Jonesing for the truth
| :: |
Tuesday, November 4, 2003 |
John Robb's Weblog
I don't know which company will be the most powerful software company in the world in 2030, but it will be running the most effective
LUI network. Paraphrased: John Smart. Which makes you consider what a shame it was that Lernout and Hauspie
went awry.
John Robb's Weblog
My friend
John Smart postulates that immune systems always win. I agree with a caveat. Innovation occurs less rapidly within a highly evolved immune system. Why? Immune systems protect against the unexpected, even if it is beneficial.
John Robb's Weblog
Kudos to
Jon Udell on his speaking engagement on blogs and mid-size companies. However, I think most of the earliest (and best) ideas on the topic of corporate weblogging came from the
Yahoo K-Logs group I run. Like Dave, I find it sad to see my innovations plastered over by others as they jump into the space. This is the big reason that I froze the discussion a couple of months ago. Life shouldn't be a zero sum equation, but it almost always reverts to that.
John Robb's Weblog
Word of the day:
Zettatechnology.
John Robb's Weblog
Dan, don't we already have micropayments with
PayPal for everything other than business transactions?
John Robb's Weblog
Scoble's right about rich client apps. By freezing the browser, Microsoft is forcing the market to build rich clients that connect to Internet resources.
John Robb's Weblog
Doc reminds us to check out the light show tonight.
John Robb's Weblog
If you haven't heard about the new sports plane license rules yet, take a look. Along with these rules, a new crop of
low cost aircraft (lots of nice pics) are on the way. They sell for the cost of a good SUV. This may bring me back into flying.
John Robb's Weblog
EETimes: IBM chip selected for the next gen XBox.
The current Xbox is based on a Pentium 3 processor running at 800 MHz or less. One problem Microsoft has faced is the conversion of Xbox systems into personal computers. By buying a heavily subsidized $200 game machine from Microsoft, and then adding a pirated disk drive, the Xbox can be used as a "poor man's PC, turning a $200 game machine into a $600 personal computer, which Microsoft doesn't like at all," Doherty said. That may have led Microsoft to the PowerPC platform developed by IBM.
John Robb's Weblog
WSJ. Wow, Prudential ignored 25,000 warning letters from mutual fund operators that its brokers were participating in securities fraud. Too bad
the hedge funds and their rich limited partners or shareholders that benefited from this to steal from mutual fund investors won't be indicted too.
John Robb's Weblog
CNN. The president's pollster claims falling polls don't spell doom for the next election. Three items to the contrary include:
- Unemployment trends are the best indicator of incumbent success. Those numbers are against the president. The current outsourcing trend during the recovery is going to play havoc as we continue to grow without jobs.
- No American likes a president that gets them into an optional war. That view will become extremely popular in the next 12 months. This is in stark contrast to what I think special or black ops should do: if somebody shoots at you in that job, you didn't do your job.
- Stem cell research bans. How do you create a large new "anti" group in one day: sentence them to daily pain and an eventual nasty death. Once these groups are organized, the religious right has a counter-weight. This is the real "right to life."
John Robb's Weblog
A peer application that makes you money for you. Gomez, a company I built, is looking for
international participants in its peer network (already over 10,000 machines all over the world). The peers will be used to test the transaction systems of financial institutions around the globe (which will make the end-user experience at your favorite online broker, bank, or mutual fund much better). Gomez will pay you via PayPal for each minute you are online on a monthly basis. I think they would pay you extra if you connect via dial-up in Germany, Japan, and Canada. Might be a way to defray the costs of computing.
John Robb's Weblog
BBC. "Islamic Republic" for Afghanistan.
John Robb's Weblog
Michael Fraase on stem cell research and presidential politics.
John Robb's Weblog
ni3. Dann Sheridan's new site is up (how does he find the time with a new baby in the house). The entire site is CSS using Radio (he had to do some rework on Radio's macros to pull this off). Congrats. Looks great.
John Robb's Weblog
A very nice collection of resources for science students (both high school and college) from
WolframResearch and
Eric Weisstein (includes:
Math,
Physics,
Chemistry,
Astronomy,
Scientist Biographies). A list of 37,000+
mathematical functions. Nice
tools for creating MathML (mark-up language) from expresions and the ability to convert from MathML to a GIF/JPEG. An online
integrator.
Mathematical graphics gallery.
Very nice.
John Robb's Weblog
Boston Globe. A good review of a neo-con patriarch: Richard Pipes. He was one of the intellectual architects of the Reagan administration's strategy of confrontation with the Soviet Union. He had some choice bits to say:
He bluntly dismisses the promise of a democratic Iraq -- "impossible, a fantasy" -- citing obstacles similar to Russia's. "Democracy requires, among other things, individualism -- the breakdown of old clannish, tribal organizations, the individual standing face-to-face with the state. You don't have that in the Middle East. Iraq is tribally run."
It is not lost on Pipes that his criticism goes directly to the judgment of the Bush team, conservatives like himself, in some cases former colleagues, most prominently Team B's own Wolfowitz. "Paul didn't have much education in history," Pipes says. "It's not his field. He was educated as a military specialist, a nuclear weapons specialist. Like most scientists, he doesn't have a particular understanding of other cultures."
John Robb's Weblog
CNN. Teen abduction foiled by cell phone camera. Cool.
John Robb's Weblog
NYTimes. Long
analysis piece on the war in Iraq.
Blueprint for a Mess.
John Robb's Weblog
Here is a small
WiFi repeater from D-Link. Unfortunately, it only works with D-Link hubs right now. Very close to what I need. All they need to do now is make it look like a nightlight that plugs into a wall socket. Drop the ethernet port, keep the USB port for firmware upgrades, and put a wall plug in the back.
John Robb's Weblog
NYT.
Mr. Gishi left a wife and nine children. His eldest son, Ala-Muhammad al-Gishi, 23, a student, insisted that his father's hands were clean. "No one had animosity for him," he said. "We didn't have disputes with anyone." A moment later he added, "A couple of days earlier another comrade was killed." Relatives standing near him suddenly blanched as they tried to quiet him. "Comrade" is the unmistakable greeting among Baath Party members.
John Robb's Weblog
Washington Post: Israel's top military officer said that
Israel's military tactics against the Palestinian population were too repressive and were fomenting explosive levels of "hatred and terrorism" that might become impossible to control.
John Robb's Weblog
Rajesh found a
great article on Vietnam and open source. Sounds like an Asian consortium of like minded countries that combine what China has done with 3G (see below) and open source could turn the tables on the US and Europe -- or to put in a more positive light, tip the technology playing field in favor of helping developing nations catch up more quickly. Who will set up that regional
bloc? Who has the clout?
John Robb's Weblog
Brent has some great insights on the concept of shareware vs. commercial software.
John Robb's Weblog
USA Today: Israel plans to use remote-control bulldozers to demolish Palestinian property. Question: unlawful attacks against property has been defined as terrorism by the US and many other states. Is the destruction of Palestinian property terrorism? Will the US use this tactic in Iraq (or have they already)? Does the use of robotic/remote-control functionality fundamentally change the nature of the act? Lots of questions: very few answers.
John Robb's Weblog
The Register (and
2): Extremely interesting. China has jumped into the standards game and they are throwing their weight around in a big way. This first forray is with TD-SCDMA (a combination of cellular technologies) for next generation 3G cellular handsets. Basically, they co-developed this technology with Siemens and own the IP jointly. This standard is in direct competition with Europe's WCDMA effort for 3G (and Qualcomm's CDMA solution).
The terms: deployment in China is royalty free and everywhere else it is 30% cheaper than alternatives. With 250 m cellular users, the ability to mandate faster acceptance, lower costs for upgrades (due to $0 royalties), and a spill over effect into the rest of SE Asia (perhaps another 100 m users): China may win big here (particularly Chinese consumers).
John Robb's Weblog
Reuters:
In Washington, the independent Congressional Budget Office said the occupation of Iraq could cost up to $200 billion over the next decade depending on its size and length and that in a worst case scenario U.S. troops could be in the country to 2013. Answering questions from an opposition Democratic lawmaker, the Office said in a best case scenario, troop numbers would be cut in half each year until a withdrawal in 2007. In the worst, at least 50,000 troops would have to remain in Iraq through to 2013. Washington currently has 130,000 troops in the country. NOTE: Sounds like a conservative estimate to me. Frankly, most of our difficulties revolve around the idea of establishing Iraq as functional, democratic, and multi (ethinic and religious) nation-state. It would be much easier, safer, and less expensive to divide it up into autonomous regions. The question is whether the neo-con advisors in the White House can adapt to the reality on the ground or are they stuck in "policy space." Also note the contradiction in the article:
independent CBO and
opposition Democratic lawmaker...
Wired News
Xbox to Switch to PowerPC. The chip that powers the Macintosh will soon be in Microsoft's gaming console. That's good news for IBM and a bad sign for Intel. By Leander Kahney.
Wired News
Spam Wars: Filters Strike Back. Until now, antispam developers and their products have played defense only. But now, one activist wants spam filters to automatically launch attacks against suspected spammers' sites to shut them down. By Amit Asaravala.
Wired News
Salem Selling a Dubious Past. What better place to spend All Hallow's Eve than in Salem, Massachusetts, site of the infamous witch trials of 1692. Or was it? Michelle Delio reports from Salem.
Wired News
Darpa Runs Robo-Racers Off Road. About 100 teams accepted the Pentagon's challenge to build robots that can race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas without human help. But the Pentgon goofed. It invited too many and may ax many entrants. By Noah Shachtman.
Wired News
Calif. Halts E-Vote Certification. The discovery that uncertified software may have been used in electronic voting machines has prompted California officials to delay plans to approve new machines made by Diebold Election Systems. Kim Zetter reports from Sacramento, California.
Wired News
Wal-Mart, DOD Forcing RFID. Despite the performance and cost barriers still facing radio-frequency identification tags, major market influencers such as Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense are pushing their vendors to use RFID.
Wired News
Amazon: Look, But Don't Touch. The online retailer apparently refines its book-searching feature to prevent users from printing out sample pages. The Authors Guild squawked that readers might simply print material rather than buying a book.
Washington Post: Editorial
Drop This Case
Washington Post: Editorial
A D.C. Health Care Flip
Washington Post: Editorial
The Funding Gap
Washington Post: Editorial
Primary Gift To Bush?
Washington Post: Editorial
To Build an Army
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Video Games Are Addictive as Work - Scientists (Reuters). Reuters - Computer game fanatics
should not be labeled addicts, although many players say they
are hooked on a hobby that is affecting their social lives,
scientists said Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
New Treatment May Help With Cholesterol (AP). AP - Intravenous doses of a synthetic component of "good" cholesterol reduced artery disease in just six weeks in a small study with startlingly big implications for treating the nation's No. 1 killer.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Letterman, Girlfriend Have Baby Boy (AP). AP - David Letterman is a daddy. Letterman's girlfriend, Regina Lasko, delivered a baby boy late Monday night. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 11 inches and is 21 inches long, Letterman announced on his show Tuesday night.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
More Voters Deciding Not to Support Bush (AP). AP - More than four in 10 voters nationwide say they definitely plan to vote against President Bush next year ÷ more than plan to vote for him, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Vanquish PC Viruses (PC World). PC World - Take command of your computer's security by following our handy 10-point checklist.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Storm Helps Split Iceberg in New Zealand (AP). AP - A powerful Antarctic storm has helped split apart an iceberg the size of Jamaica, a New Zealand scientist said Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Chief Executive and Star Designer to Step Down at Gucci (The New York Times). The New York Times - The two men who transformed Gucci into a luxury goods giant will step down in April, when a takeover by Pinault is completed.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Lawyer Gets Rapped for Singing Bob Marley Tune (Reuters). Reuters - The lawyer for a man convicted of
shooting and killing a policeman apologized on Monday for
singing the Bob Marley hit "I Shot The Sheriff" as he was
leaving the courtroom.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Dems Press Dean on Confederate Flag Flap (AP). AP - Howard Dean, under fire from his Democratic rivals, stubbornly refused to apologize Tuesday night for saying the party must court Southerners with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.
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Survey: Job Cuts More Than Double in Oct. (AP). AP - Job cuts announced by U.S. companies more than doubled in October from the previous month, providing more evidence that the nation's economy is in a period of jobless expansion, according to a report from an outplacement firm.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Leeches Help with Arthritis Pain (Reuters). Reuters - Treatment with leeches may
reduce pain and stiffness in patients with arthritis of the
knee, German scientists report.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Man Saves Fish with Kiss of Life (Reuters). Reuters - A former Belgian ambulance driver put
his first aid skills to good use by reviving one of his pond
fish with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a newspaper said
Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
GOP Leads Miss. Gov. Race, Wins Ky. Gov. (AP). AP - Republican Washington lobbyist Haley Barbour leads the Mississippi race for governor against incumbent Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove as the GOP seeks to make further inroads in the South.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Drug Appears to Unclog Arteries - Study (Reuters). Reuters - An experimental drug developed by
Esperion Therapeutics Inc. appears capable of clearing clogged
arteries of the plaque that causes heart attack and stroke,
according to a study published on Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Nurses Need Better Working Conditions - Report (Reuters). Reuters - Tired and grumpy nurses forget to
wash their hands, give the wrong drugs to patients, and waste
hours on paperwork, a panel of experts said in a report calling
for shorter hours and better working conditions for the
profession.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
U.S. Faces Troop Pressure As Turkey Balks (AP). AP - In a major setback to U.S. efforts to attract military help in Iraq, a Turkish official said Tuesday his country won't send peacekeeping troops without a significant change in the situation there. That makes it virtually certain the United States will have to send thousands more U.S. reservists early next year.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Cancer Cases Against IBM Begin Trial in California (Reuters). Reuters - Two former IBM workers were
stricken with cancer after being poisoned by the chemicals used
in the ultra-clean, sterile rooms where they made computer
disks and circuit boards, their lawyer told a jury in opening
arguments in a landmark lawsuit on Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Talk-Show Host David Letterman Is Father at 56 (Reuters). Reuters - Late-night talk-show host David
Letterman told his studio audience on Tuesday that he has
become a father at the age of 56.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
'Hasta La Vista' Comes to UN on Cuba Embargo (Reuters). Reuters - Casting itself as the
terminator, the United States on Tuesday wished Cuba's Fidel
Castro "hasta la vista, baby" before a vote in the U.N. General
Assembly on the U.S. embargo against Havana.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Child Hands Out Heroin 'Candy' to Classmates (Reuters). Reuters - A five-year-old Dutch girl handed out
"sweets" to classmates that turned out to be ecstasy, cocaine
and heroin pills, police said on Monday.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
FCC Approves Internet Anti-Piracy Tool (AP). AP - The government Tuesday approved an anti-piracy mechanism that will make it harder for computer users to illegally distribute digital TV programs on the Internet. The goal is to speed the transition to higher quality digital broadcasts and ensure such programming remains free.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Tenacious D Going Hungry for Its Art (Reuters). Reuters - With tongue planted firmly in cheek,
the members of Tenacious D announced Monday that they would
begin a 45-day hunger strike at 5 p.m.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Timeline: When Is 'The Matrix'? (AP). AP - What is the Matrix?
