"It's easy to imagine how we could make something worse than "Girls Around Me"—something much worse. Facebook encourages us to disclose a wide range of information about ourselves, including our religion and a photograph. Religion is obvious: "Yids Among Us" would obviously be one of the go-to tools of choice for Neo-Nazis. As for skin colour, ethnicity identification from face images is out there already. Want to go queer bashing? There's an algorithm out there for guessing sexual orientation based on the network graph of the target's facebook friends. It's probably possible to apply this sort of data mining exercise to determine whether a woman has had an abortion or is pro-choice.
"In the worst case, it's possible to envisage geolocation and data aggregation apps being designed to facilitate the identification and elimination of some ethnic or class enemy, not only by making it easy for users to track them down, but by making it easy for users to identify each other and form ad-hoc lynch mobs. (Hence my reference to the Rwandan Genocide earlier. Think it couldn't happen? Look at Iran and imagine an app written for the Basij to make it easy to identify dissidents and form ad-hoc goon squads to proactively hunt them down. Or any other organization in the post-networked world that has a social role corresponding to the Red Guards.)
"But as I said earlier, the app is not the problem. The problem is the deployment by profit-oriented corporations of behavioural psychology techniques to induce people to over-share information which can then be aggregated and disclosed to third parties for targeted marketing purposes."

Comment: Stross is not, sadly, exaggerating.

"That’s my wife Veronica giving her brother Vincent a shave. Oddly enough, people who perform such rituals every day are rarely Ron Paul supporters. Vincent lived until the age of 38 with his parents. He moved in with us after his mother died. He then made the transition to a nearby group home. He spends his weekdays with friends, coworkers, and staff at a sheltered workshop. He receives good medical care for various significant challenges.

Because of Social Security’s disabled adult child program, Medicare, Medicaid, and a host imperfect, sometimes costly, often essential programs, Vincent has been able to spend his adult life in relative dignity, safety, and comfort. Because of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and subsequent legislation, Vincent was able to attend public school, where he received important services. Because of those onerous class action lawsuits and the like, conditions at public and private care facilities are much better, much more community-based than they used to be.

Were it not for a host of policies that Ron Paul has consistently opposed, Vincent might well have exercised his individual liberty curled up medicated on a cot in the back ward of a gigantic state mental facility. His mother might have spent her final years going bankrupt, struggling to care for him at home or sending him away for institutional care. These comments might strike you as blogosphere hyperbole. They are not. These were common experiences across the country for hundreds of thousands of disabled people and their families well into the 1960s. In many places, inhumane policies persisted long after. Federal money and federal mandates were absolutely essential to address these concerns."

"So I hope this Libya policy works out. I have my doubts, but who knows. The world is full of surprises. I do know, however, that providing more bed nets to prevent malaria would be cheap and logistically simple compared to deposing Gaddafi and that the easiest step America could take to deal a blow to Arab autocracy would be to stop selling weapons to Arab autocrats that they turn around and fire on their people."

I have no idea at all whether this is fair, but it's a glorious rant.

"At long last, then: all this is to not to deny that the rich, many of them, haven’t done impressive things that have in many cases dramatically improved one aspect or another of human experience.

It is to say that they have already been very richly rewarded for their accomplishments, that even the most original of them have reached their happy state within a framework of public goods, owned in common, and paid-for-by-others – and to note that a substantial proportion of them have less reason than others to claim particular personal credit for their fortunate situation.

And that in that context, being obscenely wealthy ought to be its own reward; taxation the fortunate result of success and the down payment made on future prosperity. It is the price owed, not confiscated, to support a system, a government and a society that however imperfectly did and does so much to create the opportunities in which many of these folks got so rich."

The only problem is that this doesn't go far enough. No, I take that back: the only problem is that it _needs saying_.

Not what you expect to see on a baseball blog.

"But knowing their hypocrisy, he said unto them, "Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a dime and let me see it."

And they brought one. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this -- FDR's or Herbert Hoover's?"

They answered, "Roosevelt's."

And he said unto them, "Right. So shut up. Have you morons already forgotten the 20th Century? When the choice is between imitating what worked and what really, really didn't work, why are you pretending it's terribly complicated?"

And after that, no one dared to ask him any question."

"How is it a waste of their time to take someone who is otherwise unemployed and pay them to do such work, especially if it provides us with something of long-term value and them with earned income? AND it stimulates demand. Where is the down side, pray tell? Even if we guess wrong, we'll have much needed improved infrastructure, mass transportation, new energy sources, better educated kids and safer streets and highways.

I believe the problem for Glaeser (and many others who dither while unemployment is high) is a morbid fear that putting people to work with taxpayer money (much as we have done for investment bankers) will crowd out efficient private sector productivity and jobs....some day. I'm left to wonder why crowding out of public infrastructure and education by unproductive, inefficient speculation in private financial and mortgage markets is OK, but I digress."

Today's reminder that nothing I will ever do will really matter.

"There have been lies; yes, but they were told in a good cause. We have been treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn't it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit's work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best."

...in which Coates, among much else, channels Mario Savio.

"There will always be limits on what we can experience and truly understand. We turn to writers to fill in the gaps. I trust, for instace, that India exists, but what I know of it has largely been shaped by what other writers have told me. I have never stepped on the soil of Africa (even if I had, that wouldn't be enough) and what I think of the continent is shaped by what's been written. Malcolm X is real, and Spiderman is not. Both are products of writing, and frankly, I'm at pains to tell you which of the two had a larger influence on my life... In this sense, the personally unexperienced world doesn't really exist. Writers invent it. Now, the reader makes a decision as to whether to trust that invention. But if you're lucky enough to occupy certain offices, if you're privileged enough to be handed the megaphone by certain people, your inventions are imbued with a potency that others aren't...."

"Today marks a grim anniversary, a day when a few fanatics, equipped and secretly encouraged by foreign ideologues, struck a violent blow against normal, civil, democratic society. In the years that followed, the events of that day led to further tragedy, as a once-civilized country turned to the widespread practice of torture. Perhaps now at last we can gain some perspective on this history, and better understand what the defense of a democratic society demands of us. --- Today is also the anniversary of an attack on New York City and Washington, DC."

Lowering global GDP by 5% can be achieved by eliminating countries which have over 40% of the world's population. Now, if one wanted to follow this particular line of madness to its end, you'd have to include the cost to richer countries of trade disruption (e.g., we might have to pay more for tea and commodity software without India, more for t-shirts without Bangladesh, more for coffee without Malawi) --- but the point is clear.

.... in which Mark L. is polite, but relentless, in driving a wedge between "attributing responsibility to people" and "avoiding the passive voice".

Hooray for financial innovation!

I feel like this can be endorsed pretty wholeheartedly (though these criticisms do not apply with full force to the "saltwater" school, that's been pretty absent in shaping policy, especially as regards to finance).

Not having read either of the two books in question, I can't say whether this is a fair critique, but it sounds reasonable.

"The harsh reality is that [the invasion of Iraq] was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards."

It is very sad to see one of the great scientists of our age saying, in effect, "I want to believe" and "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you!"

The introduction has whetted my apetite.

No.

"It's time to separate manhood from violence. It insults men, and endangers us all."

"Finally, treating people right, especially owning up right away when you're wrong, is not on the whole, a sucker's play for which a hostile world will punish you." (I need to work on that myself...)

Wow, I actually read something recent by Pinker (in The New Republic, no less!) and agree with it. Wonders never cease.

Impeach them. Impeach them now.

Very carefully (and rightly) avoiding a substantive position; merely pointing out that the economists' arguments in public fora and textbooks are, on their own terms, bad.

The book which convinced me that we have free will.

"After 1945 our parents' generation set aside the problem of evil because —for them—it contained too much meaning. The generation that will follow us is in danger of setting the problem aside because it now contains too little meaning. How can we prev"

Henry Farrell on Brad DeLong on Timothy Burke on Dick Cheney, as viewed through John Padgett and Christopher Ansell on Cosimo de Medici.

Extroverts in the office as people with a weakness who demand it be accommodated by co-workers

Repent early, reprent often

Provided, Gelman explains, you care about what happens to other people.

John Emerson harshes on silly thought experiments from philosophical ethics (see: ticking bomb scenario).

Scott Aaronson experiences guilt over the election of 2000. (I experience guilt over the elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004.)

1982 assault; Heidegger's commitment to National Socialism was indeed of a piece with his philosophy, and, since he himself made such a point of how life and thought are inseparable, it's not possible to ignore this, or sustain any claim to moral authorit