thoughts and opinions by author s. andrew swann
S Andrew Swann | February 10, 2010
Remember Rollerball? The original 1975 version with James Caan? One of the interesting premises of the movie was the collapse of the nation-state in favor of the corporation. That premise was somewhat prescient, anticipating one of the main tropes of cyberpunk by almost a decade. The idea is commonplace now, a shorthand for some deep [...]
S Andrew Swann | February 1, 2010
I recently read a rather interesting sfnal riff on Obama’s state of the union speech, based on an administration reference to a “New Foundation”:
But I recall reading here or somewhere that Paul Krugman and several other leading economic and legal academic-policymakers had come to their professions wanting to be … Hari Seldon. Deeply attracted to [...]
S Andrew Swann | January 20, 2010
I’m not up for much of a blog post for reasons I won’t go into, but since I opine on politics, and the Massachusetts senate race is probably the biggest political story for this half of 2010, I should probably make a comment about it.
To every Republican and Democrat out there: get over yourselves. Guess [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 28, 2009
Enough with the holiday cheer. Here’s a list of ten things that I’m getting paranoid about for the coming year.
The Obama administration has modified a long-standing executive order so now agents of Interpol have full diplomatic immunity. i.e. We have now a class of law enforcement in this country beyond any rules of search and [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 11, 2009
Internet trolls are fascinating creatures. They live in the nooks and crannies of the internet, eager to pounce on any unwary passer-by. I find the psychology fascinating, as trolls almost always advocate a political point of view, and do it exceedingly badly. So badly that one is often left wondering if they [...]
S Andrew Swann | December 8, 2009
Scientific research is based on the idea of review, so others can reproduce your results. Peer review should not be about insuring a pre-determined outcome. It certainly shouldn’t be about intimidation of reporters. Is shouldn’t be about politicians defining what the “real science” is. Especially when they’re repeatedly wrong about it. Who really should be [...]
S Andrew Swann | November 30, 2009
While I was out, it seems we found out the science on Global Warming is a lot less settled than Al Gore would like us to believe. At the risk of being called the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier, I can’t say that this particularly surprises me. When we talk about climate scientists (the [...]
S Andrew Swann | November 4, 2009
Short little theory about recent electoral history that no one in the establishment is willing to entertain because it is just too scary. We have the trouncing of democratic governors and it’s announced as a fundamental shift in the electorate, away from the fundamental shift in the electorate back in 2008. I might posit the [...]
S Andrew Swann | October 26, 2009
Apparently the GOP felt is was behind the curve when it came to the rape-apologist bandwagon. Hell, if I parse this right, the amendment that these 30 asinine twits voted against wouldn’t make it illegal for a company to make a contract saying you can’t sue if their employees gang-rape you, it just said that [...]
S Andrew Swann | October 16, 2009
Thought that, instead of my normal rant on current events, I’d go and post a little bit about some first principles. This is by way of explaining why my friend Maureen calls my politics “weird.” Usually, a preface like that leads to some moral calculation of why this system is good and that system is [...]
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
Proudly Powered by WordPress | Entries RSS Comments RSS