Chineese Capitalism is the Weirdest. Thing. Ever. From The Great Leap: Scenes from China's Industrial Revolution by Bill McKibben in the December 2005 issue of Harpers.

Before showing me his factory, Bao wanted us to visit the Hua Xin Li Dress Co, Ltd, which was by Chinese standards a venerable firm. It had opened its doors in 1987, right around the time that Deng Xiaoping had begun to allow any such enterprise. From a home factory with five or six employees, it had grown into a medium-sized enterprise with several hundred workers. "'First Quality and Prestige Supreme' is our aim", says the company's brochure; on the day we visited they were churning out slightly garish yellow dress shirts for the Eastern European market. The factory was three stories tall, and on each floor young women, and a few young men, in white company T-shirts sat, four abreast, in front of new sewing machines imported from Japan. It was a hot day, but big fans moved plenty of air around. There was a busy hum, but not a din. The women worked fast, especially the button-sewers at the end of the room, but not frantically. A large red banner hung over the middle of each room reading, in Chinese, "The Customer Is God and the Market Decides Everything".

The whole article is very much worth reading. Gets right past the usual talking points about China and into the real human situation. Fascinating. I envy my friends who have been there.

I seem to be loosing my thirst for political blood lately. I have no one to fight for. Maybe it's just the bum tide of the new year or the lingering flu, but the establishment seems increasingly to be in a downward spiral from which it will not recover, even with a change in congress, and the revolution is flaccid to say the least.

I catch myself wishing that the undercurrent of doom would crest already. So we can get on to the next thing.

What's your Dangerous Idea?

The crisis of meaning is unpleasent for me. Survival has never been all that consuming of a pursuit, and I need stars to reach for. For the past three years or so various political maneuvers (peace, Dean, MFA, the aftermath) have been the locus of my ambition. Not sparking my cylendars anymore. Currently grasping at straws. Bleah.

Well, it's not really all that bad. I'm more or less certain something else will come along.

Sterling F'ing Newberry -- Crashing the Sphere:

So explaining the basic theory, and how it is supported by centuries of liberal thought - going back to ancient times, through humanism in the renaissance, through the Enlightenment, through the Romantic Revolutions, through the growth of Liberalism and Progressivism, through the great struggles against totalitarianism - producing an inevitable historical logic that draws in many different kinds of people and contributions - that is my purpose.

So he wants to be the 21st Century's answer to Karl Marx. I'm cool with that.

It's a good post. Go read it if you're into this shit.

Sterling F'ing Newberry -- Crashing the Sphere:

So explaining the basic theory, and how it is supported by centuries of liberal thought - going back to ancient times, through humanism in the renaissance, through the Enlightenment, through the Romantic Revolutions, through the growth of Liberalism and Progressivism, through the great struggles against totalitarianism - producing an inevitable historical logic that draws in many different kinds of people and contributions - that is my purpose.

So he wants to be the 21st Century's answer to Karl Marx. I'm cool with that.

It's a good post. Go read it if you're into this shit.

This is bullshit: Marquette Dental Student Suspended Over Blog Posts

When I was at NYU I once gave some juicy quotes to an NYT reporter who stopped me on the corner of Waverly and Green and asked about recreational use of prescription drugs by students. Earned me my one and only conversation with the Dean of our Tisch School of the Arts, who's a pretty laid back guy and was remarkably cool about it given this came at a time when the media was focusing on a student death from painkiller overdoses at Holy Cross college (I think).

Another girl who was at the more conservative Stern School of Business -- and who copped to personally popping some unprescribed ritalin to pull through finals, a common practice but nontheless a violation of the law and the student body regulations -- was expelled. They're more hard-ass over there.

Now students are being suspended over blogging, and not for talking about illegal activity, just for blowing off a little steam about class.

This is a first amendment issue. There are verifiable chilling effects which amount to prior restraint (which the supreme court has roundly rejected). We need to rigorously move to define and defend our rights to freely post content online without the threat of administrative punishment.

Paging the 21st Century's Mario Savio...

