October 14, 2006
The Foremost Observer of American Society
Craig Finn is the new Tom Wolfe.
Related: The new Hold Steady disc confirms my pet theory that a truly American rock band must have an organ. Not keys, not synths, but an organ. Think of any song you consider American rock par excellence. It has an organ in it. Absolutely required. J. S. Bach smiles from above.
Posted by Noel at 11:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 04, 2006
Create a Fiendish Terrorist Plot and Win a Prize
The plot: terror. The prize: an autographed book, and a call to Hollywood. I'm serious. But not about the actuality of the plot. The point is to show the silliness of our response to terrorism has been at points. We are repeatedly caught treating the symptoms of terrorist attacks, and not the causes. We spend our national security money on random, fantastic scenarios which are infinite in number, and not on actual security.
So have a go. Here's some inspiration: fantastic ideas, more mundane but plausible, and of course Sam's page on how to destroy the earth for those with more grandiose dreams.
My favorites so far follow.
Play the odds:
Terrorists use unsolicited bulk e-mail ("spam") which contain messages urging the recipient to kill everyone around them. While most people will realize the email is not genuine, a small fraction will simply take the message at face value, and go on shooting rampages.
Local flavor:
Dam The Speedboat! Pick several dams whose collapse would threaten a major metro area, canal locks, power plant intakes, etc. Any dam which trucks are forbidden on, for example. Pack explosive into a speedboat's V-hull, creating the effect of a shaped charge. Design the boat with several large scuttling holes to flood rapidly and to orient appropriately while sinking.Drive the boat up to the target, open the seacocks, neatly delivering a ton or more of high explosive right next to the target. Detonation on timer. For a bonus, simply tow the boat over the target, unhitch the trailer and run away, detonation on a timer with an anti-tamper detonator if someone tries to play hero and disarm it.
The ever-popular race card with ironic resonances:
Al-Qaeda recruits African islamists to blow up three of the largest megachurches in the South, leaving behind evidence it was the work of a revived cell of the Black Panthers. Meanwhile, light-skinned Persians destroy numerous black churches and the Apollo Theatre, leaving the impression it was done in retaliation, by white militias.Then real members of these groups begin killing each other in the cities and countryside. Al Qaeda stokes the flames of conflict whenever it seems that it may subside.
Local governments assert "states' rights" to suspend the constitution, and persecute and intern black americans. Inner-city gangs with access to high-powered weaponry assert themselves as defenders of the black community.
Self-reference:
Well-known security commentator announces "Movie-Plot Threat Contest" on his blog.
Ideas flood in.
< insert your favorite terrorist group > picks the best one and implements it.
Ah thank you!
And a grand, intricate, but well-done finale:
Balloon attack in the warn terr.
Take 30 terrorists; organize as 15 teams of 2 terrs each.Each team is equipped with
2 man-portable cylinders of helium, with regulators
120 largish, clear balloons
10 1000' spools of 28-gauge copper wire
2 roll of kite string
2 box cuttersTotal cost much less than $500,000. Use the balance for rent, food, cars, gas money, pet dogs (see below), and lap dances.
Deploy terr teams around the country, 5 to NYC metro, 5 to LA metro, 5 to Chicago Metro. Or any other cities you don't like.
Have each terr team scout out the corridors underneath major high voltage transmission lines. Find the major corridors with 3-7 transmission lines crammed into one narrow path. They are easy to spot, use G**gle Earth, USGS maps, or working eyesight to spot large metal towers. Walk the dog in the corridors underneath the lines. Find secluded spots.
On T-day, all 15 teams go their chosen spots, with or without dogs.
Check the wind by blowing up a few balloons and releasing them. Unroll 200' of copper wire, perpendicular to the chosen power line, and directly beneath it, or as required to compensate for wind. Each terr blows up a balloon with helium, ties it to the ground with 5-10' of kite string, then attaches the copper wire to the string, just under the balloon. The tethered balloons holds the wire just above the well trimmed vegetation underneath each line so it won’t be snagged.
Repeat 6 -10 times for 1 power line, moving at least 50 yards down the line for each balloon pair and wire. Then repeat for the adjacent high voltage line. Lay out 50 wires in all.
Now the terr pair ditches their heavy helium bottles and get out their box cutters. Using hand signals, they simultaneously cut the kite strings holding down one wire with a balloon on each end. They quickly move down the line to the next, and repeat.
As the wire is lifted up to the high-voltage transmission line, it causes an electrical arc. Power flows from one high-voltage wire to the next until circuit breakers open. A few seconds after they open, the circuit breakers automatically reclose. The second balloon-borne wire causes a second arc. The circuit breaker opens, closes again. The third breaker causes still another arc. The circuit breaker opens, and this time is locks open.
The attack is repeated for all the transmission lines in each corridor. In a matter of minutes, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have blackouts. When the utilities try to manually close the circuit breakers, the additional balloon-wires are already in place across the lines. They arc and the breakers trip right away.
The attackers leave the area, assembly a second kit, get in their cars, and go to the areas around the next 3 big cities they don't like.
Variations:
1) Use 30 each 1-terr teams, tether one end of each wire, and cause a line-to-ground arc instead of going for the more spectacular line-to-line. Attack 6 cities at once instead of 3. Leave lots of clear balloons and skinny wires floating near power lines, waiting for the right gust of wind to push them into the wires and cause a short circuit.2) Ditch the balloons, the helium, the wire, the rent, and the lap dances. Buy explosives and timers and train the terrs to use them. Scout out the corridors as before. Find towers where the line takes a sharp bend, and cut the outer leg on that tower with the explosive and timer. Each terr is expected to cut one or more legs from at least 12 high-voltage towers. Extra points for getting one tower to fall across an adjacent line. Now the power systems to the targeted cities are shut down for weeks or months.
