Commenter Archive

Comments by sidereal*

On “the things people say

By 'real' do you mean that the 4 exemplar arguments I offered were not actually made? Because that would make you wrong in a really big way.

"

Try thinking about the stimulus as a bubble

I'd rather think about it as a cranberry turkey sandwich. Because. . mmm. . cranberries.

Seriously, that's just not what a bubble is: trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values. It might be something else unsustainable, but it isn't a bubble.

The argument for it is that a current economic shock and retrenchment has created a temporary depression in demand, and the stimulus is designed to. . uh. . stimulate. . demand temporarily until (presumably) the underlying economic adjustments have time to complete. Arguments against it include: it's not big enough to matter, it won't last long enough to matter, putting government at the helm makes it poorly targeted, and OH MY GOD COMMUFASCISM KENYA KENYA DITTO!

Take your pick.

On “Google Bleg

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=mac
It's in beta and it's unstable. Mine has a tendency to crash fairly frequently. However, on pages on which it doesn't crash, it's quite good.

Wave invite sent.

On “Bleg

Heh. My current gig takes priority as it, you know, pays.

But I am willing to help, yes. And if that means occasionally looking through php error logs until my eyes go chartreuse.. well, that's the life I chose.

"

I would prioritize
a) Finding a host that gives you shell access to your account without excessive constraints or red tape
b) Finding someone(s) who can use that access to optimize your existing installation to better handle traffic

On the a) front, Dreamhost and MediaTemple both allow robust shell access in my experience.

On “In Praise of Roger Ebert

Also, he wrote the screenplay for the ultra-campy Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Awesome and a half. Also, he lost his ability to speak.

He's lived like 10 lives worth of interestingness.

On “Friendly advice

I'm so gratified she went right to the "I'm just here to stir up debate!" well. "If what I say is provocative, why, I'm just doing my job!" Sullivan loves pulling that one out when he's been demonstrated to be a retrograde idiot on some issue.

"

Dynamic page generated in 0.817 seconds!

That's what I'm talking about.

On “The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

Well that was depressing. I guess I'm supposed to be outraged, but I'm just sad.

On “Steele yourself for more embarassment

has since been changed from “What’s Up”

Actually, it was the significantly more 'clumsy and counterproductive' "What Up". Because the kids are, uh, hep and down wid it, I guess.

But the answer is not, as some suggest, to stop trying. Attracting new constituencies takes effort.

That's true. But Steele wandering around like a jester calling people 'slumdog' isn't effort. It's quite easy. And lazy. It isn't a path to anything. It's pure Palinism. Replace substance with the right sequence of winks and gestures that communicate cultural solidarity, on the assumption that cultural solidarity is the most important determiner of political belief. Which seems to be the foundational assumption of the modern GOP.

On “Wait, someone actually voted against this amendment?

every other Republican Senator has no problem with rape

In the interests of reasonable discourse, I'm pretty sure every Republican Senator has some problem with rape. I think that they've simply reached the point where bills are no longer about what they're about but are pieces in some big game of legislative control. Every vote is some stand on a vaguely related principle, which has the benefit that you don't have to bother reading the bill.

On “Unite, Bloggers of the World, Unite!

I am Rail Thin Spartacus!

Sorry, don't know how else to help.

On “Obsidian Wings can haz chill the hell out

Doh! Yes, sorry Scott. I somehow got the impression from your comment that you'd posted the original. It is E.D. who is the ragger.

My superpower would be to make the bylines of all blog posts really large. And blinking.

"

Dave, 'stopping by'? Not only am I a reasonably frequent commenter, I've written a guest article for your site. And if you get your knickers in a twist over the occasional intentional slangy misspelling, then yes, avoiding comments, evidently this site's headlines (see: 'haz'), and possibly the entirety of the casual written word might be your best bet.

But if you're referring to makoto, yes I sympathize.

I maintain that Scott was basically nutpicking to rag on a quite estimable blog, and I have no idea why you consider the comment thread there plague-ridden. The LOG benefits from a commentariat that is small, but should you ever grow to ObWi's traffic, which I assume you aspire to, you'll be quite fortunate to have a similarly civilized comment section.

"

Wut? There's like 3 uninformed dissidents in the ObWi thread who don't know how open threads work. You're nutpicking. Dreadfully easy to do.

On “sheer nonsense

the chances of the Democrats losing the house in 2010 at about 66%.

