Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Meanwhile, Back On Earth ...

=Milo= Okay, okay, one more post :( I think so...

2012-02-21T21:25:15.654-08:00

=Milo=

Okay, okay, one more post :(

I think some people might be getting confused by the common markup language called BBcode used by many forums, which resembles HTML but allows [url]http://somewhere.net/absolutelink.html[/url] as a synonym for [url=http://somewhere.net/absolutelink.html]http://somewhere.net/absolutelink.html[/url]. (If that's too wide to fit in one line, copy-paste it to see the full code.)

=Milo= So Blogger refuses the notvalid= attribu...

2012-02-21T21:20:22.453-08:00

=Milo=

So Blogger refuses the notvalid= attribute, but allows the name= attribute. It also allows other protocols besides http://, such as ftp://. It doesn't allow linking to about:blank, either :)

Anyway, the short of it is that links work fine if you type them right.

Oh, one more test: http://i.didn.t.actually.type.a.link.for.this.one.com/it.s.just.text.html

=Milo= Hmm. Blogger does seem to automatically...

2012-02-21T21:14:20.933-08:00

=Milo=

Hmm. Blogger does seem to automatically add a rel="nofollow" attribute to all anchors, as well as editing out invalid attributes (i.e., stuff that isn't href=).

Let's do some more testing.

<a notvalid="notvalid"> (Blogger processes this but the notvalid tag doesn't appear in the source)
<a href="relativelink.html">
<a href="http://somewhere.net/absolutelink.html">
/* <a href="htp://somehwere.not/typolink.html"> */ (Blogger refuses to process this)
<a href=http://somewhere.net/noquotes.html>
<a name="label">
<a href="#label">

Blogger doesn't allow strikethough text either, hence the C comment. But Blogger DOES accept < for <, > for >, and of course & for &.

=Milo= The space submarines thing doesn't h...

2012-02-21T20:54:28.228-08:00

=Milo=

The space submarines thing doesn't have a link. It just says [a rel="nofollow"]space submarines[/a] (with angle brackets, of course). I have no idea why Blogger decided to mark that with an [a] tag at all, since it doesn't even look like a link, unless Christopher Phoenix actually typed [a]space submarines[/a] for some infathomable reason.

Hmm, I wonder if I could do that. Test: broken link.

I took a look at the page source code. FWIW, it lo...

2012-02-20T19:08:56.820-08:00

I took a look at the page source code. FWIW, it looks like the links that DON'T work are preceded by a rel = "no follow" tag; and the links that DO work are followed by a rel = "no follow" tag.

I have only a vague idea of what that means, or if that makes any sense, or is just a dumb observation, but it is a pattern of correlation that seems to be consistent, and I thought I would point it out in case it means something useful.

FWIW: Milo's links in the first comment work ...

2012-02-20T18:59:12.226-08:00

FWIW:

Milo's links in the first comment work for me.

Christopher Phoenix's link to "Winchell Chung's Botany Bay" works for me.

Christopher Phoenix's link to "space submarines" does not work for me.

Rick's link to "old post" works for me.

Thucydides' links do not work for me.

Thanks for this confirmation!

2012-02-18T09:45:21.834-08:00

Thanks for this confirmation!

=Milo= Rick: Yes, that is correct. I have typ...

2012-02-17T14:15:12.778-08:00

=Milo=

Rick:

Yes, that is correct. I have typed up all my links explicitly, as Blogger does not automatically convert them. It's just a matter of style choice that I often have the link text be identical to what it's linking to.

Not strictly on this topic, but I'm puzzled by...

2012-02-16T18:25:35.777-08:00

Not strictly on this topic, but I'm puzzled by the trouble people have posting links. Note that Milo's links in the first comment on this thread came through fine.

Blogger may only accept links when they are done in HTML format: [a href="http://link.url"]link text[/a] - with angle brackets instead of square ones, of course.

"The Stars at War"...I'll have to di...

