December 2011
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Moving and Closing
So, um, I’m closing down this Tumblr, and indeed my personal blogging in general, and moving on.
It’s not that I haven’t had a jolly old time here, because I have, or that I have any kind of beef with most of you guys. (Which actually is the problem: y’all’re, if anything, too damn interesting; and I’m going to miss a few of y’all quite a lot in my...
November 2011
122 posts
“The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be...”
– John Locke, A Treatise Concerning Civil Government
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“Pretty much any large organisation will generate enough coincidences and...”
– Alistair’s 43rd Law
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Trope-a-Day: Landfill Beyond The Stars
Landfill Beyond The Stars: No, just no. It’s hard to imagine the economics that would make it possible to haul junk across space for dumping. And that would make it worthwhile to waste an entire planet to store the stuff. But…
…there are a couple of locations that specialize in recycling of exotic materials in, ah, ways that you wouldn’t want to live next door to, or...
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wolfkazumaru replied to your post: wolfkazumaru reblogged your post: wolfkazumaru… Fair enough, glad I’m interesting. I’ll respond to the rest when I get home, most likely. Gotta go to work.
Just to save time by clarifying one point: insofar...
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Bombing other countries is totally a-okay
logicallypositive:
but if a presidential candidate doesn’t personally believe in evolution then *gasp* I can’t bring myself to vote for them. That’s un-scientific
…I submit that there’s a strong positive correlation between our bomb-happiest - and most otherwise grossly flawed, be it social engineering hubris, economic voodoo, or whatever else - governments and the number of people...
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deadline-showdown asked: About that piece on Ron Paul and evolution. I don't know what his full opinion even is, but i thought, while reading your post, that it may possibly be so trivial a matter (or so uncontested a matter in his mind) that no effort was put into validating his opinion's factuality. Knowing 'bout what else he believes, I don't see how his entire reasoning faculty, even with his...
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wolfkazumaru reblogged your post: wolfkazumaru reblogged your photo: Democracy. … Whoa hey, you unfollowed me. Interesting. I question your method of extrapolation, since all modern democratic nations have mechanisms in...
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wolfkazumaru reblogged your photo: Democracy. Yeah, you show all those nations run by direct democracy. All zero of them.
To avoid multiplying panels pointlessly, the burden of extrapolation is on the reader.
As is...
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Watching sci-fi shows gives me linguistic ideas.
sarvanattar:
I was in the middle of a Stargate SG-1 marathon when I decided I needed a particle for Síntári that makes an imperative more urgent.
It would work in the same way that English, Latin, and Greek all use go!, ite!, or ἴθι! plus another command.
The particle is kri. This is perhaps unsurprising if you’re familiar with the show XD.
So while lainttiskuas means “(You [sg]) write it!,”...
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“The word which is commonly translated as “Imperials”, referring to...”
– The Great Powers and Their People, University of Eö Press, 7387
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Trope-a-Day: Klingons Love Shakespeare
Klingons Love Shakespeare: While cultures also are very different (see: Culture Clash), there’s enough commonality among near-median species that this sort of thing happens all the time, between any pair of species you might care to name. Even if it’s only about one small, weirdly idiosyncratic cultural element - given the way these things go, Earth is as likely to become famous for...
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Trigger Warning: QE3
shecallsmeartemis:
*proceeds to have aneurism*
Gah.
If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Bourbon and I have to go over here and have a serious discussion about my personal liquidity.
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Paging San Andreas
wolfkazumaru:
More seriously, no. A sit-in is not a violent action. And spraying pepper spray down somebody’s throat definitely is, even if the cops were “provoked.” Same with running through a crowd of protesters with a car.
Should the OWS folks be obstructing routes for long periods of time? No. Should the cops go in with pepper spray and batons when they’re not...
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WE ARE HUMANS AND WE ARE FROM EARTH →
fyeahconlangs:
Wahawafe is the name of my multilingual translation project. It was begun on 18 June 2011. The website was launched on 9 July 2011. “Wahawafe” is an acronym of “We are humans and we are from Earth.”. The aim of this project is to collect translations of this sentence in as many languages as possible. It celebrates the linguistic diversity of the Earth. Translations in all...
