ceteris paribus, life is better than death

Posted on Wednesday, 2002 August 21 by Anton

Reason: Forever Young: The new scientific search for immortality. (Thanks to Paul Hsieh for the link.)

Posted in futures | Leave a comment

can you say “backlash”?

Posted on Wednesday, 2002 August 21 by Anton

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

School officials in California are warning parents that they cannot educate their children at home unless they obtain professional teaching credentials.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

remember the Beethoven beetle?

Posted on Monday, 2002 August 19 by Anton

Programming tool makes bugs sing. (Link from GirlHacker.) Interesting if it works. There’s a similar idea in Bruce Sterling’s early novel Schismatrix: the control panel of the ship Red Consensus makes a sonic pattern designed to fade from conscious perception until it changes.

2006: See also.

Posted in neep-neep | Leave a comment

tall buildings

Posted on Monday, 2002 August 19 by Anton

James Lileks says several right things about the WTC.

It’s not cowardice to suggest that there might be difficulty renting the upper floors of two 110 story towers; I can imagine myself as someone looking for office space, standing in the exact same spot in the sky the walls of the WTC enclosed before, feeling naked, and wondering whether this just wasn’t proving some point that didn’t need proving.

. . .

It’s not that people hated Modernism – they hated seeing good old buildings fall to the reaper’s scythe, replaced by ugly tall graceless slabs, again, and again, and again. Modernism wore out its welcome long ago. Modernism had no time for people. People returned the favor.

Posted in arts, economics | Leave a comment

alternate casting

Posted on Sunday, 2002 August 18 by Anton

In Time Bandits, in the scene introducing Agamemnon, the script read: Helmet comes off to reveal Sean Connery (or an actor of equal but cheaper stature).

Imagine, if you will, that the casting director hired Roger Moore.

Later: I learned last night from some website or other that Franz Liebkind, author of Springtime for Hitler, was almost played by Dustin Hoffman (who did The Graduate instead).

Posted in cinema | Leave a comment

till somebody we like can be elected

Posted on Sunday, 2002 August 18 by Anton

Over at Little Green Footballs, chins are pulled:

For all the talk about bringing democracy to the Arab world, this problem seems nearly intractable. If the uneducated, highly propagandized people of the Arab world are given freedom of choice, many are likely to choose a political system that will destroy that very freedom.

And if they’re not given a choice?

What if Iran had got real democracy in 1979? The Islamists would have won – and by now the electorate, presumably almost as sick of Sharia as they are in real life, would have booted them out. Of course, the theocrats’ first act might have been to cripple democracy — in which case Iran would be, er, no worse off than it is in our timeline.

What’s to lose by risking the same process in Algeria or Egypt?

Not ready for democracy? Perhaps not; but ‘protecting’ them from it is no way to prepare them. Temporary dictatorship is rarely temporary.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

do as I suggest, not as I am constrained

Posted on Wednesday, 2002 August 14 by Anton

Steven den Beste, in “An act of faith”, puts words in the mouth of an anonymous blogger:

. . . I, myself, do not admit to holding those opinions to those around me because I’m afraid of the consequences. But I believe that American voters should do what I say, not what I do, and they should publicly embrace the opinions that I myself fear to admit to in my own name.
They should be courageous and take chances based on my writings, even though I’m not willing to. They should risk social censure, even though I do not.

I haven’t read the blog in question, so I won’t comment on it in specific; but —you knew a ‘but’ was coming, didn’t you?— but it seems to me not unreasonable to say: “Here are some things I wish someone would do, and I hope to persuade you that they are good ideas. I am unwilling or unable to do them myself; but maybe my constraints do not apply to you. Maybe you can see a way to do whatever-it-is without the same risk that holds me back.”

Maybe only an underachiever would think of that.

Posted in blogdom, economics | 1 Comment