link roundup: five-by-five

fantasy killed the sf-star: vintage, prescient eulogy to the genre

birdazzlers: the falcons’ hive falconry accessories

you’re doing it wrong: insights into meta-cognition

h.p. lovecat: at the litter-box of madness

civics class: JF Ptak’s wonderful blog is entering its ninth year of prolific publication

jubilee

The Washington Post reports that the government of Croatia has spent around twenty-seven million euro to forgive the financial obligations of some sixty thousand of its poorest citizens. Thousands of families caught in an unending cycle of indebtedness—that could well be inherited across generations have been given the chance to start anew, and it does seem a very small price to pay to restore a degree of dignity and independence as well as probably being more of a bargain in the long-term over paying benefits that only enrich the lenders. What do you think about this bold and unique act?

jenny don’t change your number, i’m gonna make you mine

Although the object of his affection extolled in rather cheesy verse was won over as a woman to be respected in her own right and a constant companion in the fight for his cause, the love poetry—looking forward to Saint Valentines’ Day, that Karl Marx penned for his beloved, Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny von Westphalen can make anyone proud and secure in his or her romantic overtures.

As a philosopher, author and theatre-critic (recalling how Marx later expounded, ideally, that every man ought to have the luxury after an honest day’s labour to be a critic in the evening) in her own right, Jenny Marx was swooned by such lines:
See! I could a thousand volumes fill,
Writing only “Jenny” in each line,
Still they would a world of thought conceal,
Deed eternal and unchanging Will,
Verses sweet that yearning gently still,
867-5309.

geofencing and defenestration

The always splendid and visionary BLDGBLOG presents an excellent survey of the coming electromagnetic moats that are being created to thwart off the remote controlled cat burglars known as drones.
It ought not come as any surprise that constellation of technologies that enable the good guys to keep us safe also comes off the shelf for the potential deployment and home- invasions, casing the joint from a safe distance. The number of black sites for GPS navigation devices is growing as are signal-jamming equipment create permanent and impromptu force fields. I suspect, however, that whatever counter-measures are implemented, new methods for getting around those drawbridges and portcullises won’t be far behind, including navigation by more traditional methods, orientation without being tethered to a human operator and completely autonomous missions (replete with exhaustive demographics) with no need to report back. I wonder how the the physical façade of suburbia and gated communities, exposed and set apart from the concrete jungles that might provide some natural defenses and more barriers to overcome, might change to support this firewall fortress.