And Introducing Our Latest Creationism-Friendly Politician, The Governor of Texas!. Rick Perry's on board! And no postmodern vagueness for him. He's here to tell us that intelligent design is a "valid scientific theory." That's right, governor. Just check out all the work on intelligent design going on in the biology... [The Loom]

So many conservative politicians. So many idiots. I mean, McCain said that the students shoul just choose for themselves. This is not a popularity contestor something that a lawyerly debate can decide. We are talking about models that describe the world around us. And some want to live in a made-up, dreamlike world with little connection to reality. Evil Idiots misleading the ignorant. Back to my favorite Darrow quote because of the marching morons in carge today:

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.

He said this 80 years ago at the Scopes tral in Tennessee. There are leaders today who seem to welcome the return to a day before the Elightenment, who want to use fear and ignorance to can power for their own corrupt purposes. What we see with evolution is just a small part of their effort, but it is one we need to keep making. As long as there are ignorant people being misguided by evil leaders.  3:16:38 PM    

Misbehavior in Second Life game punished by exile to "the corn field". Cory Doctorow: In the Second Life online game/world, misbehavior is suspended by banishing miscreants' characters to "the corn field," a vast star-lit field of corn cut off from communication with the rest of the world (a reference to the classic Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life"). The existence of the cornfield was only rumored until recently, but now the prison's existence has been made public and documented.

"Sometimes when someone is suspended for a short time they are sent to the cornfield," Linden Lab's Senior VP of Community and Support wrote on the official Second Life discussion forums yesterday, adding that building the cornfield didn't require any significant development work and reassuring the community that "Once someone is permanently banned they are no longer welcome in Second Life, anywhere, including the cornfield."

As promised, Nimrod Yaffle was teleported into the middle of prison simulator, finding a tractor in front of him and the eerie rows of corn. "I was laughing the whole entire time I was there," he told me. "But in a way, I was also worried that the children of the corn were going to get me...it would be great if the Linden's made scripted children there." Yaffle was disappointed at the "insanely slow" pace of the tractor, and bored by the only channel available on the televisions--a presentation of the 1940 film "Boy in Court," about a troubled teenager on probation trying to avoid a life of crime.

Link

(via Waxy)

Update: Xopl sez, "The virtual world product WorldsAway (now VZones) which just celebrated its 10th straight year of operation had a similar device known as The Void. The Void was (is?) a completely empty and monotonously coloured room where trouble-makers would be sent to think about what they had done. The offender was there an indefinite period of time and unable to communicate to anyone else in the virtual community."

Update: Marc Laidlaw sez, "Let's not forget, 'It's A Good Life' didn't come from The Twilight Zone originally. It came from the inimitable Jerome Bixby who wrote the classic original story, of which the TZ episode is a pale derivative. Say it three times so nobody forgets: 'Jerome Bixby, Jerome Bixby, Jerome Bixby.' And go read 'The Holes Around Mars' while you're at it."

[Boing Boing]"QB

Love classic SF references. It's A Good Life is one of the great stories, making not only a nice 'camp fire' type but also making some real interesting points about supreme power.  2:55:28 PM    

Chumps. Just to follow up on the chumps post. You're an "elder statesman." You and the rest of your ageing gang have been invited to the White House to give advice to the preznit with much pomp. Collectively, you're given 5 minutes for that activity before you pose for the picture.


Chumps. [Eschaton]

Apparently most of the 5 minutes was Albright trying to discuss foreign policy with Bush. He spouted some nonsense then hustled everyone out of the room. Hope it really takes that to heart.  2:49:05 PM    

What sides are we talking about here?.

On the Front Lines in Las Vegas is my latest SuitWatch at Linux Journal.

The background for the piece, I just realized upon re-reading it, is Larry Lessig's 2002 Free Culture speech, where he challenged technologists [~] makers of the future [~] to fight those who were opposing it with increasing success.

A year later Larry was calling this fight a civil war between Northern and Southern California: between Silicon Valley and Hollwood.

What I fear we are now learning, from Intel and Apple and Microsoft, is that the real division is between those who favor freedom and those who favor control. And that there are no big companies on the freedom side [~] not even in Silicon Valley.

Are there? Show me one who is willing to stand behind what Larry Lessig has been saying, for years, about the fight for free markets and free culture.

The technology community that matters is comprised of ronin. Free agents. Independent operators. These are the people standing together on one side of this fight.

And now, I fear, the fight will be with the companies we hoped would fight for us. In some cases our own employers.

[Doc Searls' IT Garage -]

It is a battle society is fighting at many levels -between those who value freedom and those afraid of it. Since most companies are afraid and they have the power, the fight will not be short or bloodless. Just as the transition to an industrial society took 50 years and thousands killed, this may be just as difficult. Because fear drive people to do horrible things. And it provides power for the corrupt.  2:47:05 PM