Results: Major metropolitan areas in blackout. Blackouts repeated many times as other disgruntled groups recruit terrs and repeat the attack along the 150,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines.
Voters turn out in mass and throw all the bums out of office. They'll stand for murder, they'll sit still for groping at airports, they'll accept ruinous taxes and deficits, but when the power goes out, the politicians follow. Ask Gray Davis.
American culture is forever changed when the new group of politicians realizes that they don't have long to line their wallets unless they can keep the power flowing. They can’t recruit enough guards for 150,000 miles of line. They have to stop the attacks at the source. They offer peace terms to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the world. All the troops are brought home, all the foreign bases closed. The Southerners, the rednecks, the ranchers, the rich, the businessmen, and even the gun nuts are made to feel welcome in American culture and politics. The Bill of Rights is restored and politicians who don't enforce the letter and spirit of the Constitution as originally written are rapidly and firmly replaced. Government is drastically reduced and the economy prospers. World peace is upon us.
Well, you asked for a grandiose goal!
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 16, 2006
The Flat Tax: the Poor and the Lucky
In reading a Times article on Estonia's economic policy, I was unexpectedly met with an incisive evaluation of an internal debate that has been raging recently.
It's obviously not right for there to be an equality gap between social groups such that lives in the poor group are cut short due to a lack of resources easily accessible (even taken for granted) to all other social groups. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year exemplifies this. In sum, "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" disappoints as a viable development for our society.
To digress, perhaps that last statement was what Kanye West was attempting to put onto point with his pithy outburst regarding Katrina last year.
To continue, however, there's an equally strong intuition that people should be free to use their abilities to gain position and power, especially in a society where everybody else is working towards the same goal. I should be free to pursue my dream of financial independence; I should be free to pursue the American dream of lifting yourself up by the bootstraps out of poverty and into affluence the likes of which your ancestors never dreamed.
To distill those last two paragraphs, there seems to be a conflict between the imperative to help the poor and society's innate desire to grow in prosperity.
"Everybody dreams about a society with no inequality," Prime Minister Ansip said. "But the best policy is to have a strongly growing economy. With more prosperity we can increase social benefits."
Reinstating a progressive tax, he said, would pay for education and for more aid to families and the elderly. With Estonia facing a national election in March 2007, Mr. Savisaar is expected to make that a political issue."What are the best societies to live in?'" asked Mr. Savisaar's top adviser, Heido Vitsur. "The best societies in the world to live in are the Nordic societies. We have to move in that direction."
Mr. Ansip is all for catching up with Finland and Sweden. But he says Estonia should not do it by abandoning a policy that he says helped propel the country this far. "I don't think it's the right thing for every country in the world," he said. "But it really suits Estonia."
Want measured political discourse that engages in substantial issues with a broad perspective?
Estonia - a world superlative!Discover Estonia and you will see it is phenomenal. Like Alice in her Wonderland, you will find there is even more to see in Estonia than you have dreamed about. The dream world becomes real and the reality is unbelievable.
It takes no effort to grasp that rapid changes are taking place around you. Change means development, fulfillment, a process of improving. Estonia’s technological sector is thriving while the past - our history and nature - has been perfectly preserved. From untouched nature to post-modern city culture, you can experience solitude and the forces of masses. Big business and handicrafts passed from generation to generation stand hand by hand. Everything fits snugly together. Estonia - positively transforming. Welcome to Estonia.
Posted by Noel at 05:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 14, 2006
My Virtual Community Responds to the Danish Cartoon Debate
One of my great joys is the challenging thoughts and provocations that my friends throw out on their blogs. The Denmark Cartoon riots/ruckus/debate attracted a particularly diverse and deep response. I've collected the best for wider dissemination.
Josiah believes that radical Muslims lack a sense of irony. Mesh calls out the press' indomitable fear in the face of unrest. Elissa parallels the Muslim response to the cartoons with the Christian response to Seurano. Jason thinks that the worldwide, decentralized Muslim response proves that Islam is not a peaceful religion.
With that link-pimping, my street cred should spike nicely.
Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
February 12, 2006
The Importance of Bourbon in These Uncertain, Modern Times
Mesh and I recently discussed the wonders and glories, the ineffable qualities that make themselves sparklingly apparent, the virtues that delight and enjoy the reader of the Walker Percy essay on drinking bourbon.
The world is a broken place. Words like his are important to hear and follow in these uncertain, modern times. The consumption of bourbon has become integral in thinking, discussing, and responding to current world events, whether you do so alone or with the companionship of others.
Last night was another miserable experience with scotch, and caused me to long for the bracing, wholesome embrace of a few fingers of Kentucky's finest. Percy converted me to bourbon with this essay, and damn if I cannot testify that it all isn't true.
It appears that the University of North Carolina holds the original manuscript, which would be a treat to examine. I'm keeping a copy of the entire essay in the extended entry so that it doesn't slip away from me again.
This is not written by a connoisseur of Bourbon. Ninety-nine percent of Bourbon drinkers know more about Bourbon than I do. It is about the aesthetic of Bourbon drinking in general and in particular of knocking it back neat.I can hardly tell one Bourbon from another, unless the other is very bad.
