Undulating Ungulate

Hmm. Where has time gone? Here’s a handful of worthies:

*  Complete genius skewering of right-wing american thought:

Hammering on this contradiction is a core wedge issue: if you don’t think the government can be effective in a wealthy, stable country that we know intimately — like, say, the United States — how on earth can you believe that the US government has any hope of being effective in a benighted, godforsaken place like Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, or Somalia?

Seriously. So clear once pointed out.

* Learn almost anything, free: Khan Academy.

* Amazing short video - 500 years of Female Portraits in Western Art

* Possibly the most amazing piece of art I have seen on the internet.

Totally unique and fairly indescribable. For those who inhale, it will blow your mind as you grok it. For the rest, it will still blow your mind.

Filed by billy at 10:39 pm under culture,politics,sunday mutants,technology
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Kind of by category: first, politics and economy:

The Citigroup Plutonomy memos quite bluntly assess the size and power of the wealthy minority in the world economy, and how this distorts a number of economic indicators. Basically argues that companies servicing the rich will continue to do well, since they have all the money, so invest in them.

In 2005 and 2006, several analysts at Citigroup took a very, very close look at the economic inequalities within the USA and other countries and wrote two memos which were addressed to their very wealthy customers. If there is one group of people who need to know the truth about what is really going on within the society and the economy, minus the propaganda, then it’s businesspeople who have a lot of money to invest, and who want to invest wisely.

Fascinating. Apparently these have been fairly successfully suppressed, yet are reasonably available online. The trick is to know to look for them. Particularly relevant in terms of the Occupy 1% – 99% dialogue.

Footnotes to a changing world: Brazil has overtaken Britain as the world’s sixth largest economy.

Saber rattling between Iran and USA

A senior Iranian official on Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

This would actually lead to war, so it will be interesting to see who backs down and how.

*

A quick few interesting tech tools:

“I’m getting arrested” android app – alert lawyers and loved ones with one click when you are being arrested. Evolved from OWS/protestors needs.

Tasker. Total automation for your android. Looks real high powered, but overkill for casual users.

Okay, this looks like it has really interesting potential: if this, then that: an automation tool for online stuff. Basically lets you automate repetitive online tasks between different programs you use daily, and more.

Also looks really interesting: hypothes.is.”The Internet, peer reviewed.”

*

A few kinda nerdy notes:

Some surprising uses of wolfram alpha for word-professionals.

Large Hadron Collider discovers its first new particle

This is quite fascinating, on a philosophical/thinking level:  answers to the question “what it’s like” to have an internalized sense of very advanced mathematical concepts“.

*

A few tracking the nasty weird future coming soon/now:

The Future of Drone Warfare – deeply weird and fascinating extrapolation on the likely direction of drone warfare. For bonus points, introduced me to the fact of Bonjwas.

System D – the 10 trillion dollar black market global economy – Foreign Policy article by the excellent Robert Neuwirth (author of Shadow Cities).

More on the emerging warlords of our near future: Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system. (via @nils_gilman / @deviantglobal)

Tracking this stuff is pretty relevant to what things are going to look like when things fall apart more openly: empowered non-state actors doing it themselves.

*

And some random shit:

How to open a padlock with a coke can

Mad monks shut down by Pope

“a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.”

Global Drug Commissioner Richard Branson (huh?) on lessons from Portugal after a decade of decriminalistation.

*

And to go out on: Wax, Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

By all accounts about the most impossibly weird film ever.

Watch it free online here.

Filed by billy at 5:43 pm under consciousness,culture,politics,sunday mutants,technology,the world
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The world shifted while the moose was loose in the world. Lots of crazy shit happening ever faster in these unfolding interesting times. We missed a lot, and I’m not even going to try to summarise or catch up. But it seems like we are at least coming closer to facing reality.

Anyhow. Here are the results of my first dedicated info trawl in a long long while, scrying the emerging future in the froth of the web… Much of the best of this comes from the already indispensable Innovation Patterns, the rest from the mutants list, and generally revisiting some of my haunts.

*

Michael Ventura steps into prophet mode again. Three parts, necessary reading/analysis of what the fuck is going. (Subtitle: “The Worldwide End of Capitalism and Its Replacement by a Mode of Commerce for Which, as Yet, There Is No Ism.”) Flash Mob Dance Revolution Parts One Two & Three. Two parts analysis, third part an attempt at solution.

*

fighting muppetocracy: pretty brutal and punchy look at how fucked we are, well worth reading and distressingly difficult to argue against.

