emperor's new clothes by calling this disastrous performance by Bush a tie. When Jim Lehrer asked:
"What about Senator Kerry‘s point, the comparison he drew between the priorities of going after Osama bin Laden and going after Saddam Hussein?"
Bush actually said: "Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden."
Freudian slip, spoonerism, malaprop, whatever you want to call it... it's a powerfully revealing screwup, and one we ought to be seeing replayed if the news media had any integrity.
That, plus Bush's assertion that Iraq attacked us on September 11th, and John Kerry's calling him on it seconds later, really show the president's sloppy thinking. If they can crucify Gore over a sigh, they can surely crucify Bush for mentally confusing Saddam with America's Enemy #1.
Again, to sum up: No Contest. Kerry outclassed Bush on both substance and style by a country mile. And remember: The foreign policy debate was supposed to be Bush's strong suit! We've got two more of these on the way. Bush can't be liking that.
For the first time, I really feel excited about John Kerry as president.
rocket88: Yeah, I love that blocky old thing. My best friend in grade school used to have a poster of it on his wall. It still reminds me of Intellivision football.
But the Aricebo message wasn't a beacon. It wasn't even a spark. It barely lasted 3 minutes. It's also hella vulnerable to errors. Someday, though, we'll have a real active SETI operation going. Someday...
Nostrildamus said:
Advanced alien civilizations are unlikely to be using anything so primitive as radio for data transmission. Humans are so fucking stupid.
SETI isn't attempting to eavesdrop on alien conversations. It's looking for intentional beacons from civilizations trying to share information with us.
I put it to you that they don't know we're listening. If they did, & they are sufficiently advanced, they come here directly.
They don't have to know we're listening in order to broadcast a beacon. The whole point of the beacon might be to reach us in the brief window between our discovery of radio signals and our likely self-extinction.
Discovering radio waves is the technological equivalent of a toddler discovering she can open the door under the sink. According to Robert McNamara, we came within a hair's breadth of full-fledged nuclear war in 1962, a mere 70 years after the first public demonstration of radio communication. Today, a single well-designed terrorist plague could end human civilization.
It isn't hard for me to imagine an alien society that would want to reach out to toddler civilizations, to connect with them before they drink the cosmic Liquid Plumr, so to speak.
A powerful radio signal broadcast at a logical frequency is a reasonable way to do that. That's why SETI focuses its search on the so-called "Water Hole", the quietest part of the radio spectrum which happens to fall between the radio spikes of hydrogen and hydroxyl, around 1.4 gigahertz.
Hydrogen (H) + hydroxyl (HO) = H2O. If there's another water-based civilization out there, it's easy to see that this is a logical place to broadcast or listen.
Projects like Danny Hillis' Clock of the Long Now enable me to imagine a future in which we broadcast a signal of our own someday.
BK Markus says:
This is why the castaways value Thurston Howell's paper dollars: because whatever absurd amount he may have brought with him for "a three-hour tour," that amount is now fixed. Dollars are the most stable currency available on Gilligan's Island, and the government has nothing to do with it.
*shakes head*
This man is mixed up twelve ways from Sunday.
I. Why This Economic Argument is Flawed
In the absence of any other source of reserve notes on the island, Mr. Howell *becomes* the Fed. He wouldn't dump all his money straight into the island economy any more than Greenspan would lower the federal funds rate to 0.00%. It would devalue his currency and make it useless. You don't get to be CEO of Howell Industries by doing that!
Instead, he would form the First Bank of Howell's Island, and put Ginger and the Skipper on the Board of Directors as salaried but powerless sinecures. The bank would store the castaway's money and make loans to achieve useful goals. For example:
The Professor wants someone to pedal the stationary bike generator to juice up the coconut batteries so the radio will work. He has better things to do than pedal a bike all day, so he asks for a loan from the bank to pay Gilligan to do it.
Gilligan will now be able to buy one of Maryanne's coconut cream pies, while the Professor is able to earn a profit by selling tickets to listen to the radio that evening. Everyone gets something they want -- charged batteries, free time, a radio show, coconut cream pie -- and at the end of the day, Mr. Howell still has control of the money supply and is the richest man in the world. Or at least his world.
The "Wizard of Wall Street" strikes again!
II. Why This Analyis Misses The Point
Of course, this never happens. What does happen is an economist's worst nightmare: a world without money!
The castaways don't buy and sell to earn their livings -- they share. Whenever Thurston's cash does come into play, it's never used as anything more than an ironic, tragicomic prop, highlighting Thurston as a hilariously delusional old fruit.
Only an economist could miss that the whole point of the Thurston Howell III character is to lampoon greed and the pursuit of wealth. The punchline of Thurston is that he still thinks he's a millionaire, even though he's a nothingaire, just like everyone else on the island. Sometimes his cupidity infects them all -- as in the gold mine episode -- but invariably the inevitable destruction it causes wakes them up and causes them to return to their prelapsarian ways.
So why do the economics of Gilligan trump the economics of Howell? The answer is obvious: the castaways didn't really want to escape. They felt richer as a community of castaways sharing their fortunes and lives than as individual cogs in a mechanical, empty economic system. Gilligan shows us something we all know in our hearts: Friends are the true wealth.
