June 29 — July 5, 2008

Home Agora Columns Connections Review

Ender's Review
of the Web

Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the preceding week.
 

If you encounter any difficulty using this document please let me know as soon as you notice. Contact information is at the bottom of this page.

I am happy to receive addresses of potential readers of Ender's Review who might like to receive a few trial issues and/or an invitation to subscribe. Or, if you prefer, please, send a link to this page or the index (which also has comprehensive source site links) to those you think might be interested.

Find all RSS feeds & e-mail lists on the Sign Up page – or use this RSS feed for Ender's Review 

Pursuing Liberty

Articles showing the positive influence of action in the pursuit of Liberty.

The Real Meaning of the Fourth of July

      By Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"[T]he real significance of the Fourth of July lies in the expression of what is undoubtedly the most revolutionary political declaration in history: that man’s rights are inherent, God-given, and natural and, thus, do not come from government."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0807b.asp

Some Proof that Marijuana is a Powerful Medicine

      By Aaron Rowe from Wired Science from Wired.com

"Marijuana contains an amazing chemical, beta-caryophyllene, and scientists have thoroughly proven that it could be used to treat pain, inflammation, atherosclerosis, and osteoporosis. Jürg Gertsch, of ETH Zürich, and his collaborators from three other universities learned that the natural molecule can activate a protein called cannabinoid receptor type 2. When that biological button is pushed, it soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals -- without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system."

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/proof-that-mari.html

Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug

      By Malcolm Ritter from San Francisco Chronicle

"Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience. Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/n/a/2008/06/30/national/a210757D48.DTL&tsp=1

Google to Viacom: 'Respect YouTube users' privacy'

      By Greg Sandoval from Tech news blog - CNET News.com

"The case is important to Internet users because it could help define the scope of the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That's the part of copyright law that Google and other Internet service providers claim protects them from being held responsible for the actions of their users."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9983702-7.html

Life in Amerika

Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

The Goal Is Freedom: Getting Rights Wrong

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"It's the Fourth of July, the day we ought to contemplate and rejoice in Jefferson's radical declaration of the 'self-evident' truth that all individuals are equally endowed with 'certain unalienable Rights, ... among these ... Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' Alas, the day cannot be one of unmitigated joy since we have again been reminded that the purported protectors of our liberties have little understanding of those rights. We thus live under constant threat from the very people who claim to protect us."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=2188

Law and Orders #8

      By Rad Geek from RG: People's Daily

"Memphis cop Bridges McRae “exceeds expectations” by punching Duanna Johnson repeatedly in the face with handcuffs over his knuckles for failing to stand up on command in the booking area at 201 Poplar ... Trigger warning. The following videos of local news stories include graphic footage of extreme physical violence by a male police officer against a woman in his custody."

http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/06/30/law_and/

Who's Winning the War on Sex?

      Interview of Marty Klein from reason.tv

"reason.tv recently caught up with author Marty Klein to chat about his book America's War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty. 'Our glorious Constitution,' says Klein, a certified sex therapist and frequent expert witness in anti-censorship court cases, 'guarantees us the widest range of right civilization has ever seen. Why are those rights systematically damaged and repealed when it comes to sexual expression?' Approximately four-and-a-half minutes."

http://www.reason.tv/video/show/464.html

Analyst sees 'ghost town' in Inland Empire

      By Peter Viles from L.A. Land of the Los Angeles Times

"A financial analyst fresh from a tour of construction sites in the Inland Empire is warning Wall Street of a 'ghost town' where finished homes sit vacant and additional homes are still under construction."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/07/analyst-sees-gh.html

Ordered Liberty without the State

Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

The Thin Blue Lie

      By Wendy McElroy from WendyMcElroy.com

"'The police' is an institution designed to enforce the law, whatever the law may be, and to process those suspected of violating it. Only if the law is just does an individual policeman stand any chance of 'producing' justice. To a large degree, current law is designed to produce morality (e.g. enforcing victimless crimes), social 'ideals' (affirmative action) or the protection of political power (gun control). As long as the well-intentioned policeman uses the institution's materials - the law - and complies with its procedures, he will not produce justice. All he can do is to minimize the viciousness with which unjust laws are enforced."

