After the pope made a mockery of religion by releasing the Vatican’s official ten commandments of driving, Mark Fiore, a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Gate, made this flash anamiation. It’s an instant classic… =)
How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million by Joshua Kaplowitz
// June 26th, 2007How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million by Joshua Kaplowitz
Well, his story beats mine…and probably tops them all.
SC rules against Bong Hits 4 Jesus
// June 25th, 2007HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE
// June 23rd, 2007Hopkins scientists show hallucinogen in mushrooms creates universal “mystical” experience
I could have told them that. I think everyone should try ’shrooms at least once. It’s such a revelatory experience, and a mindstate that lends itself incredibly well to self-discovery.
Here’s that, in bigger words:
The researchers’ message isn’t just that psilocybin can produce mystical experiences. “I had a healthy skepticism going into this,” says Griffiths, “and that finding alone was a surprise.” But, as important, he says, “is that, under very defined conditions, with careful preparation, you can safely and fairly reliably occasion what’s called a primary mystical experience that may lead to positive changes in a person. It’s an early step in what we hope will be a large body of scientific work that will ultimately help people.”
Edge; DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism By Jaron Lanier
// June 11th, 2007Edge; DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism By Jaron Lanier
An incredibly provacative piece about meta-aggregators like wikipedia and popurls, and how they enable a sort of “hive-mind collectivism” that is at once fascinatingly supreme, and drably stupid.
This article is effective in challenging many of our assumptions of the saving grace of the internet. A few clippings appear below:
That new magnitude of Meta-ness lasted only amonth. In April, Kelly reviewed a site called “popurls” that aggregates consensus Web filtering sites…and there was a new “most Meta”. We now are reading what a collectivity algorithm derives from what other collectivity algorithms derived from what collectives chose from what a population of mostly amateur writers wrote anonymously.
Kevin Kelly says of the “popurls” site, “There’s no better way to watch the hive mind.” But the hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?
There is a pedagogical connection between the culture of Artificial Intelligence and the strange allure of anonymous collectivism online. Google’s vast servers and the Wikipedia are both mentioned frequently as being the startup memory for Artificial Intelligences to come.
(Kind of disconcerting to think that these will be the sources of knowledge and understanding if AI were ever to become a reality!)
What I’ve seen is a loss of insight and subtlety, a disregard for the nuances of considered opinions, and an increased tendency to enshrine the official or normative beliefs of an organization.
An especially good one:
Here I must take a moment to comment on Linux and similar efforts. The various formulations of “open” or “free” software are different from the Wikipedia and the race to be most Meta in important ways. Linux programmers are not anonymous and in fact personal glory is part of the motivational engine that keeps such enterprises in motion. But there are similarities, and the lack of a coherent voice or design sensibility in an esthetic sense is one negative quality of both open source software and the Wikipedia.
These movements are at their most efficient while building hidden information plumbing layers, such as Web servers. They are hopeless when it comes to producing fine user interfaces or user experiences. If the code that ran the Wikipedia user interface were as open as the contents of the entries, it would churn itself into impenetrable muck almost immediately. The collective is good at solving problems which demand results that can be evaluated by uncontroversial performance parameters, but it is bad when taste and judgment matter.
And another:
The collective is more likely to be smart when it isn’t defining its own questions, when the goodness of an answer can be evaluated by a simple result (such as a single numeric value,) and when the information system which informs the collective is filtered by a quality control mechanism that relies on individuals to a high degree. Under those circumstances, a collective can be smarter than a person. Break any one of those conditions and the collective becomes unreliable or worse.
Meanwhile, an individual best achieves optimal stupidity on those rare occasions when one is both given substantial powers and insulated from the results of his or her actions.
I have mixed opinions, but for the most part agree with a man who is obviously very intelligent.
Halliburton
// June 11th, 2007Halliburton, after bilking the U.S. out of billions in war contracts, have officially relocated to the UAE, where it will pay virtually no taxes, be closer to the world’s primary source of extractable oil, and hire arabs. It’d be like the Spurs giving Tim Duncan to the Cavs – all the sudden, the game just became much more real.
frustrated with world economics and the pilfering, erudite asshats that run them,
Jonthon
Is Free Speech Really at Stake? Venezuela and RCTV
// June 11th, 2007Is Free Speech Really at Stake? Venezuela and RCTV
The article stakes this claim:
The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.
and defends it. Sort of made me rethink the issue.