Take that, Ludwig von Mises Institute!
Most of the time, I'm pretty optimistic, kamus.
I still believe it's Kerry's race to lose. I don't think the Democrats have learned how to campaign effectively against the Republicans yet, but Bush may do the work for them. He's just that bad. And if the Plame scandal pops in the next few weeks, Bush is toast.
Also, Kerry has the wonderworking power of boredom on his side. The Republicans need to make Kerry a hateable figure in order to succeed, but Kerry is too flavorless and bland a figure to inspire much hate.
Kerry has to walk a fine line during the debates, but I believe he can do it. And I think the winner of the debates takes all. So my gut tells me Kerry will win. But like I said, I might be wrong.
P.S. There's a good article on the subject by Donna Brazile here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5851875/site/newsweek/
tensor:
Hardly the first time this year, but certainly the first time after Kerry accepted his nomination.
"For the first time this year in a Times survey, Bush led Kerry in the presidential race, drawing 49% among registered voters, compared with 46% for the Democrat. In a Times poll just before the Democratic convention last month, Kerry held a 2-percentage-point advantage over Bush."
-- LAtimes.com
It was also only one of two polls that show Kerry down, a point that seems to be lost here. The other five or six polls released that week show Kerry ahead, though with a tighter lead.
Here's the most recent polling data:
FOX News: Kerry 44, Bush 43, Nader 3
Time: Bush 46, Kerry 44, Nader 5
NBC/WSJ: Bush 47, Kerry 45, Nader 3
Gallup: Bush 48, Kerry 46, Nader 4
LA Times: Bush 47, Kerry 44, Nader 3
Rasmussen: Bush 48, Kerry 45
Zogby: Kerry by 16 electoral votes
5 out of 7 show Bush ahead, not including the Iowa Electronic Markets which have yet to show Kerry in the lead.
These polls were all taken last week, so I think the Republican convention doesn't have much to do with Bush's uptick.
The polls are underindicating for Kerry this year. My Democratic caucus turnout was explosive, far beyond expectations. I expect a lot of nonvoters and occasional voters to come out of the woodwork for Kerry this year, and a number of Republicans to stay home.
But I could be wrong.
And give them the only thing they so desperately seek — credibility?
Democrats treat these kind of campaigns as if they are about credibility. They're not. Undecided voters won't go to the effort of determining whose accusations are credible and whose aren't. These are people who believe that Bill Gates really may send them money if they forward an e-mail onto their friends.
Over the last few weeks I've done a lot of reading on exactly what Kerry said then, and his testimony is remarkably consistent and well-argued.
I agree. Republicans seem to think Kerry's testimony will repel voters, but it's quite eloquent. Which is why I think Kerry should've embraced it early on and short-circuited the Swift Boat Vets drama.
The real attacks on Bush's failed policies haven't begun yet
This is not a positive.
Also expect the Ledeen and Plame stories to explode soon
One can only hope.
You continue to make excellent points.
Thanks, Darshon. You're very kind.
Everyone hold their political views for different, sometimes very personal reasons. We attach ourselves to our politics based on other, deeper observations about the world, and sometimes even about our families.
That's why political argument rarely converts anyone. The heart of political discussion is getting past politics to ideas. Like:
Does offering a helping hand to someone in need make them dependent or enable them to succeed?Do disadvantaged people deserve to be exploited?
Answers to these sorts of questions are more illuminating and can actually bring you together instead of tearing you apart.
fuyugare said:
I don't think the swift smears are working, or at least they have peaked. Take the LA Times poll which has Bush beating Kerry 47 to 44.
I'd say that LA Times poll proves the Swift smears are working. This is the first time this year the president has polled ahead of Kerry.
Take a look at the Iowa Electronic Markets, as well. They've got a history of predicting the popular vote with an average election eve error of 1.37 percent. Kerry's stock has taken a major hit since the Swift boat vet attack ads have aired.
I don't think that Kerry's mundane daily condemnations of Bush policy are going to be enough to undo the damage the Swift Boat vets have done and will continue to do until Election Day. The book is selling well, and an anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor, debuts in a couple weeks. He needs to give the scandal hungry media a new focus point, or they'll feed on him until they've stripped his bones clean.
There is a lot of speculation that Kerry wanted to wait and let the swift vets swallow their own words
I know that similar attacks on Kerry in the past have failed, but this isn't Massachusetts politics anymore. Anyone telling you that Kerry wants these attacks is engaged in spin or wishful thinking.
Kerry should've had his political guns aimed at these jokers from the moment he heard about them. The first day they ran their ads, he should've taken them down, discrediting them with strong language and laying bare their motives. As it is, some people still wonder, "Why are these guys against him? They can't all be Republicans."
Personally, I think Kerry is reluctant to bring up his Winter Soldier testimony, and is hoping the attacks will die down. Running from your past may have worked for George Bush, but he was never the public figure John Kerry was. If Kerry was smart, he'd embrace his past, and talk about what he's learned from it. I think Kerry's testimony can be tied in to the Abu Ghraib torture photos and make Kerry come off as a stronger leader. But if he lets the Swift boat vets back him into commenting on his testimony, he loses the adavantage.
kamus said:
I can forgive Bush for running into a hedge years ago if only he wasn't responsible for a lot of innocent people dying.
