Bizarrely, it appears his website has moved to http://65.18.174.119/

In this case I'm indulging in the vanity of wanting to capture my response to the Big Hollywood post here -- as one of a hundred+ comments to that post (many calling names and throwing around accusations of communism and the like), it doesn't exactly stand out there, and I found (as shown on the Bookworm blog) that many people aren't aware of the more substantive reasons that domestic partnership isn't a substitute for marriage. Having a single post on my own blog I can point people to as reference is useful for me. On the general issue of my posts being composed of quotes, I plead guilty. A number of my posts at the start contained lots of original content (such as this and this and this) and I thought they were pretty good, but they take a lot of work and, frankly, the web logs show them to be little-read. People seem to be much more interested in the posts that put together a bunch of info about a person or topic in one place, so I try to take topics of interest to me and put together a variety of sources of info that might provide insight someone wouldn't otherwise get. So there'll be more of the "full of quotes" type posts, but I'll try to throw in more original content as well. Also, I think I'll put back the box of "Read Me First" posts on the side to help people find that stuff. Thanks for the note!

I can't do that, but if you send me your bank account tracking info, I CAN get you in touch with people who have been trying to get a lost inheritance to you and who have an interesting proposition regarding some funds they need to smuggle out of their country through an honest American...

You've been reading AoS, huh? Indirectly -- it gets referenced on several of the blogs that are in my list, but I haven't taken the time yet to see if I actually want to add it. I have a peripheral perception that it might be a bit over the top for my tastes, but that's not really a fair opinion until I go really look at the site in more detail...

Mike Devx said: In sum, I just don't see that they've proved their case, and why should we agree to anything so radically transformative without that proof? As I'm sure you've heard any number of times, their easy answer to this is, "We just don't know, so shouldn't we do everything we can in case the worst-case predictions are true?" Someone trying to sound more moderate might say, "Shouldn't we do something? After all, Kyoto is just a commitment to do something..." After all, we're talking the End of the World here! Steps must be taken! The sunspot theory is also pushed by the documentary The Great Global Warming Scandal, which has been very influential in Britain (also probably a future post). I have no idea if it's correct (as I say, anyone can show me numbers that anything is correct related to the climate, and I have no basis on which to independently understand and verify their claims), and it's also possible that even with sun spots or some such as the cause we'd determine that there is a climate trend that will cause us some hassles, so I'm happy to go along with Lomborg's approach, which is to say, "Let's say the global warming guys are right -- what then should we do?" He provides a persuasive argument that if the non-silly predictions (see Gore and his projected water levels for the silly ones) are correct, then there just isn't much we should do. Perhaps most importantly, he expends a lot of time and energy getting the smartest minds around to figure out what we actually should do to have the maximum positive impact on the world; the project is called the Copenhagen Consensus...

(Hmm, that last comment was me...somehow I managed to fool the system into thinking I was a nobody...this happens to me a lot in life...)

I avoided American History X, not really knowing anything about it except that apparently there was messiness on the set (the star taking over or some such) and the unappetizing aspect of skinheads or some such. However, I've heard it referred to often enough that I think I'll add it to my Netflix queue...

If I object to any categorizations about The Surge, it's the claim that it was about sending in more troops. I agree with what you say about leadership...what bothers me about categorizations of the Surge, it's those who say, "It didn't really do anything! The Awakening started before the Surge! It all happened because of ethnic cleansing!" To be honest, I haven't looked into the last claim yet to know what the details are behind it (though, whatever the facts, I am always suspicious of arguments that are "Heads we suck, tails we're evil!", which that one strikes me as being) -- however, the claim that because Iraqis were pissed at Al Queda before we imported more troops and therefore the Surge made no difference simply makes no logical sense. They may have started uprising before we increased troop levels, but clearly they were much more likely to be successful once we poured in troops and engaged in the sort of tactics you mention. In addition, I always like to turn things around...if the awakening hard started and we hadn't done more to support it, and then the Iraqis had failed -- would these same commentators be saying we did the right thing by pulling out? I will engage in prediction and say: No, they would say our failure to help the Iraqis when they rose up proves how morally bankrupt we are. In any case, I'm am extremely glad that we did not repeat our moral failure after the first Gulf War, when we let the Kurds get slaughtered after they started to rise up (at our urging) -- this time we were there for the Iraqis when they needed us, and perhaps that does a little to erase our previous crime.

Excellent!

For some notes about writing this story, see this post...

Guy said: I've been working on a "magnum opus" for some time, and my plan is that when I finish it I'll go to the Creative Commons license generator, whip up the proper text and insert it, convert the document to a PDF, and then release it for free on the Internet. By the way, I remain available to provide editorial services or whatever on that if you wish (I think we talked about that some time back) -- I'd certainly like to see it come to pass, as I know you've worked on it for a long time. Something I forgot to mention, that might be useful for this kind of scenario, is the podcast/audiobook route. And in getting into detail on that I realized, as I often do, that the topic is worthy of its own post...so I'll work that up and it'll show up in a few days...

For some notes about writing this story, see this post...

some LSD users It's okay, Guy, you are among friends, you can be honest with us...

