The Breaking Time

The Rundown: Quotable edition

For our first piece. This, in a nutshell, is why I distrust manifestos. Great satirical work from Kim Mok.

Knee-deep in journalism work (yes, readers, this comes as a total surprise, I know), so this edition of The Rundown will focus on some apt quotes and thoughts.

The following timely "there is no they" gem is from Eli Sagan's The Honey and the Hemlock, on the thorny relationship between democracy and paranoia:

The one psychological mode of action that almost everyone recognizes as intrinsic to the paranoid position (and, in its most exaggerated form, intrinsic to paranoia) is projection: "...the attribution to external figures of motivations, drives, or other tensions that are repudiated and intolerable in oneself." If we want to conquer the world, we announce that "they" are the ones who are so intent. If we cannot abide the tolerance that democratic society demands, we discover conspiracies whereby "they" are intent on overthrowing the democracy. Hofstadter points out how the Ku Klux Klan, violently anti-Catholic, imitated the Catholic Church by wearing priestly robes, erecting elaborate ritual structures, and creating a complex hierarchy. What the paranoid personality cannot do is to create a significant psychological distance between him- or herself and others. To a degree, there are no others, only friends (a part of me) and enemies (the projections of the bad, repudiated parts of me). Lacking an integrated, internal sense of self, the paranoid cannot conceive of an independent, possibly different, even indifferent, other. Democratic society, on the other hand, rests on the fundamental assumption of the independence and integrity of other people, that they be allowed wishes and desires and lives independent of what others may require of them. The paranoid cannot abide tolerance. People who do not believe in God must allow prayer in the schools; people who do not believe their identity is dependent on a piece of cloth; must recite the Pledge of Allegiance; women who get pregnant by mistake must have the child. Every democratic society has its frontier on which paranoid forces struggle with those of tolerance.

Sex positive feminist badass Susie Bright on some lessons from her years in the trenches. There are some major points here that many activists still need to learn:

I've been thinking a lot about the abortion fight that's going on right now. What if the women's movement had kept its eye on the ball? What if we had realized what was at stake? We saw it, the Moral Majority was being formed at this time in the '80s, and we should have been saying, "We need to pull together everyone we've got and strategize on these issues because we're in for the fight of our lives and our daughters' lives." But, no, we had a sectarian battle over pornography. The FBI didn't bother to infiltrate the women's movement, but if they had, they couldn't have come up with a better plan to sow the seed of destruction. I'll still go to places where a feminist activist gingerly approaches me, not quite sure we still have anything to talk about and worried about whether I'm on the right side. It's a little hard to keep that crap up at this point.

Since the world's had more than its usual share of terrifying uncertainty lately, I find the late Octavia Butler's A Few Rules for Predicting the Future more relevant than ever:

"So do you really believe that in the future we're going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?" a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I'd described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming.

"I didn't make up the problems," I pointed out. "All I did was look around at the problems we're neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters."

"Okay," the young man challenged. "So what's the answer?"

“There isn’t one,” I told him.

“No answer? You mean we’re just doomed?” He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke.

“No,” I said. “I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

Amen to that. Good night, everyone. Dream well.

The Rundown: DADT, monopolies, copper thieves (and anime)

Police arrest Iraq war veteran Rob Smith during protests at the White House against the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy Nov. 15. Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

* “We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.” 

That one quote, from an anonymous special ops soldier interviewed as part of the Pentagon's comprehensive report on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, sums up the absurdity of the whole matter in the most succinct way possible. Interestingly, the rank-and-file of the military doesn't see any problem with allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly. Funny how dealing with life or death situations tends to reveal how utterly stupid and irrelevant bigotry is. Hopefully this is DADT's nail in the coffin, and gay and lesbian soldiers will soon be able to serve openly, without bullshit.

* European Commission opens anti-trust investigation against Google European regulators seem ready to rake Google over the alleged prejudicial nature of its algorithms, ad programs and data. I'm not shocked, at all, and in the grand scheme of things, this sort of response is long overdue. 

Awhile back, I wrote about Nation vs. Corporation, and how Big Tech would likely be the next target, as the gleam of its "we'll bring you the future" message wears off, with governments and populations wanting its sudden power to be reined in. We'll see how it goes.

