Time to close some tabs

I've been wanting to write about most of the stories behind the following links, sometimes starting a draft, sometimes leaving my browser open for days just to avoid extending my already absurdly long list of bookmarks (sleep mode is my new friend).

Hours, days, a week goes by and I just can't force myself to write about something a week old. It's odd how something seemingly so important is considerably less so a week later. But that's the nature of blogging, and news in general (I never claimed to be a great blogger). Also, distraction.

Image from Toolfools

In no particular order, some interesting stuff, even if a few are a bit old:

First, a few links related to what I'm reading. Glenn Greenwald's new book, "No Place to Hide," so far, is okay. I should finish it tonight.

• UPS Insists That It Is Not Helping The NSA 'Interdict' Packages To Install Backdoors
• This review of Greenwald's new book, "No Place to Hide" by the NYT's Michael Kinsley is inept, almost comically so (I will offer a review of the book soon).

'800 dead babies: if it could, the religious right would bury this story in the same septic tank.' Ignore the tactless linkbait phrasing: this is a big and awfully tragic story. Via The Prussian.

'The 'Miracle' Berry That Could Replace Sugar' and help millions effectively fight obesity.

Remember the Gibson Guitar raids? There may be more to that story.

This piece is over a month old, but I remember wanting to discuss it. I just don't remember why, exactly (obviously something to do with the ousting of the Mozilla CEO, Brenden Eich). It's still a good read however.

• But if you read this blog post from Mozilla, it is maddening. What are they talking about? I'm so sick of vague language--it probably was mostly read as an apology for letting Hitler run their business. BUT, because it's so vague, it can just as easily be read to suggest that they are very sorry for their intolerance--evinced by ousting a man for having an opinion. Even though it was a very common opinion, one shared by Barrack Obama at the time.

Three links from Slate Star Codex:

• 'Weak Men Are Superweapons'
• 'Infinite Debt'
• And 'Nerds can be Bees Too,' which led me to this old post by Bryan Caplan, where he is excoriated in the comments (mainly because people freak the hell out over someone wanting open immigration--which wasn't even mentioned in that post).

I always wanted to try something like this. I tend to think I could easily succeed, but if my Thanksgiving experiences are any indication, probably not.

I want to write a post about anonymity on the Internet, which was partly inspired by this post from the Last Psychiatrist. I will write that post one day.

So VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and White House press Secretary Jay Carney resigned. Why does everything feel like it's all heavily scripted, like a bad TV show? Probably because it is.

• Is it just me, or are presidential and senatorial politics are feeling very Orwellian, almost Soviet when it comes to appearances? I know congressional politics is highly susceptible to populism, but at least it's a lot more transparent--which makes me reconsider term lengths for the other two (but that's not about to happen).

Comcast, Netflix, and data caps... If you, like me, have given up watching TV through traditional means, be afraid, be very afraid. Relatedly, I've found if you spend enough time searching for channels you like--and they probably all exist--YouTube can all but replace your entire visual entertainment diet. Some people say YouTube is a bubble about to burst; I say it's just getting warmed up.

Possible blog post spoilers (lol, like anyone cares). Stuff I found in the last day or two I kinda want to write about:

'GOP House Votes To Leave States Alone On Medical Marijuana.' Despite the headline, note that the GOP votes in favor were decidedly a minority of GOP votes. At least they allowed a vote on it.

'Scientists Report Finding Reliable Way to Teleport Data'

'It's Time to Stop Babying Mars'

New Interstellar trailer. And why I dislike many "space movies"

Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine together in a big budget sci-fi, directed by Chris Nolan... What could go wrong?

From the looks of the trailer, it surprisingly seems to be fairly balanced between a character-driven story and one driven by events or the environment.

Although space travel obviously plays a crucial role here, as a sci-fi fan of the Trekkie persuasion--and from what little I can glean out of this--it seems that space, and space travel won't receive the attention it should. Traveling through a wormhole and speeding through space I fear will be an afterthought, compared to the characters and the story (of course the characters and story should come first, but the space aspect should be emphasized, else why bother?). Like space isn't interesting, except as a way to draw in crowds--as if it's a troublesome hurdle to be quickly overcome and forgotten.
 