Some bad Boubons are even more memorable than good ones. For example, I
can recall being broke with some friends in Tennessee and deciding to have
a party and being able to afford only two-fifths of a $1.75 Bourbon called
Two Natural, whose label showed dice coming up 5 and 2. Its taste was
memorable. The psychological effect was also notable. After knocking back
two or three shots over a period of half an hour, the three male drinkers
looked at each other and said in a single voice: 'Where are the women?'
I have not been able to locate this remarkable Bourbon since.Not only should connoisseurs of Bourbon not read this article, neither
should persons preoccupied with the perils of alcoholism, cirrhosis,
esophageal hemorrhage, cancer of the palate, and so forth--all real dangers.
I, too, deplore these afflications. But, as between these evils and the
aesthetic of Bourbon drinking, that is, the use of Bourbon to warm the
heart, to reduce the anomie of the late twentieth century, to cut the cold
phlegm of Wednesday afternoons, I choose the aesthetic. What, after all,
is the use of not having cancer, cirrhosis, and such, if a man comes home
from work every day at five-thirty to the exurbs of Montclair or Memphis
and there is the grass growing and the little family looking not quite at
him but just past the side of his head, and there's Cronkite on the tube
and the smell of pot roast in the living room, and inside the house and
outside in the pretty exurb has settled the noxious particles and the
sadn ess of the old dying Western world, and him thinking: 'Jesus, is this
it? Listening to Cronkite and the grass growing?'If I should appear to be suggesting that such a man proceed as quickly as
possible to anesthetize his cerebral cortex by ingesting ethyl alcohol,
the point is being missed. Or part of the point. The joy of Bourbon
drinking is not the pharmacological effect of C(2)H(5)OH on the cortex but
rather the instant of the whiskey being knocked back and the little
explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and
the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime--aesthetic considerations to
which the effect of the alcohol is, if not dispensable, at least secondary.By contrast, Scotch: for me (not, I presume, for a Scot), drinking Scotch
is like looking at a picture of Noel Coward. The whiskey assaults the
nasopharynx with all the excitement of paregoric. Scotch drinkers (not
all, of course) I think of as upward-mobile Americans, Houston and New
Orleans businessmen who graduate from Bourbon about the same time they shed
seersuckers for Lilly slacks. Of course, by now these same folk may have
gone back to Bourbon and seersucker for the same reason, because too many
Houston oilmen drink Scotch.Nothing, therefore, will be said about the fine points of sour mash,
straights, blends, bonded, except a general preference for the lower proofs.
It is a matter of the arithmetic of aesthetics. If one derives the same
pleasure from knocking back 80-proof Bourbon as 100-proof, the formula is
both as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 and as incredible as non-Euclidean geometry.
Consider. One knocks back five one-ounce shots of 80-proof Early Times or
four shots of 100-proof Old Fitzgerald. The alcohol ingestion is the same:5 X 40% = 2
4 X 50% = 2Yet, in the case of the Early Times, one has obtained an extra quantum of
joy without cost to liver, brain, or gastric mucosa. A bonus, pure and
simple, an aesthetic gain as incredible as two parallel lines meeting at
infinity.An apology to the reader is in order, nevertheless, for it has just occurred
to me that this is the most unedifying and even maleficent piece I ever
wrote--if it should encourage potential alcoholics to start knocking back
Bourbon neat. It is also the unfairest. Because I am, happily and
unhappily, endowed with a bad GI tract, diverticulosis, neurotic colon,
and a mild recurring nausea, which make it less likely for me to become an
alcoholic than my healthier fellow Americans. I can hear the reader now:
Who is he kidding? If this joker has to knock back five shots of Bourbon
every afternoon just to stand the twentieth century, he's already an
alcoholic. Very well. I submit to this or any semantic. All I am saying
is that if I drink much more than this I will get sick as a dog for two
days and the very sight and smell of whiskey will bring on the heaves.Readers beware, therefore, save only those who have stronger wills or as
bad a gut as I.The pleasure of knocking back Bourbon lies in the plain of the aesthetic
but at an opposite pole from connoisseurship. My preference for the
former is or is not deplorable depending on one's value system --
that is to say, how one balances out the Epicurean virtues of
cultivating one's sensory end organs with the greatest discrimination and
at least cost to one's health, against the virtue of evocation of time and
memory and of the recovery of self and the past from the fogged-in
disoriented Western world. In Kierkegaardian terms, the use of Bourbon to
such an end is a kind of aestheticized religious mode of existence, whereas
connoisseurship, the discriminating but single-minded stimulation of sensory
end organs, is the aesthetic of damnation.Two exemplars of the two aesthetics come to mind.
Imagine Clifton Webb, scarf at throat, sitting at Cap d'Antibes on a perfect
day, the little wavelets of the Mediterranean sparkling in the sunlight,
and he is savoring a 1959 Mouton Rothschild.Then imagine William Faulkner, having finished 'Absalom, Absalom!',
drained, written out, pissed-off, feeling himself over the edge and out of
it,
nowhere, but he goes somewhere, his favorite hunting place in the Delta
wilderness of the Big Sunflower River and, still feeling bad with his
hunting cronies and maybe even a little phony, which he was, what with him
trying to pretend he was one of them, a farmer, hunkered down in the cold
and rain after the hunt, after honorably passing up the does and seeing no
bucks, shivering and snot-nosed, takes out a flat pint of any Bourbon at
all and flatfoots about a third of it. He shivers again but not from the
cold.Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
1926: As a child watching my father in Birmingham, in the exurbs, living
next to a number-6 fairway of the New Country Club, him disdaining both
the bathtub gin and white lightening of the time, aging his own Bourbon in
a charcoal keg, on his hands and knees in the basement sucking on the
siphon, a matter of gravity requiring cheek pressed against the concrete
floor, the siphon getting going, the decanter ready, the first hot spurt
into his mouth not spat out.1933: My uncle's sun parlour in the Mississippi Delta and toddies on a
Sunday afternoon, the prolonged and meditative tinkle of silver spoon
against crystal to dissolve the sugar; talk, tinkle, talk; the talk mostly
political: "Roosevelt is doing a good job; no, the son of a bitch is
betraying his class."1934: Drinking at a Delta dance, the boys in bi-swing jackets and tab
collars, tough-talking and profane and also scared of the girls and
therefore safe in the men's room. Somebody passes around bootleg Bourbon
in a Coke bottle. It's awful. Tears start from eyes, faces turn red.
