Zuriel Barron

Understated and perfect.

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:50:31 -0500

Understated and perfect.

This 8-Bit version of Kid-A is amazing. Radiohead - Kid A...

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:30:30 -0500

This 8-Bit version of Kid-A is amazing.

Radiohead - Kid A (8-bit)

"Hacking is disruptive, and whether you code software, write books, or film movies, I believe..."

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:43:00 -0500

“

Hacking is disruptive, and whether you code software, write books, or film movies, I believe bringing anything new into the world is a disruptive act. By being novel and compelling, the new is likely to replace something else and that something else isn’t being replaced without a fight.

Reasonable people are often scared by the new. This is because reasonable people are not Barbarians and they are not hackers. They appreciate the predictable, profitable, and knowable world that comes with a well-defined process, and I would like to thank each and everyone of them because these people keep the trains running and on time. No one likes Barbarians because the Barbarian strategy is one at odds with civilization. By definition, a Barbarian, a hacker, is building on a strategy that is at odds with the majority.

It’s awesome.

”

- Rands In Repose: Hacking is Important

Occupy Wall St - The Revolution Is Love

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:02:56 -0600

Occupy Wall St - The Revolution Is Love

Radiohead - Glastonbury 2011 The full concert in all its...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:23:57 -0500

Radiohead - Glastonbury 2011

The full concert in all its glory…

Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:50:15 -0500

Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever

Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend Gaga wishes she could be as cool as...

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:22:37 -0500

Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend

Gaga wishes she could be as cool as Robyn is, without all the ridiculous antics and by actually making good pop music.

Bon Iver - Calgary (by boniver) Can’t wait for this album...

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:34:17 -0500

Bon Iver - Calgary (by boniver)

Can’t wait for this album to come out.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative..."

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:07:06 -0500

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

- Ira Glass (via nefffy)

Music of the Week: Hello Seahorse! - Casa Vacía A little known...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:38:12 -0500

Music of the Week: Hello Seahorse! - Casa Vacía

A little known but awesome Mexican electronica band. This song has just been stuck in my head for quite a few days.

Music of the Week - Phantogram “When I’m...

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:15:05 -0600

Music of the Week - Phantogram “When I’m Small”

This song has been stuck in my head all week.

Recent Scenes from Antarctica - In Focus

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:54:00 -0600

Recent Scenes from Antarctica - In Focus:

It’s like another planet. Incredible.

How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:30:06 -0600

How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us:

The astonishing story of the last few decades is a massive redistribution of wealth, as the rich have shifted the tax burden

Music of the Week: Chinatown by Destroyer This album is...

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:30:06 -0600

Music of the Week: Chinatown by Destroyer

This album is incredibly hard to describe, specially because if I tell you it sounds like 80s pop mixed with smooth jazz, you will probably immediately tune me out. But believe me. Destroyer’s Kaputt is amazing. You have to give it a try.

The Moral Bankruptcy of Low Taxes

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:30:07 -0600

If you live in Texas you have certainly heard a big hoopla about Texas’ budget deficit. It is certainly not of the magnitude of California’s’ but its getting up there.

What is surprising about the deficit is that Texas has served for many years, as one of the banner states for effective conservative budgets and of the effectiveness of low taxes to stimulate growth and sound financial decisions. In a scathing article titled “Everything’s Subsidized in Texas”, Jonathan Chait writes about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s hypocrisy in dealing with money from the 2009 stimulus package. While publicly deriding the stimulus money, Perry was glad to take as much as he could to cover up the reality of Texas’ situation; a budget deficit. Now that the money has dried up, Texas faces massive spending cuts in much of its public programs in order to make up the difference. This exposes, I believe, a bigger problem.

The moral bankruptcy of low taxes.

The middle of last year I read an article titled “The Political Genius of Supply-Side Economics”. If you have a time to read it go ahead, but if no I will quote a passage from it:

To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics”. Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue.

The political genius of this idea is evident. Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?

How did supply-side economics bring these benefits? First, it allowed conservatives to ignore deficits. They could argue that, whatever the impact of the tax cuts in the short run, they would bring the budget back into balance, in the longer run. Second, the theory gave an economic justification – the argument from incentives – for lowering taxes on politically important supporters. Finally, if deficits did not, in fact, disappear, conservatives could fall back on the “starve the beast” theory: deficits would create a fiscal crisis that would force the government to cut spending and even destroy the hated welfare state.