Oh yeah, and I'm sure it will be a great thriller movie. Because all space movies have to be psychological thrillers, can't have any awestruck adventure with a focus on sci-fi concepts now. I am sick of that Hollywood rule. Because apparently space isn't the fantastical vast sea of beautiful, mysterious, and mind-bending things it truly is. It's a backdrop. It's the thing between point A and point B--no need to explore. Spend a couple minutes in a spaceship and throw some CGI nebulae in the window. Remember Prometheus? Alien? Hell, even the new Star Trek movies have no sense of adventure. Don't have time for space, must kill bad guys.

Why can't we just have a space adventure film? I know I'm probably in the minority on this (likely because I spent way too much time reading Heinlein and watching classic Trek), but I'm tired of space movies that don't care about space. If you can replace outer space with say, the ground, a cruise ship, or a magic portal without affecting the main story, then it's a horrible "space movie." It's just a story that happens to be in space.

I hope I'm wrong. It's clear this movie isn't about space, and that's fine. It's about saving humanity or something, characters maturing. But the name is Interstellar, there better be a lot of time and emphasis devoted to space/space travel and how freaking awesome that is.

We just need a Death Star now

Life imitates art, or something.

Army's new helmet concept

Wookie hunter

Now that we've got laser guns, spaceships, and lightsabers, should we convene and formally establish the Galactic Empire already and build a Death Star? I mean, we've already got the blueprints for it.

Then again, perhaps we should wait till we have hovering cars. And it won't be long until you see the closest thing to a living, breathing Darth Vader on planet Earth.

There isn't much time. We've got to prepare!

The world isn't going to hell in a handbasket

Before people have started using that or a similar phrase in the affirmative, the world has only gotten better. We are all richer, live longer, less hungry than before, and it's only getting better.

Yet as we always have, we still complain like things are getting worse. This pessimism bias afflicts us all (perhaps that is what keeps us improving things).

Speculate about the Flynn effect, natural selection, availability of capital, population (more hands=more work=more stuff), whatever you want: life generally gets a little better everyday.



Let's hope we continue the trend.

Why patriotic, law-and-order types should consider marijuana legalization

My headline is a bit over-broad, but instead of saying xenophobic, anti-immigrant right wingers, I'll be both polite and accurate:

People who strongly oppose weak border security/illegal immigration (who also often oppose drug legalization for different reasons) at least in part due to the drug cartels and the violence they cause, more than they oppose some citizens getting high, should reconsider their position on the latter.

But why give those dirty hippies more weed, when we can solve both problems, if only the government would do its job! Well, the government is doing its job about as good as it is going to do. And it sucks at it. This is why we libertarians, conservatives, and a few liberals oppose big government and its endless programs.

Legalization, (even if highly regulated) is doing a better job at harming the cartels than prohibition could ever do:

Facing stiff competition from pot grown legally and illegally north of the border, the price for a kilogram of Mexican schwag has plummeted by 75 percent, from $100 to $25, the Post reports:

Farmers in the storied "Golden Triangle" region of Mexico's Sinaloa state, which has produced the country's most notorious gangsters and biggest marijuana harvests, say they are no longer planting the crop…increasingly, they're unable to compete with US marijuana growers.

As demand for pot is satisfied better elsewhere, what happens? The cartels turn to other banned-in-America substances.

Mexican heroin is flooding north as U.S. authorities trying to contain an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse have tightened controls on synthetic opiates such as hydrocodone and OxyContin. As the pills become more costly and difficult to obtain, Mexican trafficking organizations have found new markets for heroin in places such as Winchester, Va., and Brattleboro, Vt., where, until recently, needle use for narcotics was rare or unknown.

