The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition hikes and budget cuts, notes Barkawi.
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Author: Christopher Parsons
Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.
There is a photograph being shared in Facebook of a woman cowering in a corner, eyes downcast, as large man standing in the foreground swings his fist at her head. The caption reads, “Women deserve equal rights. And lefts.”
This is a particularly good, if depressing, discussion of Facebook’s treatment of violence towards women, masquerading under the guise of a Millian-attitude towards protecting speech.
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Time Machine Rocks
Time Machine is one of OS X’s most killer features!
Clay Bennett/Chattanooga Times Free Press (04/25/2013)
A particularly good – if depressing – political cartoon.
Last year Rob Shaw wrote a piece for the Times Colonist about online voting in British Columbia. (This is a Bad Idea by the way, for reasons that are expounded elsewhere.) At the very end of his article, we read:
B.C.’s flirtation with online voting coincides with changes to its information and privacy laws last year that paved the way for high-tech identity cards.
The government has said people will one day be able to use the cards to verify their identity and access Internet-based government services, including, potentially, online voting.
No government document released under FOIA laws that I’ve read has stated voting as a driver of the card. However, this isn’t an indictment of Shaw’s reporting but of the government’s unwillingness to fully disclose documents pertaining to the Services Card.
To be clear: there is no good reason to believe that the Services Card will be particularly helpful in combating the core problems related to online voting. It won’t actually verify that the same person associated with the Card is casting the ballot. It won’t ensure that the person is voting in a non-coerced manner. It won’t guarantee that malware hasn’t affected the computer to ‘vote’ for whomever the malware writer wants voted for.
The Services Card is (seemingly) a solution looking for a problem. Voting is not one problem to which the Card is the solution.
So, I use two factor authentication for a variety of services. It’s great for security.
It’s also a royal pain in the ass to be (re)inputting secondary authentication information all the time. That basic ‘pain point’ is sufficient to dissuade most people from setting it up. I support Twitter adopting this, and for some people it’ll be awesome. For most people it’ll just be a pain in the ass.
Matt Green has a really excellent post on why Bitcoin isn’t as anonymous as people think, and how to ‘fix’ that problem. If this is something that you’re interested in then his (very) detailed writeup (and link to his paper!) is worth the time and effort.
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This Has Been A Crappy 24 Hours
This has been an abysmally crappy 24 hours. It starts with my laptop dying last night and me, consequently, spending until the early hours of the morning trying to get it working. No joy: the logic board is dead.
Because of trying to fix stuff, I didn’t really sleep. And, because no computer no work was done through the day.
To start remedying things, I ordered a new laptop from Apple. It’s not coming until next week. So, I’m less able than normal to work/participate in anything until things arrive. Oh, and I’ve got to get last minute stuff done on 3 separate projects, and diss chapters. All due by end of month.
Still, the day got worse! After I’d sorted the computer stuff (yay! unexpected significant expenditure of money!) I dug out an old PC we have for emergencies. Like this. Much of my stuff is sitting in the cloud, so I figured I could get something done.
Wrong! My ISP managed to sever all connections with Google for most of the afternoon. It’s evening, and still no access to Google services. You know, like Google Docs, where I store ‘in progress’ writings in case there’s ever a problem with my computer AND I can’t immediately recover from backups.
It’s be really awesome to just rewind and delete the past 24 hours or so, you know?
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2013.4.20
We’re living in hard times, we’re not living in jolly boom dotcom times. And that’s why guys like Evgeny Morozov, who comes from the miserable country of Belarus, gets all jittery, and even fiercely aggressive, when he hears you talking about “technological solutionism.”
“There’s an app to make that all better.” Okay, a billion apps have been sold. Where’s the betterness?
Things do not always progress, and the successes of progress become thorny problems for the next generation. They don’t stay permanently “better.” Our value judgments about what are better are temporary. They are time-bound. When you overuse the word “better,” it’s like a head-fake, it’s a mantra.
You don’t have a better-o-meter. You can’t measure the length and breadth and duration of the “betterness.” “Better” is a metaphysical value judgement. It’s not a scientific quality like mass or velocity.
You can’t test it experimentally. We don’t know what’s “better.” We don’t even know what’s “worse.” Which is good. Every cloud has a silver lining.
Google doesn’t want to be “evil,” but they don’t have an evilometer. They don’t have an evil avoidance algorithm.
Bruce Sterling, Closing Remarks at SXSW2013
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2014.4.19
As many I was deeply shocked by the tragedy that occurred in Boston earlier this month. It was a stark reminder of the fact that any of us could be a victim of senseless violence anywhere at any moment.
As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.
As the President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman noted in his message to President Obama, the Czech Republic is an active and reliable partner of the United States in the fight against terrorism. We are determined to stand side by side with our allies in this respect, there is no doubt about that.
Petr Gandalovič, Ambassador of the Czech Republic, “Statement of the Ambassador of the Czech Republic on the Boston terrorist attack”
That an ambassador has to clarify where his nation is – and isn’t – in the face of incorrect American media and social media statements is….disturbing. Moreover, it raises serious doubts about scholarly arguments that the teaching of ‘facts’ is no longer necessary in an era of Google and the crowd.
Excited Pixels 