A while ago I wrote a post about government types on Twitter. What surprised me at the time was that Republicans seemed to outnumber Democrats on Twitter. A blogger from the UK, Mat Morrison, confirms my supposition with a nice map. He also brings up a point I hadn’t even considered. There is almost no cross-talk between the two parties (at least on Twitter). It really makes on wonder what contact Republicans and Democrats have online. Do congressmen text each other all the time? Email? Is participation in social media balkanizing or unifying? The one thing Mr. Morrison doesn’t address is the “authenticity” of congressional tweets. There is a HUGE difference between Hillary/Obama’s staffer written tweet directives and the personal tweeting of Rep. John Culberson, Tim Ryan, Thad McCotter, or Neil Abercrombie (who has a very odd twitter feed… and starts a lot of tweets with a “Hi everybody” or similar phrase).

I’ve been asked by the few people who have taken the time to stomach some of my harsher critiques of our current form of Capitalism over the past few years whether or not I see the current financial crisis as some sort of vindication of my ideas. It has taken me some time to make a decision about that, but the short answer is: yes.

My principle argument about the self-destructive qualities of Capitalism has been many-pronged. Some of these prongs are not particularly relevant. My favorite deals with Capitalism’s requirement for unending expansion. While I think this is a perfectly valid point to consider, I can’t make a conclusive argument about its impact on today’s crisis.

The more relevant argument deals with the financial sector and the business of those who make money by dealing with money: investors, traders, speculators, etc. The core problem I have run into when talking about this with those who either aspire to become a participant in the financial sector, or with those who are simply admirers who hope to benefit from these practices now or at some point in the future is the claim that it is more complex than it could possibly look from the outside, and those who are not practicing cannot possibly understand its importance. This argument to me is akin to the religious argument that God works in mysterious ways and His truth, goodness, and existence is thereby unquestionable; an absurd justification, in my opinion.

So, speaking from the outside, the practices of the financial industry are self-destructive for the following reason.

The basic idea on Wall Street is to produce money by moving money. I’ve heard the phrase “you need money to make money” repeated without the batting of an eye by many respectable and intelligent people in my life, and this surprises me greatly. Currency is nothing more than the universal equivalent. In some economic epochs it has been an equivalent for goods more generally, and to some degree that is still the case. But more specifically in Capitalism it is the universal equivalent for productive labor hours. At its core the game in the financial industry is to create the equivalent using only more of the equivalent, without producing goods and without engaging in productive labor. This is not a complicated idea and no amount of business schooling or time spent engaging in this behavior can make it more complicated or less absurd. If there is any practice that this can be related to in a glorified fashion it is gambling. I’ve gambled a bit in my life and certainly wouldn’t mind winning the Powerball, but I could never convince myself or anyone else that going to the tracks, studying the horses and making a correct educated guess about investing money in a winning horse is in any way a productive activity. Now nobody at the tracks or on the Vegas strip is going to contribute to the collapse of major economies. However, it is the same activity that is the driving force of the industry whose success or failure correlates directly into the success or failure of world economies.

Now I don’t think this crisis is the end of Capitalism. Or even that any part of this world is ready for a major overhaul of the principle underpinnings of our economic systems. Those who know me know I am an admirer of Marx, Engles, and to some degree, Hegel. However as with any philosophy there are parts to appreciate and parts to call outdated and parts to dismiss on their own absurdity regardless of timeframe. Being a critic of Capitalism does not mean that feeling vindicated today makes me happy, or that it makes me search for that sickle I must have hidden away somewhere to head out to behead the fat-cat Capitalists and lead a revolution. Many radical socialists or communists have been revolutionaries; I am not. I hope that the crisis, whether or not it continues, allows people to open their eyes to some of the self-destructive qualities of our society, and allows them to get over fear of outdated catch phrases and misunderstood notions dealing with the big bad word: Socialism.

I’ve been asked by many to share my thoughts, and though I’ve been resisting, I thought I’d say a few things about the recent and ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia… and the US (I guess we did get ourselves inappropriately mucked up in this).

First of all I’d like to take a moment to welcome Russia to the modern world as they have acted as a completely typical and predictable regional state power (other Slavophils will recognize just how bizarre it is to attach those adjectives to anything Russian). There really is nothing out of the ordinary here, and in fact, in a grander sense, Russia is acting much more appropriately than the last time the United States engaged in serious regional power-flexing (I speak, of course, of the 1980s and Latin America). Russia saw instability in its region and moved in militarily, probably excessively. I think I’ve seen a similar play before with different actors… I can’t be sure though, that one might have been a comedy, it was a little far-fetched (I hope the reader picks up the reference here, but if not that is my fault and I’m not looking to get into it any further).

