72 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. This isn’t really a reader tip. Yet if I’m not mistaken I’ve accumulated a few karma points (in the metaphorical sense) here at Small Dead Animals, so tonight I’d like to cash a few of them in to tell a little story (having taken you, dear reader, the statistical audience here, into account). There is also a bonus link at the end 😉
    It is now 10 years ± 1 % since I received my first broadband cable-modem Internet connection. Before that I had PPP, and so a web browser, and before that I had UUCP net, and UseNet, and pine, and trn, as we have discussed elsewhere here recently, and before that, well, there are always mainframes.
    I had previously started using HTML to render reports in our engineering software, because of the constraint-based layout features of the HTML table functionality, in 1996. I had already seen the effect in browsers via PPP, and I value it highly (I wrote my own version of constraint-based layout, in Scheme, in about 1993). We have a licensed component that renders those HTML reports in our stand-alone Windows client application to this day (it’s used by about 10,000 engineers on six continents).
    So, anyway, once I had a static IP address with a legal license to run servers, in 1998, well! I couldn’t resist! Clearly, one must experiment with making some Internet servers. Since that was during the three-year period in my life when I was responsible for a Windows application (at least it was NT 4, which kinda’ worked), we licensed a copy of OmniHttpd, and hooked it up to, via CGI, my favourite programming language, Perl (well, Scheme in theory, Perl in practice), and off we went. I’m not thinking then that it’s early 1998 ~ I’m thinking that now.
    Obviously, I decided to develop a framework to make it easy to write these new-fangled “web” applications, since our customer was quite happy with that, and then we could leverage it further (a framework is a bunch of software that makes it easier to write other software; it’s like a software library turned inside-out).
    Anyway, we developed an Internet Help Desk for those thousands of users of our late second millennium product (which happens to be still in use today). And today, our return-to-Unix globally-deployed current product is completely a derivative of that seminal work. And our engineering customers are, simply put, astounded by this whole global browser-based engineering collaboration environment. They would not believe you until you showed it to them, and now they’ve got engineers working together on shared databases all over the planet.
    Meanwhile, back in 1998 of course, said framework allowed me to develop, in parallel, a web site for our little software development company. You know, time logs, payroll, invoicing, versioned software repository, that sort of thing.
    But there was something else. I had already started collecting bookmarks to interesting web articles via my previous PPP web connection. Since I had a user interface and a database at hand, why not allow staff to add a reverse-date order list of web links that might be interesting to the company?
    Thus, about ten years ago now, I wrote my first blog software, and created my first (corporate) blog. The label blog, as y’all know, came later. I mention this simply to point out the passage of history, not to self-aggrandize (yeah, yeah).
    Seriously, though, think about this. Before about 10 years ago, setting up a globally available data network presence was simply not available for $40 per month. $4,000 minimum, if you were lucky. Now it has been so for about 10 years. And Blogger is free (for some value of free).
    Notice that, once again, some things have changed: directly because of technology. How many people lived in the equivalent of the direct aftermath of the Gutenburg press? You do. What will you make of it?
    An excellent discussion of some of these issues, and their effect on our current century, is available in this hour-long Century Panel discussion that Charlie Rose held at the turn of the millennium, with Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, and Walter Isaacson, which I happened to discover during the last six hours I have spent listening to many of those of Mr. Buckley’s interviews that are available at Google Video. R.I.P., Mr. Buckley.
    video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1818854397045848162

  3. Am I the only one that remembers all the talks and negotiating that went on so that the Canadian military ships and personnel could provide relief to NO after Katrina?
    Can anyone explain how this is giving up sovereignty? Does the left not understand friendship?

  4. “Does the left not understand friendship?”
    No.
    Only “solidarity.”
    With Venezuela. And Cuba. And other such sterling partners for progress in the Americas.

  6. Caledonia residents to protest at Fantino’s home
    Activists opposing the First Nations occupation at Caledonia plan on taking their protest to OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino.
    Organizers are inviting supporters to wave Canadian flags and posters outside his Woodbridge home at noon Sunday, after meeting at a local Lion’s Club hall at 10 a.m.
    Protester Gary McHale yesterday said in an e-mail: “We expect a few dozen people and I am sure Fantino will pressure the York Regional Police to stop us.”

