inkbluesky

perpetual beta a tip of the hat to all those applications, web based and otherwise that go from one year to the next and never seem to get rid of the buggy behavior they’ve had from day one.

Here’s a great idea. Let’s taxpayers pool our money and take some high school drop outs, or those that got out by the skin of their teeth, many with behavioral problems and train them in military tactics, get them in good physical condition and train then how to use sophisticated military weapons and explosives Dumb and Dumber
The U.S. Army lowers recruitment standards … again.

Today’s Army, of course, is much more high-tech, from top to bottom. The problem is that when tasks get more technical, aptitude makes an even bigger difference. In one Army study cited by the RAND report, three-man teams from the Army’s active-duty signal battalions were told to make a communications system operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of succeeding. Teams with Category IIIB soldiers (who had ranked in the 31st to 49th percentile) had a 47 percent chance. Those with Category IVs had only a 29 percent chance. The study also showed that adding a high-scoring soldier to a three-man team increased its chance of success by 8 percent. (This also means that adding a low-scoring soldier to a team reduces its chance by a similar margin.)

Though some of these low scoring recruits might use this opportunity to turn their lives around rather then be future mall mass murderers for the here and now they’re lowering the chances of mission success and survival of their fellow soldiers. All for a war that had nearly nothing to do with making America more secure.

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Dmitri’s Choice - Nabokov wanted his final, unfinished work destroyed. Should his son get out the matches?

Here is your chance to weigh in on one of the most troubling dilemmas in contemporary literary culture. I know I’m hopelessly conflicted about it. It’s the question of whether the last unpublished work of Vladimir Nabokov, which is now reposing unread in a Swiss bank vault, should be destroyed—as Nabokov explicitly requested before he died.

It’s a decision that has fallen to his sole surviving heir (and translator), Dmitri Nabokov, now 73. Dmitri has been torn for years between his father’s unequivocal request and the demands of the literary world to view the final fragment of his father’s genius, a manuscript known as The Original of Laura. Should Dmitri defy his father’s wishes for the sake of “posterity”?

Both Nabokov’s wife and son have had years to decide and since the notes (and possibly enough material to constitute a partial novel) haven’t been burned yet obviously their is some leaning on the part of the family to preserve them for history despite Nabokov’s wishes. If these were purely personal notes I would tend to agree that they be burned, but as they’re relics of history, like Rosenbaum I’m conflicted, but lean toward keeping them even continuing to keep them locked away. Once they are destroyed there is no oops, made a mistake can we get a redo.

architectural reflections

Tattooed for a Day, Wild for a Night

“Temporary tattoos are back,” said Michael Benjamin, the president of Temptu, a New York supplier of mock tattoos and body paints. In more than a decade as Temptu’s chief executive, Mr. Benjamin has seen their status wax and wane. He said that in the last year or two, his business has doubled. And these days, he has an armful of competitors, companies like Funtoos, Tattoo Shock and Body Graphics.

The cost varies, from about $10 for a packet of do-it-yourself ink transfers, to several thousand dollars for a custom design applied by a pro.

Mock tattoos, like the authentic designs that inspire them, are fast becoming a pop culture staple, cropping up in films and on the playing field, in advertising campaigns and on the pages of fashion magazines.

Temporary tattoos do solve the oops shouldn’t have gotten that one problem. The other day a guest on Carson Daley was explaining and her tattoos and mentioned that the one of her ex’s name would have to be lasered off.

winter park

While I think they are seriously off course as far what constitutes a modern civilized society or even a functional one I would hate to see a libertarian’s head explode. So be warned that this essay has been suspected of causing such reactions. Ask a Libertarian, Part II: The Constitution as Libertarian Myth

To equate libertarianism with the classical liberalism that influenced our Founding Fathers is a philosophical error. While no doubt many classical liberals call themselves libertarians today, the modern movement has been heavily influenced by Austrian economics and Murray Rothard and takes a far more negative view of the state than the old men with wigs who wrote the Constitution. Even the minarchists (libertarians who believe that society needs a state, in contrast to anarchists who believe that society doesn’t need a state) who stop short of outright anarchism and the abolition of the state would have been seen as the most radical of radicals in the early Republic; they would have made the Locofocos look mainstream. John Locke, Adam Smith and the rest of the classical liberal gang did express a mistrust of state power and its granting of monopolistic privilege, but they also supported a state for the maintenance of law and order in the face of natural anarchy. A quick glance at the Constitution reveals that the Founding Fathers, far from consistently favoring a system that viewed the state as a necessary evil, saw a role for government to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The minarchist may still argue that these broad general principles are fully compatible with a limited government favored by modern day libertarians. But the Constitution is also the source for Congress’s power to lay excises (the ancestor to our modern day sin taxes, which libertarians often criticize), to lay tariffs and regulate commerce (protectionism, a huge no-no to libertarianism), to borrow money and therefore establish a national debt (say goodbye to balanced budgets, another libertarian ideal), to establish post offices and post roads (see my previous complaints about this monopolistic agency), and to grant patents and copyrights (which is a contentious subject within libertarianism, some favoring it and some opposing it). Even a strict interpretation of the Constitution would grant the government powers that libertarians today complain about.

