Tuesday linkdump

* Clockwork fairy. Steampunk! Steampunk! Set aside the impulse to tedious kvetching about nonfunctional gears and sit agog with me. (via)

* Stop Pretending Art Is Hard. From botched art restoration to manifesto in one t-shirt.

* The Science News Cycle [PhD Comics]. Don't believe the hype. DING DING! (via)

* Talk on Beat SF, Turing and Burroughs. Rudy Rucker being as Ruckerian as is humanly possible, and we're all better for it.

* The Real Romney. Biography of the man before he became a quadrillionaire sovereign nation in a vat. (via)

* Spanish microcurrency boom. When the going gets tough, the tough issue fiat scrip. (via)

* Anarchist scaremongering at RNC. Black bloc bogeymen for everyone! They've got acid-filled eggs, you know. Because that would totally work. (via)

* Deporting parents of children born in America. No human is illegal^*. If your family values demand that the mothers of American children should be sent abroad forever, you're doing it wrong. (via)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: art • books • Economy • fashion • Funny • gop • immigration • law • politics • science fiction • spain • Steampunk

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Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

benher

Art is hard, let’s go shopping!
- knoxblox
  
  10,000 hours of shopping, that is.
dragonfrog

Oh, I was thinking LSD-filled eggs. Like “wait a minute, Eric, which eggs did you use for this omelette? Ooooh nooooo!”.

Now I get it – eggshells (made of calcium carbonate) filled with concentrated acid so as to cause burns when you throw them at people. Or the calcium carbonate is dissolved by the acid while you fill it, splashing the rest of the acid on you chest…
- http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan
  
  Damn fools probably used blotter.
- ZikZak
  
  Protest scares are like folk tales. They get embellished and exaggerated the further they get from their origin. Until it doesn’t really matter to the teller or the audience if the tale is true at all, because it tells a story that people want to believe.
  
  I’m guessing the origin in this case is that once upon a time, some anarchist saboteurs put glass etching fluid on a window. It’s an acid which, if left on glass for a while, will mark up the surface. Fairly harmless to people, although you’d probably want to wash your hands if it got on you. It’s been suggested elsewhere that the fluid could be placed in egg shells and thrown at windows, for ease of delivery. It’s unknown if anyone ever actually did that, but the idea is certainly not lost on the Tampa police. From there, it’s just a quick sensationalist jump to melting the flesh off innocent riot cops with acid eggs!
  
  The folk tales change over time. It used to be that the most popular protest scare was the “piss balloon”, which made protesters look like crazy freaks, to be mocked and disregarded. Now, it’s IEDs and acid, which makes us look like Islamic terrorists to be jailed or killed. I don’t know if that means we’re winning or losing…
  - dragonfrog
    
    I rather suspect even that has only been suggested by people who haven’t tried it – I doubt any acid strong enough to etch glass would take very long to eat a hole in an eggshell…
http://fallsastar.com Crashproof

This is what’s really going on:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/27/green_party_vp_candidate_cheri_honkala
SumAnon

Don’t know how I feel about the deportation article. Breaking up families is bad. Turning a blind eye to illegal activities is bad. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Solution: make it easier for law-abiding immigrants to become legal citizens. As if that will ever happen…..
- Dave Lloyd
  
  Let me help you, it really is easy. Illegal does not mean wrong. What is wrong is for the US to break up families and effectively steal children from their parents (terminate parental rights is the Orwellian term used by the courts). That is a very old and particularly evil trick practiced by the Argentinian dictators among others.
  The US now seems to practice a new form of racism: citizens vs everyone else who can be treated as subhuman.
  - SumAnon
    
    No, illegal means illegal. As in, not here legally.
    
    Demanding someone who isn’t a legal citizen get proper papers or risk deportation is not treating anyone as inhuman. Expecting people to follow laws is wrong now?
    - ZikZak
      
      Obviously it depends on the law. Stop using the legislative branch as a stand-in for your conscience, it’s unhealthy.
      - SumAnon
        
        “Stop using the legislative branch as a stand-in for your conscience”
        
        And how, exactly, am I doing that?
    - Sagodjur
      
      Legality is not morality. Sometimes what is legal is not moral and sometimes what is moral is not legal.
      
      Yes, expecting people to follow laws if it means being immoral is wrong now, and always has been.
      - SumAnon
        
        True, legality is not morality, though it often reflects the morals of the people instituting it. If a law is immoral, shouldn’t it be the onus of those who enact or enforce the laws to change it?
        
        Splinting up families (deportation of parent) is immoral, but it’s a symptom of the real problem, which is out-dated and inefficient immigration law. While I support an overhaul to the processes by which someone becomes a citizen, I don’t think the concept of US citizenship should be completely lax or abolished. To that point, how much or little responsibility should it be of the illegal immigrant who knowingly breaks the law?
      - aikimoe
        
        Sorry, wrong person!
      - Sagodjur
        
        SumAnon,
        
        I agree that the immigration system should be overhauled, but in the meantime, while politicians do nothing about it (and some groups of people like the Arizona state legislature try to make it worse), it’s better to ignore a broken law than to mindlessly enforce it without considering the moral harm it would do.
    - aikimoe
      
      Expecting people to follow laws for the sake of it is the source of injustice throughout history.
      
      Should we have expected people to follow the laws forbidding mixed marriages or homosexuality?
      
      Should we have expected people to follow the laws forbidding aiding slaves in escaping?
      
      Should we have expected people to follow the laws forbidding work on the Sabbath?
      