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.1698

A Fresh Look at Holidays

      By Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com

"Let us have a paid holiday for everyone ... If all 365 days could be filled up, this would mean that all government employees would continue to get paid: they just wouldn’t show up for work to do anything. The benefit of paying such people to stay out of our way would be a wonderful first step toward a total dismantling of the state."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer178.html

The Nature of Anarchism

      By Dan Clore from Eyrie of the Arch-Anarch

"Anarchists (also known as libertarians or libertarian socialists, in the original sense of socialism as worker-ownership-and-control of the means of production) oppose illegitimate authority and hierarchy, and therefore oppose capitalism and the state; anarchists do not oppose all organization: anarchists favor voluntary, non-hierarchical, self-organization. Anarchists do not oppose all rules and laws; anarchists oppose rules and laws imposed involuntarily by illegitimate authorities, such as the state, and favor voluntarily-agreed upon rules and laws."

http://www.nolanchart.com/article4158.html

Legal marriage obsolete

      By Paul Campos from Rocky Mountain News

"I would now like to propose my own constitutional revision: the Marriage Elimination Amendment. In all seriousness, as a legal - as opposed to a social - institution, marriage is an anachronism we would be better off without. ... Sixty years ago the Christian writer C.S. Lewis made the sensible suggestion that people ought to distinguish between Christian marriage and the secular variety. The former was, for Lewis, a genuinely sacred thing, while the latter was essentially a one-size-fits-all legal status provided by the state, similar in that sense to a standard business partnership or the like."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/02/campos-legal-marriage-obsolete/

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

U.S. Blues

      By Ron Jacobs from CounterPunch

"'Monster' by Steppenwolf appears on their 1970 album of the same name. An essentially libertarian anthem, John Kay and his bandmates trace the history of the United States utilizing the previously mentioned template of freedom betrayed. "America," the song asks, 'where are you now?' It is about America as a political Frankenstein that has destroyed the nation's original intent. There are no culprits named, but the implicit message is that the politicians and the corporations they serve are the ones who must be removed, since it is their wars we are forced to fight."

http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs07062008.html

Bringing Down Bear Stearns: Politics & Power

      By Bryan Burrough from Vanity Fair

"On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality...." [This guy should write mystery stories. I'm inclined to say “cui bono” to the whole thing.]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/bear_stearns200808?currentPage=all

Capture power with your curtains

      By Hilary Whiteman from CNN.com

"Imagine every time you closed your curtains, you were capturing enough solar energy to power your laptop. The technology is available, but no one's packaged it up in a handy DIY kit at your local hardware store. ... [Envision] a future in which a single homeowner or a group of neighbors would decide to wean themselves off the centralized grid and power their homes using the energy they've 'harvested' themselves from the sun."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/01/solar.textiles/index.html

Big Pharma "Doomed" if it Doesn't Change, Says Eli Lilly Chairman

      By David Gutierrez from NaturalNews

"With patents set to expire on major products and no new blockbusters on the horizon, the pharmaceutical industry must adapt or die...."

http://www.naturalnews.com/023566.html

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

We, the Salt of the Earth, Take Precedence

      By Paul Craig Roberts from AntiWar.com

"The indifference of Americans to others flows from 'American exceptionalism' — the belief that Americans are graced with a special mission to impose their virtue on the rest of the world. Like the French revolutionaries, Americans don't seem to care how many people they kill in the process of spreading their exceptionalism. ... The hypocrisy of the Nuremberg trials is that the victors were also guilty of crimes for which the vanquished were punished. The purpose of the trials was to demonize the defeated in order to divert attention from the allies' own war crimes. The trials had little to do with justice."

