hack attack

This is exceedingly cool. A must-see.

bang is the meaning of a gun

I have much I can write about today. I'll try to keep it brief. Brevity is important when you want to ramble.

First, on immigrant labor. Mallory and I ate at La Hacienda this evening. I really do love that restaurant. The food tastes great, and it's typical Mexican fare - not "Mexican-American". I love that Park Street has developed somewhat of a Mexican community. It's funny that we condemn these people - many of whom have lived here for a very, very long time - yet we consume the fruits of their labor and live on their backs. Luckily, immigration offers a solution to the problem of exploitation. Immigrants, especially immigrants inclined to entrepreneurialism, are able to see the problems in our society and set out to fix them. They can see where money can be made and can make a difference.


I have much I can write about, but I'm already feeling tired just pounding this out! I'll probably ramble more about it in the future. Immigration is, as we all know, a big topic in this country. Little is done to examine the real economic impact of immigrants. Perhaps we should do that more before we submit ourselves to demagogues who try to make us afraid of people simply because they have a different color skin.

Another topic I've been thinking about today is electoral structure, the meddling of the powers that be in elections - not only direct influence but the indirect influence created by structural changes in the system of elections - and what really constitutes democratic action. As a committed democrat (and that's small d democrat, take note--), and as a political scientist (image management? check-- although I am in training, I like to take the mantle--), I find more and more that we cannot simply label all elections democratic, even ones taken in the most fair of circumstances. There are tough questions that need to be asked about the interests that we allow to come to power across the globe (and by "we", I don't mean the royal American we, but rather the "we, the people" of global humanity).

Every electoral decision is made with real, life-or-death consequences. Do we have single member districts? Winner takes all elections? Runoff elections? Single-party systems? Do we outlaw parties? Do we have public financing? Do we require voter ID at our polling places? Do we vote for candidates or party lists? Who decides? Who selects the polling places, the hours, the days for elections? Who makes up the ballots, decides on the voting machines? Who decides which district is where, who will live in it, and where its lines lie?

Finally, do any of these questions really matter? Are we changing the electoral regime just to make trade-offs that will lift one party or candidate and sink another? Will these choices lift one segment of society and sink another?

Perhaps it will always be political. Perhaps scientists are simply tools of the ruling elite and will be utilized by the party system to justify the status quo.

Then again, perhaps not.


Thorns & Roses
+ There Will Be Blood. What an amazing film. Mallory and I went to see it for the first time, the second time for me. Daniel Day Lewis is simply electrifying and intense throughout the entire movie. What a wild man.

+ Chinese rebel hackers attacking the so-called 'Great Firewall of China'. The revolution, apparently, will be digitized. The internet, with all of its new institutions - blogs, photo-sharing, social networking, video sharing - cannot be held back or restrained. Nor should it be. Information wants to be free. It just goes to show that in this century no institution can monopolize the political landscape and dominate any form of political thought. Hopefully, the Chinese government will not resort to violence to restore its place as the sole institution. If it did, it would be a step back for China and a step back for the Hu regime.

- Increases in military spending. We've got too many problems that the military just can't solve. It's time we demobilize out of our cold war stance and begin investing in a true international future. If anyone hasn't seen this, a map of the federal government's budget, check it out. It's worth the time to poke around and see where our tax dollars are going.

+ Creativity comes out of time and effort, not 'eureka' moments. An interesting tidbit out of the NYT for all you creative types out there.

+/- The Giants won the super bowl. I didn't watch it, but I'm indifferent-pleased with the results. At the very least, I won't have to hear my roommate shout about Boston teams for a while.

And one final thing - anyone know of a good geography blog?


There's something wrong with me, I'm a cuckoo.

Dress to impress

So, what is the point of keeping an online identity, where people, even from around the world, can read news about you - even, sometimes, your innermost thoughts. Is this person we've created the same as the person we are 'in the real world'? Do they ever meet? If they are different, do they meet when we are around those people who are aware of - or have 'met' - our digital identity?

This article was in the Times earlier this month. Impression management is an interesting theory for why people act the way they do. Our generation is intimately connected to this kind of digital strategy. We are pressured to show ourselves online, but then we choose which part of ourselves. Or, enhance a part of ourselves. The classic example is the "MySpace picture", using odd camera angles or photoshop enhancements to add 'beauty' and lose pounds.

Interesting enough. Is this internet revolution creating self-actualizing people or creating some sort of 'move-to-the-center' world where everyone tries to copy the person next to them?

If our profiles are copy & paste, and our profiles are reflections of our personality, are our personalities 'copy & paste'? We try not to think like that - it's the defensive nature of our egos - but I think it's true. We, as a culture, tend to copy and move with the flow of society.

What does everyone else think? Do we manage our images, or just maintain them to reflect our own identities?

Okay. Thorns and Roses:
+ The cold weather has broken. It actually felt normal to be outside this morning. I didn't even wear my hat - yes, that ugly, ugly, pale-green Army issue winter hat. Never Again.

+ More on the French Societie General scandal.. Turns out he was able to break the security systems and make billions in unauthorized trades (and lose billions in bad bets) with simple tools provided by Microsoft. Turns out that security by obscurity doesn't really work - and security by being an oppressive company isn't much help either. It's quite a libertarian notion that people with computer skills should be constantly testing the bounds of the digital world, but it's only through that exploration that we can avoid the big cracks in the cement like this.]

+ The D debates. We're all on the same page now - I hope. Maybe the attacks will stop and we'll get on to winning the general election.

+ Youtube music/media mashups are great. Here's something I found this morning - Helter Skelter set to the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Check it out:



God only knows when your word isn't pure