MachineMachine /stream - tagged with usa http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net The US schools with their own police http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools/the-us-schools-with-their-own-police-world-news-the-guardian One of the most shocking stories I've ever read: the criminalisation of childhood in #Texas. http://t.co/uqiuR9Il ]]> Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:36:45 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools/the-us-schools-with-their-own-police-world-news-the-guardian Innovation Starvation http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation SF has changed over the span of time I am talking about—from the 1950s (the era of the development of nuclear power, jet airplanes, the space race, and the computer) to now. Speaking broadly, the techno-optimism of the Golden Age of SF has given way to fiction written in a generally darker, more skeptical and ambiguous tone. I myself have tended to write a lot about hackers—trickster archetypes who exploit the arcane capabilities of complex systems devised by faceless others. ]]> Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:47:54 -0700 http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation Traces of humanity http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/traces_of_humanity/ What aliens could learn from the stuff we’ve left in space

Even in space, where none of us live, some of what we’ve left is space junk: stuff orbiting the earth that nobody particularly intended to leave anywhere. But much of what we’ve left in space is intentional. Some of it is symbolic artifacts intended for an audience of people here on Earth - the fallen astronaut, the American flag on the moon, a CD containing a list of over half a million people who wanted to send their names to a comet, courtesy of a NASA… ]]> Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:32:57 -0700 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/traces_of_humanity/ How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/all/1 On June 17, 2010, Sergey Ulasen was in his office in Belarus sifting through e-mail when a report caught his eye. A computer belonging to a customer in Iran was caught in a reboot loop — shutting down and restarting repeatedly despite efforts by operators to take control of it. It appeared the machine was infected with a virus.
Ulasen heads an antivirus division of a small computer security firm in Minsk called VirusBlokAda. Once a specialized offshoot of computer science, computer security has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry over the last decade keeping pace with an explosion in… ]]> Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:09:47 -0700 http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/all/1 Buffalo University: Where to stay? http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/190539 Looking for good, cheap accommodation in Buffalo, NY. My partner is visiting to work at Buffalo Uni for about 7 days in late September. They've offered to organise accommodation in a Holiday Inn at $98 a night. This feels a little steep. We'd like to shop around a bit, perhaps look at alternatives other than a hotel/motel. Perhaps a student "sleep in my spare room" scheme or something. Advice much appreciated. Any advice is appreciated, but we really would like to stick close to the University North Campus.

Cheers! ]]> Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:52:49 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/190539 Views on Evolution, Intelligent Design Hinge on Death Anxiety http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/death-anxiety-shapes-views-on-evolution-29580/ It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40 percent of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this knowledge gap, newly published research suggests the key factor isn’t faith per se but rather a benefit it provides that Darwin does not: A sense that our all-too-short lives have meaning.
A Canadian study just published in the journal PLoS ONE finds a strong link between existential angst and reluctance to embrace the theory of evolution. A team of researchers led by University of British Columbia psychologist Jessica… ]]> Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:39:19 -0700 http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/death-anxiety-shapes-views-on-evolution-29580/ The Temporary Autonomous Zone http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands in the net" we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free enclave" is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than an essay ("attempt"), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct political… ]]> Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:43:13 -0700 http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html Slavoj Žižek · Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/slavoj-zizek/good-manners-in-the-age-of-wikileaks So far, the WikiLeaks story has been represented as a struggle between WikiLeaks and the US empire: is the publishing of confidential US state documents an act in support of the freedom of information, of the people’s right to know, or is it a terrorist act that poses a threat to stable international relations? But what if this isn’t the real issue? What if the crucial ideological and political battle is going on within WikiLeaks itself: between the radical act of publishing secret state documents and the way this act has been reinscribed into the hegemonic ideologico-political field by, among… ]]> Tue, 18 Jan 2011 05:01:42 -0700 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/slavoj-zizek/good-manners-in-the-age-of-wikileaks The decline of the serial killer http://www.slate.com/id/2280097 The number of serial murders seems to be dwindling, as does the public's fascination with them. "It does seem the golden age of serial murderers is probably past," says Harold Schechter, a professor at Queens College of the City University of New York who studies crime.
Statistics on serial murder are hard to come by—the FBI doesn't keep numbers, according to a spokeswoman—but the data we do have suggests serial murders peaked in the 1980s and have been declining ever since. James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University and co-author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass… ]]> Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:55:00 -0700 http://www.slate.com/id/2280097 For The Love Of Culture http://www.tnr.com/article/the-love-culture?page=0,0 In early 2002, the filmmaker Grace Guggenheim--the daughter of the late Charles Guggenheim, one of America’s greatest documentarians, and the sister of the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who made An Inconvenient Truth-decided to do something that might strike most of us as common sense. Her father had directed or produced more than a hundred documentaries. Some of these were quite famous (Nine from Little Rock). Some were well-known even if not known to be by him (Monument to a Dream, the film that plays at the St. Louis arch). Some were forgotten but incredibly important for understanding American history in the… ]]> Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:17:00 -0700 http://www.tnr.com/article/the-love-culture?page=0,0 When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"? http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers... Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films… ]]> Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:24:00 -0700 http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar The Higher Arithmetic - How to count to a Zillion http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2009/5/the-higher-arithmetic Last year the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits. The billboard-size electronic counter, mounted on a wall near Times Square, overflowed when the public debt reached $10 trillion, or 1013 dollars. The crisis was resolved by squeezing another digit into the space occupied by the dollar sign. Now a new clock is on order, with room for growth; it won’t fill up until the debt reaches a quadrillion (1015) dollars. The incident of the Debt Clock brings to mind a comment made by Richard Feynman in the 1980s—back when mere billions still had the power… ]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:32:00 -0700 http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2009/5/the-higher-arithmetic Adam Curtis: It Felt Like a Kiss - The Film http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/07/it_felt_like_a_kiss_the_film.html This is the whole of the experimental film, It Felt Like a Kiss. It was the basis of the show [Adam Curtis] did in Manchester with Punchdrunk. The show may well come to London - but probably not till the end of the year. If you think you might want to go to the show, then you might not want to watch the film. Or you might. ]]> Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:52:00 -0700 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/07/it_felt_like_a_kiss_the_film.html Adam Curtis: It Felt Like a Kiss http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/06/it_felt_like_a_kiss_trail_3.html It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world. ]]> Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:39:00 -0700 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/06/it_felt_like_a_kiss_trail_3.html Obama’s Address to the State of Non-belief http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/01/obamas-address-to-the-state-of-nonbelief.html

“We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.”

Barack Hussein Obama, 20th of January, 2009

Obama-non-believers

(Originally published at 3quarksdaily)

As a British citizen I watched the inauguration speech of America’s 44th President with a warm but distanced interest. But as someone who was brought up in a non-religious family, and has thrived without a belief in a deity, I listened to Barack Obama’s… ]]> Tue, 05 May 2009 08:31:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/01/obamas-address-to-the-state-of-nonbelief.html A nation of nonbelievers http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/78458 "The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." ~ George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." ~ Thomas Jefferson / "The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion." ~ Abraham Lincoln / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~ James Madison / "I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice." ~ John F. Kennedy /… ]]> Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:40:00 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/78458 The Simulacrisation of Technology into Life http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50098 As the Pentagon ousts plans to turn insects into cyber war machines you'd be forgiven for asking the question: Where does the real digital end and the faked life begin? Are we simulating life synthetically? or just speeding up an entirely natural process? Technologically engineered life is here to stay. Its not far fetched to speculate that simulacra may become all there is. ]]> Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:09:26 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50098