• Economics,  Web

    Shock Doctrine

    A well done piece of propaganda is Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, available on MySpace TV. It’s another attempt to get everyone riled up about income disparity, which no one seems to mind. Unmentioned is the fact that it is an indie film, being released on a social networking site, and being given away. Hardly something that would happen in a poor society.

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  • Funny,  Links,  Tech

    Friday round up

    Sorry for the light blogging, work and the house hunting process have been quite draining on me.

    Anyway, Here is your recommended reading for today

    • The Economist has a great read Iraqi Kurdistan, or as it will soon be known, Kurdistan.
    • The absolute minimum you should know about Character sets and Unicode
    • Russia Tests “Dad of All Bombs“. It’s good they’re keeping themselves busy. Money Quote: ” Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn’t hurt the environment”
    • Megan McArdle on why we haven’t been attacked since 9/11. Personally I think it’s a lack of talent/money/motivation on their part, plus a host of supporting factors
    • The view from the top of the world
    • I’m surprised this hasn’t come back to life among the many Bush conspiracies.
    • There’s this from Craigs List

      Sushi Model: Willing to act as display showcase as sushi is displayed placed on body for patrons to eat off of.
      • Model preferable of Asian ethnicity
      • Height requirement: 5’6” to 5’11”
      • Slim built; clean and body shaven
      • Will wear bottom with pasty/string bikini top or topless
      • Compensation: $200/3 hours

    • Don’t you just love it when support for Microsoft Products is done using commands only they know? Check this out (which did work for me)
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  • Fifth Gen Warfare,  Terrorism

    The best new development in some time

    Check out this article on MSNBC about American computer geeks disrupting and scooping al Qaida’s internet efforts. Basically they just troll message boards and other places on the internet and post bin Laden’s releases early and generally disrupt the marketing effort.

    Since most of radical Islam consists of marketing, this is a wonderful, unexpected organic development. A heroic romantic vision of a struggle appeals to disgruntled losers everywhere, but a bumbling piece of incoherent crap will just send them back to video games and porn.

    Everyone feel free to attach the 5th Generation terminology of your choice…

  • Barnett,  Economics,  The Gap

    Maybe countries are in the Gap for a reason…

    From the Economist Blog

    Why would anyone with a robust sense of reality simply assume that each national jurisdiction contains the seeds of a viable economy? If we insist on thinking of development as a matter of national growth, we may well consign most of the bottom billion, and their children and their grandchildren, to unrelenting poverty trapped within their UN-recognised national prisons. Our real moral concern should not be the Central African Republic, but its unfortunate denizens. The best thing for their prospects may simply be to get out–to leave for a place where growth has already commenced. The West’s many attempts to jumpstart growth where the world’s poorest already reside has yet to work. So why does the international community insist on betting the poor’s lives on the gamble that it will, finally, some day?

    While development has worked in some places, South Korea and Taiwan come to mind, there is little compelling evidence that a society locked into antiquated social capital can shift to a modern one absent the destruction of the existing social capital. The shocks would be a significant war, or a tyrannical government (i.e. China) willing to uproot society.

    Its food for thought anyway.

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  • Web

    A minor internet miracle

    Yesterday I was searching for a domain name for a friend of mine, and found exactly what we wanted, in the .com! That hasn’t happened in years, it’s a name you think would be taken as too.

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