2012-02-16T18:10:32.954-08:00

"The Stars at War"...I'll have to dig that one up; thanks!

Ferrell

@FERRELL: I know that the traditional way of t...

2012-02-16T17:09:08.589-08:00
@FERRELL:

I know that the traditional way of thinking about political oreintation is the 2-d spectrum, but I seem to remember a three-d grid; anarchy in one corner, totaltarism in the opposite corner, with total free market-but-social-tyrrany inanother corner and total-social-freedom-but-centralized-market-control in the last corner; all known governments and political systems should be able to fit into ths grid. I can't remember who came up with the grid, however. Any clues?

I was going to say that sounds an awful like Jerry Pournelle's proposed multidimensional chart -- and then I say that Thucydides linked to it above. (Although for some reason his links aren't clickable for me; you may have to paste that Wiki link into your browser.)

I first ran across that chart in an essay in one of the Pournelle-edited military SF anthologies. Not There Will Be War, though. I'm almost positive it was in The Stars at War, Vol. I: Republic and Empire but I don't have that book handy. I'm going to guess that, given your interest in the subject of this blog, that's where you saw it too.

Politics with multiple dimensions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

Well ... this has been a thoroughly unwelcome expe...

2012-02-14T19:32:15.896-08:00
Well ... this has been a thoroughly unwelcome experience.

I very much hope that this community can return to the amity it has generally shown, even across strong differences of opinion.

Rick: "Tony - My patience meter is runnin...

2012-02-14T13:57:28.586-08:00
Rick:

"Tony - My patience meter is running VERY short with all this self-righteous superiority about your personal experiences, et al., ad nauseum.

Either act civilized or find a bridge to crawl under."

Well, my patience has run out with naive young punks and naive older blog hosts that don't live in the real world. Adios.

=Milo= Ferrell: "I know that the tradi...

2012-02-14T13:47:37.952-08:00
=Milo=

Ferrell:

"I know that the traditional way of thinking about political oreintation is the 2-d spectrum, but I seem to remember a three-d grid; [...] I can't remember who came up with the grid, however. Any clues?"

The only thing that comes to mind is the political model used by NationStates, a light web game where you get to run your own country (and watch over-the-top unexpected side effects of your policy decisions).

In that game, the most prominent measurements of your country are three axes: civil freedoms (which represents how much the government tries to control people's private lives), economic freedoms (which represent how regulated your market is), and political freedoms (which represent things like democracy and free speech).

Tony - My patience meter is running VERY short wit...

2012-02-14T12:35:01.055-08:00
Tony - My patience meter is running VERY short with all this self-righteous superiority about your personal experiences, et al., ad nauseum.

Either act civilized or find a bridge to crawl under.

Damien, Oh, BTW, I can distinctly recall sitting ...

2012-02-14T02:19:28.869-08:00
Damien,

Oh, BTW, I can distinctly recall sitting in a history class in 1982, being told by the instructor that within ten years somebody in that room would be fighting in a war in Asia. Guess where I was in 1991?

So whatever you think about my education and it's results, I've got better reason than personal prejudice or idle speculation to believe that it was administered by people who knew what they were talking about.

Big kiss.

Damien, I spent 36 years in the 20th Century, 10 ...

2012-02-13T21:23:38.348-08:00
Damien,

I spent 36 years in the 20th Century, 10 of them in uniform, guarding against (and sometimes cleaning up after) failed ideologies. These things aren't anywhere near as abstract to me as they are to you.

You might want to think about that for a while. You don't have to...but you might want to.

"I was educated in relatively conservative, C...

2012-02-13T21:14:33.160-08:00
"I was educated in relatively conservative, Christian schools, where the various 20th Century "isms" were judged on their practical implementations, not their ideological claims"

And I'm *sure* those judgements were entirely objective and not distorted by the ideological blinkers of those conservative, Christian, schools.

"In short, whatever the ideologies of the left claim, in practice they wind up repressing the people, while for all of their identified inequalities, ideologies of the right (in the American context) work best with minimal government control."