'Hot damn, that's good!'1935: Drinking at a football game in college. UNC versus Duke. One has a
blind date. One is lucky. She is beautiful. Her clothes are the color of
the fall leaves and her face turns up like a flower. But what to SAY to
her, let alone what to do, and whether she is 'nice' or 'hot' -- a
distinction made in those days. But what to SAY? Take a drink, by now
from a proper concave hip flask (a long way from the Delta Coke bottle)
with a hinged top. Will she have a drink? No. But that's all right. The
taste of the Bourbon (Cream of Kentucky) and the smell of her fuse with
the brilliant Carolina fall and the sounds of the crowd and the hit of the
linesmen in a single synesthesia.1941: Drinking mint juleps, famed Southern Bourbon drink, though in the
Deep South not really drunk much. In fact, they are drunk so seldom that
when, say, on Derby Day somebody gives a julep party, people drink them
like cocktails, forgetting that a good julep holds at least five ounces of
Bourbon. Men fall face-down unconscious, women wander in the woods
disconsolate and amnesiac, full of thoughts of Kahil Gibran and the
limberlost.Would you believe the first mind julep I had I was sitting not on a columned
porth but in the Boo Snooker bar of the New Yorker Hotel with a Bellevue
nurse in 1941? The nurse, a nice upstate girl, head floor nurse, brisk,
swift, good-looking; Bellevue nurses, the best in the world and this one
the best of Bellevue, at least the best-looking. The julep, an atrocity,
a heavy syrupy Bourbon and water in a small glass clotted with ice. But
good!How could two women be more different than the beautiful languid Carolina
girl and this swift handsome girl from Utica, best Dutch stock? One thing
was sure. Each has to be courted, loved, drunk with, with Bourbon. I
should have stuck with the Bourbon. We changed to gin fizzes because the
bartender said he came from New Orleans and could make good ones. He could
and did.They were delicious. What I didn't know was that they were made with raw
egg albumen and I was allergic to it. What a lovely fine strapping smart
girl!And thinking of being invited into her apartment where she lived alone and
of her offering to cook a little supper and of the many kisses and the
sweet love that already existed between us and was bound to grow apace,
when on the Brooklyn Bridge itself my upper lip began to swell and little
sparks of light flew past the corner of my eye like St. Elmo's fire. In
the space of thirty seconds my lip stuck out a full three-quarter inch,
like a shelf, like Mortimer Snerd. Not only was kissing out of the question
but my eyes swelled shut. I made it across the bridge, pulled over to the
curb, and fainted. Whereupon this noble nurse drove me back to Bellevue,
game me a shot, and put me to bed.Anybody who monkeys around with gin and egg white deserves what he gets.
I should have stuck with Bourbon and have from that day to this.POSTSCRIPT: Reader, just in case you don't want to knock it back straight
and would rather monkey around with perfectly good Bourbon, here's my
favorite recipe, "Cud'n Walker's Uncle Will's Favorite Mint Julep Receipt."You need excellent Bourbon whiskey; rye or Scotch will not do. Put half
an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampen it with water.
Next, very quickly--and here is the trick in the procedure -- crush your
ice, actually powder it, preferably with a wooden mallet, so quickly that
it remains dry, and, slipping two sprigs of fresh mint against the inside
of the glass, cram the ice in right to the brim, packing it with your hand.
Finally, fill the glass, which apparently has no room left for anything
else, with Bourbon, the older the better, and grate a bit of nutmeg on the
top. The glass will frost immediately. Then settle back in your chair
for half an hour of cumulative bliss.
--Walker Pearcy, "Bourbon", from Signposts in a Strange Land, 1975
Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 18, 2006
The Right to Privacy: Not Really a Right, Nor Do We Have Privacy at the Moment Anyways
I've previously stated that I'm not sure that we have a constitutional right to privacy. This is not new; Robert Bork, among others, also maintained this view. I have various reasons for this, mostly pragmatic and literalistic.
As an example of the latter reason, I quote from a letter to the editor of chattanoogan.com:
United States citizens have the right to express themselves without being subjected to reprisal. As such, nothing in the U.S. Constitution states that people cannot be monitored. What it does indicate is that the Federal and State governments will not interfere with the lawful communication and protests of the people, and these governments must protect these rights.
Not to say that I approve of the NSA monitoring US citizens without judicial order. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and the NSA runs foul of that, no matter what powers the executive branch thinks it may have. But, pragmatically, this is going to get harder and harder to stop. If I have something to say privately, I'll say it using the best encryption I can get. Since this is a wonderfully entrepreneurial nation, I expect that the first person to make that encryption as unobtrusive and easy to use as possible will make a fair pile of Hamiltons.
