Fried Man  

For the first time in my adult life (and thats quite a long time, even though it may not be obvious from my writing style) I have a yard - including a lawn - and after leaving it as long as possible it had finally grown to the point where I could no longer avoid mowing it. So today I went in search of a lawnmower.

My childhood memories of lawn mowers are of stinky, noisy, hard to start and painful to maintain monstrosities that annoy everyone within earshot - so I was determined not to get a standard model. The lawn isn't all that large so a ride-on model wasn't necessary (not that I'd approve of such a thing anyway) which left me looking at cordless electric mowers and hand mowers (a scythe also came to mind but I resisted the temptation - and I don't think they sell them at Bunnings or my local hardware shop).

Some of the cordless electric ones looked quite cool (especially as I had complementary visions of recharging them from solar panels one day), but the hand helds were also visually appealing - and less than a third of the price. So my green (and cheapskate) tendencies prevailed and I got myself a Flymo hand mower. My wife was rather dubious about my choice, but was forced to concede once I'd cut the lawn (after turning the air blue while I assembled the thing) that it was quick and effective - and quiet as well.

Another way to save energy around the house - Hippy Shopper points to some low energy fairy lights for those who like to festoon their houses over the festive season.

Rather than pick a single colour of fairy light, Phosphorescence lights come with a small control box that lets you easily flick them over from blue, to purple, to red, to orange - or cycle between at the speed of your choice. The beads are based on the standard teardrop bulb shape, but crenelated so that the colour shades from deep to bright at the tips. So you could hang out green or orange for Halloween, then flip over to the typical festive colours in December without taking them down. Would that all holiday decor happened with the push of a button.

TreeHugger has a post on another stake in the heart of vampire power.

Here’s a clever little so and so. We all know about the deleterious effects of “wall warts” and their insatiable vampire-like appetite for sucking phantom power from our walls and power grids, and dollars from our pockets. It’s good to see more smart strips (and potentially even talking adaptors) come on to the market.

The little Mini Power Minder has the smarts to shut off your computer’s peripherals and doodads when the computer itself is shut down. A USB cable connection lets the devise know when the computer is powered down and correspondingly shuts off power to the second outlet. Plugging a power strip into the second outlet would mean your printer, external hard drive, iPod, speaker system, and on-desk margarita blender can all go sleepy time when the PC is put to bed.

Pricing in a $14.95, this might be irresistible. Assumedly, the upper outlet (for the computer) does stay active, which still means some power drain, making it not as smart at the Smart Strip, but comes in at about half the price.

I saw a report on ABC TV yesterday about the new Canberra airport terminal, which has been largely constructed with recycled materials and has been given a 5 Green Star rating (the Green Star system here has been influenced by both the US LEED building rating system and the UK BREEAM - Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method).

The ABC web site is generally good but the search function is worthless so I can't find a link, other than this very dated report on an office building in the complex.

The Green Building Council of Australia has announced that the design of an office building in the national capital of Canberra is the first to earn certification under Green Star for Office Design, a comprehensive tool for rating the environmental responsibility of building designs. “The Green Building Council of Australia congratulates the developer, Canberra International Airport, on this outstanding achievement,” said executive director Maria Atkinson. The building was assessed by a third party and awarded five Green Stars out of six possible, qualifying it as an example of “Australian Excellence,” according to the rating system. ...

While I was looking around for news on the airport, I noticed that Melbourne's Council House 2 (CH2) has been opened.

Some of the design quirks of Melbourne's Council House 2 (CH2) appear more akin to Willy Wonka's factory than council offices. But it is perhaps fitting that Australia's first six-star green development looks a little out of the ordinary.

CH2 features curved, rolling ceilings of unpainted, pre-cast concrete set above dimly lit office floors, brightly painted turbines towering over a roof-top garden, and 13 metre long "condoms" on its street frontage.

As of Monday, it will be occupied for the first time by Melbourne City Council workers.

"It's like a cave!" exclaimes Mick Pearce, designer of CH2, as he leads a tour of the building. He is not exaggerating. There are plants everywhere, the window frames are wooden, the lights intentionally dim. And it's cool, very cool.

That's thanks to the chilled beams and chilled ceiling panels radiating cold air and, of course, those 18 centimetre thick concrete ceilings acting as thermal sponges.