Hmm, what did someone say in another thread?

"I simply don't believe that all points of view are equal. I certainly don't believe your point of view is credible in any way, shape, or form."

I know that the traditional way of thinking about ...

2012-02-13T20:29:05.862-08:00
I know that the traditional way of thinking about political oreintation is the 2-d spectrum, but I seem to remember a three-d grid; anarchy in one corner, totaltarism in the opposite corner, with total free market-but-social-tyrrany inanother corner and total-social-freedom-but-centralized-market-control in the last corner; all known governments and political systems should be able to fit into ths grid. I can't remember who came up with the grid, however. Any clues?

Ferrell

Rick: "I'll just say (again) that ide...

2012-02-13T19:21:55.550-08:00
Rick:

"I'll just say (again) that identifying right and left as being about the absence or presence of state power is thoroughly idiosyncratic. From the French Revolution on the terms have been understood as a spectrum of attitudes toward social hierarchy and established/traditional elites."

If it's an idiosynchracy, it's a widely subscribed-to one, Rick. And it often has a lot to do with where you stand and what you focus on. I was educated in relatively conservative, Christian schools, where the various 20th Century "isms" were judged on their practical implementations, not their ideological claims. So, while socialists, communists, etc. would be put on the left and free market capitalism on the right, the important thing to the people who taught me was that broadly "progressive" politics led to repressive government, while traditional free markets, for all of their faults, were found in less restrictive states. Fascism and naziism wound up to the right of socialism, but still on the left, both for their semi-socialistic ideals and for their repressive governmental styles.

In short, whatever the ideologies of the left claim, in practice they wind up repressing the people, while for all of their identified inequalities, ideologies of the right (in the American context) work best with minimal government control.

I'll just say (again) that identifying right a...

2012-02-13T18:57:03.395-08:00
I'll just say (again) that identifying right and left as being about the absence or presence of state power is thoroughly idiosyncratic. From the French Revolution on the terms have been understood as a spectrum of attitudes toward social hierarchy and established/traditional elites.

Like the astoundingly silly coinage 'Islamofascist,' this whole attempt to redefine long-established if imprecise terminology seems to derive from US neoconservatives - people now on the right, but intellectually derived from the left.

Put another way: Come on, guys! If you want a different terminology that seems more relevant, come up with one and see if it catches on. Hijacking terminology will only lead to a muddle.

Damien, you cannot separate the means from the end...

2012-02-13T15:15:29.480-08:00
Damien, you cannot separate the means from the ends, otherwise you are not talking about politics (or any subject at all) but simply about daydreams. Perhaps a unicorn will arrive to grant equality to everyone, but until that happens you need to seriously discuss how things are going to happen and how things work in the new order.

National Socialism, while also a form of Socialism, is not Fascism, and even exists today; for example in the Bloc Québécois, a political party devoted to directing the resources of the State to a particular ethnic group ("pure laine" Québécois); although their commitment to blood and thunder is fortunately very limited.

Damien Sullivan: "Back in the Dark Ages t...

2012-02-13T13:32:28.004-08:00
Damien Sullivan:

"Back in the Dark Ages there was no left-right spectrum, let alone one running from totalitarianism from anarchy; those terms come from the French Revolution, and meant republicans vs. monarchists. All other uses are derivative from that, with some conceptual wandering, but claiming anarchy is definitive of the right is hilariously bad revisionism. The legitimate abstraction of the Revolution's contrast is equality vs. privilege. This would place libertarians -- or classical liberals -- on the left in 1789, and on the right now when inherited property is the main source of inequality and privilege."

"Dark Ages" was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Late 70s, when I first took a government class. Despite assertions to the contrary, I don't think my economic views are particularly radical or preposterous. I think I was taught government and economics -- in the Dark Ages, you didn't teach government without an understanding that the classical 20th Century isms were at least as much about economics as politics -- from a different viewpoint than a lot of younger people have been. I was just having a little bit of fun with that.