Well, Megan should put her money where her mouth is, then.
Intrade:
The Democrats to control the House of Representatives after 2010 Congressional Elections: 72.8%

That's a pretty big gap to arbitrage.

On “ThinkProgress can’t distinguish between “death panels” and euthanasia

Whoops. That should be 'not to say it's impossible'. Tripped on the triple negative.

"

I think its dumbness is up in the air until we get a chance to read the cover story. If death panels are part of the 'Creeping Culture of Euthanasia', then TP will retroactively have a point. They'll just be guilty of relying too much on an educated guess. And just to pack supposition on supposition, I will be very (pleasantly) surprised if there's no apologia for death panel hysteria in the article, given the ideological overlap and incentives.

But that is not to say that it's entirely possible to have a reasoned (or even fear-mongering) debate about euthanasia without endorsing the death panel canard.

On “A few meandering thoughts on racial anxiety and Obama’s right-wing opposition

I'm probably more inclined (judging from the extended caveat, at least) to ascribe racist/racial motives than Jamelle is. And yet I don't think race had much play in the (ridiculous) school speech controversy.

I believe it works like this: Obama is evil. Evil people with power are sinister. Therefore Obama giving a speech to children is a sinister act of influence over children. Note that this requires no concomitant objection to Reagan or Bush giving speeches to children because they are good. And good people with power are not sinister, they are noble.

On “Standing Athwart History Yelling “Ha-Ha!”

You mean. . deliberately obscuring your point (?) with gibberish? It's a difficult question to answer, since you're the only person that's tried it. If you're implying my Fun With Vectors was gibberish, I apologize for your not understanding it.

On “What the…?

I dunno. Maybe it comes from working at small startups for a long time or just working in 'knowledge work', but I don't ascribe to the whole sharp work/life distinction that suggests I transform into a different person when I take off/put on a tie. I'm more inclined to see a company as just being a legally trussed up version of any other sort of social group. I mean, it's a bunch of people getting together to do some task, and then splitting the proceeds.

Now, I'm perfectly happy choosing to dissociate myself from any person who's a raging douchebag. And if that dissociation involves kicking them out of some social group, including one in which they derive remuneration, all the merrier. That doesn't mean I'm going to sniff out his e-mails, but if I find out about it, I'm certainly going to act on it.

On “Standing Athwart History Yelling “Ha-Ha!”

First, to quote Jaybird’s paraphrase of a quote from an unknown source “libertarianism is a vector, not a destination.”

Unfortunately, philosophical models built on directions rather than destinations are of pretty limited use to real humans.

If you agree that the maximalist expression of a particular model is Bad (Say, Somalia as a maximalist expression of a minimally invasive state), then you acknowledge that if you keep going in some direction you will have gone Too Far. The point at which you stop Improving and start going Too Far is the optimal Destination. And the value of a philosophical urge is probably more or less proportional to how far away you are from that point (Maybe it even increases in value with the square of philosophical distance. I'll whiteboard it). And the closer one is to that point, the less that philosophy can offer you.

But the nature of self-sustaining philosophical movements is to exaggerate their own importance. So if we see a Libertarian pointing at, say, Sweden, and pod-person screaming about how unfree everyone is there and the terrible consequences, they are in effect saying that the gap between American Libertarianism's Destination and that place is large enough that Libertarianism is still politically relevant. But most of us see Swedes as pretty prosperous, happy people, and recognize that perhaps the American Libertarian impulse that keeps us from being more Swedish isn't really offering as much as it says it is.

On “What the…?

Did Nazis endorse or oppose at-will employees being terminated for whatever reason? I forget how they balanced the right to free association against the right to free speech.

In short, I suck at defending Jaybird. He is one of the muddleheaded bastards!

Unless the police department owns his home computer and ISP contract, how exactly does firing him prevent him from continuing to engage in his delightful speech?

"

Nah. Lemonade #5 is a rhetorical flourish of libertarianism just before undercutting a commitment to free speech.

Jaybird's disclaimer is that the BPD is just as free to fire Officer Barrett as he himself is to write non-racist screeds about 'jungle monkeys' and non-sexist screeds about women serving him coffee and donuts. It's prophylactic against the sort of muddleheadedness that makes people think 'free speech' means their comments should never be deleted.

On “I sincerely hope

Sorry, which part of this story intersected with the free market? The union contract jurisdiction dispute or the mercenary government lobbying organization?

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