  7. The CSP Mapping Shariah study is “nearly complete”:
    New Sharia study documents Islamist threat
    Based on preliminary evaluations of the first 102 mosques, there are grounds for serious concern about jihadist activities in more than seventy percent of these religious institutions. According to the research protocol, approximately forty percent of these Islamic facilities were assessed at a threat level requiring placement on a law enforcement watch list or more specific surveillance…
    Final results of the first research sample of the investigators’ observations will be published in late March. In the meantime, this chart illustrates the data from the initial 100 mosques under investigation, and the high correlation between the observance of so-called “Shariah law” and jihadist activities.
    For the purposes of interpreting the data shown on the attached chart, Shariah adherence is considered strict over 4 and typically Salafist over 7. Jihad levels are worrisome over 3, dangerous at 5 and reportable at 7. Threat levels over 4 should be on a law enforcement watch list and 7 or higher have been reported to law enforcement and/or intelligence agencies for surveillance. There have been more than a half dozen cases where the legal team for Mapping Shariah issued a Serious Incident Report when specific calls for violent Jihad were promoted directly to the Researcher.

  8. Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming
    http://tinyurl.com/279wqr
    “Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.
    (…)
    But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
    (…)
    Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.””
    It’s official folks AGW fear monger was a hoax, Suzuki is a hysterical idiot and Gore et al are pompous morons…these who followed the AGW cult can similarly wear the brand of hysterical idiot el supremo.

  10. CBC Shovelling Overtime for the LIBS.
    With the three ring circus of the Mulroney /Schreiber “Ethics” committee falling into the toilet … the sudden “revelation’ of a book that alleges conservative malfeasance becomes the NUMBER ONE story for the CEEB.
    Boag, Hiscox etal … actively cheerleading with open suggestion that this makes it possible for Dion to now “bring down” the government!

  11. But, but, but, it’s no longer Global Warming, it’s Climate Change. Never mind we’ve known for centuries you really can’t rely on the weather, seasons vary, we have good and poor growing seasons, mild to severe winters etc. It follows, since their Global Warming shtick has been exposed for the scam it is, they’ve decided to cover their asses with the blanket expression “Climate Change” for their next round of bull shit science.

  12. Avi Lewis arrives at his logical conclusion:
    http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/02/27/ex-cbc-host-avi-lewis-joins-al-jazeera.aspx
    “Avi Lewis, the former CBC host and husband of author Naomi Klein, has joined Al Jazeera’s rapidly growing English network as host of a weekly program on the American election.”
    Ah, the nepotism of the left. So much for decrying the “old boys network” then?
    “Mr. Lewis — son of diplomat Stephen Lewis and journalist Michelle Landsberg, nephew of architect Daniel Libeskind, and grandson of former NDP leader David Lewis”

  13. Yes, OMMAG, that seems to be the Liberal strategy of winning back power – by ad hominem tactics.
    They don’t provide viable policies; they don’t function as a critical opposition; their tactic is to try to take down Harper by constant allegations of corruption. The fact that these are totally without foundation is irrelevant to them; their agenda is publicity. It is they, the Liberal Party, who are corrupt by their use of such an unethical strategy.
    They began with the ‘Hidden Agenda’ and ‘Scary Harper’; these are names that can’t be confronted. After all, if an agenda is hidden, it can’t be examined, so, when the Conservatives explain their agenda..the hidden one remain..hidden.
    They tried with Mulroney-Schreiber, attempting to link them both to Harper. That’s failed. But their MPs actually visited and worked with Schreiber to ‘get their case’; that’s unethical.
    They’ve tried with various MPs. (Baird). This new one with Chuck Cadman is similar to the hidden agenda. He’s dead; he can’t counter their allegations. Indeed, they have no evidence. They just have their allegations. Frankly, that’s their primary interest – to bad mouth people, and evidence is irrelevant.
    What is different about this era from the Liberal years in power? As vitruvius points out, it’s the internet and blogs. Now, it isn’t so easy to make allegations; someone, somewhere, has data, has an experience, has an analysis that moves in and opens the topic to critical analysis. Therefore, the old Liberal strategy of ad hominem attacks, though still not to be ignored, isn’t as powerful as it used to be a decade ago.
    Perhaps the Liberals should try to come up with policies – workable policies – not just rhetoric (we will fulfil Kyoto in a year!).

