August 31 — September 13, 2008

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Ender's Review
of the Web

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

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Pursuing Liberty

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

Ron Paul Press Conference Unifies “Third” Party and Independent Candidates around Four Key Points

      By Kevin Zeese from Dissident Voice

"The event brought four third party and independent candidates 'together in unity' around a statement of principles. The event came as polls showed the presidential race tightening and third party/independent candidates getting combined votes of over 10% in swing states."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/09/
ron-paul-press-conference-unifies-third-party-and-independent-candidates-around-four-key-points/

Immigrants & American-born: “Are you listening?”

      By Pramila Jayapal from YES! Magazine

"This was not the only conversation that revealed a common agenda. Participants agreed on the need for a path for immigrant workers to become legal residents. 'They just want to work hard,' one participant said. 'This country was built by immigrants'."

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2844

Security Matters: How to Create the Perfect Fake Identity

      By Bruce Schneier from Wired.com

"I made this all up. I have no evidence that anyone is actually doing this. It's not something a criminal organization is likely to do; twenty-five years is too distant a payoff horizon. The same logic holds true for terrorist organizations; it's not worth it."

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/09/securitymatters_0904

Firefox to Embrace Porn With New ‘Private Browsing’ Mode

      By Scott Gilbertson from Webmonkey

"While the cynical might claim that the major use for private browsing is porn, there are some other times it comes in handy — on public computers, for instance, where you don’t want the browser tracking your banking or e-mail logins."

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Firefox_to_Embrace_Porn_With_New__Private_Browsing__Mode

“Happy Birthday to GNU” marks 25 years

      By Tom Espiner from Business Tech - CNET News

"The foundation plans further releases as part of the monthlong anniversary celebrations, with announcements timed for Software Freedom Day on 20 September and for the GNU anniversary itself on September 27."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10031316-92.html

Life in Amerika

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

Officer Kanapsky, is it?

      By Jeffrey A. Tucker from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"The state operates on the assumption that you are its slave when it wants you to be, and otherwise free in name only. This is especially true in the age of Bush, in which all police at all levels have morphed into militarized 'security personnel.' The friendly, helpful policeman of old civics texts seems to be a thing of the past."

http://mises.org/story/3092

A Murderous Theater of the Absurd

      By John Pilger from AntiWar.com

"Thousands of decent Americans came to the two nominating conventions to express the dissenting opinion of millions of their compatriots who believe, with good cause, that their democracy is evaporating. They were intimidated, arrested, beaten, pepper-gassed; and they were patronized or ignored by those paid to keep the record straight."

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=13444

Last Ditch

      By Jim Kunstler from Clusterfuck Nation

"All the debt run up by all parties -- home-owners, credit-card holders, business, banks, hedge funds, government -- is not being paid back reliably, and all the leveraged arrangements that depend on it being paid back are coming apart. Thus, capital disappears. The wealth of a nation disappears. All that remains is the pretense that we are still a wealthy society[.]"

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/09/last-ditch.html

Why We Were Falsely Arrested

      By Amy Goodman from Truthdig

"Within seconds, they grabbed me, pulled me behind the police line and forcibly twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, the rigid plastic cuffs digging into my wrists. I saw Sharif, his arm bloody, his credentials hanging from his neck. I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080903_why_we_were_falsely_arrested/

Crime and Drug Policy

      By Art Carden from The Independent Institute

"Someone who buys bad aspirin has legal recourse against the company that sold it to him. Someone who buys bad heroin or bad crack has no such legal recourse, and disputes over quality will be settled violently, if at all. Epidemics of urban crime are among the unintended consequences of the drug war."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2308

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

Homemade bread - a metaphor for life

      By Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"When we go into our kitchens to begin mixing up simple, basic loaves of homemade bread, we turn our backs on Authority and much that it has wrought. We reject—consciously or not—the belief that we must trust other people to predetermine what goes into our bodies. It's a form—and an important one—of owning our own lives."