* AT&T offering bounties for copper thieves In Atlanta, AT&T is offering $3,000 rewards for information leading to the capture of thieves that are scavenging telephone lines for the valuable metal, as one of their recent heists left thousands without telephone service.

This is the latest evolution of an ongoing problem. Copper thieves have been a problem for years, especially in areas where the poverty rate is high. Hardware stores like Lowe's frequently hire extra security to protect from such theft.

As cultures have become more tech-based, the resources that technology guzzles become more and more valuable. Inevitably, that demand leads to such materials fetching a pretty penny, especially with growing economic insecurity. The black market ends up savaging one part of infrastructure to sell to another and I don't think bounties alone will overcome that.

* Every anime intro ever. Really. Try not to have a seizure:

The Rundown: bodies on the highway

The body of a man killed execution style and wrapped in bin liners lies by the side of the Acapulco-Mexico highway November 16, 2006. REUTERS/Stringer

*Drug Wars A stunning set of pictures inside Mexico's drug war. Fair warning, the picture above is one of the least graphic in the set, which includes everything from blinged-out .45s and narco-saints to headless bodies hanging from a bridge. A harrowing look inside how ugly a drug-fueled civil war is.

*New Haven uses SWAT team to crack down on nightlife New Haven, Conn. has apparently decided people drinking and attending strip clubs is such a dire threat that it needs to use the SWAT team — with masks and assault rifles, no less — to round up the patrons, on a search warrant that produced a single, unrelated charge. This comes on the heels of Operation Nightlife where police started rounding up clubgoers and were widely reported to have attacked and tased a Yale student. Bunny Colvin's rant from The Wire — "call something a war, and pretty soon everyone starts acting like warriors" — comes to mind.

*LGBTIQQAA Yes, that's now the going abbreviation. I remember when it was gay and lesbian, then, around the time I was in college, LGBT became popular, and that was fine. But at this point, the acronym's stretching to the point of uselessness.

There is a term, however, that covers all those groups and their struggle for rights without resorting to a ludicrous degree of political correctness or tongue-twistingly garbled abbreviations: human.

*Catholics in US overwhelmingly support homosexual unions Many do this in direct defiance of their official hierarchy, and in percentages greater, in some cases, than the rest of the mainstream populace. A reassuring sign and a reminder that adherents to a creed don't always follow the attendant hierarchy. Again, the lesson is to be careful lumping traditions into too-neat boxes. There is No They.

*Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? A surprisingly decent series on the rise, hybridization and collapse of a subculture(s?) by Steven Hyden over at The Onion's AV Club. A good look at the way grunge and alt music linked into culture trends in one of the last eras before rock n' roll (along with mass music in general) splintered or become totally retro. Particular kudos for the way Hyden manages to balance enthusiasm with a realistic look at the limits of art.

*Experimentation, orgasms and the rise of anal sex Slate journalist William Saletan looks at changing sexual trends. Interesting material here on a social revolution steadily continuing in the background, though some of the "whoa" tone in Saletan's is a little puerile.

*'39 Queen doing an acoustic (what? yes!) presentation of one of the peppiest, saddest songs ever written about space travel:

The Rundown: Quotable edition

Fuck yeah grammarpunk

I love quotes and everything to do with them and so it seems fitting to base this edition of The Rundown on telling passages that sum things up perfectly. Like so:

* "Ethnographic studies have found that, during possession, ‘spirits’ may offer opinions or solutions to moral crises and may protect the individual from trauma and despair during times of violence." Mozambique's plague of spirit possessions.

* "If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away."

Running away from slavery was once considered a diagnosable mental illness.

* "There's stories of property owners who have court orders demanding their properties be left alone and they come in and demolish them" In Montgomery, the city government is using a local blight ordinance to target low-income homes — some in the middle of renovation or construction — for demolition. The owners are often billed for the cost and, when they can't pay (now being homeless) the city seizes the property for resale. Governments used to be at least more blunt about their intentions.

* "For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine." John Adams trash talks Thomas Paine. Epically.

* "There is a transexual prostitute on every floor, to satisfy customer requests" An interesting photo series on the quasi-legal Turkish brothels.

* "Each time your heart beats, your body moves..." A beautiful video on the zen of firing a gun.

Everyone Forever Now - "Shooting a Gun" from Everynone on Vimeo.

