But that just begs the question, why are the imams chanting that the US is the evil satan? Sure, we invented the mini-skirt(*), which has gotta make them nervous, but they didn't really give a shit about us back in the 1940s, before we started propping up local dictators.
(*) We didn't actually invent the mini-skirt, but you get the idea.
Just as with the Tucson shooting, this is a case where what you see depends on what you already believe. Just wait, tomorrow you'll hear, "If we *don't* have an Internet kill switch, we could have fundamentalist Muslim lunatics rioting on the Washington Mall and NO WAY TO STOP THEM!"
Of course they're not about the USA. But as an American citizen, I care about my country's relationship to these events. The point is that it's American inventions (Internet) that enabled this, not American intervention, which should make us Americans rethink the relative value of these two things. I don't much care if the Egyptians try to make their country more like the U.S. or not: the mere fact that they're using tools that enable unrestricted free speech almost *guarantees* that their society will shift in a direction favorable to U.S. values... though perhaps not U.S. imperial interests.
The People's Republic of China has lots of blogs, cell phones, and bogus brand blue jeans (I don't know about the Bruce Springsteen part). Does the PROC symbolize a win for American ideals?
Is he? There's a bunch of security-crazy congressmen who want to give him that power, but I haven't seen any statement by the White House asking for this power.
Can you find a quote in which Obama asked for one? His name appears in all the headlines, but I can't find a White House statement on the matter. As far as I can tell, this is security-crazed congressmen trying to give him something he didn't ask for.
"Free market is not the prerequisite for democracy. "
Who said it was? Where in my post did I even utter the words "free market"?
But the ability to communicate with peers, and belief in freedom of speech and association, upward class mobility, fundamental human rights, and a desire to oppose corruption rather than join it, *are* prerequisites for democracy. And America's communications devices and pop culture *do* embody those beliefs. Yes, even the ones directed by Michael Bay.
"Read a book sometimes"
I read lots of books. Right now I'm reading "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schultz, which you might benefit from. But to believe that nothing can be learned or gained from mass media and pop culture is pompous, arrogant, and short-sighted. If I should "read a book sometime", you should listen to Bob Dylan.
One of the arguments I've seen is that Mubarak deliberately keeps the Muslim Brotherhood around as a toothless boogeyman, justifying his abuse of power and guaranteeing a steady supply of US foreign aid. The current protests were *not* started by the M.B., but they've been quick to jump on board.
I dunno, does the U.S. count? Our ties to Christianity are so deep that if our President didn't attend a prayer breakfast and place his hand on a bible on inauguration day, we'd probably impeach him the next day.
(Europeans readers right now are saying "No, the US doesn't count as a truly progressive state.")
Exactly. If we responded to national protests in dictatorships by saying "go Democracy!" and picked sides based on their support for liberty and civil rights rather than their susceptibility to bribery, we could suck a lot of the oxygen out of muslim extremism.
Would it really be so bad if the US and the Muslim extremists were on the same side of the barricades?
There's a lot of people in this discussion claiming that the US is *always* backing dictators with whom we have existing relationships. I want to give two recent counterexamples: Tunisia: President Obama hailed the “courage and dignity of the Tunisian people,” and said the United States joined the rest of the world in “bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle." The US has had friendly relations with Tunisia for decades.
Ivory Coast: President Obama "sent a letter to President Gbagbo, urging him to step aside and warning him of consequences if he does not." While the US has never supported Gbagbo after his coup, US companies (especially chocolate companies) have a big interest in the country's stability.
I agree that this makes the "Internet kill switch" look even more jackbooted, but let's be clear on the politics here:
While every headline on this issue has called it "Obama's Internet Kill Switch", the current legislation that would enact it was proposed by republican senator Susan Collins and security-crazy independent Joe Lieberman. There have been other proposals like it by both parties, but I have not been able to find a single statement by Obama or the White House in favor of this idea.
As far as I can tell, this is a power Congress is trying to give the president, not one he's demanding for himself.
Did you know that the Internet can send data in both directions? Wow! You'd be excused for being confused about this, of course, since the world's media companies are doing their best to make sure it only goes one way, like broadcast TV.
To be more precise: we don't *like* them, but we'll hold our noses and deal with them when they're useful. And that's only our government: most of our people don't like this one bit.
Now's the time for Hilary Clinton to say, "Sorry Hosni, not our problem", and warn him not to go all Tienanmen Square, like she did with Tunisia.
You can't take direct action, but you can affect the way your country responds to events. Tell your leaders not to stand behind Mubarak, and to say they welcome peaceful demonstration and elections. Egypt's current regime may be geopolitically useful, but any democratic nation that supports Mubarak is going to lose in the court of world opinion.
