According to the New York Times, the John Birch Society is staging a comeback. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry about it. Just rest easy in the knowledge that these heroes will protect you from the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, and all those communist infiltrators in the US government, too. So wrap yourself in Old Glory and let Bob Dylan explain it:
From David Galbraith’s blog (a new discovery) comes this stunning observation: If Famous Architecture Were Priced Like Paintings, a Le Corbusier Would Cost the Same as the Entire American GDP.
It’s a stunning observation to me, anyway. If the art market were all about having good taste and the money to express it, wouldn’t it be even more valuable to live in your purchase than to simply have it hanging on the wall? Yet famous art sells for an enormous premium, and famous architecture may command no premium at all. Obviously, something else is going on …
Given current events in Iran, and news of internet access being limited in much of the world, this seems like a good cause. From their home page: “Hackers Without Borders is an international technical humanitarian cluster organization, working all over the internet to assist people whose communication is threatened by government, militia, corporations or by others in power.”
A friend, magician David Groves, has posted this video about his trip to the island of Palau. He went there to perform for the natives, and to learn something about their beliefs and experiences.
Here’s what corporate bankruptcy is all about: putting under-producing assets in the hands of someone who knows what to do with them. From Gas 2.0: Saab Buy Out Brings Koenigsegg Quant Solar-Electric Supercar Closer to Reality.
[Update 6/11: Events are moving quickly. Andrew Sullivan and Huffington Post are keeping up.]
Iranians have hit the streets in protest after what may have been a rigged election:
Recently, there have been a number of freelance terrorist events in the news. In one incident, the Holocaust Memorial Museum was shot up, and a black security guard killed, by a racist and Judeophobe named James von Brunn. Von Brunn was widely described as an extreme right-winger, touching off a backlash from conservatives who tried to assert that he was best described as a leftist. Some liberals then countered that this objection was an example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.
Perhaps, but it doesn’t really matter. The issue is irrelevant; force-fitting this wacko into the simplified left-right model teaches us nothing useful, unless your definition of useful includes “making the other side look bad.” It has nothing to do with responsible political discussion.
Von Brunn’s level of paranoia and hatred doesn’t simply arise, full-fledged, from nowhere. It must be grown and nurtured; its maintenance requires a considerable amount of energy and outside support. What concerns me is that this support is now too easy to come by. With the web, and specialty cable channels, it is all too easy to wrap oneself in a cocoon of affirmation; an echo chamber, if you will. No matter what your worldview, you now have the option of listening only to people who already agree with it. Or even better: you can listen to the “bad guys” only just enough to keep your own pot well-stirred.
And this concerns me, not only about the prospects for more violent extremism, but about my own occasional tendency to wall off differing points of view. Maybe it should concern you, too, unless feeling right matters more to you than being right. You’re only as intelligent as the last time you were willing to change your mind.
Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil have made an intriguing bet on the Long Bets website. Mitch bet that machine intelligence will not, within 20 years, be able to pass for human; Ray bet that it will. Winner gets $20,000 for a favorite charity.
My guess is that Kurzweil is right; computers will pass the Turing Test in the next two decades. What do you think, esteemed readers?
(Corrected 6/11 — I got the bet backwards! Thanks, David.)
Having spent much of the last year as a recipient (and occasional victim!) of American health care, I’m listening closely to current debates on the subject. Everybody knows that something is wrong; we spend much more money on health care than other countries with citizens that are, arguably, better cared for. So: what to do?
The American health care market is rather twisted, but it’s a market nonetheless. I suspect that a single-payer system, while initially more efficient, would constrain discovery and innovation over time. That would lower the efficiency of future health care, not just in America, but everywhere.
And single-payer isn’t politically feasible, anyway. More feasible is an optional health care plan, administered by the government. The Anonymous Liberal argues his case with the analogy of package delivery, a market in which private companies compete successfully, but a public provider plays a useful role.