The Rundown: Out come the scorpions

So pretty...

*The Google-Verizon plan: why you should worry Salon's Dan Gillmor has a nice nuts-and-bolts piece about exactly why the Google-Verizon deal to massively derail net neutrality is a really bad thing. Indeed it is. Should you fight it? Absolutely. 

Ars Technica has dubbed it a betrayal, and goes in even more depth about how Google Now differs drastically from their previous stance and their touted "don't be evil" ideals.

I am reminded of the old story of the Scorpion and the Frog in which, as the frog dies from the scorpion's sting in the middle of a river, the predator calmly explains that it is in its nature to sting.

This is why I don't quite understand all the "betrayal" anger, other than to (rightly) point out that Google is acting contrary to its stated ideals.

But let's be honest, Google is a company, and a very big one. Companies aren't designed for altruism, no matter how new and innovative their product. Companies are designed to make money and further their own power. That is their primary purpose and anything they tell you to the contrary is nothing but windoew-dressing. Companies, even large ones, fulfill a role and sometimes end up accomplishing good things, but that isn't what their built for.

They're built to sting, and big tech is no different from any other big business in that regard. I hope it's time that people learned that and treated them accordingly. 

* The Three Musketeers as Gangbangers Mark Kleiman, filling in for Ta-Nehisi Coates over at The Atlantic, has an excellent, witty little piece on how D'Artagnan would be dubbed a gangbanging thug in today's world, while Dumas would be ridiculed as irresponsible for such literature extolling tribal loyalty, whoring and murder.

Tongue thoroughly in cheek, and well worth a read.

* Dopey, Buzzy, Smoky—and Stupid Speaking of Kleiman, this in-depth proposal for reforming drug policy (in everything from prohibition to enforcement to rehabilitation) is also a must-read. I don't agree with all of its proposals (the alcohol tax or ban on commercial weed in particular), but it's a serious attempt at tackling a policy that's increasingly (finally!) being recognized as massively dumb in mainstream discussion.

* The New Monogamy One of the key features of this particular Breaking Time is how thoroughly the way society regards exclusivity in relationships has been thrown into disarray. Tammy Nelson takes a crack at defining how it's all — especially monogamy and marriage — shaping up under the cultural vicissitudes. A refreshing, ground-level — she's a therapist — view on an important topic.

* Chris Mohney strikes a blow against bullshit, especially of the "freedom means telling Muslims where they can pray" variety:

"Continuing the chain of imaginary offensiveness to stereotypes, I plan to open a Babies R Us next to the gay bar next to the mosque next to Ground Zero. Next to the Babies R Us I will open a pornographic bookstore, and next to that I will open a police station. Next to the police station I will open a hip-hop recording studio, and next to that I will open an Applebees. Next to the Applebees I will open a TGI Fridays (those guys HATE each other) and next to the TGI Fridays I will open a methadone clinic. Next to the methadone clinic I will open a crack house, and finally, next to that, I will open a Catholic church adjoining a daycare center for attractive boys, adjacent to which I will just blow up whatever’s there so I can erect a memorial, and next to that memorial I will open a community center dedicated to a locally inconvenient ethnicity that I hired to blow up the original structure on the memorial site. Next to that I’m just going to put up some condos."

Amen.

The Rundown: Unrealistic wars, meathook and machete

I mean, seriously, how over the top can you get...

* From Livejournal, of all bloody places, comes this brilliant little blast on how unbelievable and unconvincing the plot of World War II was:

Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.



Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.

Yeah, the whole piece is that awesome. A reminder that when viewed through the right lens, history is a strange place.

* Problems of permission culture You know the copyright police are getting bad when even the Wall Street Journal is starting to balk. A discussion that notes how literary anthologies are rapidly becoming unprintable, and even clear fair use cases like quoting eight words from a song run into the risk of a lawsuit.

Interestingly, I don't mind the idea of copyright in theory. There does need to be some bulwark against outright plagiarism and I do like making money off my creative works. At the same time, as public domain has rapidly been pushed closer to nonexistence, this sort of crap really starts to create a cultural stranglehold. Ironically, I think we would be better off going back to the old setup, with a strictly set limit (e.g. 30 years or life of the author +10), estates and all, on how long an author has before their works hit the public domain.

