WaveSpace - Society

We All Gotta Duck...

nospam@example.com (Guy McArthur) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:17:00 -0400

... when the isht hits the fan! Here is just a couple of random thoughts related to the meltdown of America's financial industry.

Consolidation is the root of the problem, not so much regulation and the lack thereof, except as they play into it. Under a more ideal system, all that bad debt would be spread among many more (smaller) banks and other lenders. Some would fail, the ones that found the right amount of risk would survive. This system would be a freer market, and more capitalistic, not less. The problem is that five firms were allowed to exceed the SEC's debt-to-capital ratio.
This looks real bad for McCainiac & Co. Less than 24 hours after he declared our economy "fundamentally sound", that same economy was revealed to be within days of a complete meltdown (which may still happen). He should have known better; his own son managed a bank that ultimately failed, like a number of others have. As long as the news media focuses on real issues, McCain's campaign, such as it is, is in trouble.
I don't want to be bailing out people who were stupid enough to get an "interest only" loan... or anyone who was willing to sell it to them. What about people who speculated on an ARM loan and are now getting burned? Drawing the line starts to get difficult after that.

G.O.P.D.

nospam@example.com (Guy McArthur) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:22:51 -0400

Barely covered by the mainstream media, the crackdown on the press and protesters at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis / St. Paul is nonetheless quite disturbing. From what I've read, the tactics included "pre-emptive" arrests for "conspiracy to riot", coordinated by federal, state, and local authorities. Independent and even floor-pass credentialed journalists (including an AP photographer and nationally syndicated radio broadcaster Amy Goodman) were among those arrested while doing their jobs.

The contrast to Chicago 1968 is stark; the police riot outside the DNC and subsequent trials captured national attention that still resonates today. Now, similar actions on a broader scale barely make the news. As a number of comments have pointed out, we paid more attention to protesters in Beijing during the Olympics.

Basically, the carefully scripted nature of these political conventions is now enforced, brutally if necessary, limiting the activity of the free press; one more boot on the neck of democracy in America.

Beijing 2008

nospam@example.com (Guy McArthur) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:27:09 -0400

The Olympics have been incredibly entertaining this year. I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens games, but I've been glued to the set this time around. Originally I planned to just subscribe to the NBColympics.com 'favorite videos' RSS feed but two things ruined that plan: a) the competition was too good to wait and b) it requires a Windows machine or an Intel Mac.

So that has been the only technical travesty of these games. Microsoft will find some way to screw you once again. Apparently they paid for the rights to provide the online video, so used it to push their latest .NET platform instead of the well-established industry standards in cross-platform online video (e.g. Flash/H.264 like YouTube). I can put up with waiting for primetime broadcasts and have mostly managed to avoid seeing headlines that spoiled the action.

Phelps is certainly the greatest Olympian of all time. But don't forget 32-year-old Jason Lezak, whose clutch relay swims won two of those golds. The moment of the Games was when he beat the French dude Bernard, who smugly figured his team had, as promised, "smashed" the Americans.

Another great moment was when Constantina Tomescu, the Romanian, pulled ahead in the middle of the woman's marathon, building an unchallenged lead and cruising alone to the finish. She's a 38-year-old mom! And of course, following the theme of "middle-aged" world-class athletes, there was swimmer Dara Torres at 41 picking up several medals.

I tuned out a lot of the gymnastics except for the team finals, Shawn John doing incredible leaps but Moscow-born Nastia Luikin having better finishes. The age of the Chinese gymnasts appears to be finally getting some IOC investigation, but I doubt anything will come of it.

Continue reading "Beijing 2008"

More TED Talks

nospam@example.com (Guy McArthur) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:47:54 -0400

I've been trying to get caught up on the TED talks podcast. Here are some micro-reviews of the best talks I've watched recently, a follow-up to my first post on the subject.

Richard Dawkins: Though there are no new ideas in this talk, Dawkins pulls together quantum theory and evolutionary biology to explain how narrow our slice of reality really is.
Aubrey de Grey: Makes a well-reasoned case that 'Ending Aging' is challenge that biomedicine can, and should, tackle.
Keith Barry: Magician / mentalist Keith Barry was stupendous. I'm still trying to figure out how he did those tricks. In the one at the end where he's smashing the paper cups, I'm gonna take a stab and guess that from his angle, he can see which cup has a nail under it. When he's driving the car blind-folded maybe he has driven the exact route so many times, gradually decreasing his vision, that he gets to where he can do it. I could be completely wrong of course....
Nathan Mrhyvold: I didn't think I'd like the former Microsofter and intellectual property miner. But I was really blown away with the diversity of his interests. You've gotta admit that he lives an amazing life. And hey, check out the whale penises.
Susan Blackmore: Lays down a solid foundation for memetics in this highly thought-provoking talk.
Peter Diamandis: Just a real brief slideshow of Stephen Hawking's zero-G flight, which was cool to see. Hopefully there will be a talk from him on the X-Prize or space entrepreneurship at some point.
George Dyson: Shows some amazing log entries and photos of the first real computer hackers, in the 1950's at Princeton.
Mark Bittman: Although he admits to not being a vegetarian, he puts forth a damning case on the industrialization of food, especially the wastefulness of the beef industry. Although he comes off sounding like the stereotypical self-righteous Leftist, it's hard to argue with his conclusions.

The Chronic

nospam@example.com (Guy McArthur) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:53:52 -0400

An in-depth look at the quasi-legal pot industry in California. My favorite part? The author freely admits to toking up with his subjects. It's nice to see a token element of the old new journalism... a breath of fresh air as it were... ahem!