The beams and panels are cooled using an intriguing water-based system. Black water from a sewer in Little Collins Street is cleaned and sent to roof-top evaporative cooling towers. These take advantage of Melbourne's night-time temperatures and the cooling effect of evaporation to bring the water to about 12 degrees centigrade.

It is then sent back to the basement and run over batteries containing 30,000 cricket-ball sized silver orbs filled with salt cocktail, which freezes at 15 degrees.

These frozen balls then chill water which runs through the chilled beams and panels throughout the building. They are able to keep a building cool for three days of constant heat at which point a backup system, a gas-fired turbine, kicks in to run mechanical chillers.

The building also sucks fresh air from outside the building, lowers it to 20 degrees, by a combination of evaporative cooling and chilling, and pipes it in through the floor under the seats of workers.

The hotter, dirtier air is displaced and removed through the ceiling. This process is assisted by the turbines on the roof which suck the extracted air upwards.

The entire western facade of the building is clad in wooden slat louvres that move to block the heat of the afternoon sun. Temperature control is on of the huge energy drains on a building; the entire system in this building leads to some impressive performance claims.

Compared to a five-star building, which is the current cutting-edge standard for commerical projects, CH2 will use 85 per cent less electricity, 87 per cent less gas and produce 13 per cent less in emissions. By drawing water straight from the sewer in the street outside the building, it will also use just one-quarter of the amount of mains water of a five-star development.

Aside from cooling, the water is used for various building services such as flushing toilets. But Pearce says it is cleaner than tap water and offers a bottle to the tour group. No-one takes up his offer. To reduce the embodied energy of the structure, the concrete was made from fly ash, a byproduct of the Yarra Valley coal burning power stations, as a cement substitute.

Groovy Green has a post on new building requirements in Spain that mandate solar panels on all new and renovated buildings.

Photovoltaic cells on top of someone’s roof will no longer be a sight of interest for people visiting or living in Spain. In fact, they’re simply going to become part of the building code thanks to new legislation that requires all new or renovated buildings to offset “between 30 and 70 percent of hot water costs with the sun.”

“New non-residential buildings, such as shopping centers and hospitals, now have to have photovoltaic panels to generate a proportion of their electricity. Other measures in the new building code enforce the use of better insulation, improve the maintenance of heating and cooling systems and increase the use of natural light.

“The new standards will bring energy savings of 30 to 40 percent for each building and a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy consumption of 40 to 55 percent,” the Environment and Housing Ministries said in a joint statement.”

Perth's new experiment in positive feedback loops (maybe vicious circles is a better term for it) - a desalination plant - has opened. Burn lots of coal, create endless drought, burn more coal to produce water...

Pressure on Perth's water supply has been eased with the official opening of a $387 million desalination plant. Some 17 per cent of Perth's drinking water will now be sourced from the Indian Ocean.

Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter has announced Australia's first large-scale seawater desalination plant is operational - delivering water into the public supply system.

Mr Carpenter says the plant will produce the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool, full of pure, clean water every 25 minutes.

He says it means the state is no longer solely dependent on rainfall. "Given our drying climate and our fall off in rain this is a great development," he said. When the water is not going straight into the system it can provide additional water to our dams."

The desalination plant will also help avoid the need for total sprinkler bans in Perth and the south-west WA.

Rigzone reports that Indian oil company Reliance has signed a deal to explore for oil and gas offshore East Timor.

Reliance Industries Ltd. has signed a production sharing contract (PSC) with the Timor Leste (East Timor) Ministry of Natural Resources, Minerals and Energy Policy for the offshore Contract Area K.

In January 2006, the Government of Timor Leste had invited bids for 11 offshore exploration blocks in shallow to ultra-deep waters in their country. The acreage offered lies in the proven petroleum province of Australian North West Shelf and is adjacent to the Timor Sea, which is a joint petroleum development area between Timor Leste and Australia.

This region contains world-class discoveries like Bayu – Undan, which commenced production in 2004, and Greater Sunrise.

Timor Leste is the world's youngest nation, having achieved independence from Indonesia in May 2002. The total population of the country is 1 million, with Dili as its capital city. The country has Indonesia and Australia as its immediate neighbors.