Secondly, I’d like to point out the hilarious irony here. Russia has taken military action claiming to defend the right of self-determinism in regions neighboring Russia. I’ll just provide some empty space to allow that to settle a bit.

So, Putin, remember Chechnya? Just another way that Russia has become more modern and typical. Ideals shifting unabashedly with circumstantial interests! Yay go modern nation-state! In previous epochs Russia has been an anomaly in that, while lead by awful men engaging in horrendous acts, Russia has typically had a sort of ideological zealotry it has stuck to, quite firmly. Not the case here, and if the rest of the world had a mirror it cleaned more often than once a century, it would probably applaud Russia for assuming more common tactics.

Moving on. Another point I’d like to make is that this conflict has really made clear for me the awful state of macro journalism in the US and Europe. I have not read one single article by a major news source that was not painfully un-inhibited by standards I would call essential to journalism. Some have chosen to be pro-Georgia, some pro-Russia, some even pro-US (what the hell?), but no one has relayed the facts and only the facts. This has caused me to have very little to say about the specific events that took place to cause this conflict. I simply don’t know! And I’m starting to think nobody else does either.

But what is really noteworthy here is just how un-noteworthy this conflict is turning out to be. Russia seems to have become a fairly typical international player and a regional power. Georgia may or may not have acted inappropriately but before we start name calling on Russia we should probably think about the fact that the man who almost certainly orchestrated some seriously illegal and awful regional power-flexing in Latin America during the Reagan years went on to serve as President and to produce in his offspring one of the worst Presidents in our nation’s history. Food for thought anyways…

One of the best things I have learned in the past week is that there are actually an impressive number of Congressmen on Twitter. The other great thing is that a lot of them are personally twittering rather than having staffers do it for them. There is a nice nice wiki with the names of known governmental types on twitter. A lot of them seem to only update very infrequently (such as Mark Udall (D-CO)), or have staffers writing their tweets (such as Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner the majority and minority leader respectively). However their are a lot of congressmen that are writing their own tweets and replying to other twitterers. Dan Burton even has two accounts @DanBurton for his personal tweets and @RepDanBurton for official stuff from his press office. The grandaddy of all congressional twitterers is John Culberson from the Texas’ 7th District with almost 1300 updates. Another wild thing is that he follows 3200 people and is followed by 3000. He has also made a splash recently by Twittering and Qikking live updates and video from inside the House of Representatives during what has been called a Republican congressional revolt.

A couple interesting trends in congressional Twittering is that I expected Democrats to be more on top of new web technology but Republicans outnumber them on Twitter (at least from the list above) pretty significantly. From a quick look Republicans also seem to be the most prolific twitterers (discounting feeds that appear to be done by staffers). It also seems that Twitter has brought Democrats and Republicans together on some issues. Basically Culberson and a Democrat ally, Rep. Tim Ryan, want to overhaul rules regulating correspondence from representatives. The current rules are somewhat archaic and are based on the findings of the Franking Commission which was set up to regulate how postal fee allotments could be used by congressmen. The rules forbid posting to any website that contains politicking or advertising (i.e. pretty much every website) in their “official capacity” and posts must include a disclaimer identifying the poster as a representative. The 140 character cap on Twitter prevents that. The rules also apply to blogs, youtube, and other social networking sites.

It is extremely interesting to see how congress keeps up with technology in their personal lives. It is extremelty interesting to see folks like Rep. Culberson interacting quite directly with constituents (and other citizens whether they agree or not).

For example (excerpts put together from twitter feeds):

@johnculberson 1st back up your tax assertion 2nd actually? IMO market can drive it IF we do it right & we’re not.

@jpippert I strongly support alternatives-but without taxing anyone else to pay for it. Let free market & tax credits drive it-but drill 1st

@johnculberson & drill here drill now: listen to T Boone Pickens & his mtg with Obama re dev. alternative energy. http://tinyurl.com/6lvayh

How is that for direct democracy?