* Grim Meathook Future How I missed this nice, barbed bit of insight from the lovely Josh Ellis is beyond me. But it's pretty close to my own take on the frustrating ignorance of much of the tech classes. I also appreciate the way Ellis speculates about multiple futures existing at once. A must-read.

* Detroit newspapers team up to start aggregator Faltering old school papers combine their resources to send a rocket away from Krypton start an aggregation service to cover the whole state. Keep your eye on this trend. One of the media survival tactics broached at the Foo Camp journalism discussions was combining resources to make formerly resource-heavy activities (like long-form journalism, for example) more practical.

Chief to this strategy is the realization that news is an ecosystem. Many blogs still need the glut of content from wire services and even investigative pieces to chew over, while the resources and structure provided by older news outlets can help gather otherwise dispersed content. There's potential here, and we'll see where it goes.

* In conclusion, MACHETE!

The Rundown: March of the Skeleton Army

The Skeleton Army fights the Salvation Army in the streets, 1884

I'm leaving later today for the West Coast, for Foo Camp. In the meantime, blogging will be light. Keep the homefires burning, y'all, and enjoy this assemblage of interesting links.

* The Skeleton Army Resisting the Salvation Army's attempts to shut down drinking dens in the 1880s, groups of ruffians banded together in a surprisingly organized fashion, calling themselves the Skeleton Army and fighting the pious Salvationists in the street in unrepentant defense of their vices.

They adopted macabre imagery like the Skull and Crossbones (obviously), along with the slogans "Blood and Thunder" and "Beef, beer and Bacca." This was all quite real, and another reminder that history is freaking awesome.

* 5 Reasons You Should Be Scare of Google Yes, it's a Cracked article, but one that makes some surprisingly good points. Some interesting info about exactly how far Google's reach extends, and how badly it's handled collisions with political and privacy issues. A reminder that putting your faith in companies as anything other than carefully watched tools is a bad idea.

* Judge throws out $1 billion copyright suit against YouTube/Google To give the media giant their due, however, Google's on the right side of this suit, protecting the vitally important "Safe Harbor" provision from Viacom. Good to see a legal ruling that actually goes media freedom's way.

* Monopolies, Gov 2.0 and Community The long knives come out in a fight over conferences and tech companies. Worth reading and some legit points about entrusting too much future government program development to large companies with a spotty track record. This is one of the reasons I keep calling for Gov 2.0 efforts to expand past the tech business-government agency sphere.

Another reason is that, were there a broader coalition, some enterprising activists would take this moment to say "Cut this squabbling shit out, we got work to do."

* In jail for being in debt Hellishly horrifying. Not only do large parts of the corporate classes act as if they're an aristocracy, but debtor's prisons (yes, you read that right) are making a comeback. Yes, this is quite illegal, but creditors have been slowly shoving back at debtors' protections, and this is the latest example of overreach. This sort of shit needs to be stopped now, before lettres de cachet and Dukedoms make a comeback as well.

* Coercive Games Some interesting ideas from John Robb on shifting non-violent political action away from the moribund protest cultures to actively ruining the peace of mind of officials from a larger organization who, right now, aren't being held responsible. Certainly, with the current lack of accountability, I don't think many would shed any tears if BP executives or corrupt officials started losing sleep and had their lives made hell. Fear is part of politics and movements that don't instill some measure of it into their opponents don't get very far.

At the same time, it's easy to see these tactics of individual intimidation having some pretty devastating impacts on the social fabric if widely enough applied. Food for thought.

* Saving newspapers, one dead blogger at a time Via Coilhouse comes this hilarious trailer for a fictitious Citizen Kane remake that manages to also serve as a sharp satire of both "print is dying!" hysteria and over-the-top action movie cliches. I lost my shit at the AP Stylebook line.

The Rundown: blood and lithium

Tomorrow's gasoline?

* U.S. Discovers massive mineral wealth in Afghanistan Roughly $1 trillion worth: 

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

There's my favorite Chinese curse, which goes "May you live in interesting times. May you attract the notice of those in high places. May you find what you are looking for." All three seem to apply in this case. Yet again a case of massive natural wealth found in a brutally fractious country. So far, much of the reaction I've heard has resembled "Oh. Shit."

Of course, the United States and many other industrial powerhouses once had massive resource reserves, but those have largely been used up and all the cheap stuff now lies underground of harsh political and geographical terrain.