      Of course, not. The same immigration laws threaten to deport this good person:
      
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KT_ZSiucRY
      
      And it really is easy if the choice is to enforce an arbitrary and unjust law which will break up a family or to refuse to enforce that arbitrary and unjust law.
      - SumAnon
        
        I understand the point you’re trying to make, fighting injustice as we see it is a noble idea….
        but what you’re saying is, in essence, ‘if you don’t like the law, well just do what you want.’ Why bother having laws at all if it’s pick-and-choose? And what will you do when others, who have differing values/opinions begin to ignore laws to your detriment?
        
        Ignoring or flagrantly breaking a law is NOT the way to change things. Get active, and make the laws fit what’s right and wrong. As people did in all the examples you gave. And accept that in a true democracy, there will be laws you don’t agree with that you have to bend to, as others bend to you.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        …but what you’re saying is, in essence, ‘if you don’t like the law, well just do what you want.’ Why bother having laws at all if it’s pick-and-choose?
        
        And you’re making the Nuremberg Defense. You forfeit the round.
      - SumAnon
        
        When did I ever say ‘just following orders’?
        I think we’ve run out of room for this convo.
      - SumAnon
        
        Godwin’s Law.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Oh my god! That never occurred to me!
      - aikimoe
        
        Ignoring or flagrantly breaking a law is NOT the way to change things.
        
        Sometimes it is, as civil rights protests demonstrated. But even when breaking an unjust law won’t change it, listen to yourself.
        
        You are explicitly saying that homosexuals should never have had lovers when it was illegal, that slaves should never have tried to escape or learn to read, that women should never have educated other women about contraception, that people dying of cancer should never use marijuana to ease the misery of chemotherapy where that’s illegal.
        
        Your argument for following every law would preclude the very creation of this country.
      - SumAnon
        
        Since we’re running out of room below, I’ll Reply here:
        
        “You are explicitly saying that homosexuals should never have had lovers when it was illegal, that slaves should never have tried to escape or learn to read, that women should never have educated other women about contraception, that people dying of cancer should never use marijuana to ease the misery of chemotherapy where that’s illegal.”
        
        Honey, that’s not what I said at all, explicitly or otherwise. But I think I see where you got that impression, one of my sentences was out of order.
        
        “Sometimes it is, as civil rights protests demonstrated.”
        
        Civil rights protests were in responce to laws NOT changing, despite groups trying the legal route. And in several cases, it did lead to possitive, healthy change. But in-topic with the above article, you’re not just suggesting that anyone who wants to move to the US can, you’re also opening the door for law officials pick and choose who they arrest, who they deport, and which laws they abide based on personal values. THAT is the real source of injustice throughout history; those in power using their clout for thier own goals/opinions, and not the people they represent.
        
        Breaking laws instead of fixing them isn’t going to improve the lives you hope to change.
    - aikimoe
      
      SumAnon, if a person should never choose to break laws, but rather fight to change them, then yes, you are arguing that the oppressed should suffer until the laws are changed.
      How long should the Jews in Germany waited for their laws to change before they broke the law by leaving the country illegally? Imagine a Jew in Nazi Germany or a runaway slave comes to your door looking for sanctuary.
      
      “I’m sorry,” you’d say. ”The law is the law and we can’t just pick and choose the ones we want to follow. If you don’t want to be exterminated (or be a slave) you should fight to change the laws.”
      
      I’m afraid your argument is historically invalid.
      
      “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” – DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
      
      And, by the way, police and prosecutors pick and choose which laws to enforce every single day.
      - SumAnon
        
        SumAnon, if a person should never choose to break laws, but rather fight to change them, then yes, you are arguing that the oppressed should suffer until the laws are changed.
        
        Hm. It’s a good, point in reference to people being murdered. But your examples are deviating far enough away from the original posted article as to be misleading.
        Saying that I support Law up to and including slavery and genocide is going way past my original post (about improving immigration law!). Of course extreme examples are easy to pick – ‘Do I follow the law or do I let x oppressed people die?’ That’s a non-question. But the post everyone is replying to is about people getting legal or illegal access to live and work in the US.
        I suggested that we have the capacity to change laws for the better, without resorting to turning blind eye to illegal immigration. Slaves, Jews, women; they were all being oppressed with no chance to change the legal or political environment they were in. They were powerless within the law. You and I are not.
        
        “And, by the way, police and prosecutors pick and choose which laws to enforce every single day.”
        
        And that’s wrong, isn’t it?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Please stop using bold for quotes. I’ve switched them out to blockquote.
      - SumAnon
        
        :’( Sigh, but bold is so much prettier.
    - aikimoe
      
      You’re right that we’ve veered from the issue of illegal immigration. The reason for that is your assertion that simply because there is a law which forbids people from contracting with each other to a mutually beneficial end, then that law should be obeyed. That assertion is wrong whether it is about slavery or selling lemonade.
      
      The law we’re discussing is the same law that is breaking up families. If a family gets broken up because a member of that family is a threat to society or dangerous in some way, it’s reasonable to make that difficult decision. But that’s not the case, here.
      
      And those people who are being the most negatively affected are, like women and minorities before them, unable to vote for change.
      
      Finally, it’s actually a very, very good thing that police are allowed to pick and choose which laws they enforce, so long as the police in question are not corrupt. For every bad cop who ignores a fellow officer violating the civil rights of a citizen is a good cop who ignores minor things like pot.
      
      If all cops were robotically enforcing all laws, our courts would be overflowing with offenders.
      
      Consider the ridiculous laws all over the country.
      
      http://www.dumblaws.com/
      
      Should they all really be enforced?
- jhertzli
  
  We wingnuts should regard open borders as a type of deregulation and vice versa.
http://vinnietesla.com/ Vinnie Tesla

I think that first link is broken. It currently appears to a a kind of boring dragonfly ring.
robelroy

Brilliant, far-sighted work by this same author–

http://boingboing.net/2011/03/17/new-york-times-paywa.html