Reliance is the largest private-sector E&P company in India and has proven expertise in deepwater exploration with its world-class discoveries in India's Krishna-Godavari Basin.

Meanwhile there is a feeding frenzy going on over Africa's oil fields.

Africa accounts for only around 10 percent of world oil reserves but the continent is the focus of a feeding frenzy among energy companies that is just beginning in countries like Libya and Angola.

Crisis in Iraq, concerns about energy nationalism in parts of South America and difficulties investing in Russia have limited exploration in those areas and kept interest in Africa bubbling, speakers said at the Africa Upstream oil conference in Cape Town, which ended on Friday.

China has made a major push to secure oil reserves and production in Africa while national energy companies of African countries, such as gas-to-fuels producer PetroSA of South Africa, are seeking new ground outside their own borders.

"Oil majors do not have unmitigated access to reserves in the world, think Venezuela, think Russia, think Iraq," said Duncan Clarke, chairman and chief executive officer of Global Pacific and Partners, which organised the three-day conference.

"It (the move into Africa) is partly a global consideration -- resource nationalism and the question of crisis in certain parts of the world and the steady growth opportunity in Africa in terms of maturing basins, frontiers and licensing rounds," Clarke told Reuters.

Australian community groups have told the G20 it should be focussing on cutting oil consumption, not encouraging further investment in extraction. Wasted breath unfortunately...

The G20 group of ministers and central bankers meeting in Melbourne this week has been told by Australian Community Groups representing tens of thousands of Australians to focus on cutting oil use rather than boosting production of the non-renewable fossil fuel by cutting their prices.

Dr David Worth of the Sustainable Transport Coalition (WA) noted that two recent Senate Inquiries have heard dramatic evidence about Australia's sharp drop in oil self-sufficiency. "Oil imports are now the second largest factor in our current account deficit. As world oil producers struggle to maintain enough production to meet growing demand in the US and China, Australia may find it more and more difficult to obtain liquid fuels to supply our essential transport services, especially in rural and remote areas," warned Dr Worth.

"About 40% of global greenhouse emissions are from oil consumption," said Victoria's Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) President Daniel Bowen. "It would be grossly irresponsible to increase this pollution. The G20 members should instead improve public transport so that more motorists can leave their cars at home."

"The only long-term solution to high petrol prices is to reduce oil dependency," said Margaret Dingle of People for Public Transport (SA). Ms Dingle also noted that Government policy encouraged car use at the expense of public transport. "The SA Government is seeking federal assistance to build a $550 million expressway, while, exclusive of minor tram extensions it has committed only $10 million over four years to increase public transport capacity. Even if the SA Government were to seek Federal assistance to increase public transport capacity, it would not receive it under current policy."

According to the Sydney-based group, Action for Public Transport (APT), a change in planning goals is also required. APT spokesman Allan Miles said, Providing better public transport is only part of the cure. We need to plan and build cities with minimum distances between home and work, school and leisure destinations."

ScienceBlogs has an interesting article on "The Great Dying" (also known as the Permian extinction) that was likely caused by an earlier episode of runaway global warming.

A computer simulation of the Earth's climate 250 million years ago suggests that increased carbon dioxide levels led to global warming that triggered the so-called "Great Dying". The Great Dying was the largest mass extinction event on earth. It occurred approximately 251 million years ago and marks the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, commonly known as the PT boundary. In less than one million years, approximately 96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial animal species, paving the way for the dinosaurs' eventual rise as the dominant animal group.

The massive PT extinction event has mystified scientists for decades and many potential explanations have been proposed, including an impact event with an extraterrestrial rock, plate tectonics and glaciation, extreme volcanic activity, a supernova, the sudden release of frozen methane hydrate from the ocean beds to trigger a greenhouse effect, or some combination of these factors.

This new research, published this week in the peer-reviewed journal, Geology, adds support to the hypothesis that increased carbon dioxide levels, which cause global warming, were the ultimate culprit. These new data show that extensive volcanism over the course of hundreds of thousands of years released large amounts of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the air, causing Earth's temperatures to rise from 10 to 30 degrees Celsius higher than today, write the scientists.