  15. WL Mackenzie Redux the children at my children’s school have been whining for months about “indoor recesses” because it’s too cold to go outside! So they make them walk around the school in single file. Day after day. sometimes they can colour.
    Because it’s too cold to go outside, right! Then when they get back to class they get to hear about the perils of global warming.
    More CO2 might help the plants grow can’t have that.

  16. Interesting post Vitruvious.
    I for one am grateful to those who understand and
    manipulate the guts, gears and machinations of software to make it produce near magic.
    Software programmers – Epoch – making Trailblazers!
    The SDA’s, the Mark Steyn Online, the Free Dominion’s, The Shotgun’s, The Michelle Malkin’s etc, just to name a very few would not exist without the internet.
    There is no turning back and that’s a good thing, even old timers like me, can appreciate, and even clumsily use.

  17. ET:
    “They began with the ‘Hidden Agenda’ and ‘Scary Harper’; these are names that can’t be confronted. After all, if an agenda is hidden, it can’t be examined, so, when the Conservatives explain their agenda..the hidden one remain..hidden.”
    Except that every time Harper backtracks on one of his policies, Con supporters like yourself explain that “Well, they’re a minority gov’t…just wait till they’re a majority”. But no hidden agenda, right?
    “This new one with Chuck Cadman is similar to the hidden agenda. He’s dead; he can’t counter their allegations. Indeed, they have no evidence. They just have their allegations.”
    There are witnesses. Let’s wait and see what turns up…

  18. Thanks, Lev.
    Interesting read; nice to see research done which quantifies what most gun-owners (and liberty-minded people) already know intuitively.

  20. (Via ICT) Sweden and Norway hold suspects after terror raids
    Police in Sweden and Norway detained six people on Thursday on suspicion of offences related to terrorism after carrying out coordinated raids.
    The move comes just over a week after Norway’s intelligence agency said that the threat of terror attacks by Islamic radicals was rising in part because of the country’s military presence in Afghanistan. Norway has about 500 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO mission…

  21. Daniel Pipes, Destroying Sculptures of Muhammad
    Recalling these events of 1955 suggests several points. First, pressure by Muslims on the West to conform to Islamic customs predates the current Islamist era. Second, even when minimal numbers of Muslims lived in the West, such pressures could succeed. Finally, contrasting the parallel 1955 and 1997 episodes suggests that the earlier approach of ambassadors making polite representations – not high-handed demands backed up by angry mobs, much less terrorist plots – can be the more effective route.
    This conclusion confirms my more general point – and the premise of the Islamist Watch project – that Islamists working quietly within the system achieve more than ferocity and bellicosity. Ultimately, soft Islamism presents dangers as great as does violent Islamism.

  22. Elbridge Colby, Why We Need to Nail Osama
    The recent killing of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah, after a quarter-century of pursuit, was met by a mixture of applause and shrugs. It also begged a bigger question: How important is it to take out key terrorists — such as Osama bin Laden?

  25. no,lberia, I can’t agree that there is a hidden agenda. You simply don’t get it. Anyone can say that ‘there’s a hidden agenda’!
    As a scaremongering tactic, it’s great. Because if you deny it, then your opponent will say: ‘But you can’t deny it, because it’s hidden!’.
    I’ll bet you,lberia, have a hidden agenda. Don’t bother denying it, because it’s hidden, so even if you say it isn’t there…heh..I KNOW it’s there. It’s just hidden.
    That’s the tactic you are using now with your ‘there are witnesses’ – which isn’t proven or proof.

  26. I disagree with charles macdonald; I don’t think that ‘taking out Bin Laden’ is important.
    This is apart from the fact that I tend to agree with Mark Steyn’s conclusion that he’s been dead for several years anyway.
    But I don’t think that Al Qaeda is now operating as a coherent system of terrorism. Nor is it operating under a singular leadership. It’s been splintered into numerous factions and agenda and is furthermore, moving out of an ideological activity of Islamic utopianism and fascism and more and more into pure criminality.
    I don’t think that capturing Bin Laden (which I am assuming is impossible because he’s dead)even if he were alive, would have any effect on this transformation of Al Qaeda.
    Islamic fascism has been pushed back by the US into the ME, which is where it ought to be. It’s an internal fight between a tribal and civic mode of governance – with Al Qaeda wanting a DIFFERENT tribal mode from the current corrupt tribal modes, but neither wanting to move into the civic mode. However, the civic mode will, of necessity, emerge as the only solution.
    As this change develops, and it becomes clear that the Al Qaeda tribalism of fundamentalist Islam won’t be accepted by the population, the members of Al Qaeda will move into the criminal economy – drugs, arms dealing, etc. These can be dealt with as criminal acts.
    The problem of Islamic fundamentalism still exists in the West, and this is due, I feel, to multiculturalism. This policy has isolated immigrants, and actually encouraged them to maintain their beliefs and behaviour without adapting to the modern day industrial envt of their ‘new country’.
    It has enabled a kind of purified belief system; that’s a belief system that is unaffected by any daily contextual realities. So, you can believe in sharia law, without having to address the fact that in our modern world, women are defined as equal – and even, that everyone must work to maintain a family standard of living. You can believe in the supremacy of your religion without having to address the fact that there are other peoples and religions.
    Multiculturalism sets up these isolate, purified belief systems. These are extremely dangerous; the West has to reject multiculturalism and such decontextualized isolation of peoples – and insist on a common rule of law, ethics, standards, etc.

