A Winter's Tale

Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

Fark user Antimatter writes:

This one thought that the reference to That one was rather objectionable.

You should probably skip reading this post.

I don't usually discuss politics, especially when nowadays most verbalized political opinions amount to "you're [sic] candidate sux [sic]" and "if I wasn't [sic] typing away at this keyboard, Id [sic] cum [sic] over their [sic] and punch you in the face, cuz [sic] your [sic] stupid."

This 20-minute presentation from Lawrence Lessig (transcript here), however, has illuminated some of my chief objections to the way candidates in general have run political campaigns in modern times. ( It also led me to the following video: )

I don't really have any misconceptions that a single blog-post with links to a quasi-famous law professor is really going to change anybody's mind about who they're should or should not vote for, but I thought the link was effective enough in its presentation to pass it on.

Cory Doctorow, writer, technologist and blogger-proprietor of Boingboing.net was recently interviewed by US News and World Report about the projected downturn in American productivity. His suggestions about what we should do to turn the economy around in the long term resonate pretty well with me, given that I, myself, am something of a technology buff.

A while ago a link came up on Digg.com about a biotech company in Singapore that was able to create human embryonic stem cells without introducing living non-human tissue. In the discussion that followed, two comments stood out to me: "are we losing to Singapore?" and "How is medical advancement about winning or losing?" I've posted about the general American distrust of science previously, where I included the following quote, which I think sums up why medical advancement is about winning and losing:

Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can't manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world.
--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Our ignorant politics and corporate salad-tossing are eroding our competitive edge against the rapidly-modernizing third world. With the advent of the internet, countries like China and India, countries that value science as a discipline are overtaking American industries. With idiotic laws and copyright policies, the government is (at times, literally) handcuffing software companies with novel products, such as Napster. The kowtowing we do to the RIAA and MPAA will prevent companies like Last.fm and Pandora from seeing their innovative software to a profit. And the president's close-minded veto of government-funded stem cell research will only make for profits for cures created in other parts of the world.

We are shackled to our old ways--we are far too scared, too dumb to change our cars, our business models, our minds. The technology that American ingenuity has created will only bring us so far--if we're unwilling to continue to learn, to stay on the bleeding edge, then we will, as the commenter on Digg stated, "[lose] to Singapore" and all the other developing countries of the world.

Points to the person(s) who can specifically (namely, with proper quotage) state why each of these buttons is funny.

You can find a hint in the second top-level response of this page (which, whatever your political leanings, is comedy gold).

While you might not care about the Northern spotted owl, the sudden upswing in polar bear drownings, or a mystical flower in the mountains of China which only blooms once every twenty years (yeah, that last one's fictional), you should be aware that your penchant for rampant pollution is shrinking your nads (and may turn your sons and your sons' sons into chicks with dicks).

Not to mention the sharks which can walk on their fins...

Here follows a rant on Science and politics.
( A rant on Science and politics )

This article from the New Yorker details a bit of history and criticism regarding the movement behind Intelligent Design.

Mediamatters.org has a very interesting look at one graph from the results of a CNN.com/USAToday Poll on Terri Schiavo.