I totally disagree that economic imperialism requires a free market economy. Look at the economic dominance of Russia, Imperial China, or Rome over their neighbors, as a counterexample. Big economies will always influence small ones, no matter how they're run. It's true that the free market helps *make* economies big, but opposing the free market for that reason is like starving your own child to keep him from being big enough to bully the other kids.
I also reject the idea that cultural imperialism is always bad. Some notions, such as liberty, democracy, civil rights and universal education, really *are* worth spreading. Cultural relativism is a great principle, but I refuse to take it to such an extreme that we "celebrate the difference" of cultures which value dictatorship and genocide.
Yes, and freedom of speech, equal rights for all, and government without corruption. Keep in mind these are *ideals*, which we don't always live up to. I'm well aware that my country is propping up some shitty people, and doing some shitty things with its military. My post is a call for us to stop the realpolitik and let the world see more of our liberties and less of our guns.
And yes, I do believe that our technology and our pop culture embodies our values, both noble and inane, and that the spread of that technology and culture can do good in the world. Many in the US and abroad now believe the US is entirely corrupt and entirely hypocritical. I see the hypocrisy, but I believe America's heart hasn't completely shriveled to dust.
I wrote the following back in 2006. At the time, I was mostly writing about the invasion of Iraq, and the saber-rattling with Iran, but it turns out to say a lot about other places too.
==================
Suppose, for the moment, that spreading American values — by which I mean democracy, freedom of expression, and social mobility — throughout the globe is a good idea. How do we achieve that?
Let’s take a look at our enemies, and see what they fear about the U.S. Yes, our military might is kinda scary, but we’ve shown again and again that as a nation we lack the commitment (by which I mean “tyrannical jack-booted disregard for human life”) to use it effectively. What else have we got? A giant market economy focusing mostly on communication, entertainment, personal expression, and self-improvement, which the world’s dictators, religious fanatics, and thugs see as hedonistic, socially disruptive, and downright insidious.
Damn right it’s insidious. And we ought to be insidiating like crazy. The requirements for democracy and social mobility are communication, a sense of personal self-worth, and an active free-market economy. Our pop culture, and the stuff we sell, are our best tools for sneaking these values into societies, under the noses of the dictators and the zealots.
What better tools for personal expression than the cell phone and the Internet blog? What better way to get uncensored information about the world than the satellite dish? What better tools for demonstrating the joy of self-determination than the hit TV show and the Hollywood blockbuster? What better role model for oppressed women than the stars of CSI and ER? Hell, what better role model for what a police force should be than CSI? And what better motivation for starting your own business (black-market or legit), for getting a leg up, than the need to pay for all this crap?
Maybe the Cold War wasn’t won by geopolitics. Maybe it was won by black-market Levi’s blue jeans and bootleg copies of “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen. Maybe our best hope for eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat isn’t B-2s dropping bombs, but FedEx cargo planes dropping cell phones and laptops. Actually, the world is doing a pretty good job in bombing Iran’s youth with pop culture; maybe all we need to do is sit back, sell more phones, and wait for their oppressive government to be swept aside, or simply ignored and rendered obsolete, by the new Coke generation.
*That’s* what they fear about us. Not that we’ll bomb them into oblivion, but that their own kids, raised on our pop culture, will vote them off the island.
================
I want to emphasize that this is about spreading American *values*, not American hegemony. The Egyptian riots are a problem for America as an empire, but if we play it right it can be a huge win for American ideals.
If you manage your company or institution's IT department, please do the following:
Step 1: Turn on "telnet" on your PC. (Of course you Windows, you're management, right?) Step 2: Try to "telnet" to your company's website, or to any other machine or service names your underlings bandy about. Step 3: If you don't see "Connection refused" every time, FIRE EVERYONE WHO REPORTS TO YOU.
I don't like this one bit. 1) Failure mode. All the energy is stored as mechanical potential energy, and will go right into kinetic energy in an accident. Batteries and liquid fuels have the huge advantage that when they blow up, most of the energy is released as heat. 100 kilojoules of thermal energy delivered to your body might give you a few blisters. 100 kilojoules of mechanical energy will rip you to shreds.
Now, one might be able to hook an emergency dump valve to the airbag electronics, so it rapidly release air from the tank before the crumpling car causes it to burst. But are you gonna bet your life on that?
2) Energy density. Every calculation I've seen suggests that even with the best carbon fiber wound super duper air tank, the energy stored per kilogram is much lower than current lithium batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
But that just begs the question, why are the imams chanting that the US is the evil satan? Sure, we invented the mini-skirt(*), which has gotta make them nervous, but they didn't really give a shit about us back in the 1940s, before we started propping up local dictators.
