I personally think the “seasteading” idea is largely pointless fantasy talk. Thus, I don’t see much to gripe about in the initial post about it here.
Brad Reed exhibits in the Alternet post he self-promotes there the seemingly unbreakable falsehood that libertarianism is a right-wing movement, rather than a left-wing one the rhetoric of which has been appropriated for petty political reasons in the defense of obviously incompatible goals, but that’s to be expected of him. He’s a mainstream liberal, he sincerely believes that representative government is possible & the State can be used ostensibly for a little generic “good” without inevitably being used for a fuck-ton of unambiguous Bad. Of course he’s going to assume anyone staunchly opposed to it has alterior motives.
The strawman-fest in the comments was a foregone conclusion, and there’s little of it that’s even worth addressing because, in all honesty, Patri Friedman is more than likely the first self-proclaimed libertarian they’ve heard of other than Ron Paul (who is more a paleocon w/ some leanings) & Glenn Reynolds (who is little more than a warmonger & bigot-sympathizer who wants to smoke pot legally). However, for the following commenter I have something to say that I actually find a good use of my time:
J— said,
May 29, 2009 at 16:58:
These are to be rafts, right? They’ll have to be careful about where they float, because states’ exclusive economic zones extend 200 nautical miles from their coasts.
States are established on land. Whether they bought it, broke off from another nation that held it, or simply murdered whoever last had it, land is the common feature of a nation-state. Yet 200 miles of water are declared to be, legally, part of the land. Not for occupancy-and-use reasons (private citizens don’t typically go out that far, as far as I know), but simply to — in this case literally — extend the reach of the government. Basically it leads to territorial cockfights like this.
Question: does this not strike you as the least bit odd? You ever consider why this is the way it is? Or ponder whether or not this setup actually does function for your ideal of the greater good?
In practice this concept is only recognized when it involves the strongest nations. If you’re not some form of economic and/or military power, the true law of the sea consists of “WTF you gon’ do about it?”
The claim about making the tree look taller by clearing the underbrush is an absolute crock of shit, they just want to sell more razors by trying to unilaterally void the rule that that region of the body is a No Sharp Objects zone.
Not embedding, because that being the first thing you see on my site would be doing a disservice to my audience, and all mankind in general.
A New York City police officer who had just gotten off duty was fatally shot late Thursday in East Harlem by a fellow officer who mistook him for an armed criminal, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.
The officer who was killed, Omar J. Edwards, 25, a two-year veteran who was assigned to patrol housing projects and was wearing plain clothes, was shot in the arm and chest after a team of three other plainclothes officers in a car came upon him chasing a man on East 125th Street between First and Second Avenues with his gun drawn, Mr. Kelly said.
The team’s members, assigned to the anticrime unit in the 25th Precinct, got out of their vehicle and confronted Officer Edwards. The police were investigating whether the officers had identified themselves or demanded that Officer Edwards drop his weapon before one of them opened fire.
The guy that he was chasing had just been caught red-handed breaking into his off-duty vehicle.
Oh, but there’s a twist…
The shooting is likely to raise questions again about departmental procedures involving communications among plainclothes officers — particularly those in different units — as well as issues of race. Officer Edwards was black; the officer who shot him was white.
Latest move: government gets 72%. As for the union…:
Earlier this week, the bondholders balked at a plan to give them 10 percent of the new GM, even after the Obama administration and the company agreed to scale back the United Auto Workers union’s stake in a newly restructured company. Union workers, through their health care trust, originally were to get a 39 percent stake; that was reduced to 17.5 percent. (emphasis mine)
Shorter Jay Rockefeller: “Y’know what? The internet isn’t regulated enough”.
That’s a link to the text of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009. Needless to say, when legislation starts with “to ensure the free flow of _______”, its actual function is to do the opposite. All I’d like to know is this: where the hell is this mythical rampage of organized, calculated cyber attacks that keeps getting breathlessly blathered about every few months? The type of attacks that get big enough to warrant news coverage always end up coming from some over-caffeinated superdork kid with too much time on his hands, not some deliberate cyberjihad cell or opposing state that’d actually know WTF they were doing.
Odds are, if this passes, with the ratio gap between cyberthreats as popularly portrayed & as they actually exist, that shiny new government cybersquad will end up defaulting into whatever role they feel serves the interests of “the people” — by which I mean people like this guy.