  27. Well, Well – I just had to share the following tidbit from “Mr. Nice” himself – quoted in the Globe and Mail article today, Garth (turncoat) Turner had this to say.
    “Liberal MP Garth Turner said Wednesday that he would have liked the Prime Minister to be nicer to the Liberals in light of recent events.”
    Poor Garth – the Tories aren’t being “nice” – this from a guy who has consistently smeared bile from his mouth about the Tories,including calling the PM a Whore!
    Just makes me laugh….

  28. Soft Islamism? Led by a presidential candidate.
    Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times:
    Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.
    “I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, http://www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.
    Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
    Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn’t sure if his grandfather’s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite.
    ——————————
    Some of his top campaign executives are also Nation of Islam members.
    America better wake up.

  29. Here’s an interesting analysis on the problem created by an employment sector dominated by public employment vs private employment.
    http://mises.org/story/2866
    Notice what is said about the downfall of Detroist as a vital industrial city.
    “How did this happen? One answer, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, is that Detroit’s city government is far larger, more regulation prone, and more bureaucratic than Indianapolis’s city government: the ratio of residents to city employees, a key measure of city government productivity, is 50:1 in Detroit, one of the worst in the United States, but is 203:1 in Indianapolis, one of the best ”
    Toronto’s ratio or population size (2.4 million to city employees about 40,000) is 60 to 1.
    “High taxation in turn can breed bureaucratic waste: as stated above, a key measure of “bureaucratic bloat” in municipal government is the ratio of city residents to full-time city employees”
    And Toronto’s high taxes, coupled with Ontario’s high taxes – an indicator of problems. McGuinty and Miller’s solutions to anything – is to fling money at it. That’s a typical Liberal strategy, but, it’s the infrastructure that needs attention. In this case, it’s the infrastructure of a high public employee ratio, and a high union membership ratio. The two of them, doom a city’s economic robustness.

  31. Was Aristotle on commission?
    The utility of an opinion is inversely proportional to the speaker’s investment in the matter.

  33. Charles MacDonald at February 28, 10:41 AM
    Focus on the *important*, eh Charles? Good.
    http://www.rand.org/commentary/2008/02/27/WT.html
    * * Capturing or killing bin Laden would by no means *solve* the problem of radical Islamist terror networks, but it would surely dampen the enthusiasm of their members. And history suggests that removing a charismatic leader of a movement, especially one who serves as a rallying point for groups with differing interests, as bin Laden does, can result in a strong blow to its health and popularity. The examples of Che Guevara and Abdullah Ocalan of the PKK support this.
    Indeed, especially in a war so influenced by images and symbols, knocking down the most potent symbol of radical Islamist terrorism must be a top priority. * *
    ============== Rand
    I agree with Rand. Cutting down leaders who think up clever organized plots and inspire followers to wear live bomb vests IS worth doing.
    There may well be some backlash like Muqtada al Sadr re-starting his ransom and beheading business. Yet, taking out bright and charismatic leaders like Osama removes the spirit from would be jacket bombers and shows the West and the USA as more than a mere * Paper Tiger *.= TG

  34. Nice to see that media-whore Turner in the HofC during the budget debate today.He used the spotlight to drag out the Cadman affair..WTF does that have to do with the budget?? He truly is stomach churning,and there is something awfully suspect in the whole timing of this.The cbc and G&M have grabbed on to this percieved ‘lifeline’ to turn the focus from lame-duck Libs.I note,that Szabo,on cbc this a.m.cautioned ‘very interesting Nancy Wilson’ that these were allegations only,and they needed to be ‘careful.’
    Interesting as well,CTV interview with L.Ian today re the KHS/M affair,and the Libs backing off supoena to bring BM to the committee..stated that it would possibly set a ‘dangerous precedent’ that the Libs may not want opened up(Adscam)

