Deja Entendu

Infrastructure? We don't need no stinkin' infrastructure...

2007-08-02T13:23:00.000-04:00

I wonder how much $500 billion to $1 trillion could have bought. Probably would have been enough to cover this. But why protect the "homeland" when you can try to build a new one for someone else?

Potemkin Echo Chamber

2007-08-02T12:59:00.000-04:00

What? Really? ...I didn't think so. Heh, perceiving reality must be a symptom of BDS.

A New Justinian

2007-07-28T15:33:00.001-04:00

Legislation, legitimacy, and legibility are fundamentally interrelated concepts. Legislate and legitimate are both derived from the latin legis or law. Legibility is derived from legere (to read) or legein (to declare). While I'm certainly no legal historian or evolutionary linguist, obviously these roots share a common ancestor that can likely be traced back to the Code of Hammurabi or its predecessors which both influenced the Abrahamic and Greco-Roman legal systems. The fundamental property of law is that its legitimacy is derived from its legibility; citizens could no more plead ignorance of the law than a ruler modify it on his daily whim.

Yet whether by arrogant power or the passage of years, the law has a way of evolving from an initial concrete statement of rules into a grotesque leviathan of obfuscating refutations and contradictions of objective common-sense. So the law, like any ecology, grows and contracts: Hammurabi's single tablet became 12 in Rome, Justinian revised the expansive body of Roman law in his Corpus Juris Civilis in the 6th century, the Magna Carta was meant to check an abusive 13th-century monarchy, and our own 18th-century Constitution was an 18th-century correction of the injustices sanctioned by the aforementioned. But what of the state of modern American law? While the Constitution is obviously the highest law of the land, the citizen must also navigate an various acts of legislation modifying disparate portions of the indigestably large United States Code, to say nothing of the state and local laws.

Before we ask "Who makes sure this is all consistent?" it may be appropriate to remind ourselves that as we stand here in the 21st century at the summit of human achievement with a bounty of tools for storing, communicating, and organizing information, the law remains very much two-dimensional. But to answer the initial question, we allegedly elect learned citizens to deliberative bodies to ensure a more perfect Union and so forth. Does it work? No. Why? Fairly obvious and well-documented reasons:

Term limits. There are none. Representatives are pre-selected based upon party loyalty, fundraising ability, and some unquantifiable charismatic "electability" characteristic. Once in office, they have to begin fundraising for the next election in 2n years. Once in Washington, representatives have to navigate entrenched committee assignments and chairmanships.
Congressional ghost writers. Because the representative is off fund-raising for the next election cycle, congressional staffers and lobbyists are generally the ones who do the actual writing/coding of the legislation that appears before the body. As a result, representatives rarely read (2006 PATRIOT reauthorization and subsequent attorney dismissal scandal?) the enormous omnibus legislation that appears before the body, much less discussing the legal intricacies.
F.A.M.E. Fun Acronyms Make Elections Legislators seem to enjoy either (a) imagining quasi-apropos acronyms for their sponsored legislation if they haven't made a name for themselves or (b) if they have a "name," splattering it all over it (McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc.). As a result, opposing the bill must "necessarily" imply some political vendetta against either "PATRIOT"s or the sponsoring representative/senator.
Illegible legislation. In turn, these unelected staffers and lobbyists are lawyers, whose collective love of teleological debates predisposes them to attempting to codify every possible subgenus of exemptions. As a result of lawyers writing the law, only other lawyers can understand it.

My next post will be on what can be done to solve these problems.

Michael Scott is GWB

2007-07-19T23:36:00.000-04:00

I've only recently started watching The Office (only the U.S. version) on DVD and nearly always bust a gut at the glances exchanged and overwhelmingly awkward moments . But I started to wonder if this quasi-documentary might be understood in a different light: is there another subtext in which we might interpret the staggering ineptitude of Michael Scott, the fanatical obedience of Dwight Schrute, the romantic sideshow of Jim and Pam, and the overwhelming indifference of the rest of the workers? Can The Office be understood as a parody of the Bush administration and modern American political discourse?

