Rad Geek People's Daily

official state media for a secessionist republic of one

Police Militarization Watch (Part 1 of ???)

If you have the displeasure of reading POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine,[1] you’ll find that Editor David Griffith’s The Peter Principle is a pointless, empty article which exists for no particular reason other than filling space. (The central thesis is When an officer is promoted it should be based on merit and leadership; he also bravely comes out against promoting cops solely on the basis of political cronyism. Well, O.K.). I mention it here because it is so ordinary, and what people treat as obvious and banal can be interestingly revealing. In this particular article, the one thing that Griffith does get really excited about, along the way, is a long discussion of the comparative merits of Army generals who ordered a lot of men to kill each other during the American Civil War. After discussing this burning issue, the upshot we are offered is that Even good leaders make terrible mistakes and, more importantly, nothing is more dangerous to a warrior — whether he is a 19th century infantryman or she is a 21st century patrol officer — than a bad leader. We are then told that That’s why it’s critical that only the best warriors get promoted up the ranks in law enforcement. … A promotion should only be given when an officer demonstrates effective leadership and is capable of commanding others in a crisis.

Maybe so. Meanwhile, nothing is more dangerous to ordinary people than heavily-armed twitchy police who think of themselves as warriors, and their patrols of the streets as an occupation of hostile territory.

See also:

  1. [1]Trust me, don’t bother–I read it so you don’t have to.↩

Re: Dude, Where’s My Data? (The Sequel)

Dude, Where’s My Data? (The Sequel) snellspace.com (2010-05-12):

DeWitt Clinton: I have my music collection stored on a file server, and I’d like to be able to play it remotely via my Android device. Local network only is fine. Storing personal stuff on home networks is cumbersome and annoying. I have pictures, movies, music, and many other types…

Technological civilization is awesome. But it’s not awesome enough yet. The fact that Dropbox’s remote servers are currently easier to work with than a server 3 feet away from where I’m sitting is one of the unremarked scandals of computing.

As Snell says, The fundamental technologies to make all this happen already exist. Someone just needs to make it happen. Please.

Wednesday Lazy Linking

NJ ALL Picnic Meeting May 15

Alliance of the Libertarian Left Ad Hoc Global Organizing Committee
NJ ALL

Calling all ALLies in the vicinity of New Jersey and the greater megalopolis: there’ll be an ALL picnic meeting in Passaic, New Jersey this Saturday, May 15, from 1-3pm. From NJ ALLy Darian Worden:

There's also going to be an Alliance of the Libertarian Left picnic meeting in Passaic, NJ at 1-3pm on May 15. Anyone reading this who would like to come should email darianworden@gmail.com for directions. It's easy to get to using public transit or driving.

— Darian, comment on GT 2010-05-09: Shameless Self-promotion Sunday

See also:

The history of the blink tag

theoriginofthe<blink>tag (www) www.montulli.org (2010-05-11).

A brief history of the most hated tag in the history of the Web.

Anticopyright. All pages written 1996–2026 by Rad Geek. Feel free to reprint if you like it. This machine kills intellectual monopolists.