Rad Geek People's Daily

buncha links on "triggering" and "calling out" bfp, flip flopping joy (2010-09-01). there was a discussion on tumblr about triggering–the first I saw of it was the following post: Calling out people is important but if you trigger the shit out of an abuse victim or someone with an anxiety or panic disorder in the process, you're being a bigoted shitbucket yourself.Always… (Linked Thursday 2010-09-23.)

The Trouble with the View from Above. James C. Scott, Cato Unbound (2010-09-08). State naming practices and local, customary naming practices are strikingly different. Each set of practices is designed to make the human and physical landscape legible, by sharply identifying a unique individual, a household, or a singular geographic feature. Yet they are each devised by very distinct agents for whom the… (Linked Thursday 2010-09-23.)

Seeing Like a Movie Mogul. Timothy B. Lee, Cato Unbound (2010-09-14). In his lead essay, James Scott writes about the efforts of German foresters to create "a redesigned forest that was easier to count, manipulate, measure, and assess," and throughout Seeing Like a State, he uses this as a metaphor for various state projects to reshape the complex, messy world to… (Linked Thursday 2010-09-23.)

Coordination vs. Coercion. Timothy B. Lee, Cato Unbound (2010-09-20). Don Boudreaux makes an interesting point about the way standardization facilitates social cooperation and the division of labor. But I think it's important to remember that the distinctive feature of the state-building projects James Scott describes wasn't just standardization, but coercion. People were compelled to adopt new surnames, geographical indicators,… (Linked Thursday 2010-09-23.)

Letters Department: Jacob T. Levy on Seeing Like a State. The Editors, Cato Unbound (2010-09-20). Editors' note: Political theorist Jacob T. Levy of McGill University sends us his thoughts on this month's discussion, which we are pleased to share in full. I begin with a few words of unembarrassed admiration. James Scott's Seeing Like a State, from which his essay is largely drawn, is one… (Linked Thursday 2010-09-23.)

The $200,000 Inverted Pyramid. Dorothy, Cat and Girl (2010-09-23). (Linked Friday 2010-09-24.)