"The implication of our study is that elevated CO2 is sufficient to lead to inhospitable conditions for marine life and excessively high temperatures over land would contribute to the demise of terrestrial life," wrote Jeffrey Kiehl and his colleagues in their Geology paper. Kiehl and his colleagues are research scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

On a smaller scale, the demise of Milton Friedman seems to have attracted plenty of comment (though personally I never formed an opinion on him). Mobjectivist includes a colourful Greg Palast quote and notes that Friedman was the inventor of PAYG tax (called payroll tax in the US), which came as a surprise to me.

A titan of the global pyramid scheme, economist Milton Friedman, collapsed and expired today. As a legacy he left behind the quite effective witholding tax, something that his wife chided him to no end.

Rest in peace Milton Friedman, big government's best friend.

No one should miss the person that Greg Palast called a "malevolent, dwarfish gnome".

Kevin at Cryptogon was rather more scathing.

The only epitaph I could manage for Milton Friedman was to ask in anyone could think of any individual who was responsible for more death and destruction in the world.

While not one person bothered to send in any suggestions, Sam Smith wrote a more informative epitaph for the diabolical Friedman:

We have paid a terrible price for this corruption of our culture by the new robber barons egged on by Friedman and his ilk. We so accept their foul standards that we don't even discuss or debate them. We have become prisoners of their lie.

John Quiggin has a rather more balanced view, noting its worth reading "Capitalism and Freedom", even if just to understand why you disagree with him.

Milton Friedman has died at the age of 94. He made some huge contributions to macroeconomics, notably including his permanent income theory of consumption, which paved the way for the modern life cycle theory and his work on expectations and the Phillips curve.

He was also the most effective advocate for free-market policies since Adam Smith. As has been said several times over at Crooked Timber recently, everyone, and particularly everyone with a leftwing view of the world, should read Capitalism and Freedom at least once. As Mill said, beliefs you hold merely because you haven’t been exposed to the strongest possible critique of those views, aren’t really well-founded. Certainly, my own views were changed in some respects by exposure to Friedman, and where they were not, I was forced to reconsider the basis for my positions.

Friedman was effective in part because he was obviously a person of goodwill. I never had the feeling with him, as with many writers in the free-market line, that he was promoting cynical selfishness, or pushing the interests of business. He genuinely believed that economics was about making people’s lives better and that disagreements among economists were about means rather than ends and could ultimately be resolved by careful attention to the evidence.

One commenter at John Quiggin's site pointed out that Friedman was certainly guilty of at least one evil act - global warming denial.

This encyclopedic and even-handed survey of the evidence on global warming is a welcome corrective to the raging hysteria about the alleged dangers of
global warming. Moore demonstrates conclusively that global warming is more
likely to benefit than to harm the general public.

–Milton Friedman on T.G. Moore’s Climate of Fear, 1998

Finally Ross Gittins has a look at Friedman's theories and dealing with stagflation.

let's get on to monetarism, the idea most associated with Friedman's name. The first point is that it wasn't his new idea.

What he did was revive a very old idea in economics, known as the "quantity theory of money". This is the contention that growth in the quantity of money in circulation determines inflation in the prices of goods and services.

This belief was a central part of the neo-classical orthodoxy that dominated the thinking of economists before the revolution that followed the publication of John Maynard Keynes's General Theory in 1936.

Friedman did most of his thinking and writing about monetarism in the 1950s and '60s but the theory didn't become fashionable among economists and politicians until the mid to late 1970s.

Why did such an old idea suddenly come back into vogue? Because of the advent of "stagflation" and the profound loss of confidence this led to in the efficacy of Keynesian policies for managing demand in the economy.

The Keynesians knew how to stimulate demand when it was weak and unemployment was high, or restrict demand when the inflation rate was high and rising.

Stagflation was the name coined to describe the hitherto unknown combination of a stagnant economy with high unemployment and high inflation. Keynesian demand management simply couldn't cope with both problems at the same time.

Macro-economists went through a period of floundering about, looking for new policies that would work. Some experimented with "incomes policies" - attempts to reduce inflation by directly controlling wages and prices - and others with monetarism.

Conservative governments - such as Maggie Thatcher's in Britain and Malcolm Fraser's in Australia - adopted monetarist ideas in the second half of the '70s. The US Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker had a brief flirtation with monetary targeting a little later.