...hmmm, maybe it really will be the frustrated campus activists on the right who push this. While I've nothing but contempt for David Horowitz (who's transparently two-faced about his idea of "academic free speech"), I also have no support for a university administration which seeks to stifle provocative Republican ad campaigns. That GOP3 blog cites an example of "Adopt-a-Sniper" at Marquette. I'm immediately reminded to NYU's College Republicans and their "Think Big: Bomb Iraq" postering campaign in late 2002. While they may lack taste, wit, or real political content, this sort of speech should certainly never be impeded.

These provocations are first and foremost in invitation to debate, and must be met on moral and intellectual grounds. Getting the school to quash them justifies the fantasy of many financially well-supported budding white male conservatives that they are somehow "oppressed." The reality is that their ideas are stupid, but they'll never learn this if the authorities keep stomping on them, they'll just develop that bizarre conservatives-are-victims complex that's so rampant these days.

A 21st-Centiry definition of free speech with a robust view of the right to publish online is a possible point of consensus on the left and the right. Someone aught to really make something of that.

This is bullshit: Marquette Dental Student Suspended Over Blog Posts

When I was at NYU I once gave some juicy quotes to an NYT reporter who stopped me on the corner of Waverly and Green and asked about recreational use of prescription drugs by students. Earned me my one and only conversation with the Dean of our Tisch School of the Arts, who's a pretty laid back guy and was remarkably cool about it given this came at a time when the media was focusing on a student death from painkiller overdoses at Holy Cross college (I think).

Another girl who was at the more conservative Stern School of Business -- and who copped to personally popping some unprescribed ritalin to pull through finals, a common practice but nontheless a violation of the law and the student body regulations -- was expelled. They're more hard-ass over there.

Now students are being suspended over blogging, and not for talking about illegal activity, just for blowing off a little steam about class.

This is a first amendment issue. There are verifiable chilling effects which amount to prior restraint (which the supreme court has roundly rejected). We need to rigorously move to define and defend our rights to freely post content online without the threat of administrative punishment.

Paging the 21st Century's Mario Savio...

...hmmm, maybe it really will be the frustrated campus activists on the right who push this. While I've nothing but contempt for David Horowitz (who's transparently two-faced about his idea of "academic free speech"), I also have no support for a university administration which seeks to stifle provocative Republican ad campaigns. That GOP3 blog cites an example of "Adopt-a-Sniper" at Marquette. I'm immediately reminded to NYU's College Republicans and their "Think Big: Bomb Iraq" postering campaign in late 2002. While they may lack taste, wit, or real political content, this sort of speech should certainly never be impeded.

These provocations are first and foremost in invitation to debate, and must be met on moral and intellectual grounds. Getting the school to quash them justifies the fantasy of many financially well-supported budding white male conservatives that they are somehow "oppressed." The reality is that their ideas are stupid, but they'll never learn this if the authorities keep stomping on them, they'll just develop that bizarre conservatives-are-victims complex that's so rampant these days.

A 21st-Centiry definition of free speech with a robust view of the right to publish online is a possible point of consensus on the left and the right. Someone aught to really make something of that.

This is worth reading inre: the recent massive earthquake in Pakistan:

What about the Islamist organizations of Pakistan; how did they respond? The same Kashmir leader told Reuters, "The jihadi groups are more sincerely taking part in relief operations. Those groups, which were branded bad by the government, are no doubt doing well and will influence people's sympathy in the future."

A number of earthquake victims attested to this reality by stating that the only prompt help they have gotten has been from Islamist groups. (See Asia Times Online Waging jihad against disaster, October 20.) Even Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf agreed with the performance of the Islamist groups related to post-earthquake assistance.
...

Al-Qaeda is having a field day watching the community of nations perform so deplorably in regard to the human tragedy in Pakistan.

When local orgs outperform the nation state and international community, they demonstrate superior fitness, and they build primary loyalty with the Public. And they deserve to, because they're doing the Right Thing better than We in this situation -- taking care of people who are in dire need.

By the by, this is how Christianity spreads a lot of the time: missionaries arrive with Better Things (say, antibiotics) than the people have on their own, make they make sure the indios understand that the Better Things are only possible because of Jesus, and the rest works itself out. Human beings like to win. Whoever's doing it right has the advantage. Nothing succeds like success, and nothing fails like failure.

