On a scale of Huckapoo to Prussian Blue, how deeply fucked up is US culture? Don't have a clue what I'm asking? Get clued here.

You're all clear kid!

This month I will complete repayment of my first student loan, a non-federal $2,000 emergency spot I had to pick up from Citibank my last semester when NYU was jerking me around because I was an RA and I was graduating early. This only lowers my monthly bill by about twenty bucks, but it's psychologically a big hurdle to clear.

Overall, I am about halfway free from my student loans, which feels like something of an accomplishment. It's a long way from financial stability (or "success," though I'm still pretty un-motivated to go out and amass lucre) but it's kind of nice to be able to knock one debt off my list.

My favorite Princeton Economist is back from vacation and stepping up to the plate over at the times with the first in a series of columns on the state of health care in the US:

To get effective reform, however, we'll need to shed some preconceptions - in particular, the ideologically driven belief that government is always the problem and market competition is always the solution.

If we can drive that notion home, we'll be halfway there, and it will get people thinking freely and creatively about all sorts of other things.

How would you like this site presented to you? What do you like reading? I'm starting to think seriously and long-term-ish about what I want to do with my writing, and I realize I know very little about my audience. I think maybe 500 people or so read this page semi-regularly. What are you coming for?

I'm going to keep this at the top of the page for a while. Leave comments here or contact me anonymously.

The moustached-man at the Times, five years behind as usual, drops a witty title and a pretty decent summation of what's really going on with Globalization: It's a Flat World, After All.

...the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0 -- the thing that gives it its unique character -- is individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?
...
When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids.

The piece is worth reading if you're new to the idea that the American economy is in enormous peril becuase we're really no smarter than anyone else and the labor market for intelectual products (engineering, analysis, digital culture) is truly being globalized. Friedman still isn't hip to open source, and doesn't seem to understand that this shift in how the world works is going to substantially change the role of nation-states going forward, but he's got the basic points right. Give him another 5 years and I'm sure he'll catch on to the rest.

He also has some very good advice for national poliitcs:

Meeting the challenges of flatism requires as comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of Communism. It requires a president who can summon the nation to work harder, get smarter, attract more young women and men to science and engineering and build the broadband infrastructure, portable pensions and health care that will help every American become more employable in an age in which no one can guarantee you lifetime employment.

And some stern advice for parents:

We need to get going immediately. It takes 15 years to train a good engineer, because, ladies and gentlemen, this really is rocket science. So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television and get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living.

The problem here is that Americans already work too hard for too little. If we want to maintain, let alone advance, our standard of living in the 21st Century, we need to work on strengthening our local economies.

I'm fine to play on the global market, but not everyone can do it, nor will everyone ever be able to. For those who can't, having a vibrant local economy with lots of opportunities for small business, craft production, and livable wages for service-sector work is the only viable alternative. For those of us who can compete globally, our task is to get as much value as we can for our time, and driving as much of that as possible back into our own communities.

Simply urging the USA to bear down and grind out more engineers isn't a real solution for the 21st Century. It's a beginning, but for this country to pull though we're going to have to dig a little deeper. We need to start looking beyond material acumulation as a prime metric for "standard of living." We need to start looking at developing a way of life and a set of values that create more enjoyment while consuming less energy. We need to figure out how to live better and work smarter, not just harder.

I haven't been reading Ezra Klein much since he split off of Pandagon, but this is really good: End of the Powerline.

For those of you who don't know, Powerline is the blog that most forcefully pushed the story that memos used by Dan Rather at CBS in a story about President Bush's spotty record in the TX Air Guard were fakes. This turned out to be true, although a little-reported sub-plot is that the actual content of the "forged" memos was never disputed. Now, Powerline didn't make the discovery -- that was some freeper with a preternatural eye for typography -- but they were the most strident and persistent advocates for the "memogate" story, over which Rather subsequentally retired. For this, Time magazine named them "Blog of the Year."

It turns out (surprise surprise) that they're total wankers. Quoth ezra:

It's not just that they have no shame, it's that they once met shame on a street, beat the shit out of him, rolled him up in a carpet, and threw him off a bridge....

