A post at the Mises Economics blog remixes this anti-Libertarian cartoon from leftycartoons.com with equally amusing results:
July 12, 2010
July 9, 2010
A Terry Pratchett short story
Lois McMaster Bujold happened upon this Pratchett short story and sent the link to the Bujold mailing list. The academics of the Unseen University confront the recommendations of the University Inspector:
“I have to tell you, sir, that Mr Pessimal is suggesting that we accept an intake of 40 per cent non-traditional students,” said Ponder Stibbons.
“What does that mean?” said the Senior Wrangler.
“Well, er…” Stibbons began, but the council had already resorted to definition-by-hubbub.
“We take in all sorts as it is,” said the Dean.
“Does he mean people who are not traditionally good at magic?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
“Ridiculous!” said the Dean. “Forty per cent duffers?”
“Exactly!” said the Archchancellor. “That means we’d have to find enough clever people to make up over half the student intake! We’d never manage it. If they were clever already, they wouldn’t need to go to university! No, we’ll stick to an intake of 100 per cent young fools, thank you. Bring ’em in stupid, send them away clever, that’s the UU way!”
“Some of them arrive thinkin’ they’re clever, of course,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
“Yes, but we soon disabuse them of that,” said the Dean happily. “What is a university for if it isn’t to tell you that everything you think you know is wrong?”
“Well put, that man!” said Ridcully. “Ignorance is the key! That’s how the Dean got where he is today!”
“Thank you, Archchancellor,” said the Dean, in a chilly voice. “I shall take that as a compliment. Carefully directed ignorance is the key to all knowledge.”
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July 8, 2010
QotD: Golf
I am at peace with my decision. Never again will I experience the thrill of taking out a driver on the first hole and watching as my ball sails high, higher, before settling gently onto the ladies’ tee box. Not once more shall I, in search of a wayward shot, be obliged to march into woods, or swamp, or marsh, or parking lot, or that fairway two holes over, or pro shop. Nevermore shall I shank it, pull it, hook it, slice it, flub it, duff it, lose it left, lose it right, sky it, top it, worm-burn it or — most humiliating of all — just plain miss it.
I have tried, at great cost to wallet and sanity, to become not lousy at golf. I have read books and watched Internet tutorials. I have invested in pricey irons and massive drivers and hilarious pants. I have taken a number of lessons from a number of golf pros. One of them went to the trouble of videotaping my swing so we could view and analyze it together. I remember catching his expression out of the corner of my eye as the tape played — he had the look of a young child watching someone beat a baby panda to death with a baby koala.
Scott Feschuk, “Let us now bid my game a sad farewell: Never again shall I shank it, pull it, hook it, slice it, flub it, duff it, sky it, or just plain miss it”, Maclean’s, 2010-07-08
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July 7, 2010
QotD: The essence of the iPhone experience
Using an iPhone is like taking a holiday to some corrupt country: It may be beautiful and offer simple pleasures, but you’re going to pay bribes to people who shamelessly charge you for what’s free elsewhere.
Mike Elgan, “5 Big iPhone Rip-Offs”, PC World, 2010-07-06
July 6, 2010
The anti-ergonomic design of scanners
Having recently inherited Elizabeth’s printer/scanner because it stopped being willing to play nice with her computer, I found that if anything, James Lileks is being over-charitable to scanner ergonomic design teams:
I just fear dealing with the Canon scanner interface, although it can’t be worse than HP. Yes, yes, I know, buy VueScan. But I had just gotten used to the HP interface on the new scanner. It was designed, as usual, by engineers with no taste who presume Great-gramma is trying to scan something so she can send it by the inter-mails to someone, and needs to be shown in the most obvious way possible that she is old and stupid and should not use computers. Hence it has two icons: one says DOCUMENTS, with a little badge that says “300,” and another says IMAGES, with a badge reading “200.” I assume that means dpi, but who knows? You can make custom profiles, but it never remembers them. There’s no button that actually says SCAN, which would be helpful. It’s as if the GUI team is a bunch of malicious bastiches who came up with the most non-intuitive interface ever, then said “Okay, now let’s add one more step between deciding to scan and actually achieving a scan. Johnson, you’re good at this. What would you recommend?”
