link round-up

[cellio]

I have some things collecting in tabs, so here's a hodge-podge:

• First, border-crossing. You've probably heard by now that border control in the US has gotten aggressive, including demanding passwords for encrypted devices and then taking them out of view for an extended time. You don't have to give up your password, but if you don't, they can confiscate your device for weeks or months for "review". The rights you have against unreasonable search and seizure in the US are not the same as those you have at the border. While they can't deny entry to US citizens, they can to others.

• It's important to know what you don't know. David Director Friedman has an interesting idea about applying economics to teaching -- specifically, grading exams.

• A lot of the Rands article The New Manager Death-Spiral sounds very familiar.

• We all know one of the Internet rules: don't read the comments. The parts of the net I frequent tend to be better than, say, a random sample of YouTube, which is due to a mix of conscientious participants and comment moderation. A while back I came across a comment-moderation policy described as "Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite": they require a comment to be at least two of true, necessary, and kind.

• I'm not sure that philosophy applies to windshield notes, but they sure are funny.

• How do we know Humpty Dumpty is an egg? The rhyme doesn't say so. Huh, I never thought about that.

• Speaking of things I hadn't thought about, have you ever noticed the similarities between fantasy-adventurer settings and westerns?

Comments

[metahacker]

I read that fantasy/western thing, and I kind of disagree.

Westerns are traditionally about the loner, or sometimes the posse, righting injustice and then riding off into the sunset. Fantasy novels, at least the murder-hobo ones inspired by D&D games, are more about a persistent party of people righting small wrongs and making a profit along the way, while getting more and more powerful. Or they're about a quest to find and push the Boss Lever, probably after a coming-of-age subplot that is never found in Westerns. (There is no "this is your father's sword" trope, or "you come from mysterious parents"--the Lone Ranger shows up in mid adulthood, not at adolescence.)

Put another way, fantasy is about gathering more and more personal power, possibly so you can then fight the Big Bad and restore the world to how it was. But the emblem of the Western is the Colt revolver for a reason--it was marketed as "the equalizer", and it made it possible for each person to mete out justice as they individually saw fit. But it was bounded--there was no leveling up from there (aside from the "hottest gun in the west" dueling culture).

Anyway. Maybe I'll write a rebuttal. ;)

[cellio]

Please do write a rebuttal. :-) We could run it as a top-level post on the blog, or you could leave a comment, or whatever.