  35. charles macdonald – thanks for the link.
    But I don’t think that Al Qaeda is operating as a coherent network because I don’t think that Al Qaeda is dependent on leadership but is dependent on ideology. And when that ideology is confronted with resistance, it can’t sustain its members as a ‘fighting force’. It couldn’t do it in Afghanistan, it can’t do it in Iraq. It can only move into power when there is no resistance, either militarily or ideologically. Therefore, its existence doesn’t depend on a leader but on the ideology’s capacity to exist under resistance from a population.
    I claim that it has little capacity to sustain itself under resistance. Islamic fascism thrives in an isolate domain – which is why I consider multiculturalism, which ensures isolation, so dangerous.

  36. Liberal Media Evidence
    A new poll by the Pew Center proves that the media is as liberal as ever. When will “diversity” mean more conservatives?
    by Fred Barnes
    THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.
    Over 40-plus years, the only thing that’s changed in the media’s politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven’t changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.
    …In truth, the effort to hire more minorities and women has had the effect of making the media more liberal. Both these groups tend to have liberal politics, and this is accentuated by the fact that many of the women recruited into journalism are young and single, precisely those with the most liberal views. “By diversifying the profession in one way,” Rosenstiel says, “they were making it more homogenous in another.”
    http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/143lkblo.asp

  38. Via Hot Air
    “Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned.Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have been critical of the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement over the course of the Democratic primaries, saying that the deal has cost U.S. workers’ jobs.
    Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.
    The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.”
    http://hotair.com/archives/2008/02/28/barack-obama-does-emily-litella-on-nafta-to-canadians/

  39. Sikh terrorists/murderers in Canada walk freely.
    …-
    Singh supporter [Nagra*] changes mind
    Paralysed failed refugee claimant would get better treatment in India, man argues
    “*Harpal Singh Nagra” “a founder of the International Sikh Youth Federation,” (ISYF).
    http://tinyurl.com/2fakbd (vansun)
    “Since 2003, the ISYF, like the Babbar Khalsa, has been officially listed in Canada as an illegal terrorist organization.” (cbc)

  41. I don’t see how the Conservatives or anyone could offer Cadman a life insurance policy, seeing as he was currently diagnosed with terminal cancer. No company would insure him on that basis.
    It’s the Liberal Party doing its usual, which is to focus on tabloid hysteria that sets up hidden allegations based on ‘anonymous sources’ and hearsay and ..
    The Commons Ethics Committee is an unethical disgrace, running from one Fraudulent Attack to another one. Their focus is Harper; they failed with the Mulroney-Schreiber strategy; now, they are trying yet another one.

  42. Just wait until the gun control advocates see this. “We need biometric data for the long gun registry (which hasn’t cost nearly enough)!”
    (Via CSP) Iraqi Army to Ditch AK-47s for M-16s
    In a move that could be the most enduring imprint of U.S. influence in the Arab world, American military officials in Baghdad have begun a crash program to outfit the entire Iraqi army with M-16 rifles…
    A system that registers each rifle with the individual who receives it using biometric data such as thumb prints and eye scans is meant to address concerns over U.S. weapons winding up in enemy hands. A July 2007 Government Accountability Office report concluded that as many as 190,000 weapons delivered to the Iraqi army were not accounted for and could’ve wound up in terrorist caches.

  43. “…I don’t think that Al Qaeda is dependent on leadership but is dependent on ideology…”
    I suggest, ET, that the ideology of al Qaeda is encapsulated in subservience to Osama bin Laden, just as the ideology of the cult of Islam requires subordination to one Allah (this is radical monolatry, not monotheism), then one Rasool/Prophet, then one caliph, then one king, or one sheikh… Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer, in short.

  44. Paul Marshall, Egypt’s Identity Crisis: Religious tolerance for some
    The government’s stance reflects the regime’s push for, or acquiescence in, an increasingly Islamist state as it seeks to avoid being outflanked in its Islamic credentials by its main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood.