“Well, just off the top of my head, I’d say have the default setting for saving put it into some proprietary image-collection program buried deep in the User’s library, so it can’t be found no matter how hard they look.”
“Excellent! Make it so.”
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July 2, 2010
QotD: Overworked word of the year
Okay, I want to hear everyone in the auditorium this time, okay? Even all of you folks there in back! I want it loud, and I want it proud! Ready? And . . . UNEXPECTEDLY!!! Truly, it was a flabbergasting, never-to-be-repeated freakish turn of events that absolutely no one could have anticipated. A lighting bolt out of a clear blue sky, as it were. The asymptote just raced off to infinity, leaving only gobsmacked surprise in its wake.
Monty, “Friday Financial Briefing”, Aces of Spades HQ, 2010-07-02
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June 30, 2010
Questionable police tactics at the G20 protests
Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me a link to this video, saying “My support for the police evaporates with [this] video. What the hell were the police thinking?”:
He then suggested that this is a Toronto Police Services training video:
Update: Even better than the ragged charge shown in the first video, now the police are showing off some of the “weapons” they collected during the G20, including LARP (Live Action Role Playing) gear confiscated from a gamer:
Toronto Police are on the defensive this week as they attempt to defend their heavy-handed tactics during the G20. To prove the seriousness of the threat to public security, they took police on a tour of weapons confiscated from activists.
Only there’s a problem: some of these weapons were taken from people who weren’t demonstrators. And some of them weren’t weapons — the police proudly displayed the blunt arrows and chainmail they confiscated from a live-action role-player who was taking the train to a game
If they’d found a random SCA heavy fighter to take the armour and weapons from, they might have a slightly better case: SCA heavy combat gear would be comparable to (in many cases better than) police riot gear. SCA weapons are solid rattan covered with silver duct tape to make them appear to be metal — LARP weapons are non-functional foam or other light material (similar “weapons” are called “boffers” and are used as safe toys for kids). SCA shields are fully functional as protection — LARPers generally carry lightweight shields that just look like protection but would not do much in a real confrontation.
I liked this comment to the BoingBoing post:
I remember seeing this same police press conference, only it was in Miami in 2004 during the FTAA summit. Among the items they presented as having seized from activists:
– Tire iron
– Gas can
– A map of Miami (see, they could use it to plan out their terrorist strike!)It took me a minute to realize they had just pulled all this stuff out of the trunk of some unfortunate activists’ car, where you’d totally expect to find it.
This kind of press conference is a standard component in the “new model” of protest suppression. It gives the police the hilarious task of taking a whole bunch of mostly innocuous stuff they seized and making up stories about how it could be used to maim, kill, and generally cause mass destruction.
I mean srsly – an empty water bottle could be used to fill with gasoline and throw at cops?
Bruce Schneier would be proud.
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June 28, 2010
Marketing secrets revealed
An absolutely brilliant post at The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs tells you all about the reality of marketing:
It’s a pretty safe assumption that if you’re reading this blog, you’ve seen “The Matrix.” And you may or may not remember the scene where a kid explains to Neo that the trick to bending a spoon with your mind is simply to remember that, “There is no spoon.”
So it is with marketing. One thing I learned very early in life, thanks to intentional overuse of psychedelic drugs, is that there is no reality. As a guy at the commune once put it: “The reality is, there is no reality.”
So some guy says his iPhone 4 is having reception issues. I say there is no reception issue. Now it’s his reality against my reality. Which one of us is living in the real reality?
There’s a two-part answer: 1, there is no real reality, and 2, it doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is which reality our customers will choose to adopt as their own.
[. . .]
What I realized many years ago — and honestly, it still amazes me — is that most people are so unsure of themselves that they will think whatever we tell them to think.
So we tell people that this new phone is not just an incremental upgrade, but rather is the biggest breakthrough since the original iPhone in 2007. We say it’s incredible, amazing, awesome, mind-blowing, overwhelming, magical, revolutionary. We use these words over and over.
It’s all patently ridiculous, of course. But people believe it.
H/T to Chris Anderson for the link.