In that respect, in American 20th Century discourse, left and right didn't have the meanings you ascribe to them. Left was the direction towards more government social and economic control, eventually ending in totalitarianism, while right was the direction towards less government control, eventually ending in anarchy. That's because in the US started out a democratic republic with very little government interference in people's daily lives. So the laisez faire, minimal-government-intervention position was the conservative, and thus on the right of the scale. Movement towards progressivism, fascism, socialism, and eventually totalitarianism was movement towards the left end of the spectrum.

So, you see, it's not revisionism that I'm writing, but a more traditional view than you seem to have, as far as the American political and economic contexts are concerned.

Back in the Dark Ages there was no left-right spec...

2012-02-13T13:08:04.166-08:00
Back in the Dark Ages there was no left-right spectrum, let alone one running from totalitarianism from anarchy; those terms come from the French Revolution, and meant republicans vs. monarchists. All other uses are derivative from that, with some conceptual wandering, but claiming anarchy is definitive of the right is hilariously bad revisionism. The legitimate abstraction of the Revolution's contrast is equality vs. privilege. This would place libertarians -- or classical liberals -- on the left in 1789, and on the right now when inherited property is the main source of inequality and privilege.

Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Meanwhile, Back On Earth ...

=Milo= Okay, okay, one more post :( I think so...

=Milo= So Blogger refuses the notvalid= attribu...

=Milo= Hmm. Blogger does seem to automatically...

=Milo= The space submarines thing doesn't h...

I took a look at the page source code. FWIW, it lo...

FWIW: Milo's links in the first comment work ...

Thanks for this confirmation!

=Milo= Rick: Yes, that is correct. I have typ...

Not strictly on this topic, but I'm puzzled by...

"The Stars at War"...I'll have to di...

@FERRELL: I know that the traditional way of t...

Politics with multiple dimensions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

Well ... this has been a thoroughly unwelcome expe...

Rick: "Tony - My patience meter is runnin...

=Milo= Ferrell: "I know that the tradi...

Tony - My patience meter is running VERY short wit...

Damien, Oh, BTW, I can distinctly recall sitting ...

Damien, I spent 36 years in the 20th Century, 10 ...

"I was educated in relatively conservative, C...

I know that the traditional way of thinking about ...

Rick: "I'll just say (again) that ide...

I'll just say (again) that identifying right a...

Damien, you cannot separate the means from the end...

Damien Sullivan: "Back in the Dark Ages t...

Back in the Dark Ages there was no left-right spec...

Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Meanwhile, Back On Earth ...

=Milo= Okay, okay, one more post :( I think so...

=Milo= So Blogger refuses the notvalid= attribu...

=Milo= Hmm. Blogger does seem to automatically...

=Milo= The space submarines thing doesn't h...

I took a look at the page source code. FWIW, it lo...

FWIW: Milo's links in the first comment work ...

Thanks for this confirmation!

=Milo= Rick: Yes, that is correct. I have typ...

Not strictly on this topic, but I'm puzzled by...

"The Stars at War"...I'll have to di...

@FERRELL: I know that the traditional way of t...

Politics with multiple dimensions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_charthttp://www.theadvocates.org/quiz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

Well ... this has been a thoroughly unwelcome expe...

Rick: "Tony - My patience meter is runnin...

=Milo= Ferrell: "I know that the tradi...

Tony - My patience meter is running VERY short wit...

Damien, Oh, BTW, I can distinctly recall sitting ...

Damien, I spent 36 years in the 20th Century, 10 ...

"I was educated in relatively conservative, C...

I know that the traditional way of thinking about ...

Rick: "I'll just say (again) that ide...

I'll just say (again) that identifying right a...

Damien, you cannot separate the means from the end...

Damien Sullivan: "Back in the Dark Ages t...

Back in the Dark Ages there was no left-right spec...

Politics with multiple dimensions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum