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Boing Boing
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Barlow's Forth of July message
Vinay sez, "John Perry Barlow is in Iceland for the Icelandic Foundation for Digital Freedoms' conference. We shot this Fourth of July talk with him at Thingvellir, the ancient site of Iceland's historic parliamentary republic, B. 930 AD, D. about 3 centuries later." Link (Thanks, Vinay!)...
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Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential: Kevin Kelly
Snip from an essay published by Kevin Kelly today over on his Technium blog: All extropic systems -- economy, nature and technology -- are governed by self-accelerating feedback cycles. Like compounding interest, or virtuous circles, they are powered by increasing returns. Success breeds success. There is a long tail of incremental build up and then as they keep doubling every cycle, they explode out of invisibility into significance. Extropic systems can also collapse in the same self-accelerating way, one subtraction triggering many other subtractions, so in a vicious cycle the whole system implodes. Our view of the future is warped and blinded by these exponential curves. But while progress runs on exponential curves, our individual lives proceed in a linear fashion. We live day by day by day. While we might think time flies as we age, it really trickles out steadily. Today will always be more valuable than some day in the future, in large part because we have no guarantee we'll get that extra day. Ditto for civilizations. In linear time, the future is a loss. But because human minds and societies can improve things over time, and compound that improvement in virtuous circles, the future in this dimension is a gain. Therefore long-term thinking entails the confluence of the linear and the exponential. The linear march of our time intersects the cascading rise and fall of numerous self-amplifying exponential forces. Generations, too, proceed in a linear sequence. They advance steadily one after another while pushed by the compounding cycles of exponential change. Balancing that point where the linear crosses the exponential is what long-term thinking should be about. Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential [Kevin Kelly]...
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Jesse Helms leaves the planet.
US Senator Jesse Helms died today. Here were his words in 1956, responding to criticism that a fictional black character in his newspaper column was racist: To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing. Jesse Helms quotes on life and politics [AP]...
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Iran: death penalty for “corrupt weblogs”
New legislation has been proposed in Iran that could make blogging a crime punishable by death. Cyrus Farivar has a story on today's edition of the PRI radio show The World: Iran considers harsh penalty for some bloggers (3:30). Over at Global Voices, Hamid Tehrani writes: On Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add, “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,” to the list of crimes punishable by death. In recent years, some Iranian bloggers have been sent to jail and many have had their sites filtered. If the Iranian parliament approves this draft bill, bloggers fear they could be legally executed as criminals. No one has defined what it means to “disturb mental security in society”. Such discussion concerning blogs has not been unique to Iran. It shows that many authorities do not only wish to filter blogs, but also to eliminate bloggers! A translated English copy of the proposed legislation is here. [International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran] Image: "Women In Black," by Matthew Winterburn, who has some really neat photos of Iran in his Flickr stream....
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Some douche steals Ian Curtis' (of Joy Division) headstone
The headstone marking the final resting place of deceased Joy Division singer Ian Curtis is suddenly missing. Whoever stole it is a total douche, and deserves a special place in hell where screaming emo demons torture them with burns from a thousand clove cigarettes, poke them with a million blunt eyeliner applicators, and blind their eyes with painfully asymmetrical hair extensions for all eternity. The grave marker, wherever it is now, reads: "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and the words "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Here is a story in the Times UK, and above is a music video by Jonathan Beamish for the earliest recorded version of "Love Will Tear us Apart," produced as a John Peel Session for the BBC in 1979 (jesus! 30 years ago, wow)....
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