Progressives on the Warpath: US Army's Civilian Inmate Labor Program

H/t Orly Tatz. The US Army established a Civilian Inmate Labor Program in 2005 under Army Regulation 210-35, which states:

"This regulation provide guidance for establishing and managing civilian inmate labor programs on Army installations. It provides guidance on establishing prison camps on Army installations..."

Under Section 1-5:

"Civilian inmate labor programs
a. Civilian inmate labor programs benefit both the Army and corrections systems by—
(1) Providing a source of labor at no direct labor cost to Army installations to accomplish tasks that would not be
possible otherwise due to the manning and funding constraints under which the Army operates.
(2) Providing meaningful work for inmates and, in some cases, additional space to alleviate overcrowding in nearby
corrections facilities.
(3) Making cost–effective use of buildings and land not otherwise being used.
b. Except for the 3 exceptions listed in paragraph 2–1d below, installation civilian inmate labor programs may use
civilian inmate labor only from Federal corrections facilities located either off or on the installation."

Under Chapter 2:

"With a few exceptions, the Army’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program is currently limited to using inmates from
facilities under the control of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP). Section 4125(a), Title 18, United States Code
allows the Attorney General to make available to other Federal agencies the services of Federal inmates and defines the
types of services inmates can perform. The FBOP provides civilian inmate labor free of charge to the Army."

A Conspiracy Theory of the Obama Phenomenon

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories but let's try one. A group of investment bankers, George Soros, David Rockefeller, Rupert Murdoch types gather at the Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission or some similar venue. They aim to loot the public by injecting a huge amount of monetary reserves into the banking system, hyper-escalating a stock market depressed by media rumors (media that they control), sell at the peak and then sell dollars. They aim to find a fall guy for the ensuing market collapse and hyper-inflation. They create the image of a messianic president who turns out to be corrupt. What could be worse than discovering the Anointed One is a corrupt fraud? They play to racism thinly veiled by "progressive" cognitive dissonance and "liberal guilt". The monetary reserves do their work while, simultaneously a series of corruption scandals evolve even before the Annointed One takes office. The scandals start almost instantaneously, but take several years to coalesce around the Anointed One. By then, the stock market has peaked and goes into free fall, the dollar is plunging and there's hyper-inflation. The banker conspiracy pulls their dollars out of the US into gold, commodities or Euros. Who better to hang the problems on than the corrupt Messiah?

Tin foil hat stuff, right?

Rahm's N*ts Roasting on an Open Fire

The AP reports (via Yahoo!):

"Emanuel and Obama have remained silent about what, if anything, Emanuel knew of the governor's alleged efforts to peddle Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder."

If Obama were Nixon, would the New York Times, the LA Times and the Washington Posts be sitting like three monkeys, "see no evil", "hear no evil", "speak no evil"? Or would they be calling for a special prosecutor?

Notes on the Singularity

One of my students, Jason (who happens to be George Herman "Babe" Ruth's grand nephew), gave me an interesting 1993 article by Vernor Vinge entitled "The Coming Technological Singularity". Vinge believes with Ray Kurzweil and others that computer technology will become self-aware and will supplant human intelligence, so that all heck will break loose. They call this the singularity. Vinge writes:

"...we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence...The development of computers that are 'awake' and superhumanly intelligent...Large computer networks may 'wake up'...Computer/human interface may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent..."

Vinge calls this occurrence "the singularity" because "a new reality rules". The outcome of this singularity would be the transcendence of the human race by a new conscious entity, what I may call computerkind, that would view humankind as a lower order life form.

This is very theoretical. I do not believe it will happen. I am skeptical of Vinge's assumption (that is characteristic of this literature, including Ray Kurzweil) to assume that intelligence is pure rationality. Vinge is a mathematician and so overrates that kind of intelligence. Rather, I would argue that intelligence is adaptation to environment, and mathematics is a reflection of adaptive evolution, important but incapable of independent existence. Pure rationality is not capable of grasping real world problems because parameters change too frequently and therefore assumptions about the world are anemic. Information specific to time and place is far more important to creative processes than deductive logic. That is why most mathematicians are poor.

Here's a test: If this signularity doesn't occur by 2030 (which Vinge predicts) will Vinge (a) push the year to 2050 or (b) admit that he was mistaken? If (a), might his ideas be more theoretical real world?