Monetarism was hugely oversold as a simple and painless way of getting inflation under control. All you had to do was announce a rule limiting the rate at which the "money supply" (strictly speaking, the quantity of money in circulation) would be allowed to grow, stick to it and the inflation rate would fall back without any adverse side effects.

So that's the next point: monetarism was wrong and didn't work. It was a theory built on assumptions that didn't hold. "Money" was something hard to define and measure in practice. The assumption that central banks could control the supply of money was mistaken.

The assumption that by controlling the quantity of money you could affect prices without affecting real economic activity was wrong. When there's enough slack in the economy, it is possible to use monetary stimulus to increase activity without adding to inflation.

More normally, it's not possible to use monetary restrictions to get inflation down without first reducing economic activity and, in all probability, putting the economy into recession.

Australia's experiment with monetarism was a farce. We had no success in reducing inflation and we only ever hit the money supply target by accident - which is no surprise because, with a fixed exchange rate, we had no hope of controlling the quantity of money (although the econocrats never admitted this at the time).

My recent post "Pissing Oil Against The Wall" had the unexpected effect of increasing my traffic from Google somewhat via a small flood of people interested in the term "pissing". Like the "nude japanese waitresses" dude, I get the impression these searchers aren't in search of news about the limits to growth (though they may be interested in enlargement I guess).

While trying to work out just how far down the Google search rankings I appear for this search term (and I couldn't find my post, so these searchers are truly dedicated seekers of knowledge), I came across Joe Bargeant's rant "Pissing In The Liberal Punchbowl", which mentions three of my favourite subjects - peak oil, global warming and Iraq.

Americans take comfort in the spoonfed "pendulum" theory of politics. No matter that the pendulum smacks them in the goddamned head at either end of the swing, because supposedly, it achieves some democracy preserving balance. To my mind, it merely offers a different faux target for citizen discontent every four years, so the same powers behind the powers can continue to extract wealth and sucker the public into consumer confidence and the latest Wall Street Ponzi scheme, or fighting wars to obtain more wealth and to protect what the elites have already piled up. Yet American tolerance for this pendulum bullshit, for this set of fake choices between two powerful groups of political elites who are dancing in the Washington conga line, asshole to belly button pretending they are alternatives to each another, seems endless.

Just what on god's green earth do liberals think the Democrats are going to do after they finish singing "This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius?" Really? What to do after they spend a few more years indexing the Republican crimes? The Republicans have the stolen geet, the Dems have a two-year ticket to ride, and the working guy and the middle class are pretending they are not about to get the worst reaming since Herbert Hoover was president. What are the Democrats to do, dear Nelly, pray tell? Well, it would be nice if they would immediately move to dismantle the police state that is so well under construction. And ideally they might begin to address the real problems that constitute the very shaky stage upon our delusional "American lifestyle" movie is being played out -- peak oil and the collapse of the environment. When it comes to the peak oil crisis, their best shot seems to be Al Gore telling us to hang our clothes on lines and turn down the thermostats, never once mentioning, much less blaming, the corporations that keep our nation addicted to oil, and are responsible for bankrolling the Bush/Cheney junta that brought us this ongoing national nightmare in the first place.

If Dems have not learned from what nearly happened to America's constitution in the past six years, we are in deep shit. We are still in deep shit even if they did learn, but at least have cause for fresh false hope. But we may assume, until they prove otherwise, that the elites of the Democratic leadership are immune to the real life consequences of their economic and political decisions. I seriously doubt that they will push for any of the things inherent to a civilized post-industrial society, such as ABSOLUTELY FREE universal health care, or ABSOLUTELY FREE universal higher education, or even letting the tens of thousands of poor hapless fucking potheads out of this nation's now privatized prison system. Or kicking McDonald's and Coke out of the nation's school lunch programs. And do you actually think they are going to address America's unspoken class system? Nope! But they will use the word class a bit more, just for its resonance of authenticity, but only should it become absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, the Democrats are going to raise the minimum wage. They will do so because even the Republicans are willing to do it now. And they will raise it to somewhere around seven bucks, which is half of what it takes to eat and shit with any regularity in this country, and they will do it in three timid steps stretching out over hell only knows how long.