This show brought to you by the international community, by government, by the NGOs, by well-intentioned individuals, by the UN, and all the rest of it. The same cast of clowns that screwed up Haiti.

Get it yet? Is it landing?

We are screwed. We don’t need to speculate on how or why, but we have an absolutely clear and rational expectation that there will be no sudden, effective, global and complete transformation in our global governance systems resulting in an effective resolution to our climate crisis.

We did not do it for poverty.

We do not do it for natural disasters.

We will not do it for climate.

Everything rests on us getting a technological fix for climate, and we’re massively, dramatically underfunding research into those breakthrough technologies in favour of continuing to subsidize oil. These are the facts.

Really worth reading the whole thing for context etc.

*

kind of an antidote to that: recent interview with zen buddhist master Thich Nhat Hahn :

“Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come,” he warns. “Civilisations have been destroyed many times and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

“If you meditate on that, you will not go crazy. You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.”

*

Excellent Foreign Policy article about the logical limits to China’s growth, and the rise of Turkey, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia.

*

DARPA trying to hack the neurobiology of narrative in order to bring in a whole new generation of propaganda control.

Once scientists have perfected the science of how stories affect our neurochemistry, they will develop tools to “detect narrative influence.” These tools will enable “prevention of negative behavioral outcomes … and generation of positive behavioral outcomes, such as building trust.” In other words, the tools will be used to detect who’s been controlled by subversive ideologies, better allowing the military to drown out that message and win people onto their side.

“The government is already trying to control the message, so why not have the science to do it in a systematic way?” said the researcher familiar with the project.

Um. WTF? Disturbing as fuck anyway.

*

The Case Against the Spirit World Model of Psychedelic Action

Pretty fascinating/challenging read for entheogenic enthusiasts.

*

Cyborg future news: A team at at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen says it’s built the foundation for devices to communicate directly with the human brain.

The researchers’ new graphene-based transistor array is compatible with living biological cells and can, for the first time, record the electrical signals they generate.

*

Have you missed these posts? Or are you happier not knowing?

(Hell, for that matter, have I missed making these posts, and am I happier not knowing?)

Filed by billy at 11:48 pm under consciousness,oblivion,politics,sunday mutants,technology,the world,utopia
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I realise the cheek in posting something like this as I prepare to head off (and the extent to which this is an exercise in projection/lecturing myself.) But I love my country and I would like NZ to be worth coming back to. And National is, honestly, damaging this country, and its future, to an extent that is actually startling.

I’m not entirely sure what the hell National and Key believe in. It seems different from anything I value. At the least, the way they go about things horrifies me, seems actively ridiculous, and completely broken. (This is just what I can remember of the top of my head: Inheriting a country with a budget surplus, then cutting government revenue via tax cuts for the richest, then cutting social programs to pay for that, and doing nothing whatsoever to get us through the recession while stamping on the poor, while borrowing heavily and sinking us in debt, while opening us up to exploitation by big business and letting overseas governments determine our policy, and abusing democratic process to pass extreme laws without oversight under urgency, and failing miserably to handle the Christchurch recovery, or deal with climate change and our collective future responsibly (let alone respectably): a pretty pathetic performance really, from a government that in theory represents us, but instead services a broken ideology divorced from reality. Yet still John Key is popular? WTF?)

-=-=-

Take a moment to feel the horror and rage you would feel over the next three years if National got re-elected and proceeded to brutally fuck the country even further.

Use this feeling as motivation to get involved actively in politics, now. Being pissed off and miserable for three years in which mostly what you can do is complain stinks. Being pissed of and active for a few months before the election is a far more useful expenditure of time and energy. This is what the structure of our democracy means.

-=-=-

I think the Left in general doesn’t grasp that politics is war. (At least, it has only recently really dawned on me.) Assume for a moment that von Clausewitz got it right – “War is a continuation of policy by other means”.

The simple corollary is that regular politics is essentially war, with all that entails.

It is about fighting for what you want the world to be like. It is about doing whatever the hell it takes to win. It is about realising that the other guys realise this, and are not fucking around.

Recognising this does not mean becoming the enemy. But it does suggest that techniques may be borrowed and repurposed; and suggests the attitude that is appropriate – how seriously to take things.

What, to you, is worth fighting for? Because the other team is fighting for something else, something that sucks balls, and, right now, they are fighting better than us.

-=-=-

I wonder how this government would cope with massive public protests against them during the rugby world cup?