They get nothing right. Their fact-checking skills are atrocious. They neither report nor call experts, it's just whatever they invented twenty seconds ago. Watching them work is like attending a high school debate match in the impromptu event. Arguments are created on the fly, accuracy is unimportant so long as the product accuses the "MSM" or Democrats of some cardinal sin that'll leave Powerline's sycophantic readers moaning with the exquisite pleasure that comes only from having one's biases expertly stroked.

They really do have that kind of right-wing brainwashed thing going on, as you can see in this video clip from Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary.

As far as I can tell the left doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about islamofacism, doesn't care about 100s of thousands of people getting killed. All they care about is their own power... the whole mainstream of the Democratic party, I would say, is engaged in an effort that is really a betrayal of America.

Blog of the year, folks. Blog of the year. Really I think it says something more about Time magazine than anything else. It reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Back where Dylan is giving an interview to someone from Time. Paraphrase: "You'll never understand me or what I'm about," Dylan says. "Why, Bob? Why?" the reporter asks back. "Because you work for Time Magazine, man." It's a revealing moment, and one that continues to resonate with me.

I still believe there's an odds on chance that the internet will prove an even better ally to Truth and Reality than to Opinion and Rhetoric. In the long run wikipedia is vastly more significant than faux "free press" outlets like worldnetdaily. It's just going to take a little time.

I haven't been reading Ezra Klein much since he split off of Pandagon, but this is really good: End of the Powerline.

For those of you who don't know, Powerline is the blog that most forcefully pushed the story that memos used by Dan Rather at CBS in a story about President Bush's spotty record in the TX Air Guard were fakes. This turned out to be true, although a little-reported sub-plot is that the actual content of the "forged" memos was never disputed. Now, Powerline didn't make the discovery -- that was some freeper with a preternatural eye for typography -- but they were the most strident and persistent advocates for the "memogate" story, over which Rather subsequentally retired. For this, Time magazine named them "Blog of the Year."

It turns out (surprise surprise) that they're total wankers. Quoth ezra:

It's not just that they have no shame, it's that they once met shame on a street, beat the shit out of him, rolled him up in a carpet, and threw him off a bridge....

They get nothing right. Their fact-checking skills are atrocious. They neither report nor call experts, it's just whatever they invented twenty seconds ago. Watching them work is like attending a high school debate match in the impromptu event. Arguments are created on the fly, accuracy is unimportant so long as the product accuses the "MSM" or Democrats of some cardinal sin that'll leave Powerline's sycophantic readers moaning with the exquisite pleasure that comes only from having one's biases expertly stroked.

They really do have that kind of right-wing brainwashed thing going on, as you can see in this video clip from Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary.

As far as I can tell the left doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about islamofacism, doesn't care about 100s of thousands of people getting killed. All they care about is their own power... the whole mainstream of the Democratic party, I would say, is engaged in an effort that is really a betrayal of America.

Blog of the year, folks. Blog of the year. Really I think it says something more about Time magazine than anything else. It reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Back where Dylan is giving an interview to someone from Time. Paraphrase: "You'll never understand me or what I'm about," Dylan says. "Why, Bob? Why?" the reporter asks back. "Because you work for Time Magazine, man." It's a revealing moment, and one that continues to resonate with me.

I still believe there's an odds on chance that the internet will prove an even better ally to Truth and Reality than to Opinion and Rhetoric. In the long run wikipedia is vastly more significant than faux "free press" outlets like worldnetdaily. It's just going to take a little time.

This is Fucking Awesome

The city will build out the infrastructure and then sell wholesale access to Internet service providers, telecommunications companies and nonprofit organizations. ISPs and other providers will handle all billing, marketing, customer service and the at-home equipment needed to pick up the signals.

Philadelphia will become a customer of the network by allowing city departments to buy broadband access to communicate with one another. As part of this new technology plan, the city will also establish a nonprofit organization that will provide computers and technical training to low-income residents.

