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Comment of The Day – I Blame John Wayne

Blogs, Comment of the Day, Wingnuts
Published on 5 Comments on Comment of The Day – I Blame John Wayne

Comes via Sore Eyes from Charlie Stross’ blog and the commentathon that ensued when he pointed out, quite reasonably (as I’ve been saying to Martin for yonks too, and don’t get me started on eternal bloody life again or We Will Have A Row) that interstellar travel’s a complete and utter pointless fantasy, and that human space travel even within the solar system is unlikely at the very best.

Comment 237 of 450-odd sums it up:

237:

For those just joining, here is a summary of many of the previous comments. Be careful! What you’re about to say might have been said already.

“I don’t know who you are, Mr. So-called Science Fiction writer, but you are a pessimist! You of all people should be pushing fantasy, not poo-poo headedness!”

“I did not read your article, but you are wrong!”

“How can you not understand that humanity will inevitably invent magic ponies, which will carry us to the stars on their backs?!”

“Why are you so narrow-minded, Mister Physics and Numbers?! Leave the equations out of space travel: they don’t belong there!”

Thank you, and good night.

Well, quite.

But this explosion of comments is the flowering of a totally erroneous political mindset, one that as far as I can see doesn’t get discussed much publicly any more in SF fandom foir fear of flamewars.

What seems to have gripped many of the engineering/libertarian-verging-on-wingnut chohort, like Instapundit and his fellow Randite robotarians – is that we can fuck up this planet, but something will save us, be it cryogenics, uploading (selected, special) personalities to computers, or maybe just the sudden miraculous invention of an interstellar hyperdrive and a handy, earth-like planet ready and waiting in some other star system.

It’s the old ‘cavalry to the rescue’ thing again. Jeez, fuck something up, wait for the grownups to come along and fix it, story of the wingnut life. But what if you are the grownup and there is no-one else? Cowboy movies have a lot to answer for.

When is the Right going to get to grips with the fact that we have one planet, and if we fuck it up, we all die. There is no afterlife, there is no Battlestar Galactica, there is no warp drive, Shane’s not coming back and there are no High Elves: there’s this planet, and when it’s dead we’re dead with it.

Nope, easier to bury yourself yourself in magical thinking by treating speculative fiction as though it were real and believing any old bollocks, if it means you can evade responsibility for your collective actions in the here and now.

Is Google Malign? And Do You Care?

Blogs, Civil liberties, Democratic (in)action, Internet, Meta
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The trouble with search algorythms and databases is that although they’re useful tools they’re also horribly double-edged; they can be turned right back on us by the politically or economically unscrupulous.

So it’s proved.

If you don’t read anything else today, read Privacy International‘s report ranking internet search companies – can you say Google? – on how they invade or protect their users’ personal privacy. I think it’s safe to say they don’t do well.

Google was so concerned about this report, say Privacy International, that they’ve embarked on a media smear campaign against them. From an open letter to Google’s CEO:

Dear Mr. Schmidt,

You may be aware that Privacy International yesterday published its first privacy ranking of leading companies operating on the Internet. Google Inc performed very poorly, scoring lowest among the other major companies that we surveyed.

I am writing to express my concern not just at this unfortunate result, but also at communications between Google Inc and members of the media during the period immediately prior to publication of our report. Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that “Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft”. I presume this was motivated because Microsoft scored an overall better result than Google in the rankings.

Read open letter to Google in full

Google, Yahoo and their fellow data-handling corporations are big enemies to take on. So why are Privacy International doing this? They say:

We are increasingly concerned about the recent dynamics in the marketplace. While a number of companies have demonstrated integrity in handling personal information (and we have been surprised by the number of ‘social networking’ sites which are taking some of these issues quite seriously), we are witnessing an increased ‘race to the bottom’ in corporate surveillance of customers. Some companies are leading the charge through abusive and invasive profiling of their customers’ data. This trend is seen by even the most privacy friendly companies as creating competitive disadvantage to those who do not follow that trend, and in some cases to find new and more innovative ways to become even more surveillance-intensive.

We felt that consumers want to know about these surveillance practices so that they can make a better-informed decision about how, whether and with whom they should share their personal information. We also believe that companies need to be more open about how they process information and why it is processed.