On the world stage, with their domestic issues and failings highlighted. A cunning campaign could really put them on the spot. Targeted action. Leverage.

-=-=-

There is a lot of muttering, a lot of energy around the interwebs, a lot of dissent. Shape it. Use it to do something good. Get involved.

Because, scary as it is, we are the responsible generation now. We look up and see the deadwood fucking shit up based on outdated ideologies – those who have lost it. We look down and see kids, and young adults who don’t know anything yet – those who don’t have it.

Look in the mirror. We’re the adults now. This is our watch.

Filed by billy at 1:53 pm under new zealand,no mercy for john key,politics
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At some point, the alternative currency philosophy was going to hit the open source/p2p movement, and give us a dangerous mutant.

It has arrived in the form of bitcoin.

If you can begin to grasp the implications of an untraceable, untaxable, global, uncontrollable-by-governments currency, you ought to know about this.
Moreso if you can’t.

Filed by billy at 11:47 pm under oblivion,politics,technology,the world,utopia
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Govt confirms NZers will pay for any oil spill resulting from drilling offshore in deep water (
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1105/S00072/govt-confirms-nzers-will-pay-for-oil-spill.htm)

So, basically, what we are saying is, hi, foreign companies, come exploit our resources, and don’t worry if you fuck it up catastrophically, it’s sweet, we’ll cover your ass.

Not so much 100% pure, as 100% stupid.

Especially when you consider how unready we are to actually deal with an oil spill, as Jez shows with pictures so simple even John Key could grasp their meaning.

I guess this is what being blinded by ideology means.

Filed by billy at 1:59 pm under new zealand,no mercy for john key,politics
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The Herald has posted a list of the laws National has passed under urgency in the first two years of this term. I have ranted about these as they happened – click the No Mercy For John Key category tab for more. And it has been around the blogosphere, but it is interesting that a conservative mainstream media venue is now voicing it.

This shit is sobering reading. A government which announced no policies pushing through laws based on an extreme right wing vision, without allowing any democratic process.

(Note this list doesn’t include the most recent batch, including the Copyright File Sharing one….)

Posting here mostly to have the list easily accessible for posterity.

Laws which passed under urgency without any select committee consideration between December 2008 (when National came into Government) and December 2010:

9-Dec-08: Bail Amendment Bill provided for bail to be denied if there was any risk of a defendant absconding, interfering with witnesses, or offending while on bail.

Article continues below

Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill implemented national standards in primary schools.

Employment Relations Amendment Bill introduced 90-day trial period for small companies and allowed bosses to consider KiwiSaver contributions when negotiating pay increases.

Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill required courts to take into account factors such as the defencelessness of victim, abuse of trust and attempts to hide the abuse when sentencing for child abuse or ill-treatment.

Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill introduced tax cuts, cut some aspects of Kiwisaver, including holding employer contribution levels at 2 per cent rather than increasing up to 4 per cent.

16-Dec-08

Energy (Fuels, Levies, And References) Biofuel Obligation Repeal Bill removed Labour’s requirement for an increasing proportion of petrol and diesel sales to be biofuels.

Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill removed Labour’s 10-year ban on new fossil-fuelled thermal electricity generation.

17-Feb-09

Electoral Amendment Bill repealed Labour’s Electoral Finance Act and reinstated the old Electoral Act as an interim measure.

13-May-09

Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill was the first of three bills for the new Super City in Auckland. It provided for the end-date of the previous city councils, set up the Auckland Transition Agency to manage the change, and restricted the powers of the city councils until the new Auckland Council was born.

24-Nov-09

Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill allowed court cells to be used to house prisoners as a last resort.

Policing (Constable’s Oaths Validation) Amendment Bill was a technical bill to retrospectively validate the oaths of a swathe of police officers following a change in the swearing-in procedure.

30-Mar-10

Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill replaced Environment Canterbury’s elected council with government appointed commissioners until 2013. Gave powers to impose a moratorium on water and discharge permits.

Immigration Act 2009 Amendment Bill brought forward the date at which implementation work could start on changes from new Immigration Act, including set up of Immigration and Protection Tribunal.

28-Apr-2010 (Extraordinary Urgency)

Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill increased tobacco tax in three stages.

20-May-2010

Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill increased GST to 15 per cent and cut income taxes.

22-Jun-10

Civil Aviation (Cape Town Convention and Other Matters) Amendment Bill aligned NZ law with international Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (the Cape Town Convention).

