Murphy Bytes

Regime Change the Right Way

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:18:13 +0000

I was having coffee with Pieter Hintjens talking about a bunch of crazy ideas fueled by caffeine and lack of sleep when I decided I need to become a defense contractor and build weapons. If you know me you probably scoff at the idea that I actually have something to contribute in the field of defense but read on before you judge. Before I explain my idea for a weapon I need to discuss some characteristics of what we’ll call the enemies of freedom. Enemies of freedom would be countries like Iran, North Korea, and Taliban tribal chiefs in regions of Pakistan like East Whathefuckisstan that don’t like us westerners very much. Some would say we need to defend ourselves from these enemies of freedom. We customarily use the military for this sort of ‘defense’. In a way this makes sense because someone who is dead can’t really attack your freedom. An error in judgment made by the Bush administration was that if you use the military to get rid of the despots ruling a non-free country the population of that country will welcome Americans as liberators and naturally adopt freedom (and give us their oil). Of course experience has shown this isn’t quite true, you have to kill quite a large number of the non-freedom adopters before you manage to convince the survivors that being alive and free is better than being dead and not free. Some never do quite figure this out and so we have suicide bombers. Killing people is a really bad way of spreading freedom. The people being killed tend to get pissed off if you start killing them and so it becomes easier for their despotic leaders to point the finger of blame at the nasty westerners doing the killing which takes the focus off the despotic leaders and the killing and the torturing that they do to remain in power. This tends to perpetuate non-freedom. Anyway, the non-free people really don’t care about freedom. What they really want is enough to eat, a nice place to sleep and no worries that they will be arbitrarily hauled off in the middle of the night and tortured. They don’t know that in many countries people have enough to eat, have nice places to sleep and can pretty much say whatever they want to without fear of night torture and that these types of things follow from having a free society. This is because the leaders of non-free people try really hard to control the information interchange with the outside world.

This is where my weapon idea comes in. The philosophy behind my weapon is to inundate the non-free with information (and consumer goods) from the free world. My weapon consists of portable solar powered kiosks. Each kiosk contains internet enabled computers with browsers bookmarked to Amazon.com, Ebay, You Tube and a variety of popular porn sites. Each kiosk has a certain amount of store credit that can be used to purchase consumer goods and also dispense free espresso and other coffee drinks. Dozens of kiosks can be stacked inside a C-130 Hercules for rapid parachute deployment over a non-free country. The idea is that you seed a non-free area with hundreds of internet kiosks and the non-free people of the area will start using them, communicating with the outside world, buying stuff and browsing porn. The kiosks would also provide a place to sleep and the store credit could be used to buy food. If the despots leave the kiosks in place, the populous will naturally be assimilated into the consumer culture and people in these countries will soon be too dept ridden to stop working and go to war against the west. If the despots attempt to take the kiosks people will be outraged for being deprived of their porn and consumer goods and will overthrow them. In any of these cases the west comes out looking like the good guys. We’re not killing people, we are merely providing consumer goods, coffee, a nice place to sleep and some harmless diversions. Also, I’d have to think that one of my little kiosks would be cheaper than your basic smart bomb, currently a common tool used by the military to liberate people . The GBU-39 variant of the 250-pound class bomb equipped with an INS/GPS guidance system costs about $100,000 apiece. I think I could build one of these little kiosks for a lot less than that.

Historic Moment

admin — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:00:24 +0000

Last Tuesday night I went up to Manhattan to visit my friend Dmitri. Later when I was taking the train back to Princeton Junction they announced that Obama won the presidential election. The train erupted in applause and cheering. I don’t know that there were any McCain supporters on the train but if there were they were keeping a pretty low profile.

