elfs | Brains From Another Planet... (Reply)

James Scott, "Legibility," Flavius Apion, Anoup, the Emperor Justinian, Robin of Locksley, Rebecca Daughter of Mordecai, King Richard, and Others... Brad Delong tells a tale of "legibility." "Legibility" in this case is the ability of a centralized government power to discern what is going on in the periphery of its responsibilities. He starts with Emperor Justinian's inability to see clearly what is happening in the provinces, which are behaving more like feudal states with local lords than like the legal order of the Imperial Republic, and Justinian's inability to do anything about it because he relies on the local lords to inform him. "Illegibility" in this case is a description of The SNAFU Principle.

Police Tell Brooklyn Women Not To Wear Skirts If They Don’t Want To Be Raped. [Ads on this site probably NSFW]. The Department For The Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice strikes again. Look, whoever's assaulting women in Brooklyn would attack even if every woman wore a freakin' burqa. It is not the police's job to police the public dress of its citizenry.

On the other hand, I'm annoyed by Roche's attitude toward the gun thread on the news site. The world is full of assholes, and the cops can't hover over every single one of them. It's a sick and misogynistic attitude to believe that a woman who has been raped is somehow morally superior to the one who shoots an assailant, but that is the moral calculus at the extreme end of liberal sensibilities. It's as misogynistic to tell a woman that "carrying a gun is acting like a man," as it is to question my masculinity when I wear my kilt.

The Fermi Paradox solved: our galaxy farts, so no one will come near