Body Snatchers

After reading this article, we had some words to say...

http://www.plainsite.org/articles/article.html?id=2

The idea for creating a mafia collection of body-snatchers (I guess that's the new word for psychopathic personalities that manipulate the unwary) has reached the cyber world.  I have heard the industry for copywrite (or patent) infringement in this country was huge but, didn't get an idea of the scope until I once read that it's the second biggest non-farm industry in California after the tourist industry!!!!

 

One of the true freedoms of our society over others is amazingly easy access to the courts.  In terms of the down-trodden, that's good but, it also serves a dire purpose for those who seek a sanctimonious outlet for crime by intimidation.  (Gee, I just reread what I said and think I coined a new phrase that even impressed me!?!?  Maybe I should get it on the blog to protect the copywrite????)  Okay, just kidding but, the opportunity for someone sued by one of these vulture outfits to learn about them could be the basis for a new cyber investigative agency???

 

The limitations on doing such investigative work before has always been the huge date base and ability to cross-reference for effective retrieval. 

The Irony in the SEC

Today the Netflix CEO posted that the SEC is filing suit against Netflix for giving the netflix facebook followers “material” investor information about the company and stock, because they used facebook to publish the news instead of a 8-K filing or press release.

The SEC does not recognize social network postings as public knowledge, and by association they probably don't yet recognize blog posts as public knowledge. This is stupid.


Original Post by Reed Hastings

SEC staff questions a Facebook post. Fascinating social media story.

We use blogging and social media, including Facebook, to communicate effectively with the public and our members. 

In June we posted on our blog that our members were enjoying “nearly a billion hours per month” of Netflix, and people wrote about this. We did not also issue a press release or 8-K filing about this.

In early July, I publicly posted on Facebook to the over 200,000 of you who subscribe to me that our members had enjoyed over 1 billion hours in June, highlighting how strong our content was. There was press coverage as there are many reporters and bloggers among you, my public followers. Some of you re-posted my post. Again, we did not also issue a press release or file an 8-K about this. 

SEC staff informed us yesterday that they are recommending that the SEC bring a civil action against us for my July 1 billion hour public post, asserting we violated “Reg FD”. This rule is designed to ensure that individual investors have equal access to information as large institutional investors, by prohibiting selective disclosure of material information.  

The SEC staff believes that I gave you all “material” investor information in my post and that we needed to instead release the June viewing fact “publicly” with an 8-K filing or press release.  

I want to note a few things. 

First, we think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers.  

Second, while we think my public Facebook post is public, we don’t currently use 

Facebook and other social media to get material information to investors; we usually get that information out in our extensive investor letters, press releases and SEC filings. We think the fact of 1 billion hours of viewing in June was not “material” to investors, and we had blogged a few weeks before that we were serving nearly 1 billion hours per month.  

Finally, while our stock rose the day of my public post, the increase started well before my mid-morning post was out, likely driven by the positive Citigroup research report the evening before.  

We remain optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process.  

-Reed

Why is Marijuana illegal?

Seems like the vote in Colorado and here stirred up the hornet's nest and gotten the interest of the media.  Again, here's an article that claims the government's decision to classify marijuana as a dangerous drug was made arbitrarily with no scientific basis. 

I had heard this way back in my law enforcement career and wondered why it wasn't more of an issue.  I'm still wondering why there's so little said about why it keeps being driven into an illegal status which benefits the opportunists controlling the illicit market when it is so cheap to provide?

my best explanation is that extremely lobbying from tobacco companies mixed with an easy 'sell' on the idea that the drug is dangerous.
the idea of 'DANGER' is easy to sell because it is better to error on the side of safe. If you can argue something might be dangerous and can't be proven it is absolutely not dangerous then the damn DEA decided that they can increase their budget if it remains illegal. they would probably have to let go half of their staff if it was decriminalized and legalized. 

Is marijuana bad for you? - The Week 

The Napster of Education is Happening

This is a repost of the article originally written by clay shirky titled:

Napster, Udacity, and the Academy. 

I have reposted it because his website stopped working, and i wanted to save the text before the google cache erased it in case his website really did suffer a fault.

Fifteen years ago, a research group called The Fraunhofer Institute announced a new digital format for compressing movie files. This wasn’t a terribly momentous invention, but it did have one interesting side effect: Fraunhofer also had to figure out how to compress the soundtrack. The result was the Motion Picture Experts Group Format 1, Audio Layer III, a format you know and love, though only by its acronym, MP3.

The recording industry concluded this new audio format would be no threat, because quality mattered most. Who would listen to an MP3 when they could buy a better-sounding CD at the record store? Then Napster launched, and quickly became the fastest-growing piece of software in history. The industry sued Napster and won, and it collapsed even more suddenly than it had arisen.

If Napster had only been about free access, control of legal distribution of music would then have returned the record labels. That’s not what happened. Instead, Pandora happened. Last.fm happened. Spotify happened. ITunes happened. Amazon began selling songs in the hated MP3 format.

How did the recording industry win the battle but lose the war? How did they achieve such a decisive victory over Napster, then fail to regain control of even legal distribution channels? They crushed Napster’s organization. They poisoned Napster’s brand. They outlawed Napster’s tools. The one thing they couldn’t kill was the story Napster told.

The story the recording industry used to tell us went something like this: “Hey kids, Alanis Morisette just recorded three kickin’ songs! You can have them, so long as you pay for the ten mediocrities she recorded at the same time.” Napster told us a different story. Napster said “You want just the three songs? Fine. Just ‘You Oughta Know’? No problem. Every cover of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ ever made? Help yourself. You’re in charge.”

The people in the music industry weren’t stupid, of course. They had access to the same internet the rest of us did. They just couldn’t imagine—and I mean this in the most ordinarily descriptive way possible—could not imagine that the old way of doing things might fail. Yet things did fail, in large part because, after Napster, the industry’s insistence that digital distribution be as expensive and inconvenient as a trip to the record store suddenly struck millions of people as a completely terrible idea.

Once you see this pattern—a new story rearranging people’s sense of the possible, with the incumbents the last to know—you see it everywhere. First, the people running the old system don’t notice the change. When they do, they assume it’s minor. Then that it’s a niche. Then a fad. And by the time they understand that the world has actually changed, they’ve squandered most of the time they had to adapt.

It’s been interesting watching this unfold in music, books, newspapers, TV, but nothing has ever been as interesting to me as watching it happen in my own backyard. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC), and our Napster is Udacity, the education startup.

We have several advantages over the recording industry, of course. We are decentralized and mostly non-profit. We employ lots of smart people. We have previous examples to learn from, and our core competence is learning from the past. And armed with these advantages, we’re probably going to screw this up as badly as the music people did.

* * *

A massive open online class is usually a series of video lectures with associated written materials and self-scoring tests, open to anyone. That’s what makes them OOCs. The M part, though, comes from the world. As we learned from Wikipedia, demand for knowledge is so enormous that good, free online materials can attract extraordinary numbers of people from all over the world.

Last year, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, an online course from Stanford taught by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun, attracted 160,000 potential students, of whom 23,000 completed it, a scale that dwarfs anything possible on a physical campus. As Thrun put it, “Peter and I taught more students AI, than all AI professors in the world combined.” Seeing this, he quit and founded Udacity, an educational institution designed to offer MOOCs.

The size of Thrun and Norvig’s course, and the attention attracted by Udacity (and similar organizations like Coursera, P2PU, and University of the People), have many academics worrying about the effect on higher education. The loudest such worrying so far has been The Trouble With Online Education, a New York Times OpEd by Mark Edmunson of the University of Virginia. As most critics do, Edmundson focussed on the issue of quality, asking and answering his own question: “[C]an online education ever be education of the very best sort?”

Now you and I know what he means by “the very best sort”—the intimate college seminar, preferably conducted by tenured faculty. He’s telling the story of the liberal arts education in a selective residential college and asking “Why would anyone take an online class when they can buy a better education at UVA?”

But who faces that choice? Are we to imagine an 18 year old who can set aside $250K and 4 years, but who would have a hard time choosing between a residential college and a series of MOOCs? Elite high school students will not be abandoning elite colleges any time soon; the issue isn’t what education of “the very best sort” looks like, but what the whole system looks like.

Edmundson isn’t crazy enough to argue that all college experiences are good, so he hedges. He tells us “Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition”, without providing an analogy for the non-memorable ones. He assures us that “large lectures can also create genuine intellectual community”, which of course means they can also not do that. (He doesn’t say how many large lectures fail his test.) He says “real courses create intellectual joy,” a statement that can be accurate only as a tautology. (The MOOC Criticism Drinking Game: take a swig whenever someone says “real”, “true”, or “genuine” to hide the fact that they are only talking about elite schools instead of the median college experience.)

I was fortunate enough to get the kind of undergraduate education Edmundson praises: four years at Yale, in an incredible intellectual community, where even big lecture classes were taught by seriously brilliant people. Decades later, I can still remember my art history professor’s description of the Arnolfini Wedding, and the survey of modern poetry didn’t just expose me to Ezra Pound and HD, it changed how I thought about the 20th century.

But you know what? Those classes weren’t like jazz compositions. They didn’t create genuine intellectual community. They didn’t even create ersatz intellectual community. They were just great lectures: we showed up, we listened, we took notes, and we left, ready to discuss what we’d heard in smaller sections.

And did the professors also teach our sections too? No, of course not; those were taught by graduate students. Heaven knows what they were being paid to teach us, but it wasn’t a big fraction of a professor’s salary. The large lecture isn’t a tool for producing intellectual joy; it’s a tool for reducing the expense of introductory classes.

* * *

Higher education has a bad case of cost disease (sometimes called Baumol’s cost disease, after one of its theorizers.) The classic example is the string quartet; performing a 15-minute quartet took a cumulative hour of musician time in 1850, and takes that same hour today. This is not true of the production of food, or clothing, or transportation, all of which have seen massive increases in value created per hour of labor. Unfortunately, the obvious ways to make production more efficient—fewer musicians playing faster—wouldn’t work as well for the production of music as for the production of cars.

An organization with cost disease can use lower paid workers, increase the number of consumers per worker, subsidize production, or increase price. For live music, this means hiring less-talented musicians, selling more tickets per performance, writing grant applications, or, of course, raising ticket prices. For colleges, this means more graduate and adjunct instructors, increased enrollments and class size, fundraising, or, of course, raising tuition.

The great work on college and cost-disease is Robert Archibald and David Feldman’s Why Does College Cost So Much? Archibald and Feldman conclude that institution-specific explanations—spoiled students expecting a climbing wall; management self-aggrandizement at the expense of educational mission—hold up less well than the generic observation: colleges need a lot of highly skilled people, people whose wages, benefits, and support costs have risen faster than inflation for the last thirty years.

Cheap graduate students let a college lower the cost of teaching the sections while continuing to produce lectures as an artisanal product, from scratch, on site, real time. The minute you try to explain exactly why we do it this way, though, the setup starts to seem a little bizarre. What would it be like to teach at a university where a you could only assign books you yourself had written? Where you could only ask your students to read journal articles written by your fellow faculty members? Ridiculous. Unimaginable.

Every college provides access to a huge collection of potential readings, and to a tiny collection of potential lectures. We ask students to read the best works we can find, whoever produced them and where, but we only ask them to listen to the best lecture a local employee can produce that morning. Sometimes you’re at a place where the best lecture your professor can give is the best in the world. But mostly not. And the only thing that kept this system from seeming strange was that we’ve never had a good way of publishing lectures.

This is the huge difference between music and education. Starting with Edison’s wax cylinders, and continuing through to Pandora and the iPod, the biggest change in musical consumption has come not from production but playback. Hearing an excellent string quartet play live in an intimate venue has indeed become a very expensive proposition, as cost disease would suggest, but at the same time, the vast majority of music listened to on any given day is no longer recreated live.

* * *

Harvard, where I was fortunate enough to have a visiting lectureship a couple of years ago, is our agreed-upon Best Institution, and it is indeed an extraordinary place. But this very transcendence should make us suspicious. Harvard’s endowment, 31 billion dollars, is over three hundred times the median, and only one college in five has an endowment in the first place. Harvard also educates only about a tenth of a percent of the 18 million or so students enrolled in higher education in any given year. Any sentence that begins “Let’s take Harvard as an example…” should immediately be followed up with “No, let’s not do that.”

This atypical bent of our elite institutions covers more than just Harvard. The top 50 colleges on the US News and World Report list (which includes most of the ones you’ve heard of) only educate something like 3% of the current student population. The entire list, about 250 colleges, educates fewer than 25%.

The upper reaches of the US college system work like a potlatch, those festivals of ostentatious giving. The very things the US News list of top colleges prizes—low average class size, ratio of staff to students—mean that any institution that tries to create a cost-effective education will move down the list. This is why most of the early work on MOOCs is coming out of Stanford and Harvard and MIT. As Ian Bogost says, MOOCs are marketing for elite schools.

Outside the elite institutions, though, the other 75% of students—over 13 million of them—are enrolled in the four thousand institutions you haven’t heard of: Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. Bridgerland Applied Technology College. The Laboratory Institute of Merchandising. When we talk about college education in the US, these institutions are usually left out of the conversation, but Clayton State educates as many undergraduates as Harvard. Saint Leo educates twice as many. City College of San Francisco enrolls as many as the entire Ivy League combined. These are where most students are, and their experience is what college education is mostly like.

* * *

The fight over MOOCs isn’t about the value of college; a good chunk of the four thousand institutions you haven’t heard of provide an expensive but mediocre education. For-profit schools like Kaplan’s and the University of Phoenix enroll around one student in eight, but account for nearly half of all loan defaults, and the vast majority of their enrollees fail to get a degree even after six years. Reading the academic press, you wouldn’t think that these statistics represented a more serious defection from our mission than helping people learn something about Artificial Intelligence for free.

The fight over MOOCs isn’t even about the value of online education. Hundreds of institutions already offer online classes for credit, and half a million students are already enrolled in them. If critics of online education were consistent, they would believe that the University of Virginia’s Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies or Rutger’s MLIS degree are abominations, or else they would have to believe that there is a credit-worthy way to do online education, one MOOCs could emulate. Neither argument is much in evidence.

That’s because the fight over MOOCs is really about the story we tell ourselves about higher education: what it is, who it’s for, how it’s delivered, who delivers it. The most widely told story about college focuses obsessively on elite schools and answers a crazy mix of questions: How will we teach complex thinking and skills? How will we turn adolescents into well-rounded members of the middle class? Who will certify that education is taking place? How will we instill reverence for Virgil? Who will subsidize the professor’s work?

MOOCs simply ignore a lot of those questions. The possibility MOOCs hold out isn’t replacement; anything that could replace the traditional college experience would have to work like one, and the institutions best at working like a college are already colleges. The possibility MOOCs hold out is that the educational parts of education can be unbundled. MOOCs expand the audience for education to people ill-served or completely shut out from the current system, in the same way phonographs expanded the audience for symphonies to people who couldn’t get to a concert hall, and PCs expanded the users of computing power to people who didn’t work in big companies.

Those earlier inventions systems started out markedly inferior to the high-cost alternative: records were scratchy, PCs were crashy. But first they got better, then they got better than that, and finally, they got so good, for so cheap, that they changed people’s sense of what was possible.

In the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Now it’s a hostage situation, required to avoid falling out of it. And if some of the hostages having trouble coming up with the ransom conclude that our current system is a completely terrible idea, then learning will come unbundled from the pursuit of a degree just as as songs came unbundled from CDs.

If this happens, Harvard will be fine. Yale will be fine, and Stanford, and Swarthmore, and Duke. But Bridgerland Applied Technology College? Maybe not fine. University of Arkansas at Little Rock? Maybe not fine. And Kaplan College, a more reliable producer of debt than education? Definitely not fine.

* * *

Udacity and its peers don’t even pretend to tell the story of an 18-year old earning a Bachelor’s degree in four years from a selective college, a story that only applies to a small minority of students in the US, much less the world. Meanwhile, they try to answer some new questions, questions that the traditional academy—me and my people—often don’t even recognize as legitimate, like “How do we spin up 10,000 competent programmers a year, all over the world, at a cost too cheap to meter?”

Udacity may or may not survive, but as with Napster, there’s no containing the story it tells: “It’s possible to educate a thousand people at a time, in a single class, all around the world, for free.” To a traditional academic, this sounds like crazy talk. Earlier this fall, a math instructor writing under the pen name Delta enrolled in Thrun’s Statistics 101 class, and, after experiencing it first-hand, concluded that the course was

…amazingly, shockingly awful. It is poorly structured; it evidences an almost complete lack of planning for the lectures; it routinely fails to properly define or use standard terms or notation; it necessitates occasional massive gaps where “magic” happens; and it results in nonstandard computations that would not be accepted in normal statistical work.

Delta posted ten specific criticisms of the the content (Normal Curve Calculations), teaching methods (Quiz Regime) and the MOOC itself (Lack of Updates). About this last one, Delta said:

So in theory, any of the problems that I’ve noted above could be revisited and fixed on future pass-throughs of the course. But will that happen at Udacity, or any other massive online academic program?

The very next day, Thrun answered that question. Conceding that Delta “points out a number of shortcomings that warrant improvements”, Thrun detailed how they were going to update the class. Delta, to his credit, then noted that Thrun had answered several of his criticisms, and went on to tell a depressing story of a fellow instructor at his own institution who had failed to define the mathematical terms he was using despite student requests.

Tellingly, when Delta was criticizing his peer, he didn’t name the professor, the course, or even his institution. He could observe every aspect of Udacity’s Statistics 101 (as can you) and discuss them in public, but when criticizing his own institution, he pulled his punches.

Open systems are open. For people used to dealing with institutions that go out of their way to hide their flaws, this makes these systems look terrible at first. But anyone who has watched a piece of open source software improve, or remembers the Britannica people throwing tantrums about Wikipedia, has seen how blistering public criticism makes open systems better. And once you imagine educating a thousand people in a single class, it becomes clear that open courses, even in their nascent state, will be able to raise quality and improve certification faster than traditional institutions can lower cost or increase enrollment.

College mottos run the gamut from Bryn Mawr’s Veritatem Dilexi (I Delight In The Truth) to the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising’s Where Business Meets Fashion, but there’s a new one that now hangs over many of them: Non Potest Quae Non Manent. Things That Can’t Last Don’t. The cost of attending college is rising above inflation every year, while the premium for doing so shrinks. This obviously can’t last, but no one on the inside has any clear idea about how to change the way our institutions work while leaving our benefits and privileges intact.

In the academy, we lecture other people every day about learning from history. Now its our turn, and the risk is that we’ll be the last to know that the world has changed, because we can’t imagine—really cannot imagine—that story we tell ourselves about ourselves could start to fail. Even when it’s true. Especially when it’s true.

What stops light from going faster?

So, lets approach this a few different ways. First with the simplest, and then to increasingly more accurate descriptions.

So, as theduffer said, according to the laws of electricity and magnetism, the speed of light is related to these two variables, permeability and permativity of the material its going through. Now, why is that? That is because following the classical derivation of electricity and magnetism, we come up with some differential equations which describe the proegation of a wave. This wave is what we call light. This light is self perpetuating, just the same as a pendulum is self perpetuating. A pendulum will continue to swing forever as long as there is no friction or drag. This is also in the same way the fact that earth is self preptuating around the sun, it is in an orbit. In the same way, as light is traveling, the electric and magnetic fields are oscillating back and forth, necessitating that the light continues flowing forward. A good way to understand that light is just due to this oscillation, we can just look at a radio antenna. Radio waves are light, as is all electromagnetic radiation. We make radio waves by literally pushing and pulling electrons to one end of the antenna, and then back to the first end Doing this creates an electric field which is oscillating, this in turn creates a magnetic field that is oscillating, which makes an electric field that is oscillating, each one extended in space a little, creating a wave that physically moves and travels.

So, what describes the speed of that light? Well, we have equations which describe if you put an electron at point A, and another electron at point B, and we can measure how strong those two things pull on each-other. Likewise we can do this with spin and magnets. With these measurements, we find out that nature itself has a fundamental strength when it comes to electric and magnetic fields. And, there is a physical response of the universe to these things, that just always is the same no matter where and how we measure it. We have overtime determined that this fundamental and universal thing we keep seeing is also the same limit of the speed of light.

So now, we have determined that the fundamental speed of light is due to the medium through which it travels, and in a vacuum, it still has a characteristic speed that is not infinite. This is to say, space itself and electric and magnetic fields in space cannot respond instantaneously. Then we must ask, why not? What is physically stopping us here. And this is where we must get into relativity.

As it turns out, the universe itself has some fundamental relation between the dimension of time and the dimension of space. This is to say, space and time can be turned into each other (in a sense). If you were to start moving very very fast the distances you are traveling and the time you experience will be different from someone who is stationary. This ability for us to transform from time to space is contained within the math of "Lorentz Transformations"

So, this is to say, nature has a specific way for us to change physical dimension, length into time. These things as it turns out are necessarily directly related. These things are two heads to the same coin, except that time itself is always propagating in one direction, and the spatial dimensions are things we are free to roam around in. (That is a much harder question and concept to try to tackle, and up to much debate)

So! Now we have made mention that space and time are actually connected, they are actually fundamentally related somehow. Well, we measure time by counting essentially. We find a pendulum and count how many times it has ticked. We assign an arbitrary number to that and say "15 ticks have passed, and it ticks once every millisecond, therefore 15 milliseconds have passed" That is how a second is defined. And now, we have space, how is space defined? Well, we used to have a stick on the ground and said, this stick is "1 unit" length, and people called it a foot, a meter, whatever they wanted. And with these two variables, we are able to measure what the speed of light is, as a length over time. Some 3*10^8 meters per second. However, as it turns out, due to relativity, meters and second should be the same thing in some way. They are both measurements of length in their dimension. So, we could have just as easily stopped at the definition of 1 second, and then said that c is the speed of light, and called that "1" At this point, we would say that the stick you placed on the ground is actually 3 nanoseconds long. In this sense, nature actually specifically relates these two dimensions and defines C in such a way that that is how the two dimensions talk to each other.

So now, I have two last points to make.

One: That in fact, speed of light is less of a "speed" and more of a conversion factor between time and space. For this reason, when we are wondering why you cannot go faster than the speed of light, why isn't speed of light higher, etc. what we are really asking is why is the ratio of time to space defined as is? Why can space not be longer for the same amount of time? Now that is the hardest question to answer, as we are getting deep into the fundamentals of general relativity, and the limits of modern physics. As it stands right now, its almost taken for granted, that... space itself is all wibbly-wobbly, and the amount of bounce and shape and cushion that space itself has fundamentally is described by some physical _constants_ and in that sense, the speed of light is one of them. In some way, space itself has some built in number that explains this, and all we can do is measure it. This is the same way as asking about the other fundamental constants, which as it is understood are fundamental descriptions of the universe. One possible interpretation is that there is some symmetry group which describes the universe, and under this symmetry there are constants, and from these constants come other constants such as the speed of light. (Noether's theorem)

And Two: just a small side comment / joke: When I saw your question about "c+1" I actually read that as is twice as fast. It turns out, when you write down the math, if you measure length in seconds, and time in seconds (or length in meters and time in meters. (I'm 7 parsecs old!)) then c is just equal to 1 exactly. In this sense our notion of "3*10^8" is almost arbitrary. And that is why we have defined it precisely (for the sake of the definition of the meter) as being: 299,792,458 meters per second _exactly_. But we could have just as well defined it as 17 potatoes per hour. And then measured our lengths in potatoes.

So... **TL;DR**: Sorry for just going on for so long, but I felt like a lot of background is needed for this unsatisfactory sounding answer... As far as we know, light goes as fast as it does because it simply is the constant in the universe that is the "fastest" anything can go. And therefore, it cannot go faster because the concept of moving faster than that simply does not exist. Also, yes, light is truly self perpetuating.
---
Wiki articles that are worth looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permittivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_permittivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_(electromagnetism)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_permeability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_equations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem

Is it fair for a poor majority to tell a rich minority to hand over the money?

Considering that the wealth of the wealthy is only possible in the context of a society, a nation-state context of today, they must fund the government which gives their wealth meaning. The 'wealthy' really have pieces of paper which are nothing more than IOUs or statements, whether that is currency, stocks, treasuries, or bonds. These things are totally meaningless, as is the concept of ownership of things like machinery without a means of either enforcing ownership claims or acceptance of those pieces of paper as currency.
So they are not only morally obligated to fund the system/society to the level that enables it to function to the benefit of all, but they have a self interest in doing so, as it mean funding that which gives their wealth meaning and therefore power.
Fairness means nothing in this context, as their wealth is dependent on the acceptance of the public of it. Is it fair that the public accept that some few should be mega-rich when so many are suffering so badly and could have their lives improved significantly through marginal outlays of some of that 'wealth'?

In the context of what you seem to define 'fairness' as, it is that of the individual to have property rights above all else in a society and have an authority enforce meaning of their wealth and their rights to that property. Fairness though could be defined in any number of ways and is really therefore meaningless when discussing what if 'more fair'. What would make more sense is discussing what is moral in the context of a system that enables wealth as we understand it.

Washington Initiative 502 Results, Marijuana Legalization

I-502 - Washington’s New Marijuana Regulation Law 

Frequently Asked Questions   

The ACLU of Washington will be working to ensure that Washington’s new voter-approved
marijuana law is fully and fairly implemented, and offers this brief FAQ about implementation
of Initiative 502.  

• When can adults legally possess and use marijuana?      
• As of December 6, 2012, adults age 21 and over in Washington state can no longer be arrested under state law for possessing limited amounts of marijuana.  
• How much marijuana  can adults legally possess under I  legally possess under I-502?
• Under Washington law, adults can possess 1 oz. of useable marijuana, 16 oz. of marijuana infused product in solid form, and 72 oz. of marijuana-infused product in liquid form. 
• Can I grow marijuana at home?   
• No. Unless you are an authorized medical marijuana patient under Washington law, home growing is not allowed.  
• When can  can marijuana retail outlets sell marijuana?    
• The Washington State Liquor Control Board, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Health will have until December 1, 2013 to complete rule making that will create a system to license and regulate the production, processing, and sale of marijuana.  Commercial businesses can be set up after rule making is complete and once a license is obtained. 
• Where will stores be located?
• Licenses will authorize stand-alone marijuana businesses, with similar restrictions to the old state liquor stores.  Marijuana stores must be located at least 1,000 feet away from schools and parks. the number of marijuana store licenses will also be determined in rule making. 
• Does I-502 change Washington’s medical marijuana law?
• No. Washington’s Medical Use of Cannabis Act remains unchanged.    
• Can marijuana be used in public?   
• It will remain unlawful under Washington law to use marijuana in public. Similar to a traffic offense, violations will result in a civil infraction bringing a fine but not arrest.  
• Can a prospective employee a prospective employee still be drug tested for marijuana when applying for a job?   
• I-502 does not change Washington state employment law, which allows for employment drug testing in some situations. 
• How do the DUI provisions work under I-502?
• I-502 creates a standard for marijuana impairment while driving, similar to the .08 cut-off for alcohol. The DUI provisions focus on active THC in one’s system that can impair a driver and not inactive marijuana metabolites that do not cause impairment.  As is currently the law, an officer will need to have probable cause for an arrest and reasonable grounds to believe a driver is impaired before requiring a breath or blood test. Nor does it change the fact that blood tests can only be administered by medical professionals.
• How will the federal government respond to I-502?
• Proponents of the new law look forward to working with federal officials in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation to ensure that it is fairly implemented. The law’s tightly regulated system will improve public safety and increase respect for law enforcement. We hope that federal officials will respect the will of our state’s voters and not enforce federal laws against Washington residents who are obeying state law. 
• When does I-502 take effect?
• Here is a summary of important dates for implementation of I-502: 
• December 6th 2012: Initiative 502 goes into effect.
• On this date it will be legal for adults 21 and over to possess limited amounts of marijuana under Washington law. I-502’s Driving Under the Influence provisions will also take effect.  
• December 1st 2013: Rule making Must Be Completed.
• The Washington State Liquor Control Board, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Health must conduct rulemaking as specified by I-502 to set up a system to license and regulate the production, processing, and sale of marijuana.  No commercial business can be set up until rulemaking is complete and licenses are obtained. 
• September 1st, 2015: Evaluation 
• The Washington State Institute for Public Policy must provide legislature with a preliminary evaluation and recommendations regarding the cost-benefit outcomes of I-502. Additional evaluations will be produced in 2017, 2022, and 2032. 

source

a good night for this country as a whole

Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. And he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack ON us, it was not a scandal BY us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as Communism.

Listen. Last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons. But it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country we have a two party system, in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas, from both sides, about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum sealed, door locked, spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived, as a nation, of the constructive debate between competing, feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked. And they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them, in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it even as it was happening to them. And unless they're going to secede, they're going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside, if they do not want to get shellacked again. And that will be a painful process for them, I'm sure, but it will be good for the whole country - left, right, and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up.

There's real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations everybody. Big night.

Meanwhile, here's some thoughtful words offered by Bill Keller in The New York Times

There are plenty of legitimate reasons voters should be disenchanted by the candidates and the campaign, but the idea that we'll be voting in the dark is not one of them.
Yes, the candidates have been reluctant to publish some unpleasant details of their policies.  Most presidential candidates in modern times don't, for the understandable reason that details can be cherry-picked for attack ads.
(But) we don't elect agendas, we don't elect platforms, we don't even elect parties to the presidency.  This is not a referendum or a ballot initiative.  We elect the human being we trust to have our best interests in mind.  We choose a direction, a disposition, a set of instincts and convictions and competencies.

Well, at least some of the media world put substance ahead of style!!!!  God Bless the American persona.
"The Enlightened Prisoner"

And, that's your morning take from "The Enlightened Prisoner"

I really can't abide the huge number of people and organizations that poison the air-waves trying to one-up everyone with their prognostications.

Survey results are always questionable because of the ways it's questions are framed and, the particular local where it's conducted. Mr. Silver's methods are more unique and, have a proven track record.

But still, I'd rather hear more of what's being said by the candidates and the person on the street than by boring commentators. 

I rather suspect they invent a lot more than they admit when it comes to reflecting the electorates opinions. 

But, the other half of that problem is the number of people out there who want to be told what they agree with and is nice to hear instead of what they need to hear.

And, that's your morning take from "The Enlightened Prisoner".

Google Knows What we search for, and how we'll vote

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/googles-crystal-ball/

Interesting to think about a tool in our existence that basically acts as a crystal ball.

I can't decide if this is a good or bad thing. If this is finally how we create a townhall. instead of actually discussing the topics, we use a privacy barrier(the internet) as a way to learn about topics and policies without subjecting themselves to local subjectivity.

/trying-to-sound-smart

Conversation about Agricultural Sustainability

I watched this movie about peak oil, and couldn't stop thinking about the sustainability of farmland in the North West. found this washington harvest calendar.

Washington i 502 - Legalize Decriminalize Hemp/Marijuana

This measure would license and regulate marijuana production, distribution, and possession for persons over twenty-one; remove state-law criminal and civil penalties for activities that it authorizes; tax marijuana sales; and earmark marijuana-related revenues.

Should this measure be enacted into law?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

Argument For		Argument Against
Our current marijuana laws have failed. It’s time for a new approach. Initiative 502 frees law enforcement resources to focus on violent crime. Treating adult marijuana use as a crime costs Washington State millions in tax dollars and ties up police, courts, and jail space. We should focus our scarce public safety dollars on real public safety threats. Initiative 502 provides billions in new revenue for Washington State. Regulating and taxing marijuana will generate over a half-billion dollars annually in new revenue for state and local government. New funding will go to health care, research, and drug prevention. Initiative 502 takes away profits from organized crime. Marijuana prohibition has wasted billions of American taxpayers’ dollars and has made our communities less safe. Just as when we repealed alcohol Prohibition, we need to take the marijuana profits out of the hands of violent organized crime. Initiative 502 protects our youth. Decades of research show what works to prevent kids from abusing drugs. Based on this research, Initiative 502 restricts advertising and provides funding to proven prevention programs. It also provides funding to programs that help keep kids in school.		Two Different Perspectives Against Initiative 502: If You Support Legalization, Vote No On I-502I-502 would create laws that risk the incrimination of innocent people. The proposed per se DUI mandate will lead to guaranteed conviction rates of unimpaired drivers, due to an arbitrary, unscientific limit. A direct conflict with federal law will prevent any legal production, distribution, or retail of cannabis.With no home growing permitted, and no legal retail system, individuals will be forced to the same black market that promotes violence and crime in our communities. I-502 creates situations in which state employees and business applicants can be charged with manufacture or delivery of marijuana, money laundering, or conspiracy, due to self-incrimination. Sharing marijuana with another adult constitutes felony delivery. To learn more, or to support real reform, visit www.SensibleWashington.org.If You Support Safe & Healthy Communities, Vote No on I-502Legalizing marijuana will greatly increase its availability and lead to more use, abuse, and addiction among adults and youth. Most 12th graders currently report not using marijuana because it is illegal. Marijuana recently surpassed alcohol as the number one reason youth enter substance abuse treatment. I-502 provides no funding for additional treatment costs leaving that burden to taxpayers.I-502 creates new regulations without additional funds to enforce those regulations. Marijuana possession will still be illegal under federal law. This conflict leaves growers, users and employees who sell marijuana at risk for federal prosecution and taxes generated by I-502 subject to seizure by federal authorities.
Rebuttal of Argument Against		Rebuttal of Argument For
502 puts public safety and public health first. 502 keeps marijuana illegal for people under 21 and sets a marijuana DUI standard like we have for alcohol. 502 also provides hundreds of millions in new revenue for drug prevention programs that work. Finally, almost all marijuana law enforcement is handled by state and local police – it’s time for Washingtonians to decide Washington’s laws, not the federal government. Get the facts: www.NewApproachWA.org. Vote Yes on 502.		We agree that it's time for a new approach, but not the one offered in Initiative 502. It conflicts with federal law, voiding the possibility of any newly generated tax revenue. It decriminalizes marijuana possession, but not retail or home growing, forcing people to the dangerous black market. This decreases public health and safety and supports organized crime. Furthermore, our state simply can't afford the increased social costs associated with this initiative.
Argument Prepared By		Argument Prepared By
John McKay, U.S. Attorney, Western District of Washington, 2001-2007; Kim Marie Thorburn, M.D., former Spokane Regional Health District Director; Leslie David Braxton, Senior Pastor, New Beginnings Christian Fellowship; Charles Mandigo, former Seattle F.B.I. Special Agent in Charge; Roger Roffman, UW professor and marijuana dependence treatment professional; Jolene Unsoeld,U.S. Representative, 3rd Congressional District, 1989-1995		Anthony Martinelli, Sensible Washington Steering Committee member, Communications Co-Coordinator;Douglas Hiatt, Lawyer; Gilbert Mobley,MD, Diplomat, American Board of Emergency Medicine; Jim Cooper,Substance Abuse Prevention Professional, Community Organizer;Steven Freng, Psy.D., MSW, Chemical Dependency Prevention/ Treatment Professional; Ramona Leber, Former Mayor City of Longview, Public Safety Advocate

Washington Ref 74 - Gay Marriage

This bill would allow same-sex couples to marry, preserve domestic partnerships only for seniors, and preserve the right of clergy or religious organizations to refuse to perform, recognize, or accommodate any marriage ceremony.

Should this bill be:
[  ] Approved 
[  ] Rejected

Argument For		Argument Against
Only Marriage Provides the Security to Build A Life Together Imagine if you couldn’t marry the person you love? Parents dream of their children being happily married and settled into a lifetime, loving relationship. They don’t dream of walking their son or daughter down the aisle into a domestic partnership. Marriage matters. Vote Approve to Uphold the Freedom to Marry The law allows caring and committed same-sex couples to be legally married. Committed same-sex couples are our neighbors, our friends and family, our co-workers. They should have the freedom to marry and build their lives together, without government interference. It’s not for us to judge, or to deny them that opportunity. Treat Everyone as We Want to Be Treated Think of your own reasons for wanting to marry - you can imagine why same-sex couples dream of the happiness, security and responsibility of marriage. Same-sex couples may seem different, but when you talk with a committed same-sex couple, you realize they hope to marry for similar reasons as everyone else - to share and build a life together, to be there for each other, in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, and to make that special vow before family and friends to be together forever. Vote Approve to Protect Religious Freedom We are all God's children. This law guarantees religious freedom and won't change how each religion defines marriage. It protects the rights of clergy, churches, and religious organizations that don't perform or recognize same-sex marriages.		Marriage is more than a commitment between two loving people. It was created to benefit the next generation. Traditional marriage promotes child well-being because kids need both a mother and a father. Extensive social science shows that children do best when raised by their married parents. The new marriage law passed by legislators did not enact same-sex marriage – it redefined marriage for all, stripping it of its essential man/woman nature and tossing common-sense out the window. Women can now be “husbands” and men can be “wives.” Our “Everything But Marriage” Law Already Provides Gays Full Legal Equality Washington same-sex couples already enjoy full legal equality. The new marriage legislation did not provide any new substantive legal rights for gay couples. Redefining marriage has consequences. God’s creation of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is the foundation of society and has served us well for thousands of years. People who disagree with this new definition could find themselves facing sanctions, as has occurred elsewhere. Church groups have lost their tax exemptions. Small businesses were sued. Wedding professionals have been fined. Charities opposing gay marriage were forced to end services. Young children were taught about gay marriage in public school. Gays and lesbians are entitled to respect and to live as they choose, but they don’t have a right to redefine marriage. Being opposed to same-sex marriage doesn’t mean you dislike gays and lesbians. It means you support traditional marriage. Please reject R-74 to reject redefining marriage.
Rebuttal of Argument Against		Rebuttal of Argument For
Marriage is two people vowing their love and commitment together. Same-sex partners shouldn't be denied access to their loved one in emergencies because they aren't married. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees legalizing same-sex marriage promotes healthy families and children. Washington State Psychological Association and Children's Alliance approve R-74. This law doesn't change existing anti-discrimination laws or schools. Lawsuits haven't increased in states with same-sex marriage. Liberty and pursuit of happiness are core American values.		Proponents of Referendum 74 focus on what same-sex couples want. But marriage isn’t only about adults’ desires; it’s about what children need. Marriage is society’s way of connecting fathers and mothers to their children. Voters gave gay couples full legal equality through the “everything but marriage law” just two years ago. Referendum 74 will provide no new legal benefits; it redefines marriage for everyone and has serious consequences for society. Please, reject Referendum 74.
Argument Prepared By		Argument Prepared By
Kim Abel, Co-President, League of Women Voters of Washington; Denise Klein, CEO, Senior Services; Chris Boerger, Bishop, Northwest Washington Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church; Ed Murray, State Senator, Born in Aberdeen; Jamie Pedersen, State Representative, Democrat, Born in Puyallup; Maureen Walsh, State Representative, Republican, Walla Walla, small business owner		Joseph Backholm, President Preserve Marriage Washington; Joe Fuiten, Senior Pastor Cedar Park Church; Matt Shea, State Representative, District 4

Washington i 1240 - Charter Schools

This measure would authorize up to forty publicly-funded charter schools open to all students, operated through approved, nonreligious, nonprofit organizations, with government oversight; and modify certain laws applicable to them as public schools.
Should this measure be enacted into law?
[  ]  Yes
[  ]  No

General Assumptions:

·         Estimates assume 40 charter schools will be authorized over five years. The proportion authorized by a local public school district (“school district”) or by the Washington Charter School Commission (“Commission”) is unknown.

·         Charter schools would be tuition-free public schools within the state system of common schools under the supervision of the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and State Board of Education (“Board”).

·         State funding for charter schools would be provided in the same manner as other public schools.

·         It is unknown where charter schools will be located, their size or the composition of their staff or students (“characteristics”).

·         Estimates assume charter schools could first be authorized for operation for the 2013–14 school year. 

·         The effective date of the initiative is Dec. 6, 2012.

·         Estimates are described using the state’s fiscal year (FY) of July 1 through June 30.

State and Local Government Cost Estimate – Assumptions

The state will incur known costs to implement the initiative estimated to total $3,090,700 over five fiscal years. See Table 2.1 for details on state estimated costs. Assumptions by agency are as follows:

·         The initiative establishes a nine-member Commission as an independent state agency. The Commission’s mission is to authorize charter schools. Estimates assume the need for operational and staff support to the Commission at the cost of $970,300 over five fiscal years.

·         The initiative requires the Board to develop an annual application, approval process and timelines for entities seeking approval to be charter school authorizers no later than 90 days after the effective date of the initiative. The Board is also responsible for oversight of the performance and effectiveness of authorizers it approves. Duties also include the setting of an authorizer oversight fee. The Board, in collaboration with the Commission, must issue an annual report on the state’s charter schools for the preceding year. In the fifth year following the operation of charter schools for a full school year, the annual report must contain a recommendation on whether the Legislature should authorize the establishment of additional charter schools. Estimates assume these new duties will require additional operational and staff support to the Board at the cost of $815,000 over five fiscal years.

·         Estimates assume the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction will require additional operational and staff support to allocate and reconcile funds paid to charter schools and to perform duties as the Board’s fiscal agent. These costs are estimated at $764,400 over five fiscal years.

·         Charter school employees’ certificated and classified staff may participate in public employee collective bargaining. Any bargaining unit or units established by the charter school must be separate from other bargaining units in the school districts, educational service districts or institutions of higher education. Each charter school is a separate employer from the school district. It is not known to what extent charter school employees will seek representation and collectively bargain. If all charter school employees were to seek representation and bargain, the maximum estimated cost to the Washington State Public Employment Relations Commission is estimated at $461,000 over five fiscal years.

·         Charter school employees may also participate in the state’s health benefit programs through the Public Employees Benefits Board in the same manner as other public school employees. Charter school employees must become members of state retirement systems if their membership does not jeopardize the federal tax status of these retirement systems. The one-time cost of seeking a federal tax status determination is estimated at $80,000 in fiscal year 2013. No additional state costs are assumed for the provisions of retirement contributions and health care benefits as those are a component of the state’s basic education funding to school districts.

Irony

 a quote from a friend...

Why does it seem the happiest Muslims live in many countries that are non-Muslim (Canada, England, Denmark, Holland, the U.S., and many others) while all the unhappy Muslims seem to live in Muslim countries? 

And, all the unhappy Muslims seem to blame the non-Muslim countries for their un-happiness???

FBI has 12 MILLION iPhone user's data - Unique Device IDentifiers, Address, Full Name, APNS tokens, phone numbers.. you are being tracked.

During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.

http://pastebin.com/nfVT7b0Z

A New Approach...

This post is for Washington viewers.

America's Dental System

I think this is important to watch. dentistry is linked to so many more health concerns than people actually realize. I think dentists and doctors should have more understandings of each-others practices.

Watch Dollars and Dentists on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch Julian Assange TV Show E06

This week, Julian Assange talks to the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa. Correa is a left wing populist who has changed the face of Ecuador. But unlike his predecessors he holds a Ph.D. in economics. According to US embassy cables, Correa is the most popular President in Ecuador's democratic history. But in 2010 he was taken hostage in an attempted coup d'etat. He blames the coup attempt on corrupt media and has launched a controversial counter-offensive. Correa says the media defines what reforms are possible. Assange tries to figure out is Ecuadorian president justified and what is his vision for Latin America.

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Watch Julian Assange TV Show E05

The 5th episode of The World Tomorrow takes us to the very heart of America's War on Terror: Guantanamo Bay. In the episode Julian Assange speaks with Moazzam Begg - former Gitmo prisoner and a rights campaigner fighting for those still trapped behind the wire, and Asim Qureshi - former corporate lawyer, whose human rights organization Cageprisoners Ltd exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of prisoners who remain in Guantanamo Bay.

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Watch Julian Assange TV Show E04

In the fourth episode of The World Tomorrow Julian Assange speaks with two leading Arab revolutionaries in the middle of conflict, Alaa Abd El-Fattah from Egypt and Nabeel Rajab from Bahrain. Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a long time Egyptian blogger, programmer and political activist. His parents were human rights campaigners under Anwar Sadat; his sister Mona Seif became a Twitter star during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and is a founder of the No Military Trials for Civilians group formed under the post-Mubarak military junta. El-Fattah was imprisoned for 45 days in 2006 for protesting under the Mubarak regime, and released after "Free Alaa" solidarity protests in Egypt and around the world. In 2011, from abroad, El-Fattah helped route around Mubarak's internet blockade. Nabeel Rajab is a lifelong Bahraini activist and critic of the Al Khalifa regime. A member of a staunch pro-regime family, Rajab has agitated for reform in Bahrain since his return from university in 1988. Along with the Bahraini-Danish human rights defender Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, he helped establish the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights in 2002. Rajab is reasonably new to the limelight -- becoming a face for the Bahrain uprising of February 14 2011, after the sit-in at Pearl Roundabout. Since then, he has been a public face for the revolution, waging a social media war on Twitter with PR companies working for the regime. After al-Khawaja was imprisoned, he led protests for his release. He has endured beatings, arrests and legal harrassment for engaging in pro-democracy demonstrations. On Saturday 5th of May, he was arrested at Manama airport , and charged the next day with encouraging and engaging in "illegal protests." Nabeel Rajab remains in detention at the time of broadcast.

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In the third episode of The World Tomorrow Julian Assange speaks with Tunisia's first post-revolution leader Moncef Marzouki about the West's double standards in protecting human rights. He is a former human rights activist. During the reign of the previous President he was imprisoned and kept in solitary confinement, which he considers to be torture. Once elected Head of State, he has vowed to put an end to human rights violations in Tunisia.

Marzouki recalls how he was invited to the US to talk about the human rights situation in Tunisia with a man he believed was involved in the Guantanamo controversy. Torture and the West's double standards on the issue is indeed one of the hottest topics in this episode of the show.

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how subtle economic and social trends have impacted the social contract

So we're quickly reaching the limits of private ownership. Think about it, there's finite material, finite land and resources on this planet. If you say people get to own it, all of it, you leave this problem for generations to come in which there is a diminishing pool of property for them to possess. This is assuming we allow dynasty building in which property is concentrated into fewer hands, which has been the most recent historical trend. The result is fewer owners and more renters, which is in effect to take people out of the game and put them on the sidelines and people on the sidelines tend to get drunk and fuck about while the games going on. The engine of capitalism is the right to own property, because it entails an obligation to be responsible for that property. When you remove this opportunity you take away a major incentive to act in socially productive ways because you're reduced to always paying tribute to someone else.



This economic disempowerment is increasing as the world settles into a neofuedalism. Not only does one often not get to own their dwelling, but also their car, their education which looms over them further delaying or preventing home ownership, they don't get to own major appliances because they have no home to furnish. They don't own their culture e.g. the books they read, the music they hear, the movies they see, and even the video games they play. I mean this in a very visceral way because of the controversy over copying and intellectual property. The things they do get to own are of decreasing quality, which is what makes them cheap enough to be owned. This has been offset in television and computers which are fairly affordable considering their recent advancements. Video games also have a lot more replay value than movies, plus they can be selectively social outlets, again referencing this temporality of interactions and investments. So you're two best quality items are technology that suit using the internet and playing video games. Everything else is cheap crap intended to be disposable so you'll just buy another. We're a buy short, fuck the long term culture. It's amusing because as the quality of what's peddled to us decreases the quality of satire, parody and our disposition towards it increases. So we've moved into this age in which people trade in culture by deoconstructing it e.g. Mystery Science Theater, The Onion, Angry Video Game Nerd, The Daily show etc, all things that appeal to the young male video game playing pornography addict.


You don't have job prospects, those you do have posses all the power to set the terms of your employment, which is expected to be temporary. No longer does one settle into a one company or even one industry. You're expected to always be running, even if you're not getting anywhere. You don't have healthcare, or you pay out the ass on premiums and deductibles and hope to never use it. Needless to say people's social lives suffer for this. When going out costs money or time you don't have or confidence you've lost from all the failures you seem to face day to day. There's been moral panic after moral panic so now dating and marriage which has always been institutionalized as a merger of business interests and social rank now has moral hazard. A man pursing a woman isn't clearly the default and when that's not in question we have to live in this fear based society of date rape, stranger danger, kidnapping, public perverts, etc. Sex is simultaneously publicly everywhere, glamorized and air brushed but ignorant, embarrassing and scary when experienced on the personal level. This hypervigilance to relatively improbable events raises the expectations for social interactions being as "normal" as possible because we allow for such volatile ostracization of those who deviate from social norms. This is where it's important to point out there's an underlying assumption about the sample of young men we're talking about. What this article is most probably addressing in my opinion is white young professional age males from social climber families. Basically middle class backgrounds. I don't think this is really concerned too much with working class or minority males, even though they face the same issues and I'm sure the same problems presented by freely available porn and games not to mention a lack of empowerment.


These are people who were told they are great and because of this failure is not acceptable. They had potential but so feared the stigma of failure they avoid adversity and don't fully appreciate their own abilities. It's like an abusive relationship, the person is capable of making the choice to leave but have psychological blinders that limit their apparent options for remedy. This especially difficult because what is needed is a change in cultural disposition, essentially the overthrow of their parents. You have to stand up to everyone who came before you and say, "The system of life you've known is no longer adequate; the clothes that fit the body politic as a child are too small for how it's grown." We need new norms and archetypes and right now we're in that painful period of transition were there is no comforting conventional wisdom and we realize just how far we are from the familiar past that had always been the status quo.


We have what George Carlin called the "illusion of choice" so we were free to make all the trivial decisions we want but anything important was monopolized and limited. This is particularly relevant in our political choices. People are disaffected and feel that their votes don't matter and even if they did it would be to choose one of two people, neither of whom they liked. We're brought up to believe in this schizophrenic world view in which this is the land of the free but you have to pay to play and so "No" is all one hears. This is positive freedom, the ability to meaningfully engage the options one supposedly is unfettered in pursuing. I remember as a kid being blown away when I first went to an amusement park at the absurdity of it all. Here is a place that markets itself as the funnest fucking place on earth, and you can't do anything. Anything that's actually a decent prize or a good time costs too much. My parents, being sensible spend thrift people, just limited themselves to the cheap thrills, but even you have the added cost of time spent waiting with everyone else who had the same idea. And that really describes america as you would experience it today, there are great, shiny, wonderful things but most people aren't going to have the money to partake, regardless of their freedom to pursue it. It's very disheartening.


At the same the time the identity of the american male has gone from threatened to complete disarray. I think this process started during the end of the cold war with the advances feminism was making. The result to group identities when threatened it to flee to ideological purity. You're seeing now with the republican party and you're seeing it today with american men. Or rather you've seen it. I think the 80s and 90s were really the height of male gender identity hysteria and since then we've settled into an unhappy acceptance. Which is why you see action movies today like the reboot of Casino Royale where bond isn't just tortured he's emasculated. It's why you see movies like Hurt Locker, or even Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in which the male, Daniel Craig again, is the effete victim and the punk rock chick is the balls to the wall heroine. Contrast with the legacy of Rambo, Die Hard, Commando, etc. We still have action movies, but I think the loss of the cold war really took the blinders off as to the sociopathic, one dimensional, and really damaged people that were being idealized to young men.


We are overpopulated, that should be a less and less controversial view and the question arises, with all these excess people, particularly men, why is there no war? I mean, my understanding historically is that a population would best make use of an excess supply of males to wage war and that's not exactly happening. It is in Iraq and Afghanistan, but think about all the men who spend their time killing each other online. Essentially a constant, mass virtual war.


TL;DR So basically life as a modern male is like being stuck on a layover at the airport and there's nothing to do but play games and sneak off to the bathrooms to spank it.