• Help Noam Chomsky Find His Inner Anarchist. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-10). A reader tipped me off that Noam Chomsky has agreed to answer the top-rated questions submitted via this reddit page; the reader suggested that I condense my "Chomsky's Augustinian Anarchism" gripes into a question. So I did. Here's my question for Chomsky: Although as an anarchist you favour a stateless… (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)
• DAVID T. BEITO: Rand Paul is No Libertarian. Liberty & Power: Group Blog (2010-02-10). “This first advertisement for his U.S. Senate campaign … is quite simply terrible. It not only panders to the darkest side of American conservatism but to the basest emotions of voters.” Like pappy, Ron’s boy Rand has chosen to emphasize absolutely the worst parts of his platform in his early campaign advertisements. Here, the current poster-boy for Chairman Ron’s Great Libertarian Electoral Revolution comes out for “strong national defense,” an immigration police state, and overseas legal black holes for “enemy combatants.” (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)
• How to split up the US. pwarden, PeteSearch (2010-02-06). As I've been digging deeper into the data I've gathered on 210 million public Facebook profiles, I've been fascinated by some of the patterns that have emerged. My latest visualization shows the information by location, with connections drawn between places that share friends. For example, a lot of people in… (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)
• Bear Becomes Mushroom; Trout Implicated. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-11). So the picture on the left of a girl leaning against a bear is an image that appears on merchandise produced by independent artist Hidden Eloise; and the picture on the right of the same girl in the same pose, leaning against empty air in the vague vicinity of a… (Linked Friday 2010-02-12.)

• Comment on Rand Unbound, Part 8 by Kevin Carson. Kevin Carson, Comments for Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-09). "we know that they would buy roughly the same *kind* of goods." Well, sure. But the old USSR manufactured the same *kind* of goods in general terms: refrigerators, cars, TVs, microwaves, furniture, housing, etc. The question was whether, in any particular case, a given good was the most efficient use… (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)
• You Gotta Keep the Devil Way Down in a Hole. Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-02-10). “Still upset over the devilish connotations of Mount Diablo, an Oakley man has again petitioned a federal agency to rename Contra Costa County’s signature peak. This time he wants to rename the 3,849-foot-high mountain for the 40th president of the United States — Ronald Wilson Reagan….” Well. I say potato, you say potahto…. (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)
• Nevada State Prison could be closed to save money. Nevada Prison Watch (2010-02-10). Here’s hoping it’ll be the first of many. (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)
• The Bipartisan Corporate State. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-02-10). Tim Carney's column today is about the career of Dan Coats, the senator turned lobbyist who now wants Indiana voters to return him to the Senate. Here's the lede: Republicans in 2010 have an opportunity to capitalize politically on popular anger with elites in Washington and Wall Street and with… (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-10.)

• Anarchists in Space. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-07). Paul Raven reviews Ursula K. Le Guin's classic novel The Dispossessed, a tale of the confrontation between an anarcho-syndicalist culture and a state-capitalist culture. (CHT François.) Though Le Guin's personal sympathies were with the anarchists, she doesn't stack the deck (unlike most political science fiction): the anarcho-syndicalist culture is actually… (Linked Monday 2010-02-08.)
• Comment on Anarchists in Space by Roderick. Roderick, Comments for Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-08). Back in 1980, when Broach came out, perhaps Kolko's Triumph of Conservatism or Railroads and Regulation, and then follow it up with stuff from Left & Right and the early years of Libertarian Forum. If it were nowadays, Kevin Carson's books would obviously be essential. The crucial point is this:… (Linked Monday 2010-02-08.)

Happy Sunday, y’all. Ready for some Shamelessness?

This week has been a week of getting back into activism after time away — time for the holidays, time for conferences, and time to just chill out and try to get some solitary work done for a while. But this week I made it out to UCIR and to Vegas Anarchist Cafe for the first time in 2010; and today I’m back for Food Not Bombs. After that — onward to some work (printing, folding, announcing, etcetera) in preparation for an ALL table at this year’s Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair. Also, there’s a new Market Anarchy zine in preparation.

¿Y t?@c3;ba;? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

• !!!@@e2;2dc;2026; What if Flash Were an Open Standard? John Gruber, Daring Fireball (2010-02-01). Some good questions from Dave Winer regarding Apple, Adobe, and Flash: What if Apple were trying to erase something that's not company-owned? Either a formal or de facto standard? Further, what if their alternative were something that was locked-down and owned by a company? Further, what if the company was… (Linked Monday 2010-02-01.)
• Campaign finance reform is pretty simple. John, Blagnet.net (2010-01-24). Many of my friends and millions of people in the blogosphere/social-mediasphere have expressed their outrage and indignation at the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want to promote or oppose whatever political candidates or causes that they want. One of my friends said she was… (Linked Tuesday 2010-02-02.)
• Food Trucks Get Booted – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine. reason.com (2010-02-02). The War on the Informal Sector (Cont’d.): Government Force Vs. Affordable Lunch (Linked Tuesday 2010-02-02.)
• DS Web: Lunar Compression Artifacts. Diesel Sweeties webcomic by rstevens (2010-02-02). (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-03.)
• 30 is the New 20: Might the Brain Follow? der Blaustrumpf (2010-02-03). Perpetual State of Supervision and its consequences. Cheryl Cline drops some philosophy on pop “brain science” in the press. Also, via the psychologist Richard Epstein: “American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons.” (Linked Wednesday 2010-02-03.)