This site is not going dark in protest because, well, this site isn’t exactly turning heads. Anyway, if you want to learn more take a look at the video below or read a good breakdown of the current bills here. Now for some pointless musing about what’s really going on. The point of SOPA/PIPA is [...]
The occupy movement juxtaposed with recent warrantless GPS tracker cases has really crystallized an idea for me about the two sides of the surveillance state. The key to normalizing a privacy free culture is to trade off the civil liberty issues with the clarity brought about by careful observation of the state. In short, as [...]
I’ve been watching the slow evolution of the discourse on college athletics with interest. When I casually suggested that college athletes should be paid among friends many years ago I was rebuffed in a way that indicated to me how deeply the dogma of “amateur” athletics was ingrained in fans. I’m happy that the tide [...]
However you feel about the disposition and application of US military might around the world, you have to admire the singular ability of the US armed forces to systematically dismantle air defense systems of other countries. This capability is largely the result of having a super weapon of sorts, the Tomahawk Missile. Tomahawk is the [...]
Because I just can’t get enough: But it seems clear enough: exactly the same alliance that gave us Iraq is giving us Libya: the neocons who want to see the US military deployed across the globe in the defense of freedom and the liberal interventionists who believe that the US should intervene whenever atrocities are [...]
Some attitudes and patterns persist long enough to become tropes, and among the political bloggers on the left, a popular trope (imported from the ambient politics of our time) is the idea of a chicken-hawk, someone who advocates for war without offering any sacrifices, either in the form of military service or (as is sometime [...]
Let’s remember who deserves the credit/blame when the situation in Libya shakes out: Inside the Tuesday evening meeting, senior officials were lined up on both sides. Pushing for military intervention was a group of NSC staffers including Samantha Power, NSC senior director for multilateral engagement; Gayle Smith, NSC senior director for global development; and Mike McFaul, NSC senior [...]
I don’t have any kind of public opinion on Wikileaks except to say that this strikes me as catastrophically bad policy. The point of hiring is to find the best people for the job. Certainly being circumspect about classified material is one aspect of a job in government, but one assumes that particular responsibility when one actually gets [...]
I can understand if companies like PayPal want to sever business ties with certain customers, but I really don’t understand how it is at all legal to freeze or close an account without releasing the assets in the account back to the customer. Isn’t that just theft? Of all the troubling issues surrounding the publisher-who-cannot-be-named, [...]
Nice to see that my concerns about R.E.A.C.T. are echoed by at least one professional blogger. Reading many of the comments of the linked post, it seems pretty clear that people are missing the point. There is an issue here that is independent of Apple, Gizmodo, stealing phones, trafficking in stolen phones, shield laws, and any other [...]