Monday, February 08, 2010

Quote of the Day

Elaine Vassal: Happy's easy. You act happy. People see you as happy and you see yourself in their eyes. You feel happy. It doesn't work for lonely... but, happy's easy.
-Ally McBeal

Tales from the Meltdown 21: the Recap

Felix Salmon points us to Moe Tkacik's essay in the Baffler that reviews the review books of the meltdown, and mercy has he none. Andrew Lahde comes out looking smart (again) but not many others do.

Good times, good times.

Is Obama's Inner Circle Ruining his Presidency?

An interesting pair of articles from Steve Clemons at the Washington Note and Edward Luce at the Financial Times suggest that an inner circle of Obama advisors (Emmanuel, Jarrett, Axelrod and Gibbs) have pushed the Cabinet and other potential advisors aside, and have pushed tactically smart moves at the expense of the overall strategy. It's an interesting look backstage from a pair of insiders, and would explain a lot of the inexplicable problems that have been created over the past year. AmericaBlog agrees with the assessment. How to fix it?

But one thing essential to understand is that the kind of policy that smart strategists -- including by people like National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other advisers like Denis McDonough, Tom Donilon, James Steinberg, William Burns, (previously Gregory Craig) -- would be putting forward is getting twisted either in the rough-and-tumble of a a team of rivals operation that is not working, or is being distorted by the Chicago political gang's tactical advice that is seducing Obama towards a course that has not only violated deals he made with those who voted him into office but which is failing to hit any of the major strategic targets by which the administration will be historically measured.

President Obama needs to take stock quickly. Read the Luce piece. Be honest about what is happening. Read Plouffe's smart book again. Send Rahm Emanuel back to the House in a senior role. Make Valerie Jarrett an important Ambassador. Keep Axelrod -- but balance him with someone like Plouffe, and get back to putting good policy before short term politics.

Set up a Team B with diverse political and national security observers like Tom Daschle, John Podesta, Brent Scowcroft, Arianna Huffington, Fareed Zakaria, Katrina vanden Heuvel, John Harris, James Fallows, Chuck Hagel, Strobe Talbott, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others to give you a no-nonsense picture of what is going on.

And take action to fix the dysfunction of your office.

Otherwise, the Obama brand will be totally bust in the very near term.

xkcd Reinactment

Olga Nunes, plus "Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Google Zurich, Hank Green, MC Frontalot, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Mr. Toast, Miss Cellania, Team Genius, Phil Plait, Allan Amato, Maddy Gaiman, Charissa Gilreath, Belinda Casas, Chuck Martinez, Jeremy James, Joanna Gaunder, Lee Israel & Octavio Coleman Esq. of The Jejune Institute" reinact the classic xkcd "We love the Internet" strip. The coolness/geekiness factor gets maxed out here.



Discovery Channel's original Boom-De-Yadda here.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Mark Jenkins
















Mark Jenkins makes packing tape babies, clothed mannequins, and other art that interrupts your day. Reminds me of the conceptual sculptures Marc & friends did in Dutch Money, only non-fictional.

IngloriousMr.Football

The Superbowl conceived by auteur filmmakers (Tarantino, Lynch, Anderson, Godard, Herzog)

(via kottke)

Anthony Bourdain vs. the Ten Year Old


(via Ezra Klein)

Images of the Week




Zeppelin under construction
Economist ad
early Bill Watterson
there's a story here somewhere, via rcs
tv2 ad

Bruce Sterling/Shapeways Interview

Bruce answers quirky questions from 3-d printing company Shapeways. A little spiky, a little flinty, all zen:
Joris Peels: In the future will people still read science fiction?

Bruce Sterling: "Science fiction" is 80 years old. Mass-produced commercial fiction is about 250 years old. "The future" is a very long time. Do you suppose people will still be "people" forever? The human species is only two million years old and the universe is 13.7 billion years old.

...Joris Peels: Does [Avatar] suck?

Bruce Sterling: Not if the intention was to clear a billion dollars with a three hundred million dollar investment. The Bollywood people I follow are hugely impressed by "Avatar."

Joris Peels: Who is the most likely person to be the first to start his own species?

Bruce Sterling: Somebody not born yet. A "species" by definition would be required to breed only with itself and not with human beings. It's hard to believe that we couldn't finesse a minor problem like that one. If you somehow engineer yourself to have four arms and wings, we could just re=engineer your stem cells and restore your so-called "species" to the status quo. Big deal.

Joris Peels: If you could resurrect one dead media, which would it be?

Bruce Sterling: The Incan quipu. It would be great to learn how those really worked.
...
Joris Peels: The hoverboard is the greatest piece of technology ever imagined, discuss.

Bruce Sterling: If we're talking strictly imaginary technology, it's hard to beat the Hindu pantheon churning the entire universe from a sea of milk by using a giant cobra.

(via boingboing)

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Avatar Review'd, the Way It Should be.

By Mike, the guy who brought you the masterful ten-part take-down of Star Wars.



Quote of the Day

Having an MRI is like being buried alive in a coffin that screams at you.

-NoFo Jake

The Roman Army Knife




Invented by the Swiss Romans, these multifunction knives were in use across the Roman empire by 200AD. In addition to a knife, fork and spoon, the knives include a spike "to extract meat from snails" and a spatula for "poking cooking sauce out of narrow-necked bottles". Apparently, Tobasco sauce has been used since time immemorial to make rations edible. More images here.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Bill Waterson, 15 Years Later

In his first interview since 1989, Waterson says that he stopped drawing Calvin & Hobbes at exactly the right time. Fans beg to differ.

Pink @ Grammys

Friday, January 29, 2010

Da Vinci's Resume


A capabilites-based resume written in 1482, when Leonardo Da Vinci was 30, citing his skills as an armorer, engineer, architect and artist. I'd hire the guy, or at least give him an "experiment".
"Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.

1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.
2. ...

And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency - to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc."


(via mr)

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Are Atoms the New Bits?

The state of the desktop fabbing industry. Get excited and make stuff, people.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Guardian Editor Against Paywalls

Good. While everyone else in the newspaper biz is trying to squeeze nickels out of their online audience, The Guardian's Alan Rusbridger is worrying about how to grow his audience (and everyone else's) as large as possible. His model has worked, too. The Guardian has pulled 37 million unique users out of North America, having spent less than $25k in ten years to do it. Maybe information does want to be free.

More on the Freeze Gimmick

Bruce Bartlett reiterates the history of FDR's disastrous 1937 pullback.
what we call the Great Depression was not a continuous downturn; it was really two back-to-back recessions. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the first ran from August 1929 to March 1933 and the second from May 1937 to June 1938.

According to current Commerce Department data, real gross domestic product fell sharply in 1930, 1931 and 1932, and modestly in 1933. But GDP rebounded strongly in 1934, growing 10.9% that year, 8.9% in 1935, 13% in 1936 and 5.1% in 1937. But in 1938, real GDP fell 3.4%.

For many years, economists thought this "secondary recession" was inherent in the nature of the business cycle. Today, however, economists generally believe that the only thing that caused the 1937-38 downturn was disastrously bad government policy.

Although right-wingers like to portray FDR as a giddy big spender whose profligate ways made the depression worse, the truth is that he was by nature quite conservative, fiscally. Indeed, when running against Herbert Hoover in 1932 Roosevelt was unsparing in his criticism of Hoover's spending and deficits. As he put it in an Oct. 19, 1932 speech:

"I regard reduction in federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign. In my opinion it is the most direct and effective contribution that government can make to business. In accordance with this fundamental policy it is equally necessary to eliminate from federal budget-making during this emergency all new items except such as relate to direct relief of unemployment."

Roosevelt vowed that every member of his cabinet would be required to support the economic plank of the Democratic Party's 1932 platform, which said, "We advocate an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than 25% in the cost of the federal government."

Mark Thoma pans the freeze:
This is pretty disappointing.

The long-term budget problem is due to primarily one thing, rising health care costs. Everything else is dwarfed by that problem. If we solve the health care cost problem, the rest is easy. If we don't solve it the rest won't matter.

This was an opportunity for Obama to explain the importance of health care reform and how it relates to the long-term debt problem. Why not emphasize this?...

Instead we get cheap political tricks that are likely to backfire. How will this look, for example, if there's a double dip recession, or if unemployment follows the dismal path that the administration itself has forecast?

This seems to be a case of the former Clinton people in the administration (or wannabees) trying to relive their glory days instead of realizing that those days are gone, the world is different now and it calls for different solutions.

I wasn't in favor of having so many Clinton administration people in this administration, and nothing so far has caused me to change that assessment. They're nothing but trouble.

Maddow on the Budget Freeze

"Insane"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

125 Unusual Photos of Famous People


George Clooney, proving that there is hope for all of us as we grow older. 124 more, including a surprising number of Manson & fam.

(via Alltop)

Monday, January 25, 2010

Freeze!

This discretionary spending freeze idea from the Obama Administration is the first sign that they're not just disappointing and spineless, they're actually stupid. It is impossible that the economics PhD's who are supposedly advising the place believe both that a) deficit spending in a downturn produces positive results, and therefore the stimulus package was (somewhat) effective, and that b) now cutting the deficit will also produce positive results.

In fact, the proposed freeze will be a serious drag on the economy, just like the tightening in 1937. What part of Great Depression do you not understand? We've had this level of stupidity from the Bushies for eight years, with tax cuts that were supposed to work for everything from helping a weak economy to cutting inflation. Eight years of reliably bad news produced by idiots who left the country in a shambles, and now we get more of the same? No thank you.

People should be fired for any policy that would get you thrown out of Econ 101.

Wise up.

More: Brad DeLong rounds up the reactions from actual deficit hawks.

Still more: via Brad, here's Jonathan Zasloff:
Obama’s Self-Inflicted Lobotomy Proceeds Apace « The Reality-Based Community: I’m trying to think of what could possibly be a worse plan. Let’s see: we might be entering a double-dip recession and unemployment is in double-digits, and you are going to freeze spending? What in God’s name are they thinking? Perhaps the worst thing about this is how it cedes the ideological ground to the Republicans. At some point someone must make an argument for government. I think it was former Senator Paul Simon who said: “give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican and they will choose a Republican every time.”

What next? The rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary? Or do we already have that?