There was a time when I sort of believed the standard blogging doctrine “blog often”. I’m not exactly sure what the point of this was, other than to increase the likelihood of something you write being picked up somewhere significant. Or perhaps it was to “keep your blogging skills sharp”, if there are such things to sharpen. Recently though I’ve been subscribing to a huge number of politically influential blogs because I’ve been very engaged in this election cycle. And I have to say, regardless of what side of the isle these people come from, their work is almost exclusively terrible (there are rare exceptions).

I was reminded of a quote from way back in the day when I was first learning BSD (as introduced to me by the first Mac OS X … yes, I was a late bloomer in the grand scheme of things). From Ray & Ray’s Mac OS X Unleashed, reproduced without permission,

Caution [...] Just as some of us are safer not owning super-fast sports cars, some are less a threat to ourselves and others if we don’t have a big box of firecrackers, and some would be better off if we couldn’t buy donuts by the dozen, Unix is just too much for some people. It might be too much power, or too much flexibility, or too much information to remember, but Unix seems specifically designed to create a user who epitomizes the phrase knows just enough to be dangerous.

Each of these examples deals with “excess” in some way shape or form. While I disagree with its application to Unix for obvious reasons, it’s perfect for some of these people. Some of those to which this commentary is directed (not listed) I believe are extremely intelligent and linear in their thinking when writing through other mediums, but good lord, they all just become trivial little assholes who’d rather post off-the-cuff remarks then actually think through anything logically anymore.

Vdov.net has often published prolifically, through just as often we lag in our content production. I will no longer care if in a given month we lag … microblogging belongs at twitter.com.

Cheers.

It’s 6:42 am, and polls opened 42 minutes ago here in Indiana. I was 5th in line at my polling place at about 5:51 am, just in time to watch the live news report and be on camera for a few minutes. This was my first primary vote, my first in-person vote in Indiana, and actually my first at-a-machine vote in history (Oregon is all vote-by-mail).

Man did they have issues. As soon as polls opened, each one of their check-in machines crashed at least 10 times. They thought it was due to high activity around the state on whatever servers run the system, but find that sort of hard to believe — it’s not as though everyone was really powering through at 6 am. Though they had tons of issues actually getting people to the polling machines themselves, once I was there, it was surprisingly smooth. Dare I say the voting experience itself was perfectly acceptable. I have no idea what types of machines they were using and my thoughts on electronic voting machines are well known, but absent these more theoretical complaints it couldn’t have gone much better.

This is probably the first election I’ve voted in where there’s some major ambiguity as to who will win (the democratic nomination). Cross your fingers everyone. Cheers.

“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.” -Samuel Adams

Vdov.net is not normally prone to politicking and this post is mostly about principles rather than politics. The authors here, from what I know of them personally, tend toward unfettered freedom rather than more tempered and restrained freedom. I am personally enamoured of the cause of liberty wherever it arises. I have a soft spot in my heart for all democratic reformers and movements that sincerely want to replace repressive regimes with open societies governed by democratic principles, whether that be anti-theocratic student movements in Iran or the Free Tibet movement. (more…)

Tonight I went to a town hall meeting with Senator Barack Obama in Lafayette, Indiana. Those of you who know me well are well aware of my feelings on the candidates, though I don’t consider Vdov the appropriate venue for that kind of analysis. As such I’d rather talk about the “Town Hall” experience rather than specifics about Obama and his platform. I had never been to one of these rallies before and it was a pretty interesting experience.

I had to show up and wait nearly 2 hours in line yesterday to get tickets for this town hall, and I showed up more than 2 hours early to get an even slightly reasonable seat. Now, it was a relatively small venue (a high school gym), and pretty much everyone had a decent seat, but I didn’t know that ahead of time. Getting into the venue was more or less going through an airport security checkpoint, only a bit worse. Not only was I “metal-detectored”, but I had a *very* complete wand scan as well. At about 5 o’clock, someone came out to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. This was interesting: I probably hadn’t said the Pledge of Allegiance since middle school. Then a pastor came out and gave a prayer. Another 20 minutes passed by before a major political figure in Lafayette/West Lafayette came out and gave a sort of pre-rally pump-up speech on issues important to her and those that would conceivably be addressed by an Obama administration. It was all pretty mundane up until the final speaker introducing Obama to the crowd. He was a regular guy from Lafayette who owned a small business, and who had obviously never given a major speech to that many people (over 3000) in his life. Most striking was his choice of attire. He was dressed in a ratty sweater and kakhis. I imagine this wasn’t intentional, though I have since decided that it was probably a play to the audience: before the big-wigs come out, get someone truly “of-the-people” to speak. Then he introduced Obama.