Government and Social Contract →
libertydefender:
[snippage, for length]
To be pedantic, and as all know, I love to be pedantic, that doesn’t actually make laissez-faire minarchism logically untenable. Hell, it doesn’t even make intrusive maxarchism logically untenable.
All it requires is that it operate with the unanimous (or depending on your view as to one’s right and ability to contract away all your future volition,...
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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wolfkazumaru replied to your post: wolfkazumaru replied to your link: Group-Loyalty… also looking at this again: Not much to criticize that I can think of. Tribal identity is a bitch.
It surely is that.
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Trope-a-Day: Kiss Me, I'm Virtual
Kiss Me, I’m Virtual: Subverted inasmuch as the virtual people are actually people.
…okay, well, yes, lonely people do use probably terabytes of simulation space for this sort of thing, with full awareness of the situation. Although I should probably mention that anyone who tried using a real person’s image in this way would be laying themselves open to a truly spectacular Bad...
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statehate:
Rothbard: My conversion to anarchism was a simple exercise in logic. I had engaged continually in friendly arguments about laissez-faire with liberal friends from graduate school. While condemning taxation, I had still felt that taxation was required for the provision of police and judicial protection and for that only. One night two friends and I had one of our usual lengthy...
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Ron Paul's opinion on evolution matters as much to...
This is true for me, too, but in the exact opposite direction. Which is to say, it matters to me a great deal.
Here’s why, simplified version:
Ethics is logic applied to the problem of sophont relations. Logic depends on metaphysics and epistemology. If your epistemology is broken - which to be any of the popular kinds of wrong about evolution or physics, it generally needs to be -...
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Clever Cleverbot
Cleverbot: What's the best way to ask a girl out?
Me: If I knew that, I'd have done it more often.
Cleverbot: Darn it.
Me: Yep. Had to resort to drink.
Cleverbot: What are you up to later?
Me: I bet you say that to all the humans.
Cleverbot: Not very often that I talk to a computer though, is it?
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Trope-a-Day: Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: For most things, yes. It’s not that they don’t have perfectly functional energy weapons, or power cells which can manage the job - if you can run a mass driver that can get a flechette or slug up to a respectable fraction of the speed of light, yep, you can power a laser with it too, just fine. Nor do energy weapons lack their place - lasers are a...
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The Folly Of The Concrete
logicallypositive:
I’ll write a more detailed post on this later, but lately I find myself disillusioned with the libertarian notion of atomic individualism. You know, the argument that “society is nothing more than the individuals who compose it!” A crass sort of reductionism.
What libertarians ignore is the fact that society consists not only of the individual members, but also the realtions...
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“A “non-violent” action that places the rest of the world in the...”
– and that’s before we even talk about strategic provocation — which is still causally strategic provocation even when your opponent is dumb and brutal enough to oblige you
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Trope-a-Day: Kill It With Fire
Kill It With Fire: Played straight in both senses. The Empire is certainly happy to use flamethrowers and other Fire Breathing Weapons, fire bombs, fire sheets, and other kinds of fire in war, not because it’s tremendously efficient (it’s not) or because things are Immune To Bullets (they aren’t) - but rather, just because while it’s possible to convince a lot of species...
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“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a...”
– Gustave Flaubert
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“Charity creates dependency.”
– Alistair’s 42nd Law
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wolfkazumaru replied to your link: Group-Loyalty vs. Principle (originally: The Real Problem at Penn State) I’m pretty sure the real problem at Penn State is kiddy diddling.
…congratulations on the most contextually content-free response...
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Group-Loyalty vs. Principle (originally: The Real... →
Megan McArdle makes a good point regarding this case, and the way people tend to behave when they discover friends and family and other people in their own circle doing appalling things:
“I have been thinking some more about the Penn State case, and why McQueary and Paterno did what they did. And I have come to the conclusion that most commentators are overlooking a rather obvious...