Allow me to propose that Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin is a tidy microcosm of America: Michael Scott is our inept Dear Leader, Dwight Shrute is the boot-licking wingbat, Jim and Pam are the distracting sideshow of faux news and reality TV, Ryan represents the international community that has no clue how to react, and the rest of the workers represent a populace too blinkered and bored to care. Similarly, there is this "Corporate" apparatus embodied by Jan who ostensibly has the power to correct or balance these injustices but is initially indifferent then later seduced by the endearing machinations of Michael as well as a "Warehouse" of underclass laborers. Most important, however, is the acknowledged presence of the camera which serves to record the incalculable tedium and pointlessness of witnessed events in a society on the verge of collapse that it might be viewed later as a lesson.

Or perhaps my cynicism is reading too far into this...

Oral History Project

2007-06-15T12:12:00.000-04:00

I've begun the MIT150 Oral History Project in earnest in the past 24 hours-- I interviewed Morris Halle and Sheila Widnall who are both extraordinary people in their fields (Linguistics and fluid dynamics respectively). The conviction and dedication that they demonstrated convinced me to start ploughing ahead with my own ideas, so I went ahead today and registered www.legeditmate.com, www.legedimate.org, and www.legeditmate.net.

Legeditmate is now christened. Too bad I don't know how to run a website yet, but I'm about to start learning...

Wikicracy

2007-05-31T19:03:00.000-04:00

I was ruminating over what sort of project I hoped to pursue for my Ph.D., I was beset by a kind of despair because explaining my project to lay people elucidated the same sort of quizzical how-does-this-affect-me blank stares as one might get trying to explain postmodern art. Gold farming and virtual property rights? "They're just games!" Transnational and online identity among gamers? "They don't sleep and eat online." Celebrity, governance, and recognition in social networks like wikipedia and MySpace? "Like superlatives in a yearbook?" Consumption and value in post-scarcity economies? "Huh?"

A common thread wove through each: how authority & deviance are constructed, (de)legitimized, and re-appropriated within online (virtual, synthetic, disembodied -- take your pick) collaborative spaces. Or, who gets to make the rules, why are they made, and how are they enforced? This line of thinking had been ruminating in my head for weeks and three major pieces of legislation have caused substantial consternation on all sides of the political sphere during that time: H.R.1591 (Iraq funding supplemental with troop withdrawal), H.R.2206 (Iraq funding supplemental without withdrawal), and H.R.2230 (Comprehensive immigration reform). In each of these examples, small but specific differences between these huge legislative tomes create very real implications. And who put all these stupid pork barrel funding items in? Gosh, I wish I had something like Media Wiki's history tool to track all of this! Then I got to thinking, well who actually writes legislation?

Certainly senators and congressmen have neither the time nor the mental stamina necessary to personally write all of this, they have staffers who write, review, vet, and negotiate and so forth. Since Attorneygate has proved that huge pieces of legislation (ie, USA PATRIOT Act) generally go unread by the legislators voting for them, and certainly the staffers writing this legislation are not directly elected by the legislator's constituents, why not just have the people write the legislation directly and submit it to the representative body for deliberation? For that matter, why have all the debates about it spread out all over the blogosophere/internet when they could be hosted in one place? It seemed like a really good idea to use Media Wiki to draft legislation.

So thinking myself cleverer than I am, I search for wikicracy -- sure enough, people are already on to the idea: Wikocracy.com, Wikitution.org, Openlaw. Ok, but there seems to be some fundamental disconnect between our ideas as I never thought that a wiki constantly in transition could be a reliable basis for law and justice. Rather, the wiki could be used as a collaborative tool by various ideological sects to draft and coalesce around specific pieces of legislation, changes could be tracked, consensus achieved, and debate centered. At some later time, the wiki-legislation (wikilation?) could be submitted by means of a vote, consensus, or administrator for consideration and a vote by the deliberative body. I think of it as a reverse referenda as the people set the agenda and issues to be voted on by the legislative body.

