Restoring the Constitution is now a liberal issue →

Published December 21, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 21  ·  

Other than photo ID, these are all things the Founders could have written into the Constitution, but they didn’t. And that should tell you something: Levin’s book isn’t about restoring anybody’s “original vision”; it’s about radically reshaping the American government into something it never was and was never intended to be.

Contrast this with the proposals in retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ new book Six Amendments. Only one of Stevens’ amendments — adding a phrase to the Eighth Amendment to define the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment — would change what Stevens’ argues was the Founders’ original intent. (Hanging and the firing squad were common in the founding era.) He composed the other five to reverse the drift of wrong-headed judicial interpretation.

~ Doug Muder from, Restoring the Constitution Is Now a Liberal Issue

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Programming sucks →

Published December 20, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 20  ·  

Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro,1 you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.”

System administration sucks too:

… And if these people stop, the world burns. Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.

~ Peter Welch from, Programming Sucks

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hear! hear!

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Looking for something else →

Published December 19, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 19  ·  

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

~ Federico Fellini

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The continuum of aggression →

Published December 18, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 18

Men look at Elliot Rodger and say, “I would never do something like that.” Women look at his victims and say, “That could totally happen to me.”

~ Doug Muder from, #YesAllWomen and the Continuum of Aggression

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The realization that men and women fundamentally think about, and understand, aggression differently, is probably the single most “wait wat?” moment that I had in 2014.

Seriously.

My brain — and that of every guy I’ve asked — has different categories of violence; Murder is a “no way, no how, would I murder a woman” category. But every woman I’ve asked has “aggression” organized into one big continuum. Rhetorical: Does that strike you as a huge difference in the way men and women view the world? Does is perhaps suggest something about how the male half of the species treats the female half?

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Confirmation bias →

Published December 17, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 17  ·  

If you are thinking about buying a new car, you suddenly see people driving them all over the roads. If you just ended a long-time relationship, every song you hear seems to be written about love. If you are having a baby, you start to see them everywhere.

Confirmation bias is seeing the world through a filter, thinking selectively.

The examples above are a sort of passive version of the phenomenon. The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.

~ David McRaney from, Confirmation Bias

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Do you want to be someone or do something? →

Published December 16, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 16

There comes a point in every man’s life where he must decide if he will strive to be somebody important, or if he will work to do something important. Sometimes these pursuits go hand-in-hand; often they do not.

Research has shown time and time again that kids of our modern age aspire for what’s perceived as a more glamorous life than one of service and lasting legacy. In fact, the top three career aspirations of today’s 5- to 11-year-olds are sports star, music star, and actor. Just 25 years ago, that same survey turned up teacher, doctor, and banker.

~ Brett McKay from, John Boyd’s Roll Call

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Preemptive: About the movie Tracers →

Published December 14, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 14  ·  

Preemptive: To all my friends. Yes, I know about the movie “Tracers”. No, I have nothing nice to say about it. Imagine Hollywood used a generic formula to paste your favorite thing onto the big screen; Do you think you would enjoy it? Right. It pretty much highlights all the negative aspects of Parkour, and casts Parkour in a bad light. (That’s just my opinion of course.)

Selling Out →

Published December 14, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 14  ·  

If you think you can buy your way to individuality, well, you are not so smart.

Since the 1940s, when capitalism and marketing married psychology and public relations, the market has been getting much better and more efficient at offering you something to purchase no matter your taste.

~ David McRaney from, Selling Out

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Care less →

Published December 13, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 13  ·  

The less you care about what others think, the better your life will become.

~ unknown

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Infrastructure, suburbs, and the long descent to ferguson →

Published December 12, 2014  ·  All posts on Dec 12  ·  ,

The short version is that as the climate degrades and fossil fuels become simultaneously more expensive and less useable, each generation inherits from its more prosperous ancestors an infrastructure that it can’t afford to maintain. Society muddles through from year to year — sometimes even seeming to advance — until some part of that poorly maintained infrastructure snaps and causes major destruction. The destroyed area may get rebuilt, but not to its previous level. The resulting community has less infrastructure to maintain, but is also less prosperous, and so the cycle continues into the next generation.

~ Doug Muder from, Infrastructure, Suburbs, and the Long Descent to Ferguson

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He draws heavily from John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent.

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