  45. Vitruvius, you’ll be interested in this. I posted it on Kate’s reader links yesterday, but I think its worth repeating.
    //phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2008/02/personal-fabrication.html
    This is a talk by Neil Gershenfeld the MIT computer brainiac filmed in 2006, I just caught it yesterday on Slashdot.
    What he’s talking about is personal fabrication, via rapid prototyping and CNC machining and laser cutting and all that awesome stuff. The smaller point he’s making is that home computers are going to be used to build cars in 20 years. Like, at home in your garage. I saw a desktop 3d printer on the web yesterday for $5,000, possibly he’s a little behind the curve here.
    The larger point is that people are going to going to be making cars in their yurt in Izbekistan. Right now we have the explosion of ideas and communication via the Internet, which the usual suspects are doing their best to choke off and crush. That would be the likes of North Korea, China, and Warren Kinsella (HRC Warren, you’re trying to make people stop posting stuff on the web. Its a stupid, doomed idea.)
    They are meeting with some success because the Web still runs off Big Iron , like telephone exchanges, server farms, under sea cables and etc. However success is limited by the tricksssy ways of young men in their mom’s basement hacking away at the firewalls. DeCSS being just a ferinstance.
    What are they going to do when every yak herder in the country can print a satellite phone and a gun with his home computer? For that matter, what is Ford Motor Company going to do when you can download a Mustang?
    The movement of technology is toward ever increasing empowerment of the individual with knowledge and productive capacity, and away from the centralized ways of mass production. Making the collective-oriented ideology of the Lefties more obsolete and counter-productive ever single day.
    Ok, this is great. But I’m watching Bill Buckley there tearing a strip off Gore Vidal, and I’m thinking this sounds exactly like Rush Limbaugh going after Ward Churchill. Then I think that this conversation happened in 1964! We are still fighting the same battle with the same @$$holes as back in 1964 when I was 8 years old.
    That to me means one thing: we SUCK at this! We Conservatives have been beating our heads against a brick wall for FORTY F-ING YEARS. We say facts and truth, and we lose. Conservative policies work, and we lose. Liberal policies fail, horribly, every single f-ing time, and still we lose. Technology and the vast weight of history is inexorably pushing OUR policies and OUR ideas forward and we STILL LOSE.
    Until now, that is. Now Avi Lewis gets his narrow Dipper ass handed to him by super chick Hirisi Ali, we all hear about it. Avi Lewis subsequently joins Al Jazeera, we hear about it. William F. Buckley calls uber-Lefty Gore Vidal a queer on national TV, and after forty three frickin’ years I finally get to hear about it. SWEET!
    Yay technology! I can hardly wait to download my first Mustang!

  49. “But this lady had somehow escaped the zombies. She drew me to one side and whispered, “Don’t tell my boss, but two-thirds of the delegates here are mad.””
    …-
    Bali diary
    Fortnight Of The Undead
    By Christopher Monckton in Nusa Dua, Bali
    Down the Poxy, our local fleapit late on a Saturday night, voodoo flicks like Night Of The Undead were always popular when I was a lad. To shrieks of scornful merriment from the teenage audience, mindless zombies would totter aimless across the clumsily-constructed sets with lugubrious expressions frozen on their messily-made-up death-masks until the hero, with the lurv interest wrenched screeching from the clutches of the late Baron Samedi and draped admiringly on her rescuer’s extravagantly-muscled arm, triumphantly saved the day.
    Thus it was in Bali during the Fortnight Of The Undead. http://tinyurl.com/2pjf4c
    (nzclimatesci)

  50. no. charles macdonald, I’ll continue to claim that Islamic fascism doesn’t require a leader. I think it’s a political ideology and will dissolve into assimilation with the civic political order AND a section will move into criminality.
    As for Islam as a religion, considering that it is primarily a socioeconomic/political system, frozen as a ‘revealed’ religion, I think it will also dissolve – because the socioeconomic and political structure will no longer be tenable. The religious control will moderate.
    The ME will continue to work through its ‘identity crisis’ but it has no choice; it has to move out of tribalism and into a civic mode and enable a middle class in power.
    As I said, the dangerous domain of Islamic fascism is within the isolate ghettoes of the West where the ideology moves into a pure fiction, removed from context with daily reality.
    phantom – marvellous. That’s exactly right. The complex networked informational structure of the planet means that ideas can’t be controlled by authorities – totalitarian or whatever – the way they used to be.

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