Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

Lessig at it again: Free culture in Brazil

An excellent, excellent article by Lawrence Lessig was post in Technology Review recently. It is a good primer for people unfamiliar with the issues behind copyright (and why it matters) or digital rights management (DRM). But it is worth reading because it shows how these issues do matter to people and how they can affect the very substrate of our cultural life and identity. The scene at the conclusion of the article makes me jealous and (even more) disappointed with US democracy.

Solar Powered Windows

Here we find information about an upcoming technology that is really exciting. I've wished for years for efficient transparent photovoltaic cells to use as windows, and it looks like someone has come up with something even better.

It's a tiny solar panel about half an inch square that is over 50% efficient now (and perhaps 100% eventually) that is embedded in glass and serves as a window blind. The coolest thing: the cell rotates to face the sun at all times! The energy it sucks up is piped into the building grid to augment heating and cooling and all that other jazz. Researchers hope to have it available in as little as 3 years.

If we ever get efficient solar power and establish a network for storing it (either in hydrogen or flywheels), it'll be a big deal. The sooner the better too, because even though we won't run out of oil for 80 years or more, our demand is set to outpace production within a generation.

Thinking about what you think

i was wondering about something the other day....

It seems like many of the anti-abortion people in the US are also politically conservative. This may be a misperception, of course, and I'm known for making those all over the place on this blog. But if it is true, there seems to be a major inconsistency, and I wonder if they are aware of it.

They claim to be opposed to abortion out of their belief in the sanctity of life and their concern for the welfare of the child. I can accept this, and see quite a bit of validity in their position. I actually agree with most of their beliefs about life and personhood, just diverge with what they are saying when it comes to the part where they insist that everyone else should be forced into living their life under their rules and perceptions. But that isn't the point I'm trying to make here, and I don't want to get distracted.

The conflict comes in when the conservative agenda of cutting government support for the poor. No, not all mothers who seek abortions are poor and not all poor mothers seek abortions. But some women do seek abortions precisely because they do not feel that they are capable, either emotionally or financially, to care for the child in the manner in which they think is needed. Having a baby would disrupt their livelihood and contribute to a pathetic life for both of them.

If abortion opponents are so concerned about the health and welfare of mom's and babies, why aren't they greater defenders of welfare benefits for them? Where are the child-care programs that enable single parents (or dual-income, for that matter) to work enough to provide for family, secure in the knowledge that their kids are taken care of in healthy environments?

I'm a lefty dipshit sometimes, I know this, but I also know that we have a crisis going on (more than one, actually) with childcare right now. Humans need to be taken care as children, and not just in the 3-hots-and-a-cot sense. They need active engagement in a stimulating social evironment full of affections. Our brains respond to mirror the environment, and if kids grow up in lonely crappy environments, they will grow up to be crappy adults.

I've gotten off-track, again. The point I was wondering about though was how can conservative anti-abortion people reconcile the proposed outlawing of abortions while opposing social support to mother's and families? It seems that if they truly cared about the health and wellbeing of the people involved in a potential abortion, they'd want to do what they can to help them succeed in a difficult, and often unplanned, situation.

But I guess claiming to be opposed to abortion on moral grounds vis a vis the sanctity of life is easier than admitting that they don't really care about human welfare and wellbeing and that you just want people to live by your moral code. And that is a fine way to be I guess, except when you live in what is supposedly the freest country on earth.

"I'm never coming down, but that's okay"

Are Psychedelic Drugs Good for You?

None other than John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism and The End of Science?, has a nice little article discussing the positive benefits of responsible psychedlic drug use and arguing for a reclassification. It's also nice to see him point out that it isn't all fun and games and that some people don't mix well with entheogens, but overall they bring more of a benefit than harm to people. Worth reading, but don't get your hopes up, at least not with God Ashcroft in charge of the justice department. He's the one who cracked down on Psilocybe Fanaticus, a company selling legal products.

There is also a new book about Ayahuasca out that looks interesting. I'd like to try that sometime.