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed
Global Warming Means Snow for Great Lakes - Report (Reuters). Reuters - In theory, global warming should be
a good thing for the Great Lakes, right? Wrong.
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
STRIKE OUT: Our one step forward, three steps backward...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
DAMN: I don't know what I can add to this : The...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
BEDTIME FOR BONZO: Frankly, I say " good riddance " to...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
CAPTION CONTEST: "Hey there Arnie, did you have a little...
dive into mark
Redesign (again). New home page. Love it? Hate it? Be honest. (24 words)
Semi-Daily Journal
Let Us Now Curse Microsoft Windows.
The Ten-Year-Old is trying to install SimIsle on our lone Windows computer--purchased because the Thirteen-Year-Old wanted to play Medieval Total War, and there was no Macintosh version.
It is throwing up a post-installation error message: something about WinG32.dll incorrectly installed in the "System" rather than in the "System32" directory.
Shouldn't an operating system smart enough to know that the WinG32.dll file is in the wrong directory also be smart enough to move, copy, or link it to the right directory? I mean, what's the problem requiring human-level attention here, anyway?
I don't like the lesson this machine is teaching the Ten-Year-Old: that when she tries to do simple things, they just don't work, and computers can only be understood and made to work by Big People like Dad.
The fact that this is an accurate lesson, at least as far as Windows machines are concerned, is beside the point.
Semi-Daily Journal
Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Fools? Part CCCXXV.
Kevin Drum momentarily visits an alternative branch of the universe's quantum wave function in which things that Paul Wolfowitz says are true, in which "100,000 troops... [are] enough [to keep order in Iraq]. Occupation costs ... [are] low. Oil exports... amount to $15 billion or more. There's no ethnic strife in Iraq. Iraqis... welcome an American liberation force. Other countries ÷ even France! ÷ ... see the light and help out after the war is over."
Calpundit: Wishful Thinking: WISHFUL THINKING....As I was Googling links for the post below, I came across this Eric Schmitt article for the New York Times from last February. In retrospect, it is nothing less than mind boggling, and a salutary reminder of what the administration was really telling us nine months ago. Here are some excerpts:
Mr. Wolfowitz...opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year.
....."The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said....A spokesman for General Shinseki, Col. Joe Curtin, said today that the general stood by his estimate.
....In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.
....Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high....Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.
100,000 troops should be enough. Occupation costs will be low. Oil exports will amount to $15 billion or more. There's no ethnic strife in Iraq. Iraqis will welcome an American liberation force. Other countries ÷ even France! ÷ will see the light and help out after the war is over.
Schmitt's entire story is less than a thousand words long. It hardly seems possible to pack so much wishful thinking into such a small space.
And these guys are still in charge.
Once again, where are the grownups in the
Republican Party? What do the Republican senators think that they are doing, exactly?
Semi-Daily Journal
Kinda Sad....
Julian Sanchez makes an interesting find in a used book store:
Julian's Lounge: Notes from the Lounge: Strolling home today from the cafe where I sometimes work so as to get out of the apartment for a while, I popped into a local used bookshop. Browsing through the new arrivals, I spotted a hardbacked copy of Effort, Opportunity and Wealth by the late economist Julian Simon. Flipping it open idly, I was surprised to find it inscribed:
For Bea and Irving,
In hopes of more [ILLEGIBLE] together,
Julian
January 10, 1988
I had chanced upon a copy signed by Julian Simon! But what of "Bea and Irving"? I immediately thought of Irving Kristol. But wasn't he married to the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb? I asked the clerk to Google Kristol's name along with "Bea" and quickly saw that Himmelfarb is known as "Bea" to her friends. So this was indeed a book Simon had given them some 15 years ago. I don't know how it came recently to this little bookshop, but it's kind of a cool find—15 bucks in mint condition.
Kinda sad. The only books of mine that are in "mint condition" are those that are still unread, after all. No copy of anybody's book should have to suffer that indignity...
Semi-Daily Journal
Czar Vladimir's Khodorkovshchina.
The Financial Times's Martin Wolf tries to make sense of Russia:
FT.com Home US: A clash between arbitrary power and illegitimate wealth. That is the conflict between Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, estwhile chairman of Yukos. Power will surely win. The question is how it will use that victory. Will it support a market economy or lead to a new cycle of predation? Either way, Russia's progress towards what contemporary westerners regard as normality is to be measured in decades, not years.
Secure private property is the foundation of both a market economy and democracy. Parliamentary control emerged in England because the Crown had to obtain the consent of the propertied to taxation. In time, the suffrage widened with the circle of those whose consent was necessary. In the Russia of Peter the Great, however, the state owned everything. When private property was granted, under Catherine the Great, it took the form of absolute ownership of the country's principal resource: its people. Inevitably, as Harvard's Richard Pipes notes, property "was widely viewed as an enemy of both freedom and social justice". The serfs were at last emancipated in 1861, only to be re-enslaved, after 1917, by perhaps the most despotic state in history.
That this history made a swift transition to a law-governed, property-owning democracy nigh on inconceivable is evident. Yet how far Russia has gone backwards to its future is astonishing. An arbitrary, but ineffective, state faces vast, but illegitimate, wealth.... A less foolish comparison is with the successful reformers of central and eastern Europe.... Russia failed to carry through such [comprehensive] reforms, as it struggled with the simultaneous collapse of its ideology, its empire and its regime. Partial reforms allowed a group of shrewd people to amass huge fortunes. Privatisation permitted both them and existing managers to seize industrial assets. Finally, the notorious "loans for shares" scheme of 1995 transferred much of the country's natural resources to private hands....
[S]izeable improvements have been made. Gross domestic product this year is forecast to be some 36 per cent above its trough in 1998.... Yet these improvements, albeit real, must not be exaggerated. The data... suggest GDP is still below 1990 levels.... The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates capital flight at $191bn from 1994 to this year inclusive, and $23bn this year alone. The cumulative flight is not much short of twice annual exports and two-thirds of GDP.
The question is whether Mr Putin's authoritarian state will improve the economy further. This is possible, but doubtful. The Khodorkovsky affair can only underline the insecurity of property and the discretion available to the state. Those who support Mr Putin understandably resent the wealth of the new tycoons. That is a recipe for ongoing capital flight and corruption. Finally, the basis of wealth in Russia remains natural resource rents. As long as this is the case, the pursuit of wealth will be seen as a zero-sum game, with victory to the powerful.
Semi-Daily Journal
China Bashing as Political Cowardice IV.
James Sasser believes that Bush administration (and bipartisan congressional) China-bashing is being made by those who have no conception of what good long-run economic policy is and no regard for the long-run national security of the United States:
FT.com Home US: ...China's progress toward reform has been slow, sometimes meandering, but ultimately steady and entirely real. China's commitment to free market reform has been consistent and remains a powerful force. Its efforts to comply with the terms of its WTO accession, while imperfect, have been favourably received by many US exporters. China has begun to dismantle its massive tariff regime and is opening its markets to a wide range of foreign goods and services. As a result, US exports to China increased by more than 15 per cent between 2001 and 2002.
China has also worked with the US government on several post-September 11 2001 anti-terrorism initiatives, including a recent agreement allowing US customs officials access to the ports of Shanghai and Shenzhen in order monitor container traffic destined for the US. By western standards, China's record on human rights continues to be tragically inadequate; no one is suggesting that its pace of democratic reform is as rapid as we should like it to be.
But there is much to lose if we allow short-term domestic political advantage to blind us to the long-term strategic consequences. Hu Jintao, China's new president, is eager both to safeguard existing reforms put in place by his predecessor and to advance their momentum. Nothing could more jeopardise Mr Hu's reformist designs or play more into the hands of the hard-liners than policy dictates from the US that would increase Chinese unemployment (which is already at dangerous levels) or weaken its economic foundation and thereby undercut the essential foundations of continued reform...
Semi-Daily Journal
The Infamous "Team B".
Matthew Yglesias writes about the infamous "Team B":
TAPPED: November 2003 Archives: IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED. Over the weekend, The Boston Globe ran an interesting profile of Richard Pipes, the historian of the Soviet Union whose anti-communist zeal led him to Washington to do some practical work as a cold warrior:
In late 1975, a dramatic reshuffling of the Ford administration installed a new defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a new chief of staff, Dick Cheney, and a new CIA chief, George H.W. Bush. It was Bush who approved the formation of "Team B," a group of 16 outside experts charged with challenging what some considered the CIA's sanguine estimates of Soviet military strength. Pipes, named the group's chairman, brought in a brilliant young weapons analyst, Paul Wolfowitz. "Richard Perle recommended him," Pipes says of Wolfowitz today. "I'd never heard of him."Team B was engulfed in controversy from the outset. A top CIA analyst called it "a kangaroo court of outside critics all picked from one point of view." Others said its mission was to hype the Soviet threat. Pipes disagrees. "We dealt with one problem only: What is the Soviet strategy for nuclear weapons? Team B was appointed to look at the evidence and to see if we could conclude that the actual Soviet strategy is different from ours. It's now demonstrated totally, completely, that it was," he says, adducing documents in Polish archives that show the Soviets planning to use nuclear weapons in the event of war.
This is a pretty serious misrepresentation on Pipes' part of Team B's work. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek over the summer:It all started with the now famous "Team B" exercise. During the early 1970s, hard-line conservatives pilloried the CIA for being soft on the Soviets. As a result, CIA Director George Bush agreed to allow a team of outside experts to look at the intelligence and come to their own conclusions. Team B--which included Paul Wolfowitz--produced a scathing report, claiming that the Soviet threat had been badly underestimated.In retrospect, Team B's conclusions were wildly off the mark. Describing the Soviet Union, in 1976, as having "a large and expanding Gross National Product," it predicted that it would modernize and expand its military at an awesome pace. For example, it predicted that the Backfire bomber "probably will be produced in substantial numbers, with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984." In fact, the Soviets had 235 in 1984.
The reality was that even the CIAâs own estimates--savaged as too low by Team B--were, in retrospect, gross exaggerations. In 1989, the CIA published an internal review of its threat assessments from 1974 to 1986 and came to the conclusion that every year it had "substantially overestimated" the Soviet threat along all dimensions. For example, in 1975 the CIA forecast that within 10 years the Soviet Union would replace 90 percent of its long-range bombers and missiles. In fact, by 1985, the Soviet Union had been able to replace less than 60 percent of them.
This is significant because the Team B personnel are now back working in the government, where they once again decided to circumvent the intelligence agencies and over-over-estimate a threat that it appears the agencies were already over-estimating on their own. Take a look at Pipes' defense of the intention-based approach to intelligence gathering:Today Pipes defends his approach. "Hardware doesn't tell you anything. You can have a neighbor who's a peaceful man who likes to collect guns because he likes to collect guns. But he may also be a criminal, or someone who collects them for a different reason." The big question, in other words, is intention.
This makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly, if you want to know whether or not somebody is going to shoot you, you need to know two things. First, does he have a gun? Second, does he want to use it? In Pipes' example it's simply taken for granted that the neighbor has a gun, but we now know Saddam Hussein's WMD program was all hat and no cattle, so his intentions hardly seem relevant.Pipes and his collaborators seem to have gained a lot of confidence from America's victory in the Cold War, but the fact remains that they had relatively little to do with it. In the second Reagan administration, a reform-minded Soviet leader came to the helm and the president largely sidelined the super-hawks in favor of a return to containment. As a result, the Soviet Union was kept in its box and the communist system collapsed under its own weight. The Soviet menace wasn't growing any more than Iraq was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Getting something like this wrong once is pretty understandable -- intelligence gathering is an inexact science -- but having been proven wrong once, the same group of people came back to power, used the same methods again, and were proven wrong again. Pay attention to administration statements about the WMD search and you'll see the goalpost-moving strategy Pipes employed in this article -- trying to switch the conversation from whether Saddam had weapons to whether he wanted them. Doubtless we'll see the younger members of today's team back 20 years from now insisting that the CIA is underestimating the looming Peruvian threat or something. Some people never learn.
--Matthew Yglesias
Semi-Daily Journal
How to Search.
Elizabeth Lane Lawley channels Mary Ellen Bates:
mamamusings: Internet Librarian: 30 Search Tips in 40 Minutes: Mary Ellen Bates on tips for searching effectively. These are her tips, not mine. My comments, when I have them, are parenthetical.
I almost hate to share these, because these are the kind of tips that let people like me come across as an “angel of information mercy” to the people who ask me for help in finding things!
BTW, Mary Ellen is a great presenter. Funny, interesting, clear. She’s got a free “tip of the month” email update, which you can also read on her web site.
- Always use more than one search engine. (You’ll often get very different results; useful to triangulate.) See a test at www.batesinfo.com
- Use AltaVista’s “world keyboard” to insert non-Roman characters.
- Use AltaVista’s “sorted by” box to filter results. It’s not an “AND”, but it causes results with the sorted-by contents to bubble up to the top. “Softer than an AND but more relevant than an OR.”
- Use thesauri and web dictionaries to identify key words, put client’s request in context. (e.g. Google’s define feature, etc)
- Use spell-check to identify American-only spellings (fiber/fibre, labor/labour, etc). Type search terms in MS Word, set language to UK English, and run spell check!
- Watch for alternative phrasing (retirement/superannuation, revenue/turnover). British to American tips
- Use Google’s synonym feature. ~search-term; e.g. ~sheep returns sites with terms livestock, lamb.
- Use “pearl culturing” (particularly in for-fee services)—look for key concepts in just the title of elements, then find the keywords assigned to that document. Use a similar approach on the web by using a “reverse link lookup”—find out who linked to a site, on the assumption they’ll have more like it.
- Use Google’s “related:” operator. Syntax: related:www.altvedmed.com ; doesn’t find linked pages; finds similar pages.
- Use tools, not search engines. Open directory (dmoz.org), subject-specific directories. Use search engine to find a tool, use the tool to find the answer. Let someone else (an expert) find the most relevant/authoritative information.
- Search for sources, not just information. Assume key information will be buried in the “invisible web.”
- Mine weblogs, don’t subscribe to ‘em. “JIT research, rather than JIC reading.” Use daypop, technorati searches. (“Weblogs are the most efficient source of time wasting.”)
- Use AllTheWeb’s URL Investigator ; type URL in search box and see lots of meta information about the link.
- Use “reverse link” searching as a citation search, and to find “more like this”. Google syntax is link:www.somedomain.com Works best with less common sites. Works better in AllTheWeb
#Use Wayback Machine to find deleted pages, 404 pages, etc. It now has full text searching which greatly enhances its value. Useful to see how an issue was treated at a specific point in time, or how it changed over time.
- Use whois to track down elusive companies. whois.sc, allwhois.com, easywhois.com. Caveat: some people lie. Aternative, Dialog’s Domain Names database (file 225), which lists Whowas records.
- Use commercial online services to search the web. Dialog, Factiva, LexisNexis. Search for keyword near multiple occurrences of “www” — this generally leads to a good overview article, with related links.
- Use Teoma.com to identify experts’ sites, link-rich pages. (Look at “resources” section on results page; these are “link-rich” sites on your topic.)
- Poke around the site. Be nosy. Use the “search this site” function, use site map, check all the pull-down menus.
- Mine Yahoo! Groups. Many groups have shared files, but you must join the group to get access. Find groups on a specialized topic, use that as a subject resource. (“Where would people with shared, obscure interests go to discuss a topic with like-minded people?”) This is invisible web content; you won’t find it in a general search engine.
- Buy a kitchen timer. After 15 minutes, re-evaluate your web research strategy. You can get so deep into “following the trail” that you lose your focus. (My note: Great idea for a lot of things. Blog reading, etc.)
- Use “type of document” indicators; for audio, include things like listen or hear — for opinion pieces look for PDF or DOC files. For statistics, look for .XLS files; include chart or graph along with keywords.
- Know the advanced search capabilities of at least three search engines. Truncation? Proximity searching? Case sensitivity? Field searching?
- Use results “clustering” or refining features when you can. Example of “mooter.com”, an Australian search engine, which clusters results visually. Small index right now, but the concept is very cool. (My note: This kind of clustering is what I’ve always liked about NorthernLight, which was my pre-Google favorite engine.)
- Search inges only show 2 or 3 results from a site; click the more results from… link to see (often) many more pages.
- Know what you’re looking for. What kind of answer? A phone number? An expert? Search engine might not be the best tool. Think creatively about what kind of information you’re looking for; where would that be likely to be?
- Use the web to find experts, then pick up the phone! Makes you “value added” in a way that matters to clients.
- Use free sources to scope out what’s available, and to find problems in your search strategy— then go to a for-fee service.
- Disambiguate. Know what you’re looking for. What does “mobile messaging” mean? Net-enabled PDAs, or vehicles that display advertising. Always rephrase the request in your own words.
- What works best for the professional online services doesn’t work well with web searching. Complex searches don’t work on the web. Order of the search terms matters. Forget precision and go for what will likely float to the top.
- Some searches are simply not meant to be done online.
Semi-Daily Journal
Another Organization with a Positive Allergy to the Truth.
Two Boston Herald reporters accurately report a phone conversation they had with a Massachusetts Catholic bishop, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston calls them "either ignoran[t] of [the] church's teachings or [expressing] a media sympathy for the gay rights agenda."
Don't I remember something about "not bearing false witness"?
Church: Media got bishop's words on gays all wrong : ...A front-page story in the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, The Pilot, deals with the controversy. An accompanying editorial states the reporters who wrote the story for the Boston Herald, The Boston Globe and other media displayed "either ignorance of church's teachings or a media sympathy for the gay rights agenda."... In a telephone interview with a Herald reporter after his testimony, Reilly was asked about denying benefits to "gay couples." Reilly said: "That's wrong, and that's too bad." He further said: "We have to find a way" to give civil benefits to gay partners. Reilly did make it clear... that the church opposes any form of "gay marriage."
Why slime reporters who were doing their jobs well? Why not a simple "Bishop Reilly was off message"?
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Dean's Surprise?. Am I the only one in pundit land that thinks that Bob Graham declining to run for re-election has maybe a little something to do with the Thursday announcement from the Dean campaign described by Joe Trippi as "the most...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Fight, Then Fight Some More. I highly recommend that you pick up the current issue of The American Prospect - the one with Bill Clinton on the cover. Along with the interview, there's some great essays on how the left can (and has) articulated a...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
"Lagging Indicator" Watch. The Bush Economy: Good for corporations, horrible for actual human beings. Job Cuts Announced by U.S. Corporations More Than Double in October Job cuts announced by U.S. companies more than doubled in October from the previous month, providing more evidence...
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Creating 3D Classes with ActionScript 2.0 by Chad Corbin; re: Macromedia Flash.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Creating Movie Clip Subclasses in ActionScript 2.0 by Brian Lesser; re: Macromedia Flash.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Speeding Up CFML Development With Dreamweaver: How to Create Custom Server Behaviors by Simon Horwith; re: Dreamweaver, ColdFusion.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Creating a Flash Element by Andreas Heim; re: Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
How to Develop An Online Shopping Cart (Part Two) by Lawrence Cramer; re: Dreamweaver.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Imaging Lingo Basics by Chuck Neal; re: Director.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
What You Missed at TAAC 8 (The Alternative Authorware Conference) by Aaron Jones; re: Authorware.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Eye Candy for Authorware (Part 1) by Amy Blankenship; re: Authorware.
Macromedia - Designer Developer Center
Authorware and Learning Management System Knowledge Objects by Andrew Chemey; re: Authorware.
Daily Kos
A Political Disaster on Both Sides of the Atlantic. The Deluge of Disaster in Iraq has begun. There is...
Daily Kos
Return of the Draft?. Several commentors have posted this website for the Selective Service...
Whiskey Bar
Spanish Fly. Spain Withdraws Some Personnel From Iraq Spain said Tuesday it was withdrawing much of its diplomatic staff from Iraq for security reasons, becoming the third coalition country in recent weeks to downgrade its presence in Baghdad or leave altogether. I'm...
Whiskey Bar
The Bush Boomlet. I meant to post something on the 3rd quarter GDP numbers after they came out last week, but various things got in my way -- including a bad head cold, a child with a bad head cold, work-related deadlines and...
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
More Trouble for Diebold on E-Voting. Wired News: Calif. Halts E-Vote Certification. The reason, Carrel said, was that his office had recently received "disconcerting information" that...
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Deep-Sixing History. This page --
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/nightline_042403_t.html -- used to exist on the website of the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
BUSH INCOMPETENCE UPDATE: Kevin Drumm makes a very good...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
DETROIT MAKES HISTORY: Their new Chief of Police is, for...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
MEASURING ECONOMIC GROWTH: I am curious at to how that...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
IRAQ VS. VIETNAM REDUX: Josh Marshall endorses a column...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
NURSING WOUNDS: Howard Dean unveiled his strategy for...
Daniel W. Drezner
Is Al Gore responsible for Halliburton?. I've received a lot of e-mail traffic from the Slate piece on whether there was systemic corruption in the awarding of official reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Half of them raise the following point:* even if there's no systemic...
Daniel W. Drezner
Drezner gets results from Jonathan Rauch!. My first TNR Online essay back in February disputed the notion that the Bush administration was instinctively unilateralist. In Reason this week, Jonathan Rauch picks up this theme in "Bush Is No Cowboy," a critique of Ivo Daalder and James...
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
TPM tonight on the Aaron Brown show on CNN at 10 PM -- talking about the Reagan miniseries ridiculousness....
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
As promised in the previous post, here's a copy of the letter about possible voting irregularities in Mississippi today which Secretary of State Eric Clark sent today to Attorney General Mike Moore and the state's two US Attorneys. The irregularities...
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
The Kentucky governor's race is down to the wire, with Republican candidate Ernie Fletcher having a clear, though not insurmountable, advantage going into today's voting. Says uber-election-maven Charlie Cook ... In Kentucky, Republican Rep. Ernie Fletcher appears to have a...
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
Let's file this one under 'saving private nethercutt' ... A couple weeks ago Congressman George Nethercutt (now running for Senate) stuck his foot in his mouth about up to his ankle when he said that the good news in the...
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
Okay, some follow-up on the Îseesâ versus Îseeksâ matter in the presidentâs speech before the Australian parliament last month, which is noted below. Iâve done Advertisement a little digging and hereâs what Iâve found out --- some of it helpful to...
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Boy dies after school stabbing. A 14-year-old boy dies and another student is arrested following a stabbing at a school in Lincolnshire.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Firefighters in new pay protest. Fire crews in many parts of the country are taking part in unofficial industrial action in a row over a pay deal.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
'Ghost fleet' row heads to court. Campaigners are taking legal action in a row over rusting US navy vessels heading to the UK for wrecking.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
US vows to improve Iraq security. The US deputy defence secretary says continuing violence threatens American-led efforts to rebuild Iraq.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Soham jury sworn in. The jury in the Soham trial at the Old Bailey is told to put aside emotion and judge the case on its facts.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
British marine dies in Iraq clash. A Royal Marine has been killed during a coalition operation in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence announces.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Sri Lanka leader defends actions. The Sri Lankan president justifies her decision to sack key ministers, saying she acted to protect national security.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Dame Shirley's 'assets frozen'. Assets worth millions thought to belong to Dame Shirley Porter are frozen under court orders, it emerges.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Immigration films sweep awards. Illegal immigration drama Dirty Pretty Things wins four prizes at the British Independent Film Awards.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Football: Man U crush Rangers. Man Utd move to within a point of the Champions League knockout stage with a 3-0 win against Rangers.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Football: Chelsea rout Lazio. Chelsea play some sublime football to thrash 10-man Lazio 4-0 in Rome.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
UN warns of Somalia terror link. United Nations investigators warn that surface-to-air missiles may have been smuggled into Somalia.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Sumatra flood death toll rises. Hopes fade for more than 100 people still missing after a flash flood in Indonesia killed at least 80 people.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Bug scandal aids US mayor's campaign. Voting taking place in Philadelphia and other cities and states could provide clues for the presidential election.
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
German general axed in Jewish row. The head of Germany's special forces is sacked for backing an MP who is accused of anti-Semitism.
MetaFilter
And, well, everything ....
Stunned to see that a Tertiary Phase of the radio series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy is going into production and everyone (apart from the obvious) is back for it. It'll be a dramatisation of the third novel
Life, The Universe and Everything. A fourth series covering everything else will follow. It's being produced by Dirk Maggs who's worked with Douglas Adams before and has rejected one my own radio scripts in the past. Not that I blame him. It was pretty awful. It's going to be odd not hearing Peter Jones as The Book, but his seat is being filled by
William Franklyn. I was hoping for
Oliver Postgate if anyone was going to do it. Anyone have a sample of how Mr. Franklyn's voice sounds?
MetaFilter
Getting converted has never been so easy!.
Getting converted has never been so easy! "The
Plug 'n' Pray concept: Religion is no longer a mystical experience or a personal journey to get closer to our transcendent inner dimension - it belongs now to the FCG (Fast Consumer Goods) segment." …A brilliant religious (and software marketing) satire, IMHO.
MetaFilter
iCan... **not** Apple's new toilet..
The BBC introduces it's new grass-roots political website
iCan. After research showed (surprise surprise) that "
many people are very disillusioned and cynical about politicians and local civic institutions" moves were made to set up iCan, to enable people to get information on and engage in local and national political issues. With search tools to find actions on local issues, message boards, and the ability to create a website for your cause, "
iCan aims to make politics accessible to ordinary people confronting a problem."
It's also one of the things Rupert Murdoch and The Guardian would like to squash.
MetaFilter
SiCAF sand cartoon. A
neato sand "cartoon" (.wmv). It's a video clip from the 2003
SiCAF. The file is a bit large, but hang in there.
MetaFilter
Trojan Games.
The Trojan Games (as in Trojan condoms.) Forget the Olympics, this is where true champions rise to greatness. NSFW. [Via
Milk and Cookies.]
MetaFilter
Eating The Galaxy Next Door.
Nearer, My Galaxy, to Thee. The only thing I find more surprising than the discovery of a
galactic collision-in-progress is the fact that a
similar nearby galaxy had already been found last decade. I need to get up to date and throw out all my astronomy books which still cite the Magellanic Clouds as being our
closest neighbors.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
GOP's Fletcher Wins Kentucky Gov. Race (AP). AP - Rep. Ernie Fletcher easily won the Kentucky governor's race Tuesday, becoming the first Republican to lead the state in 32 years, while the GOP hoped to take another Democratic governor's seat in Mississippi.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
U.S. Faces Troop Pressure As Turkey Balks (AP). AP - In a major setback to U.S. efforts to attract military help in Iraq, a Turkish official said Tuesday his country won't send peacekeeping troops without a significant change in the situation there. That makes it virtually certain the United States will have to send thousands more U.S. reservists early next year.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Three Wounded in Mortar Attack in Baghdad (AP). AP - Insurgents struck Tuesday at the center of the U.S.-led occupation, firing mortars after sundown at the heavily guarded district that includes major American facilities. Three people were wounded, the Pentagon said.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Largest of California Wildfires Contained (AP). AP - Firefighters contained the biggest and deadliest of Southern California's wildfires Tuesday and turned their attention to mopping up other blazes and heading off mudslides when the rains come.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Dems Press Dean on Confederate Flag Flap (AP). AP - Howard Dean, under fire from his Democratic presidential rivals, stubbornly refused to apologize Tuesday night for saying the party must court white Southerners with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
SEC: More Mutual Fund Charges Are Likely (AP). AP - The government is conducting a broad sweep of the mutual fund industry and more charges are likely in the growing scandal in the $7 trillion business, a top enforcement official said Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Feds to Retry Investment Banker Quattrone (AP). AP - The government said Tuesday it will bring a second trial against Frank Quattrone, the wealthy Internet-boom investment banker whose first trial ended in a hung jury last month.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
U.N. Report: al-Qaida Trained in Somalia (AP). AP - Al-Qaida operatives who attacked a hotel and plane in Kenya trained, plotted and obtained weapons in neighboring Somalia, a U.N. report says, lending support to U.S. concerns the lawless Horn of Africa nation could be a haven for terrorists.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Letterman, Girlfriend Have Baby Boy (AP). AP - David Letterman is a daddy. Letterman's girlfriend, Regina Lasko, delivered a baby boy late Monday night. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 11 inches and is 21 inches long, Letterman announced on his show Tuesday night.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Big East Returns to Basketball Roots (AP). AP - The Big East's expansion returns the conference to its roots as a premier basketball league. Football is another story.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Ex-Prudential Brokers Charged with Fraud (Reuters). Reuters - Federal and state authorities on
Tuesday accused seven former Prudential Securities employees of
fraud related to mutual fund trading, on the same day that the
outrage over improper trading hit Janus Capital Group Inc.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Republican Wins Kentucky Governor's Race (Reuters). Reuters - A Republican won the Kentucky
governor's office for the first time in more than three decades
on Tuesday and polls closed in a hard-fought Mississippi
governor's race as U.S. voters cast ballots in state and local
elections.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
HealthSouth's Scrushy Indicted in Scandal (Reuters). Reuters - Former HealthSouth
Corp. (HLSH.PK) Chief Executive Richard Scrushy was indicted on
Tuesday on 85 criminal counts for his part in deliberately
inflating earnings and assets at the health-care company he
founded by $2.7 billion, U.S. officials said.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Fire Tour Takes Bush Back to California (Reuters). Reuters - President Bush toured
damage from the worst wildfires in California history on
Tuesday during his second visit in a month to a state that is
growing in importance to his 2004 presidential re-election bid.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Chief Executive and Star Designer to Step Down at Gucci (The New York Times). The New York Times - The two men who transformed Gucci into a luxury goods giant will step down in April, when a takeover by Pinault is completed.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Ex-Chief of HealthSouth Is Indicted on 85 Counts of Fraud (The New York Times). The New York Times - In addition to the criminal charges brought against Richard Scrushy, who pleaded not guilty, the government is seeking $278 million in forfeitures from him.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
U.S. Soldier Killed by Bomb in Baghdad as Violence Continues (The New York Times). The New York Times - For the second night, explosions rocked Baghdad, injuring three. The death brought the number of U.S. fatalities in November to 23.
Boing Boing Blog
FCC screws America, adopts Broadcast Flag, doom, gloom, armageddon. We've lost a round in the Broadcast Flag fight. The FCC today decided that it didn't need to listen to the tens of thousands of Americans that wrote to it, asking to have this terrible proposal set aside, and instead adopted a rule proposed by billionaire movie studios whose biggest problem is figuring out how to spend the riches they made off the VCR after we saved their asses by telling them to get bent when they tried to get the Betamax banned the last time around.
"The FCC today has taken a step that will shape the future
of television," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property
Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Sadly, this represents a step in
the wrong direction, a step that will undermine innovation,
fair use, and competition."
"The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove
useful recording features from television products you can
buy today," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "The
FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt
digital DTV is to make it cost more and do less."
Link
Boing Boing Blog
Movie trailer for Disney + Baseman's "Teacher's Pet". Walt Disney Pictures' "Teacher's Pet" trailer is now online. The feature film, based on the art of
Gary Baseman, is about a talking dog who finds a way to make his dream come true to become a real, living boy. Written by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner, directed by Timothy Bjorklund, starring Nathan Lane and Kelsey Grammer. Rated PG, opens January 16th.
Link, or visit Disney.com/TeachersPet.
NYC BB readers: Gary Baseman will have a personal appearance signing his NEW Japanese "Dunces" Toys at KidRobot/Soho on November 6th from 5pm to 7pm.
126 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012, 212.966.6688. (thanks, Sean)
Boing Boing Blog
Wi-Fi's new security standard has a weakness. BoingBoing pal
Glenn Fleishman writes:
I wrote a piece yesterday for the Mac journal TidBITS about the recently released implementation of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) in the AirPort Extreme product line from Apple. WPA replaces WEP by fixing its various holes. That article drew a response from Robert Moskowitz, long-time wireless security expert, who sent me a paper and his permission to post it about a serious weakness in the consumer version of WPA: if you choose short keys that are comprised of real words, WPA keys can be easily broken through passive access to a network. I've written this up and posted his paper here. Interestingly, the problem is all at the presentation layer, not at the encryption layer. It's a flaw with how manufacturers are offering users the chance to create and enter WPA keys, and thus could be easily fixed with a driver update -- no firmware necessary.
Boing Boing Blog
Announcing Link-Fu: Battle of the Bizarro URLs. OK. Listen up, freaks -- here are the rules. Link-Fu is an online competition where during a specific, pre-established period of time -- in this case, Thursday, November 6 from 9AM-12PM, Eastern Time -- you send us one url that links to some very weird something somewhere. Something so bizarre and wild and intriguing and fascinating, that no-one else (or as few nobodies as possible) has seen.
Judges: Warren Ellis, Invisible Cowgirl, Mark, Pesco, and yours truly. We declare a winner based on whatever we happen to like best. Not the grossest, not neccesarily Farkish or Rotten. Just the flat-out most bizarre -- though grotesquery is not neccesarily out of the question. In fact, here was last week's barfbag winner (WARNING: extremely distgusting, NSFW, Cowgirl found it). The winner wins the title of High Master of Link-Fu, until we hold the next battle.
So, if you'd like to compete in the website smackdown -- e-mail the funkiest, most potently bizarro url-age you can find to linkfubattle@yahoo.com on Thursday, November 6 from 9AM-12PM, Eastern Time (US). We will announce the winner Friday morning. May the best link win. (disclaimer: the whole thing was Warren and Cowgirl's idea.)
Boing Boing Blog
Debut of first Wired blog: Bruce Sterling, Beyond the Beyond. Now online: "
Beyond the Beyond" by
Bruce Sterling, the first blog launched by
Wired Magazine. Forthcoming launches are said to include a Mac-related blog from veteran
Wired News correspondent Leander Kahney. From the "Wired Blogs" home page:
Wired News and Wired Magazine Blogs are new features that allow our writers and readers to post their thoughts on recent developments and ideas in their corner of the Web. As a new site feature, these blogs will grow and develop into living, breathing areas for the exchange of links, thoughts, and information.
Mr. Sterling explains that he will not be incorporating comments into said blog:
I plan to blog to this site EVERY SINGLE DAY except for weekends and major nondenominational holidays. Minor planetary calamities such as military invasions, Microsoft worms, electrical blackouts, abject market collapses, a patch of California the size of Rhode Island catching fire from climate change -- not only will these mishaps not slow me down in my blogging duties, they will probably SPEED ME UP. Note that there is NO COMMENTARY ALLOWED in my pristine, high-toned blog here. Why? Because you might be a spammer, that's why! When I have a big red anti-spam button I can push that will cause Homeland Security to arrest you immediately and deport you to Guantanamo, then you may comment. Until then, no blog-reader of mine will ever be forced to endure your lame illegal product pitches, and that goes double for you harebrained flamers and trollers.
Incidentally, I understand these sites will all use a weblog-building tool from Tripod -- part of the Terra/Lycos family of companies, which owns Wired News, but not Wired Magazine, which is owned by Conde Nast.
Link to "Beyond the Beyond."
Boing Boing Blog
Xeni on NPR's Day to Day: RFIDS and privacy. On today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I speak with host Madeline Brand about RFIDS -- radio frequency ID tags -- and the technology's potential impact on commerce and personal privacy.
Wal-Mart executives are scheduled to meet with some of their top suppliers today to establish RFID compliance standards. Participants in the meeting to be held near Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters are said to include Kraft Foods, Proctor & Gamble, Tyson Foods and Unilever. A number of large IT companies are also expected to be in town for an RFID-related tech event slated for Wednesday, including IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Philips Semiconductor and SAP.
Both Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense plan to require that their major suppliers implement the wireless tracking technology by early 2005 -- a move similar to Wal-Mart's push for UPC (bar code technology) some two decades ago.
Link to "Day to Day" home, listen to the archived show here after 12PM Pacific.
Boing Boing Blog
Cool laptop bags for chicks.
The "Slim," a new bag/sleeve hybrid designed specifically for G4 Apple PowerBooks and other laptops. Bag can be inserted into another bag or carried with or without the removable shoulder strap. Lots of textiles to choose from. Starts around $79. Swankolicious. Link (thanks, Clayton)
Boing Boing Blog
Robolympics games in SF December 13. From antweight to sumo fights, expect an overdose of robotic fun in the RSA's biannual show, including movie robots, stormtroopers, and lots of competitions. Plus, a vendor area selling cool robot stuff.
link
Boing Boing Blog
Microsoft's new blogging tool. The new weblogging tool currently in development at MS Research Lab, "where you can share photos, blog, and interact with your friends."
Link (thanks, Jean-Luc)
Boing Boing Blog
Photographic place map.
Following on the heels of this site blogged last week, another online collection of images organized by points on a map. I love how the photographer/webmaster says, "Please make the room dark and look [at] the photographs." I can't recall ever having read those instructions on a photoblog before. Link (via Cup of Chica)
Boing Boing Blog
Simpsons fan creates tomacco. A Simpsons fan has created tomacco by cross-breeding tomatoes and tobacco:
"What we found was nicotine in the leaves". said scientist Ray Grimsbo. The plant grew off the tobacco roots and sucked up the nicotine, just like Tomacco on The Simpsons. The lab hasn't tested if the actual tomato has nicotine in it yet, but they say it probably does. "Generally in the fruit there is more material concentrated because that's what everything's going through to produce the fruit for the next generation. I would expect there would be more." And that would make the real life tomacco plant very poisonous. Rob Baur says he grew the tomacco plant just for fun, just to see if it would really work.
Link
(via /.)
Boing Boing Blog
Immersive VR Pacman. The Human Pacman: an immersive 1980s video-game experience. I'm not convinced it's not a hoax: where are the screenshots?
Human Pacman is an interactive ubiquitous and mobile entertainment system that is built upon position and perspective sensing via Global Positioning System and inertia sensors; and tangible human-computer interfacing with the use of Bluetooth and capacitive sensors. Although these sensing-based subsystems are weaved into the fabric of the game and are therefore translucent to players, they are nevertheless the technical enabling forces behind Human Pacman.
Link
Boing Boing Blog
Sustainable fish wallet-card.
The Monterey Bay Acquarium has produced a wallet-card that grades west-coast fish based on how environmentally sound the fishery practice is for each species.
Link
Boing Boing Blog
Man drops phone in train toilet, causes big hassle. "A man riding a Metro-North train dropped his cell phone in a toilet and got his arm stuck trying to retrieve it Thursday, forcing the train to stop and delaying the evening commute for thousands of people."
Link
Boing Boing Blog
Johnny Meah: The Czar of Bizarre. Since the 1950s, Johnny Meah painted more than 2,000 circus sideshow banners. Here's his personal gallery of surreal canvases and writings on the carney and circus life.
Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne!)
Tomalak's Realm
uiweb:
The art of usability benchmarking. By capturing the current level of ease of use of the current product or website, a reference point is created that can be measured against in the future. It doesn't answer the question of how usable is enough, but if the benchmark is done properly, it does enable someone to set goals and expectations around ease of use for the future.
Tomalak's Realm
SF Chronicle:
Building a crash-test Internet. The new test network, called the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network, or DETER, will contain lots of routers and switches imitating the complexity of the real Net. It won't be nearly as big as the real Internet -- the goal is to eventually hook up 1,000 PCs -- but the researchers hope it will be comparable in behavior.
Tomalak's Realm
Technology Review:
Everyone's a Programmer. Even as software collapses under the weight of its own complexity, we've barely begun to exploit its potential to solve problems. The challenge, Simonyi believes, is to find a way to write programs that both programmers and users can actually read and comprehend. Simonyi's solution.
Tomalak's Realm
Good Experience:
Halloween story: the ghost of Boo! But the truth isn't anything nearly as cinematic. Boo.com simply forgot the key truth about users online, at least those wanting to conduct a transaction (like, say, buying hip shoes): The only reason users use the Web to do *anything* is because it's a better experience than doing it in the real world.
X-POLLEN
Beth, I hear you calling.
Scot Hacker asks the musical question, What was your first record?
My older sister had the Partridges record he depicts (as well as a few others - all of them?), but the first record I bought myself was Kiss Destroyer, an LP that by pure coincidence was given to me for my birthday last week, years after I had sold it to the Princeton Record Exchange along with all my other Kiss albums out of embarassment (a decision I later regretted, of course, both for the irony value of the Kiss LPs as well as out of shame for denying my own roots).
t a c i t u s
More catching up and post facto reactions on errata. What, now the Army isn't allowed to frighten suspects under interrogation in wartime? Cripes, people. Same JAG officer who saved Mullah Omar's life, no doubt....
t a c i t u s
Language. Still rehashing old news, but it's part of my catching-up process. Actually, this isn't so much news as it's an irritant: Josh Micah Marshall is taking issue with the (mandatory lefty adjectival invocation to follow) "Orwellian" use of phrases like...
Eschaton
Conservative Humor. I think Robert George is okay,
but this is frightening... Someone in NYC has to go take a look at this.
Republican Riot
at
An Evening of Stand-up Comedy
Starring
Fox News Columnist
Julia Gorin
and
New York Post Columnist
Robert George
WHAT: Stand-up Comedy with a conservative bent
WHEN: Saturday, November 8th at 5:30 pm (Seating starts at 5:00.)
WHERE: Don[approx equal]¥út Tell Mama Cabaret, 343 W. 46th St., between 8th & 9th Aves (All major subways nearby at 42nd St., Times Square: N/R, 1/9, 2/3, E, A and C Trains, plus the Grand Central Shuttle)
HOW MUCH? Cheap! $ 8 cover charge, plus a two-drink minimum (but those shysters accept only CASH)
RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED: 212-757-0788
MEDIA CONTACT:
Bruiser Books, producer
email: info@bruiserbooks.com
Ah, here's the
stunning wit of Julia Gorin:
Buddy was accidentally struck Wednesday afternoon when he darted out in front of a car on a busy two-lane road at the end of the cul-de-sac where the Clinton house stands.
I find myself wondering whether, upon hearing the news about Buddy, Mr. Clinton even remembered that he had a dog. Considering how expendable human life was rumored to be under his watch, what could a canine one count for?
Granted, the dog was mostly under someone else's watch. Still, if you care about the dog, you lay down the law with the caretakers-or with the Secret Service, as the case may be. A dog's babysitters will take their cues from the dog's owner, and will tend to be either as vigilant or as cavalier as the master is. If the master's attitude is lackadaisical, why should theirs be any less so?
...
What happened to Buddy is precisely what can be expected to happen to a dog when it's meant to be little more than a pawn in its owners' ongoing attempts to impersonate human beings.
However, to give credit where credit is due-at least Bill Clinton didn't entertain photographers and guests by dangling his dog by the ears while it squealed-the way that other great humanitarian, creator of the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson, did to his dogs "Him" and "Her."
So Buddy's dead. Socks they gave away. Has anyone seen Chelsea?
Personally, I was surprised the girl made it past the '93 inauguration, having already done her part to fulfill the minimum quota for a family unit so her parents could have a political life. Of course, she was a self-sufficient adolescent by then, not quite as vulnerable as a dependent canine. The only visible, physical manifestations so far of the stress she's endured from playing her role are the chain smoking and the boozing (although she held off on the latter all through college, until her parents were out of the White House). More symptoms will be sure to manifest themselves as the years go on. But notice how, far from the mischievous Bush daughters, this kid was a stellar child; she never made a wrong move. She must have known her life depended on it.
Damn liberals and their incivility.
Eschaton
Slacktivision. Slacktivist takes
a long hard look at the moral clarity of BoBo "Dude! Where's my reputation?" Brooks.
Eschaton
Phoggy Jogging. Went for a little run around a foggy center city to check out the election activities. Katz clearly had a superior machine in this part of town. People and signs every where. It's nice being in a city on election day - politics seems a bit more alive and relevant than it does out in the burbs.
Eschaton
A Joint Statement from Donald Luskin and Atrios. "We both regret a series of misunderstandings that have resulted in something that neither of us intended. We have discussed our differences, and both of us are confident that such misunderstandings will not occur again in the future. As a result, Mr. Luskin is retracting his demand letter of October 29, 2003. We congratulate each other on having quickly achieved an amicable resolution. We are both glad to have put this behind us."
Eschaton
Big Lies. For locals, Joe Conason will be speaking at the Friends Select school at 17th St & Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, tomorrow (Wed.) at 7pm.
Eschaton
Russia. I think Matt Taibbi is the only journalist working here who has a clue about
what's going on there.....Ted Barlow of
Crooked Timber recommends
his book.
Eschaton
All According to Prediction. As with everything else in this administration, I'm almost always happy to be wrong, but it looks like the much-touted Bush Boom may
be the Bush Bust.
NEW YORK (AP) - Job cuts announced by U.S. companies more than doubled in October from the previous month, providing more evidence that the nation's economy is in a period of jobless expansion, according to a report from an outplacement firm.
Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said Tuesday that in October companies announced plans to eliminate 171,874 positions, compared with 76,506 jobs in September. It was the highest monthly level since October 2002, when 176,010 job cuts were announced.
The surge in October ended a streak of five months when job reductions fell below 100,000 per month. The lowest figure during that time was in June, with 59,715 jobs cut.
Hardest-hit was the automotive industry, which announced plans to eliminate 28,363 jobs in October. That was followed by the retail sector, which plans to cut 21,169 positions, and the telecommunications industry, which said it would slash 21,030 jobs.
"While perhaps shocking to some, the October spike follows a trend of heavy year-end downsizing that has occurred since we began tracking job cuts in 1993," said CEO John A. Challenger. "In 2001 and 2002, October was the largest job-cut month in the fourth quarter."
As I've said a few times, jobs flat in Sept. and October (data out Friday), and then the bloodbath begins. Hope I'm wrong.
Eschaton
Tripp. Eric Alterman
sets the record straight about Linda Tripp. Our press sucks. Even I didn't know most of this stuff.
Eschaton
Groundhog Year. Yet another blonde conservative pundette is busted for apparently
lying about her age...
Eschaton
Wingnuttery. It's absolutely impossible for this tiny brain to comprehend how Nethercutt's full quote
even slightly changes the meaning of the partial quote that had been reported. Maybe
someone can explain it to me.
Eschaton
Identity Politics. This basic scenario is fairly common, but here in Philadelphia it's more obvious than in some places. An African-American incumbent is running against a white opponent who was once a Democrat. The city is overwhelmingly Democratic in its registration (75-17%), but the race will be much closer than that. Blacks will overwhelmingly vote for the incumbent, Street, and whites will overwhelmingly vote for the challenger, Katz.
At first glance, the logical answer is that the white voters are racist. Black voters normally vote for Dems, so it's normal for them to vote for one aside from his race. White voters are more likely to vote for a Dem if s/he's white.
I'm sure stark naked racism plays somewhat of a role here. Philly's race relations - not just black/white, but the whole complex issue - are not and have never been particularly good. For a city of this size and with it's general degree of cosmopolitanism, the locals are pretty resistant to assimilating the latest round of immigrants - Vietnamese, Latino, etc...
But, the truth is it's more complicated than that. Both sides, to some degree, are engaging in identity politics. A good deal of the white voters are not going to pull the lever for Katz because they're racists - they'll do it because they think he'll be a better mayor. They may be right. Some of the black voters are going to vote for Street because they identified with his plight after Ashcroft's boys bugged his office (polls swung in his direction after that).
However, some voters are going to vote for one over the other because they think he'll be a better mayor
for them. Black voters, rightly or wrongly, likely tend to perceive that a black mayor would understand and pay more attention to issues that the black community is more likely to face, while white voters perceive things similarly about a white mayor. Some of that is tinged with racism, but some is just a rational (if potentially incorrect) appraisal of the situation.
I'm pretty much a dead dog Democrat these days, but I nonetheless approached Katz with an open mind. I chose to vote for Street for two reasons - the first, and it probably will cost him the election, was the way Katz behaved when the bugging scandal broke. I think if he'd taken the exact opposite position that he did, and acted livid about the FBI messing around during an election, he would have gained votes. He could have stayed above the fray and been statesmanlike, and the story would have still had all the press attention that it did. Bad move.
And, secondly, the centerpiece of Katz's economic plan is a disaster. We have an onerous city wage tax here - which you pay whether you work in the city or not (and pay a reduced rate if you work in the city and live elsewhere). For residents it's 4.46%. The perennial issue is how to have a revenue neutral tax reform which sharply reduces or gets rid of the thing. For the usual reasons it never happens.
Katz proposed reducing it by about 1 percentage point, and then borrowing $750 million over ten years in order to pay for it, while decreasing city spending by 1% per year (not sure if that's actual reductions or over current projected growth). The fantasy is that this will pay for itself as new jobs flow into the city. So, debt service will be covered by the resulting boom caused by the magical tax cut fairies.
It could happen - whether fortuitously or as a direct result of the tax reduction. But, it's a huge gamble. If it doesn't work, it'll put the city in a pretty dire financial situation. Hello, Alabama!
Eschaton
Vote!. I just did, so go vote if there's an election in your area.
Eschaton
Jon Stewart Beats Them All. His ratings for the 18-49 set exceed those
of the cable news nets.
Eschaton
Pollack Returns!.
Here:
I was also busy over the weekend reading letters from soldiers wounded in what I'm now calling the Iraqi Renaissance. If you watch television or read newspapers and magazines, you might get the wrong idea that we're losing the Renaissance, or at least flailing about without much direction. But take it from my highly-reliable correspondents who file from anonymous email addresses. Our soldiers are not losing their resolve, and thanks to our brilliant strategy of opening schools and then surrounding them with barbed wire, we're winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis everywhere. How can you disagree with the following letter?
Eschaton
Pop Quiz. Who said this?
Well, just as it's important, I think, for a president to know when to commit U.S. forces to combat, it's also important to know when not to commit U.S. forces to combat. I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government would we have? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shi'a government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Ba'ath Party? Would be fundamentalist Islamic? I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept the responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all.
Lockergnome's RSS Resource
Reviews in RSS feeds. Les Orchard writes: The RVW specification is a module extension to the RSS 2.0 syndication format. RVW is intended to allow machine-readable reviews to be integrated into an RSS feed, thus allowing reviews to be automatically compiled from distributed sources.&194; In other words,&194; you can write book, restaurant, movie, product, etc.&194; reviews inside your own&194; website, while allowing them to be used by Amazon or other review aggregators. Source:Blogware Implements Distributed Reviews Aww, yeah. Bring on the microcontent. Yay, hooray! This is an XML namespace-based extension to RSS 2.0, and...
Lockergnome's RSS Resource
MS Developers ponder a preemptive standard. At the Blogger's BOF ("birds of a feather" or self-organized side-meeting) at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC), there was some discussion of XML, RSS, and Atom. Benjaminm reports, in his notes from the BOF that there is frustration with perceived drawbacks of the RSS 2.0 / XMLRPC approach to blogging and sydnication but also impatience with the community-driven nature of the Atom process: Clemens concern is that there is a 'comunity discussion' that may go nowhere. We could either wait or we could define our own standard. DasBlog, .Text are...
Lockergnome's RSS Resource
Javascript feeds with Feedroll. Andy Baio: add arbitrary RSS feeds to your site via Javascript includes [Waxy.org Links]...
The Motley Fool
Decoding the Fund Scandal. David Gardner explains the mutual fund scandal and how not to get ripped off.
The Motley Fool
The Best Gillette Can Get. Plus, Marvel's still a marvel and Atari is back.
The Motley Fool
Automakers Downshift. Detroit's titans may be in for a long winter.
The Motley Fool
IGT: The Biggest Winner. IGT wins from the rapid expansion of gaming and a shift to cashless slots.
The Motley Fool
Sport Chalet Swings Away. Investors are catching on to this small, California-based sporting goods retailer.
The Motley Fool
Charter Grows Broadband. Charter is in need of a big fix. But at least its broadband unit is growing.
The Motley Fool
The Best Gillette Can Get. By marketing heavily, the company is gaining market share.
The Motley Fool
EOG Resources A-OK. Exploration and production company looks solid in the field.
The Motley Fool
Are You Rich?. The extraordinary lifestyles of the average and unfamous.
The Motley Fool
What Price for that Home?. Don't risk losing the house to another bidder -- but don't get in over your head, either.
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Al Qaeda In Africa. For a few years now I have argued that America's neglect of the African continent is morally reprehensible - and even worse, its a breeding ground for terrorists. This is the important front in the war on terror that we...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Broadcasters Hunted By Cluestick. One of the most amusing stories has been the media industry's shock and awe at the loss of male viewers in prime time. "We need to see if the 'missing men' is something real," said Lyle Schwartz, senior vice president...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Blogger Endorsements. Kevin Drum has endorsed Clark, and as you know I'm a Dean supporter after a somewhat public dalliance with the Edwards camp. But I think all of us Democratic bloggers know that come November '04 we'll have one candidate......
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Military Disgrace. It has been a consistent Bush strategy to use our military as a prop, as a well of good feeling the administration can tap into time and again to color over bad policies and worse decisions. Now there's some new...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Demopublican Nonsensery. Even Jeff Jarvis (who I've taken to task several times for lying down with GOP dogs) smells fecal matter with Zell Miller Oh, ferchrissake. Let's make him Pope, too. Or at least bishop of New Hampshire. Unlike Miller, Roger L....
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Tomorrow's Debate. I believe that there's been too many debates in the Democratic race so far, especially when you see that the primaries are still almost two months away. But I think that the America Rocks The Vote debate is quite important....
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
American Taliban Blinded By Science. Our modern-day mullahs have decided to go after our smartest citizens via their malleable politicians. A list of nearly 200 scientific researchers has been compiled and given to federal officials by the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group that goes...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Party Politics & Occupation. William Swann on Centrist Coalition believes that many of the Democrats opposition to the $87 billion signifies a major shift in policy for the major candidates. I (obviously) disagree. The problem with this bill is that it wrapped in money...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Illegal Thriller: Chapter 3. [Read the whole thing here] Tracy Swedlow-Washington burst through the double doors of the Los Angeles FBI office. Bursting through doors had never come naturally for Tracy, but instead the skill came as a result of her "Law In Media"...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
More Adventures in the So-Called Liberal Media. CBS is thinking of shelving the Reagan miniseries. So, the lesson is: 9-11 Pro Bush Lies: Okay Fictionalized Portrayals of One Of The Least Compassionate Presidents Ever: Not Okay Thank you, corporate media!...
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Backstabbers. There's a story in this week's Army Times about the outrage surrounding the Bush administration cutting all sorts of benefits for our soldiers. These men are dying every day because of his decisions, and he can't muster up any sort...
FIONA
Portrait of a prolific, profound, palpitating prosodist
Semper Fi
FIONA
I Knew It.
I've said before that I believe members of congress are being intimidated if they don't vote the way the GOP wants or rewarded if they do. To my mind, it's the most likely explanation for the Great Democrat Crap Out we've seen since the 2000 election. But maybe I'm in denial. Maybe they're really all just corrupt phonies who promise their constituents one thing, then do whatever they want when they get to DC, just like the Republicans. But the staggering amount of spinelessness is what makes me suspect that somebody is maniuplating somebody.
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the senior Democrat on the Committee on Appropriations writes a letter explaining how members of congress are being manipulated. It's worse than I thought. Visit TomPaine.com (a great web site, by the way) for the entire letter. Here's an excerpt:
What this proposal really translates into is not simply the diversion of money needed to more adequately fund critical national priorities such as reading improvement, but the use of those funds for the creation of a slush fund to intimidate members into voting against adequate funds for programs that they believe are important for the American people. The clear message is that if you support the Republican cuts in education, health research and assistance to seniors, you will get projects to help with your reelection. If you vote your conscience and support more funding for education and health you will get stiffed. This is nothing more than systematic bribery with public funds to enforce the "Robin Hood in reverse" policies of your party.
FIONA
President Bush ought to be ashamed.
Note to President Bush: Stop campaigning for your reelection and start going to some of the funerals of the young soldiers whose deaths you're responsible for. Don't you have enough damned money in the bank, now? You ought to be ashamed of yourself for trying to downplay the destruction that is your fault. The world didn't want your dirty war. These kids shouldn't be dying so that your buddies can see some return on their campaign contributions.
You make me sick.
FIONA
Camille Paglia sucks
She denounces other people for being too strong... But it appears to me that she is just as much of a shock jock as Madonna or any of the other people she trashes in her Salon interview. I loved the way she beat everybody up for not respecting the Limbaugh and Hannity audiences, then went on practically in the next breath to insult all bloggers. She is the queen of ad hominem attacks. She doesn't have a lot to say that's substantive or constructive about anything. There is an excuse for bloggers to be sloppy or self-indulgent. The majority of us aren't pros and don't claim to be. But she is. She even has the egonerve to claim that she herself had the first blog and practically tries to take credit for the form, after trashing it. I'd like to call names, but that would make me no better than she is. (Don't worry, I'll get back to that sort of thing tomorrow.)
I can see the fires burning near Boulder from my window tonight. This afternoon when I went out for my walk, I wondered when we'd get our first one. It's been very hot and dry here for weeks. As I came around the corner into open space, I saw an enormous plume of smoke rising from the mountains and knew that today was the day. In fact three fires are burning here. Our fighters and equipment are in California! People I know are being evacuated tonight from their homes in the canyon just west of here. It's scary. The winds died down for a while earlier this evening, but now they're kicking up again something fierce.
FIONA
Bronx Cheer
Gimme a G! Gimme an R! Gimme an E! Gimme another E! Gimme a D! What does that spell?
BUSH!
Everybody! Repeat after me!
ONE WAY TICKET TO CRAWFORD!
ONE WAY TICKET TO CRAWFORD!
Gawker
Remainders. · Low Culture asks: When did Vice become the new Brill's Content? · In praise of literary alcoholics. [via Arts...
Gawker
Gossip Roundup/Gawker Stalker: Hilton Edition. · Paris and Nicky: wouldn't shut up at the Sydney premiere of "Matrix: Revolutions." [NY Post] · Children's Rights Halloween...
Gawker
To Do List. · The Last Minute Guide to today's election because we nearly forgot it was the first Tuesday in November. (Okay,...
Gawker
Rosie: Day Three Wrapup. Rosie's magazine lawsuit circus continues on downtown. Yesterday's (possibly disingenuous) notable quotable from Ms. O'Donnell on the subject of fatphobia,...
Gawker
Playing Taxi. Growing up in Colorado, kids play doctor. Growing up in Manhattan, kids play taxi. From this highly scientific ethnography: "What's...
Gawker
Open House: Chanel. Chanel's website has put up a whole load of content: tours with Jeanne Moreau and Karl Lagerfield, an interview...
A Supposedly Staggering Infinite Work of Heartbreaking Illumination I'll Never Read
That wasn't my real picture I sent you.
That picture I sent you isn't me. I liked your picture. Is that really you?
This new picture is me. It's a little old. My hair isn't that color anymore. I may not be quite as thin now as I was in that picture, but it still looks like me. You'll see.
Calpundit
Global Warming: Semi-Final Update. GLOBAL WARMING: SEMI-FINAL UPDATE....In case you're wondering if there's an update on the global warming hooha that I wrote about a few days ago, David Appell reports that the authors of the original report now have a final preliminary reply...
Calpundit
Republicans for Labor. REPUBLICANS FOR LABOR....It's nice to see that there are Republicans out there who support the supermarket strike here in California. Larry Miller in the Weekly Standard explains why he not only supports the strike, he's even walking a picket line...
Calpundit
Investigative Journalism. INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM...."Where is America's fascination with nudity taking us?" Find out in this hard hitting Washington Post expose....
Calpundit
The Memory Hole Re-Revisited. THE MEMORY HOLE RE-REVISITED....First we had the White House scouring their website for headlines that said "combat operations" in Iraq were over and changing them to say "major combat operations" were over. You know, because the original got kind of...
Whiskey Bar
From Worse to Better. The bug in the comments has now been fixed, thanks to Don, my new computer hero. Over the next few weeks (or however long it takes) Don is going to be working with me on the much-promised but much-delayed makeover...
Whiskey Bar
Bad to Worse. I tried to upload a program to my web server that would go through my old posts and automaticaly delete comment spam. Bad idea. Not only did the upload not work, but now whenever you try to post a comment...
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
Fareed Zakaria has a dynamite column about 'Iraqification' in today's Post....
dive into mark b-links
no microsoft web fonts without microsoft products. still installed by default, but for how long?
dive into mark b-links
sponsor gina's novel. nanowrimo, mo, mo!
dive into mark b-links
atom api search proposal. on the interconnectedness of all things
dive into mark b-links
google crawling irc. beware the bot
dive into mark b-links
sortable tables. unobtrusive javascript wins again
dive into mark b-links
bluejacking. bluetooth is the new smtp
dive into mark b-links
filevault is buggy. just what i need, a buggy program that encrypts all my documents
dive into mark b-links
annotating photos with rss and rdf. i'm playing with my photo gallery again
MetaFilter
grouphug.
need to get it off your chest? share it with some of the nice people at grouphug.us
MetaFilter
Ocean tank & shark video cam.
Ocean Tank and Shark Video Cam - take a aquatic break to explore the New England Aquarium's 200,000-gallon ocean tank, viewable from user-controlled cameras. The exhibit has more than 50 species of sea creatures from eels, sharks and barracuda, to turtles, stingrays and angelfish. You might catch a diver in the tank at feeding times. Viewable 9 am to 5 pm, EST.
MetaFilter
Mary Mary, Quite Contrary. ABC last night ran a program examining the life of
Mary Magdalene and her role in Jesus' life as possible wife. The
Mary-as-whore idea was debunked some time ago, but is it possible that she was made into a whore by the church to explain her intimacy with Jesus? The novel
The da Vinci Code, on which this ABC program was based, explores the relationship between da Vinci and a
secret society protecting the blood line of Christ, who according to some theories fathered children with his wife, Mary Magdalene. If you look at the
Last Supper, the figure to the right of Jesus is so clearly a woman, and it is possible that the Holy Grail that gathered the blood of Christ is a metaphor for Magdalene's womb carrying Jesus' children. And according to Magdalene's
apocryphal gnostic gospel, she knew secrets that Jesus kept from the apostles.
MetaFilter
Tripp gets her pay-off.
Hey, Linda. Thanks for all you've done! Linda Tripp gets a $600K settlement from Bush's Defense Department for having her privacy violated. Oh, sickening irony.
via TPM
MetaFilter
True blue.
Bluejacking is the new craze (
according to the BBC) of sending random strangers within range unsolicited messages on their mobile phone via
Bluetooth.
MetaFilter
Doors East.
Doors East is upon us again. A meeting of the minds on information design, brought to you by
Doors of Perception. More inside....
MetaFilter
Desktop cool: a gallery of imported and independent toys.
The gallery of Kidrobot is a collection of toy photos I ran into on a recent search for a U.S. retailer of a
desktop toy I wanted by
Cube-Works. Outside of finding what I came for, I enjoyed just browsing the photos and descriptions. In the vein of "fair and balanced", I also found the toy at
Sweatyfrog, which has some other neato-torpedo things.
MetaFilter
CBS may cancel 'Reagans' mini-series over GOP protests..
CBS may cancel 'The Reagans' mini-series over GOP protests. Rep. John Dingall has some thoughts on the matter: As someone who served with President Reagan, and in the interest of historical accuracy, please allow me to share with you some of my recollections of the Reagan years that I hope will make it into the final cut of the mini-series: $640 Pentagon toilets seats; ketchup as a vegetable; union busting; firing striking air traffic controllers; Iran-Contra; selling arms to terrorist nations; trading arms for hostages; retreating from terrorists in Beirut; lying to Congress; financing an illegal war in Nicaragua; visiting Bitburg cemetery; a cozy relationship with Saddam Hussein; shredding documents; Ed Meese; Fawn Hall; Oliver North; James Watt; apartheid apologia; the savings and loan scandal; voodoo economics; record budget deficits; double digit unemployment; farm bankruptcies; trade deficits; astrologers in the White House; Star Wars; and influence peddling.
MetaFilter
Whither useful information for an overdesigned site?.
R.I.P. Bay Area Transit Information Page, 1994-2003. The site, started by two
Berkeley students, provided quick access to transit information in the San Francisco Bay Area, who later received funding for their efforts in 1996. Instead, it gets replaced by
this abomination of web design. On the other hand, it is
very unusual for a web site to
keep the same user interface over the span of almost a decade. Already, there have been
user interface rants,
complaints about not finding information,
sarcastic commentary, and a brief
eulogy delivered from one of the original creators, and it hasn't even been the first day. Is content over style dead or are information sites like
this (flash) the wave of the future?
MetaFilter
Same old cock and bull story. Just in time for Christmas!
Shop for scrotums. Get yourself a
bull penis walking stick. Spoil your dog with
bull penis chew treats.
(Go for the 24" ones, if only for the jealousy factor)
MetaFilter
Spread 'em. In need of a little cyber-divination? Here's a rather eccentric
online tarot oracle based on
Timothy Leary's and
Rob't Anton Wilson's
eight circuit model of consciousness.
MetaFilter
Steve Earle vs. Bill O'Reilly.
In this corner, Left-Wing Redneck Steve Earle! "The deal is, he's gonna interrupt me and then eventually he's gonna tell me to shut up," Earle says. "That's what he does, then on to the next thing. Equating any of that with a serious political discussion is like thinking pro wrestling is real. But the worst that comes out of it is I get the shit kicked out of me on Fox News and we get free publicity for the tour. It's a win-win situation. The worst part is I actually have to watch Fox."
I *heart* Steve Earle.
Sorry, but it's probably already been aired by now. Anyone catch it?
MetaFilter
The Benefits Of Booze.
Poor, Much-Maligned Alcohol Gets A Good Word: It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place/Except you and me,/So set 'em' up Joe, I got a little story/ I think you should know... And the story is something, if you're a drinker, you probably already know. (
I was so surprised by this article I wondered if it was sponsored by the booze industry. But then I mixed myself another drink; read the wonderfully-named, probably Guinness - and poteen-fuelled - Dublin Principles and drank its health anyway!)
MetaFilter
Gaiman Q&A.
Neil Gaiman Q&A on Slashdot. Another on
Sequential Tart. If you loved the books find out about the author (who has a
blog and has been mentioned here
a few times).
Workbench
Java inventor tries for a jackpot. A profile of
Charles Simonyi in
Technology Review describes Java inventor James Gosling as a recent convert to modeling:
Recognizing that the software industry constantly reuses old programs, Gosling proposes finding a way to plug existing code into a modeling tool that will represent it graphically, rather than requiring programmers to pore over millions of lines of text. ...
Code-named Jackpot, the project is still small, well outside Sun's product development process.
In an Artima interview that provides more information about Jackpot, Gosling throws a little love to technical writers:
One of my general design principles is that it's really helpful to have a good tech writer on the engineering team early on. If you're building something and you have a tech writer trying to document it, and the tech writer walks into your office and says, "I don't know how to describe this," it means one of two things. Either you've got a really stupid tech writer who you should fire. Or much more likely, you've got a bad piece of design and you ought to rethink it.
Workbench
Merlin Olsen woos micro-businessmen. I heard an ad today on a streaming radio station for the
National Association for the Self-Employed, which Merlin Olsen described as a support and insurance benefits organization for "micro-businesses and the self-employed."
Though I'm sure Father Murphy wouldn't steer me wrong, I'd like to find out more about this group before I send them a come-hither e-mail asking for their literature. I couldn't find much objective commentary about the association on the Web, aside from Glenn Fleischman's recommendation in a health insurance discussion on Backup Brain:
When I had treatment for Hodgkin's Disease in 1998, the plan's optional cancer rider (best $6/month I ever spent!) covered about 97 percent of all costs, and negotiated better rates for me than I could on my own. It paid 100 percent of the chemo, 100 percent of the MRI/CT scans, and 100 percent of the GCSF (white cell stimulating) shots. All told, they paid about $35,000 or so without squawking: no preapproval, checks typically delivered to billing departments within 4 weeks of a correct bill being sent (clinic billing departments were the worst part; the insurance company was great).
Workbench
Radio weblogger stumps for Dean. Gary Santoro, the author of the Radio weblog
Mediaburn, has written
two articles on why he thinks independent voters should choose Howard Dean in 2004.
On some policy issues, there is a distinct difference between the two major parties, but as a whole competition and choice have declined considerably over the past decade. The economic theory of supply-side economics and pre-emptive invasion of Iraq are two recent examples illustrating the lack of competition and dialogue between the parties in Washington D.C.
I'm not ready to think about who I'll vote for in 2004, but it's interesting to see so many people becoming engaged in the campaign this early.
Workbench
St. Augustine residents mourn surfer. On the morning of Oct. 22, I drove past the pieces of a downed motorcycle on Highway A1A in St. Augustine. The police tape and investigators milling around weren't a good sign, so I figured there would be bad news in the paper.
The St. Augustine Record reported the next day that Chris Wint, 37, had died after failing to make a sharp turn at high speed and colliding with a tree. The 1 a.m. accident was the second fatality at that spot in recent years.
Since then, I've watched a makeshift memorial grow around that tree and chanced upon a LiveJournal user who attended his funeral.
On Sunday, the Record covered a surfer's memorial for Wint that took place in the ocean and reprinted a remarkable photo: Six weeks ago, the paper ran a front-page photo of Wint enoying the kicked-up surf caused by Hurricane Isabel.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Bush to Meet Firefighters, Schwarzenegger (AP). AP - The hotly contested California recall election is over. Fires that ravaged southern California are all but surrounded. Enter President Bush, who on Tuesday is touring scorched parts of the state he lost in 2000 but has hopes of winning next year.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Miss., Ky. Races Closely Watched for '04 (AP). AP - Gubernatorial races in Mississippi and Kentucky were being closely watched Tuesday for signals of President Bush's strength heading into the 2004 presidential contest.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Army Can't Confirm 16th Helicopter Death (AP). AP - Army officials said Tuesday they could confirm 15 soldiers killed in Sunday's Chinook helicopter shoot-down in Iraq, not 16 as has been widely reported since the attack.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Ex-HealthSouth CEO Indicted in Fraud Case (AP). AP - Former HealthSouth Corp. head Richard Scrushy was indicted on 85 counts alleging he was the mastermind of an enormous corporate fraud scheme that allowed him to personally pocket more than a quarter-billion dollars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Wal-Mart Receives Target Letter From U.S. (AP). AP - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Tuesday it has received a "target letter" from the U.S. Attorney's Office saying the world's largest retailer allegedly violated federal immigration laws.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
CBS Pulling Reagan Miniseries (AP). AP - Barraged by accusations from conservatives that it was distorting the legacy of a president, CBS announced Tuesday it was pulling "The Reagans" miniseries off the air.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Al Sharpton to Host Saturday Night Live (AP). AP - Democrat Al Sharpton, whose one-liners and pointed rhetoric have added laughs to the presidential campaign, will host "Saturday Night Live" next month.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Dow, Nasdaq Mixed in Late Morning Trading (AP). AP - Wall Street was mixed Tuesday as investors sought profits from the previous day's session, taking a pause between key economic reports as earnings season winds down.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Yankees Said to Name Mattingly New Coach (AP). AP - Don Mattingly has been persuaded by owner George Steinbrenner to become the New York Yankees' hitting coach.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Three Blasts Inside U.S. Compound in Baghdad-Guard (Reuters). Reuters - Three explosions that rocked Baghdad on
Tuesday evening took place inside the main U.S. compound in the
Iraqi capital, a guard on the scene told Reuters.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Philly Mayor, 2 Governor Jobs in Electoral Spotlight (Reuters). Reuters - Voters cast ballots on Tuesday in
two Southern governor's races and a scandal-plagued mayor's
race in Philadelphia, the top contests in state and local
elections that could offer hints about the political climate
heading into 2004.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Turkey Accuses U.S. of 'Favoritism' in Iraq (Reuters). Reuters - The Turkish ambassador in Washington
said on Tuesday the United States was giving excessive favors
to Kurdish groups in Iraq, at the risk of encouraging civil war
and Kurdish secession in the future.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Bomb Kills U.S. Soldier, Spain Recalls Staff in Iraq (Reuters). Reuters - A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier
in Baghdad and one of Washington's chief allies, Spain, said it
was recalling some embassy and other staff Tuesday in fresh
setbacks to U.S. efforts to bring calm to Iraq.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
HealthSouth Founder Indicted in Scandal (Reuters). Reuters - Former HealthSouth Corp. Chief
Executive Richard Scrushy was indicted on Tuesday on 85
criminal counts stemming from a $2.5 billion accounting fraud
at the health-care company he founded.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Campaign Tactics Being Reversed as Events Shift (The New York Times). The New York Times - Monday was a snapshot of the presidential contest, as realities at home and abroad intruded on the plans of the candidates.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Iraqis Seek Justice, or Vengeance, for Victims of the Killing Fields (The New York Times). The New York Times - Nothing seems to preoccupy Iraqis quite like the urge to settle accounts with the old regime.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Extensive Flaws at Mutual Funds Cited at Hearing (The New York Times). The New York Times - The mutual fund industry, plagued by a series of scandals, was battered by new details of widespread trading abuses.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Ten Commandments move stands (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - The Supreme Court on Monday refused to enter the dispute over a 2[cedilla] -ton monument to the Ten Commandments. The monument's removal from an Alabama state judicial building in August fueled a national debate over religion's role in government.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Peterson will put on DNA expert (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - Could a single strand of hair be the smoking gun in the Laci Peterson murder case?
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Grief grips Army families (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - Sgt. Ernest Bucklew, 33, was coming home from Iraq to bury his mother in Pennsylvania. Now it will be a double funeral.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Previous fire victims sympathize (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - The fires that swept through these hills and turned Howard Matis' home to ash happened more than a decade ago. But still there are days when Matis searches for something misplaced and wonders whether it is among those things lost forever.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
Presidential candidates reach out to young voters (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - Who wants this 26-year-old, eating lunch at a Cuban restaurant in Cincinnati's hip Over the Rhine neighborhood? Ten presidential candidates, who say they are making unprecedented efforts to woo young voters.
Yahoo! News - Top Stories
D.C. Area A Magnet For Bright Singles (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - Washington-Baltimore is among the most attractive regions for the nation's most sought-after demographic group -- young, single people with college degrees, the Census Bureau reported yesterday.
Rayne Today
Blogglenecked·.
A sick kid here at home and a case of writerâs block make for bloggleneck.
Even my two daily mega-cups of caffeine ö I mean, coffee ö arenât helping matters a bit. Inspiration is non-existent.
Bear with me while I nurse the six-year-old and my befuddled Muse.
Rayne Today
No way to treat a veteran.
Nextel sucks.
Imagine coming home from a tour of duty in Iraq, trying to get your life back on track, when a cell phone company refuses to sign you up for a cell phone.
Why? Because they canât find any credit records on you.
Not because of bad credit, because you canât be seen anywhere in their system.
Yeah. It happened today. I was with my stepson when he offered to pay for the phone, the deposit and a full year's contract in advance and they still wouldnât sign him up.
The kid went into the service a mere four weeks after graduating from high school. Heâs had investments and a retirement account for more than the four years heâs been in the service; heâs had a residence with his mother and here with his father and me for more than 15 years. He had a government-issued Visa card.
And Nextel wonât sign him up even after two attempts, even with me present to vouch for him.
F*ckers. Way to treat a veteran.
Semi-Daily Journal
They're Not Military Police.
Edward Luttwak makes the point that the soldiers of the 4th Mechanized and 101st Airmobile Divisions are not military police:
Op-Ed Contributor: So Few Soldiers, So Much to Do: ...Thus the number of troops on patrol at any one time is no more than 28,000 -- to oversee frontiers terrorists are trying to cross, to patrol rural terrain including vast oil fields, to control inter-city roads, and to protect American and coalition facilities. Even if so few could do so much, it still leaves the question of how to police the squares, streets and alleys of Baghdad, with its six million inhabitants, not to mention Mosul with 1.7 million, Kirkuk with 800,000, and Sunni towns like Falluja, with its quarter-million restive residents.
In fact, the 28,000 American troops are now so thinly spread that they cannot reliably protect even themselves; the helicopter shot down on Sunday was taking off from an area that had not been secured, because doing so would have required hundreds of soldiers. For comparison, there are 39,000 police officers in New York City alone â¥ä and they at least know the languages of most of the inhabitants, few of whom are likely to be armed Baathist or Islamist fanatics.
Joho the Blog
Off to Open Text. Through Friday morning I'll be at Open Text's annual user meeting, this time in Orlando. I'm giving a very brief talk tonight — 15 mins on why messy, tangly relationships always are and have to be at the bottom of even the most tightly managed business — and then am going to be a "roving reporter," doing a keynote on the last day that reports on what I've seen and heard and possibly smelled. I'm going to be keeping a blog for the conference. Unfortunately, due to yet another disk crash — this time on my laptop — I've...
Joho the Blog
Beijing Ann Frank Reviewed. From the mailing list of Beijing's only Jewish synagogue, Kehillat Beijing In this month's issue of That's Beijing there is an interesting article about a Bejing interpretation and staging of The Diary of Anne Frank. It is playing 1-16 November in a local theatre.We are considering a community trip, tentatively for Wednesday, Nov. 12th. If you are interested in reserving a ticket and joining with members of the community to see it together, please send an email with your contact details to .... About a Girl Ji Pei finds inspiration in The Diary of Anne Frank Gerald Mak Ji Pei...
Joho the Blog
News from Iraq and Vietnam. Steve's making connections so gently that before you know it you've gone from the blatancy of Fox to the filagree of memory....
Salon.com
These are your kids on drugs. Journalist Meredith Maran spent two years searching for answers to America's epidemic of teenage addiction, while her son Jesse found his own answers -- and got clean -- through the Bible and the Baptist Church.
Salon.com
This Modern World. It's the zaniest sitcom on TV! President Baby!
Salon.com
King Kaufman's Sports Daily. The growing scandal involving the new designer steroid THG gives sports fans one more thing other than sports to worry over.
Salon.com
Oiling up the draft machine?. The Pentagon is quietly moving to fill draft board vacancies nationwide. While officials say there's no cause to worry, some experts aren't so sure.
Salon.com
Condom conundrum. My girlfriend is afraid of birth control but I can't enjoy sex with a rubber. What should we do?
Salon.com
The Fix. ABC gets into married Jesus controversy, Kurt Andersen shows his Colors, and Heidi Klum wants a room of her own. Plus: Cheerleader fooled by Average Joes!
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Viacom's Pathetic Pandering. Washington Post: 'The Reagans': Too Hot for CBS to Handle?. Though no one at the (Republican National Committee) had seen...
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Recalling a Bold, Too-Early Online Newspaper Experiment. UPDATED My employer, Knight Ridder, tried something bold two decades ago: an online videotext service that in many ways was...
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Intel Outside: Chip Competition Still Alive. Mercury News: IBM picked for Xbox. Breaking ranks with Intel in the video game business, Microsoft said Monday that it...
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Apple and Software Quality Control. The Register: Panther bitten by second data damaging bug. Mac OS X 10.3's FileVault system, which protects each user's home...
t a c i t u s
And speaking of news isolation..... One interesting thing about travel is that your sense of what's going on the world gets horribly skewed. Particularly when you're on "business" travel: the media sector of the mini-economy tailored to your needs assumes that you desperately want to...
t a c i t u s
Still getting back up to speed..... So, the Plame Affair: That never went anywhere, did it? I was expecting to return to find investigations, or new developments, or something, and I'm getting zilch. Looking back in Google News, it's like the story just abruptly stopped, like...
The Kicker
Prada on Talley. Excerpts from Miuccia Prada's interview with Vogue's Andr/ Leon Talley in the November issue of Interview (confiscated from Lou Reed's book party last night—but more about that later): ALT: Look at you with your gloves and your bag! MP: And...
Tomalak's Realm
SJ Mercury: From July 22, 2001;
IDEO Gives Technology a Human Touch (PDF from IDEO)
anil dash's daily links
Send a FAX by E-mail. every couple of years i rediscover this service, use it once, and it saves my ass
anil dash's daily links
Don't Test Users, Test Hypotheses. turning web dev into a science means planning out the information you're trying to discover
anil dash's daily links
the thong meme reaches its ugly nadir. i am not sure how this device functions, but pondering it has made me afraid and uncomfortable
anil dash's daily links
goodbye, redbird. the last old-style subway car is put to bed
anil dash's daily links
software vendors seize opportunity from new regulations. i think sarbanes-oxley and the patriot act will be huge opportunities for consultants advocating wbelogs as documentation tools
anil dash's daily links
invasion of the FYROMians!. the firebird browser's language support gets sidetracked into a discussion of greek nationalism and macedonian identity
anil dash's daily links
how to unshrink a wool sweater. almost four years ago, jason kottke changed my life
anil dash's daily links
the dutch strike out against the euro penny. god bless 'em. the euro penny is even more annoying than its american counterpart.
anil dash's daily links
donate to meg's run. if everyone reading this gives just a dollar or two, meg will make her goal in a few hours. go help out.
anil dash's daily links
the sharks circling google. the economist is typically astute at analyzing everyone's favorite web company
anil dash's daily links
Business Blogs: How Successful Companies Get Real Results With Weblogs. marketing wonk has put together a really solid (and lengthy) report on the emerging biz blog market
anil dash's daily links
the worst plane in the world. thanks to my commenters, i now know that getting on a LET plane means YOU WILL DIE
anil dash's daily links
red hat cans linux distribution. no such thing as a free lunch, apparently. i bet the zealots will hate this move.
Jeremy Zawodny's blog
Self Assessment. Yup, it's that time of year again. Ever since I've graduated from college and worked full-time, the end of the year has meant that I need to set aside some time to fill out forms as part of a formal review process. The idea being that I assess myself, my manager assesses me, and my peers provide feedback. This all gets stirred together by my manager and then results in a rating of some sort and possibly an annual raise....
Washington Post: Editorial
A Lonely Fight
Washington Post: Editorial
To the Polls
Washington Post: Editorial
Tax and Click
Washington Post: Editorial
Correction
Washington Post: Editorial
'Superbug' Threat
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
BUSH SCREWS OUR TROOPS AGAIN: This is becoming a rather...
Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE."
PALE AILES: Fox News denies that they bend news coverage...
The Scobleizer Weblog
Welp, I'm caught up with the RSS feeds. Now gotta catch some sleep.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Silicon.com: "Red Hat's chief executive has said that Linux needs to mature further before home users will get a positive experience from the operating system, saying they should choose Windows instead."
The Scobleizer Weblog
Tom Mertens: Lessons learned at the PDC.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Scott Loftesness says "Scoble's speaking in parables."
Oh, geez. There are some things in Scott's reply to me that are NOT true. Microsoft invests a LOT in making sure things are high performance -- the Longhorn performance story hasn't been written yet. I remember working with the NetMeeting team and they took great joy in showing off how performant their code was (not to mention the entire app was less than three megabytes, while ICQ today is more than 10).
Actually, if you look Ole's points, he makes it clear that he believes that IE won in the marketplace because it performed better. That didn't happen by accident.
Also, he says that Quartz already does everything Longhorn will do in three years. That's also not true. But, I don't wanna pull an Andreeson, so you'll have to figure that out on your own. We've already hyped up the market enough about Longhorn. Go back to sleep for another couple of years. :-)
The Scobleizer Weblog
IBM's John Patrick: "I decided to begin the journey toward Linux for my desktop, to learn more about Linux, and see how far I can get. I'll be writing about my experiences here on patrickWeb."
The Scobleizer Weblog
Tim Bray makes the case that end users aren't asking for rich client apps. Heh, if you can find an end user that even knows what a rich client app is I'd be suprised. Tim, you're asking the wrong questions.
Now, go back to mom and dad and ask "wouldn't you like a web browser that doesn't erase all that stuff you just entered in on your banking form if you accidentally click on a link?" or "wouldn't you like to watch three videos on a page at once?" or "wouldn't you like to play a new kind of high-performance video game while reading the news?"
How about "wouldn't you like to have rich video and rich animation-based interfaces that don't require downloading yet another plugin?" Or, "hey, look at the new Amazon interface we showed off on stage at the PDC, wouldn't you like to tour through Amazon like that?"
Or, how about: "
The Scobleizer Weblog
Ahh, the stage is set by eWeek for a "Linux vs. Longhorn" showdown.
The Scobleizer Weblog
ROFL.
Rory Blyth's latest.
Visit Rory's blog and see why I'm ROFL.
For those of who who are really new to this game: ROFL means "Rolling On the Floor Laughing."
The Scobleizer Weblog
Mike Gunderloy posts a post-PDC rant about what he's seen so far: "I should preface this by noting that I wasn't there. This means that I've been free of the Microsoft reality-distortion field, but also that I'm relying on published stuff to form my opinions."
The Scobleizer Weblog
Ingo Rammer wonders what is wrong with Seattle weather. I tell ya, it's been messed up ever since the Scoble's moved north.
The Scobleizer Weblog
I liked this review of last Monday's keynotes by Jon Kale: "It's Windows, but it sucks less." I was in those keynotes, sitting near Chris Sells way in the back. Nothing like seeing Don and Chris on eight of the 16 screens. Nothing like seeing Jim Allchin playing code monkey on them either.
The Scobleizer Weblog
If you haven't figured out by now, I'm going through my list of 600+ RSS feeds looking for gems to post. I'm on the "D's" right now. I'm a week behind, so shoot me. But, my workflow goes something like this:
1) Open my RSS folder (it has 618 subfolders).
2) Click on the first bold one. Scan the headlines.
3) If something like this headline pops out, blog it: "Don Box Violated Me Tonight."
Note: anything about cats gets automatically passed up.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Paul Paradise: The Magic of Blogging.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Dare Obasanjo says that the weblogger BOF at the PDC focused on the wrong thing. Well, I was there, and one of the problems of the BOF was that we didn't focus on anything for more than a couple of minutes. The Atom vs. RSS thing was a mere two-minute discussion.
But, I agree, we didn't get important work done. We probably should have split the crowd up into smaller groups.
The Scobleizer Weblog
I was just over at Dan Gillmor's site (he writes about tech for the San Jose Mercury News) and saw that he was wondering if a new Microsoft fan site was real or not. Anyone know? I've never heard of the Microsoft user network before.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Larry Magid has a weblog, but no RSS feed that I can see, and no conversations taking place. Oh well, I'll point to him anyway. If you don't know who Larry is, here's his bio. Writes tech for New York Times, among others.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Scott Hanselman: "PDC was the shiznit." Good overview of what was important to take away from the PDC.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Scott Hanselman noticed the preparation that went into the PDC. I love that Don Box comes along in his comments and corrects one of Scott's assumptions.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Oh, Don Box is getting into the Jon Udell conversation too (actually Don's posted twice already on the topic -- here's the first post).
The Scobleizer Weblog
Dare Obasanjo replies to InfoWorld's Jon Udell about his "Replace and Defend" piece. Now we're getting someplace! Notice. Jon started a conversation. Dare replied. Anyone else? Oh, yeah, John Montgomery1 and John Montgomery2.
The Scobleizer Weblog
John Coggeshall starts an interesting conversation with his rant titled "Microsoft, and why they might care about Open Source."
The Scobleizer Weblog
Brad Abrams is quickly becoming one of my favorite Microsoft bloggers.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Benjamin Mitchell has a cool photo blogroll from the PDC. I wish we could do something like this for everyone of our attendees.