Most liberals would agree with you, but we ought to let the Republicans make that defense. I suspect some of the folks on their side, especially mothers, may not feel as generous.
I also think it's relevant to make the analogy that Bush's DWI showed him to be reckless, irresponsible, unconcerned about the damage he could inflict on others -- just like his Iraq war policy and credit card presidency shows him to be today.
I sympathize with your wish for a more perfect world, where politics would just be about policy, not people. But we can't cower in the corner. Bullies must be fought. We must hit them as hard as our principles will allow. Nothing good comes easy.
kamus, thanks for your support, but I'm not making the case for lowering our ethical standards. I don't think we should lie, or steal, or blackmail our way into office.
I am making the case for campaigning truthfully but aggressively, like winning matters to us. Let's stop leading with our chin and bring the fight to them this time.
About making drunk driving convictions into a campaign issue -- I think it will backfire on the Democrats.
Okay, at least we're getting somewhere now. You think pointing out Bush's DWI isn't inherently bad, it's just a bad tactic that will backfire.
I feel that way about attacking Bush's National Guard service. It's impossible to prove a negative, and every time they show a picture of Bush in his National Guard uniform, all undecided voters see is a photo of their president as a young man serving his country. The whole National Guard issue is too murky to lead with.
But Bush's DWI is an undisputed moral ugliness that's hard to defend. He didn't just fail a breathalyzer test, he ran off the road into some hedges, according to his arresting officer, Calvin Bridges.
After his conviction, his Maine driver's license was revoked for two years -- a punishment not statutorially in line with a first time offense.
Bush has a shady history when it comes to booze, drugs, and the law. He's said, "I did some irresponsible things when I was young and irresponsible," but he was 30 years old when he received this DWI. He changed his Driver's License number when he was governor of Texas for reasons that he won't explain.
Starting to get curious yet? So will the rest of America, if Democrats actually hold Bush to the same level of scrutiny the Republicans are holding Kerry to right now.
If the dems make drunk driving an issue, they will lose former undecideds, now in the Democratic camp, who will see the attack as confirmation of long held suspicions about Demcorats as Bush-haters.
Have you seen the poll drop in Kerry's numbers since the Swift Boat ads started running? Negative ads are effective at swaying significant percentages of voters away from your target candidate to you. That's why the Republicans run them.
A campaign on the issues is not as easily impugned, and promotes honest debate.
Meanwhile, Kerry plummets in the polls.
The Democrats need to quit worrying about being impugned and start worrying about getting elected.
What is the use campaigning against Bush if you are going to be just as awful on tactics?
You're kidding, right?
a) Pointing out that Bush has a DWI conviction on his records doesn't begin to approach the awfulness of Team Bush.
b) The use is getting Kerry in office, and all that entails for our nation and its citizens. Do I have to make this argument, too? I sort of assumed you knew what we were fighting for here.
Any time a campaign decides to play these manifestly dirty tricks, the country as a whole suffers.
Fuyugare, dirty politics is when you lie for political gain. There's nothing dirty about pointing out George Bush's drunk driving conviction, or Cheney's double-shot of DWIs, for that matter. It's a matter of undisputed public record.
If you think it's "dirty" because it's not an elevated NPR-like discussion of the issues, well, that was my point: Democrats think that way, and that's why they're probably going to lose.
Undecided voters have different criteria for voting than you do. They figure all politicians are alike, and it doesn't really matter who gets elected. They will vote based on factors you find yourself too above-the-fray to mention: military service, drug use, drunk driving, etc.
Some -- I'd say most -- of these voters don't know Bush was convicted of drunk driving. Why? Because the Democrats haven't told them he was.
We should talk about the issues, because we're stronger on the issues, but we shouldn't abandon those who don't care about the issues and make their choices differently. If the Democrats listen to people like you, they will abandon these voters and lose their votes. It's as simple as that.
There's a large chunk of the Democratic party which finds this a perfectly acceptable circumstance. They would rather lose than fight as hard as the Republicans will. On November 2nd, they'll watch the election returns and frown.
"Well, I tried to tell people to vote for Kerry," they'll sigh. "But they didn't listen."
They listened, all right. To the Republicans. Because the Democrats were too timid to speak up, even when their opponent was a drunk driver.
rolypolyman, I hear you.
It's not about "talking down" to conservatives, but rather being able to articulate your beliefs as succinctly and compellingly as they can articulate theirs.
One of the frameworks I use is the idea of America as garden.
During a political discussion, a conservative friend will say to me, "It's MY money! I earned it! The government's got no right to it."
I'll agree with them. It is your money. But that's only half the story, I'll say.
I tell them America is like a garden, and in this garden, we have people picking carrots. Some people say, "I picked these carrots! These are my carrots! No one has a right to a single carrot that *I* picked!"
But who planted the carrots? The people who planted the garden are the ones who made your labor possible. And they didn't do it just so you, personally, could benefit, but so that everyone could. You owe them a lot of your success. Public education helped make you smart. Public roads gave you the ability to buy and sell from distant places. The FDA made sure no one was poisioning your food or watering down your medicine.