Among the multitude of pseudo-religious ideas that pass as politics and economic policies now days, none sees to be so backwards and anti common-sense as the idea of low taxes.

Why this idea is dangerous is self evident. Government, like any institution needs money to run, while a short period of low taxes has proven to have good short term benefits, a continuous state of low taxes only has as consequence the ability to bring government revenue to zero.

Now, a lot of conservatives see no problem with this. This is because the idea of “low taxes” is commonly followed hand to hand by the idea of “limited government”.

What is interesting about these ideas, is that they have have long ago ceased to exist as pragmatic points of discussion from which the work of governing is done. They have instead transformed into self-fulfilling prophecies of anarchist consequences. As the Tea Party works to elect public servants that have no interest on doing the actual work of governing, but instead focus on “stopping the ineffective government” they in fact lay the groundwork for an ineffective government.

It is there where the moral bankruptcy happens. Actual public servants worried about making our government work, on both parties, recognize the danger of such policies. It’s easy to see it when Rick Perry touts to his base about the “evils of big government” but then when it comes to balancing the budget he gladly takes any money the Fed offers. It is in the actions that reveal the true intentions than in the actual job of making government work. Money matters. In making raising taxes the equivalent of political suicide, governments now days face very grim realities and the primary victims of budget shortfalls tend to be the main services that we actually all agree the government should be in charge of making work: education and law enforcement.

How we have descended into such depths of cynicism is hypocrisy is beyond me, but the reality is this: if we cannot elevate our discourse from extremists ideologies that aren’t rooted in the realities the complex job that is governing, we will soon make fast work of tearing down the institutions that have taken centuries to build. Switching the discussion from childish ideas like low taxes into actual adult ideas like “let’s figure out how to make our government WORK” might be a good start.

It’s here!!! Radiohead - Lotus Flower

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 08:48:41 -0600

It’s here!!! Radiohead - Lotus Flower

"For on Egypt, it was the moral force of non-violence — not terrorism, not mindless killing..."

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:36:00 -0600

“For on Egypt, it was the moral force of non-violence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but non-violence, the moral force that bent the arch of history toward justice once more.”

- President Barack Obama

Music of the Week - The Decemberists - Don’t Carry It All

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:27:31 -0600

Music of the Week - The Decemberists - Don’t Carry It All

Even Tombstone had gun laws

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:01:07 -0600

Even Tombstone had gun laws:

Great historical perspective on gun laws in Arizona.

For all the talk of the “Wild West,” the policymakers of 1880 Tombstone—and many other Western towns—were ardent supporters of gun control. When people now compare things to the “shootout at the OK Corral,” they mean vigilante violence by gunfire. But this is exactly what the Tombstone town council had been trying to avoid.

In late 1880, as regional violence ratcheted up, Tombstone strengthened its existing ban on concealed weapons to outlaw the carrying of any deadly weapons within the town limits. The Earps (who were Republicans) and Doc Holliday maintained that they were acting as law officers—not citizen vigilantes—when they shot their opponents. That is to say, they were sworn officers whose jobs included enforcement of Tombstone’s gun laws.

Today, in contrast, Arizonans can legally buy guns without licenses, and are able to carry concealed weapons without a permit. The state bans cities from passing their own, stricter laws. The legislature will consider a bill this session that would force schools to allow guns on campus — like Pima Community College, which the alleged shooter attended.

The policy makers of the “Wild West” realized like any rational person would, that reasonable gun controls laws could help prevent unwanted violence.

This is in stark contrast to today’s 2nd Amendment defenders, who continue to fight for laxer and laxer laws in order to defend their “right” to do whatever they want with their guns.

The reality is that if we want to create a safer society, we need to start embracing common sense and start acting the question, “what is effective government”, what are “proper” guns for civilians to own and what “rational” laws that would be effective in reducing the risk of guns falling in the hands of just any lunatic out there?

The reality is that many of the arguments we are having out there in regards to many topics: low taxes, free market, limited government, gun control… have long ago entered the realm of ideological and religious beliefs, devoid of any relation to real life governing and the challenges that we face every day in trying to enforce laws and have civil society.

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:41:01 -0500

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law:

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.

Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.

“The gentleman that’s the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger,” Nichols said. “He’s a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman.”

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

“They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community,” Nichols said, “the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate.”

But Nichols wasn’t buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?

“They talked like they didn’t have any doubt they could fill it,” Nichols said.

That’s because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona’s immigration law.