Voder-Vocoder

Happy Día de la Resistencia Indígena!

He [Jared Diamond] elaborated a bit on his book’s account of the Easter Island collapse, where a society that could build 80-ton statues 33 feet high and drag them 12 miles, and who could navigate the Pacific Ocean to and from the most remote islands in the world, could also cut down their rich rain forest and doom themselves utterly. With no trees left for fishing canoes, the Easter Islanders turned to devouring each other. The appropriate insult to madden a member of a rival clan was, “The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth!” The population fell by 90% in a few years, and neither the society nor the island ecology have recovered in the 300 years since.

Diamond reported that his students at UCLA tried to imagine how the guy who cut down the LAST tree in 1680 justified his actions. What did he say? Their candidate quotes:

• “Fear not. Our advancing technology will solve this problem.”
• “This is MY tree, MY property! I can do what I want with it.”
• “Your environmentalist concerns are exaggerated. We need more research.”
• “Just have faith. God will provide.”

—Summarized by Stewart Brand (source)

That was Jared Diamond’s take on the impending end of things. I’ve already made that analogy.

Via Billmon, who has more to say:

Ordinarily, I’d be the last one to challenge Jared Diamond’s thinking — the man is a genius. But in this case I have to wonder if he isn’t overanalyzing things. Maybe the reason humans act so dumb isn’t because of their intellectual frame of reference, or their clan structure, or because they lack historical awareness. Maybe people act dumb because a lot of them are dumb — dumb as turnips. So stupid they have trouble each morning remembering that their shoes go on their feet. So mentally challenged they have to use crib notes to remember their ABCs. So monumentally dense they can’t even do the job of a cable news talk show host — or at least not properly. Borderline vegetative, in other words.

If my boss nicknamed me Turd Blossom, I would quit. And possibly sue for harassment.

Many analysts have noted the transformation of Al Qaeda from an organization to a movement—that is, from a top-down, centrally directed terrorist group to a decentralized “franchise” operation, in which local operators like Abu Zarqawi and the Madrid bombers make their own plans and pursue their own tactical objectives.

John Robb, the systems analyst behind the blog Global Guerrillas, argues that this evolution may actually have improved Al Qaeda’s long-term survivability and operational effectiveness, even if it rules out large, complex attacks like 9/11. A highly decentralized network of terrorist cells, he argues, can use something analogous to market mechanisms to coordinate its actions—learning to avoid the mistakes and imitate the successes of other cells.

If true, it could mark the birth of an entirely new type of conflict—a “fifth generation” warfare in which the enemy not only isn’t a nation state, but isn’t even an entity—like the Viet Cong or the Shining Path or the PLO. It’s almost impossible to imagine how a security establishment that yet hasn’t learned how to fight a fourth generation insurgency is going to cope with that.

—Billmon (source)

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place with thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder - its DNA - xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.

—NS (source)

If Terror is now nothing more than a franchise—anyone with a high school education, access to a public library (you don’t even need to check books out), and a grudge can start a cell—then we need to rethink how we deal with it. How do you deal with spoiled brats who throw tantrums? Ignore them.

What do these kids want? (1) They want to be on TV. (2) They want you to be afraid of them.

Will someone explain to me why Robert Novak is not in jail?

It’s systemic. For some reason, our people [America] are stuck in WE’RE NUMBER 1!!! mode from birth even and especially in the face of opposing proof.

We’re not number 1 on:

• Education
• Health care
• National security
• Government representation
• Standard of living
• Job security
• Technology
• General manufacturing
• Research
• Law enforcement
• Religious tolerence
• Vacation time

…any number of things eveybody likes. But for some reason, the WE’RE NUMBER 1!! mentality allows us bully other countries while ignoring our own problems.

—Yesferatu (source)

Fuck patriotism.

In my polisci class, we discussed congressional redistricting. This post is an attempt to summarize the situation.

Irregularly Shaped Districts
1991-2000
(SOURCE)

Illinois District 4

Illinois District 1

Tenn. District 4

Tenn. District 3

Redistricting Roulette!

If a single piece of legelation passes in the next two years, let this be it. (via)

The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war is somewhere between 15,289 and 100,000. Good to see that we have a number that’s at most off by one order of magnitude.

Apoligists for the war would say that the true number is somewhere on the low end. I’d like to see GWB in front of a war crimes tribunal:

“But, your honor, we only killed fifteen thousand inocent civilians, not that other number!”

“You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house . . .(to one of the men) . . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can.”

Christmas season is “It’s a Wonderful Life” season, and anyone who has seen that movie — which ought to be pretty much everyone by now — will remember Jimmy Stewart’s plain-spoken explanation of banking, delivered to angry customers who have begun a run on the bank where he works.

Today it’s the Bush administration that’s started a run on the institution of Social Security. And so far no one in Washington has had the gumption or the forthrightness to get up, like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, and tell the American people what’s really going on.

—Scott Rosenberg ( source)

UPDATE 2004-12-04

Here’s the deal about social security reform. Suppose in any year the workers put $X into social security and the beneficiaries (grandma) take out that same $X. This is approximately how it works now.

Now, instead, through “GWB Social Security reform”, the workers pay $(X-Y) to SocSec and $Y to their personal retirement savings account. Now the gov sill owes $X to the beneficiaries. So the Treasury borrows $Y. This should help the economy because it spurs investment, right? We have $Y more investment in the economy, right? Wrong. Because the government is borrowing $Y, there is $Y less money available for businesses to borrow. It’s a zero-sum game.

Then the stock market crashes. Sorry, you get to go to debtor’s prison when you die!

I am almost thankful for the incompetence of the administration. The decline of the dollar, which has accelerated in the past month, might eventually force Americans to be more humble.

Extra credit to whoever points out the flaw in this statement.

Q: You talk about how the radical conservatives have distorted the term “liberalism.” What’s your definition of liberalism?

A:

[1] Keeping church and state separate.

[2] Fighting concentrations of economic power that undermine democracy.

[3] Expanding social insurance, including health care.

[4] And extending the reach of international law and human rights.

These principles all interact. They have to do with the interdependence of all of us.

—Robert Reich (source)