Slow Line

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:56:48 +0000

If there is are lines of people waiting for something I’m going to pick the slowest one no matter what. It doesn’t matter if it’s waiting to check out at the grocery store or waiting to go through security at the airport, if there is a line I’m going to be in the slow one. Case in point I just got through security at Newark Liberty Airport. It’s really early here and they just opened up a security station so there were only a couple of people waiting to go through. I headed over to the short line thinking that fewer people in the line would translate to a shorter wait. Silly me. As soon as I got in line the guy at the head of the line started stirring up shit with the TSA people staffing the gate. I don’t think the guy spoke English and he evidently hadn’t been to an airport before so he didn’t think his luggage would be searched or something I don’t know but he was really upset which of course caused the TSA people get upset and the whole thing was a huge CF. Needless to say what I thought would be the fastest line became the slowest line so it took forever to get through. If this was an isolated incident it wouldn’t be a big deal but this sort of thing happens to me all the time. I’m like the Odysseus of lines. I’ve pissed off the line god and he’s not letting me through. Anyway, it’s time to wait in line to get on the plane so I’d better be going.

Late Fall in Iowa

admin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:44:19 +0000

I’ve been spending some time in Iowa the state where I grew up. I was driving to the airport in Des Moines taking back roads feeling nostalgic. All of the corn is dry and ready to harvest the ditches and gullies of gray dead grass hiding deer and pheasants. This used to be my favorite time of year. The time of hunting dogs, shotguns and early mornings in the field. My eyes are still programmed to see certain motion patterns that indicate a duck, a deer, a rabbit. I think of passing on the unspoken things that my father passed on to me. Quiet masculine companionship, hunting, breath fogging the cold air, love of nature, life and death.

Idioms and Customs

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:11:47 +0000

I grew up in a town that would be the cultural equivalent of Wonder Bread so one of the things I like about my job is that is that I get to know people from all over the world. I was talking to one of my Chinese friends today and mentioned something about her recent marriage ( something she said made me think she was recently married ). She corrected me saying that she had a college age daughter (which I already knew) and that I should infer from this that she had been married many years. I responded that the daughter could have been from a previous marriage. She replied she was old fashioned. Then she said ‘When you marry a dog you become a dog. When you marry a pig you become a pig’. I’m really not sure what sort of ancient Chinese wisdom she was trying to pass on but it does exemplify what I enjoy about interacting with people from other places. Every so often I’m surprised by some idiom or custom like celebrating Maslenitsa or learning how to really insult someone in Tamil.

Hate

admin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:20:03 +0000

I hate Linux.
I hate Free BSD more than I hate Linux.
I hate Mac OSX more than I hate Free BSD.
I hate Solaris more than I hate Mac OSX.
I hate Windows more than I hate Solaris.
I hate AIX most of all.

Sore Fingers

admin — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:22:00 +0000

I got a new guitar as a gift, a very nice Fender DG-24. A long time ago before I got married I used to play quite a bit and I’d been thinking about picking up the habit again. It’s kind of funny my fingers remember what to do but my hands aren’t strong enough to pull it off and no callouses. I played, or tried to play until I got little bloody lines on the end of the fingers of my left hand. It was kind of weird playing because it seemed like it sort of shook loose a bunch of old memories. It’s like I suddenly had access to all of these old sensations smells and feelings that I associated with playing years ago. I have to travel to New Jersey next week so my fingers will have a chance to heal up. If I keep traveling I’ll have to get a travel guitar. Or else stop traveling.

Sweet Potato Party

admin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:20:55 +0000

I went to a party at a CSA farm last weekend. I knew about one person there so I was uncomfortable as hell. The premise of the party was fairly interesting, everybody brought food and helped dig sweet potatoes.

Here are some of the potatoes.

Here are some of the diggers eating.

Here’s part of the farm.

Why I’m Fat

admin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:13:08 +0000

I basically get paid to think about stuff. Here’s an article from Ars Technica that cites a study that indicates that heavy mental effort leads to much bigger meals. So now I have an excuse.

Where’s your hair?

admin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:09:10 +0000

Yep. No more long hair. Chopped it all off. No reason. Quit bugging me about it.