Many of the devices powering the information revolution depend on lithium batteries. It will be interesting to see if technologists end up supporting bloodshed to keep that cheap, just as previous generations did to preserve cheap oil.

Of course, this cycle can't continue forever. We've got to find better ways of recycling old technology and using less resources in the new stuff.

Conor Friedersdorf argues the United States should run away from the Afghan resources, "sending someone else across the minefield in our stead. The United Nations? The World Bank? The China Mineral Corporation? Whoever it is, better that they suffer the consequences of this find than that we do."

* Chamber President wants government to pay for BP cleanup Speaking of the dangers of risky resource extraction, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to push for the government to bail BP out.

It's a particularly shocking display of privilege, unjustifiable under free market ideals or any other. The translation on his statement is easy: "Shut up peasant, and pay your betters."

* Culinary diplomacy with the Axis of Evil Cafe The Conflict Kitchen, started by a group of Pittsburgh artists, features food from places the U.S. is on bad terms with. The project is intended "to help people see these countries as everyday, human places that are defined by more than just their policies and government." 

The article has a particularly interesting account of a meal (and the ensuing conversation) via satellite between a group in Tehran and Pittsburgh. 

* New Soft City One of the latest augmented reality proposal. We'll see how it pans out. I'm waiting for the inevitable black market/social uses of this technology to start arising and honestly I find them more fascinating than seeing in flashier ways if the buses are running on time. 

* And Still They Cry Out On the anniversary of the Green Uprising, rebel calls still ring from Tehran rooftops. 

* Prince Poppycock at America's Got Talent. Let's change things for a sec for the less serious. This is just absolutely divine.

The Rundown: Technology Will Crush You

Maybe Magnus was right...

Oh bloody hell, where to start?

* Bizarre writer and friends get microchip implants Of the variety used to ID pets. They're cheap and apparently not all that hard to install or read, as Emma Mendes Da Costa and a few of her friends were able to get one implanted just fine in a local body mod shop.

The article's fun and tongue-in-cheek, but it indicates how a once-scary, science fictional tech is becoming increasingly common. So far it's mostly a novelty, because the infrastructure to read those chips on a massive scale doesn't yet exist. Mark my words, though, given our current times of turmoil, the potential for oppressive backlash on this particular technology is huge.

While I of course believe in people's right to install, tinker or put whatever they want into their body, there's no way in hell I personally want a chip of any sort under my flesh. Piercings are lovely, tattoos too, but there's an extra level of intrusion there that I'm deeply uncomfortable with.

Which brings us to the next item...

* First human 'infected with computer virus' Oh my, how I love our species. No sooner has a new technology started to become widely available than we begin figuring out ways to infect and corrupt it. Brilliant, and a process that happens with laws and attempts at repression too as well as machinery.

In this particular case, British scientist Mark Gasson, installed with the Cadillac version of the chip Da Costa and her friends received, managed to infect said chip and then spread the virus to surrounding machinery. Now we see  a future where humans face mechanical viruses as well as biological ones.

Of course, then there's the matter of the oft-forgotten workers who are building those and similar objects of tech-fetish lust...

* Apple's Chinese suicide problem From Andrew Leonard, of the superb How the World Works, comes news that, after a spate of recent suicides, workers assembling iPhones in China are asked to promise they won't kill themselves. 

Leonard writes that the situation is pretty dire:

I don't know about you, but if I was working 12 hours a day, six days a week, plugging circuit boards into Apple gadgets that sell for more than I might make in a month, and I looked out the window and saw nets being installed to keep co-workers from dashing their brains out on the streets below, I'd start to feel a little depressed. Top that off with an explicit corporate request to refrain from suicide and I'd be seriously questioning my career path.

However, he also notes that by Chinese standards, a job at the Foxconn plant is considered pretty good. In some ways, perhaps, Foxconn is lucky, Johann Hari's excellent piece on hideous working conditions in China reveals that labor uprisings often include kidnapping management.

Meanwhile, Apple's market capitalization just exceeded Microsoft's. I believe this sums it up.

Naturally, my Apple shit-talking is written on a Mac.

* Robots replacing Damien Hirst and your baby A creepily thought-provoking exhibit in (where else?) China highlights how easily the dreaded robots can replace a number of basic human functions.