To be fair here, the Democrats have fifty-one seats. Fifty-one ain't sixty, which is what it takes to accomplish anything by fiat at the syndicate headquarters on East Capitol Street. Still, they can accomplish much if they have enough hair on their asses to fight the good fight. If they get out f their limos and set out on foot without their entourage of royal eunuchs to find the good fight.

Otherwise, they will or will not fight the good fight in the marble royal citadel where three out of every 100 people are homeless. And in a fit of high dudgeon, they will order blanket subpoenas for half the Republican Party to testify, which is not going to put a single blanket over their bruised asses of the nearby homeless as they rustle around on damp cardboard under the watchful eye of the city's several thousands of security cameras, cameras that manage to catch the average DC resident some 250 times a day (nanny cams excluded), cameras that document protesters with facial recognition software, cameras that make 81 percent of residents "feel safer, according to surveys -- even though they do not reduce crime, according to the police chief himself. Like the Republicans, the Democrats understand that people now believe their chances of being attacked by swarthy terrorists are greater than their chances of being mugged by the crackhead on the corner. The residual fear of our 12-year ordeal will be there a long time, if it ever disappears at all. Democrats believe they must continue to play to that irrational fear to get elected. Which will only perpetuate the fear. Meanwhile, President Sparky fiddles with his veto pen in the Oval Office, while Rove and Cheney plot to leave the Dems with as many unpaid bills on the table as possible. Nobody said it would be easy.

Internationally speaking, the picture is no better. It's pretty doubtful anyone will publicly fess up to the fact that the whole damned world hates us, and that a recent poll found that just about everybody but the Japanese and the South Koreans consider us far more dangerous than Kim Il Sung's North Korean nuclear zoo. The soon-to-come investigations of Cheney and Rumsfeld may make jolly spectacle for the American public, even entertain the Europeans for a while, with its examination as to how our illegal invasion, complete destruction and occupation of a sovereign country was "mishandled" -- if the actions of a rogue nation can be said to be mishandled -- which will distract the citizenry for a while longer. But the Democratic Party will never challenge the militarism that has made war the resort of first option so acceptable to so many Americans. Cutting defense spending by half remains unthinkable, even though it would still leave us with one quarter of all the world's weapons and four fifths of the world's viable nuclear firepower. Despite that the savings would rebuild every school in then nation, or send every American child through college or technical school, or wipe out homelessness in one fell swoop, or pay for nationalized health care for all, (if the insurance company leeches are dumped in the process) or public transit.

Democrats like being THE liberal party. They like being the only game in town for anyone who thinks that maybe, just maybe, a police state might not be the best idea we can come up with, or that the Bible may not have been written as a physics or biological treatise. For anything to change at all, Democrats are going to have to actually lead the liberal tribes, make liberal Americans understand that there is too much as stake to let the divisiveness of gender, identity, and single issue politics keep us so divided. Otherwise, when the cheap oil fiesta is over, which will be within most people's lifetimes, if not my own, when real economic collapse is on the horizon, Americans will switch on the same reptilian survival brain they did when they elected Bush. Assuming they ever turn it off.

If so many other nations can come to understand what is really at stake in our times, and modify their national programs and ambitions to accommodate the Kyoto Agreements or energy reductions, or cleaner fuel standards, or land mine bans, or the need for a world court on atrocity, or even the Geneva Conventions for crap sake, there is no reason we cannot do the same, other than lack of international leadership by the people we elect (or presume to elect.) Some domestic leadership would be nice too. Hell, 18 states have a higher minimum wage than the fed standard, 12 states have tried to modify coal fired emission standards on their own (only to be stymied by our elected government). Is there any will at all to do the right thing?

It may be possible the will is exists within the American public to do the right thing, a rather dodgy assumption given that they we been fed on a complete diet of supremacy and misinformation for three decades. But even if it is still possible, it will take leadership. And by leadership, we don't mean such crap as "We will deliver a better plan than Bush for the war in Iraq." We bombed the fuck out of a sovereign nation, killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, instituted an illegal occupation that makes Germany's French occupation look like a bridge party (Really! Go read about it sometime). And we made the world a more dangerous place in the process. We don't need a fucking plan. We need to admit our guilt to the world, then beg forgiveness and demonstrate our sincerity through reparations. THAT is the right thing to do. But we won't.