(*) We didn't actually invent the mini-skirt, but you get the idea.
Just as with the Tucson shooting, this is a case where what you see depends on what you already believe. Just wait, tomorrow you'll hear, "If we *don't* have an Internet kill switch, we could have fundamentalist Muslim lunatics rioting on the Washington Mall and NO WAY TO STOP THEM!"
Quick, someone write an RFC for "IP over 9mm".
Let this be a lesson to you: healthy functioning democracies are BORING.
Of course they're not about the USA. But as an American citizen, I care about my country's relationship to these events. The point is that it's American inventions (Internet) that enabled this, not American intervention, which should make us Americans rethink the relative value of these two things. I don't much care if the Egyptians try to make their country more like the U.S. or not: the mere fact that they're using tools that enable unrestricted free speech almost *guarantees* that their society will shift in a direction favorable to U.S. values ... though perhaps not U.S. imperial interests.
Not yet. Give it a few years.
Is he? There's a bunch of security-crazy congressmen who want to give him that power, but I haven't seen any statement by the White House asking for this power.
Can you find a quote in which Obama asked for one? His name appears in all the headlines, but I can't find a White House statement on the matter. As far as I can tell, this is security-crazed congressmen trying to give him something he didn't ask for.
"Free market is not the prerequisite for democracy. "
Who said it was? Where in my post did I even utter the words "free market"?
But the ability to communicate with peers, and belief in freedom of speech and association, upward class mobility, fundamental human rights, and a desire to oppose corruption rather than join it, *are* prerequisites for democracy. And America's communications devices and pop culture *do* embody those beliefs. Yes, even the ones directed by Michael Bay.
"Read a book sometimes"
I read lots of books. Right now I'm reading "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schultz, which you might benefit from. But to believe that nothing can be learned or gained from mass media and pop culture is pompous, arrogant, and short-sighted. If I should "read a book sometime", you should listen to Bob Dylan.
One of the arguments I've seen is that Mubarak deliberately keeps the Muslim Brotherhood around as a toothless boogeyman, justifying his abuse of power and guaranteeing a steady supply of US foreign aid. The current protests were *not* started by the M.B., but they've been quick to jump on board.
I dunno, does the U.S. count? Our ties to Christianity are so deep that if our President didn't attend a prayer breakfast and place his hand on a bible on inauguration day, we'd probably impeach him the next day.
(Europeans readers right now are saying "No, the US doesn't count as a truly progressive state.")
Exactly. If we responded to national protests in dictatorships by saying "go Democracy!" and picked sides based on their support for liberty and civil rights rather than their susceptibility to bribery, we could suck a lot of the oxygen out of muslim extremism.
Would it really be so bad if the US and the Muslim extremists were on the same side of the barricades?
There's a lot of people in this discussion claiming that the US is *always* backing dictators with whom we have existing relationships. I want to give two recent counterexamples:
Tunisia: President Obama hailed the “courage and dignity of the Tunisian people,” and said the United States joined the rest of the world in “bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle." The US has had friendly relations with Tunisia for decades.
Ivory Coast: President Obama "sent a letter to President Gbagbo, urging him to step aside and warning him of consequences if he does not." While the US has never supported Gbagbo after his coup, US companies (especially chocolate companies) have a big interest in the country's stability.
I agree that this makes the "Internet kill switch" look even more jackbooted, but let's be clear on the politics here:
While every headline on this issue has called it "Obama's Internet Kill Switch", the current legislation that would enact it was proposed by republican senator Susan Collins and security-crazy independent Joe Lieberman. There have been other proposals like it by both parties, but I have not been able to find a single statement by Obama or the White House in favor of this idea.
As far as I can tell, this is a power Congress is trying to give the president, not one he's demanding for himself.
Did you know that the Internet can send data in both directions? Wow! You'd be excused for being confused about this, of course, since the world's media companies are doing their best to make sure it only goes one way, like broadcast TV.
To be more precise: we don't *like* them, but we'll hold our noses and deal with them when they're useful. And that's only our government: most of our people don't like this one bit.
Now's the time for Hilary Clinton to say, "Sorry Hosni, not our problem", and warn him not to go all Tienanmen Square, like she did with Tunisia.
You can't take direct action, but you can affect the way your country responds to events. Tell your leaders not to stand behind Mubarak, and to say they welcome peaceful demonstration and elections. Egypt's current regime may be geopolitically useful, but any democratic nation that supports Mubarak is going to lose in the court of world opinion.
I totally disagree that economic imperialism requires a free market economy. Look at the economic dominance of Russia, Imperial China, or Rome over their neighbors, as a counterexample. Big economies will always influence small ones, no matter how they're run. It's true that the free market helps *make* economies big, but opposing the free market for that reason is like starving your own child to keep him from being big enough to bully the other kids.