Robots can have Hirst, but I don't want to live in a world where my rickshaw drivers ain't people.

The Rundown: Razing Arizona edition

Flank attack!

* LA boycotts Arizona. Arizona threatens to cut off power LA invades Arizona, rounds up supporters of draconian anti-immigrant law and deports them to Mexico. Ok, so I'm making that last part up (though, as Grumpy Owl points out, LA already has their marching music).

On another note, the fight over Arizona's law illustrates a number of interesting breaking points and important shifts. The first is how ill-equipped state lines mostly drawn in the 19th century are to dealing with today's environmental and resource issues. One of the major things states fight about is resources: who's stealing whose water, power, etc. Part of this is because environmental regions are hacked up, pie-style, between any number of arbitrary boundaries. The basic support system for a modern city stretches across many political jurisdictions, something that makes tackling disagreements or problems extremely difficult.

Also, notice that it's LA fighting Arizona: a city versus a state. Within Arizona, Phoenix is notable as a hot-bed of opposition to the law. As more and more people move to cities, they become greater centers of political power, often deeply at odds with the surrounding territory. Forget Red States and Blue States (one of the dumbest political memes of the past decade), look at a more accurate map and you'll see that the biggest political divide is urban-rural.

* New Social Networking Site Changing the Way, Oh, Christ, Forget It "Let someone else report on this bullshit." The Onion goes there. Spectacularly.

* Is the Drug War more militarized than the military? A soldier argues that raids in Afghanistan and Iraq often have more restrictions than SWAT teams busting in the doors of suspected drug traffickers. An interesting read.

* Robot conducts wedding in Tokyo No word yet on if the infernal machine seduced the bride beforehand. 

An interesting example of how culture can drive technology as much as the other way around. Japan has more (and often more sophisticated) robots than anywhere else in the world. This is partly because Japan's is a first-world industrial power with the resources to build such devices. However, there's also a cultural fascination that shapes what it builds with that capability, and what ends it's put to.

Speaking of...

* Because Every Country is the Best at Something Yes, Japan actually is number 1 in the world in the robotics department. The US leads in, uh, serial killers (send them to fight the robots, I smell a hit movie here). The UK leads in CCTV cameras and France in sugar beets. It's a strange world.

* The French Anti-Burqa Jihad An excellent column by Indian atheist Shikha Dalmia on the crusading and dictatorial impulses behind France's new law. Includes this passage, which could stand to be repeated often:

Nor will it do to justify this ban on grounds that it will save women from having to make painful personal choices. It is not the job of liberal governments to make personal tradeoffs painless--just possible. Giving individuals the right to exit without fearing physical retaliation provides an automatic check on oppressive traditions without taking away the crucial tool that minority communities in liberal polities have to perpetuate themselves: moral suasion. Banning the burqa or the Sikh turban or the Jewish yarmulke is tantamount to telling observant Muslims, Sikhs and Jews that they don't have a right to exist.

Despite years of sectarian bloodletting, if Indians still intuitively understand this and take a benign view of the burqa, it is hardly because they are inherently more rational. It is because their secularism has been shaped by India's dominant religion--Hinduism--whose non-monotheistic ethos allows the space for multiple faiths. In this sense, Hinduism is perhaps more profoundly in sync with liberal tolerance than monotheistic faiths.

More crucially, however, there is nothing in Hinduism that makes an individual's spiritual salvation anyone's business except the individual herself. By contrast, Hitchens, et al, who have been raised in the cradle of a Christian civilization, have imbibed a certain comfort level with the crusading notion that people can--and ought to--be saved even against their will. Hence, it does not matter if Muslim women don't regard the burqa as oppressive. They have to be given sartorial liberation in the same way that the heathens need to be given spiritual liberation.

This is a profoundly anti-liberal and anti-secular idea. Indeed, if the French and Hitchens were serious about either secularism or liberalism, instead of asking Muslim women to shed the burqa, they would be shedding their own proselytizing prejudice against it.

Amen. I've always found it interesting that the anti-Roman Christian sects ended up becoming the heir to the Roman Empire. Similarly, I can't help but wonder if a certain strand of atheism won't end up embodying the crusading and socially meddlesome mentality of its worst foes. The wheel turns...