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/wolfe113.html

May Contain Peanuts

      By NonEntity from Strike The Root

"A law never motivated anyone. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not inspired because someone passed a law requiring him to give a speech. Nope. Inspiration only comes from within. It is love, it is the life force. It cannot be frightened into being. No, it is that incredible force which caused our parents to create us, and which shows up in dance, in charity, in invention. Love is the force of life, love is Stevie Wonder's voice. Love does not use a gun to enforce its opinion on you. Love smiles upon you and, if you are able, is that which smiles back."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/82/nonentity/nonentity4.html

What Belongs to Caesar?

      By Mark R. Crovelli from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"If we are to take seriously the idea of equal human dignity and the sanctity of every single human life, then, contrary to Archbishop Chaput, we must necessarily denounce the tax-funded, coercive state as the single most egregious violator of human dignity and the most dangerous enemy of human life and civilization."

http://mises.org/story/3081

Chomsky’s Augustinian Anarchism

      By Roderick T. Long from The Art of the Possible

"If the state really is intervening massively and systematically on behalf of the 'potentate' and against the 'starving subject' – as Chomsky must admit that it is, since his research explicitly demonstrates just this – why on earth would he expect that power imbalance to remain unchanged once that intervention ceases?"

http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/09/04/chomskys-augustinian-anarchism/

Hoping Against Hope for No Signs of Life

      By Karen Kwiatkowski from LewRockwell.com

"Comedian Lewis Black is surely correct, and this country really could use a dead president (n.b. foul language). If we cannot have a dead president, Black outlines another presidential selection process, one with real possibilities. "

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski210.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Straightening Out Cloud Computing

      By John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine

"I don't hate the cloud. I'm only leery of systems in which the individual loses control of his or her own data, software, and other necessities. When the desktop revolution began, it was all about control—wresting control away from others and keeping it to ourselves. That's the major, overriding trend of modern computing, but it doesn't mean there should be no clouds or networks."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329303,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000584

One More Palin Post

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Magazine Hit & Run

"I don't know if Palin was ever a member of the AIP [Alaskan Independence Party]. I do know that it's entirely possible to be registered one way on the voting rolls while paying dues to a third party and attending its events. ... why should this bother anyone? At a time when the GOP is plunging ever deeper into mindless nationalism, Palin's willingness to hang out with northern separatists is a breath of fresh air."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/128532.html

Canonical funds Linux in a bid to overtake the Mac

      By Matt Asay from CNET News

"It's one thing to talk about open-source software like Linux becoming easy to use and a joy to look at, but it's quite another to actually fund the development of such improvements. Mark Shuttleworth has talked a lot recently about desktop Linux becoming as easy and beautiful as Mac OS X. Now he's ready to fund the talk."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10040226-16.html

Why cable operators want to become wireless ISPs

      By Nate Anderson from Ars Technica

"Right now, wireless broadband is offered through wireless phone carriers, but once a customer has signed on with someone like Verizon Wireless, that person is more likely to get cell phone service as well. This might cause them to ditch a landline and therefore not pay for Comcast's VoIP product. It might also mean that, as video content increasingly moves to the Internet, and wireless home Internet access becomes a reality, Comcast's video and Internet businesses could also be affected."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20080911-why-cable-operators-want-to-become-wireless-isps.html

Mobile fish farms could soon navigate the oceans

      By David Robson from NewScientist.com news service

"Swimming cages may soon shepherd farmed fish about the ocean, giving them a more natural environment and reducing their impact on natural ecosystems. The first tests of the wandering cages have just taken place in Puerto Rico."

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/
dn14663-mobile-fish-farms-could-soon-navigate-the-oceans-.html

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Let Them Eat Cake

      By Karen Kwiatkowski from LewRockwell.com

"In a sheer quantitative sense, the United States has long since avenged 9-11, racking up hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded, and scarred innocents. It has long since avenged 9-11 in sheer destruction, laying waste to cities, villages, homes and hearths, industry, government and religious observance. The destruction and murder is now habitual, profligate and self-indulgent. To the world, the President of the United States – present and future – is an uncouth and supersized version of Marie Antoinette."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski211.html

