THE BOOKER PRIZE nominees are out.

MARYLAND IS FOR PIE FIGHTS. “For a moment I considered asking if there was a back room where one could gorge on smuggled pies, but thought better of it. Such secret places would be only for locals and those known to the Mafia, not for transient gypsy engineers such as myself.”

FRAGILE INFRASTRUCTURE: Damaged cable causes Internet blackout in four West African countries.

MIKE TREDER wants to purge transhumanism of libertarians. Hmm. What does a non-libertarian transhumanist future look like?

UPDATE: Here’s something Charlie Stross sent to the Extropian list a while back, and — when contacted by email — he says it still represents his views. Mine too.

Excuse me, but I’m having a really bizarre vision right now, of what the Extropian Revolutionary Front will look like in few years’ time.

(That’s what you get when extropians stop being content to agitate from the sidelines and start thinking about mandating change, get rebuffed by the mainstream, and adopt Lenin’s vanguard party doctrine by way of revenge.)

It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s pretty hellish.

If you mix coercive tactics, or even plain old-fashioned discrimination, in with extropianism and high technology, you get a very, very nasty end product. Previous tyrannies at least left the contents of your skull alone — they yammered propaganda at you, but if you’re used to resisting the blandishments of modern advertising you should be aware that most propaganda is considerably less effective than that. An extropian tyranny, enforced from without in accordance with the usual parameters of a tyrannical system, wouldn’t be content with mere physical compliance. The flip side of uploading as a viable procedure is downloading, and could well be abused to give new meaning to the phrase “the Stalin in your soul”.

If you feel any kind of aversion to this possibility, you want to think very hard about mixing coercion with extropian ideas. Before it’s too late.

Indeed. (Thanks to reader Alastair Young for the tip).

JEFFREY HIRSCH: Making Globalism Work for Employees.

LAW-SCHOOL RANKING EFFORTS REPORTED:

To begin with, let me share an interesting telephone conversation I had several weeks ago, plus two more that followed. On June 23, I received a call from someone at #%$*^# Law School [name redacted, but it is a public law school ranked in US News’s Top 25]. The caller, an employee of that school, asked me if I could provide him with the names of the chair of our faculty hiring committee and the most recently tenured professor (“MRTP”). I asked him why he wanted these names, and he told me that his school planned to send promotional literature to these two faculty members, and also to the dean and associate dean for academic affairs.

For those who haven’t already figured this out, these are the four faculty members who will soon be receiving ballots from US News in connection with next year’s law school rankings. Soon after I had this conversation, two other law schools called me to ask the same question. . . . o, what do you think we might want to send to prospective US News voters? Simple but warm congratulatory notes to every MRTP in the nation? Flowers? Gift cards? ITunes cards? Don’t laugh about that one — at least one other law school has reportedly been sending ITunes cards to would-be law students as a way of improving its student selectivity numbers.

Or just cash. . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Hi Prof. Reynolds:

As you can tell by my e-mail, I work for —- Law School. I am one of the faculty assistants; we sort the incoming mail for the professors. We get a LOT of mail from law schools looking to advance in the U.S. News Rankings – and I’ve worked for both faculty hiring committee chairs and new professors, so I know that this is a lot of mail, everything from postcards and brochures to law school alumni magazines.

If I could say just one thing to all law schools who do this, and the deans who think it’s a good idea: STOP. It is a bad idea. It has no effect on your rankings, and in all likelihood it’s hurting them. The professors who receive this pile of extra junk mail call it “law porn.” Every professor that I know of who gets these instructs us assistants to put it all straight into the trash. They call it a waste of paper – very expensive glossy paper. One told me that it’s actually a negative – the more law porn a school sends him, the more he marks it down on the rankings – and I’m not sure he was kidding. Most of it is academic conference brochures for schools on the other coast in subjects the professors receiving them do not teach in. 50+ page alumni magazines are probably the biggest wastes. But one law school went the extra mile and actually sent separate postcards announcing each of its new faculty hires for the last year, four or five in all, which particularly annoyed the professors here. If these schools want to improve their US News rankings, it’d probably be better to take the money spent on this law porn, which nobody will read, and use it for something else that does improve rankings – more library volumes, for instance. Or better professors.

If you post this (and I hope you do, you’re our only hope), please leave out my name and the school I work for.

Okay, but if I’m you’re only hope, well . . . .

MAKING A laundry list of happiness.

THOUGHTS ON taxing abortion to fund health care. I wonder if cosmetic surgery doesn’t at least arguably have the same personal-identity and bodily integrity issues as abortion. . . .

MSNBC: Losing The Message War? “Perhaps the biggest thing that stood out to us at President Obama’s AARP town hall yesterday was that the White House appears to be losing the message war on health care.”

TOM MAGUIRE NOTES THAT ABC’s race-obsession has led it astray.

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG? West Virginia to Tennessee: This Means War.

CHANGE: NPR Poll Finds Tough Sledding For Obama. “When asked about the plan now moving through Congress, a plurality of 47 percent was opposed and 42 percent said they were in favor, based on what they had heard about the plan so far. . . . But if the president saw his numbers down, Congress fared far worse, with just 7 percent saying they approved strongly and 25 percent saying they approved somewhat. A 61 percent majority said they disapproved of Congress, with 2 out of 3 of them doing so strongly.”

UPDATE: How do you know — I mean, besides that even NPR is saying it — that Obama is in trouble? Suddenly, his critics are being called racist. Would a “wise Latina” recommend this rhetorical move?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Dunn emails: “Surely it was obvious that eventually dissent would become the highest form of racism.” And I remember when it was the highest form of patriotism! Less than a year ago, in fact . . . .

TRACY QUAN is unimpressed with the latest research on “withdrawal” as a means of contraception. “Anxiety about contraception is both good and necessary. It’s like the anxiety you feel about flying through the windshield of your car that makes you buckle up. Even if there are a few short rides during which you didn’t buckle, do you really want road-safety experts telling you not to worry about it?”

I’ll note, though, that from my single-days experience women can be just as casual about contraception as men, and just as unhappy to be reminded of the need to, er, buckle up.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin McKinley writes: “Women can be casual about contraception, because it’s men who ‘get women pregnant’. Apparently women don’t really participate.” People do talk that way sometimes, don’t they?

OOPS: New CBO Estimate Cuts Savings from Obama’s Student Loan Plan in Half. It’s like you can’t trust any of their numbers!

NIGHT INTO DAY: Michael Yon reports on combat in Afghanistan. “The Taliban are trying to snare us with mines, bombs, and SAFIRE (small-arms fire), and basically we try to do the same, only we don’t use mines, and our bombs often come from the sky. The Taliban are very brave, but they are ignorant brutal men who murder locals who do not support them, and brave doesn’t stop bullets.”

LATEST NANNY-IST WORRY: The role of alcohol in Harry Potter.

RUMOR: Health Care Vote Back On. “Democrats are growing fearful that August recess will turn the Blue Dogs cold and want something out by Friday.” Hmm. We’ll know soon, but the rush to get something out by Friday seems unseemly. As John Conyers recently emphasized, nobody’s read this thing.

UPDATE: The Hill: Blue Dogs Strike Deal — No Health Vote Before Recess. “In exchange for putting off a floor vote until after Labor Day, the Energy and Commerce Committee may be allowed to continue its markup of the healthcare bill this week even if an agreement has not been reached between Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and seven Energy and Commerce Committee Blue Dogs over the content of the bill.”

IN THE MAIL: Stephen Carter’s new novel, Jericho’s Fall.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama has aura but doesn’t know how to legislate. “One reason, perhaps, is that he has had little practice.”