In a thousand different ways, you've benefitted from the gardeners who came before you. Shouldn't you be trying to plant the garden, too?
Why haven't the Democrats capitalized on Bush's weaknesses? Because they've been too busy playing defense. Badly.
The Republicans know something that Democrats don't: Undecided voters don't vote based on policy or economics. They vote based on feelings, vague impressions, half-remembered bits of advertising that reached them in the car on the way to work, or during their favorite sitcom. They vote based on e-mail forwards. They vote based on what the news is Election Day morning.
That's why 75% of Bush's ads are negative. That's why the Republicans funded the Swift Boat ads. Truth doesn't matter here; what matters is pushing voters' emotional buttons, getting them to associate negative feelings with Kerry.
If I was a rich Democrat donor, I'd have formed a 527 by now called "Drunk Driving Victims Against Bush." Families who've lost their children due to drunk drivers would come out and say that anyone convicted of drunk driving should not be president.
Of course, they'd have their own ads.
"George W. Bush was convicted of drunken driving," a mother's voice would say, while spare, tragic piano music played softly in the background. "He crashed into a hedge. It could just as well have been a child." Cut to home video of a cute 8-year-old girl with pigtails opening Christmas presents in slow motion. "My daughter Jenny was killed by a drunk driver. No one who drives drunk deserves the presidency." It would finish with the text: "Jenny can't vote. You can. Don't vote for George Bush this November."
Emotionally manipulative? You bet.
Distracting from the issues? Yup.
But suddenly the landscape of cable news changes as Republicans strain themselves trying to defend drunk driving. Kerry's Swift Boat problem fades into the background as questions about Bush's drunk driving conviction lead inevitably to questions of Bush's quasi-admitted cocaine binges, pushing him to formally confirm or deny his drug use. It's all downhill for him from there.
Bush's drunk driving conviction is low-hanging fruit that's begging to be picked. Women voters especially won't want to cast their ballot for a drunk driver. But Democrats will never pluck it. They believe they must win on the issues. Which is another way of saying they don't want to win as much as the Republicans do.
Oh, please. You'd think the Monkeyfilter crew would be smart enough not to fall for this Drudge Report propaganda.
AirAmerica paid for a period of air time on the LA station, and the owner took their check but ALSO sold that time to another party. This is no different than your landlord taking your rent check and then renting your apartment to someone else because you were on vacation. You'd stop payment on your rent check, too, if your landlord did that.
AirAmerica offered to go to arbitration, but the station owner then chose to breach an entirely separate contract by, again, cashing AirAmerica's check for time on the Chicago station, but denying them access to the station. The story here is one of unlawful practices by a business, and it has nothing to do with AirAmerica's finances.
I've heard some backwards folks say things like, "Haw haw! Th' libruls haf to BUY time! Cuz no one will lissen to them!" Let's get this straight: AirAmerica buys time, adds value to it via their programming, and resells it to advertisers. This is called capitalism, and liberals are very good at it. The demand for AirAmerica across the country has been tremendous. Their streaming numbers are huge. Only frustrated, threatened right wingers are trying to spin this as "liberal radio fAiLS!"
I've really been enjoying the O'Franken Factor and the Majority Report. I often d/l MP3 archives of their daily shows (found at the fan-created airamericaplace.com) and listen to them in the car on my iPod.
As a right-wing talk radio connoisseur, I can say with authority that conservative talk radiospace is completely saturated. In my market, there are 6 talk stations competing for a increasingly small share of the radio pie. Liberal talk radio is the only way this market is going to grow, and many station owners know this. You can expect AirAmerica's network of stations to grow fast. Count on it.
I like Mperia. RIAA-free music, but reasonably priced to help support the artists.
posted by stimulantcaplets 19 years ago
In "Who's old now?"
Cool is a relic of an earlier era which we are thankfully shedding. It was the product of the electronic media culture colliding with traditional culture. Cool was born as a way to signal to others that someone was tuned in, awake, aware of themselves, engaged and creative, an individual. These electronic values competed against the traditional values of a much harsher and punitive cultural system that emphasized responsibility, loyalty, conformity, and the importance of the group over the individual. The battle has been fought, and electronic values have won. This can be seen by the fact that the uncool has nearly disappeared. Napoleon Dynamite can be seen as an example of electronic values consuming traditional values, of cool consuming even the uncool. The reassertion of the uncool is the last gasp of traditional culture. It seeks domination and control of others by assigning shame, embarrassment, humiliation, and fear. Those who describe others as "old" or "embarrassing" are merely attempting to reassert the uncool. But they are on the losing side, and most will eventually realize this. The beauty of the victory of the cool is that it frees us from the cool/uncool dichotomy altogether. It allows us to spend our days pursuing our own interests, being ourselves instead of a cookie cutter mold of who we feel we're supposed to be. The past is dead. No one has to be old anymore.
posted by stimulantcaplets 19 years ago
In "Curious George: Voice Recognition Software"
If you'd like a sense of how well the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking works, watch this this video. [Quicktime.] It's actually quite impressive, much better than it was when I tried it last. Best wishes for your Mom.
posted by stimulantcaplets 19 years ago
In "Creationists will breed themselves into the majority."