Most importantly, we wanted to indicate to the marketplace that their surveillance and tracking activities are being scrutinised

Their interim rankings are available as a .pdf here. I’ll be posting some stuff from it later on, for you lazy sods who can’t be bothered downloading.

Some of us were born naturally suspicious and paranoid: we’re not all asleep at wheel, googling with abandon as though every search term is forgotten once done.

It isn’t, everything is logged somewhere. That’s the nature of the digital world and anyone who forgets that is a fool. There’s plenty of those about, blithely blundering through life thinking no-one knows what they’re doing, until the knock on the door or the heavy hand on the shoulder comes.

Many of these call themselves progressives, and blog, sometimes about data protection and civil liberties. But they also run Sitemeter, which collects saleable data via the specificclick cookie – consequent to your visit to their blog, the cookie’s tracking your movements around the web. I wanted to name names, but Martin persuaded me not to. Suffice it to say if you have Sitemeter, you’re datamining your readers, even though it may be unconsciously.

Do these bloggers know? Do they even care that are colluding with the very forces they rail against? If so, why not? Dammit, even the wingers have picked up on it. Why are so-called ‘progressives’ being so wilfully blind?

The issue of datamining and lack of data privacy, when combined with the authoritarian and draconian police and data surveiilance powers that our governments are abrogating to themselves, are a danger to anyone who dissents from received political wisdom or who challenges the status quo. If you really call yourseldf a progressive you should remove Sitemeter today.

Google, now that’s a much longer-term project.

I’ll be mortified if it turns out I’m foisting a tracking cookie on someone via this site, but I’d also be grateful that someone pointed it out. I’ve done my best, getting rid of Sitemeter for instance, but I’m not really technically adept enough to know if anything is lurking in the undergrowth. Not many of us are, and therein lies the root of our problem.

Damn

Blogs
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Steve Gilliard has died. He had been seriously ill and in hospital for some time now, so sadly his death does not come as a surprise. Our condolences to his friends and family.

Steve was somebody I only knew through his blog, I never had the pleasure of meeting him offline, but his personality shone through his writing. Loud and opiniated at times, but also knowledgeable, smart and never afraid to cut through the bullshit and say what he meant. In a sane world Steve Gilliard would’ve had Tom Friedman’s spot in the New York Times; instead he had his blog.

In a way, that was our luck, because through his blog he also created a community of readers, commenters and guest posters, that was one of the smartest and most intelligent around, where everything from food to sport was discussed aggresively but never obnoxiously.

He will be missed.

Palau adds:

Sorry, not blogging today, gutted.

De Haut En Bas

Blogs, Culture, Feminism, Parenting, Poverty, Women
Published on 2 Comments on De Haut En Bas

Is it just me, or does this read as horribly condescending?

Kactus, one of my super-favorite babymama blog crushes who needs a wider audience, has chronicled her experiences using food stamps for the last five weeks (although I think I lost week 4): Week One, Week One Part II, Week One Part III, The Meat Deal Is A Big Deal, Week Three: The Month So Far, Week Five.

I do urge you to read the posts despite the twee intro: everyone should know exactly how it is many of us survive these days and not only that, learn how to do it themselves. The good times won’t last forever, and poverty isn’t a moral fault, it’s just shitty circumstances. This whole ‘you are poor you must have brought it on yourself’ schtick is a crock of shit designed to assuage others’ greed and guilt.

There but for sheer blind good fortune go you, no matter how much you might like to tell yourself it’s all your own talent, charm and all-round coolness. No-one is secure: even if you’re in an open-ended salaried job with benefits and no dependents, you’re still likely to be only a couple of month’s salary or a major illness away from penury. But with a job of the uncertain, badly paid type that are available these days and dependents, you’re fucked – unless you’re a very, very clever manager, which Kaktus obviously is, as well as being a talented writer. The fact that she finds time to write at all is a bloody miracle. What she’s doing is feminism in the raw and I know because I’ve done it too.

So to describe Superbabymama not as a fellow grown woman and a writer but as a “super-favorite babymama blog crush” – well, to me it gives off an air of magnolias; but then maybe I have a sensitive nose. But I still can’t help but be reminded of Reese Witherspoon in full on “aren’t I cute while being so sweet to the help’ mode.

But like I said, maybe it’s just me. I’m English and class skirmishes make my atennnae go up.