Better late than never! EsoZone t-shirts are now available. I just got a sample one, and Bob does it look sharp!
Artwork by the incomparable Ian McEwan.
MonthOctober 2009
I just noticed that I never linked to NPR’s interview and Democracy Now’s interview with Jeff Sharlet on the subject:
Democracy Now Interview:
JEFF SHARLET: The Family began as this domestic organization way back in the 1930s, a union-busting organization. But by the ’50s, they—
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, union-busting organization?
JEFF SHARLET: Oh, they—it’s part of that invisible hand of the market. They believe that organized labor is ungodly, to put it mildly, perhaps Satanic. It began with this vision in 1935 that the New Deal and organized labor were literally a Satanic conspiracy they had to fight back.
In the 1950s, in the Cold War, they started moving overseas and identifying strongmen, dictators, who they thought were effective in the fight against communism, who they thought were effective in the fight for free markets. And Suharto was one of those men. You know, Suharto, who—even the CIA, which helped him orchestrate his coup, later said it was one of the worst mass killings of the twentieth century.
The Family leaders called it a spiritual revolution and began sending delegations of congressmen, oil executives, over to meet with Suharto. They then hosted Suharto, actually, in the United States Senate for a Senate prayer breakfast with their members, to which they invited the then-Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They have that kind of access. And they were able to arrange that kind of reach for Suharto. And they effectively became his most persuasive champions within the US Congress, as the United States funneled, as we know, just billions of dollars toward his military regime.
You know what’s just too damn liberal? The Bible! But don’t worry, those crusaders for truth at Conservapedia are working on a new translation of the Bible that is meant to fulfill the following requirements:
1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”
I’m sure The Family will love number 7. The timing of this is meaningful, as Michael Moore’s new film uses Christianity as a wedge against capitalism.
Conservapedia: Conservative Bible Project
(via Theoretick)
Dean Baker:
The NYT reported on discussions in the Obama administration to implement a tax credit of $3,000 for companies that hire additional workers. The hope of course is that this will be a spur to job growth.
Most studies show that labor demand is highly inelastic (this is why increases in the minimum wage have little effect on employment), so a tax credit that modestly decreases the cost of labor is unlikely to have much effect on employment. On the other hand, there would be many opportunities for employers to game this tax credit.
The most obvious is simply bringing some jobs on payroll that are currently contracted out. For example, if a company currently contracts out its custodial services it can instead hire people on its payroll to do this work and get the $3,000 tax credit. This would lead to no net gain in jobs. It would have been helpful if this piece had included some analysis of this tax proposal.
Baker continues on to examine some problems with the $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit and concludes “There was an enormous amount of misinformation about home prices distributed by the housing industry and the media during the bubble years. It would be helpful if the media tried to do a better job informing the public about predictable movements in house prices now.”
Prospect: The Easy Way to Game the New Hire Tax Credit: Hire Your Contractors
(via Jorn Barger)
New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible for communication from person to person through the power of thought — with the help of electrodes, a computer and Internet connection.
Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) can be used for capturing brain signals and translating them into commands that allow humans to control (just by thinking) devices such as computers, robots, rehabilitation technology and virtual reality environments.
This experiment goes a step further and was conducted by Dr Christopher James from the University’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The aim was to expand the current limits of this technology and show that brain-to-brain (B2B) communication is possible.
A New York-based anarchist has been arrested by the FBI and charged with hindering prosecution after he allegedly used the social networking site Twitter to help protesters at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh evade the police.
Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (£19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September. […]
The FBI said that as well as the computers and radio scanning equipment discovered at the motel, they also confiscated from Madison’s home 11 gas masks, five pairs of goggles and test tubes and beakers. They said they also took away anarchist books and pictures of Marx and Lenin.
Guardian: New York man accused of using Twitter to direct protesters during G20 summit
Unconscionable.
In the 18 months since the “missing link of electronics” was discovered in Hewlett-Packard’s laboratories in Silicon Valley, California, memristors have spawned a hot new area of physics and raised hope of electronics becoming more like brains. […]
Memristors behave a bit like resistors, which simply resist the flow of electric current. But rather than only respond to present conditions, a memristor can also “remember” the last current it experienced.