Richard Epstein, in the course of a critical entry on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, blurts out this:
We have already seen a president whose professed devotion to the law takes a backseat to all sorts of other considerations. The treatment of the compensation packages of key AIGexecutives (which eventually led to the indecorous resignation of Edward Liddy), and the massive insinuation of the executive branch into the (current) Chrysler and (looming) General Motors bankruptcies are sure to generate many a spirited struggle over two issues that are likely to define our future Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. (emphasis mine)
Considering AIG is now worth approximately two used condoms & a bus pass, existing solely via the benevolence of the U.S. government with our money, I believe the missing question is “compensation for what?!?”
The just response to AIG failing was to give them jack shit. Within the realization that the just response was not followed, common sense would suggest that claims to financial reward for the job — which they failed miserably at — are not only automatically void, but are jokes. Of all the things to gripe about…
Apparently this is supposed to be the story of the day. Oh well. SCOTUSblog has summaries of previous opnions, if you’re into that kind of thing, here, here, here, and here.
In case you’ve been under a rock the past few years, I’ve shifted on some things over time. For obvious reason, it’s not like I’d anymore actually endorse anyone for the Supreme Court. Out of curiosity though, I looked up some stuff, and I gotta say it is hilarious that someone is being painted as a ultra-liberal who first got appointed to a federal court by friggin Bush Sr.
My only hope among all this was that the “will he pick a woman??” stuff led to a curveball — in the form of a man, but a gay one. Had one in mind, too*…yeah, yeah, I know, when hell freezes over, but that’s my point. This type of thing has never been about what the language used in the discussions suggest, but about agreement with one’s own views; on those grounds, if I had that power, I’d just say fuck it & nominate the first prominent skeptic of government power that popped into my head. Besides, the entertainment value of THOSE confirmation hearings would be well worth it.
(* - yes, I know he said he doesn’t mind the pick, but 1) squat about her view of executive power has come out yet, & 2) he’s not an anarchist, and we can already assume that anyone with writings out there advocating anarchy wouldn’t get a single vote for confirmation even if they didn’t turn down the nod. I use him as my example purely for the reasons I gave.)
Poetry. I found a paper with these on it buried in my closet underneath a bunch of random junk:
—————————–
Chaos out of Order
The volcano has
blown; Hatred
like fires of Hades.
Words that shouldn’t
be
repeated. Want to break
a law, but
Why?
Are anchovies that
important to you?
—————————-
Pondering
Pencil in hand
trying to
create
sculpture with words
On the road of
inspiration; Then I hit
a brick wall
broke the lead again
Shouldn’t have drank all
that coffee.
——————————
Judging by the look of the paper, this somehow made it through 13 years of moves & different containers. Fittingly, next to it in the junk pile was an issue of Time magazine, face down, w/ an ad for AIG on the back.
Shorter Sam Schulman: “Gay Marriage is bad because women need to be controlled like pets, and — oh, fuck, who am I kidding, I’m tempted by man ass and need the State to discourage me”.
That article is an absolute masterpiece of wingnuttery. Ostensibly trying to make a case against gay marriage that doesn’t rest on religion or bigotry, he ends up barfing up a huge rant about the righteousness of suffering in a relationship, assumptions that all gays do is have wild sex without a care in the world otherwise, and this, a line so ridiculous and exposing of his personal issues you have to just see it to believe it:
Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage–much less three, as I have done–were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom. (emphasis mine)
Do read the whole column, it’s hilarious. There’s Freudian slips, and then there’s Freudian fits of impromptu boogaloo over an endless path of banana peels & dog shit.
Listening to Shoutcast radio today, a funk station played this (obviously not the video, this is just what came up in a search afterwards):
How the hell did they find that? I did not know there was an alternate, funkier, more drum-centric version of that song, I’m shocked. Was that a throwaway vinyl B-side, a live remix, or what?
BTW: anyone know about car radio type add-ons that can somehow — wi-fi, regular wireless connection, whatever — play internet radio stations? That type of thing has always seemed to me like a better deal than satellite radio, since unlike satellite radio you don’t pay a monthly subscription, and anyone & their mother can stream audio these days, making for a wider range of possible stations.
Edit: anyone know of any directories of internet radio/ streaming music stations you know of other than Shoutcast that are compatible w/ Winamp (read: I don’t have to bookmark the site of each individual station)? If so, lemme know. Recently realized how much of a bitch it is to find stations otherwise. Shoutcast is alright, but the offerings in some genres are pretty thin (for example: if I pick “funk” as the genre, half the stations listed are stupid “FUNKY HOUSE!” stations, which makes about as much sense as square circles IMO).