If there are breakthroughs in embryonic stem cell treatments for various lifethreatening diseases, fundmentalists will have to decline their benefits on moral grounds. That alone could even the score.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "The Future of Media"
Googlezon is the worst company name ever. Except for Newsbotster. They would make great Godzilla nemeses, though. I love this sort of blue sky futurism, even if it doesn't always make sense. I mean, if EPIC assimilates and summarizes news articles so well that it drives the newspapers offline and into bankruptcy, then it no longer has free news articles to assimilate and summarize. Not much a business model there. There will always be a market for insight and accuracy. Any news organization that consistently shows both will thrive.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Hilarious and Yet Discerning Live Blog of The Debate"
This was no debate -- it was a blowout. John Kerry was unbelievable. Forceful, articulate, with a powerful command of the facts, he lit up the stage and showed America what a president is supposed to sound like. Bush, in contrast, was frighteningly bad. When confronted by tough questions (and even some easy ones) he often could only stare at the camera and blink. On a sheer physical level, the guy just looked bad. Slumping, blinking, staring, mumbling, humorously mispronouncing everything in sight ("moo-lahs", "pe-nin-shoola", etc.), and looking annoyed, angry, and defensive throughout, the contrast between the two couldn't have been greater. Kerry looked every inch the president, and spoke with the authority of one. Even if the undecided voters don't know anything about the issues, they know presidential when they see it, and Bush wasn't. Some of his longer blink-and-stare pauses (and calling terrorists "a group of folks") were enough to make even a Freeper cringe. Bush had his ass handed to him. Kerry was outstanding. The real question following this debate is whether the mainstream news media have the integrity report what all America saw, or if they'll continue praising the emperor's new clothes by calling this disastrous performance by Bush a tie. When Jim Lehrer asked: "What about Senator Kerry‘s point, the comparison he drew between the priorities of going after Osama bin Laden and going after Saddam Hussein?" Bush actually said: "Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden." Freudian slip, spoonerism, malaprop, whatever you want to call it... it's a powerfully revealing screwup, and one we ought to be seeing replayed if the news media had any integrity. That, plus Bush's assertion that Iraq attacked us on September 11th, and John Kerry's calling him on it seconds later, really show the president's sloppy thinking. If they can crucify Gore over a sigh, they can surely crucify Bush for mentally confusing Saddam with America's Enemy #1. Again, to sum up: No Contest. Kerry outclassed Bush on both substance and style by a country mile. And remember: The foreign policy debate was supposed to be Bush's strong suit! We've got two more of these on the way. Bush can't be liking that. For the first time, I really feel excited about John Kerry as president.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "The Genesis Project."
squidranch: no, that's the Singularity you're thinking of.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Contact?"
rocket88: Yeah, I love that blocky old thing. My best friend in grade school used to have a poster of it on his wall. It still reminds me of Intellivision football. But the Aricebo message wasn't a beacon. It wasn't even a spark. It barely lasted 3 minutes. It's also hella vulnerable to errors. Someday, though, we'll have a real active SETI operation going. Someday...
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
Nostrildamus said: Advanced alien civilizations are unlikely to be using anything so primitive as radio for data transmission. Humans are so fucking stupid. SETI isn't attempting to eavesdrop on alien conversations. It's looking for intentional beacons from civilizations trying to share information with us. I put it to you that they don't know we're listening. If they did, & they are sufficiently advanced, they come here directly. They don't have to know we're listening in order to broadcast a beacon. The whole point of the beacon might be to reach us in the brief window between our discovery of radio signals and our likely self-extinction. Discovering radio waves is the technological equivalent of a toddler discovering she can open the door under the sink. According to Robert McNamara, we came within a hair's breadth of full-fledged nuclear war in 1962, a mere 70 years after the first public demonstration of radio communication. Today, a single well-designed terrorist plague could end human civilization. It isn't hard for me to imagine an alien society that would want to reach out to toddler civilizations, to connect with them before they drink the cosmic Liquid Plumr, so to speak. A powerful radio signal broadcast at a logical frequency is a reasonable way to do that. That's why SETI focuses its search on the so-called "Water Hole", the quietest part of the radio spectrum which happens to fall between the radio spikes of hydrogen and hydroxyl, around 1.4 gigahertz. Hydrogen (H) + hydroxyl (HO) = H2O. If there's another water-based civilization out there, it's easy to see that this is a logical place to broadcast or listen. Projects like Danny Hillis' Clock of the Long Now enable me to imagine a future in which we broadcast a signal of our own someday.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III"