Obama looks exactly like you’d expect him to. The only other even pseudo-celebrity I have ever met/seen in person was Matt Fox (of Lost and other fame), and he looked completely different in person than he does on TV. Not Obama. I could have sworn I was just watching a youtube video or reading a Drudge Report headline when he took the stage. The only thing I’ll mention about the speech itself was that it was refreshingly original in structure. Yes, he talked about exactly what I thought he would talk about, tailoring it slightly to the Indiana audience, but the flow of the speech was new (at least as far as the videos I’ve seen of him previously … they are numerous). Standing ovations were abundant, as expected. However, it was only after the speech that things got really interesting.

He took questions. And the questions from the audience were interesting. The first question came from a middle-aged to slightly-over middle-aged woman who had obviously experienced some significant hardship in her life. There’s no question that she had real, serious problems that she was concerned about. But her 15 minutes of fame was ill-conceived. Instead of asking a well thought out question, she instead droned on about everything that was wrong with her life in great detail, to the point where it just sounded like she was whining. Then she says “what can you do for me *before* you get elected to fix all my problems?” Absurd. Here she actually has the opportunity to ask a real question and instead decides to kill her opportunity. I realized afterward that her question effectively boiled down to and would have been equivalent to her asking Obama to come over to her house and fix her broken down TV, an obviously ridiculous way to spend your time with a direct voice to the candidate. Obama did what he could: in this case all he could do is address some of the issues she brought up and those he had specific plans for, and try to come out of it looking good and with a cheer from the audience. He certainly succeeded.

The rest of the questions were fine. A cute little elementary school girl came out and asked a question her parents had obviously written down on a card for her about national and sub-national testing in elementary and secondary education, for which she received a standing ovation. It was a good question, and the audience responded in kind. Other questions were directed at specific issues, such as his thoughts on the election of supreme court justices (the most interesting of the questions and a policy of Obama’s I had not heard before), environmental policy, free trade agreements, etc. etc. etc. At the end Obama thanked everyone for their time and gave his farewell. After which he shook a lot of hands and exited the gym.

All in all it was a very interesting experience. Obama is a charismatic speaker, I think we can all agree on that. And regardless of your politics, I recommend trying to attend a “Town Hall”-like event in the future. It was really a lot of fun.

UPDATE: There has been a briefing by the Pentagon which has video of the missile launch, the “kill,” and a brief analysis. The launch occurred on time with no delays due to weather (only 2-3 foot seas). It looks like the shoot down was successful and the hydrazine tank was, in fact, destroyed along with the satellite. The collision occurred at 153 nautical miles above the Earth (~283km).
UPDATEII: Also, what do you know… it looks like there is already amateur photography of the debris field and the hydrazine trail, courtesty of Rob in Maui, Hawaii.

As many of you may know the US military is planning on shooting down a rogue spy satellite in a decaying orbit. It is designated USA-193. The satellite failed immediately after launch and was reported by amateur satellite watchers to have a decaying orbit. The official reason for shooting down the satellite rather than allowing it to deorbit on its own is that the ~5000 pound satellite contains about 1000 pounds of frozen hydrazine propellant that could potentially deorbit into parts of North America. It has been confirmed that the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser, will fire a modified SM-3 missile to intercept the satellite. This may occur sometime within a couple hours of this post, but it looks like weather might delay the shot. Despite assurances from the US, there has been wide speculation that the reason for shooting down the satellite is to test US anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, specifically as a reaction to the unannounced test by the Chinese which destroyed a weather satellite dubbed FY-1C in early 2007.
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The CNN/YouTube presidential debate, in which voters submitted online videos with questions for the Democratic candidates, was praised in some quarters as the most earthshaking change in communication technology for presidential politics since the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960. So says the New York Times editorial page today. I am not really feeling the shaking beneath my feet but hey the questions came from… online… you know… the internets… the tubes? Looks like the Times seems to feel the same way. But the format was still basically the same one that’s been used for nearly 50 years: candidates standing on a stage, answering questions selected by the news media during a made-for-television broadcast. The rest of the op-ed asks various experts for their opinion on what a real “new media” debate would be. I was not really satisfied with some of the answers others I like a lot. So I thought I would let the minds of vdov readers turn it over for a while and see if we could come up with anything better. (more…)