NSA reform bill passes. Hurray! NSA bulk phone record collection is gone forever!
OK, maybe not right away.
Besides, if you oppose NSA spying you are probably just a racist white person, Salon says. Not from the Onion.
One of Bobby Campbell's favorite book covers has finally gotten published.
Texas may have just executed an innocent man.
Six books Bill Gates wants you to read.
4 comments:
That's not really what the Salon piece said. The author, a first generation Pakistani-American, merely expressed a preference for bulk collection and data crunching as opposed to profiling, which generally only affects people more or less like himself. And he pointed out that this distinction probably hadn't occurred to Rand Paul since he doesn't fall in the demographic that gets profiled. I appreciated this perspective (although I still despise the concept of white privilege).
Very cool cover art by Bobby on Leary's _Game of Life_, which I have on my half.com wish list. Used copies - with the non-Campbell covers art - have been going for up to $90 over the last year or so. Whenever I've wanted to check my indexing of Leary's ideas there, I've had to do an interlibrary loan.
So the news that a new edition is out - with BC's cover art (which reminds me of Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA's "Cheating Death" segments) - is cheering. Until I see Amazon still wants $25. Oy!
Re: Bill Gates's reading list: I'm pretty sure my own little copy of _How To Lie With Statistics_ got me kicked off a jury once. I'm sitting in the box during voir dire and one of the lawyers asked me the same Qs that the previous person was asked, and I answered them pretty much the same way. But I saw the lawyer glance down at my lap to check out what book I had. I was excused for cause. Not sure if it was my long hair or the book. I remain convinced that most of voir dire is about getting rid of people who seem too smart, or too liberal. (All it takes is one of the two asshole...I'm sorry: attorneys...to not like you for whatever reason, and you're off to waste more time waiting to see if you'll be called into a courtroom again.)
The cartoon from Politico was right on. If anyone believes that suddenly that gigantic spying/surv apparatus has suddenly stopped its bulk collection, they're impossibly naive. Or stupid. Or just very romantic.
Here is a direct quote from the Salon piece that Chas says I mischaracterized: "Perhaps to those like Sen. Rand Paul who’ve never had to fight assumptions based on one’s ethnicity or the color of one’s skin, the thought of cell phone data being pooled and analyzed is disconcerting."
Michael--I come across some good Leary stuff in the local used bookstores from time to time, and for some reason here in bean town they aren't quite so hefty in cost. If I find a reasonable copy of the game of life I'll snag it for you.
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