BK Markus says: This is why the castaways value Thurston Howell's paper dollars: because whatever absurd amount he may have brought with him for "a three-hour tour," that amount is now fixed. Dollars are the most stable currency available on Gilligan's Island, and the government has nothing to do with it. *shakes head* This man is mixed up twelve ways from Sunday. I. Why This Economic Argument is Flawed In the absence of any other source of reserve notes on the island, Mr. Howell *becomes* the Fed. He wouldn't dump all his money straight into the island economy any more than Greenspan would lower the federal funds rate to 0.00%. It would devalue his currency and make it useless. You don't get to be CEO of Howell Industries by doing that! Instead, he would form the First Bank of Howell's Island, and put Ginger and the Skipper on the Board of Directors as salaried but powerless sinecures. The bank would store the castaway's money and make loans to achieve useful goals. For example: The Professor wants someone to pedal the stationary bike generator to juice up the coconut batteries so the radio will work. He has better things to do than pedal a bike all day, so he asks for a loan from the bank to pay Gilligan to do it. Gilligan will now be able to buy one of Maryanne's coconut cream pies, while the Professor is able to earn a profit by selling tickets to listen to the radio that evening. Everyone gets something they want -- charged batteries, free time, a radio show, coconut cream pie -- and at the end of the day, Mr. Howell still has control of the money supply and is the richest man in the world. Or at least his world. The "Wizard of Wall Street" strikes again! II. Why This Analyis Misses The Point Of course, this never happens. What does happen is an economist's worst nightmare: a world without money! The castaways don't buy and sell to earn their livings -- they share. Whenever Thurston's cash does come into play, it's never used as anything more than an ironic, tragicomic prop, highlighting Thurston as a hilariously delusional old fruit. Only an economist could miss that the whole point of the Thurston Howell III character is to lampoon greed and the pursuit of wealth. The punchline of Thurston is that he still thinks he's a millionaire, even though he's a nothingaire, just like everyone else on the island. Sometimes his cupidity infects them all -- as in the gold mine episode -- but invariably the inevitable destruction it causes wakes them up and causes them to return to their prelapsarian ways. So why do the economics of Gilligan trump the economics of Howell? The answer is obvious: the castaways didn't really want to escape. They felt richer as a community of castaways sharing their fortunes and lives than as individual cogs in a mechanical, empty economic system. Gilligan shows us something we all know in our hearts: Friends are the true wealth. Take that, Ludwig von Mises Institute!
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Curious George: why are the Democrats and Kerry so inept"
Most of the time, I'm pretty optimistic, kamus. I still believe it's Kerry's race to lose. I don't think the Democrats have learned how to campaign effectively against the Republicans yet, but Bush may do the work for them. He's just that bad. And if the Plame scandal pops in the next few weeks, Bush is toast. Also, Kerry has the wonderworking power of boredom on his side. The Republicans need to make Kerry a hateable figure in order to succeed, but Kerry is too flavorless and bland a figure to inspire much hate. Kerry has to walk a fine line during the debates, but I believe he can do it. And I think the winner of the debates takes all. So my gut tells me Kerry will win. But like I said, I might be wrong. P.S. There's a good article on the subject by Donna Brazile here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5851875/site/newsweek/
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
tensor: Hardly the first time this year, but certainly the first time after Kerry accepted his nomination. "For the first time this year in a Times survey, Bush led Kerry in the presidential race, drawing 49% among registered voters, compared with 46% for the Democrat. In a Times poll just before the Democratic convention last month, Kerry held a 2-percentage-point advantage over Bush." -- LAtimes.com It was also only one of two polls that show Kerry down, a point that seems to be lost here. The other five or six polls released that week show Kerry ahead, though with a tighter lead. Here's the most recent polling data:
5 out of 7 show Bush ahead, not including the Iowa Electronic Markets which have yet to show Kerry in the lead. These polls were all taken last week, so I think the Republican convention doesn't have much to do with Bush's uptick. The polls are underindicating for Kerry this year. My Democratic caucus turnout was explosive, far beyond expectations. I expect a lot of nonvoters and occasional voters to come out of the woodwork for Kerry this year, and a number of Republicans to stay home. But I could be wrong. And give them the only thing they so desperately seek — credibility? Democrats treat these kind of campaigns as if they are about credibility. They're not. Undecided voters won't go to the effort of determining whose accusations are credible and whose aren't. These are people who believe that Bill Gates really may send them money if they forward an e-mail onto their friends. Over the last few weeks I've done a lot of reading on exactly what Kerry said then, and his testimony is remarkably consistent and well-argued. I agree. Republicans seem to think Kerry's testimony will repel voters, but it's quite eloquent. Which is why I think Kerry should've embraced it early on and short-circuited the Swift Boat Vets drama. The real attacks on Bush's failed policies haven't begun yet This is not a positive. Also expect the Ledeen and Plame stories to explode soon One can only hope.posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Curious George: Parables for the Limbaugh masses?"
