Our first production assignment in film school was to film and edit together a silent short, then give it a sound­track that completely altered the emotional response of the viewer. It was a demon­stration of the equally-​​​​matched emotional power of picture and sound. It was a chal­lenging exercise. Today, I present you with two videos, both of which use nearly the same sound­track, but with different pictures. This inverts the exercise. Watch them both, then tell me how each made you feel. Don’t think too much, and don’t try to limit yourself by thinking which is better. Just watch and observe your automatic response to each. [ . . . ]

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Gus Van Horn mentions the diffi­culty of arguing against the government’s use of behavior-​​​​modifying tech­niques in mixed-​​​​government contexts: Unfortunately, everyone is so used to the government owning the roads ... that few so much as bat an eye when they hear of the government looking for ways to psycho­log­i­cally manip­ulate people into doing its bidding. Indeed, in this limited context, it is hard to argue produc­tively against the government taking advantage of such knowledge about human perception. As a law student, this topic has caused me a great deal of concern over the past few months. I have wanted to write something about [ . . . ]

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Flibbert blogs about the possi­bility of people in the future marrying robots. I had some thoughts on the topic that were far too long to post in his comments. Here they are. I agree that only things with rights can enter contracts. Marriage, being a constel­lation of legal rela­tion­ships akin to a contract, is only properly available to things with rights. One could not marry one’s toaster. One’s toaster is not a condi­tional, voli­tional consciousness. Its existence is not an end in itself, it does not require sustained action to gain and achieve values in order to continue to exist, it is not required to [ . . . ]

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It occurs to me that the last post was really long. Sorry. Here’s some more on the conse­quences of Positivism. Constitution. From constituere, to fix or establish. The U.S. Constitution was written as an estab­lishing document. It “fixed” the powers of government. If you read the main body, it presents a list of what the government, be it the Executive, Congress, or the Judiciary, may do. In those places where it prohibits the government from doing something, it is always a narrowing of an earlier grant of authority. Fundamentally, the original Constitution, without the Bill of Rights, is an empow­ering document. It [ . . . ]

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