Monday Morning Links Are Visible from Space

* The schedule for the next four weeks of my Cultural Preservation course is up at the course blog. Benjamin! Fight Club! Ani DiFranco! Oh my!

* Half of Sexual Abuse Claims in American Prisons Involve Guards, Study Says. Nearly 10 percent of inmates suffer sexual abuse.

* Black Chicago Residents Are 10 Times More Likely To Be Shot By Police Than White Residents. What could explain it?

* The comeback of guaranteed basic income. Alive in the Sunshine.

* David Graeber: What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?

* After Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him.

* On Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies.

* ICE/ISEE-3 to return to an Earth no longer capable of speaking to it.

* That “distressed baby” who Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter. Armstrong could have paid for the full “cost” of both the babies directly out of his own salary and still made ten million dollars that year (in base salary).

* Dylan Farrow Responds to Woody Allen: “I Have Never Wavered.” 10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation. Just the Facts
. Brainwashing Woody.

* What would Middle Earth look like from space?

* South Bronx Students May Have Found Site of Slave Burial Ground.

* Duke’s Own Julia Gaffield describes her finding the first known copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence.

* I think about the ways to address people who think computers are magic, and there’s lots of them, the ways I mean although there are also lots of people sufficiently baffled by their own phones to presume that physical laws SHIT LIKE TIME AND SPACE don’t apply to digitization projects…

* “The legislation is almost certainly unconstitutional, it’s a bad law, and it reinforces stereotypes about Jewish influence,” said one pro-Israel Democratic strategist familiar with the groups’ thinking. “It’s so bad that AIPAC and ADL oppose it.”

* At long last, the purges begin at Occupy Wall Street.

* No one likes Obama’s terrible college rankings.

* Concerned with growing class sizes, teaching assistant union files complaint against UC.

* Renowned science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the award-winning “Mars Trilogy,” will select the winners of a national flash-science fiction contest co-organized by Wisconsin Public Radio’s nationally syndicated show “To the Best of Our Knowledge” and the Center for the Humanities and Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gates “Beverly Crusher” McFadden will produce the scripts for radio.

* The Truman Show as eldercare: ‘Dementia Village’ – as it has become known — is a place where residents can live a seemingly normal life, but in reality are being watched all the time. Caretakers staff the restaurant, grocery store, hair salon and theater — although the residents don’t always realize they are carers — and are also watching in the residents’ living quarters.

* The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird.

* The prohibition and attempted eradication of drugs can be a nightmare for the climate and environment. Particularly in Latin America, the fight against drug production has led to deforestation, widespread contamination with toxic chemicals, and contributed to a warming climate. Meanwhile: Climate Change Comes for Your Cup of Tea.

* I used to be a good teacher.

* Ideology at its purest: Saying it needed to prevent inbreeding, the Copenhagen Zoo killed a 2-year-old giraffe and fed its remains to lions as visitors watched.

* Scientists Think They Have Found The Mythical ‘Sunstone’ Vikings Used To Navigate Warships.

* 11 Alarming Weather Flukes That Happen When it Gets Really Cold.

* The Way We Live Now, by David Brooks.

* This Student Is On His Death Bed, But His Family Still Has To Prove He Can’t Take A Standardized Test.

* The worst people in the world: Four Long Island workers arrested for running ‘developmentally disabled fight club.’

* Sports Corner! How will news that Michael Sam is gay affect his NFL draft stock? 10 Points About College Hoops All-American Marcus Smart’s Pushing a ‘Fan.’ Why Superfan Jeff Orr Is A Much Bigger Problem For College Basketball Than Marcus Smart. More details on the Raiders’ cheerleaders wage theft suit. Olympic Committee Supports Russia’s Arrest of LGBT Activists. Why the Olympics Are a Lot Like ‘The Hunger Games.’ Detroit’s Unrealized Olympic Dreams. Only six of the previous 19 Winter Olympics host cities would be suitable to host the Games again by the end of this century due to warming temperatures, according to a new analysis. And The George Zimmerman-DMX Fight Has Been Cancelled, So At Least There’s That.

* How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine.

