[Links]
[links] Link salad bestirs itself
A reader reacts to Green [ Powell's | Amazon
A reader reacts to Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon thb
A reader reacts to Escapement [ Powell's | Amazon
A reader reacts to METAtropolis [ Audible.com | Powell's | Amazon
Post-Medium Publishing — An interesting take on the value propostion of publishing. Counterpoint regarding ebooks here, “What’s Wrong With eBooks?” Note all the discussion of the relationship between content, formats and prices. (Via a mailing list I’m on.)
Black Holes Cannot Exist in Latest Theory of Quantum Gravity — Some fascinating intellectual contortions here.
The Why of METI and SETI — Centauri Dreams asks some important questions. “Because it’s cool” isn’t really enough of an answer. Except maybe it is…
Simpler Colon Cancer Screening — A new blood test could improve cancer-screening compliance. Pay attention, people. This almost killed me.
‘Smoking kills’, doctors warned in 1606 — Heh. (Thanks to
Glenn Greenwald: CIA Directors conclude CIA shouldn’t be investigated for murder — I can remember when conservatives at least pretended to stand for the rule of law, and railed against criminals getting off on technicalities. Even Watergate worked the way it did because many in the GOP chose principle over party. But somehow when it comes to torture and murder in the name of antiterrorism, situational ethics born of fear have displaced Constitutional loyalty among Republicans.
?otD: Chocolate or vanilla?
9/22/2009
Body movement: n/a (up late last night)
Hours slept: 6.5
This morning’s weigh-in: 233.4
Currently reading: The Real Wizard of Oz by Rebecca Loncraine
Posted: 5:38 am Tue September 22 2009 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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Steve Buchheit
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:01 amConservative are also against “Gotcha Journalism.” You know, until you can get footage of Acorn people being idiots. And then you play it far and wide and tag it as “refreshing journalistic look at truth.”
Jaws
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 amThe ex-CIA directors’ caution isn’t about ideology; it’s about institutionalized paranoia that cuts across all ideologies. We could have polled “ex-KGB” or “ex-Stasi” directors and reached the same result. (And contrary to popular belief, the rank-and-file at intelligence agencies is not markedly different from the general population’s politics… or perceptiveness. But that’s another story for another time.)
What you’ve got here is a bunch of people who have personal knowledge of horrible examples in which revelation of a seemingly harmless bit of information led to someone getting killed, as confirmed by later (highly classified) inquiries. Of course, that personal knowledge itself is deeply, deeply buried under layers of conscious concern for security and nondisclosure agreements that will expire only after the heat-death of the universe (no, I’m not joking about that last). To slightly warp Clarke’s Third Law:
Any sufficiently detailed knowledge of intelligence gathering methods and operations is indistinguishable from clinical paranoia.
So, this time anyway, I have to disagree with blaming this one on the conservative movement. It’s not as though the conservative movement doesn’t have a lot else to answer for!
Jay
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 amI don’t blame the investigation or lack thereof on the conservative movement. I do blame the widespread use of coercion and torture as an explicit instrument of policy on the conservative movement. Prior conservative leaders, including Ronald Reagan and Bush 43 early in his first term, have stood against torture as anti-American. We wouldn’t be having this issue in the first place if it weren’t for them.