{"id":2528,"date":"2009-05-07T23:48:07","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T03:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2528"},"modified":"2009-05-07T23:48:51","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T03:48:51","slug":"thursday-evening-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/07\/thursday-evening-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday evening notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Watching Maine becoming #5 this week, it occurs to me that while the process may be terribly slow from the perspective of people who just want to be treated equally (and I know I can only say that off-handedly since I already have all the privileges&#8211;white, male, straight, etc.) the whole thing is pretty much inevitable at this point. Even in America, it&#8217;s only <a href=\"http:\/\/politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/04\/cnn-poll-generational-gap-on-gay-marriage\/\">one more generation of die off<\/a> before weird homophobic notions become the minority.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of majority opinions, isn&#8217;t it really about time we legalized some drugs? There&#8217;s no rational argument for making weed illegal that doesn&#8217;t apply just as much, if not much more, to booze and cigarettes. Prohibition repeal takes the money out of criminal hands, direct taxes means a windfall for government, and indirect tax savings (on law enforcement, etc) means another windfall and the ability to reprioritize resources on more serious crimes. And guess what? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dosenation.com\/listing.php?smlid=6232\">Even most Yanks know it<\/a>. I haven&#8217;t seen our numbers lately, but given how close we were to seriously putting legalization on the table before that last big Liberal scandal threw us into the right-wing minority downspiral, I bet they&#8217;re even more radical&#8211;especially if you count B.C.<\/li>\n<li>All those kids who did a mass protest to raise awareness of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/story\/RTGAM.20090504.wkeswick0504\/BNStory\/National\/home\">some typically ridiculous school board actions<\/a> get props from me. I wouldn&#8217;t mind more signs that the whole Me generation thing has completely washed out and it&#8217;s OK for kids to be activists again.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of reading about the death of the newspaper lately. A lot of it focuses on technological change, a lot on social changes, and even some on bad business decisions by the papers. Not a lot of it talks about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/newspaper\/ireland\/2009\/0506\/1224245992919.html\">the death of standards for research<\/a>. I&#8217;m just saying.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve never studied macroeconomics<footnote>I did have to take one intro course in microeconomics as part of my degree, but that&#8217;s only barely relevant.<\/footnote> and only have a layman&#8217;s understanding of it. But even I already know all the stuff Krugman lays out in his recent <a href=\"http:\/\/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/02\/liquidity-preference-loanable-funds-and-niall-ferguson-wonkish\/\">cranky-old-man-these-kids-today<\/a> post. If real economists need to be reminded of this stuff, it&#8217;s no wonder the financial system is such a mess.<\/li>\n<li>Of course there&#8217;s a whole other argument for why things might be so buggered up: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2009\/05\/07\/debt-is-not-a-good-p.html\">Debt is not a good product<\/a>. Or, to quote from the body of the piece: &#8220;this whole scheme was arranged by 14th Century monarchs as a way of making money by having money, rather than providing value&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>While I&#8217;m in that mood, I should mention that I&#8217;m really enjoying watching <a href=\"http:\/\/dreamcafe.com\/\">a very smart Trotskyist<\/a> do a close critical read of Adam Smith&#8217;s The Wealth Of Nations. Starts <a href=\"http:\/\/dreamcafe.com\/words\/2009\/04\/30\/adam-smith-the-wealth-of-nations\/\">here<\/a>, and continues through each chapter&#8211;he&#8217;s up to Chapter 5 as I write this.<\/li>\n<li>I am, generally speaking, not a fan of books I enjoy being adapted into other media. I have ranted about this at length. I am, however, a fan of <a href=\"http:\/\/grrm.livejournal.com\/86651.html\">Peter Dinklage getting work<\/a>, especially work where he has good character writing to bring to life.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/24\/thursday-night-gallimaufry\/\">The last time I linked to The Groovy Age Of Horror<\/a>, my comment was &#8220;Not Safe For Work. Will require brain scrub.&#8221; and it was in reference to some bits from Italian horror comics from the 60s. Well, that comment goes double for <a href=\"http:\/\/groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/zora-n-144-lucccello-prensile.html\">this recent post<\/a> about a particular Italian horror comic from the 80s. Those dudes are messed up&#8211;this makes those <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-isb.com\/?p=980\">haunted vagina<\/a> fan twisted-man-boys almost look good.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, if you&#8217;re looking to lose some productive time, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/lab.andre-michelle.com\/tonematrix\">ToneMatrix<\/a>&#8211;very simple to play with, but weirdly compelling. You will be writing your name, playing Conway&#8217;s Life, and drawing hearts and smiley faces, just to see what they sound like.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Watching Maine becoming #5 this week, it occurs to me that while the process may be terribly slow from the perspective of people who just want to be treated equally (and I know I can only say that off-handedly since I already have all the privileges&#8211;white, male, straight, etc.) the whole thing is pretty much inevitable at this point. Even&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/07\/thursday-evening-notes\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[109,121,95,265,344,106,377,387,136,184,375,211,214],"class_list":["post-2528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linkapalooza","tag-adaptations","tag-civil-liberties","tag-cultural-differences","tag-economics","tag-equality","tag-law","tag-newspapers","tag-prohibition","tag-protest","tag-republicans-are-fucking-nuts","tag-steve-brust","tag-web-crack","tag-youth","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-EM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2531,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions\/2531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}