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June 25, 2010
QotD: The danger of electing real libertarians
I don’t know what it is, but when you go all the way down the libertarian path, it leads to complete insanity. Just look at Ron Paul followers — they’re pretend-to-be-Spock-and-bite-each-other crazy. The libertarian philosophy seems reasonable enough, but it somehow always leads to candidates who accidentally dye themselves blue or carry around a pet ferret named Gustav.
So anyway, let’s definitely get someone in 2012 sympathetic to libertarian ideals who is adamantly against fiscal irresponsibility and government expansion — and for individualism — but if any candidates start foaming at the mouth, screaming “FIAT MONEY!!!!!”, back away and don’t make eye contact. Still, pure libertarians have a place in the GOP, but they’re sort of like Murdoch to the Republican A-Team: They keep breaking him out of the insane asylum because he’s useful for certain situations, but they’re not going to put him in charge of anything. Or there will be much fool pitying.
Frank J. Fleming, “Libertarians and the Republican Party”, IMAO 2010-06-25
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Apple’s latest iPhone gets approval of key “Suicide Girls” market
Lester Haines reports that the Apple iPhone 4 has received top marks from the discerning folks at Suicide Girls:
In an absolutely shameless piece of bandwagon-jumping self promotion, the internet’s leading repository of female tattoos and body piercing has taken the latest manifestation of the Jesus Phone out for a spin (link NSFW).
Screen grab from iPhone 4 showing young lady with exposed breastSuicide Girls has put the iPhone’s 4’s imaging capabilities to the test as is the local custom — by photographing women with their tops off.
The snap seen here apparently demonstrates an “unexpected feature”, in that “when you point it at Rambo her boob pops out”. We’re pretty sure someone has indeed written an app for that, but are surprised it got past the Apple Titfinder General.
Image at El Reg is probably NSFW for workplaces in North America . . . images at Suicide Girls are even more so. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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June 23, 2010
June 22, 2010
Sparkly legal shenanigans
As I indicated in a Twitter update yesterday, the nice folks at ThinkGeek received their best-ever cease and desist letter:
Recently we got the best-ever cease and desist letter. We’re no stranger to the genre, so what could possibly make this one stand out from the rest?
First, it’s 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they’re not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds.
But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it’s for a fake product we launched for April Fool’s day.
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June 19, 2010
Penn still waiting for that call from Hitler’s booking agent
An amusing interview in Vanity Fair points out that Penn Jillette would even go on Hitler’s talk show:
Is that why you don’t have a problem going on Glenn Beck’s show, because he doesn’t pretend to be objective?
Well, it’s complicated. Tommy Smothers, who’s one of my heroes, got really angry at me about it. We actually had this argument in public, on another show that’s going to be on Showtime this summer called The Green Room With Paul Provenza. Tommy attacked me for being on Glenn Beck, and he ended up saying, and I don’t think this part made it on the air, “If Hitler had a talk show, you’d probably do that too.”
And your retort?
I said yes, I would, and I would tell the truth.
Wow. O.K. then.
I’m not kidding.
Just don’t mention the part about telling the truth to Hitler’s talent bookers, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get a guest slot.
Oh, I won’t say a word. But you know what I mean, right? It does have an effect. I go on Glenn Beck as an atheist and talk about atheism. And I have people come up to me and say, “You know, until I saw you on Glenn Beck, speaking so passionately about atheism, I’d never considered that as a moral decision.” That’s incredibly powerful. These are people watching a hardcore Christian show and being exposed to an atheist point of view.
Your intentions seem genuine, but I can’t help myself, Penn. Every time I hear you’ve been on Glenn Beck, it makes me a little sick.
It makes me sick too! When people come up to me and say they love the show, I feel sick. Because I do disagree with a lot of what he says. But I also feel a little sick whenever people say they saw me on Keith Olbermann.
And yet you continue to do it. You know, there’s an easy way to stop making yourself sick.
But I think it’s important. I may be the only person who goes on Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and says the exact same shit. I am so much more socially liberal than Olbermann will ever be. You can’t believe how pro gay and pro freedom of speech I am. I’m way out beyond anyone on the Left. And as for fiscal conservatism and small government, I’m so much further to the right than Glenn Beck. Nobody is further left and further right than me. As I’m fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it’s straight ahead.
And I love Penn’s suggestion for the Obama re-election campaign in 2012 at the end of the article.