Past Peak notes that creepy US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (a man who seems destined for a life as head of some sort of secret police organisation) considers people who care about their civil liberties are a "grave threat" to American security. I wonder when he'll send them all off to the new gulags ?

Alberto Gonzales says foes of the administration's warrantless electronic surveillance are a "grave threat" to the "liberty and security of the American people." AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales contended Saturday that some critics of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program were defining freedom in a way that presents a "grave threat" to U.S. security.

Gonzales was the second administration official in two days to attack a federal judge's ruling last August that the program was unconstitutional. Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday called the decision "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching."

Gonzales, in remarks prepared for delivery at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said that some see the program as on the verge of stifling freedom rather that protecting the country.

"But this view is shortsighted," he said. "Its definition of freedom — one utterly divorced from civic responsibility — is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Gonzales and Cheney's attacks on the court order came as the administration was urging the lame-duck Congress to approve legislation authorizing the warrantless surveillance. The bill's chances are in doubt, however, because of Democratic opposition in the Senate, where 60 votes are required to end debate and vote. [...]

In August, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit struck down the warrantless surveillance program, saying it violated the rights to free speech and privacy and the constitutional separation of powers. She was the first judge to rule on the legality of the program, which is operated by the National Security Agency.

Bush and other administration officials sharply criticized the ruling, which the government appealed. They argued that the program is legal under the president's constitutional powers and saved lives by helping to disrupt terrorist plots.

Cheney, in an address Friday to the Federalist Society, said Taylor's order was troubling because it was "tying the hands of the president of the United States in the conduct of a war." He added: "And this is a matter entirely outside the competence of the judiciary."

In his prepared remarks, Gonzales dismissed as "myth" the charge that civil liberties were being sacrificed in the fight against terrorism. He defended the USA Patriot Act and the handling of detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Jamais at Open The Future has a tale about a society that is making an unwelcome transition from the economics of scarcity to the economics of abundance - Second Life. As in the real world, the economics of abundance aren't appreciated by those at the top of the economic tree...

Two related quotes from previous Open the Future posts:

When you are able to manipulate atoms as easily as you do bits, the rules of the bit world apply.

The rules we come up with to grapple with virtual objects of real value will haunt us for decades to come, if we're not careful.

The big news from the metaverse this last week has been "CopyBot," an application that allows a Second Life user to duplicate... well, just about anything, including clothing and objects other Second Life denizens have created for sale. James "Hamlet" Au offers a recap of the situation at his New World Notes site; be sure to read the comments to get a sense of how upset many SL residents are about this program.

As Sven Johnson suggests, the important story here isn't about Second Life per se, but about the clash between a scarcity-based economy and an abundance-based world.

The Second Life internal economy was predicated on the notion that designers could produce in-game objects that they could then sell; these objects would ostensibly be scarce (in the economic sense) because the designer could put limits on how many copies s/he would sell, and because -- in principle -- other residents couldn't make copies except by tedious efforts to reproduce a design by hand. Although the only "raw material" involved in the creation of Second Life goods is the memory & storage space needed on the SL server, the capability to design desirable objects serves as a market-generating form of scarcity. No matter that everyone can have the capability to make limitless numbers of in-game objects -- unless you can design something that other people want, you're just making digital junk.

But with CopyBot, these limitations are less meaningful, because it eliminates the barriers to making your own duplicates of other people's designs. It's not tedious or challenging, it's a click of a button. As a result, apparently over a hundred in-game designers have shut down in protest, and threats of lawsuits and copyright-infringement actions are flying.

If the ability to make copies continues to exist, these vendors argue, the basis of the SL economy will be destroyed. And since there's a direct conversion between in-game money and real-world money, anything that weakens the SL economy threatens the real-world economic livelihoods of many SL residents. They're right -- but is the Second Life economy worth saving?

What Linden Lab has tried to do is replicate the atom-world scarcity rules in a bit-world environment. Nobody should be surprised in any way that this doesn't work for long. It is the nature of bits to be easily copied. Even if Linden manages to shut down CopyBot, it will arise again in another form, and probably as something much harder to squelch. The death of Napster becomes the explosion of Gnutella and Bit Torrent; the death of CopyBot will mean the emergence of something more powerful and less easily eliminated. It's delightfully Darwinian.