You continue to make excellent points. Thanks, Darshon. You're very kind. Everyone hold their political views for different, sometimes very personal reasons. We attach ourselves to our politics based on other, deeper observations about the world, and sometimes even about our families. That's why political argument rarely converts anyone. The heart of political discussion is getting past politics to ideas. Like: Does offering a helping hand to someone in need make them dependent or enable them to succeed? Do disadvantaged people deserve to be exploited? Answers to these sorts of questions are more illuminating and can actually bring you together instead of tearing you apart.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Curious George: why are the Democrats and Kerry so inept"
fuyugare said: I don't think the swift smears are working, or at least they have peaked. Take the LA Times poll which has Bush beating Kerry 47 to 44. I'd say that LA Times poll proves the Swift smears are working. This is the first time this year the president has polled ahead of Kerry. Take a look at the Iowa Electronic Markets, as well. They've got a history of predicting the popular vote with an average election eve error of 1.37 percent. Kerry's stock has taken a major hit since the Swift boat vet attack ads have aired. I don't think that Kerry's mundane daily condemnations of Bush policy are going to be enough to undo the damage the Swift Boat vets have done and will continue to do until Election Day. The book is selling well, and an anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor, debuts in a couple weeks. He needs to give the scandal hungry media a new focus point, or they'll feed on him until they've stripped his bones clean. There is a lot of speculation that Kerry wanted to wait and let the swift vets swallow their own words I know that similar attacks on Kerry in the past have failed, but this isn't Massachusetts politics anymore. Anyone telling you that Kerry wants these attacks is engaged in spin or wishful thinking. Kerry should've had his political guns aimed at these jokers from the moment he heard about them. The first day they ran their ads, he should've taken them down, discrediting them with strong language and laying bare their motives. As it is, some people still wonder, "Why are these guys against him? They can't all be Republicans." Personally, I think Kerry is reluctant to bring up his Winter Soldier testimony, and is hoping the attacks will die down. Running from your past may have worked for George Bush, but he was never the public figure John Kerry was. If Kerry was smart, he'd embrace his past, and talk about what he's learned from it. I think Kerry's testimony can be tied in to the Abu Ghraib torture photos and make Kerry come off as a stronger leader. But if he lets the Swift boat vets back him into commenting on his testimony, he loses the adavantage. kamus said: I can forgive Bush for running into a hedge years ago if only he wasn't responsible for a lot of innocent people dying. Most liberals would agree with you, but we ought to let the Republicans make that defense. I suspect some of the folks on their side, especially mothers, may not feel as generous. I also think it's relevant to make the analogy that Bush's DWI showed him to be reckless, irresponsible, unconcerned about the damage he could inflict on others -- just like his Iraq war policy and credit card presidency shows him to be today. I sympathize with your wish for a more perfect world, where politics would just be about policy, not people. But we can't cower in the corner. Bullies must be fought. We must hit them as hard as our principles will allow. Nothing good comes easy.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
kamus, thanks for your support, but I'm not making the case for lowering our ethical standards. I don't think we should lie, or steal, or blackmail our way into office. I am making the case for campaigning truthfully but aggressively, like winning matters to us. Let's stop leading with our chin and bring the fight to them this time.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
About making drunk driving convictions into a campaign issue -- I think it will backfire on the Democrats. Okay, at least we're getting somewhere now. You think pointing out Bush's DWI isn't inherently bad, it's just a bad tactic that will backfire. I feel that way about attacking Bush's National Guard service. It's impossible to prove a negative, and every time they show a picture of Bush in his National Guard uniform, all undecided voters see is a photo of their president as a young man serving his country. The whole National Guard issue is too murky to lead with. But Bush's DWI is an undisputed moral ugliness that's hard to defend. He didn't just fail a breathalyzer test, he ran off the road into some hedges, according to his arresting officer, Calvin Bridges. After his conviction, his Maine driver's license was revoked for two years -- a punishment not statutorially in line with a first time offense. Bush has a shady history when it comes to booze, drugs, and the law. He's said, "I did some irresponsible things when I was young and irresponsible," but he was 30 years old when he received this DWI. He changed his Driver's License number when he was governor of Texas for reasons that he won't explain. Starting to get curious yet? So will the rest of America, if Democrats actually hold Bush to the same level of scrutiny the Republicans are holding Kerry to right now. If the dems make drunk driving an issue, they will lose former undecideds, now in the Democratic camp, who will see the attack as confirmation of long held suspicions about Demcorats as Bush-haters. Have you seen the poll drop in Kerry's numbers since the Swift Boat ads started running? Negative ads are effective at swaying significant percentages of voters away from your target candidate to you. That's why the Republicans run them. A campaign on the issues is not as easily impugned, and promotes honest debate. Meanwhile, Kerry plummets in the polls. The Democrats need to quit worrying about being impugned and start worrying about getting elected. What is the use campaigning against Bush if you are going to be just as awful on tactics? You're kidding, right? a) Pointing out that Bush has a DWI conviction on his records doesn't begin to approach the awfulness of Team Bush. b) The use is getting Kerry in office, and all that entails for our nation and its citizens. Do I have to make this argument, too? I sort of assumed you knew what we were fighting for here.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
Any time a campaign decides to play these manifestly dirty tricks, the country as a whole suffers. Fuyugare, dirty politics is when you lie for political gain. There's nothing dirty about pointing out George Bush's drunk driving conviction, or Cheney's double-shot of DWIs, for that matter. It's a matter of undisputed public record. If you think it's "dirty" because it's not an elevated NPR-like discussion of the issues, well, that was my point: Democrats think that way, and that's why they're probably going to lose. Undecided voters have different criteria for voting than you do. They figure all politicians are alike, and it doesn't really matter who gets elected. They will vote based on factors you find yourself too above-the-fray to mention: military service, drug use, drunk driving, etc. Some -- I'd say most -- of these voters don't know Bush was convicted of drunk driving. Why? Because the Democrats haven't told them he was. We should talk about the issues, because we're stronger on the issues, but we shouldn't abandon those who don't care about the issues and make their choices differently. If the Democrats listen to people like you, they will abandon these voters and lose their votes. It's as simple as that. There's a large chunk of the Democratic party which finds this a perfectly acceptable circumstance. They would rather lose than fight as hard as the Republicans will. On November 2nd, they'll watch the election returns and frown. "Well, I tried to tell people to vote for Kerry," they'll sigh. "But they didn't listen." They listened, all right. To the Republicans. Because the Democrats were too timid to speak up, even when their opponent was a drunk driver.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Curious George: Parables for the Limbaugh masses?"
