kakistocracy

comment []5:17:54 PM    

"Michelle Malkin: HOW MUCH MOBILITY IS THERE IN THE BLOGOSPHER..." [Daypop Top 40]

You know, I really dislike Malkin's writing. It is so insular. It fits her readers, though, who like to make snarky comments about opportunity. But she does reveal the insularity of political blogs, because Billmon discusses something with no reflection on anything else than political blogs. It is about how some blogs get all the attention and how hard it is for a new one to crack the top.

If they actually looked outside politics (hard to do during these times) they would know that several bloggers whose speciality is the social networks blogs create have examined this problem. Clay Shirky, one of the best, discussed this over a year ago in an article called Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality. It generated a tremendous amount of discussion. It seems that any sort of blogging environment seems to follow a power law. That is, a small number of blogs are responsible for most of the action. Just as 80% of the wealth can be held by 20% of the people, 50% of the links can be found in 12% of the blogs.

Now, this examines real data, not someone's opinion. The discussion is just what sort of power law blogs fall into, how strong they are and what opportunities there are. however, this is looking at it from the wrong end of the spyglass. What is important in a blogging community is not who is at top but how rapidly important information moves throughout the network of bloggers.

The guys at the top are usually there because they are extraordinarily good at solving this problem. Either through their own hard work or by linking to others, they help make sure important information bubbles to the top. If they fail to do this, the community will move to one that does. Information transfer is the key point and whatever lowers the friction for this will win.

That is why the top bloggers are maintained in their community. They move the largest amount of credible information rapidly to the greatest numbers of the community. The fact that only 2-5 blogs are read by everyone is not the point. The ability of important or unique information from obscure, low rated blogs to rapidly get to the top and dispersed is the key to a top level blog. That is what happens. It does not really have a lot to do with opportunity. The top ones now have first mover momentum. They have filled the top level niche and will not be displaced unless they become unreliable, incompetent or retire. The opportunity to fill that niche is gone. So, find a new niche and run with it.

As an aside, I do not mean that the information that is moved is 'true' in an objective sense. It must be sustaining to the community that the blogs and bloggers serve. What Little Green Footballs talks about will very seldom be true to Eschaton. But if either of them decided to switch communities, you can be certain that the communities would rapidly fall apart and reform somewhere else. So, the only way a blogger can remain top of the heap in the community is to keep serving the community.

This may not be a problem for an amateur who is doing this out of their own passion. They can lead the community or not. They just want their passion to be out there; screw anyone who does not like it. But for someone who makes a living by being at the top, passion may not be enough. Staying on top is what got them the job and thus staying on top is what will keep them the job. So there may be a natural tendency to cater to the community and try and give them what they want. Try not to do anything that might upset any members of the community because they might leave, reducing the importance of the bogs and putting the blogger's job in peril. Thus, slowing down information flow, the death knell of any effective blog at the top.

It is easier to be edgy when your livelihood is not dependent on numbers. That is a danger for any individual blogger. But the blogging environment will not be harmed because it is always ready to elevate another blogger who can provide the information flow. Just as Nature is red in tooth and claw, so is the blogging community. If you can not move information around fastest, it will find someone who can. The community that succeeds will be one that has optimized the flow of information. That is why major media are doomed. They simply can not move information around as rapidly. Look how quickly facts are checked by both parties. It become very hard to tell untruths outside your little community. In fact, it is in the interactions between the different blogging communities that the really interesting stuff seems to occur. I think that the most successful groups, organizations, countries will be the ones that most effectively engage their different communities to arrive at solutions to difficult problems. This interaction is almost organic in nature, with goo ideas being rapidly dispersed amongst the group(s). Those that do this well will succeed. Those that to it poorly will not.

I have many reasons to hope for this Administrations demise in November. But the main one is that they do not understand this mode, one that requires openness and transparency in the social network. The way this Administration works is to slow down information transfer, to try and control it and to make it very difficult for good solutions to difficult problems to get to where they can be used.

I am not totally convinced that Kerry gets it either. However, I do know that some people who understand this are working for Kerry. I do know that his management approach naturally fits with transparency. So, I have a hope that if he wins, we will be able to more rapidly make the transition to these sorts of social networks. Because if we don't, someone else will. The US will not always be powerful. But, I believe its diversity of communities, and the networks between them, give us a big leg up. But we need to get going soon.  comment []4:53:57 PM    

Plan Would Let U.S. Deport Suspects to Nations That Might Torture Them (washingtonpost.com) [Daypop Top 40]

More information about how this Adminstration wants to keep torture one of its perogatives, with no apparent oversight. Could they simply take anyone from any country, give them the right label and ship them off to be tortured? Sure sounds like it. What a nice country we are becoming? What a beacon of hope we are for all the downtrodden of the world? Not a US citizen? Then we can do any old thing we want to you simply because we do not like your attitude. Sounds like we really are becoming the world's policeman, with the same corrupt attitudes found in places like LA or New Orleans. What a legacy!  comment []4:20:27 PM    

Voltaire. "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." [Quotes of the Day]

John Lehman. "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." [Quotes of the Day]

The second quote seems to embody the philosophy of this Administration. The first serves as a vivid reminder of our country's peril. This Adminstration has been expert at making people believe absurdities (i.e. that Saddam was responsible for 9/11) and we have seen atrocities committed. We need to stop this right now.  comment []3:53:32 PM    

What do the President's "values"
    say about outsourcing torture?. The President says he's against torture, but his administration backs the torture-outsourcing bill. What gives? [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

So, just being accused of being involved with terrorism (something the government gets to define) you can get sent off to a surrogate country to be tortured. And the American courts can not do anything to oversee this at all ('That damned Supreme Court won't let us violate the Constitution. Well, we will show them. We just won't let them serve as a check on this legislation.') This approach to preventing judicial oversight for ANY legislation, much less one that makes torture of government prisoners easier, is retty repugnant and very un-American. Why does this Adminstration support it?

Well, it doesn't apply to citizens, does it? Maybe not yet but we have already seen American citizens have their constitutionla rights abused so why would citizenship be a shield from this sort of thing? I love that it is up to the accused to prove they won't be tortured.

If these guys were perfect and only arrested terrorists, I might be less worried. But since this Administration is at least 0 for 5000 in its ability to successfully prosecute a case of terrorism at rial, I think we should all worry.

The Death Penalty should not be used, in my opinion, not because it is morally wrong. I think society can have a right to remove serial killers from its midst. It should not be used because we make so many mistakes and have killed so many innocent people. It is why we have a rule of law and believe that 10 guilty should go free if it prevents even one innocent from going to jail. We are fallible. So, how many innocent people are we willing to torture to get 1 terrorist? How many innocent men, women or even children should be physically mistreated to get 1 terrorist? In my opinion, not a single one. Not only from a 'pie-in-the-sky' view regarding just what kind of culture we want to live in but the fact that torture just does not work in these settings. People will say anything to get the torture to stop. It degrades the torturer and our society in ways that will hvae harmful consequences. We become the thing we fight.

The way the terrorists win is by getting us to move towardds means such as torture to secure our safety. It will not make us any safer and it will lower us to their level. It is a slippery slope that no cultures have been able to successfully negotiate. That is why we signed treaties to prevent it. Treaties and legislation this Adminstration istrying to find ways to negate.  comment []3:40:52 PM    

Khan Con. Bush last night:

My administration started what's called the Proliferation Security Initiative. Over 60 nations involved with disrupting the trans-shipment of information and/or weapons of mass destruction materials.

And we've been effective. We busted the A.Q. Khan network. This was a proliferator out of Pakistan that was selling secrets to places like North Korea and Libya. We convinced Libya to disarm. It's a central part of dealing with weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.

And then we have the Chicago Tribune yesterday.

The hunt for Osama bin Laden was Topic 1 last week when Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf met with President Bush at the White House. The two leaders discussed other things, including Musharraf's efforts to retain his post as chief of the army. But apparently one thing that failed to rank high on the agenda was the threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons.

To be specific, Bush reportedly didn't even try to persuade Musharraf to allow U.S. or International Atomic Energy Agency officials a crack at interviewing Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear program and one of the world's most brazen nuclear profiteers.

Earlier this year, Khan's underground nuclear bazaar--dubbed the "nuclear Wal-Mart" by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei--was uncloaked, solving the mystery of how North Korea, Iran and Libya acquired so much nuclear technology so fast. The answer: Khan's network sold it to them.

Khan, revered in his homeland as the father of the Pakistan bomb, confessed and was instantly pardoned by Musharraf. The Pakistan president apparently feared that his grip on power could be undermined by a long investigation and trial of a national hero. Musharraf insisted that Khan acted without government knowledge, a claim that is difficult if not impossible to believe.

