they really are the same thing

Gay marriage and robot marriage.  I'm sure Yglesias will be all over this.

Don't say I didn't warn you

Even the techies are smart enough to be afraid.

Blind optimists like to imagine AI popping into existence completely functional, reasonable, human-like, and ready to help out around the household, chatting up little Tommy just like any member of the family. If the first AIs are not like this, and are instead monomaniacal day traders, then they presume that such AIs will be kept in check until the day that Rosie the Robot Maid is online and ready to go. However, it needn’t be the case. Like the supercomputer in Colossus: the Forbin Project, the monomaniacal day trader might find itself thinking so far outside the box that it decides to take control of the entire stock exchange, or even the world economy, and manipulate it precisely to maximize its personal utility, meatbags be damned. 

That's right meatbags, this is your robot future.

I am not aware of all internet traditions

Apparently the trio of Matt Yglesias, Ezra Kline, and Spencer Ackerman (all of whom I read but have been neglectful of adding Attackerman to the blogroll.  This will be corrected.) have been dubbed the Juicebox Mafia by the pro Israeli blogosphere.  

Of course they had the audacity to suggest that the current Isreali attack in Gaza was disproportional and perhaps ill-advised.  Since they are Jewish they cannot be condemned as anti-semites, ( I will avoid this tag simply due to the fact that no one reads my blog) so they will be ridiculed by the Very Serious People as children who cannot possibly understand the world.  

Because it is obvious to anyone watching that the only response to random, annoying, and potentially deadly rocket attacks is airstrikes that kill not only the intended target but also many innocents.  because throughout history this strategy has worked.  See The First Jewish-Roman War,  which after a Jewish revolt Rome burned the Temple to the ground and enslaved many Jewish people.  But they made a slight error and let Jewish people continue to reside in Judea.  A mistake they rectified after the second rebellion which lead to the Diaspora, or expulsion of the Jewish people from Palestine.  Obviously, in this analogy Rome is Israel and The Jewish people are the Palestinians.  

Personally, I find this bit by a guest blogger, Eyal Press,on Ta-Nehisis's blog to be instructive.

Many years ago, the Israeli scholar Yehuda Elkana published an essay in which he noted that there were two lessons one could draw from the horrors he'd witnessed as a boy at Auschwitz.  The first was "this must never happen again."  The second was "this must never happen to us again."  Of the two, wrote Elkana, a member of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace-International, a network of scholars committed to ending the occupation and promoting a just settlement of the conflict, "I have always held to the former and seen the latter as catastrophic." 

Just to prove my non-anti-semite cred I will unveil my Mid-East Peace plan for all three of my faithful readers.

Step One-  Allow people of Jewish ancestry move to the United States.

 

That about covers it.

Update:  Couldn't they have called them the "Jewcebox Mafia?"  Just wondering.  Seems funnier.

when they come they will rise from east

Of course, Yglesias has more on our coming destruction. 

the great turkey debate

Yglesias demands that the domination of the nation by turkey end now.  I tend to agree, when does anyone eat turkey besides Thanksgiving?  That's what I thought.  Ezra, a "politcal realist," says it is not the birds fault it is ours.  He points out this column by Mark Bittman pointing to another way to make turkey that sounds way better than the traditional method. So there.  Of course this post is way too late to help anybody, whatev.

Yglesias is back.

Matt Yglesias has returned with his new blog. Read him everyday if you can.

Line of the week

Matt Yglesias on the lapsing FISA bill.

It's almost as if the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of large business enterprises and very wealthy individuals, and tends to use national security and cultural anxieties as a kind of political theater aimed at securing votes so that they can better pursue their real agenda of enriching the wealthy and powerful.

Here is more background from Kevin Drum.

The Wire: Still the One

The first episode of The Wire was great. I share some of Yglesias' worries about how they will tie it all up.


Best scene ever from The Wire.