Flogging a dead horse? Yes, but really, what else are you going to do with a dead horse?

Jim Harper of Cato defends Google in China:

Let’s say a contractor had the tools and materials to build the sturdiest modern structure, but the local building code required less-than-perfect construction. Would putting up a structure as required by local code be “evil”? Nothing of the sort.

By their logic, though, critics of Google’s engagement with China would rather see people freeze in the cold than take shelter in substandard housing.

My contribution was here.

Dr Gregor Wolbring - biochemist, bioethicist, health researcher, futurist and disability studies and governance of science and technology scholar - has watched Gattaca and thinks it is really convincing. “The unenhanced underclass” (PDF) Demos has a series of articles online, Better Humans? The politics of human enhancement and life extension, on the ethics of biotechnology. A highly readable, and highly convincing book on this topic is Ronald Bailey’s Liberation Biology: The Scientific And Moral Case For The Biotech Revolution, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before now.

I’m not really a jewelry kind of guy, but like all things, I am interested when they are historically interesting or quirky. Case in point:

Russian constructivist jewelry for the state airline. Its eerie how much this appears to be designed specifically to appeal to me.

Found at this magnificent collection at Howard Schickler Fine Art. Take some time to browse around the site, its full of amazing and unusual pieces. To be clear, (I will happily accept any of these books as gifts.)

Costello on the GST:

…the transfer of responsibility to the states in return for $35 billion in GST funds had not happened: “You would have to say that element was a failure.”

Mr Costello said the states had been given more funding since the introduction of the GST than they had ever received, and more than they were promised.

So what will the government do about it?

Saying he was “scarred for life by the GST experience”, he denied it had made him gun-shy of further tax reform and said he believed tax cuts were tax reform.

Asked if there was room for further tax reform, Mr Costello replied: “Would I like to cut taxes further? Yes. If I get the opportunity consistent with our fiscal policy, balance the budget, reduce debt, keep interest rates low - yes. In my mind, this is tax reform.

Nothing at all.

The Australia Institute, trying to prove some odd, unintelligable point, has come up with a study into what they term ’skip dipping’, the practise of foraging in tips and bins to find stuff. PDF. The best political point I could find in it was this, from a participant in the study:

It’s responsible, progressive behaviour, a tidal change against sickening capitalism. (Melbourne, 38)

Another participant states:

[I feel] slightly less like a consumer schmuck… [Skip dipping is] a little bit liberating … I mean you aren’t going to dumpster one night, then get sucked into the latest addictive consumer fashion the next. You’re building an immunity to that trap by actively doing something socially abhorrent. (Melbourne, 31)

This contrasts with some of the benefits states, “You also get to eat lots of junk food that you wouldn’t normally buy!” and “I can sometimes get obsessive and go several times a day!” Looking through lists of some of the items found, it seems that the practise of skip-dipping is, at least for some participants, close to hoarding.

lengths of really nice wood of all sorts; 2mm steel sheeting concrete reinforcing rod (medium carbon steel, hence useful for many things); stainless steel; copper plumbing fittings/pipe; garden hoses; chicken wire; insulation batts; hardiplank and gyprock off cuts; lengths of PVC pipe; empty 20 litre buckets; half empty bags of cement.

It seems unlikely that the skip dippers went looking specifically for lengths of PVC pipe or half empty bags of cement. But anyway, theres nothing wrong with the practise, apart from the fact that its disgusting, one participant fears finding ‘meat juice’.

I just think its a weird thing for the Australia Institute to write about, thats all.

McSweeney’s: Conversations I’ve had in a normal day in Los Angeles, modified to include the shocking depiction of racism found in Paul Haggis’s 2004 film Crash.

FRIEND: How was work?

ME: Not bad. The usual stuff. Yourself?

FRIEND: I sure hate those Mexicans.

Great quote found by Russell Roberts, as a journalist inserts despair into an otherwise positive anecdote:

Harold Meyerson’s column in today’s Washington Post… looks at the workers at a Ford auto plant that’s being shut down. They are highly skilled and the main reason for the plant’s demise is partly due to Ford’s failure to update the Lincoln, assembled at the plant. The workers actually feel pretty good about themselves and the future, refusing to see themselves as victims, but Meyersohn sings a different tune:

“It’s not, ‘Woe is us,’ ” says Burkie Morris, speaking for his defiant, reeling buddies. Maybe not for you, Burkie, but speaking for your countrymen, who are seeing American manufacturing dismantled and the middle torn from our economy: Woe is us.

Museum of Online Museums (MoOM) has more images than one person could possibly digest in a lifetime, or at least a long evening on the internet, including classics like The World of Fruit Labels and The Museum of Beverage Containers and Advertising. Link via James Lileks.

EDIT: Also, got a [worksafe] chicks in space suits fetish? I know I do…

I don’t have time to do much commentary on this, but Getting the Government’s Permission to do Business, at Coyote Blog, is pretty damn self-explanatory. (Link via Catallachy.) Reminds me of the similarly illustrative post on Technology Liberation Front on US telecom ‘deregulation’: 82 regulations in 77 pages.

Yet another success for the Australian morality watchdog:

The Classification Review Board yesterday refused to classify the game, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, meaning it cannot be sold, demonstrated, hired or imported.

Set in a city of the future, the game features a world where freedom of expression is suppressed by a tyrannical city government. Game players battle the authorities to overthrow corrupt officials using only street fighting skills and graffiti.

Computer games are refused classification on the basis that they either promote, instruct or incite a matter of crime or violence.