You know how your dad used to spend several hours per week maintaining the lawn, or waxing the car? You're going to have to spend several hours a week maintaining your privacy and identity.
Posted by Noel at 05:34 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 07, 2005
Can I Live Better Than This Guy?
Frederik “Frits” Phillips ran the Dutch electronics company Phillips for a decade, watched his hometown team from the bleachers for 93 years, practiced charity and humility because he loved God, and saved over 300 Jews from Auschwitz during WWII. He died on Monday, December 5, at one hundred years of age.
And he's Dutch, which for some of my friends means I didn't even need to write the preceding laudatory paragraph.
Posted by Noel at 05:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
A Force More Powerful?
My little brother bought me Rise of Nations for my birthday. Strategy & simulation games, a la Sid Meier, are my thing. We happily conquered the world together as the Russians over Thanksgiving. In Soviet Russia, the Weichbrodt boys are belong to all your base!
But what happens when you lose the tanks and add student protestors? A Force More Powerful. Wired News dropped the name on me via an interview with one of the game's consultants, who founded the Serbian student organization that helped bring down Milosevic in the 90's. Not quite like a video game designed by Gandhi or MLK, but more like a didactic and fun subversion of a genre, like A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer. The name echoes what that silly rock star Bono said at the beginning of the year. "How do you dismantle an atomic bomb? With love." Like the saying, I'm not sure if the game is a hippy dream or a useful tool.
Posted by Noel at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2005
A Modest Proposal to the Librarian of Congress
Proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted:
Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text.
Brief summary of the argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed above:
These classes of works (Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text) have traditionally been granted copyrights for the purpose of encouraging the public dissemination of the works for the benefit and use of the public by providing a property incentive to the originator for a short period of time. The DMCA ignores this traditional cause of granting a copyright, and moreover establishes crippling restrictions on the aforementioned "benefit and use of the public". As such, the DMCA's use should be restricted to the text of the DMCA itself, with the consequence being that any private party which attempts to discern the workings of the DCMA with the intent to apply it in any broader fashion outside of the text of the Act itself would be committing a punishable, criminal action under the DMCA.
Just an idea ;)
I am awaiting a response from the LoC.
Found via Slashdot.
Thank you!
The following information was submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office at 17:35 on 11/3/05. Please print this page for your records.
[I have read the notice of inquiry and acknowledge that my attached submission will be posted on the Copyright Office website.]: Acknowledged
[Name]: Noel Weichbrodt
[Title]: Application Developer
[Organization]:
[Street Address]: The Volunteer Building
[Address Line 2]:
[City]: Chattanooga
[State]: TN
[ZIP]: 37402
[Phone]: 4237858262
[Fax]:
[Submitter's email]: nweichbrodt millermartin com
[Proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted]: Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text.
[Brief summary of the argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed above]: These classes of works (Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text) have traditionally been granted copyrights for the purpose of encouraging the public dissemination of the works for the benefit and use of the public by providing a property incentive to the originator for a short period of time. The DMCA ignores this traditional cause of granting a copyright, and moreover establishes crippling restrictions on the aforementioned "benefit and use of the public". As such, the DMCA's use should be restricted to the text of the DMCA itself, with the consequence being that any private party which attempts to discern the workings of the DCMA with the intent to apply it in any broader fashion outside of the text of the Act itself would be committing a punishable, criminal action under the DMCA.
[Attached file]: ExceptionProposal.doc
Posted by Noel at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 25, 2005
My Kind of 3rd World Aid
The MIT Media Lab blows a lot of hot air, but occasionally gets into something interesting. Negroponte et al have designs for a $100 laptop to give to 15 million poor kids. Before you poo-poo it, think: the network is the computer. With built-in next-gen wi-fi, ad-hoc networking ability, and internet connection sharing, these laptops will wire together and together march onto the internet.
We're networking 15 million kids across the globe together.
The poor are defined as those who lack resources. Hey Brazillian street kid: here's 15,000,000 resources. Hey Honduran farmer kid: here's a thingy that can be the Farmer's Almanac, 21-century style. Hey Congolese orphan kid: here's a way to inform the planet about your situation and story, something that hasn’t been heard in over a hundred years.
This is The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer in real life.
$100 laptops + Social web + 15 million fresh faces? Technology that brings freedom. That's what I'm talking about.
Posted by Noel at 07:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 29, 2005
Hey William Cotton [PG-rated Local Politics Rant]
Hey William Cotton: let's play soccer with your balls. Oh wait, you don't have any. And apparently your integrity is worth $1,750. Hope that works out for you in prison and all.
Maybe you can buy a subscription to Martha magazine with the bribe money. That's the great thing about this country: even scumbags are able to buy a magazine with quick & easy instructions on how to make seasonally-matched window curtains for a 6x9 cell.
I sincerely hope, William, that you repent publicly, quickly, and truly. I also sincerely hope that you, and all you represent, will never represent our town again. Have a nice, long stay in jail.
Posted by Noel at 04:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 30, 2005
While I'm At It, Bravo Mr. Bob Costas...
Consider this my abtruse contribution to the subcurrents debate.
Bravo, Mr. Costas, for not participating in the life-destroying emotional pornography that is cable news coverage. Don't confuse it with the vapid, Romanesque-in-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-empire-sense nightly network news, which posses its own set of evil. There sadly seems to be enough of that to go around.
Reminds me of what I said in the beginning of this blog.
My hope for the future? The internet (eg blogging), might enable our scale and life to return to a more human size. Filtering and editing is an act of a wisdom that we lack at the moment.