I'm not going to win over many people saying we should legalize heroin, too. The cartels are following the path of least resistance, economically speaking. The demand is always going to be there. We can have cartels supply that demand, or we can have somewhat more responsible American citizens and businesses supply it.

That doesn't mean legalize everything, it just means that fighting this with blood and guns has accomplished very little over the decades, while marijuana legalization changed the cartel's behavior practically overnight.

If this were a science experiment, you would note well the variable that had an effect. And if you were a scientist with half a brain, you might follow that course.

Dawn of the sequel of the planet of the apes of the San Franciscan tropical jungle

Why is San Fransisco covered in vines and turning into a rainforest? Is it from the virus? Does it make apes and plants grow smarter and stronger? Or is it global warming?

I bet it's both.

Still, this new trailer makes me want to see it. It looks mind-numbingly predictable, but the whole intelligent ape society draws me in. A lot they could do with that. A whole lot they could do with that, and much better than the original, especially the awful 2001 film.

Gotham, sans Batman: the TV series. This is a thing now.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the coolest, most interesting thing about the whole Batman universe, was, um, Batman.

Granted, there are other, cool things going on in the Batman universe besides Batman, but he's like the whole point of the thing. Not anymore it seems.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: My assumption has been that the reason this TV show can be done — rights-wise — is because Batman himself is not in it. That way, it doesn’t overlap with any films. Is that correct?

BRUNO HELLER: Certainly from Warner Bros. and DC’s business point of view, that’s why it can be done. For me, if they said, “Do Batman,” I would have said, “No.” I would have not been interested at all. I don’t think Batman works very well on TV — to have people behind masks. Frankly, all those superhero stories I’ve seen, I always love them until they get into the costume. And then it’s, “Oh, okay, they’ve ascended, they’ve stopped becoming humans.” It’s their apotheosis. They go to heaven and they’re Superman. There have been so many great versions of it. This is a version of something else entirely.

Those were sort of my first thoughts too, upon seeing the trailer--that Batman is too big for TV, and it probably has something to do with the rights. But after the wow-they're-really-doing-this-thing shock/interest wore off, I started imagining Batman movies without Batman. And all the potential coolness I initially hoped for, vanished.

Perhaps I just lack imagination. Maybe they'll pull it off:

When reading your script, I kept thinking how difficult this must have been to write — there’s so many tough decisions that need to be made, so many ways to do this idea wrong. How did you decide the tone, how realistic vs. comic, which villains you would use? Can you talk me through the creative process?

The first thing was starting with Jim Gordon, who is the most human and real and normal person in the DC pantheon. What would the city of Gotham look like to a young rookie cop coming into this world? And that’s where we calibrated. This is a world that’s going to become that familiar world of Batman, but it’s not there yet. It’s an embryo. A lot of the work was reverse engineering the story to look at what these characters were like when they younger. Penguin, for instance, is not a powerful gang leader, he’s a gofer for a gangster. It’s about giving the world room to grow, but at the same time giving the fun and pleasure and drama of that heightened world. One of the great things about the Batman world is [the characters] have no super powers. Nobody flies or leaps over buildings. You start with psychology and that’s where we build from.

So it's going to be a cop show in Gotham city. That's either good, or really bad.

If it's Gotham City: The Wire, hell yeah! It would make my day to watch Jim Gordon and his rag-tag group of mostly straight cops navigating the corrupt waters of the system, whilst trying to take out bad guys, not infrequently bumping into future Batman villains.

If it's Law and Order: Gotham, no thanks, I've got to keep a sharp eye on my Florida paint drying and my Death Valley grass growing.

Link via Ace, who warns: "Coming soon: Jimmy Olsen, Boy Reporter."
I hope not.

 

Dude

I was going to put this in the Mystery Link in the sidebar, but it's just too good (too good to check as well).

But my skeptical spidey sense is going crazy.

He's like, living the life of James Bond, without any actual spying . . . just consistently escaping death in sensational ways.

Little late on this

But good stuff.

Maybe I should hang out on twitter more often.