..a new study argues that for a democracy to function at all, you need lots of ignorant people blindly siding with the majority.

…

There needs to be just enough people who know anything about the issues to act as leaders for everyone else, but the majority disintegrates if there are too many viewpoints pulling in different directions.

…

[The researchers] looked at golden shiners, a species that is naturally attracted to the color yellow. The researchers took a bunch of these fish and trained most of them to act against instinct and swim towards a blue target, while the rest were trained to follow their natural preference and go for a yellow target.

When the researchers placed just these two groups together, the smaller group of yellow-seeking fish was able to dominate the blue-seeking fish, making them all swim to the yellow target 80% of the time. This is because their natural instinct gave them a stronger desire go after the yellow target than their counterparts. But then, when fish with no prior conditioning were added to the mix, the influence of the yellow-seeking fish quickly dropped away, and the initial, blue-seeking majority regained control.

From Democracy needs ignorant people, says science [io9.com]

The article is a summary of a paper in Science [sciencemag.org]… now go read the article about how ignorant fish are required for an enlightened fish democracy to work. Before I plagiarise the whole damn article.

“free web services are not like free software. If your free software project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose resources. Your time is spent firefighting and your money all goes to the nice people at Linode.”

Maciej, from Don’t be a Free User [pinborad.in] blog post at Pinboard.

Neurosis can be the sign of a decent guess

Tom Murphy, from Wind Fights Solar; Triangle Wins [physics.ucsd.edu] a post on his blog; Do The Math

Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included: Pepco Holdings (–57.6% tax rate), General Electric (–45.3%), DuPont (–3.4%), Verizon (–2.9%), Boeing (–1.8%), Wells Fargo (–1.4%) and Honeywell (–0.7%).

DuPont and Monsanto both produce chemicals. But over the 2008-10 period, Monsanto paid 22 percent of its profits in U.S. corporate income taxes, while DuPont actually paid a negative tax rate of –3.4 percent.

Department store chain Macy’s paid a three-year rate of 12.1 percent, while competing chain Nordstrom’s paid 37.1 percent.

In computer technology, Hewlett-Packard paid 3.7 of its three-year U.S. profits in federal income taxes, while Texas Instruments paid 33.5 percent.

FedEx paid 0.9 percent over three years, while its competitor United Parcel Service paid 24.1 percent.

Robert S. McIntyre, Matthew Gardner, Rebecca J. Wilkins and Richard Phillips. Taken from Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010

Stop having a tax or find some way of making companies pay it.

we’re not taking care of our gerbil, so we have not demonstrated that we deserve a pony

Tom Murphy [physics.ucsd.edu], in his blog post Sustainable Means Bunkty to Me [physics.ucsd.edu].

I’ve been reading Tom Murphy’s blog on “astrophysicist’s-eye view of societal issues relating to energy production, climate change, and economic growth” since I first came across it a few months ago. It’s a wonderful blog for anyone remotely math capable who is interested in the details of what it would take to ‘fix’ the current issues of human impact on the earth. Somehow in the age of social updates via Facebook, Google+, Twitter and the like I have never plug it on this site… Consider that oversight fixed. The articles are long and a bit math heavy, as might be expected of an astrophysicist, but you don’t need to focus on the math to understand the conclusions. In fact the only reason to focus on the math would be to try and disagree with him or because you could actually do that level of math and enjoy the challenge. As long as you trust his ability to actually setup and solve the equations the math is just a tool to lead to the inevitable and, bleak, conclusions that our gluttany is leading the world to, spelled out in metaphor and examples that a non-astrophysicist can actually understand.

“My concept of God does not allow for God’s blessing of genocide as a means for one country’s hegemony over the earth.”

Andrew Sullivan in Exceptional and Unexceptional America [theatlantic.com]

He is obviously not a fan of the Old Testament God of Deuteronomy and Numbers.

“”When the Lordyour God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir’gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per’izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them.”

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

Sounds like hegemony through genocide to me. And it’s not even the worst thing in the Old Testament; remember the Moabites and Midianites?

Could somebody slap Newt with a limp herring?

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

Huh? I mean; What. The. Fuck?

From The New Republic [tnr.com] via Andrew Sullivan [theatlantic.com].

“So, you can call anyone you know at any time, and that’s so convenient for you, right? Well, it isn’t. Do the math. How many numbers do you have stored in your phone? Fifty, a hundred, more? Well, they’re the people for whom your phone is a great convenience—they know that they can call you and wherever you are, even if you don’t pick up, they have asserted their presence as a part of your day. You are one person with one person’s communication needs; they are legion, and they want and expect answers now. Want to know real convenience? Leave a message on my machine, or email me, and I’ll get back to you when I damn well feel like it.”

Dana Albarella James, quoted from My Life Without A Cell Phone: An Amazing Tale Of Survival [theawl.com] published at The Awl [theawl.com].

I do have a phone &mdash I had one back in the mid-90′s and was, on at least one occasion mistaken for a drug dealer due to said cell phone, trench coat and dark glasses but that’s a story, about fish and their exorbitant electricity consumption, for another day &mdash but I can sympathize with the sentiment. I don’t talk on my phone much. I much prefer SMS or email. I’ve never really liked to talk on the phone…. But I’ve said all this before… [confusion.cc]

“It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it.”

Michael Bérubé, quoted in the New York Times [nytimes.com] article Fact Free Science

If a U.S. president could speak honestly about Libya, he would say something like this:

“Look, I have been alternately horrified by the behavior of the Libyan regime over the past few days and inspired by the courage of the Libyan people. But if you’re asking me what we the United States is going to do about the situation, the answer is very little. Most Libyans reject the idea of external intervention by western powers, and we’re just fine with that since we have few interests in Libya. You can’t expect the United States to take an active role in responding to every humanitarian crisis or regional conflict worldwide unless you take a ridiculously broad conception of our interests, and Americans are increasingly unwilling to fund a military and aid program that could respond to each and every flare-up around the world. You cannot, in other words, have a steak-and-lobster foreign policy on a budget more suitable for McDonalds. But if I’m wrong and you guys want to cut social security and Medicaid to increase funding for USAID, the Department of Defense and the State Department, let me know. As for the rising price of oil? Look, folks, it’s a global market. I can ask our Saudi friends to increase their output, but honestly, we Americans enjoy relatively cheap gasoline since we hardly tax the stuff at all compared with our industrial partners and competitors. I know that comes as little solace to a suburban mom dealing with national infrastructure built around the internal combustion engine, but that’s not going to change anytime soon, and I can hardly tax Americans less, so we’re stuck. You’re just going to have to adjust your consumption as best as possible and save elsewhere.”

Abu Muqawama, in If a U.S. president could speak honestly about Libya… [cnas.org]

I’d vote for the Pres if he said it that way. Too bad politics get in the way. I quoted almost all of Muqawama’s post but check his out for a bit more and some links to what the Obama actually said.

Haven’t said much here about the politics in a while, but on the Jasmine revolution and the unrest in Arab dictatorships; best thing for America to do is stop all financial (military and non-military) aid that was being paid to any of the these governments immediately and funnel the money to NGO and UN aid organizations to help deal with the people. You know; the people not the dictators or their associates