Monday, September 29

Wednesday, September 24

Weird pro-sex, err, pro-family messages are coming from conservative politicians in England. An even weirder quip from the American past in this BBC article - 'In a 1951 letter only now made public, Ronald Reagan revealed his angst about sex. "Even in marriage I had a little guilty feeling about sex, as if the whole thing was tinged with evil," the man who would be US president wrote to a friend. '

Tuesday, September 23

The largest arctic ice shelf has ruptured, but don't worry, it's not due to global warming. Don't worry, we don't need to do anything differently. (M)

Monday, September 22

Statistic of note: There are approximately two million people in jail in America today, 2,166,260 at last count: more than four times as many people as thirty years ago. David Garland's The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society - reviewed.

Friday, September 19

If ye ignorant wenches and stupid salty dogs don't celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day (today, Sept. 19th!), I'll make ya walk the plank!

Thursday, September 18

"What ideas and worldviews motivated the push to overreach and try to dominate the globe, with Iraq as step number one? What secrets, maneuvers behind the scenes policy power struggles after the attacks of 9/11, led the U.S. to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?" The U.S. Plan for Global Domination. (M)

Tuesday, September 16

The Science Behind Prohibition - A scientific study (widely quoted in support of the oppressive RAVE ACT passed earlier this year) that claimed to prove the negative health effects of Ecstasy use has been retracted because the authors were using the wrong drug on the monkeys.

Monday, September 15

"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens." (via reason.com)

Friday, September 12

Sunday, September 7

Thursday, September 4

When do we resist convienence? (Especially) In questions of technology, does it seem sometimes as if there is an ineveitable wave of increased use that swamps and erodes one's choice to opt in or out? I am thinking about cell phones (previously blogged article), which I most likely will obtain one of in the near future, but also things like the rise of friendster, E-Z toll passes and related intelligent transportation systems, the internet in general, automobiles and many other things that change our identity and perhaps nibble at our privacy. Will I be able to buy a car in 5 years that doesn't have a GPS enhanced tracking, err, navigation system? By law, all your cell phones have GPS these days. Sometimes the choice is taken from us.

Related posts - Commercial tracking, Technoculture, Taste...
Be careful, because in Ashcroft's America, you can be jailed for what you - whoops, check that - for what other people write.

Wednesday, September 3

In Search of the Buy Button - What makes some products irresistible? Neuroscientists are racing to find the answer to that question--and to pass it along to consumer marketers. (via the ccle)