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 26, 2005
Wait, Let Me Check...Yep, Still Want to Deport Pat Robertson
I collected some interesting postings from around the chattablogosphere after publishing my last short story about deporting Pat Robertson (which, by the way, still awaits readers creative enough to provide an ending to the cliff-hanger that I ended with..).
The Old Grey Lady did a nice pithy follow-up piece (oh for the day in which they would add that tone and substantiative quotations to their other stories!).
The Holtonian inadvertently attempts to place Venezuela's Hugo Chavez into a broader South American socialist revolutionary context.
Stella Blue elicits comparisons between Robertson and your old loony uncle who won't stop going on about those Yankees and their oppressions, except Robertson has his own cable tv program (ABC Family, how much do you suck now for agreeing to keep Mr. Rapture on air until the 3rd millennia?).
Finally, the Funky Presbyterian & commentators note that Robertson lacks not only "the boys" but also the truly Christian virtue of self-sacrifice in the face of death. Yeah, a Christian leader that's neither Christian nor leader. Hopefully we'll be able to ridicule him in a few decades just the same as that old Empire.
I'm outie.
Posted by Noel at 08:24 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 24, 2005
Can We Please Deport Pat Robertson?
The irony would be so sweetly rich. Sigh.
Imagine with me: Robertson gets erusticated to, just to make it interesting, Venezuela, by CIA officers flying a private-chartered Gulfstream V who have spent the previous evening at the local Hilton racking up a tab. After being whisked away from the airport by Chavez's neo-commie posse and tickled with Mao's little Red book, Pat manages a daring daylight escape by donning a beard, cap, and fake Cuban accent that have been smuggled to him by Paul & Jan Crouch (who know a thing or two about under the table dealings and prison).
Sensing the imminent End of the World and Rapture for All True Believers, Robertson makes his way up the isthmus, through Noriega-free Panama, and into Mexico. His disguise is less than convincing for the locals due to their ability, even in the most agrarian of villages, to catch a TBN signal.
Pat spends two straight days running, families of illegal immigrants chasing after him. He makes it to the border, but, damn! While he was out, Texas & Arizona put up that border wall that he spent all that airtime fantasizing about. Pre-mill prophet he is, Pat has already foreseen that he must make it back into the ole US of A. He constructs a wall scaling kit out of cactus and discarded Corona bottles. Falling heavily on the other side, he kisses the God-blessed ground of our fair America.
Pat has made one mistake, however, and it might be his last. He told his 700 Club crew via TBN satellite phone that he was planning on entering the border in Texas. But during that 48 hour ultra marathon, Robertson became disoriented. He veered west, and has dropped to his knees in Arizona.
"Don't tread of me," says the Minutemen volunteer border guard from behind the barrel of the standard-issue 12-gauge double-shot...
Audience participation time! Write your grand finale to my little yarn in the comments below:
Posted by Noel at 05:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 28, 2005
What I Won't Pay for Security
What a becoming change to read the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary state his goal as "maximize our security, but not security at any price."
The fuller quote confirms my take: “DHS must base its work on priorities driven by risk,” said the new Secretary, Mr. Chertoff. “Our goal is to maximize our security, but not security at any price. Our security regime must promote Americans’ freedom, prosperity, mobility, and individual privacy.”
It seems the DHS is finally realizing that fingernail clippers aren't the problem; plastic explosives that are not screened on those little trolleys that cause us so much travel-pain are. Perhaps they will stop confiscating pen knives and making up laws that cannot be revealed to the public, presumably fearing that if the public knew the law, the public would then break the law, but as long as the law remains a secret, only law-breaking terrorists will, er, break it.
Hey, how about taking that evident skill in paper-pushing bureaucracy and setting up a division to track down those baker's dozen missing Russian nukes that seem to have magically been sent to Africa and then vanished?
Security at any price is not acceptable. Security that puts more translators to work, that trains more cops to recognize suspicious behavior, and that educates the public on what to do if someone tries to bum-rush the cockpit door is smart security that we should gladly pay for.
My man Bruce Schneier has much to say on the topic of security, risk management, and these modern times. I've collected the best in my bookmark tag 'security'.
Posted by Noel at 05:50 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
"Just Desserts"
The Supreme's "Kelo vs. City of New London" ruling was on it's hands and knees begging for some Swiftian-style savaging. Enter the Lost Liberty Hotel development, located at 34 Cilley Hill Road, Weare, NH. Which is where you might have maple syrup topped home-cooked pancakes with Chief Justice Souders when the Court is not in session.
Lots of noise in the blogosphere about this, justly so IMHO.
Found via the Funky Presbyterian.
Posted by Noel at 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 15, 2005
How The NBA Got Its Soul Back
IMHO, last year's finals were the best thing that's happened to the NBA since Jordan left the Bulls. Commish David Stern's pseudo-gangsta hype built LA as the next Chicago, Shaq and Kobe as Jordan and Scotty except awesome-er.
I always thought of it as the difference between 50 Cent and The Roots. 50 may sell the knockoff jerseys and get the TV ratings for a season, but it's the Roots that have held it down for a decade, doing their thing. Same deal in LA versus Detroit. Detroit plays classic ball, "do it the right way" as their Larry Brown mantra. It's ugly sometimes, but so is ?uestlove's hair sometimes too. Doesn't mean he isn't the best there is. Just that he doesn't get on MTV much.