The American Empire is Another Bubble

      By Don A. Rich from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"For the last sixty years, the United States has provided military protection for the European and Asian capitalist powers, all possessing economies governed by regulatory apparatuses analogous in character to the apparatuses of the American postwar New Deal. These apparatuses, especially when coupled to fiat money, have in common the fundamental flaw that they create economic instability via moral hazard."

http://mises.org/story/3095

The Government's War on Money Laundering

      By Gary D. Barnett from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"OFAC has the power to impose controls on transactions and freeze assets under U.S. jurisdiction. This is nothing less than the power of the U.S. government to steal any foreign assets it chooses and for any reason it sees fit. Every new account, every check and wire, and all stock receipts are compared with an OFAC master list of prohibited names, and all that information is captured. There is no privacy whatever here. "

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0809b.asp

The next president and the world of IT

      By John C. Dvorak from MarketWatch

"The result told me that there is something going on at the federal level that we don't know about and would be changed by the election. What is it?"

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?
guid=%7BD4060156%2D2207%2D4A39%2D8B45%2D4EF7A6C2331A%7D

Farmers See 'Mark of the Beast' in RFID Livestock Tags

      By David Kravets from Threat Level from Wired.com

"The farmers' lawsuit, brought by the Virginia-based Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and some of its 1,400 members, seeks to block enforcement of the National Animal Identification System. Some of the group's members so staunchly oppose the program that 'they may have to quit farming,' according to the lawsuit." [That's probably “the intent” of the law, to bring the US to have only corporate farming.]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/farmers-decryin.html

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

From out of a Rotting Log

      By Fred Reed from Fred On Everything

"I discovered that America is about to have an election. Why? Every time they do that, no good comes of it. You’d think they’d learn. As usual, the election is a popularity contest run for dimwits. And to elect a dimwit, which is worse. "

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Election.shtml

Is George W. Bush the Worst President in US History?

      By Ivan Eland from AntiWar.com

"Although Bush lied us into a war, many presidents have done that, and he appeared to have at least some vague conception that it was in U.S. security interests to do so (even if safeguarding U.S. oil supplies was the real reason)."

http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=13452

The Calamity of Bush's Conservatism

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

"Remember the phrase, 'humble foreign policy'? Coming from Bush, that sounds about as ridiculous as the phrase 'peaceful war,' except that he seems to believe in that too. His delirium is like an infection. It spreads. After all, Bush supporters are the people who continue, even to this day, to talk about their amazing tactical successes in Afghanistan and Iraq."

http://mises.org/story/3091

The Radical Center

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Magazine Hit & Run

"I appreciate the small-pieces-lightly-joined nature of the lineup, especially when you focus not on the figures who took the stage but on their jumbled bands of supporters, a collection of dissatisfied outsiders who aren't necessarily committed to a particular political outlook but are searching for an alternative to the status quo, mixing and matching all sorts of ideas in the process."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/128726.html

Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote

      By Eartha Jane Melzer via Truthout

"The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP's effort to challenge some voters on Election Day."

http://www.truthout.org/article/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Are towns really safer without traffic lights?

      By Isabelle de Pommereau from The Christian Science Monitor

"Mr. Goedejohann heard of a radical traffic-management philosophy called 'shared space.' Pioneered by a Dutch engineer who thought towns were safer with fewer rules, it envisioned open surfaces on which motorists and pedestrians could "negotiate" with one another by eye contact, other signals, and a greater consideration for one another."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0912/p07s03-woeu.html

Pencils And Politics

      By George F. Will from Newsweek

"The spontaneous emergence of social cooperation—the emergence of a system vastly more complex, responsive and efficient than any government could organize—is not universally acknowledged or appreciated. It discomforts a certain political sensibility, the one that exaggerates the importance of government and the competence of the political class."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/158752

America's Economic Myths

      By David Saied from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"These myths are erroneous at best, sometimes based on half truths. The majority of them are just false. We read and hear them every day: 'inflation' is caused by rising oil prices; consumption is the most important element for economic growth; low interest rates are helpful to the economy; government expenditures help 'stimulate' the economy; there is an energy 'crisis,' and many others. We will examine the most common ones and proceed to explain the reality behind these myths."

http://mises.org/story/3085

Could Life Evolve on the Internet?

      By Brandon Keim from Wired Science from Wired.com

"Indeed, computer viruses and e-mail spam have arguably displayed evolutionary characteristics. But Nowak was more interested in the forms of social life produced by the internet. "

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/could-life-evol.html

Incomes: Equalizing or Churning?

      By Anthony de Jasay from Library of Economics and Liberty

"Any government that would falter in the progress toward complete equality should be voted out and replaced by its rival that promised to go further. How come, then, that there is no trace of any strong trend toward income equality? To all appearances, governments and their oppositions fight their main battles over redistributive measures, vast programmes to that effect are constantly born or reshaped, yet the statistics do not show that inequality is being ironed out."

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Jasaychurning.html

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

The Goal Is Freedom: Bailing Out Statism

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"The key to understanding the saga of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the newly nationalized twin government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that dominate home financing -- is this: They were created -- intentionally -- to distort the housing and mortgage markets. That is, government planners were not content to let voluntary exchange and spontaneous market forces configure those industries unmolested. So -- holding the taxpayers hostage -- they intervened."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=2336

Planning Order, Causing Chaos: Transantiago

      By Michael Munger from Library of Economics and Liberty

"It's always easy to criticize, with hindsight. But optimism about planning and ignorance about the information provided by markets nearly always imply bad outcomes, and people should be able to see that in advance."

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Mungerbus.html

Bernanke Has Kept His Helicopters Grounded...So Far

      By Steve Saville from Safe Haven

"[T]he Fed's ability to continue along its current path will be restricted by the fact that its holdings of US Treasuries have already dwindled from $780B to $480B. The Fed will almost certainly want to retain at least a few hundred billion dollars of Treasuries on its balance sheet, so if the financial sector requires additional large-scale assistance in the future then it is reasonable to assume that the Fed will be forced to resort to methods that involve creating a lot of new money 'out of thin air'."

http://www.safehaven.com/article-11196.htm

Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public is Shocked

      By Robert Higgs from Liberty & Power: Group Blog

"This financial mega-mess is the same sort of event as the collapse of the USSR’s centrally planned economy, another economically unworkable Rube Goldberg apparatus that was kept going, more or less badly, for decades before it fell apart completely. Along the way, of course, famous (yet actually unsound) economists assured the world that everything was working out splendidly."

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/54332.html

The Scope of Public Choice Theory

      By Tibor Machan from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Those so called public servants, in short, have no clue at all what needs to be done by you, me, our friends, colleagues, neighbors, and the rest, so they will promote policies they happen to prefer, never mind whether they help solve the problem. They will, as customary, feel the urge to 'do something,' even if there is no demonstrable connection between it and any solution to the problem that is supposedly being addressed."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0809a.asp

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

McCain’s Self-Righteous Fakery

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Service to country is far too abstract a slogan to be any guide to living. In real terms it ends up meaning service to the state, which is to say, service to whatever manipulative, scheming politician happened to have clawed and double-talked his way into the White House at the time. Countries don’t call men to war. White House occupants do, and they know that the surest way to be ranked among the 'great presidents' is to embroil the country in war. We must stop dressing up the slaughter of foreigners as a great national cause."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0809c.asp

US 'may plot assassination of Al Maliki'

      By Basil Adas from gulfnews.com

"Americans, increasingly resenting recent moves by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, could seek to topple or even assassinate him, says a secret report by a Kurdish political party, which is part of the national government."

http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iraq/10244335.html

Sarah Palin: The Xena of the War Party

      By Justin Raimondo from AntiWar.com

"McCain and his top advisors are ideologues who care about one thing and one thing only: war. The glory of it, the utility of it, the necessity of it. It's the McCain panacea...."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13412

So, the President Can Just Kill Anybody He Pleases, Right?

      By Robert Higgs from Liberty & Power: Group Blog

"What an awesome power the president and, with his authorization, his subordinate officers possess: they can kill people at will, including those persons’ wives and children, with no risk whatever of receiving return fire or other retribution. Surely this is the long-sought culmination of the Republican’s quest to establish 'law and order'."

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/54437.html

U.S. Dependence on Foreign Oil: Why We Shouldn’t Be Alarmed

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"Oil is strategic ... in the narrow sense that its derivatives help run tanks, aircraft, ships, helicopters, and other vehicles that the U.S. military would use in a war."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2306

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

America's Most Famous Forgotten Thinker

      By Jeffery J. Smith from The Progress Report

"Overlooking original thinkers is not unusual in history. Most people know Edison, not Tesla (for electrical inventions), know Newton, not Leibnitz (for trigonometry), Selma Hayek, not Willem Dafoe, and just about any economist other than the one whose insights are listed above. Nevertheless, why is our man forgotten more so than his contemporaries? One reason is his reform would raise wages at the expense of rents. The major corporations of the late 1800s -- railroads and oil – endowed universities lavishly to rewrite economics so that land, including resources and urban locations, was folded into capital and soon lost as a separate factor. "

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

High Flight, 1960s TV sign-off shown on Mad Me

      By Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing

"I have dim memories of watching it as a kid, and I wanted to see the whole thing, so I started looking for it. It turns out there are a bunch of versions using different aircraft and different narrators..." [I remember the first one with the F-104 Starfighter from the 60s and/or early 70s.]

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/04/high-flight-1960s-tv.html

A President Needs Good Judgment Rather than Experience

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"Richard Nixon was one of the most experienced people ever to take the office of president—having served in the Senate and eight years as vice president—yet he made a thorough mess of things domestically and had a mixed record in foreign policy."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2311

Indigenism and Economics

      By Ibsen Martinez from Library of Economics and Liberty

"This Incan Empire, as it was also known, was headquartered in the now Peruvian city of Cuzco. Its Pacific coastline stretched for more that 5000 km. When the Spaniards first arrived during the early 15th century, the Incan Empire extended over what now is Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. At the height of its might, during the 13th century, it comprised large expanses of what now are Colombia and Northern Chile and Argentina. This only fact would explain why indigenism in the Andean countries has morphed into a force that simply will not go away and must be reckoned with."

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Martinezindigenism.html

Secession and Slavery

      By Scott McPherson from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"If liberation was coming too slowly, then what about the those slaves who would have preferred the presumably quicker liberation that was coming under the British government but who were nonetheless swept away as hostages to the American Revolution?"

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0809d.asp

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Defending the Baltics

      By William S. Lind from AntiWar.com

"A handful of modern jet fighters, a battalion or two of tanks, and a frigate for the navy all add up to nothing. Against a Great Power, a toy army goes down to defeat in days if not hours."

http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13432

The Folly of Interventionism

      By George C. Leef from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The 'isolationist' label is just a red herring. No one proposes that the United States should wall itself off from contact with the rest of the world (although some protectionists come close to that). The real question is whether it will continue with, as Bandow puts it, 'promiscuous intervention' that makes us less secure, less free, and less prosperous."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0806f.asp

The Limits of Deterrence

      By Ted Galen Carpenter from Cato Institute

"Now that the conflict in Georgia has returned to a simmer, it is time to reflect on some of the larger lessons. Perhaps the most important lesson is about the limits of America's ability to protect small, strategically exposed client states. ... To be blunt, the NATO commitment to small, vulnerable countries in Russia's immediate neighborhood looks like a bluff — and not a very credible one at that."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9622

Cheney in the Caucasus

      By Mike Whitney from CounterPunch

"Medvedev and Putin know who is to blame. Putin even suggested that the invasion was planned as a way to improve the chances of one of the presidential candidates to win the election.(McCain) Regardless of the reason, when one country demonstrates that it is willing to kill the citizens and soldiers of another country to achieve its geopolitical objectives; that's when friendship ends and attitudes harden. "

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09112008.html

Stupidity Protection Plan

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"If you are like me and most Americans, we immediately see that these are foreigners, who don't even speak English, and when they do, they sound hilarious with their funny accents. Naturally, with such an easily-identified group with no voting power that is agitating for its rights to have contracts honored, America has demonstrated again, as it has consistently demonstrated over and over again for a hundred years or so, that we will cheat them any way we can, and kill them if we can't. So no problem!"

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG091108.html

Gazing Ahead

Attempts to peek into the future.

A Temporary Respite from Permanent Decline

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"Americans were alarmed last June as the price of oil raced toward $150 per barrel. Today, as the price falls toward $100, Americans feel relieved. They have forgotten that prior to the Bush regime’s wars, the price of oil was $30 per barrel."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09102008.html

Stronger Than a Hurricane

      By Byron W. King from Whiskey & Gunpowder

"And oil was rising as the dollar was falling. In fact, oil has been rising for well over a year, as the dollar has tumbled. For the currency traders, life was easy. Bet against the buck, and the Euro would rise. You saw this in gold and other precious metals as well. Then in mid-July, it all changed. Overnight. There was no big announcement from the Federal Reserve or the European central bank. Nobody said “We’re Tanking the Euro.” But it’s pretty clear that they decided that enough was enough. The falling dollar and rising Euro was killing exports from European countries. It was putting Germany and France into recession."

http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2008/20080912.html

How HTML 5 Is Already Changing the Web

      By Scott Loganbill from Webmonkey

"Shaver says the HTML 5 movement was born out of impatience. Many sensed activity around web standards was stagnating as the W3C started directing its attention away from HTML and to another emerging technology, XML."

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/How_HTML_5_Is_Already_Changing_the_Web

Google co-founder expects Chrome for Android

      By Stephen Shankland from CNET News

"Chrome and Android were developed largely separately, Brin said in an interview at the Chrome launch event Tuesday. .... But you can expect that to change now that both projects are public and nearing their first final releases."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10031318-92.html

The CPUs of the future? Alleged Intel roadmaps leaked

      By Joel Hruska from Ars Technica

"The two big changes, according to this roadmap, are the processor's new platform and an integrated GPU core. The GPU core may or may not be directly integrated into Atom; Intel could also opt to use a multi-die package."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20080905-the-cpus-of-the-future-alleged-intel-roadmaps-leaked.html

Culcha'

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

Philip K. Dick Teams Up With Alanis Morissette To Save The World

      By Charlie Jane Anders from io9

"In addition to being Dick's first semi-autobiographical novel (in which he appears as a character), Albemuth also has something very important in common with Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen. Both stories take place in an alternate universe where Richard Nixon is still president, years after Watergate."

http://io9.com/5044424/philip-k-dick-teams-up-with-alanis-morissette-to-save-the-world

Beyond Galt's Gulch, there's Macrolife

      Reviewed by Wally Conger from out of step

"Its scope is certainly epic, spanning one hundred billion years, so I suppose it qualifies as space opera. ... And I think it offers exciting ideas for radical libertarians, freedom-seeking secessionists, and anarcho-transhumanists to mull over."

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2008/09/beyond-galts-gulch-theres-macrolife.html

Jerry Reed, RIP

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Magazine Hit & Run

"The singer, songwriter, actor, guitarist, and backwoods hipster Jerry Reed has died at age 71."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/128530.html

Ron Paul Is A Nut (And So Am I)

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"We all know something is wrong, terribly wrong, with our country. But the judges and politicians have been corrupted by the power they possess."

http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=3051

Poe's "The Raven," translated into 50s hipster argot

      By Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing

"One of my favorite Poe adaptations is jazz poet Lord Buckley's 'The Bugbird,' a too-awesome-to-be-believed translation into the 'semantic of the hip,' circa 1950."

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/09/poes-the-raven-trans.html

The lighter side

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

You Suck At Photoshop #16: Define Brush Preset

      By Donnie Hoyle from MyDamnChannel

"Donnie Hoyle finds himself in a hairy situation with an old friend."

http://www.mydamnchannel.com/Big_Fat_Brain/You_Suck_At_Photoshop__Season_2/
YouSuckAtPhotoshop16DefineBrushPreset_899.aspx

Republocrat campaign song

      By BreakTheMatrix from YouTube

"Music video of McCain, Obama, Clinton and Bush...."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1xO1LCGGJQ

Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain

      By staff from The Onion

"Since witnesses first reported the unexplained marking—which appears to resemble a 19th-century male figure with a high forehead and large beard—this normally quiet town has become a hotbed of biological zealotry. Thousands of pilgrims from as far away as Berkeley's paleoanthropology department have flocked to the site to lay wreaths of flowers, light devotional candles, read aloud from Darwin's works, and otherwise pay homage to the mysterious blue-green stain."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolutionists_flock_to_darwin

Hollywood Star Snitcher

      By Garry Reed from River Cities Reader

"Why do so many Hollywood stars turn into Marx-huggers when it comes to politics? Some believe it's embedded in their DNA. Entertainers are professional emoters. People who emote for a living tend to see the whole world through their emotions."

http://www.rcreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13055&Itemid=42

Silver Stats that Will Make You Salivate

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"I am obviously not in the mood for a lengthy conversation as I am suddenly ... salivating like Pavlov's dog with a lot of foamy drool coming down my own chin, and I am sure I looked disgusting as hell."

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG090108.html

Deep Thought

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

Thinking Like “Fat Tony”

      By James Turk from Dollar Collapse

"There was a thought-provoking book published last year entitled The Black Swan. It provides an insightful perspective into seemingly improbable events (i.e., a ‘black swan’) and our thinking that surrounds them. "

http://www.dollarcollapse.com/iNP/view.asp?ID=75

Is Gold Money?

      By Robert Blumen from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"What qualities have made gold (and silver) the winners of the monetary competition in centuries past? The qualities most often cited by monetary historians are durability, divisibility, recognizability, portability, scarcity (the difficulty of producing more of it), and a value-to-weight ratio that is neither too high nor too low. ... The 'demonetization' of gold by central banks has rigged the competition — but not ended it."

http://mises.org/story/3086

The Landscape of Possible Intelligences

      By Kevin Kelly from The Technium

"I don't think intelligence as we currently understand it is equivalent to computation. The internet as a whole is computationally larger than our brains, but not as intelligent in the way we crave. "

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/09/the_landscape_o.php

Our Trillion-Dollar War

      By Edgar K. Browning from The Independent Institute

"By any reasonable standard, a trillion dollars devoted to fighting poverty and inequality is a substantial sum. What do we get for it? That is the question we should be asking our politicians in this election year as they urge us to spend still more on the War on Poverty."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2310

Sun's face virtually spot-free for months

      By Elise Kleeman from NewScientist.com news service

"Several dozen sunspots can appear every day during periods of maximum solar activity. But only a small handful of sunspots have occurred during all of 2008 to date, suggesting the Sun's activity is now at a minimum."

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14652-suns-face-virtually-spotfree-for-months.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"[T]he principle that the United States may murder Muslim innocents because they have failed to stop the violent elements among them is precisely the argument Osama bin Laden used in justifying the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks. "

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0806b.asp

Lorem Ipsum

      By HotForWords from YouTube

"[I]s it secret code handed down from generation to generation?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLABoi1I-As

Pride in Acting Like a Pawnshop

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from Safe Haven

"I had the opportunity and motivation to read the rest of the article, which said that business at the pawnshops ('The U.K.'s alternative credit industry') is booming, according to Ms. Hotter, who is an unknown, mystery woman whose name gets me hot just by looking at her name and wondering what kind of luscious, dirty-minded little vixen would choose, I assume, such a suggestive nom de plume."

http://www.safehaven.com/article-11144.htm

Record Low For Climate Science

      By Patrick J. Michaels from Cato Institute

"If 'future generations' and 'legacy of our decisions' sound more to you like politics rather than science, you're correct. The CCSP report isn't a science document at all. Not unless global warming science is a virtually one-sided world where almost everything is bad and getting worse, and where a moderate response dishonors our progenitors."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9619

Lenovo won't refund the Windows tax without an NDA

      By Ryan Paul from Ars Technica

"The cost of the Windows license bundled with OEM computers has long been a source of ire for Linux enthusiasts who erase unused Windows installations. The controversy surrounding the so-called Windows tax flared up again this week following a report that Lenovo has agreed to reimburse a buyer for an unused Windows preinstallation license, but only if the individual would sign a nondisclosure agreement."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20080831-lenovo-wont-refund-the-windows-tax-without-an-nda.html

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