Obviously there are a host of problems that would have to be overcome. Implementation questions about accessibility, security, and usability would have to be addressed firstly: how do you address spammers, sock-puppeteers, and other users acting in bad faith? How do you ensure that only citizens or constituents can contribute or should such restrictions not apply? How do you overcome systemic bias, the "digital divide," and questions of representation? How would highly contentious or partisan issues like abortion and immigration be effectively addressed without massive revert-wars? Who would own or control this legislative interface? How are issues selected to be submitted to the body? What elites would have to be assuaged or overcome to implement this? How would this change the social-political discourse? What other problems does this model introduce?

Questions I hope to begin to address.

Democrats blink

2007-05-22T18:25:00.000-04:00

The Democrats blink first. After a whole campaign of tough talk and weeks to get withdrawal legislation on the President's desk, the Democrats blink and are about to pass legislation funding the war without timelines or accountability just like the Republican congresses before them. This is a complete and total collapse and a betrayal of their base who elected them there. It is obvious they are more concerned about perceived as having politicized the war in the next election than actually keeping the ball in the President's court. Now that the President is newly emboldened, do you think those investigations and subpoenas are going to go as swimmingly? I doubt it.

Double-take

2007-05-20T22:25:00.000-04:00

Hugh Hewitt writes about the immigration bill:

There are so many problems with this bill that it should not be introduced in the Senate absent a period of open hearings on it and the solicitation of expert opinion from various analysts across the ideological spectrum. Even were it somehow to improbably make its way to the president's desk, if it does so before these problems are aired and confronted, the Congress would be inviting a monumental distrust of the institution. There is simply too much here to say "Trust us," and move on. The jam down of such a far reaching measure, drafted in secret and very difficult for laymen much less lawyers to read, is fundamentally inconsistent with how we govern ourselves.

Open hearings? (But not have Rove & Co. testify on their roles in attorneygate?) Expert opinion from across the ideological spectrum? (But evolution and climate change don't exist.) Don't just "trust us" and move on? (But trust us on Guantanamo detainees, NSA wiretapping, et al) Drafted in secret and difficult to read? (Cheney's Energy Task Force?) Inconsistent with how we govern ourselves? (But the Military Commissions Act and PATRIOT Act are consistent?)

What a tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, wacky moonbat, America-hating liberal. Why can't he just support the troops and the President so that we can protect freedom?

Muzzling Ron Paul

2007-05-20T11:43:00.000-04:00

Malkin excoriates Ron Paul for making claims like Well, I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation because too often I think there's an area that the government covered up
Sounds familiar to Reagan's oft repeated quote, "Trust but verify." Wasn't it Reagan to whom all the Republican candidates aspired (gee, why not the current 2-term Republican president?). Perhaps something about Paul's message (maybe lower taxes, less government, less foreign intervention) appeals to a certain group of Americans who do not want to promulgate a misogynist and xenophobic Christian theocracy. However, it is funny seeing a twice-divorced cross-dressing Roman Catholic, northeastern elitist Mormon, and agnostic hypocritical politco trying to pander to these Southern Baptist Bible Belters.

It should get interesting as all the other neo-cons who have been drinking the Cheney-Rove KoolAide(Malkin, LGF, RedState, etc) continue to cover Dr. No over his "radical" and "lunatic" stances even though he was not even in the second tier of candidates before. John Dickerson at Slate has more on the Republicans efforts to silence their own candidate. Well now Paul's the top hit on Technorati and getting top-fold coverage elsewhere online. Let's see how the media tries to cover or spin it as it continues to pull for its favorite 3 as well as if he can translate into any momentum "on the ground."

EVE Online

2007-05-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

I've been away from the blog for a while, still need to get used to doing this on a more regular basis. What I have been doing in the meantime is (1) bartending which, while generally thankless, does provide the opportunity for me to get away from the computer and read; (2) working on the oral history project which is greatly picking up steam and I need to find a way to break it to the bartending management; and (3) EVE Online.

