Category: religion and politics

Church and State should be separate in the body politic, but never in individuals.

6 months to a better Iraq

During the boom, if you asked any startup in the Valley when they planned on going public they’d tell you “about 18 months.”

Come back in 18 months and you’d hear the same talk. This continued until IPO’s become radioactive. Post boom you hear these same people espouse having a “path to profitability,” which is a sure barometer for the fact that they actually have no such plan.

After working at four startups, I can see clearly from the inside that most of these strategies are wishful thinking tied together with two matchsticks: that’s why luck is so important.

A lot of startup people spend an inordinate amount of time messing with their Excel spreadsheets of revenue and growth projections until the numbers say they’re going to be profitable. When you read, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” a startup person knows this is what you get when you elect a CEO president: someone simply forgot to prefix the word “failed” in front of his title.
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Posted on by tychay 0

The best advertising database in the world

It’s making the news now and really should have come as no surprise if you have been following the news. It’s a reducto ad absurdum of the Administration’s “creative” interpretation of the Constitution.

If you parse the up-to-date denials and spin, you will see they’re not denying it. The only claim is that the profiles are anonymous. Their interpretation of the law seems to be as long as its not tied to your social security number, no warrant is needed and the 4th is not violated. (There is this separation in their minds between “unreasonable search and seisure” and “probable cause” along the lines of “these are terrorists, this is war, it is not unreasonable to search these records without warrants in times of war.)

I’m not interesting in talking about the legality of that. Instead I want to think about two things: 1) Why the outrage now? 2) Even if you take the most restrictive definition of what that database does, how useful is it?

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Posted on by tychay 4

Music for free (with strings)

Neil Young has introduced his new album on his website for free. The interesting thing is it forces you to listen to it in its entirety—the actual website consists of two interacting swf file and a GIF used to track stats.

Living With War

This way it won’t undercut sales of the CD or downloads when it is released on Tuesday. Pretty clever.

(The spin on this form of delivery is quite clever. From The New York Times review:

Mr. Young wants the album heard as a whole. The online streams play through from beginning to end; until the CD is ready, the downloadable copies will be available only as a bundle of the full album. “That first impression is so important,” he said. “Instead of just going to ‘Let’s Impeach the President,’ people will have to absorb the whole thing. To understand the songs, you need to understand where the whole album’s coming from. It protects my right as an artist to have the work presented the way I created it.”

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Posted on by tychay 1

Immigrants are the new gay

Conservative blogger, John Cole, has an insightful article on immigration being the new wedge issue for the midterm elections.

It is weird because I thought that this was an issue that would just backfire against the Republicans. Hispanics, after all, are not voting “traditionally democrat” anymore than Catholics are (I believe the numbers in the last election were 45 for Bush, 55 for Kerry). Driving the largest growing segment against you, especially a segment that normally votes for you on the abortion wedge-issue seems a recipe for pitting border-Republicans (California, Arizona, Texas, Florida) against the rest, in a party that can only survive through nazi-like discipline—their views, after all, on nearly every issue are in the minority.

But it’s bad to dismiss Right Wing political strategy. I can only assume that they’ve done the polling and have determined that while a majority of them again are disagree or are indifferent, a number of people like “Ms. Kitlica” mentioned in the article will be motivated enough to go to the polls to vote.
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Posted on by tychay 9

A difference of one letter

Redgee likes to joke that his relatives are all in jail or the military. He told me a few months ago that he heard from them that they are being told to gear up for a war in Iran. Now with a recent New Yorker article I read, this rumor is getting some play in the public discourse.

I don’t think it’s going to happen. But since we are gearing up for midterm elections, it is about time for the Republicans to start another war.
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Posted on by tychay 7

CA-50 is dead to me

Today is the day of the California 50 special election.

The purpose of the special election, like that of the one that will occur in Delay’s district, is based on the premise that Republicans are more likely to vote when voter turnout is low. After all, what is the purpose in Governor Schwarzenegger wasting resources on an election after the last debacle with the midterms so close, especially after the last debacle?

It has some significance to me because even though most of PacBeach is not part of CA-50, the part I live in, the rich, conservative part, falls just within it. (By the way, special kudos to GovTrack for a creative use of GoogleMaps.)
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Domestic spying reframed

The new watchword is to replace “domestic spying” with “Terrorist Surveillance”. It consisted of a three-pronged assault of the news: Bush speaking at Kansas, A.G. Alberto Gonzales speaking at Georgetown University Law Center, and Karl Rove speaking at the Republican National Committee.

I won’t get into a defense or attack about this issue because it won’t convince anyone—we’ll rationalize our own view even in the face of facts.

Instead I don’t think this new frame will work. To me, at least, “domestic spying” sounds a lot more catchy than “terrorist surveillance”Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1