I'm with ya on Janeane -- I first recall her both on the criminally underrated Ben Stiller Show and, before or around that time, on something she was hosting, probably on Comedy Central, called "Comedy Product" (Wikipedia doesn't list this, but I'm pretty damn sure I saw it...) I've watched her career ever since. While these days I disagree with much of her politics, on reviewing her Wikipedia page, she doesn't appear to fall into the criteria for me to officially list someone in this post: That is, publicly supporting a person or cause so heinous that I would have a hard time being in the same room. The closest is an item that, interestingly, apparently caused a split with Air America...from Wikipedia: Garofalo was criticised by some of her listeners for comments she made on her April 28, 2006 show supporting Scientology-linked New York Rescue Worker's Detoxification Program, a controversial treatment for workers now suffering ailments from 9/11 clean-up efforts in New York City. On July 14, 2006, Garofalo announced that she would be leaving her co-host position on The Majority Report. Although several reasons for her departure were cited, including her outside acting responsibilities, the relationship between Garofalo and co-host Seder had become increasingly strained, largely due to her support for the Scientology-linked program. I have serious problems with scientology...however, I would still consider her support to be misguided, not a case of supporting something so obviously evil or stupid that she deserves "no beer" status. Maybe I'm getting soft in my older age...

My swing story: We used to go fishing at this big lake that had a picnic area and big solid swings where the seat was made up of inch-thick slabs of wood. I was sitting near the swings and one of my siblings was swinging. I think they may have jumped off the swing, and the big heavy wooden seat suddenly arced further, and connected with my head. This is the only time I think I have ever been rendered instantly unconscious. My next moment of awareness was my mother screaming from the car and running up to me... This story may explain more about me than I'd like.

> That also means more arable/habitable land closer to the poles The well-meaning guys in the Starship Sofa podcast -- which usually covers classic science fiction -- once exasperatedly expressed disbelief that anyone talks about the "good side" of global warming. What nuts people are to try and find something good in this! This feeling, which I think is widespread among those particularly concerned about global warming, is very revealing. It betrays an attitude in which global warming is a form of rapture or global nuclear war, after which only bad can be expected. It treats this as a form of unmitigated evil. But that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. As mentioned in my post, the climate has always changed and will always change. In the time of humans it's been hotter and it's been colder. Water levels have changed in various places significantly, requiring some of us to move or build barriers to the water. Further, when people were theorizing global cooling, we heard all the same sorts of doom and gloom. Is it really the case that if it gets colder everything will go to hell, and if it gets warmer everything will go to hell, and in neither case will anything that benefits anyone occur? The most legitimate argument in favor of that that I've heard is that we've built modern society around the current climate, so any change is bad. Perhaps. But as Lomborg has pointed out elsewhere, when in recent history water rose in some areas as much as the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) estimates will occur in the next hundred years, people simply adapted. They don't stand in the same place while the water pools around them... And, as you say, part of that change will have some benefits in some areas of the planet, and we would be irresponsible to not consider those as part of the package while we formulate a response to climate change. Here is my bet: Say we totally mitigate climate change in this century (good luck with that) -- we will then have doom and gloom newspaper articles about the benefits we have given up by not allowing some amount of warming. Because, you know, doom and gloom is what newspapers are here for, regardless of what actually happens...

I hope you listened to the Cosmonauts episode! Too cool to miss. Anyway, yeah, there were numerous questionable and unscientific aspects to the Zimbardo experiment. Thing is, maybe it did have some interesting things to say about human nature...unfortunately, as executed, we'll never know. And no academic institution would allow a psychological test of this nature today. The disturbing thing is that he continues to lecture and testify on the basis of that experiment, and (that I'm aware of) he does not do so in the context of all the flaws of the test.

You've touched on a term that has intrigued me for a while (and by intrigued, I mean 'slightly annoyed me each time I hear it'). To 'beat' something is to overcome an obstacle you were not intended to overcome. But this is exactly the opposite of what is happening in most games. In the context of a game, you are overcoming an obstacle that was specifically designed for you to overcome it. If play testing showed that people couldn't get past the obstacle, the designer wouldn't cheer for his victory over gamers, he would dumb it down. In this sense, you finish a game but you don't 'beat' it. However, there are those games or encounters that can indeed be 'beaten' in the real sense. If a designer purposefully or accidentally created a situation that no sane gamer can overcome, it's a different matter. For example, the Babelfish puzzle in Hitchhiker's Guide, or those MMOs where a placeholder 'unbeatable' boss has been left in an unfinished dungeon to keep players out, and the players figure out a clever way to kill it -- in those cases, the game is indeed being 'beat'. I would like to petition for all gaming podcasters and journalists to forever more replace 'beat' with 'finished the game in the manner intended by the designer'. Join with me in my quest!

You bring up some interesting points that both provide an opportunity to post more cool videos and to talk about opportunity costs. We actually can do something about asteroids (I'll discuss that in my next post). It's not clear we can do much about global warming. We can do something (like the Kyoto protocol), but probably at a great cost for very small benefit. The Wikipedia page about the Kyoto protocol contains a discussion of the cost-benefit analysis. Of particular interest there is the reference to the Copenhagen consensus, a panel of scientists who regularly look at what would be the most effective way to spend money to improve life on the planet. Their #1 item: Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin A and zinc). Of the top #30 they proposed, global warming didn't make it, based on small benefit for big cost. (Neither did stopping asteroids, alas!) Of course, that's controversial, and the Wikipedia page on the project covers some of the criticism. The important thing is to realize that there are costs, possibly huge costs, and they won't "stop" global warming in any case, most likely just nibble at the edges. Or, to be more accurate, "climate change" is a constant...throughout history the planet has gotten much colder and much hotter at various periods than it is today, and that is going to continue regardless, though for short periods we might be able to push it a degree or two in one direction or another. So stopping asteroids may not be the most cost-effective thing...but it may actually be more doable and certainly much cheaper, not to mention just plain cool. More on that next...