* New York State has roughly 15,000 zombie homes and leads the nation in the time required to foreclose on a home, at almost three years, according to data from RealtyTrac, a company that tracks troubled properties.

* If you’ve been wondering how Mockingjay will handle Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sudden death, here’s your answer.

* Nabokov’s immigration card. (Nationality: “without.”)

* If You Thought You Couldn’t Go To Jail For Debt Anymore, You’re Wrong.

* And standardized testing? Just opt out.

* Werner Herzog casts Mike Tyson, Pamela Anderson, and Russell Brand in his next movie, because life is chaos.

* Justice Department to give married same-sex couples equal protection.

* Good news: FX will make Redshirts a limited series.

* And can The LEGO Movie really be that good? MetaFilter is on the scene.

This World Is Still Possible, Maybe

By request, now up at the Polygraph website: Michael Hardt’s “Two Faces of Apocalypse: A Letter from Copenhagen” from Polygraph 22.

This conceptual conflict between limits and limitlessness is reflected in the seemingly incompatible slogans of the movements that met in Copenhagen. A favorite rallying cry of anticapitalist social movements in recent years has been “We want everything for everyone.” For those with an ecological consciousness of limits, of course, this sounds like an absurd, reckless notion that will propel us further down the route of mutual destruction. In contrast, a prominent placard at the public demonstrations in Copenhagen warned “There is no Planet B.” For anticapitalist activists this too closely echoes the neoliberal matra popularized 30 years ago by the Margaret Thatcher government: “There is no alternative.” Indeed the struggles against neoliberalism of the past decades have been defined by their belief in the possibility of radical, seemingly limitless alternatives. In short, the World Social Forum motto, “Another world is possible,” might translate in the context of the climate changes movements into something like, “This world is still possible, maybe.”

Late Monday Night

* The headline reads, “Cleverest women are the heaviest drinkers.”

* Chris Currey at FrumForum: “How the GOP purged me.”

I do not recognize myself in the Republican Party anymore. As someone said it before, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me. I have the same ideological positions on most of the issues that I had when I voted for Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush in 2000. However, I just cannot trust the reins of our government and nation, of this formidably complicated and complex gigantic machine that is the USA, to the amateurish leadership of the Republican Party.

We are living through tough times. We are being challenged like I have never seen America being challenged before. China is a formidable foe, and it is out there competing against us on every field and beating us on several fronts. While our education budgets are being slashed in every state across the nation, China is doubling and tripling theirs. These are the challenges and challengers that we are facing. And we need our best and brightest to lead us, not a half-term governor or radio/TV talking heads.

Maybe I am too old and too cynical, but I think the Republican party is in the last stages of agony. If nothing happens, we might win an election or even two, but in the long run we will lose America.

* Was Copenhagen not a failure? More from Plumer and Drum.

* Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast “Shadow Network” of online espionage based in China that used seemingly harmless means such as e-mail and Twitter to extract highly sensitive data from computers around the world.

* And another David Simon profile.

Second Batch

* While we still come down on opposite sides of the particular questions involved, Traxus has a mostly good piece on Copenhagen, health care, and everything else.

But if the term ‘progressive’ is to be taken seriously, a different political reality has to be embraced. All the feel-good talk about ‘getting somewhere’ or ‘good starts’ is so much living in the past. Everyone who calls the shots now knows, or has to pretend they know, that environmental catastrophe and financial crisis are real, and that health reform is necessary. We can be pleased or terrified about that. But from a practical standpoint the most important immediate goal is to move the center left. … In the world we live in, where we are just extras whose consent is either manufactured or assumed, fighting back means refusing to take on ourselves the dreary weight of their responsibilities and the illusion of power that comes with them. Demanding at the same time that they live up to their professed responsibilities and killing their bills when they don’t may be irresponsible in this heavily leveraged political environment — a losing battle — but that’s asymmetric politics. Devoting our energies to help the political class make decisions as if we didn’t exist isn’t even a partial victory, it’s just martyrdom.

* Ezra Klein is all over the filibuster this weekend, with a cover story in the Outlook section of the Post as well as interviews with Jeff Merkley, Tom Harkin, SEIU’s Andy Stern, and UCLA’s Barbara Sinclair.