So when Detroit took LA 4-1 as the pretty boys from Tinseltown ego-imploded, there was balance restored to the Force. The tipping point was reached. Who represents true hip-hop: 50's Kevlar vest, or Blackthought's mike? And we know who would win in a battle, in both cases. But it doesn't come to that. Detroit is a team. LA was, depending on the count, one to four inclusive egos resembling blimps that buzzed around the court, the press room, the court room, and the red carpet. The team, the crew, the sound, the fury, the spirit. Where's the room for pop culture in that? It's drama and respect. Ben Wallace's hair won't ever appear in the Most Beautiful People list. He plays basketball, and that well; not much else.
It's still cool by me to have celebrity and such involved with the NBA. Spike Lee and his Knicks. LeBron. But remember who's in the Finals this year: Detroit and San Antonio. That's fly-over country, baby. Represent. USA, Argentina, Frace, they're all there. It's the melting pot, not the superstar sushi roll. And so Eva Longoria can get all desperate for the Spurs in the stands, and Stevie Wonder can bob his head to the rhythm of Billups bouncing down court. We all know that Robert Horry is hot. But now we're about playing basketball the right way. 37-36 at half means that the teams pay for each hoop with a pound of sweat and a bucket of flash. The NBA has its soul back, and screw the ratings, I'm happy for it. Everybody is a star.
Posted by Noel at 05:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 09, 2005
Do The Right Thing
Cobb has a brief thought about the Deep Throat thing:
...the insider who finked on Nixon was a simple, straight guy just doing something a little bit extraordinary.
The aphorism "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.", and the lessons learned from reading Ordinary Men, give a significance to what Mr. Felt did, and what I would hope to do if given to me.
It seems entirely possible that Mr. Felt's motivations were (and remain) base, but the long-silent example still remains.
Posted by Noel at 05:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 06, 2005
TFP Garners a Cult Blog Following?
Chattavegas' own Times Free Press seems to benefit from the big fish in small pond syndrome. In a ranking of blogs-to-incoming-hyperlinks, it ranks in the top five newspapers in the country. With only six blogs, and 27 inbound links, it gets a stellar 4.5 links-per-blog. Of course, the New York times, for comparison, has 43,246 blogs giving 105,694 inbound linkys (with a 2ish links-per-blog). Still, this is the internet: passionate regional concerns can have disproportionate impact on the world.
For more, check the summary post of where these numbers came from.
Posted by Noel at 05:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 08, 2005
Blogging For Globalization
T. Friedman, since
...individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?
Further, and I harp back to my previous analogy of Maine moving next to Texas, network infrastructure has increased the value of networks a la Metcalf.
...the Netscape stock offering triggered the dot-com boom, which triggered the dot-com bubble, which triggered the massive overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic telecommunications cable. That overinvestment, by companies like Global Crossing, resulted in the willy-nilly creation of a global undersea-underground fiber network, which in turn drove down the cost of transmitting voices, data and images to practically zero, which in turn accidentally made Boston, Bangalore and Beijing next-door neighbors overnight.
On the flip side of this, Cobb unintentionally touches on what this globalization means for ordinary americans like your humble author. In my analysis, the melting pot and the global village are converging. I don't think our country's constitution is flexible enough to accomdate that convergence. I don't mean the document, but everything except the actual document by Mssrs. Jefferson et al.
Posted by Noel at 05:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 11, 2005
Have You Hugged Your Favorite Federal Judge Today?
If you remember, I introduced you to my favorite Old White Land-Owning Male blog a while back, the Becker-Posner blog. Two federal judges blogging about the Important Issues of the day make twice the fun!
Well, it seems that the Honourable (or is it Honorable? God save the Queen!) Mister Posner (or is it Becker. Viva la revolution!) is quite down in the dumps about the success of his blog. Read his letter to my favorite funny lawyer, and be sure to send him a nice note with furry bunnies and puppies to brighten his day.
Posted by Noel at 08:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 01, 2005
Transparency & The Atomic Bomb
I first learned about transparency from Photoshop. Beginning in version 3, Photoshop's editing metaphor became layer-based. Images are 2-D, and in Photoshop each image becomes a 2-D layer sitting in a z-axis stack of layers. Play now with many layers stacked on top of each other. What good is this? Well, if part of a layer is transparent, you are able to see the layer underneath (and if that layer is transparent, the layer underneath that continued). So if you make the background of a layer transparent, the foreground will be set in the background of another image. Repeat about ten times and mix with vaguely medieval religious imagery, and you're well on your way to becoming a mid-90s graphic designer of the Seattle grunge style!
Transparency, I've come to realize, is vital in more than image-editing. It's a fundamental ethical virtue. The present moment hosts a struggle between transparency and opacity that must galvanize us into living more transparently and calling for more transparency from our institutions. Government, business, education, and science must be transparent in important ways for their future fundamental integrity.
Korby Parnell tells a motivating tale of transparency at work in the splitting of the atom. But significantly, other institutions must act transparently as well. Higher-Ed springs to mind, perhaps from recent experiences. So does Enron, WorldCom, Google, and Microsoft. There's varying degrees of transparency in each of those companies (and varying degrees of failure therein). For lawyers and their firms, there's even less transparency, as Evan Schaeffer humorously relates.
Transparency. Not like a Johnsone-esque glass house, but like a piece of open code. Transparency over processes, models, and compliance. Not over execution and decision-trees. Think about why I believe it to be so important over the week.
Posted by Noel at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2005
Cut Down and Talked Up
If dour comments in gapingvoid cut me down into the abyss this last weekend, Alan Kay shot my hopes for the future back up with his small talk this morning.