Public surveillance of public surveillance.

The United Kingdom has over a million public surveillance cameras trained on its society, and the United States, while far behind in terms of density, is racing to catch up. The purpose of the cameras is straightforward: surveillance helps to prevent crimes from occurring in the first place and helps to prosecute them when it does. To accomplish this, the cameras are fed into a centralized criminal bureau that monitors the activity, basically TV bobbies gazing at our lives.

Imagine now for a moment that these camera feeds were public available. There is no reason why the feeds shouldn't be viewable by the general public since they are of the general public. Anything on the film would be observable by anyone who happened to be on site in a public space; it isn't as though these cameras are violating privacy at all.

What would be the pros and cons of this situation? I immediately see lots of pros: parents able to keep track of kids, lovers keeping track of each other, the obvious voyeuristic thrill associated with so-called reality TV, and most importantly it helps to keep the authorities honest. Beyond keeping films of the public accessible to the public, this kind of system could presumably help the authorities monitor what is going on. Imagine how many cops you need to have on shift 24/7 to watch a million video feeds! If the public was browsing these lines, there would be more eyeballs watching what would happen at the other end.

Okay, fine, some of you say, those are nice ideas, but come on! Do I really think its a good idea to turn us into spies on each other? I don't think that it would be pathological in the least. Remember, these aren't hidden cameras but just video feeds from public spaces. Millions of people see the activities being recorded when they are in the same physical vicinity, so there is no violation there.

I think it would be cool. In the end though, given that the cameras exist, the choice is basically would you prefer the authorities to have exclusive access to monitor the public or would you prefer that the public have access to it as well? I don't see how permitting the public to view this stuff would in any way limit police efforts to prevent and prosecute crimes. I suppose there are perhaps some abuses possible by the general populace, but they couldn't be any worse than potential abuses by the authorities could they?

We pay for it, we should at least get to watch it, eh?

Why don 't we just buy off Kim Jung Il?

What to do about North Korea? We can't fight them without writing off the millions of people living in Seoul, a city an hour's drive from the DMZ that will be annhilated within minutes of the commencement of war. But we can't negotiate with them because we can't trust them nor can we submit to blackmail. But if we don't do something, they are likely to sell off some nukes or the material needed to build them, which isn't really a cool thing.

Why not just buy him off? Kim Jung Il surely would capitulate to a kind of clemency or absolution that gives him freedom from persecution to go along with, say, 10 billion dollars and an island to live on somewhere. Hell, we could even offer to sell him arms so he can train and run a private army (albeit no one to fight with, as we'd preclude a navy and long-range missiles). We'd recoup most of the money we give him in arms sales.

Stock the island with old movies and nubile whores and let him play god. Sure beats the alternatives.

Two takes on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

While what follows here appears incredibly partisan, it isn't intended to be a political discussion as much as a philosophical one. But I guess that's what politics is though, philosophy in action (and sometimes inaction).

I happened to stumble across a nice little synopsis of the differences between Democrats and Republicans the other day that was so elegant, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Since the two parties are considerably more complex than the following characterization permits and I suppose its even arguable about whether the generalization applies, let's not get caught up in arguing how accurate these two ideologies are. Since there are undoubtedly people somewhere that fit these categories, let's restrict our discussions to them. I'll try to keep it abstract so we can avoid muddying the waters more than needed.

The distinction was thus: Repubs generally want the government to stay out of regulating business and administering programs (ie smaller government) with the exception of the military. They prefer lower taxes over government provided services, again with the exception of the military, which they basically want to be buffed up and pimped out as much as possible. They aren't much interested in social programs like Social Security and Medicare, nor are they much wont to spend on education or absorb business expenses stemming from say, environmental regulations and labor laws. The government wastes money and thus taxes should be kept as low as possible to force efficiency from the federal budgetary monster.

For the sake of a clear-cut example, Dems are just the opposite. They consider the government a plausible agent for providing services for the population. In terms of productive services that aid the populace in life, liberty, and their pursuits of happiness, the military doesn't offer much and hence military spending is seen as undesirable. The higher taxes required to fund the health, education, and other socially beneficial programs come primarily from the highest earners, ie those who can afford it.

Put so simply, I found myself rather disgusted with the former position. I wholly support the principles of efficiency espoused by the conservative sector of society and generally belief that a freer market is more robust and efficient that one heavily burdened by regulations or central planning. But the narrow-minded accounting of so-called free market conservatives who oppose say, environmental regulation and labor laws because of their "negative" impact on profitability illustrates that most evil of human shortcomings, hypocrisy. To truly address the profitability of an enterprise, doesn't it make sense that one consider ALL the costs of the undertaking, including social and environmental factors among others?

And the issue of taxation has me perplexed as well. No one likes to pay taxes, whether it be a penny on a dollar income or millions from the upper crust income. I understand that the higher percentages the richest members of society are burdened with equate to incredible sums of money, but once the taxes are paid, they still end up with more than most people had to start with before they paid their small tax bills. Given the option of a $500,000 annual salary that pays 50% ($250,000) in taxes, leaving me with $250,000 or a $50,000 annual salary with a 20% tax bite ($10,000) that leave $40,000 behind, no one is going to choose the lower wage because its a smaller percentage or total amount.

Why is it such a problem to pay taxes that benefit society? Where is the pride in taxes? Of course wasteful government puts a sting in the bite, but it is just horrific to me that a person would feel fine being taxed to fun a war machine (and presumably prisons) but objects to taxes that provide public services. Taxes that fund better schools and hospitals contribute to a safer, more stable society. Give the choice between a million dollars for education which will keep 999 of 1000 kids from turning into criminals vs a million dollar jail to lock up the 999 criminals from the 1000 who got shitty education, some people would prefer to build the jail. Or suggest that we buy off the dregs of society to keep them from fucking up their own and others' lives (while simultaneously providing a safety net for upstanding folks fallen on hard times, but that doesn't fit the rant here) for a reasonable price. Oh no! Best to build the jail rather than have dregs on welfare.

Our nation is the richest nation the known universe has ever produced. Richest in terms of dollars, in terms of knowledge, in terms of technology and information. But we squander it. Where is the pride in doing things that make life better for all involved? We claim to be patriots and supporters of our country, but we aren't. We have a nation of petty selfish brats without a glimmer of concern for the welfare of their fellow citizens.

And if that's the best the strongest, richest, most advanced nation on Earth can do for its own, what hope is there that it can actually begin to create a legacy worth caring about?

What the hell is wrong with humanity?

It's such a sophomoric question that we've all pondered, usually in high school or the early college years when we are just beginning to pull our heads out of our asses and realize there is more happening "out there" than getting grades, laid, or drugs for the weekend. It's such an obvious question, and surely one worth answering, but it seems like it has just become taken for granted. It's as if you develop a shocked awareness of it as you emerge from the pubescent cocoon brimming with arrogance and belief in your ability to do whatever you want to, but then get sidetracked (usually with work, pussy, and drugs) and just accept the fucked up state of affairs.

I was almost afraid to even bring up the topic because it seems to be such a foregone conclusion. The more cynical could argue that I'm idealist, but that's just a pathetic excuse for not being realistic, or pragmatic at least. It's minimally immoral to not judge humanity harshly for the current state of affairs. Either immoral or humans are just a bunch of amoral hypocrites (in which case my question is answered. But I've got more to say here and now).

There are so many ways to look at the problem, but in general it boils down to the fact that we live in a world of shit. Some of us have it pretty good, but for the most part, life utterly sucks for people. Most people alive on Earth right now are worse off than had they been born 10,000 years ago. Sad testament to how far we've fallen and good reasons to be pessimistic about our future. But it isn't the sorry state of existence for people that is so damning, but the fast that it just doesn't have to be that way is the rope we hang ourselves with.

We are such petty creatures, unwilling and unable to rise above blind devotion to the little concepts adopted by our progenitors, worshipping the lines they've drawn and refusing, yea, actively resisting attempts to remove the blinders, refusing to recognize that the concepts and cognitions we define ourselves by are nothing more than mental holdovers of historical circumstance.

What separates people like me, who think it despicable that we squander heritage and use our technological progress to cash in on the future, leaving the interest payments for those who come after us, and those who are doing the check cashing and barrier building? What is so horribly wrong with the idea that working towards meeting a standard of minimal human dignity is worthwhile? Why are we hellbent on living in the now, without even an inkling of foresight or adherence to ideals?

Is the Enlightenment dead?

This isn't just a veiled rant at any particular government or corporation, but humanity as a whole. Of course we have elements of actual intelligence, elements that are able to accomplish a great deal, but they are a minority. Why can't the powers that be actually do something worth being proud of on a grand scale?

Are we too greedy? Too stupid? Too arrogant? Too racist? Too indifferent?

Why doesn't this matter?

RIP our civil liberties

A while back the United States Congress passed a special law that permits the authorities to hold "material witnesses" without charging them for the purposes of detaining flight risks who will be compelled to give important testimony. This designation allows them to hold you indefinitely without charging you. This law was coincidentally passed in, you guessed it, 1984.

Thus far its hasn't been abused, but since 9.11, John Ashcroft's Justice Department has made great use of it to detain people for extended periods of time without charging them, an action that typically violates our right of due process. In extreme cases, US civilians have been classified as "enemy combatants" which is even worse, as it qualifies one for a special secret tribunal that appears to be in violation of due process (see the pattern). In case you forgot, these laws are being applied to American Citizens.

Like this guy, Mike Hawash for example. Two weeks ago, as he's getting out of his car at the parking lot at Intel for work, the Feds swoop in and arrest him. They showed up at his house in combat gear as well to take away his computer and other stuff from his wife and two children. Mike wasn't born an American, but became a citizen in 1988 (maybe he isn't grandfathered in the civil rights coverage that the rest of us get?). His wife and two daughters are though.

So now he's been held without being charged for 2 weeks with only limited contact with his family and lawyer. He hasn't been interrogated by the authorities and has no idea why he is being held. Perhaps its because of the money he gave to a charity a few years ago that builds mosques in the US or perhaps its because he's Arabic and the gov't thinks he knows something. No one knows yet.

Check out the Free Mike Hawash page for information about this case as well as information about how to donate to his legal fund and his family's living fund. There are also articles at the New York Times and Wired as well as discussion at Slashdot if you're interested.

This is real, people. The US Gov't is locking people up with telling us or them why. There isn't much we can do about it right now, perhaps, but keep this in mind in November of next year.

Bush's extended plans for fighting bioterrorism in China

Now that the new SARS virus has been nailed down to a Hong Kong hotel, President-selected Bush announced plans to invade The People's Republic of China "at a time of our choosing."

"Biological weapons are bad," Mr. Bush said. "It's obvious that when people die from disease, a weapon has been employed. We took out the Iraqis for past possession of these weapons, and we'll take out the Chinese for it too."

In other news, earlier reports that Bush had cursed his God for giving him a runny nose on the eve of his conquest of the Middle East could not be confirmed. Initial reports that shouts of "WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME!" came from the Oval Office can only be considered rumor at this point.

Mad With POWR!!!!!

Well, its pretty obvious that I've succeeded beyond all possible expectations in creating this site.

It was pretty tough too. It involved downloading a tarball, editing 4 lines of code with path names of web directories, uploading two different types of files (ASCII and binary!), and setting permissions.

I also had to pull some strings with some system admins who owe me some favors to get some server side elements squared away, but I have prevailed.

I'm probably overqualified for most of the available tech jobs out there, I'd say.

Here is my tricky attempt to post an image in an entry.

I finally figured out the fucking HTML code for an image. Too much BBCode make me stupidier!