General welfare, that loosely defined term that continues to drive libertarians crazy in discussing constitutional interpretations, was a very real concept to these classical liberals.

Normally I try not to take such large snips from an essay, but this was posted about a year ago and since many Americans are still having the same argument, thought it deserved to be rediscovered. It is not wholly anti-libertarian. As much as I think libertarians such as Lew Rockwell are from another planet when it comes to economic and cultural issues the guy can make a hell of a good case when it comes to issues of privacy.

The fickle finger of fate, the Saudi Royal Family and the Saudi religious police organization have waved the magical wand of masculine tolerance and beneficence upon Saudi women allowing them to stay in hotels unaccompanied by a male family member. Mean while back in the good old US of A a few homophobic wing-nuts probably just had a stroke as America gets its African-American lesbian mayor Denise Simmons.

news and announcements

No our universities and colleges are not shoving Marxism down the throats of students or giving advanced degrees in basket weaving (I’ve read this in forums several times). Nope they’re doing important stuff like studying Facebook, Students study Facebook

For senior Brice Russ, studying Facebook profiles is schoolwork, not just procrastination.

Russ, of Kernersville, is one of a growing group of academics using the social networking site to research sociology, psychology and communications.

Facebook profiles reveal varying amounts of personal information and show to whom people communicate and how often - information of interest to many researchers.

As far as web apps or the dynamics of web communities go researchers may find something interesting, but they’re not likely to find much new about people. Facebook members and members of other web communities only put up information they want you to know or that they inadvertently let slip. If the researchers really want some insights they need to compare Facebook profiles with information that they would gather from face to face interviews; ones that included a standardized personality test.

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When Fake Is More Real: Of Fools, Parody, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Like McKain and Stott, Paul Lewis is interested in the extent to which comedy can effect political change. In his 2006 book, Cracking Up, Lewis offers his readership a serious look at American comedy shows of the last thirty years, giving special attention to post-9/11 comedy. He is particularly concerned with the success of rightwing political humorists and points out that comedians, such as Jay Leno, who deliver more impartial (or at least more bipartisan) political jokes have little effect on their voting public. Using Rush Limbaugh as the forefather of how humor is deployed by rightwing commentators, namely Bill O’Reilly, Lewis distinguishes mean spirited humor (killing jokes) from healing laughter, which is an important distinction to make because satire itself knows no restraint. There is a difference between Limbaugh and Stewart that is not based on party affiliation. Lewis asks: “In not addressing and seeking to alleviate human suffering by holding those responsible up to ridicule, does it serve Freddy-like 1. ends, leaving abuses unmocked, unexposed, and unimpeded?” (158). Therefore, like McKain, Lewis positions TDS as exposing abuse by those with power, rather than protecting those with power and attacking those without. Limbaugh’s humor is not only mean-spirited, it is often used to distract from his numerous distortions of facts. Lewis surveys all the research done on how factually incorrect Limbaugh is, and nevertheless remains popular: “It’s interesting to note how many of these might actually have been intended as comic exaggeration…‘I was only kidding’ is a defense strategy deployed by Limbaugh when his accuracy is challenged” (167).

An odd and rare observation of The Daily Show is that it is simply a liberal version of what hate-shock jocks on the Right do thus the large clip pertaining to Limbaugh. No one that cares to be intellectually honest can see Stewart as the derisive ignorant O’Reilly’s, Savages etc. My take on Stewards claim that he is just a comedian is his way of deflecting whatever power he has back to his viewers where he thinks it belongs.

There is also a nice snippet of the history of satire and social change within the same article.

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 Is Bigfoot really Cain? 

Here’s a Bigfoot theory I haven’t heard before. Apparently there are some in the Mormon church who hypothesize that Bigfoot may actually be Cain, condemned to walk the earth forever. Matt Bowman provides some scholarly elaboration on this theory on the Mormon Mentality blog.

That’s the thing with believing one absurd thing it leaves the door open for more.