From http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/

Back in 1971, when the web was still twenty years off and the smallest computers were the size of delivery vans, before the founders of Google had even managed to get themselves born, the polymath economist Herbert A. Simon wrote maybe the most concise possible description of our modern struggle: “What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” As beneficiaries of the greatest information boom in the history of the world, we are suffering, by Simon’s logic, a correspondingly serious poverty of attention.

The audio for the This American Life episode that I mentioned recently has been posted. I have it available here if you, for whatever reason, can't get it there.

Just listen to the first 45min of it - I guarantee* that you will come out of it with the capacity to form an informed opinion on the TARP/bailout, whatever that opinion may be. Do the patriotic thing and learn about this current event.

*If you aren't satisfied, I'll refund in full any money you paid to me for any services rendered that are directly related to this event

Tags: current events, economics, tarp

Being the dork that I am, as I was going through my Friday night I tuned in to the latest installment of This American Life on my local NPR station about the banking crisis. I consider myself to be a reasonably well-informed person, and I don't think there was any particular fact they presented that I didn't already know; the crisis, however, was explained so smoothly that I came out feeling even better informed because the neurons in my brain were re-wired such that I could think about the problem much more efficiently: the thought process became untangled. I would post a link to the actual audio, but it's not yet available: it should be required listening for anyone wishing to discuss the TARP or the bailouts in general (especially these people).

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love NPR.

This is mainly intended for people who have at one point lived in and around the DC area...

Poll #1323442 Kojo Nnamdi Roundup
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Have you heard of Kojo Nnamdi?

If you have heard of him...

The least significant digit of the current minute is:

In case you haven't heard already:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/a-readers-guide-to-the-blagojevich-complaint/?hp

This makes me physically ill.

I just thought of this old Onion article today.

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

Because I haven't seen a musical in awhile, and Les Miserable is a really good one:
"Les Misbarack"


And, keeping with the musical theme, what I presume is a parody (but I'm not completely sure):
"The Enchanted Republican Forest"


2012 days since the declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq

Current Mood: politics, videos

Impressive:

Tags: current events, economics, elections, videos

From the Chicago Sun Times

[...]
When the [Commission on Presidential Debates] took over [the presidential debates], in 1987, the president of the League of Women Voters, the organization that had previously sponsored the debates, had this to say:

"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debates . . . because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The league has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.''

[...]

From the NY Times

[...]
While both candidates run on the premise that Washington Is Broken, I’m disinclined to disagree, only to add: our good faith with ourselves is broken, too, a cost of silencing or at best mumbling the most crucial truths. Among these, pre-eminently, is the fact that torture evaporates our every rational claim to justice, and will likely be the signature national crime of our generation — a matter in which we are, by the very definition of democracy, complicit. (Perhaps some unconsciously hope that electing a man who was himself tortured will provide moral cover, just as Batman’s losing his parents to violent crime forever renews his revenger’s passport.)

No wonder we crave an entertainment like “The Dark Knight,” where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion.

It may be possible to see the nightly news in a similar light, where any risk of uncovering the vulnerable yearnings, all the tenderness aroused by, yes, the seemingly needless death of a promising young actor or of a brilliant colleague, all hope of conversation between the paranoid blues and the paranoid reds, all that might bind us together, is forever armored in a gleeful and cynical cartoon of spin and disinformation. Keywords — “change,” “victory” — are repeated until adapted out of meaning, into self-canceling glyphs. Meanwhile, pigs break into the lipstick store, and we go hollering down the street after them, relieving ourselves of another hour or day or week of clear thought.

Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership’s implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher’s resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another’s final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we’ve seen, only sure we’re primed for the sequel.

If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us.

Tags: batman, current events, debates

Also: Please please please </näivity>

Edit: Anyone, without hearing the argument from both sides in court, want to lay me [hypothetical?] odds that Obama and McCain are both on the Texas ballot come November?

Anyone want to lay the same odds in the reverse case? (i.e. odds that Barr is on the ballot in November if one of the other campaigns launched a suit with the exact same relevant facts with the roles reversed?)

Edit 2: What I mean to ask is this: are the odds in the second case higher, lower, or the same as the first case above?

Current Mood: Dreaming of barnyard animal cosmetic tips