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MonthMay 2009

End of the War on Drugs? Dream on.

May 15, 2009 /

Unfortunately, it’s the name he doesn’t like, not the policy. […]

According to the Journal, “Mr. Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate—and likely more controversial—stance on the nation’s drug problems….The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.”

Where have we heard this before? From Barry McCaffrey, Bill Clinton’s drug czar.

Full Story: Hit and Run.

(via Radley Balko).

As always, I recommend you read Balko’s Overkill (available in print or free PDF), his chronicle of how Reagan turned the “War on Drugs” into an actual war by militarizing the police, and how the Clinton administration escalated it.

Unless the Obama administration is planning on de-militarizing the police and/or legalizing drugs, they are not ending the drug war.

Training the Police State’s Next Generation

May 15, 2009 /

boy scout cops

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

New York Times: Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More

In Attics and Closets, ‘Biohackers’ Discover Their Inner Frankenstein

May 15, 2009 /

In Massachusetts, a young woman makes genetically modified E. coli in a closet she converted into a home lab. A part-time DJ in Berkeley, Calif., works in his attic to cultivate viruses extracted from sewage. In Seattle, a grad-school dropout wants to breed algae in a personal biology lab.

These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes. Some of them buy DNA online, then fiddle with it in hopes of curing diseases or finding new biofuels.

But are biohackers a threat to national security? […]

The man on the other end of the line was Nils Gilman, a researcher with Monitor 360, a San Francisco company that provides “geo-strategic” research. Mr. Gilman declined to identify his client, saying only that it’s a branch of the U.S. government involved in biosecurity. “I think they want to know, is this something we need to worry about?” he said — particularly, could the biohackers’ gadgets and methods, in the wrong hands, create dangerous pathogens?

Wall Street Journal: In Attics and Closets, ‘Biohackers’ Discover Their Inner Frankenstein

New Yorker Summit Video: Nassim N. Taleb and Robert Shiller

May 14, 2009 /

(via Alex Burns)

Last minute LOST theory: Locke is Jacob

May 13, 2009 /

The season finale is already on in some parts of the country, but thanks to the time dysfunction I have to wait a couple more hours before it starts.

Here’s a current favorite from the ever insightful Wadester23:

Has anybody directly interacted w/ themselves from another timeline? If Locke is Jacob.. google “The Circle” from ‘Land of the Lost’

Anyone have a good link for a summary of “The Circle”? I didn’t find one during my first initial quick search.

Lost Fathers and the Issac Complex – Guest Post

May 13, 2009 /

Guest Post: Lost Fathers and the Issac Complex
by Edward Wilson

Lost is exploring, or perhaps creating, a non-freudian father issue which I’m going to call the Issac complex. Rather than a sexual trine involving the mother, this father issue centers around the father’s betrayal and abandoning of the child. Psychologically this is very similar territory to that explored by Fight Club. The biblical story of Issac and Abraham is that god asks Abraham to sacrifice or murder his son Issac as an act of faith and that just as he is about to kill his son, God relents in this demand. This story is recounted in Lost.

Character names are very significant in Lost and the ultimate authority on the island is named Jacob, who biblically the son of Issac. Interestingly Jacob seems to have a tendency to turn on and banish his representative leaders. Additionally, Jack’s father, Christian Sheppard is taking over as his spokesperson.

Whereas Fight Club locates the solution to this issue in the creation and assumption of a new image of masculinity, the aggressive trickster figure of Tyler Durden, Lost has thus far shown us two solutions. We
are shown forgiveness and acceptance of the bad dad in Hurley’s story and violent rejection of the betraying father in John Locke and Sawyer’s murder of John’s father.

Given the Gnostic themes of the show it behooves me to point out that the ultimate example of the bad dad theme would be the Gnostic Demiurge or the bad creator god. In Demiurgic Gnosticism the creator god is an evil entity that has trapped us in this creation. The Gnostic Christ, or son, would be expressed in those same two modes, rejection of the Father’s world or forgiveness and redemption of it.

Obama – Yes We Can = Thank You Satan

May 12, 2009 /

(via Sloppy Unruh)

The psychology and sociology of drinking

May 12, 2009 /

There’s more to alcohol than getting pissed but you’d never know it from the papers. In a period of public hand wringing over ‘binge drinking culture’, our understanding of the ‘culture bit’ usually merits no more than an admission that people do it in groups and this is often implicit in the work of psychologists.

In a recent Psychological Bulletin review on the determinants of binge drinking, psychologists Kelly Courtney and John Polich devote only a few sparse paragraphs to the social issues in an otherwise impressive review, despite the fact that drinking alcohol is one of the most socially meaningful and richly symbolic activities in our culture. […]

But it is not just the meaning of drinks which determine the role alcohol plays in our lives, it is the meaning of drinking as well. Sociologists have been exploring this territory for years and we would do well to read their maps, because it shows us how culture influences not only our views on drunkenness, but the experience of being intoxicated itself. […]

While health campaigns are focusing on risk reduction, research by Sheehan and Ridge with teenage girls in Australia found that any harm encountered along the way tends to be “filtered through a ‘good story,’ brimming with tales of fun, adventure, bonding, sex, gender transgressions, and relationships”.

Mind Hacks: Binge and tonic

10 Workplace Skills of the Future

May 11, 2009 /

This is worth reading, despite the author’s creating lots of new buzz words for established skills. Here they are, in older terms:

Ping Quotient – Responsiveness and Confidence – “Good Networker.”

Longbroading – Big Picture Thinking

Open Authorship – Cooperation, Collaboration. “Team Player.”

Cooperation Radar – A common leadership trait.

Multi-Capitalism – OK, I still have no idea what this means.

Mobbability – See “Open Authorship” above.

Protovation – Risk Tolerance.

Influency – Communication skills.

Signal/Noise Management – I guess this is as good a term as any for this.

Emergensight – Adaptable, Resourceful.

10 Workplace Skills of the Future

Before you get too wound-up thinking about the above list, don’t forget the mainstays: leadership, creativity, attention to detail, intelligence, work ethic, efficiency, self-promotion, etc.

Create your own video games with new DS game making game

May 11, 2009 /

Once you draw the objects that you’ll want to use in your game, you can jump into the programming tool, which asks you plain-language questions about what you want your objects to do. For example, when I put my main character dog Otis onto the screen, the game walked me through these steps:

1. Which frame of animation should I start out displaying?
2. Where should I be? Should I be alone, or attached to another object?
3. Should I be placed in exactly one spot, or in some general area?
4. Where/In what area?

Wired: Game About Making Games Takes Nintendo to New Heights

Wired: Made in Ore’s Game Design Process, Explained

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