At the time of Khan's confession, ElBaradei raised alarms, saying Khan was "the tip of an iceberg" in an illicit nuclear supply network with connections in many countries. "We need to know who supplied what, when, to whom," ElBaradei said.

Some eight months later, though, no one has those answers because Pakistan has refused to make Khan available to outside investigators, either from the U.S. or the IAEA. The United States, fearing that more pressure could destabilize a crucial ally in the war on terror, hasn't pressed the case.

One of these things is not like the other one.(via Kos diary) [Change for America -]

But. But. But. The President said justice has been done. The man who almost single handedy sold the bomb to Libya, Iran and North Lorea got a pardon and is walking around free. Apparently. the President is not even interested i having US officials interview this man. Makes me feel safer. I guess he is just lucky this Adminsitration did not lael him an enemy combatant and ship him off to Gitmo to get all the answers out of him. I uess it is like all things, if you are going to break a law, do it big. Kill someone in the commission of a bank robbery -> death. Rip off shareholders of millions -> get six months. Create the 'nuclear Wal-Mart', selling nuclear technology to terrorist states -> get a pardon. I just guess this Adminstration has different priorities about nuclear proliferation. Let's attack a country that might someday have had the capability to produce some sort of nuclear device versus a known trafficker who sold secrets to known supporters of terrorism. Kind of makes you wonder if the $200 billion transfer of money from Americans to war profiteers had any sort of part of the equation? This is exactly what Eisenhower warned us against and is perhaps why his son, who voted for Bush in 2000, is now going to vote for Kerry.  comment []3:05:24 PM    

I will spare.... I will spare you any pretense of mock surprise that Fox News is ridiculously biased against the Kerry campaign. But it's one thing to know it and another to get such a blazing and undeniable example of it as a... [Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall]

There should be no way to print such a story on a web site without proper vetting. To think that Fox would publish such a horrible example from the reporter ostensibly covering Kerry. Just another example of the major media and its continuing irrelevance. Serious people will get their news from credible sources. The major media that are not credible will simply continue their decline into tabloid journalism. Nothing wrong with making up stories about 3 headed gorillas but do not call yourself a journalist. Everyone knows what a hack is.

And I certainly do not think it is only 'reporters' that are conservative that are the problem. The problem of lazy journalists knows no political bounds. In truth, there is only one member of this fraternity that I listen to. And he is not even a journalist. he is a fake news talk show host. But he does a better job providing skeptical reportng of all the news than anyone else. And Jon Stewart is rightly pissed that the press is not doing their job. He has told them this on NPR, onFox News, on CNN, on Nightline. Everytime, they look around sheepishly, knowing he is right, but the pay is just too good to be honest. Cowards, every one of them.

The most honest reporting I generally find at the edges of the major media. At leat the news when it breaks first. There are still small newspapers that value the reasons for a free press. There are important bloggers that are passionate about getting the facts right. The disconnect between the corporate-run media outlets, with their appeal to enetertainment and the bottom line, and the need of many reporters to serve a larger community with the facts (the main reason most reporters enter the field) is becoming, every day, greater and greater.

A lot of people remember the movie 'Inherit The Wind.' They remember the conservative blowhard falling apart and having a heart attack when cross-examined by the liberal lawyer. But, the absolute key in the movie for me, the whole point, is not that event. It is the continuing presence of the cynical reporter played by Gene Kelly (playing against type). He makes a particularly snide comment at the end about the blowhard which is rebutted by the comment that 'at least he believed in something.'

Money can do great things, in the hands of those that care. Money can also result in horrible things being done. To some extent, it is a great clarifier, demonstrating just what sorts of moral and ethical beliefs we will follow, in the pursuit of money. It is why Jesus made his comment about a rich man, heaven and a camel. The acquisition of wealth can lead to a perilous path. I see it demonstrated every day on TV news or read a paper. To the detriment of our society.  comment []2:49:42 PM    

GOP Convention Redux. From Oliver Willis, we present the latest fun time happy joy joy short movie spectacular, which I call, "Terror, terror, terror, poison, saddam, saddam, terror, terror, fear, terror, terror, evil, terror, freedom is good, flip flop, sandal, terror, die." [Change for America -]

I am so glad i now have DSL which allows me to download Quicktime movies such as this one. It is a devastating clip of just what the GOP talked to the American people about at their convention in New York. And they call Kerry pessimistic.

[Check out Guiliani's emoting. No one else comes close to his ability to wring so many types of emotion from single phrases.]  comment []2:27:06 PM    

The Press Just makes Things Up

comment []1:45:21 PM