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=13078

I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham

      By Kevin Carson from The Art of the Possible

"Far from it being an issue of whether peasants should be compelled to continue subsistence farming and till the field with an adze, it has been almost entirely an issue of whether they should be allowed to do so on their own land. As I said in my comment to Jim’s post, the real significance of the Green Revolution is 'the road not taken'–or to use terms more libertarians are familiar with, 'the unseen.' Today’s battle lines reflect a colonial history where landed oligarchs pushed peasant cultivators off of the best land and onto marginal land, so that they could use the most fertile, level land for plantation farming of cash crops."

http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/07/01/i-do-not-like-green-eggs-and-ham/

Preemptive Crime Fighting

      By Garry Reed from That Other Paper

"Here’s how Preemptive DUI Enforcement works: If a suspect refuses a breathalyzer, members of Fort Worth’s finest will be empowered to trash the centuries-old principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' and stick a (dirty? Hepatitis infected?) needle in his arm. ('Badges? Of course we need stinking badges. Badges put us above the law.') The article doesn’t say what happens to the 'citizen' who declines the mandatory blood test. Perhaps the Medi-Cop calls for backup and a fifteen-member SWAT team arrives to force the 'suspect' to the ground, taser him into submission, and slam the civil rights-denied 'peasant' into the slammer. Ain’t democracy grand?"

http://thatotherpaper.com/austin/preemptive_crime_fighting

In the Cause of Fear and Ignorance

      By John Pilger from Dissident Voice

"No British court has found any of these people guilty of any crime, but as Tony Blair, a genuine prima facie criminal, put it so well, 'the rules of the game have changed'. As in the Irish conflict, it is again the ignorance of us, the public, upon which the state relies. All propaganda is directed at honing this ignorance and fabricating a fear. This is primarily the task of journalists. True fear is in Muslim communities. Visit them and you will find people terrified by your knock on the door, and women who now never go out. In effect, control orders have been served on thousands of British citizens."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/in-the-cause-of-fear-and-ignorance/

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

The Capsizing of American Democracy

      By James Bovard from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Since the 1930s, politicians have striven to leave no vote unbought. Government aid programs have been endlessly expanded, and the government has sought to maximize the number of people willing to accept handouts. Government aid has become redefined as a symbol of self-actualization. Americans’ dependency on government is soaring."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0804c.asp

Bush Expands Covert War on Iran

      By TheRealNews.com from Consortiumnews.com

"In an article in The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh writes that President George W. Bush issued a 'presidential finding' for a covert operation against Iran that could spend up to $400 million, and that top Democrats were informed."

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/070108a.html

The Mendacity of Hope

      By Pham Binh from Dissident Voice

"He might have set out to change the system, to change the way politics is done in this country, but it is the political system that has changed him. ... The corporate media forced Obama to choose between his pastor and a shot at the presidency, between principles and power. After some hesitation, Obama chose the latter."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/the-mendacity-of-hope/

The GOP's December Surprise

      By James K. Galbraith from Mother Jones

"Is the worst over? Are we on the road to recovery? Will the next president take office against a backdrop of economic improvement, as Bill Clinton did in 1993? Or has something deeper and more intractable gone wrong?"

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/december-surprise.html

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

America's Underground

      By Jeffrey Tucker from LewRockwell.com

"The cash-only economy is pervasive in the United States. How big, no one knows for sure, obviously. The lesson here represents a wholesale overturning of the official rationale for the interventionist state: that it is good for us. You can turn these informal scenarios around in your head again and again and still fail to see how we as a society are better off when mutually beneficial exchanges that would take place absent intervention fail to take place because of the intervention."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker99.html

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand

      By Michael Erard from Wired.com

"Any language is constantly evolving, so it's not surprising that English, transplanted to new soil, is bearing unusual fruit. Nor is it unique that a language, spread so far from its homelands, would begin to fracture."

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-07/st_essay

Commodity Prices and Inflation: What's the Connection?

      By Frank Shostak from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Contrary to the popular definition, inflation is not about a general rise in prices but about increases in money supply. The general increase in prices as a rule develops because of the increase in money. The harm that most people attribute to increasing prices is in fact due to increases in money supply. Policies that are aimed at fighting inflation without identifying what it is all about only make things much worse."

http://mises.org/story/3018

Charades reveals a universal sentence structure

      By Ewen Callaway from NewScientist.com news service

"Goldin-Meadow and her colleagues asked 40 native speakers of Chinese, Turkish, English and Spanish to mime scenarios shown on a computer screen using only their hands and body."

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/
dn14228-charades-reveals-a-universal-sentence-structure.html

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Government's Perennial Enemy

      By George F. Smith from Strike The Root

"The Fed is the perfect tool of tyranny, almost. 'Almost,' because there’s a problem, one annoying protestor quietly calling attention to its egregious ways: government’s perennial enemy, gold. Government has banned it, hoarded it, and publicly downplays its significance. But the more money government prints, the more it cheats dollar holders, and the greater the demand for gold on world markets."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/smith/smith7.html

Agribusiness, the USDA, and Regulatory Cartels

      By Kevin Carson from The Art of the Possible

"This is the effect of most regulations. They cartelize an industry to the same extent as would the adoption of a uniform standard of quality by all the firms in an industry, coupled with an agreement not to compete in that area. The difference is that industry establishes the common standard, not through a trade association or private cartel, but through the state."

http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/07/03/agribusiness-the-usda-and-regulatory-cartels/

Grand Theft Society

      By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"There are lessons here. One is never to permit the government to discern the relationship between cause and effect. Government invariably rules out the possibility that the structure of the public sector itself is to blame for the problem, whether that problem is terrorism or recession."

http://mises.org/story/3031

US issues health warning over mercury fillings

      By Geoffrey Lean from The Independent

"After years of insisting the fillings are safe, the US government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a health warning about them. It represents a landmark victory for campaigners, who say the fillings are responsible for a range of ailments, including heart conditions and Alzheimer's disease. ... Some research suggests that mercury from dental fillings may be linked to high blood pressure, infertility, fatigue, disorders of the central nervous system, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Dentists have been found to have high levels of mercury in their bodies as well being more susceptible to brain tumours and problems with concentration and manual dexterity."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/
us-issues-health-warning-over-mercury-fillings-856582.html

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Operation Horse's Head: U.S. Raid Sends Message on Iraq "Agreement"

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"[T]he openly stated goal of the Bush Faction -- even before they seized power in 2000 -- has always been to reduce Iraq to a client state with a permanent American military presence and a kicked-down 'open door' for exploitation by Western corporate interests. ... [T]he Bushists literally don't care how the deal gets done -- as long as they get what they want in the end. ... Try anything and everything, as long as you keep your eyes on the prize: a client state and forward bastion in the American empire of military bases -- with the second biggest oil reserves in the world."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1549&Itemid=135

Happy Insurrection Day!

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"Just as every man's life was considered property of the state, so were every man's offspring. This was made clear by the demented Theodore Roosevelt: 'Any man who says, “I didn't raise my son to be a soldier” isn't fit for citizenship. That statement is on the same moral level with saying, “I didn't raise my girl to be a mother.”' Killing and dying on behalf of the state -- the congealed essence of lethal violence -- was thus defined as a moral exercise as exalted as bringing life into the world."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/07/happy-insurrection-day.html

Bush Iraq oil policy "crony capitalism" at its worst

      By Sherwood Ross from AfterDowningStreet

"This is the same crony capitalism that gave Halliburton, formerly headed by Good Buddy Vice President Cheney, a controversial, multi-billion no-bid contract to truck oil into Iraq. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root(KBR) also got named sole source contractor to douse any oil well fires that might break out in Iraq."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34558

Can the Air Force Be Reformed?

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"In addition to pilots being a powerful interest group within the service, the military-industrial-congressional complex would probably thwart an increased emphasis on drones even if the pilots didn’t. Lucrative contracts on the F-22, which usually go to industrial concerns heavily dependent on defense business, have kept the unneeded fighter alive, at the expense of increased funding for badly needed drones. Members of Congress who have such defense industries in their districts and states usually become powerful members of congressional committees that authorize and appropriate funds for such projects. "

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2248

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Blind Whistling Phreaks and the FBI's Historical Reliance on Phone Tap Criminality

      By David Price from CounterPunch

"In those years, before Judge Harold Green broke up the phone monopoly and birthed the baby bells, it was easy for Hoover’s FBI to maintain a special arrangement with the phone company - an arrangement under which the FBI ran warrantless wiretaps and pin registers largely as Hoover saw fit and with the phone company’s compliance. No questions were asked. The public inspection of such matters would have threatened Hoover’s special relationship with the phone company."

http://www.counterpunch.org/price06302008.html

Mr. Twain Offers a Lesson on Patriotism

      By Scott Horton from Harper's Magazine

"I would not take my patriotism from my neighbor or from Congress. I should teach the children in the schools that there are certain ideals, and one of them is that all men are created free and equal. Another that the proper government is that which exists by the consent of the governed."

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/hbc-90003176

AK-47

      By Marina from HotForWords

"Here is the origin of AK-47! From my days in the KGB…"

http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/06/29/ak-47/

June 30, 1908: A Very Close Encounter of the Second Kind

      By Tony Long from Wired.com

"A fireball streaking across the sky and a massive explosion in the Siberian hinterlands marks the largest recorded collision ever between Earth and an object from space."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/06/dayintech_0630

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

The Necessary War?

      By William S. Lind from AntiWar.com

"Buchanan argues that both World War I and World War II were unnecessary wars; that Britain bears at least as much responsibility for both as Germany; that Winston Churchill was 'the indispensable man' in reducing Britain from a world-encircling empire to 'a cottage by the sea­to live out her declining years;' and that the consequence of the Western civil war that encompassed both World Wars (I would add the Cold War as well) has been the fall of the West. Buchanan is correct on all counts."

http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13082

Hunkering Down in Afghanistan

      By Mike Whitney from CounterPunch

"The Bush administration promised to rebuild war-torn Afghanistan, transform its feudal system into a free market economy, and liberate its women from the oppression of Islamic extremism. It was all hogwash. None of the promises have been kept and none of the goals have been achieved."

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07062008.html

Now that war is obsolete, can peace prevail?

      By Jeffery J. Smith from The Progress Report

"The United States is well positioned to take the lead among nations in renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and dismantling the means of conducting war. We account for roughly half of world military expenditures and our military expenditures account for more than half of the US federal discretionary budget. Among the potential starting points, two stand out as particularly promising. The first is a call by establishment insiders like George Shultz, who was US Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, to dismantle all the world's nuclear weapons. The second is an emergent social movement calling all the world's parliaments to adopt the principles of Article 9 added to the Japanese Constitution following World War II."

http://www.progress.org/2008/endtowar.htm

The Risk of an Iran War Fireball

      By TheRealNews.com from Consortiumnews.com

"The U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the United Nations’ atomic energy commission have both issued warnings about the risks of a military conflict with Iran."

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/070408b.html

Gazing Ahead

Attempts to peek into the future.

Intel says to prepare for 'thousands of cores'

      By Brooke Crothers from Nanotech: The Circuits Blog - CNET News.com

"Intel is increasingly 'discussing how to scale performance to core counts that we aren't yet shipping...Dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of cores are not unusual design points around which the conversations meander,' he said."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-9981760-64.html

Scorched Earth Economy

      By David Galland from Safe Haven

"So, we are calibrating our investments toward a serious economic slowdown, but with high inflation. Some people would call that Stagflation. But given the severity of both sides of that formula, the situation may be better described in terms of Scorched Earth. Or, because people seem to find concepts ending in 'flation' handy, Stag-flagration. Businesses and personal net worth will be devastated at the same time that costs run out of control."

http://www.safehaven.com/article-10672.htm

People still love their pay TV, but for how much longer?

      By Nate Anderson from Ars Technica

"It's not all good news for pay-TV, though, as the survey seems likely to undercount those who are most comfortable watching online video, as those folks are not likely to sign up for pay-TV service in the first place (our household survives on a diet of over-the-air HD local channels, TV shows on DVD, and online sites like Hulu)."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20080630-people-still-love-their-pay-tv-but-for-how-much-longer.html

Not Your Grandma's Depression

      By James Howard Kunstler from The Second Great Depression

"We're a very different country than we were in 1932. In that earlier crisis of capital, few people had any money but our society still possessed fantastic resources. We had plenty of everything that our land could provide: a treasure trove of mineral ores and the equipment to refine it all, a wealth of oil and gas still in the ground, and all the rigs needed to get at it, manpower galore (and of a highly disciplined, regimented kind), with fine-tuned factories waiting for orders. We had a railroad system that was the envy of the world and millions of family farms (even despite the dust bowl) owned by people who retained age-old skills not yet degraded by agribusiness. We had fully-functional cities with operating waterfronts and ten thousand small towns with local economies, local newspapers, and local culture."

http://depression2.tv/d2/node/140

Culcha'

Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.

New agitprop from Cory Doctorow

      Reviewed by Wally Conger from out of step

"Doctorow’s characters are generally well defined and appealing. Even some of the adult characters who can’t understand why anyone would refuse to surrender liberty for security are fully drawn and sympathetic. The story is fast-paced and told with passion. There’s no question that the author believes his novel’s warnings are urgent. Radical libertarians like myself will find naïve his traditionalist notion that solutions still lie in the voting booth. But Doctorow’s heart is in the right place, and there’s no question that he’s one of the Good Guys." [I added the italics/emphasis above. I believe Wally has nailed it. I could not have summed it up better and I thank him for his fine review. I will add this: only the epilogue has much advocacy of voting. Most of the novel focuses on the efficacy of peaceful monkeywrenching. As I noted a few weeks back, in addition to a “dead tree” version, the novel is also available as a free download. Read the review and then the story in the form you prefer.]

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-agitprop-from-cory-doctorow.html

The Dark Knight Review

      Reviewed by Todd Gilchrist from IGN>Entertainment>Movies>Reviews

"It isn't an overstatement to call The Dark Knight the most sophisticated and ambitious work of its kind. Superior to all three Spider-Man installments and even its amazing predecessor in terms of conceptualization, writing, acting, and direction,"

http://movies.ign.com/articles/884/884876p1.html

The Unknown Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy Prequel You've Already Read

      By Graeme McMillan from io9

"Seven years after his death, an unfulfilled idea of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams is about to come to fruition, as the BBC prepares to bring unlikely detective Dirk Gently into the Hitchhikers universe in a new radio series."

http://io9.com/5021216/
the-unknown-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-prequel-youve-already-read

Cory Doctorow: a "Little Brother" reading (3rd in a series)

      By Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing

"Cory performs a reading from his new novel Little Brother. This reading (from chapter 3, part 2) is the second in an ongoing BBtv series."

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/01/cory-doctorow-a-litt-1.html

The lighter side

Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

      By Today NOW! from Onion News Network

"President Bush will seek to comfort victims of his presidency as they try to make sense of the destruction he has caused."

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/bush_tours_america_to_survey

Barack Zelig

      By John Walsh from Dissident Voice

"There was also movement on the other side. McCain soon stepped forward to announce that some old rumors were true and he had fathered a Black child. Thereupon, he apologized to his wife of many years and also announced he would divorce her. He would marry the mother who, it turned out, was Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey appeared at his side the next day on her show and switched her endorsement. From then on McCain began to denounce any disagreement with him as racist."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/barack-zelig/

N.M. Court Refuses Obscene Name Change

      By The Associated Press via CBS News

"A New Mexico appeals court on Friday ruled against a Los Alamos man who wanted to change his name to a phrase containing a popular four-letter obscenity. The man appealed after a state district judge in Bernalillo County refused his request to change his name to 'F--- Censorship'!"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/28/ap/strange/main4216394.shtml

Bluetooth it baby!

      By Marina from HotForWords

"[W]hy the name Bluetooth? Was there a guy with blue teeth?"

http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/07/05/bluetooth-it-baby/

Deep Thought

Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles

Left Opportunism and Crackpot Realism

      By Kevin Carson from The Art of the Possible

"Reform within the system is usually governed by the Crackpot Realist approach. The reason is easy to understand. Reform within the system is usually carried out by the people running the system, based on their institutional mindsets and basic assumptions about how the world works. Since the fundamental purpose of the system is good, and its basic operating assumptions are self-evident, any reform must obviously be limited to tinkering around the edges. Any reform coming out of the system will be designed to optimize the functioning of the existing system, and only amenable to being carried by the managerial caste currently in charge of the system."

http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/06/30/left-opportunism-and-crackpot-realism/

It's not the Gates, it's the bars

      By Richard Stallman from BBC NEWS | Technology

"Microsoft's software is distributed under licenses that keep users divided and helpless. The users are divided because they are forbidden to share copies with anyone else. The users are helpless because they don't have the source code that programmers can read and change. If you're a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can't. If you're a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can't. If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a 'pirate'. ... Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm

Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential

      By Kevin Kelly from The Technium

"[W]hile progress runs on exponential curves, our individual lives proceed in a linear fashion. We live day by day by day. While we might think time flies as we age, it really trickles out steadily. Today will always be more valuable than some day in the future, in large part because we have no guarantee we'll get that extra day. Ditto for civilizations. In linear time, the future is a loss. But because human minds and societies can improve things over time, and compound that improvement in virtuous circles, the future in this dimension is a gain. Therefore long-term thinking entails the confluence of the linear and the exponential."

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/07/where_the_linea.php

The Rule of Law

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"When 'public policy' is the end, individual rights disappear. And when statistics determine public policy, the selection of which information should be the study of statistical research is politicized,and the results will reflect the preconceived agenda."

http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2994

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

The Court Gets It Right on Guns

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Unfortunately, the majority opinion allows for gun regulations that fall short of outright bans. Existing regulations will now be tested in court. In the end, the ruling may have little effect on most gun laws, but the declaration that guns rights are individual rights is important. Think what we would have witnessed had the case gone the other way."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0807a.asp

Warcraft on Terror

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Magazine

"Is your game room breeding jihadists? Probably not, but just to be sure the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wants to 'study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games.' In other words, they’ll be watching for security threats in role-playing games...."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/126839.html

Independence Day

      By Robert X. Cringely from I, Cringely

"It is clear to me that government (ANY government, not just the U.S. federal government) and Wall Street have no idea whatsoever how to handle the current crisis. They are just trying to look busy while protecting their own interests and allowing those affected to muddle our way through this mess to some kind of solution. It's not that they don't want to be helpful (if the cost of being helpful is low enough) but that they simply don't know HOW to be helpful. They can't be educated and they can't be changed. Certainly they wouldn't consider any course that would curtail government authority or commercial opportunity."

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080704_005191.html

No More Odes to Bill Gates, Please!

      By John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine

"Bill will still be chairman of the board at Microsoft, so how is this any sort of real retirement? I mean, come on. He should be like Jack Welch: out completely. Instead, he still has one foot in the door as chairman. And as chairman how does he keep himself away from what he does naturally: micromanage? This is total BS. But the media is ignoring this small factoid. 'Never let facts get in the way of a good story,' you know."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2324231,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000584

Find all RSS feeds & e-mail lists on the Sign Up page – or use this RSS feed for Ender's Review 

Each week immediately after Ender's Review is posted at Endervidualism a small plain text note (~5K) containing a few links to the web edition is sent to ERevNote subscribers.

Subscribe to ERevNote:

the Ender's Review reminder note

If you know of prospective readers, please send them a link to this page, or alternately if you don't wish to e-mail them yourself, you can e-mail their addresses to me at this address:  Tom@Endervidualism.com and I will send them a message with a link to the latest issue and invite them to subscribe. 

Comments suggestions and discussion on the content and structure of this review are welcome at the ERevD: EnderReviewDiscussion Yahoo group. Feel free to jump in there at any time.

Alternately, you may elect to receive a copy of an HTML e-mail object (50 - 90K). Archives of the HTML e-mail are available to EnderReview members. You may join that group or subscribe to its mailing list.

Home Agora Columns Connections Review