Posted by Noel at 08:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
Blogging by a Broad-headed Meekrat and a Wizened Chipmunk
In the "most fascinating pictures and words of old white male land-holders" category, test the mettle of your argumentative stamina and ability to artificially sustain interest in an issue even though you really, really want to think about how funny that William Shatner album review on NPR last night was by following the Becker-Posner blog. When you get bored following the weekly topic that you should really care about as a citizen and intellectual, scroll to the top of the page and softly chuckle at the pictures. Then grimace because those men are smarter than you, and just proved it again. This weeks post is about student loans. I for one have a hot date tonight with that adorable twosome!
Posted by Noel at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 06, 2005
Back from Lunch. New Posts Shortly.
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December 13, 2004
Barely Legal: This Title Will Only Make Matters Worse
Josiah notes that this humble blog is now the most-searched-for site on chattablogs. I responded:
I'm, er, honored. I was assuming it would take me a little while longer to hit no. 1 for search terms, but I guess I underestimated the power of pr0n and overestimated the popularity of chattablogs (no intended slight in that second clause).
To answer Nelly's standing question: provocative naming that fools the NASCAR proles. Now watch me get sued for trademark infringement.
Posted by Noel at 05:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 23, 2004
Word to Power: 10x10
10x10, a sort of visual Google News, presents an interesting example of information design.
However, as 10x10 claims to present the world according to the Beeb, the Old Gray Lady, and Reuters, does it function so much as a definition of the time, or as a commentary on the powerful control of corporate news? It seems like such a small sample, and we're still relying on the big media companies to edit the world into our front pages. For a hundred possibilities, perhaps it is telling that there were only four discrete images on display in a recent visit. In essence, what our minds intake about the world is still seen through the filtered glasses of Reuters et al. This being a Kantian critique, our knowledge of what exists is thereby determined by these companies. How about a 10x10 that exposes visually what is not being covered by those companies?
How to design something more democratic, more exposing of the phenomenal?
Posted by Noel at 03:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 22, 2004
Diebold, May You Never Die Boldly
Remember that part of the Founding Father's brilliance in how they arranged our three-branch governmental structure is revealed as men try to grab more and more power. By divvying up things between three branches, power was spread out in an fashion that is as irrevocably decentralized as is possible in this world.
Recall to mind too that in designing secure systems and networks, heterogeneous networks are more stable and secure than homogenous networks, on the principle that they are simply more complex and thus harder to crack and take down.
Let's apply those two points now to the current debate about how the US conducts elections. You have quotes like these:
A key problem is the lack of a unified voting system for the nation, the legacy of a patchwork of balloting technologies, regulations, partisan bickering and litigation.from a recent Wired New article entitled Reports of Muddled E-Voting and a couple more. Makes you wonder if voting software falls into the category of .
Now, I'm no Schneier, though given the clear thought in his article on this issue I'd like to be like him some day. And I'm no Diebold fanboy--in fact, I'm pretty sure there's a special place in hell for corporate officials who corrupt social institutions like suffrage. But on the flip side, it seems to me that an unrecognized strength of the current US voting system lies in its heterogeneous, state- and precinct-determined balloting systems. We have, in simultaneous use, ATM, touchscreen, computer-scanned, lever-style, and GOF (good old-fashioned) hand-counted paper, ballots. The ballots are stored in flash drives, on RAID arrays in servers, and on paper. They are delivered in the mail, through courier, by hand, by modem, by wi-fi, and by telephone. Try to engage in widespread, systematic fraud in that mess of systems--I dare you! Sure, some systems make it easy for localized fraud (harumph, Diebold in Ohio). But there's no way to defraud the entire process, or even a substantial (but perhaps not significant) portion of it. Long live our provincial ways!
For the record, I can see two attacks against this argument. First, going off of
my throwaway about Societal Infrastructure Software, it may be that as we move forward we will settle on digital-style voting exclusively, and such software is best handled on a nationwide scale. Second, hinted at parenthetically, is that voter fraud can be localized but still significant (see, for example, Florida in 2000).
Posted by Noel at 09:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2004
Dealing With That Special Post-Election Hangover
...and I'm not talking about the bottle of vodka I polished off last night to cope with, and now we arrive at the subject of the post, my post-polling malaise. In speaking with Mesh last night, we realized that the choice between the lesser of two weevils unsettled us much more deeply than we thought. I spent my morning like I had my last month: vacillating between anger at that-hideous-callous-liar and his children-killing crew; disgust at the featherweighted-morality of tweedledum-and-tweedledee. By ten I had decided to stick it to Cheney and vote Kerry; by noon I needed to stand up to the terrorists and give Bush a mandate to continue the reconstruction of Iraq with minimum interruption. As I drove to the polling place I flip-flopped again. When all along I should have listened to my heart.
My old roommate had an apt poster for this moment: "Cthulu in '96: Why choose the lesser evil?"
Shakespeare, as a high school lit teacher burned into me, stated, "To thine own self be true."
I should not have voted for the best of the popular choices. I should have voted Badnarik. He best (and that's a stretch) matches my personal views. Never again will I sacrifice personal convictions to a desire to be relevant.
As a bonus discussion, is anyone else weirded out over which world leaders have expressed congrats to Bush? We've got Allawi, of course, but also Putin and Berlusconi. Yes, that's Putin of the "Russian people are weak" responses to terrorism. When did the Poles, Italians and Mother Russia become bff with us? The article also goes on to note my chief reason for choosing who to root for last night.
Posted by Noel at 04:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack