Honestly, when you look at this:
what is your first impression? Do these fellas look like the good guys or the bad guys? And, holy hell, do they look like public servants to you?
You may be concerned about judging by appearances, but sometimes there's a reason it looks and quacks like a duck.
So, Paul did respectably in New Hampshire. Not the upset we thought it'd be, but oh well. I find it interesting that Paulites are blaming two New Republic pieces (here and here) exposing a supposedly racist Ron Paul. Paul claims not to have authored the pieces, and they certainly don't reinforce any policies or agendas he's promoted. And you have to understand that there are liberals who insist on labelling anybody who talks about shrinking government as racist, anti-semetic, and a host of other politically incorrect epithets.
However, I share Radley Balko's disappointment about the Paul campaign not being quicker to step up and address this issue of racism. There's no reason whatsoever that the kind of honest and hard-hitting campaign Paul has been running could not have used this accusation as a starting point for talking about racial justice issues. It's a great opportunity to demonstrate how libertarianism dispenses with all collectivist arguments such as racist ones, but that it also opposes the kinds of laws and government policies that, throughout this country's history, has propped up and subsidized social norms that discrminate and oppress on the basis of some arbitrary identity. The "separate but equal" decision, Jim Crow and poll tax laws, the Fugitive Slave Act - all of these are the result of positive, intrusive government intervention. It's unfortunate that libertarians have missed the opportunity to talk about the State's role in racism, playing defense instead of offense.
However, just about all of the activists I've met are focused much more on Paul's broader agenda than Paul himself. Paul is a symbol for a sentiment that has just recently been energized. The campaign may or may not continue, but the networks of activists that have been cultivated will almost certainly continue and, hopefully, grow. This is good, because it's a sign that the seeds libertarians have sown are starting to sprout. I truly believe that the Paul campaign is only the beginning of a new, distributed, loosely-coordinated movement to resist the direction of American governmental leviathan.
How come I turn off the heavy duty spam filter (Spam Karma 2) and now I get less spam?
Left libertarians should make sure as many people as possible hear this interview on Fresh Air. This is the most eloquent explanation of how corporations use government to make money rather than competing in the market.
Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.
Cay Johnston covers tax policy for The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on that beat. His previous book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else, was a best seller.
The new book, which expands the inquiry beyond tax policy into a whole range of regulatory machinery, is titled Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).
The story about George Bush's wealth being almost solely due to special government connections is priceless, but the take-home is that Bush is one of many, many wealthy individuals who do this.
I know it's kind of whiny, but this comic captures my current feelings about life and career rather well.
From the Daily Paul:
On the evening of, January 3, 2007, Ron Paul supporters will be protesting the exclusion of our candidate from the Fox News candidate forum debate. We will be protesting at local Fox TV Stations across the country and at the Fox Forum Debate location in New Hampshire.
See the original post for more details. WRLH-TV/FOX 35 Richmond, VAIf you're a Richmond Paul supporter, here's the address of our local Fox affiliate:
1925 Westmoreland St.
Richmond, VA 23230
(V)804-358-3535
(F)804-358-1495
When I know the time we're meeting I'll update.
UPDATE: If you're a Richmond, VA Ron Paul supporter, we're meeting at 6:30 PM at the 7-Eleven at the corner of Broad and Westmoreland (4601 West Broad Street). We'll then march a quarter mile to the Fox station from there starting around 6:45.
George H. Smith gives Ron Paul a quasi-endorsement:
But of course, every endorsement is conditional, to the extent that it is principled and thought-out. But this is precisely why I do appreciate Smith making his stance clear, instead of just issuing blanket moral indictments of people. Institutions matter, true, but people act, not institutions. Libertarians should be talking about this, rather than using this as an excuse to excommunicate each other.
Since I've been on SliceHost I've learned a lot about server management. I've also made a lot of mistakes and generally made a mess out of that slice. So I got a new one and am moving everything over. This is the first post from the new slice. If you have performance issues, let me know - I probably could stand to tweak some of the Apache and PHP settings.
UPDATE: I just deleted my old slice. The move is complete!
Praise be to jeebus - a development release of Ruby 1.9.0 was announced on ruby-lang.org Christmas Day (nice timing for the western world). I guess it's too early to install on my new slice, and probably better to wait for the package anyway. Nevertheless, at RubyConf this year we got a sneak peak at the priorities and decisions that have been guiding the implementation of 1.9, which above all should be much faster than 1.8 (and more competitive with other languages). More detailed changes here.
Also, in case you didn't hear, Rails 2.0 was released last month. 'Tis hot. And I finally figured out that scaffolding has NOT been gutted; I had lamented the fact that the scaffolded views no longer generated HTML input fields based on the database table fields. But now it's much more consistent: you name the fields at generation time and it creates the views and the migration for you. Kids, it pays to read the docs.
So one of the big changes I made on my new slice is to centralize my WordPress blogs. I run three WordPress sites, and having to upload a whole new codebase three times while being careful not to overwrite my customizations, plugins, themes, etc. was beginning to grate. It would be better to have one unit of code that I could maintain and tweak. But was that possible without going down the MU route?
The answer is that not only is it possible, but it's also rather easy. I made a modification to my wp-config.php file that appends a host name prefix to every WP table in the database. So I run everything in one database, and the wordpress PHP code just chooses the tables to run off of based on the requested host. Pretty slick, because it also means I can keep all my themes, plugins, etc. in one place and just turn them on and off in the different tables. And I'm using Subversion to run updates, which means it doesn't overwrite files I've modified, while still letting me do updates with one command.
So I guess now that I've found such a convenient solution to my problem, I'm wondering if it's vulnerable at all how vulnerable it is. I suppose I'm advertising any security holes, but I'm a pretty transparent internet user, and all the data's backed up anyway - plus, I keep a pretty good eye on the server, and it's locked up rather tight for anything that would be terribly damaging. But all you WordPress gurus: what do I need to know about this approach? Is it insecure? Are there performance issues with which I need to concern myself? This is running everything from my personal blog to a moderate traffic aggregator. I'd appreciate any insight or warnings or sharp tongue lashings you could provide.
This just goes without saying. By mediating our children's world to eliminate any danger, we end up disconnecting them from the physical experience of fun, discovery, and exploration. I really would like to donate to this guy's cause of "putting power tools in the hands of second graders."
Merry Christmas!
Well, time for yet another post of personal goings-on. Presently, I'm posting from a rented Suburban heading back to Virginia. My parents, three brothers, wife and sister-in-law rolled out of my driveway Friday afternoon, stayed in Louisville for the night (and got to have breakfast with my friend, Gary, who lives there), and then made the rest of the trip to Normal, Illinois. We celebrated Christmas with my dad's side of the family whom I rarely see, and it's pretty nice - I was last out that way, and last saw most of those relatives, probably 10 years ago. Now we're on the way back, trying to make the 14 hour drive in one big overnight trip. It's gonna be pretty trying, but so far so good (though I'm typing in an awfully cramped position).
Before I left for Illinois, I was working pretty intensely on getting a custom application up for the grassroots Ron Paul campaign in Virginia. I'm pretty excited that I got a server provisioned, set up, and the app deployed in about 24 hours. It's a pretty simple app right now, but hopefully I'll get to add some bells and whistles to it. Once it's better tested I'll post the URL for your enjoyment, but the speed of the deployment is apparently catching attracting attention from somewhat higher circles in the campaign (not sure if that's a good thing).
Finally, I'm pretty excited about the book I've been reading on this trip. B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity was pulled off the shelf and recommended to me by a friend who is a psychologist doing post-graduate work in organizational behavior. I was trying to turn her onto Carson's work on the subject and she ripped Skinner's book off the shelf and insisted I read it. I must admit, I'm fascinated by his behaviorist approach to so many questions that anarchists ask themselves and each other.
The Ron Paul campaign is not well organized in Virginia, and time is running out prior to the primary. We need Virginians to step up to the plate and act yesterday, but now will have to do (hey, I just got involved in the last week, too). There are some real hurdles to cross in Virginia because of the way the Republicans run their caucuses. That's why we need to get people coordinated.
So if you want to help us out, great! Putting up signs helps. Talking to your friends, family, and neighbors helps. However, we are going to need to coordinate our actions on a pretty massive scale in order to get Ron Paul nominated by Virginia Republicans.
Therefore, if you are in this for Ron Paul, we desperately require that you do two simple things:This TED talk by Daniel Goleman succinctly presents many of the points I made in an earlier post about feedback and attention.
It's not that the consumerist, managerialist, corporate reality prevents us from caring. Of course it doesn't prevent it - individuals are the primary volitional units, and we have choices. But it does, in an increasingly well-understood, psychologically concrete manner, subsidize and reinforce a very particular sense of identity. This subsidy takes a lot of our resources to preserve a system of central management, but hides the costs from us in a variety of ways.The self involvement of which Goleman speaks does not appear to preclude basic empathy. It simply rushes and distracts us, forcing us to think about community participation in terms of more and more involved and complex management of our personal resources (in terms of time, attention, emotional energy, money, etc.). We find ourselves with less time and less energy, focusing more on our own needs and desires. Consequently, our relations with others become abstracted into less visceral, personal channels, which then require mediation and scientific, centrally coordinated approaches to the problems this management necessarily creates. In other words, it's a bit back-asswards.
Certainly, lack of compassion predates the modern system. What's interesting is not that some people don't care, but rather how the people who do seem to care feel powerless to act. Because the managed society (espeically the therapeutic State) wants to systematize our approach to all problems, individual and collective, people tend to think that these issues require redress by a new institution that can organize and coordinate an approach. Simultaneously, the increase in information about these problems dwarfs our individual initiative that might make a difference on a neighborhood or individual-to-individual basis.
Congratulations to Ron Paul and his supporters! Looks like we topped the $4.2 million raised on November 5th, and not by any mean amount - over $6 million in one day, according to this graph:
And look at when the $6 million mark was crossed - looks like that email from the campaign at 11:00 PM really pushed it over the top. Fucking awesome.
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