rolypolyman, I hear you. It's not about "talking down" to conservatives, but rather being able to articulate your beliefs as succinctly and compellingly as they can articulate theirs. One of the frameworks I use is the idea of America as garden. During a political discussion, a conservative friend will say to me, "It's MY money! I earned it! The government's got no right to it." I'll agree with them. It is your money. But that's only half the story, I'll say. I tell them America is like a garden, and in this garden, we have people picking carrots. Some people say, "I picked these carrots! These are my carrots! No one has a right to a single carrot that *I* picked!" But who planted the carrots? The people who planted the garden are the ones who made your labor possible. And they didn't do it just so you, personally, could benefit, but so that everyone could. You owe them a lot of your success. Public education helped make you smart. Public roads gave you the ability to buy and sell from distant places. The FDA made sure no one was poisioning your food or watering down your medicine. In a thousand different ways, you've benefitted from the gardeners who came before you. Shouldn't you be trying to plant the garden, too?
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Curious George: why are the Democrats and Kerry so inept"
Why haven't the Democrats capitalized on Bush's weaknesses? Because they've been too busy playing defense. Badly. The Republicans know something that Democrats don't: Undecided voters don't vote based on policy or economics. They vote based on feelings, vague impressions, half-remembered bits of advertising that reached them in the car on the way to work, or during their favorite sitcom. They vote based on e-mail forwards. They vote based on what the news is Election Day morning. That's why 75% of Bush's ads are negative. That's why the Republicans funded the Swift Boat ads. Truth doesn't matter here; what matters is pushing voters' emotional buttons, getting them to associate negative feelings with Kerry. If I was a rich Democrat donor, I'd have formed a 527 by now called "Drunk Driving Victims Against Bush." Families who've lost their children due to drunk drivers would come out and say that anyone convicted of drunk driving should not be president. Of course, they'd have their own ads. "George W. Bush was convicted of drunken driving," a mother's voice would say, while spare, tragic piano music played softly in the background. "He crashed into a hedge. It could just as well have been a child." Cut to home video of a cute 8-year-old girl with pigtails opening Christmas presents in slow motion. "My daughter Jenny was killed by a drunk driver. No one who drives drunk deserves the presidency." It would finish with the text: "Jenny can't vote. You can. Don't vote for George Bush this November." Emotionally manipulative? You bet. Distracting from the issues? Yup. But suddenly the landscape of cable news changes as Republicans strain themselves trying to defend drunk driving. Kerry's Swift Boat problem fades into the background as questions about Bush's drunk driving conviction lead inevitably to questions of Bush's quasi-admitted cocaine binges, pushing him to formally confirm or deny his drug use. It's all downhill for him from there. Bush's drunk driving conviction is low-hanging fruit that's begging to be picked. Women voters especially won't want to cast their ballot for a drunk driver. But Democrats will never pluck it. They believe they must win on the issues. Which is another way of saying they don't want to win as much as the Republicans do.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
In "Plug Pulled on Air America? Already???"
Oh, please. You'd think the Monkeyfilter crew would be smart enough not to fall for this Drudge Report propaganda. AirAmerica paid for a period of air time on the LA station, and the owner took their check but ALSO sold that time to another party. This is no different than your landlord taking your rent check and then renting your apartment to someone else because you were on vacation. You'd stop payment on your rent check, too, if your landlord did that. AirAmerica offered to go to arbitration, but the station owner then chose to breach an entirely separate contract by, again, cashing AirAmerica's check for time on the Chicago station, but denying them access to the station. The story here is one of unlawful practices by a business, and it has nothing to do with AirAmerica's finances. I've heard some backwards folks say things like, "Haw haw! Th' libruls haf to BUY time! Cuz no one will lissen to them!" Let's get this straight: AirAmerica buys time, adds value to it via their programming, and resells it to advertisers. This is called capitalism, and liberals are very good at it. The demand for AirAmerica across the country has been tremendous. Their streaming numbers are huge. Only frustrated, threatened right wingers are trying to spin this as "liberal radio fAiLS!" I've really been enjoying the O'Franken Factor and the Majority Report. I often d/l MP3 archives of their daily shows (found at the fan-created airamericaplace.com) and listen to them in the car on my iPod. As a right-wing talk radio connoisseur, I can say with authority that conservative talk radiospace is completely saturated. In my market, there are 6 talk stations competing for a increasingly small share of the radio pie. Liberal talk radio is the only way this market is going to grow, and many station owners know this. You can expect AirAmerica's network of stations to grow fast. Count on it.
posted by stimulantcaplets 20 years ago
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