EVE is gigantically, titanically, cavernously, enormously BIG. I mean other virtual worlds are big, it would take a few hours to run end to end on one of Azeroth's continents. But Eve is larger than anyone can really imagine. It is so starkly barren, one rarely sees other players, and given the intrinsic PvP aspects of the game, you're generally better off for it. Nevertheless, in addition to its "geography" (galaxgraphy? univergraphy?) it has a overwhelmingly complex and robust trade and bartering system. There is no simple "take loot to vendor, get coins from vendor, buy sword from AH with coins" economy here - contracts, corporations, bounties, margins, taxes... it can be overwhelming. But it's also really interesting, plus I get to play out my ambitions of being the renegade gun-for-hire like Hans Solo.

Like I said before, EVE has a small player base, maybe 30-50k active; but it definitely attracts a very different crowd based upon my interactions. One "levels" in the game, not necessarily by repetitive combat to gain experience, but by learning skills that train in real time... ie, powerleveling is impossible since your character's power is tied to skills that require finite amounts of time to learn. Gone are many of the behaviors that are stereotypically associated with hormonal teenage boys ganking and pwning everything in sight; public channels and Vent conversations are measured and mature and even the OOC discussions about politics or current events occur on a higher plane than most games. That being said, the mechanics of gameplay are tedious, repetitive, and have an enormous learning curve - nevertheless EVE should be an interesting case study or counterpoint to many other virtual worlds.

2007-04-16T18:24:00.000-04:00

The shootings at Virginia Tech have stunned me, but what what will surely follow is even more loathsome:

Administrators at other schools, leery of being accused of the alleged negligence displayed by Virginia Tech administrators will shut down their campuses after minor, violent incidents.
Jack Thompson or some other evangelical Christian will claim that the shooter(s) were propelled to violence because they played video games or listened to music.
Democratic presidential candidates, pandering to the "do something!" crowd, will call for tougher gun laws.
Alberto Gonzales' Tuesday appearance before Congress, Moqtada al Sadr's party quitting the Iraqi government on Monday, Karl Rove's 5 million missing emails from last week will all get swept off the front pages for the next week(s).
College campuses will begin stringent new security procedures and patrols including student searches and controlled access.
If the perpetrator was a student, two scenarios are possible.

The discourse around a native-born shooter will center around the competitiveness, exclusivity, and rejection he felt in the curriculum/school/etc.
The discourse around a foreign-born shooter will center around the need for tighter visa controls -- monitoring and screening of these students.

My responses:

How can you shut down and evacuate a 2,600 acre campus with 30,000 students and hundred of buildings after one violent incident? The same decision is made all the time by other public safety officers and administrators in response to other violent crimes on college campuses. Really, you can't stand there with 20/20 hindsight and double guess a decision made with the best information at the time. Nevertheless, I expect the ambulance-chasing lawyers are already drafting suits against the school for the families affected by this.
Are violent video games and music present and prevalent? Yes. Do they cause people to go out and shoot other people? No. Any person who claims they have not, even for the slightest second, contemplated causing bodily harm upon others in response to an intensely emotional/traumatic event is a liar. That the vast majority of us don't act on these impulses makes us human.
What, of the many gun laws already enacted and enforced prevented this tragedy? What law stopped this armed assailant from killing over 30 people? The right to self-defense is the most basic and primal. When you are face-to-face with an armed and deranged lunatic (or the agent of an invading power) and given the choice between firing back or waiting for the police to arrive, which would you prefer?
I'm sure some moonbat conspiracy theorist that will emerge in the coming hours will chalk this massacre up to some vast right-wing conspiracy to divert the nation's attention, but haven't Anna Nicole Smith and Imus already done this? Nevertheless, much will be said about the media in how they cover other news in the coming days as anything out of Virginia Tech will be unsubstantiated speculation (and macabre voyeurism) until any investigation is over.
Expect more cameras, limited access doors, security checkpoints, and other central authoritarian measures to be introduced as colleges scramble to cover their collective asses and parents demand more safety in loco parentis. Oh, guess what? It's also college decision season: I imagine VT is going to have a hell of a time convincing admitted seniors to come now.
This tragedy has nothing to do with high-intensity engineering/science curricula, international students, or any of the other discourses pundits are likely to invent to advance their own political agendas. Millions of both categories go through their education successfully every year without resorting to mass murder.

