Singularity may rid us of death, but it won’t abolish backscratching

IT is not magic pixie dust, technology
Published on Leave a comment on Singularity may rid us of death, but it won’t abolish backscratching

Evgeny Morozov puts the boot in the well deserving TED talks industry:

The “technological” turn in Khanna’s “thought” is hardly surprising. As he and others have discovered by now, one can continue fooling the public with slick ahistorical jeremiads on geopolitics by serving them with the coarse but tasty sauce that is the Cyber-Whig theory of history. The recipe is simple. Find some peculiar global trend—the more arcane, the better. Draw a straight line connecting it to the world of apps, electric cars, and Bay Area venture capital. Mention robots, Japan, and cyberwar. Use shiny slides that contain incomprehensible but impressive maps and visualizations. Stir well. Serve on multiple platforms. With their never-ending talk of Twitter revolutions and the like, techno-globalists such as Khanna have a bright future ahead of them.

What a difference a skin colour makes

War on Terror
Published on Leave a comment on What a difference a skin colour makes

Juan Cole on the difference between white and all other terrorists:

10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

Silly Palestinians, this isn’t about you

Israel/Palestine, US politics
Published on Leave a comment on Silly Palestinians, this isn’t about you

So, presidental candidate Mitt Romney has been on a whirlwind foreign tour making incredibly stupid and offensive remarks, the latest of which blamed the Palestinian mentality for not doing as well as Israel, economy wise:

Palestinian leaders expressed offence and outrage at comments by Mitt Romney during his lightning visit to Israel, in which he said the Jewish state’s economic success compared with its Palestinian neighbours was due to “cultural” differences and the “hand of providence”, and declared Jerusalem to be “the capital of Israel”.

The presumptive Republican candidate in the the US presidential race told a $25,000-a-head (£16,000) fundraising event in Jerusalem: “As I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognise the power of at least culture and a few other things.”

He cited a climate of innovation, the Jewish history of thriving in adversity, and the “hand of providence”.

Anybody with even a casual grasp of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict knows how wrong or offensive this is, nor should his nominal Israeli audience be flattered by nonsense like this; they know the truth. But of course it’s neither aimed at them or the Palestinians: this is for the know-nothings at home, who know for sure Israel is the eternally innocent victim of Palestian malice, that if only the latter renounced their evil, antisemitic, terroristic ways and recognised Israel’s right to exist, they too could become wealthy. Even Romney himself knows that what he was saying was twaddle, but he forced himself to believe it because that’s what it takes to please the Republican base these days. You can’t get away with just mouthing the right shibboleths, you have to believe them.