Policing (Involvement in Local Authority Elections) Amendment Bill allowed police officers to run for local council and be councillors without having to leave the Police.

14-Sep-2010: (in extended sitting hours, rather than Urgency)

Canterbury Earthquake Response Bill gave government greater powers to deal with recovery after the September earthquake. Set up the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission.

28-Oct-2010

Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill so-called Hobbit Bill – specified workers on film productions are independent contractors unless they specifically entered into an employment agreement.

Summary Proceedings Amendment Bill (No 2) made offences such as theft purely summary offences if the property involved was less than $500.

I would really like these guys to be voted out. Because voting them back in accepts and endorses this, and will free them for worse.

Filed by billy at 12:29 am under new zealand,no mercy for john key,politics
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You all should be reading the latest series of posts on No Right Turn about what National is doing economically.

Basically, their do-nothing policy of economic mismanagement means we have a recession and no money. They are blaming the earthquake for having to cut the budget of the tiny $800 million they had allotted for government spending, mostly on health and education, which will negatively effect the worst-off kiwis. However, with the other hand, they are still managing to pass laws which will give $500 million in tax cuts to the wealthiest New Zealanders.

Instead of having the poorest New Zealanders paying the cost of the earthquake, we could split the load more fairly via an earthquake levy. Of course, John Key won’t do that.

This government is consistently acting against the majority of its people.

Stark when pointed out.

Filed by billy at 2:50 pm under new zealand,no mercy for john key,politics
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I had a post brewing about the middle east/north african revolutions. Libya kind of superseded that, though it still is there in draft. In it I note at length I have no grip on what is going on.

Anyway. Plunging on in.

Libya.

Messy.

A no fly zone to stop civilian massacre = a good thing. Governments murdering their own people is one of the major causes of preventable death worldwide.

That is where it stops being simple.

Regime change? No mandate, no plan. And at a guess no one wants to occupy Libya, unless someone (maybe France?) is really desperate for a bigger slice of the oil pie there.

Knocking off Gaddafi and installing a Western-friendly dictator-lite under the guise of democracy? Standard operating procedure for the last century, but probably not what the people have in mind. Also: see regime change.

Funding and arming the opposition and letting them figure it out themselves? Some kind of defacto splitting of the country between Gaddafi and opposition forces? Awkward. Also, the opposition is a diverse popular beast.

Continuing the suspension of slaughter and hoping that it resolves itself? aka “Wait and see.” Not exactly dynamic, or satisfying, but probably what needs to happen.

Chaos has come to town. Who the hell knows.

Filed by billy at 7:10 pm under politics
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So I have seen some bits of Glen Beck’s show a few times now. (One of the oddities of having satellite TV.) I had heard the legends but never experienced it.

He wears glasses and a sweater with a collar peaking out. He has a couple of blackboards, which he writes stuff on, in big letters with arrows. He moves around between these blackboards and other big simple displays. It is quite like a school teacher designed for multiple angles to give it dynamism on TV. He speaks earnestly and with concern about the fate of the world.

What is weirdest is that it is oddly comforting. Simplistic explanations that make no real sense as they wash over you, but delivered with passion. If you didn’t know anything about the world, it would be a convincing act.

It is pretty surreal. The content makes it more so. What is fascinating to me is that in his own way he is quite genuine and concerned with what is going on in the world. He is trying to deal with the complexity of the world, and the massive changes underway; the economic, ecologic, and energy crises underlying the decline of America’s dominance, and explain it to his people.

I hope he is genuine because if he isn’t he would have to be completely insane, rather than just … wrong.

As it is, he is simply someone who, from my perspective, has made a number of flawed fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality and what is important, and then proceeds to analyse the world from that starting position. (NLP cofounder Richar d Bandler observes that crazy people have often just made one bad assumption, the proceeded logically from there, until they make a whole crazy world which confirms it. For example, if you think the CIA are watching your every move, then innocent things, the car parked over the road, take on new meanings, etc.)

The overall effect makes me wonder what it would look like if the left had some sort of equivalent. I am imagining David Icke with an hour a day in primetime to explain to people what the hell is going on. Over time he would seem a lot more reasonable.

And, more importantly, why don’t we have some sort of equivalent? (Forget Icke for the moment; that was not a serious suggestion.) The format Beck has hit upon is weirdly powerful. Where is the primetime TV preacher for a saner political view?

Filed by billy at 10:56 pm under politics
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