Suicidal ideologues

2007-04-05T23:24:00.000-04:00

As though Bush administration apologists don't have enough on their plate to spin, Michelle Malkin - fresh off her racist John Doe screed - posted this:

I

I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

II

I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

III

If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

IV

If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

V

When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

VI

I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

What's her point? That the British sailors are cowards and traitors or that US servicemen would have responded more aggressively? Would she have preferred these sailors to have died in a firefight and ignite the region's tinderbox to hasten her savior's second coming? Given her extensive military service, diplomatic experience, and overwhelming familiarity with the facts of the situation, to say nothing of her experience of being held at gunpoint by a foreign government, where does she have the moral authority to suggest sacrificing these sailors at the altar of partisan ideology?

Go West, Young Man

2007-04-01T14:47:00.000-04:00

I am headed to Northwestern University's Media, Technology, and Society program this fall. I knew nothing about it before applying (struck my fancy off of a Google search in the fall), was flown out to interview there over a brutally cold February weekend, enjoyed the program and people, and was accepted a few weeks later.

Now being accepted is a big deal - I struck out 11 times with law school admissions the previous year and had already been rejected by Harvard and Stanford this year. Then, last week, MIT HASTS -- my alma mater and home department, the sure-thing, don't worry, slam dunk -- in a punch to the gut, rejected me. The usual post-rejection justifications or rationalizations of "I wouldn't be a good fit", "I wasn't well connected", "I wasn't well qualified" all fail -- I am so enmeshed with the program through research projects, faculty, and staff connections that outside people who know nothing about my interests or the program are shocked on the news. People who do know something are flabbergasted. And I'm just sort of numb.

So now I'm making lemonade: I realize this is a good opportunity to escape the cherished technocratic myopia of MIT, to move to a new city and learn from new people. I have to leave a lot behind; most important among them, my girlfriend already committed to a job outside of Boston will require us to commute to stay together. Plus, I have any number of friends still living or regularly visiting Boston. Plus I get 2 years of my life back, a 4-5 year Ph.D. versus 6-7 years at MIT. Living in this newly constructed perspective, I now wonder if I even would have gone to MIT had I been accepted... but everything works out in the end.

RedState's Revisionism

2006-11-27T22:39:00.000-05:00

RedState, itself a relic-of-a-name hearkening to an era when it implied some sort of Republican authority, offers this bit of advice: Any obstacle can be overcome in war - if you're serious enough about it. A wonderful synthesis of various sources about Romans and boats and Carthage, I felt like I was reading a wikipedia article. But that title kept getting to me and nothing in the meandering narrative ever really got back to the opening:

The situation in Iraq, and the spectre it presents of asymmetrical, guerrilla combat, as well as its requirement of radically different tactics than those to which we are accustomed, has caused doubt to creep into the minds of many regarding whether America is capable of adapting to the changing battlefield, both effectively and quickly enough to be successful in the war we are now engaged in.

There is historical precedent not only for adaptation to a different style of war, but for the radical alteration of scene, setting, and style of fighting.

Perhaps I am missing something, but after we declared Mission: Accomplished, this stopped being a war and started being an occupation? And previous occupations have always gone so well for the occupier? This Second Iraqi War seems like another conjured conflagration like Vietnam so that chickenhawks can claim that they too are the greatest generation.

First Post

2006-11-27T22:12:00.000-05:00

I've tried to blog before, but it never lasted more than a few posts. Then I realized that the majority of many blogs are just links to other blogs while adding no meaningful value or content.

My purpose in establishing this blog is partly to document my own personal thoughts and political views. I find that much of the dialogue in the blogosphere consists of right-wingers harping on suicidal muslims as though that were the only extant issue, left-wingers bashing Bush as though describing the varying degrees of the emperor's nakedness was progress, libertarians pretending someone was listening, and self-important youth combing MySpace with no meaningful exchanges or debates between any of the camps. Indeed, the blogosphere has facilitated the balkanization of political discourse, people can stick their proverbial heads in the sand about emergent issues that cannot be packaged into their tidy worldview. This blog is a venue for me to mashup the postings across the political spectrum and inject my own judgments.