Comics Friday: The Fringe Candidates

Hijinks Ensue

Comics Friday: God works in mysterious ways edition

Dumb games Friday was too much effort, because we have to play a game for a while to know whether it's worth posting. So instead I'm trying out webcomics. 

A great article on "The Social Graph"

If you are at all interested in social networks, I strongly recommend reading this article over at the Pinboard developer blog. I'm just going to toss out some examples here. If any of these sound interesting, go read the whole thing.

First, there's a lot about the technical failures of Facebook and Google+ to get at the "graph" part of the Social Graph.

There's also the matter of things that XFN doesn't allow you to describe. There's no nemesisor rival, since the standards writers wanted to exclude negativity. The gender-dependent second e on fiancé(e) panicked the spec writers, so they left that relationship out. Neither will they allow you to declare an ex-spouse or an ex-colleague.
And then there's the question of how to describe the more complicated relationships that human beings have. Maybe my friend Bill is a little abrasive if he starts drinking, but wonderful with kids - how do I mark that? Dawn and I go out sometimes to kvetch over coffee, but I can't really tell if she and I would stay friends if we didn't work together. I'd like to be better friends with Pat. Alex is my AA sponsor. Just how many kinds of edges are in this thing?
And speaking of booze, how come there's a field for declaring I'm an alcoholic (opensocial.Enum.Drinker.HEAVILY) but no way to tell people I smoke pot? Why are the only genders male and female? Have the people who designed this protocol really never made the twenty mile drive to San Francisco?

 Then there's some great stuff about how anti-social social networks really are:

You might almost think that the whole scheme had been cooked up by a bunch of hyperintelligent but hopelessly socially naive people, and you would not be wrong. Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. Our industry abounds in people for whom social interaction has always been more of a puzzle to be reverse-engineered than a good time to be had, and the result is these vaguely Martian protocols.

Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook.

It's easy to rap about Berlusconi, because his name rhymes with a large percentage of the Italian language

I have a bunch of Italian rap cassettes from the mid 90s in which the (not yet then) Prime Minister's name gets dropped a lot. He's been dominating Italian politics for a very long time.

He's also a criminal and a joke, and Italy will be well rid of him, maybe soon:

Reporting from Rome— Italy's beleaguered prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has survived more than 50 no-confidence votes and multiple accusations of criminal and sexual impropriety, including charges he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl. But the 75-year-old billionaire may have finally met his match in the bond market. 

With dwindling confidence in Berlusconi's ability to manage Italy's affairs — and the Eurozone's debt crisis hanging in the balance — investors Monday pushed up Italian bond yields to a euro-era high of 6.63%. That means higher borrowing costs, and takes the yield ever closer to a point that tipped Greece, Ireland and Portugal over the edge and seeking financial rescue.

… Indeed, the reaction from financial markets adds to "strong pressure for Berlusconi to resign," said Sergio Fabbrini, political science professor at the LUISS Guido Carli university in Rome.

In once sense, this the ultimate referendum on his performance. The bond rates represent the utter failure of the country to right itself.

On the other hand, as much as I would like to see Berlusconi out, there's something unseemly about the bond market* having this much power over a sovereign, democratic country. It reminds me of the rating agencies trying to dictate the size of our own budget cuts during the summer.

Capitalism should be a tool in service of democracy, not the other way around.

---
* The bond market is people, my friend. 

It's the (plausibility of) equality, stupid

One assumes it's our old Doctor DR, posting at numskulduggery, who highlighted this quote:

"The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation’s history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high. In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between “labor” and “capital,” there has rarely—if ever—been a time when “capital” was so clearly winning."

I have to think we are reaching a tipping point, here, and that we will tip towards progress. And here's why.

During the formative years of the blogosphere, I spent many, many words here and in comments on other sites making the case that the middle class was losing under trickle-down and deregulatory policies. During this time, I could rarely get our conservative interlocutors to agree to the basic facts.

Now, however, these facts are widely reported and discussed. And conservatives have been forced from being "income inequality deniers" into a far less defensible position that this dramatic inequality is somehow OK. We shouldn't demonize success, after all.

Facebook finds European Privacy Laws more Stringent

An Austrian law student named Max Schrems has filed complaints against Facebook for violation of his privacy rights with the Irish Privacy Commissioner. He's also set up a website called Europe v. Facebook where you can read his 22 complaints. According to some news coverage, Facebook could be fined 100,000 Euros (nearly $140,000) for its violations of Irish law. Could this be the beginning of the end of Facebook as we know it?

I'm sorry, but The Simpsons is still funny

Discuss. They even made a funny World Trade Center joke in this episode.

Archer is still the best animated show on TV.

Thank you, Federal Aviation Administration, for giving us a new euphemism for sex

"Physically jostled."

We could have just scooted over

Everybody is quoting Steve Jobs talking about how death is "…life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." 

So, what has Steve's death made way for? I'd really like to know. 

"A five tonne, 20-year-old satellite has fallen out of orbit and is expected to crash somewhere on Earth"

"Nasa says the risk to life from the UARS - Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite - is just 1 in 3,200."
…
"The 1 in 3,200 risk to public safety is higher than the 1 in 10,000 limit that Nasa aims for."


BBC

Here you go

via MoJo

Wait… what did you just say? I didn't, uh, hear you, I, uh, guess

"Once these population differences were corrected for, the long-term effects of marijuana use disappeared: The scientists found that “there were no significant between group differences.” In other words, the amount of pot consumed had no measurable impact on cognitive performance. The sole exception was performance on a test of short-term verbal memory, in which “current heavy users” performed slightly worse than former users. The researchers conclude that, contrary to earlier findings, the mind altering properties of marijuana are ephemeral and fleeting…" | via FC |


Unrelated: I'm getting smarter every day. 

what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break?

Mark Twain said,

"Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell.

There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break?

What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."

… in reference to the Civil War.

Who drops out of the GOP race next?

My money is on Santorum, as Cain is too crazy to realize he is beaten and Gingrich is just going for the payday anyway. What do you think?

Suggestion for more Apropos Cartoon Lyrics

Herman Cain quoted the theme song from 2000's Pokemon movie in yesterday's debate. I cannot wait from the Republican Primary season to hit full swing.

Here are some other cartoon lyrics I think he could maybe use:

"When in this world, the headlines read of those whose hearts are filled with greed, who rob and steal from those who need, [I'll] right this wrong with blinding speed... I'm an underdog..."

"You've got the touch, you've got the power."

"[I'll] fight for freedom wherever there's trouble."

"Come along with the Snorks. Swim along with the Snorks. Play along with the Snorks. Happy to be living under the sea."

Dr. Beardlove: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Prognostication

Bellmen: Ring your bells, load your muskets, ride your horses, and warn the British. The republican primaries are coming, and it is time to prognosticate.

Iowa had a little event at the state fair yesterday, and a few blowhards blew. Perhaps drawn by the lure of fried butter, or piqued by the shallowness of the republican pool, Perry is expected to officially throw his 10-gallon into the deep end a little later tonight.

I couldn't help but notice we're not talking about it.

My observations? A Texas candidate is nothing without Rove. I don't think Rick Perry's pray and wait strategy will play where it counts, mainly the important north-east and mid-west primary states. He should also be easily overcome if the actual Texas books are scrutinized. (And I don't mean our text books). The cooked books and fudged numbers that won him a few elections out here will definitely come to light (if not in the primaries then in the general election). As weird as it is, I just don't see how Romney should be worried about Perry's entry.

That said, I can't wait for Perry to enter the debates.

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart: Coda

American Beard