I also reject the idea that cultural imperialism is always bad. Some notions, such as liberty, democracy, civil rights and universal education, really *are* worth spreading. Cultural relativism is a great principle, but I refuse to take it to such an extreme that we "celebrate the difference" of cultures which value dictatorship and genocide.
> What American ideals exactly? Democracy?
Yes, and freedom of speech, equal rights for all, and government without corruption. Keep in mind these are *ideals*, which we don't always live up to. I'm well aware that my country is propping up some shitty people, and doing some shitty things with its military. My post is a call for us to stop the realpolitik and let the world see more of our liberties and less of our guns.
And yes, I do believe that our technology and our pop culture embodies our values, both noble and inane, and that the spread of that technology and culture can do good in the world. Many in the US and abroad now believe the US is entirely corrupt and entirely hypocritical. I see the hypocrisy, but I believe America's heart hasn't completely shriveled to dust.
PHB's don't know what "port 80" means.
I wrote the following back in 2006. At the time, I was mostly writing about the invasion of Iraq, and the saber-rattling with Iran, but it turns out to say a lot about other places too.
==================
Suppose, for the moment, that spreading American values — by which I mean democracy, freedom of expression, and social mobility — throughout the globe is a good idea. How do we achieve that?
Let’s take a look at our enemies, and see what they fear about the U.S. Yes, our military might is kinda scary, but we’ve shown again and again that as a nation we lack the commitment (by which I mean “tyrannical jack-booted disregard for human life”) to use it effectively. What else have we got? A giant market economy focusing mostly on communication, entertainment, personal expression, and self-improvement, which the world’s dictators, religious fanatics, and thugs see as hedonistic, socially disruptive, and downright insidious.
Damn right it’s insidious. And we ought to be insidiating like crazy. The requirements for democracy and social mobility are communication, a sense of personal self-worth, and an active free-market economy. Our pop culture, and the stuff we sell, are our best tools for sneaking these values into societies, under the noses of the dictators and the zealots.
What better tools for personal expression than the cell phone and the Internet blog? What better way to get uncensored information about the world than the satellite dish? What better tools for demonstrating the joy of self-determination than the hit TV show and the Hollywood blockbuster? What better role model for oppressed women than the stars of CSI and ER? Hell, what better role model for what a police force should be than CSI? And what better motivation for starting your own business (black-market or legit), for getting a leg up, than the need to pay for all this crap?
Maybe the Cold War wasn’t won by geopolitics. Maybe it was won by black-market Levi’s blue jeans and bootleg copies of “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen. Maybe our best hope for eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat isn’t B-2s dropping bombs, but FedEx cargo planes dropping cell phones and laptops. Actually, the world is doing a pretty good job in bombing Iran’s youth with pop culture; maybe all we need to do is sit back, sell more phones, and wait for their oppressive government to be swept aside, or simply ignored and rendered obsolete, by the new Coke generation.
*That’s* what they fear about us. Not that we’ll bomb them into oblivion, but that their own kids, raised on our pop culture, will vote them off the island.
================
I want to emphasize that this is about spreading American *values*, not American hegemony. The Egyptian riots are a problem for America as an empire, but if we play it right it can be a huge win for American ideals.
"websites run on port 80, right?)"
If you know this, you are not an IT manager. Nice try!
If you manage your company or institution's IT department, please do the following:
Step 1: Turn on "telnet" on your PC. (Of course you Windows, you're management, right?)
Step 2: Try to "telnet" to your company's website, or to any other machine or service names your underlings bandy about.
Step 3: If you don't see "Connection refused" every time, FIRE EVERYONE WHO REPORTS TO YOU.
Yes, a regular hybrid "only" needs to store as much energy as needed to bring the car to a stop and accelerate it to highway speeds.
Which means that when the pressure vessel bursts, you have one car-at-highway-speed's worth of kinetic energy blowing up in your face.
Yes.
I don't like this one bit.
1) Failure mode. All the energy is stored as mechanical potential energy, and will go right into kinetic energy in an accident. Batteries and liquid fuels have the huge advantage that when they blow up, most of the energy is released as heat. 100 kilojoules of thermal energy delivered to your body might give you a few blisters. 100 kilojoules of mechanical energy will rip you to shreds.
Now, one might be able to hook an emergency dump valve to the airbag electronics, so it rapidly release air from the tank before the crumpling car causes it to burst. But are you gonna bet your life on that?
2) Energy density. Every calculation I've seen suggests that even with the best carbon fiber wound super duper air tank, the energy stored per kilogram is much lower than current lithium batteries.