Yes, yes, yes, y'all - a brighter day

Our taxes, their dividends

From the WaPo:

U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.

The government said it was giving banks more money so they could make more loans. Dollars paid to shareholders don't serve that purpose, but Treasury officials say that suspending quarterly dividend payments would have deterred banks from participating in the voluntary program.

Monkey Jazz: Live: one man looping

Must We Obey Interior Design Regulations?

There is no plausible economic justification for government regulation of interior design rather than private certification. The idea that the state has the legitimate authority to tell people whether they can or cannot recommend shades of paint without a license is a moral absurdity. Laws and regulations like these are not laws and regulations we have a duty to obey. If anything, as Schaeffer might argue, we have a moral duty to disobey them.

More at Ludwig von Mises Institute

Justice Department Pressed by Bush to Contest 200,000 Ohio Voters

The White House is intervening in an election dispute in the state of Ohio. The White House has asked the Department of Justice to look into whether 200,000 new Ohio voters must reconfirm their registration information before the Nov. 4 election because their records don’t precisely match other government databases. Last week, the US Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by the Ohio Republican Party over the issue

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Reposted from Democracy Now!

Cuz fair and accurate voting is a cornerstone of this Administration.

In 1901, a 14-year-old student published an article in his school newspaper describing the world of 2001

Fun read

Song for Sarah

If you are a Flight of the Conchords fan, you'll find this extra entertaining:

I'm looking at you Congress...

Even several months later when being asked to forfeit the rights and freedoms of your constituents.

The AI-Box Experiment:

Person1:	"When we build AI, why not just keep it in sealed hardware that can't affect the outside world in any way except through one communications channel with the original programmers?  That way it couldn't get out until we were convinced it was safe."
Person2:	"That might work if you were talking about dumber-than-human AI, but a transhuman AI would just convince you to let it out.  It doesn't matter how much security you put on the box.  Humans are not secure."
Person1:	"I don't see how even a transhuman AI could make me let it out, if I didn't want to, just by talking to me."
Person2:	"It would make you want to let it out.  This is a transhuman mind we're talking about.  If it thinks both faster and better than a human, it can probably take over a human mind through a text-only terminal."
Person1:	"There is no chance I could be persuaded to let the AI out.  No matter what it says, I can always just say no.  I can't imagine anything that even a transhuman could say to me which would change that."
Person2:	"Okay, let's run the experiment.  We'll meet in a private chat channel.  I'll be the AI.  You be the gatekeeper.  You can resolve to believe whatever you like, as strongly as you like, as far in advance as you like. We'll talk for at least two hours.  If I can't convince you to let me out, I'll Paypal you $10."

More on preparing for Singularity here

Petulance

'...Military participation in domestic operations was originally outlawed with the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, however, included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to “restore public order” or to suppress “any insurrection.” While a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal.'

fRead'm & Weep (democracynow.org)

Homemade Synth w/ built in visuals

Behold the acid-machine 

McCain was before ACORN before he was against it.

"A goldfish's lifetime ago, Sen. John McCain was happy to accept the honors and acclamation of the Service Employees International Union, People for the American Way, UNITE HERE --  and ACORN.  Here he is, on Feb. 20, 2006, telling immigration rights activists at a rally in Miami  that they "are what makes America special..."  the Atlantic

Don't miss the video...

The Expansion of Ignorance

"Thus even though our knowledge is expanding exponentially, our questions are expanding exponentially faster. And as mathematicians will tell you, the widening gap between two exponential curves is itself an exponential curve. That gap between questions and answers is our ignorance, and it is growing exponentialy.  In other words, science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge"

From Kevin Kelly's amazing website @ kk.org.

Is it a desktop, is it a webpage? it's all javascript!

May only be interesting for geeks:

http://www.chiptune.com/

Freaky Halloween Window Project

Of course, you need a projector:

Dipity Election Center

Interesting way to visualize updates from the candidates.