* More on America’s broken political institutions today from Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen.

* Yesterday’s thwarted terror attack over Detroit has already caused overboard security procedures to be implemented on transatlantic flights int the U.S. Via Kevin Drum.

According to a statement posted Saturday morning on Air Canada’s Web site, the Transportation Security Administration will severely limit the behavior of both passengers and crew during flights in United States airspace — restricting movement in the final hour of flight. Late Saturday morning, the T.S.A. had not yet included this new information on its own Web site.

“Among other things,” the statement in Air Canada’s Web site read, “during the final hour of flight customers must remain seated, will not be allowed to access carry-on baggage, or have personal belongings or other items on their laps.”

* If I’m reading this story correctly, insects are our masters now.

* And Glenn Beck is your misinformer of the year.

A Few More While I Have Time

* Really interesting development: Pakistan’s Supreme Court says eunuchs must be allowed to identify themselves as a distinct gender in order to ensure their rights. Via Pam.

* Via Kottke: Jim Lehrer’s rules for journalism.

* Do nothing I cannot defend.
* Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
* Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
* Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.
* Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
* Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
* Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
* Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions.
* No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
* And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.

* ‘Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job’: Steve Benen evaluates Obama’s first year.

FDR had to address the Great Depression, but in the wake of Hoover, there were plenty of Republicans willing to work with the Roosevelt administration, and a discredited GOP didn’t put up much of a fight. Three decades later, LBJ had a bold, large-scale agenda, but there were still moderate Republicans on the Hill. Neither Roosevelt nor Johnson had to worry about mandatory supermajorities to pass legislation — Filibuster Mania was still decades away.

It’s why I tend to consider the demands on Obama to be almost comical. First, Obama was tasked with rescuing the economy, overseeing two costly wars, improving a deteriorating job market, addressing a crushing debt, and fixing health care, energy policy, immigration, a housing crisis, a collapsing U.S. auto industry, the Gitmo mess, and America’s reputation around the world.

Second, Obama is expected to do all of this without Republican support on anything. The GOP simply pretended that its spectacular failures didn’t discredit the party.

And third, Obama, for the first time in American history, is told that every one of his proposals has to get 60 votes in the Senate to proceed, making it impossible to do much of anything unless Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson approve.

* And Mark Lynas explains his take on Copenhagen.

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

Still More Copenhagen

Grist’s David Roberts and Duke’s Own Michael Hardt™ have two more Copenhagen round-ups. Here’s Michael:

Outside the official summit in Copenhagen, in fact, at the second scene of struggle over the common, one of the most interesting strategies of the activists and social movements was to act on a division between the powers inside the meetings. The primary concept of the “Reclaim Power” coordinated actions on Wednesday 16 December was to link “walking in” with “walking out.” In other words, protesters, attempting to break the restricted perimeter, as they have at summit meetings for over a decade, were to be met by dissatisfied delegates and participants who would express their objections by walking out. Together these two groups would then hold a “people’s summit.” The Danish police, through mass arrests and other tactics, made sure that the two sides did not actually meet, of course, but they did get to within about 100 yards of each other, close enough to wave across the fences and police lines. The conceptual significance of the effort, however, was clear to all involved, since “walking in” / “walking out” not only opens up the decision-making process but also highlights the kinds of alliances that are possible within and outside the structures of global governance—alliances that have the potential to create real alternatives.

We should keep in mind that the basis of such alliances rests on some fundamental conceptions of the management and institution of the common. For example, the primary mechanisms to address climate change promoted by the dominant forces, such as “cap and trade,” involve transforming the common into private property and, specifically, transforming carbon emissions and pollution rights into commodities and establishing markets in which they can be traded. Such strategies are indeed consistent with neoliberal ideology and its belief that privatization always leads to efficiency. The various opposition groups that can potentially form alliances advocate a variety of different solutions, but they all agree in their hostility to the neoliberal strategy and the privatization of the common.

Saturday Afternoon!

* I was going to offer this post from Matt Yglesias on Weber’s “Politics as Vocation” as a potential intervention in the argument Vu and I have been having over the last few comment threads. But upon reflection I don’t think “compromise vs. compromised” is quite what we disagree about after all; it’s really a much smaller dispute about the efficacy of adopting an aggressive negotiating posture when you’re playing Chicken with sociopathically indifferent ideologues. The bad actors will always win such a fight, because we care about outcomes and they don’t. What we we need to do, therefore, is direct our attention away from mere political affect toward structural reform, wherever possible, of the various political institutions that give these bad actors final say.

* The Wonk Room compares the original health care bill to the (presumably final) manager’s amendment, with more on the new CBO score from Steve, Ezra, and TPM. I have to say this post from mcjoan on making sure doctors don’t take away our precious guns made me smile, as did the follow-up on mandates from the comments. So did Benen’s Botax/Boeh-tax bit.

* Stupak launches another desperate bid to be thrown out of the Democratic caucus.

* More ‘Flopenhagen’ analysis from Mother Jones, MNN, Wonk Room, Kevin Drum, and immanance. One’s level of happiness/sadness and optimism/pessimism on Copenhagen continues to strongly correlate with the extent to which one thought a genuinely successful agreement was ever possible at Copenhagen in the first place.

* ‘In the Shadow of Goldman Sachs’: Trickle-down economics on Wall Street. Via PClem.

* Jack Bauer interrogates Santa Claus. Via Julia.

* Captain Picard to become Sir Captain Picard.

* And very sad news: Influential film theorist Robin Wood has died.

‘Not Exactly the Spike-the-Ball Moment Obama’s Supporters Envisioned’

Grist’s David Roberts is disappointed with the climate accord.

What’s remarkable is that the accord already represented an enormous diminution of hopes and expectations, wan even compared to drafts that had circulated earlier in the week. It achieved only the barest of Obama’s aims: one, to draw the major emitters among the developing nations — China, India, and Brazil — into a process that would yield concrete commitments on their part, and two, to get funding flowing from developed countries to developing countries to aid their efforts to deal with climate change. The idea was to pull big emitters into a political agreement that would, at next year’s COP16 in Mexico City, become a legally binding treaty. Obama adopted this two-step process after it became clear that a full treaty simply wasn’t in the offing this year; he wanted something that could be operationalized immediately and serve to build trust in the intervening months.

Thanks to what Obama called, at a Friday-evening press conference, a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives” (read: China won’t budge!), the accord ended up in an attenuated form that even its architect conceded is “not enough” to do what needs to be done. Gone was the firm commitment to reduce global emissions 50% by 2050. Gone were any short-term emissions targets for 2020. Missing were the concrete commitments to “measurement, reporting, and verification” (MRV) Obama wanted from China, in its place vague language about “national communications.”

Perhaps most fatefully, gone was any explicit pledge to formalize the agreement as a binding treaty next year. That’s worrisome, because Copenhagen is only the first challenge in a three-part political obstacle course Obama will need to navigate to reach success on climate change. First was drawing China and India into an agreement. Next will be using the Copenhagen accord to fortify the U.S. Senate to pass a climate bill. Third will be to use that U.S. climate bill to convince UNFCCC countries to sign on to a binding legal treaty in 2010.

I for one wasn’t expecting any touchdown—but most of the activist left seems pretty disheartened.

Copenreactions (UPDATED)

With just a strange hint of bad-movie badassery

The deal came after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Chinese protocol officers noisily protested, and Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret.

a Copenhagen accord was apparently forged. There’s predictable disappointment and even rage in activist circles, but (unlike health care) it seems to me this is about as good an outcome as we could have ever hoped to get.

UPDATE: The Vine’s Bradford Plumer has more roundup, including this key quote from CAP’s Andrew Light that shows up in my RSS reader but not at the Climate Progress site:

I]f successful, this interim agreement represents a fundamental game changer in how the world looks at ending carbon pollution. This was not an agreement forged among our closest allies in the developed world; it was forged among a group of developing nations [China, Brazil, South Africa, and India] that had met prior to the meeting to declare that they would never move beyond one of the core guiding assumptions of the Kyoto Protocol: that the world is divided between developed and developing countries and that only the former are required to take steps to curb their carbon emissions and be held accountable for those reductions.

Plumer also shares my view that this was about as good an agreement as possible under the circumstances.

Cartoon of the Day

Pharyngula has your cartoon of the day. Just perfect.

As I Head Out of Town, Some Links

* Rate Your Students has a long piece with “real advice” for grad students headed out to job interviews. Good luck out there.

* Sony strenuously denies that the Vulture/”Vulturess” pair sucks bad enough to stop production on Spider-Man 4.

* Attention: Avatards: The House Next Door has two reviews, and there’s one each at /Film and Overthinking It.

* Climate Progress says the Guardian bungled the Copenhagen story I posted last night: the 3°C rise in temperatures describes promised cuts made pre-Copenhagen. David Roberts at Grist adds that things in Copenhagen are actually looking pretty good.

* The first things a new nation needs are a football team and an army. The last thing it needs is for either to disappear overnight and it’s an embarrassment to Eritrea, which won independence from Ethiopia in 1993, that all 12 members of the national squad should have dumped their strip in the wheelie-bins at the back of their hotel during a CECAFA tournament in Kenya and vanished without further ado. ‘Cazzo,’ I hear the Eritrean leadership whispering to itself. ‘But at least we’ve still got the army.’

* You are in a game show with nineteen other players. You don’t know the other players, you can’t see them, and you can’t communicate with them. The game you are in is called ‘Greed!’, and is straightforward to explain. You are asked to write down a whole dollar amount in the range $1 – $1,000,000 on a piece of paper. You will be paid the amount you asked for if it is deemed to be ‘non-greedy’. Whether your request is indeed ‘non-greedy’ will be decided once all twenty request have been received by the host of the show. Your requested amount will be labeled ‘non-greedy’ if no other player has asked for less, and at least one player has asked for more. Let’s all make a pact now that if we wind up on this show we write “$1,000,000.” (via)

* Ladies and gentlemen, the known universe.

* And science proves peer pressure is a good thing. Via Eric Barker.

Thursday Night Links

* James Randi responds to the criticism he received yesterday for his stated climate change “skepticism.”

* The emissions cuts offered so far at the Copenhagen climate change summit would still lead to global temperatures rising by an average of 3°C, according to a confidential UN analysis obtained by the Guardian.

* The physics of space warfare.

* It turns out Joss Whedon significantly overbid for Terminator; James Cameron originally sold the franchise for a dollar.

* Avatar poised for a $200-million weekend.

* Point and counterpoint on Massachusetts as a model for health care reform.

Monday Night

* A key feature of capitalism in America is the complete insulation of elites from the violence the system inflicts against the poor. This is illustrated well in today’s health care debate; the actual human suffering and death caused by our broken health care system is invisible to people like Joe Lieberman, who is therefore free to consider health care reform as a purely abstract game centered around revenge against his enemies. To bring up the fact that people are actually dying over this is considered unspeakably rude—a total breach of decorum. Frank Rich and BAGnotes make the same point today about the invisibility of suffering in the economic crisis as a whole.

* In any event, Lieberman won (with an apparent assist from Rahm): the Medicare buy-in is officially dead.

* Ezra Klein explains why everyone is so terrified of reconciliation.

* Grist says the big story out of Copenhagen’s first week is the emergence of tensions between richer and poorer developing nations.

The one significant new feature of this treaty round is the emergence of a distinct voice for small island nations and the poorest states—the folks for whom climate change is an existential, not just economic, problem. Inside the talks, this manifested in the tiny island state of Tuvalu’s call for a new, post-Kyoto treaty that would require mandatory reductions not only from rich countries but from the biggest and fastest-growing developing nations, including China and India. It would also set 1.5 degrees C as the target for limiting the rise in global temperature, rather than the 2 C agreed upon in previous talks (and still maintained by big emitters). This amounts to the first big public eruption of the simmering tensions between major developing countries and their smaller/poorer brethren. Whereas China and India want to shelter their economic development above all else, Tuvalu, well, might go under water soon.

* The ultimate Disney/Marvel mashup.

* Millions of “lost” Bush administration emails discovered by computer technicians. MetaFilter has your schadenfreude.

* Could Bernanke really withdraw his nomination for chairman of the Federal Reserve?

* And I wanted to post this a few days ago, but seem to have forgotten: the situation with Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio is rapidly growing completely insane.

Monday Midday

* Some in the Obama administration want the expansion of the increasingly misnamed war in Afghanistan to include drone attacks on cities in Pakistan the size of San Francisco:

“If we don’t do this — at least have a real discussion of it — Pakistan might not think we are serious,” said a senior U.S. official involved in war planning.

Well, we certainly can’t have that. Via Kevin Drum, who says “history is rhyming.”

* Following up on earlier posts: Timo tracks down more fake English in response to this post while this morning’s Muppet post prompts Eli to report that the Jim Henson biopic The Muppet Man is both promising and doomed.

* Meanwhile, President Lieberman remains the talk of the Internets. Does Joe have principles? (Only one.) Is Joe smart? (Not really.) What are our options now? (Not many.) Did Lieberman really endorse the Medicare buy-in compromise he’s now rejecting just three months ago? (Of course he did.)  Is it time for reconciliation? Josh Marshall still says no. Open Left says it doesn’t matter how, just get it done. There are even conflicting reports that the White House may be backing Lieberman’s latest tantrum. Taibbi weeps.

* ‘Philosophy prof won’t go to jail for making unofficial Derrida translations available to students.’ Jail’s too good for him!

* Also at Boing Boing: ‘Man returns library book due in 1955.’ What I like about this story is that he specifically took advantage of a late-book amnesty to do an almost $2000 fine. Kafka weeps.

* In the Yes Men’s first transatlantic action, an email purported to be an official Environment Canada press release this afternoon announced an incredibly ambitious plan to cut carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. It also went on to commit Canada to paying 1% and eventually up to 5% of its GDP in 2030 to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

* The New Yorker analyzes China’s climate and energy policy.

* Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilization are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Also via MeFi.

* “James Chartrand” tells the story of how picking a male pseudonym got her more freelancing gigs and more money for them. Via MetaFilter.

* The end of Haloscan. Looks like I helicoptered out of Blogspot just in time.

More Stuff

* Whoa: The UN international climate change conference is in chaos as the G77, which represents 130 developing countries “pulled the emergency plug” suspending the talks over wealthy countries’ reluctance to discuss a legally binding emissions treaty. I hope this is just a negotiating tactic in response to the so-called “suicide pact” and not a true collapse of the talks.

* If anyone tries to tell you that uncertainty about climate change is a reason for inaction, he’s either a fool or a scoundrel. Probably a bit of both.

* Two from ChartPorn: an interactive map showing the estimated effects of a 4 Celsius degree change in global temperatures and Climate Anomalies, 2007-09.

* Now we see the violence inherent in the system: Hundreds of billions in crime money knowingly laundered by banks during credit crunch.

The Observer reports that an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks’ doors open.

* ‘In the lawless mountain realms of Asia, a Yale professor finds a case against civilization.‘ Via MeFi.

In Zomia’s small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm’s length. Zomia’s history, Scott argues, is a rejection of the mighty lowland states that are seen as defining Asia. He calls Zomia a “shatter zone,” a place where people go to escape the raw deal that complex civilization historically has been for those at the bottom: the coerced labor and conscription into military service, the taxation for wars and pharaonic building projects, the epidemic diseases that came with intensive agriculture and animal husbandry.

* Nicholas Stephanopoulos on phasing out the filibuster. Via Matt Yglesias, who notes the real problem with this proposal:

If we actually were in a situation where Democrats were clamoring for a restoration of majority rule and Republicans were blocking it, then I think a clever compromise would be just what the doctor ordered. But as best I can tell only Tom Harkin has any real interest in doing this. A few public option stalwarts, like Sherrod Brown, have pressed for the use of reconciliation to do health care. But even on this proponents of majority rule seem to be a minority of the Democratic caucus. Which is to say that the issue is less that Republicans are insisting on the filibuster in order to preserve their ability to block legislation than it is that Democratsare insisting on a supermajority rule in order to preserve each individual member’s ability to make demands.

* And I’ve used this precise argument from xkcd many times with regard to both climate change and evolutionary biology. It’s logically sound, but, alas, gets few results.