Look for more and more various developments like this -- smaller network orgs beating lumbering 20th-century institutions -- in the coming years. Eventually the Establishment will turn on and start working with the new stuff, but only after they're repeatedly and publicly whipped for their incompetance. The fatbacks recoil from anything which threatens their control, even if that means they get beaten like a gongs by their most hated enemies; they're fundimentally greedy and assume their "expertice" makes them more fit than any others to make decisions; rather drive in defeat than let go and win.

The only question is whether they go down in a heavy exctincion/evolution cycle, or adapt in time to save enough of their juice to remain relevant. Across the board the results will be mixed -- e.g. the odds of recognizable survival for General Motors are different than, say, the Democratic Party -- but I believe that by the time my children get out on their own the institutional landscape will have changed significantly.

This is worth reading inre: the recent massive earthquake in Pakistan:

What about the Islamist organizations of Pakistan; how did they respond? The same Kashmir leader told Reuters, "The jihadi groups are more sincerely taking part in relief operations. Those groups, which were branded bad by the government, are no doubt doing well and will influence people's sympathy in the future."

A number of earthquake victims attested to this reality by stating that the only prompt help they have gotten has been from Islamist groups. (See Asia Times Online Waging jihad against disaster, October 20.) Even Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf agreed with the performance of the Islamist groups related to post-earthquake assistance.
...

Al-Qaeda is having a field day watching the community of nations perform so deplorably in regard to the human tragedy in Pakistan.

When local orgs outperform the nation state and international community, they demonstrate superior fitness, and they build primary loyalty with the Public. And they deserve to, because they're doing the Right Thing better than We in this situation -- taking care of people who are in dire need.

By the by, this is how Christianity spreads a lot of the time: missionaries arrive with Better Things (say, antibiotics) than the people have on their own, make they make sure the indios understand that the Better Things are only possible because of Jesus, and the rest works itself out. Human beings like to win. Whoever's doing it right has the advantage. Nothing succeds like success, and nothing fails like failure.

Look for more and more various developments like this -- smaller network orgs beating lumbering 20th-century institutions -- in the coming years. Eventually the Establishment will turn on and start working with the new stuff, but only after they're repeatedly and publicly whipped for their incompetance. The fatbacks recoil from anything which threatens their control, even if that means they get beaten like a gongs by their most hated enemies; they're fundimentally greedy and assume their "expertice" makes them more fit than any others to make decisions; rather drive in defeat than let go and win.

The only question is whether they go down in a heavy exctincion/evolution cycle, or adapt in time to save enough of their juice to remain relevant. Across the board the results will be mixed -- e.g. the odds of recognizable survival for General Motors are different than, say, the Democratic Party -- but I believe that by the time my children get out on their own the institutional landscape will have changed significantly.

The beautiful freaks at Downhill Battle have a new campaign: Kill Bill's Browser - Switch to Firefox. This is raising the stakes. Backed by a $1/referral offer from Google, they're making a push to drive the next wave of adoption.

What's interesting is that the new browser wars are more likely to be fought over associated services. Right now the main thing in play is who gets to handle things from the "search" bar, but the future will see more refined and specialized services. This is what the Flockers want to do, though in the short term their revenue stream appears to be replacing Google search with Yahoo and suckling from that teat. I think we've got a ways to go before these services really break.

The interesting thing is that the break-out of these services will coincide with the maturation of today's teenagers. There are political implications here too; the 2008 election will see the largest potential youth vote in US history. The right candidate with the right online campaign could make serious waves.

Anyway, if you browse with IE, get ready to be annoyed coming here.

The beautiful freaks at Downhill Battle have a new campaign: Kill Bill's Browser - Switch to Firefox. This is raising the stakes. Backed by a $1/referral offer from Google, they're making a push to drive the next wave of adoption.

What's interesting is that the new browser wars are more likely to be fought over associated services. Right now the main thing in play is who gets to handle things from the "search" bar, but the future will see more refined and specialized services. This is what the Flockers want to do, though in the short term their revenue stream appears to be replacing Google search with Yahoo and suckling from that teat. I think we've got a ways to go before these services really break.

The interesting thing is that the break-out of these services will coincide with the maturation of today's teenagers. There are political implications here too; the 2008 election will see the largest potential youth vote in US history. The right candidate with the right online campaign could make serious waves.

Anyway, if you browse with IE, get ready to be annoyed coming here.