That’s an ability that would usually require many different components. “Each memristor can take the place of 7 to 12 transistors,” says Stan Williams, head of HP’s memristor research. What’s more, it can hold its memory without power. By contrast, “transistors require power at all times and so there is a significant power loss through leakage currents”, Williams explains. […]
The similarities between memristive circuits and the behaviour of some simple organisms suggests the hybrid devices could also open the way for “neuromorphic” computing, says Williams, in which computers learn for themselves, like animals.
New Scientist: Electronics ‘missing link’ united with rest of the family
More background: New Scientist: Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence
(Via Chris 23)
Sitting up straight in your chair isn’t just good for your posture – it also gives you more confidence in your own thoughts, according to a new study.
Researchers found that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job.
On the other hand, those who were slumped over their desks were less likely to accept these written-down feelings about their own qualifications.
The results show how our body posture can affect not only what others think about us, but also how we think about ourselves, said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
Science Daily: Body Posture Affects Confidence In Your Own Thoughts, Study Finds
Good news!
GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!! I don’t have the official documents yet, but my lawyer informs me that the Appellate Division has dismissed the case against me! This means the jurisdiction of my case will move from Orleans County, NY to here in Georgia …where I live, so I can never again be forced to leave my home & rent an apartment in New York to fight the case!
It also upholds the current joint custody agreement that lets my son reside with me [as long as no SubGenius materials are in my house]! I’ll be sure to post scans of the papers when I get them, and of course there’s probably some kind of legal loopholes that might come up, but this is GREAT news! Thank you so much everyone, I could never have gotten here without you!!
I do still owe about $50,000+ in legal bills, and the payments are getting really tough to make with my husband laid off, so if anyone has a bit to spare, I promise to send massive Slack waves of thanks for your donation!
It might seem a waste of Rev. Magdalen’s money and the tax-funded court system to spend so much only to have things return to the way they were in the first place, with Rev. Magdalen having custody of her son. But one concrete change did occur in all this. Rev. Magdalen is forbidden from having SubGenius material in her home. SubGenius material such as books I helped write. If you have my writing in your home, if you have SubGenius material in your home, if you have children, this case should matter to you. You may be next to spend $140,000 for the privilege of being left alone, minus some of your stuff.
To donate directly to Rev. Magdelen, use paypal to send any amount to magdalen@subgenius.com. To send funds to her lawyer write or call Christopher S. Mattingly 42 Delaware Ave Ste 120, Buffalo, NY 4202-3924 USA (telephone: +1-716-849-1333 ext 351).
It’s amazing and disgusting that she is still being denied the right have SubGenius materials in her home. How can this possibly be legal?
Forty years after the uproarious heyday of the alternative press, writer Alan Moore is launching the 21st century’s first underground magazine from his home town of Northampton, a community that is right at the geographical, political and economic heart of the country; one which has half its high street boarded up and is at present dying on its arse, just like everywhere else. […]
As cheap and beautiful as a heartbreaking teenage prostitute, Dodgem Logic has a cover price of £2.50, with its content similarly tailored to the fiscal toilet-bowl that we are currently engaged in sliding down. Regular columnists provide delicious, inexpensive recipes, wide-ranging medical advice, simple instructions for creating stylish clothing and accessories from next to nothing, guides to growing your own dinner by becoming a guerrilla gardener, and, in the first of Dave (The Self-Sufficient-ish Bible) Hamilton’s environmental columns, a bold experiment in living with no money. The same approach to helping readers deal with socio-economic meltdown and a blitz of repossessions is there in upcoming features on the present-day resurgence of the squatters’ movement, or in our communiqués from the Steampunk/ Post-Civilisation gang on how to start rebuilding culture and society before those things have broken down completely and our children are reduced to battering each other to a bloody pulp with their now-useless X-Boxes in a dispute over the last tub of pot noodles.
Also, an expanded and illustrated version of Alan Moore’s history of pornography, originally published in Arthur has been published: 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom.
(via Arthur)
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