The fact that Verizon lobbied like hell to block this and got a law passed to make it nearly impossible to do it elsewhere in PA is disgraceful. Preventing municipalities from offering services that compete with private corporations? Are you fucking kidding me? This is infrastructure, people. You want it to be Public, Open and Cheap. You want to give cities the ability to offer you internet access for the same reasons you let them fix the streets and put out fires.

On a base moral level, cities are more important than corporations. The interests of the city and its citizens should outweigh the interests of shareholders and CEOs. That should be obvious, but for some reason in this day and age it isn't.

Of course, this anit-municipal movement is nothing new. Telco corporations have been trying to restrict this for years, why? Well...

Comcast and SBC both know that once a decent municipal alternative emerges, they've got legitimate competition and will be forced to lower rates. Competition harms the bottom line; it also forces them to work harder to improve their product and keep you happy - or lose you. There is no scientific mystery here.

One of the roles of government is to regulate the market. Another role is to offer services. People act like this is communism or something, but that's total bullshit. We're not talking about nationalizing that ass, we're talking about bringing some real fucking competition to the table.

Man this shit pisses me off. But bully for Philly. Here's hoping they lead the way for us all.

This is Fucking Awesome

The city will build out the infrastructure and then sell wholesale access to Internet service providers, telecommunications companies and nonprofit organizations. ISPs and other providers will handle all billing, marketing, customer service and the at-home equipment needed to pick up the signals.

Philadelphia will become a customer of the network by allowing city departments to buy broadband access to communicate with one another. As part of this new technology plan, the city will also establish a nonprofit organization that will provide computers and technical training to low-income residents.

The fact that Verizon lobbied like hell to block this and got a law passed to make it nearly impossible to do it elsewhere in PA is disgraceful. Preventing municipalities from offering services that compete with private corporations? Are you fucking kidding me? This is infrastructure, people. You want it to be Public, Open and Cheap. You want to give cities the ability to offer you internet access for the same reasons you let them fix the streets and put out fires.

On a base moral level, cities are more important than corporations. The interests of the city and its citizens should outweigh the interests of shareholders and CEOs. That should be obvious, but for some reason in this day and age it isn't.

Of course, this anit-municipal movement is nothing new. Telco corporations have been trying to restrict this for years, why? Well...

Comcast and SBC both know that once a decent municipal alternative emerges, they've got legitimate competition and will be forced to lower rates. Competition harms the bottom line; it also forces them to work harder to improve their product and keep you happy - or lose you. There is no scientific mystery here.

One of the roles of government is to regulate the market. Another role is to offer services. People act like this is communism or something, but that's total bullshit. We're not talking about nationalizing that ass, we're talking about bringing some real fucking competition to the table.

Man this shit pisses me off. But bully for Philly. Here's hoping they lead the way for us all.

Here's something I've said before: I'm superficially as well as substantively attracted to intelligence in women. On the one hand, conversation is a must for any real interest. On the other hand, for me having a woman tell me she's got (or getting) a degree is equivalent to great cleavage in terms of an immediate turn-on. It's kind of cheap and tawdry, but also true.

What prompts this re-revelation? Well, last night I went to see a rough cut of this movie about a guy named Zizek, who's an intellectual rockstar from Slovenia. It's actually quite good. The woman who made it, Astra Taylor, interviewed me last weekend for a book she's writing. I'm kind of fascinated with her; book-writing, film-making, all seems very exciting and triggers my IQ fetish.

Also at the screening by complete random chance was this other woman from whom I've had a long-standing yen. She was the main office person at ETW while I was there, working on her PhD the whole time -- I always thought she was super hot, though very clearly unavailable. Anyway she was there and we chatted for a moment after. She's finished getting her degree, said I could call her doctor (really! yowza!), and I actually got quite nervous and don't think I made any kind of impression at all. Yes, that still happens to me from time to time. Kind of a treat, actually.

What can I say? It's spring, and the warm air makes the blood run. Yesterday riding round the city from meeting to gym to screening it was a cavelcade of city girls. With the farenheight pushing 70, the great unveiling is on, and everyone's looking fresh and pretty. The nite-ride back to Frank's place was dusted with very light warm rain; just lovely all around.