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Water Does Not Prevent Dehydration →
…and saying that it does, in the EU, will soon carry a two-year jail sentence.
As my wife says, we can see the rough outlines of the thought process by which they got there… but sane people, when their process gets them to a place like this, stop, think, and realize that therefore their process is incredibly fucked up.
Alas, sane people evidently don’t work for European...
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Trope-a-Day: Kill Sat
Kill Sat: Oh, yeah. See also Death From Above and Wave Motion Gun, because there’s no artillery like ortillery, and no high ground like orbit. The orbital defense grid (it defends orbit from above, it defends orbit from below, and, of course, it’s in orbit) that any self-respecting planet has is the stereotypical example, but should you need to carry out a ground assault on someone...
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hipsterlibertarian asked: Re: The Daily Show/personal vs. private property. Thank you for making literally the exact case I didn't feel like writing out. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that the distinction had some validity, I struggle to see how it neatly works out in our post-industrial, information-based economy.
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A brief note on PIPA and SOPA
While I support intellectual property for reasons both philosophical (I believe in the ontological status abstractions and the consequents of believing in the ontological status of abstractions) and pragmatical (I make my living selling intellectual property), let it be known that I have no support whatsoever for this incredible bullshit. Or even the DMCA that preceded it.
A terminal itching...
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Watchbethefoodoflove:
hipsterlibertarian:
The Daily Show finds that Occupy Wall Street is against “private property,” but not “personal property.”
Wait. What?!
Are you really so dense that you don’t understand that personal property (commodities and basic goods) is significantly different from private property (private, guarded ownership of a means of production)? The two terms can’t be used...
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Trope-a-Day: Kill All Humans^WOf Species X
Kill All Humans Of Species X: Well, for the organic version of this trope, see up there under Absolute Xenophobe. Even most of the complete nutjob brigade, in polity terms, are usually capable of recognizing that the Galaxy is bigger than they are, quite often much better armed, and tend to look unfavorably on genocidal maniacs out of self-interest, if nothing else.
For the digital version -...
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Free Lotion! →
foamontherange:
Having recently changed the packaging (and a couple of other details) in our Hand and Body Lotion, I find myself with rather a lot of stock of the old sort that I need to find something to do with. So: Any order of at least $10 between now and next Wednesday (November 23) will get a free bottle of lotion thrown in!
More foamy news!
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Class
hrlaughed:
GSI: “Who thinks that amphetamines should be legal for ‘normal’ people for cognitive enhancement?”
Me: *raises hand*
Class: *looks at me in disgust*
GSI: Okay, so ONE.
Who thinks they should not be legal?
Class: *All raise hands*
Me: …ha but—
GSI: Okay.
Me: :[
THIS is why we can’t have nice brains.
Never mind the government. Abolish...
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Trope-a-Day: Karma Meter
Karma Meter: Reputation networks are everywhere, functioning as effectively a public record, social network, and barometer of public opinion for everyone. Of course, there’s not a particular standard of karma in use - they exist for all kinds of different groups and different themes - to steal an example I’ve used before, the Iniscail City Righteous Enforcers of Social Propriety and...
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Trope-a-Day: Just a Machine
Just a Machine: Averted (and extremely rude) in all civilized polities. (Played straight in less civilized places, until it’s also averted… all too often, if the Silicate Tree or the more bloody-minded abolitionists get their way, with bullets, missiles, and orbital bombardment. They really hate people who think this way.)
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Volitional or Negligent Transmission of HIV
Another little legal theoretical question (well, less than theoretical for those involved in such a case, or given the current various different stances on the question taken by different legislatures) for those of us with our own takes on how the legal, ethical, and deontological world ought to work.
Scenario: Party A has HIV, or another sexually communicable, terminal disease, and is aware of...
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“I can’t hammer this home enough. A recession is not when something bad happens....”
– Karl Smith
“Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The...”
– Ayn Rand, Theory and Practice