The Scobleizer Weblog
I guess I should put a disclaimer on my weblog. Benjamin Voigt has one of the better ones. Since I haven't talked about it in a while and I have a ton of new readers: I'm a technical evangelist on the Longhorn team for the Microsoft Corporation.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Tony Perkins says Silicon Valley is back. Hey, just got back from there last night. Is it back? Well, the traffic is back. Even on weekends. Jobs (and not Steve, heh) seem to be coming back, but there's plenty of open space in lots of those big industrial parks. The dirty little secret is that there's still a huge amount wrong. There are still tons of people out of work. Many for a very long time. My brother in law has all but given up. There are still people trying to leave. Tons of "for rent" and "for sale signs." Housing prices there are still over the top expensive (Maryam and I couldn't afford a home there).
But, the valley is still a great place to be for a geek. If you're a geek there are really only a handful of places in the world you can live and meet lots of geeks. Silicon Valley is still on the top of that list.
The weather is still the best in the world.
That said, I'm very happy to not be living there right now. It's going to be very hard for anyone but the most expensive employees to live there. To buy a three-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood you'd need to be making $150,000 at minimum (980 square foot houses in Santa Clara now sell for $500,000). I don't make that. Most of my friends and family don't make that. Translation: the pressures to give up your personal life and work two jobs just to pay the mortgage are very extreme.
The Scobleizer Weblog
G. Andrew Duthie: "In the .NET world, we're all .NET programmers." Interesting rant about why he believes VB shouldn't be differentiated from C#.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Werner Vogels calls me a "bad boy" for not making sure the PDC Community Environment application was "Tablet friendly." Good point. We'll go into this more next week. Software development is about tradeoffs. When you have an inflexible deadline (the PDC wasn't gonna move) you need to reduce your set of requirements to get your app done on time.
Remember, this thing was done with very few resources and very little time. We did test it on the Tablets though.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Chris DeHerrera is tracking all the Tablet PC stuff that went on at the PDC last week on his very nice TabletPCTalk site.
The Scobleizer Weblog
The rumor: Microsoft wants to buy Google.
The reality: Microsoft Blogger has dinner with Google's founders. (I took that picture a couple of weeks ago at O'Reilly's FooCamp)
OK, I've gotta go on the record. I did NOT ask Brin and Sergey if we could buy Google. Wouldn't it be wacky if all of this is due to someone reading too much into that dinner? Hmmm.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Susan Kitchens, one of the first bloggers I ever read, was blogging the Los Angeles fires last week.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Congrats to Chris Pirillo for getting a redesign of Lockergnome. Nice newsletters for geeks.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Anyone try Copernic's Summarizer? I used Copernic's stuff back before I really got into Google, but this new tool looks like it's been much improved. I'll put it on my "to try" list and see if it is good enough to get me to stop visiting Google's toolbar.
The Scobleizer Weblog
So, I think the PDC 2003 photoblog is done with. Looking through those, man we built some memories up. Any ideas on how to improve photoblogs of events like this? There'll be more events and Text America would appreciate your help in making these even more useful.
The Scobleizer Weblog
So, I'm starting to dig through all the press reviews of the PDC and Longhorn last week. Here I found Extreme Tech has a good review. Anyone have some favorites? Man am I far behind.
Another one I heard all week long is "Paul Thurrott this" and "Paul Thurrott that." Ahh, now I see. He has videos!
The Scobleizer Weblog
Chris Hollander says that this PDC was the "Blogging PDC." Very true. Tons of people experienced blogs and RSS for the first time. OK, here's a question: why aren't all of you using an RSS News Aggregator yet?
1) Too lazy to try?
2) Have no idea what RSS is?
3) Thought you needed Longhorn to do that?
So, what's your excuse for still using a Web browser to visit sites like MSDN or my weblog? Have you seen the little XML icon over on the right? Ever wonder what that is? So ask! That's why I have comments.
The Scobleizer Weblog
As an example of a great conversational weblogger who works for Alan Meckler: Jupiter Media's Joe Wilcox takes Microsoft (and me) to task "Microsoftâs biggest challenge coming out of its developer conference, which ended today, will be getting everyone focused back on Windows XP."
Good point. It's only human to want to focus on what's coming rather than what's already here.
One thing we've done is pull tons of people off of Longhorn development to get a major security fix done (code-named Springboard). Windows XP +is+ job #1. We're continuing to invest in that and bring out great new products, games, and services for XP.
But, how do you pull back the hype lever once you've pulled the trigger? That's an interesting problem and one that no marketing department has ever faced.
Hey, Alan Meckler, notice what I did in this post:
1) I linked somewhere else.
2) I responded to what that weblogger said.
That's a conversation. I sent people off to another weblog. In the "old school" of Websites, that's a no no. I once had a boss who said "never send anyone off to someplace we don't own."
In the weblog world you get paid back for sending people to some other weblog and/or website. Most people haven't figured that out yet.
Oh, yeah, I just committed another sin: I just taught the competition how to do a great weblog. That's part of weblogging culture too. Share and share and share until you can't share anymore. Why? Because people will remember the guy who shared the tips that made them rich and/or famous. They won't remember the guy who kept everything close to the vest. Not to mention that my readers teach me FAR FAR more than I teach them. But, they'll only do that to people who share first. It's the definition of "win win." I want my readers to win. That makes them want me to win too.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Alan Meckler announces yet another enterprise-focused cdXpo (conference and exhibition). I still am bored with Alan's weblog, which doesn't have a conversation, but rather is just a way to deliver press-releases. Hey, Alan, yeah, this is a good cheap way to replace those press-release announcement services. I hated using them too. But, Alan's missing the real power of weblogs. Why doesn't Alan talk to his Jupiter Research webloggers about best practices? They have tapped into something real powerful: conversational marketing.
Does conversational marketing mean bigger events? I had tons of people come up to me last week and said "I came to the PDC because of your weblog." So, yes, I think it can be shown that conversational marketing is very powerful indeed. The PDC was sold out. How about cdXpo? Can it hurt to try?
The Scobleizer Weblog
Yes, the rumors are true. Marc Canter stayed in my room during the PDC. Weird thing was I barely even got to see him because I'd come in at 4 a.m. and leave at 7 a.m.
The Scobleizer Weblog
What do we want you to do now that the PDC is over?
1) If you were at the PDC, please log into http://www.mymsevents.com and evaluate the sessions you attended. That'll help us improve for next time.
2) Catch up on your post-PDC reading. Mike Gunderloy has an excellent article that'll get you caught up.
3) Join in the newsgroups.
The Scobleizer Weblog
Hey, what happens if you don't make all the PDC materials downloadable in one download? Two guys take the weekend and write a .NET hack to do it for you. Thanks Sean and Scott!
The Scobleizer Weblog
Heh, Scott Hanselman has some fun with me at dinner the other night. Seriously, I'd be honored if he really considered me his friend. Scott was doing some very cool blogging with his little Blackberry.
The Scobleizer Weblog
One problem is just getting anything done the week after the PDC. Most of the team I'm on is getting some well-deserved rest. Jeff even has a bit of time to catch up on his weblog (cool pic of Don Box and Chris Anderson -- they really are the rock stars of PDC 03 -- their banter with Jim Allchin was classic and will be a "must study" for keynote demonstrators for years).
The Scobleizer Weblog
I started writing out my memories of the PDC week, but it just got way too boring. Let's just say there were a few high points. Having Ray Ozzie ask to meet me at dinner. Walking into the weblogger BOF and having people cheering me. Seeing Aero on screen. Touring Universal with a bunch of webloggers and meeting Don Box. Having Chris Anderson come to dinner with me. Yes, the rock star of the PDC!!
Seriously, I'm getting boring again. Thanks to everyone who said hi and now let's start your aggregators again. Be back later for a tour through what's in my feeds.
The Scobleizer Weblog
As of yesterday Maryam and I have been married for a year. Wow, how fast it has gone. It's been quite a wild time in the Scoble household. I haven't been good to her during the leadup to the PDC, so will try to slow my blogging down a bit. This weekend, for instance, we'll be taking off. The community is really rocking, though. The SQL blogs, the .NET blogs, the PDC blogs, the Longhorn blogs, are all fantastic and are growing in numbers and in quality (don't count last week's many "moos" into the signal-to-noise ratio).
I love Maryam very much, and believe me, she's the reason my blog is halfway decent.
How to Save the World
THE CAUSE OF VIOLENCE.
In two
recent
posts I enquired about the cause of
human cruelty and violence. Now fellow Canadian blogger abuddhas memes
points to a possible answer in an article
by neuropsychologist James Prescott: a combination of neglect or abuse in early childhood
and pre-marital sexual repression.
The article studies many different human cultures and correlates
proclivity for violence with a host of environmental factors, and
these two seem to account overwhelmingly for the (in my view) aberrant
behaviour that perverts our whole society. It suggests that societies
that show great physical and emotional affection for their young, and
don't ban sexual expression from adolescence to young adulthood, tend
to be virtually violence-free. In the whole nature-versus-nurture
debate, Prescott seems to be suggesting that nurture is the root cause of
violence, and that we are all born innocent but can be perverted either
directly by one of these deprivations in our own childhood or
secondarily corrupted by having the violence of one of these depraved
individuals inflicted upon us. In other words, violence stems from
childhood deprivation and then begets more violence in adulthood.
I have some reservations about the study, which goes on to present some
fairly strident and unsupported conclusions, but let's assume for a
moment that the basic thesis, which seems to have some credible
empirical support, is valid. What would Darwin have to say about all
this? While the article suggests that this violence is
counter-Darwinian, I think it misses a critical point. There are, on
the surface, two Darwinian ways of looking at the above correlations,
both of them suspect:
- Ferocity increases the likelihood of survival, so our
30,000-year-old violent Western culture, perhaps rooted in salvationist
religions that (a) encourage 'eye-for-an-eye' violence, (b) prohibit
premarital sex, (c) encourage stern disciplinary treatment of children,
and (d) tolerate substantial and prolonged separation of children from
their parents as a means of 'teaching independence', is successful because it is violent.
Non-salvationist cultures, which are 'by nature' peaceful, just can't
compete. This seems to me completely counter-intuitive, since, as a
look at Western history and current events indicates, this violence
breeds war, ethnic hatred, and retaliatory violence that threatens our survival, rather than
advancing it. You might argue
that what is in our survival interest in the short term (violence) is
not in our survival interest in the longer term (self-annihilation),
and that therefore Darwinian 'rules' are imperfect. But given the
remarkable sustainability of evolution for tens of millions of years,
such a massive flaw in the rules seems highly improbable.
- Human violence is a survival response to violence in
nature. Hence survival of the fittest becomes survival of the most
violent. This frightened view of nature implies that nature is itself
violent, brutish, and destructive, and that humans had no alternative
but to fight force with force, violence with violence. The problem with
this view is that there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support
it.
However, if we reverse cause and effect, and see the violence and its
behavioural causes as a response
to critical environmental stress, the logic is more tenable and both
the end-state and some possible solutions become evident. The
prevailing view of nature is that it is profligate, wasteful, and
relies on checks and balances to counteract the 'natural' instinct to
breed and expand and eliminate other species without limit. But there
is another view that is, while more recent, more sensible and more
consistent with the geological and biological evidence. This
alternate view is called the 'Gaia
hypothesis' and posits that the Earth is, like the body of any
living creature, a single self-regulating organism, and, just as the
body's organs work to sustain the health and integrity of the whole
body, Earth's ecosystems work to sustain the health and integrity of
our planet.
Under this hypothesis, regulation of the ecosystems is not attained by
introducing counter-balancing forces (like epidemics), which would tend
to lead to wild whip-sawing changes and disequilibria of life on Earth,
but rather by self-regulation. Indeed, studies of many animals and
birds have indicated that as population in a particular community
increases, fertility drops. Perhaps this is a stress reaction, perhaps
it is an 'instinctive' reaction (analagous to the 'knowledge' of the
body's organs when to stop growing), or perhaps there is a 'program' at
work that we haven't yet learned to recognize that sends the
overpopulated species a biochemical signal to cut back procreation.
Whatever the cause, perhaps our human culture's reduction in population
growth rate in the last century in many countries is a manifestation of
the same self-regulatory impulse, rather than a conscious decision or
outcome of improved birth control. If so, it is too little, too late to
achieve anything like equilibrium.
What happens in nature when the natural checks and balances and
self-regulation fail? There must be another mechanism short of
ecological upheaval, since nature is constantly evolving new mutations
and testing their viability and hence challenging the entire Gaia
equilibrium. A student of the University of Colorado named Eli Meier cites
a study by "Hall, 1969" (if anyone can find more info on this,
please let me know) which says that in addition to reducing procreation
and fertility, overcrowded rats exhibit these six anti-social
behaviours (emphasis mine):
- a minority display aggressively dominant behavior
- passive males avoid both fighting and sex
- hyperactive subordinates rape females and eat or kill children
- pan-sexual males will have sex with both males and females
- some males withdraw from sexual and social intercourse and
are active when others sleep
- female rats generally react by acting absent minded, having
disorganized nests, and by either eating
or neglecting their children
The impact of this psychotic behaviour on young rats sounds to me
awfully similar to Prescott's 'childhood deprivation'. It's certainly
an effective way to put population control in 'overdrive' when the overcrowding is extreme.
And yes, it seems cruel, but perhaps it is less so than the suffering
that would otherwise occur through starvation, and disruption of the
entire ecosystem of which the overpopulated group is a part. And
because of the trauma inflicted on the children, this internal violence
has a 'memory': it will endure at least a generation or two, continuing
to suppress procreation, perhaps just to ensure the extreme
overpopulation doesn't recur.
At any rate, the six psychotic behaviours listed above sound
frighteningly like the human behaviours that are in evidence everywhere
on our planet, especially in areas where human overcrowding is most
extreme.
What emerges from all of this is a compound hypothesis that I'll dub
the "Self-Imposed Population Control Hypothesis". And it is:
- Communities/species that are moderately out of ecological
balance instinctively and temporarily reduce their population
- Communities/species that are severely
out of ecological balance reduce their population and also exhibit
psychotic behaviours (violence, rape, cruelty, bullying, greed,
depression, suicide, megalomania) that accelerate, and draw out the
period of, population reduction
- These two self-imposed population control
mechanisms are
Darwinian, helping to restore balance with the minimum amount of
disruption to the rest of the ecosystem, and the mimumum extent of
suffering
- A combination of human technologies
introduced in the last 30
millennia has defeated the effectiveness of these mechanisms,
perpetuating and institutionalizing the psychotic, violent behaviour
that has made modern human society dysfunctional, mentally disordered,
and brutal
|
Well, it's just a hypothesis, but it makes more sense to me than any
other explanation I've heard, rational, psychological, religious,
scientific, social or moral, for the epidemic of human violence in our
society. And the list of six anti-social behaviours above seems to
perfectly describe the actions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, Perle and
the whole psycho gang in the White House.
What's troubling is that there doesn't seem to be any human answer, now
that we've irreparably screwed up these mechanisms. I don't think we'll
be saved by gods or aliens, and I don't believe we'll wake up and find
out this is all a bad dream. Deus ex
machina, anyone?
P.S. Thanks to Rob Paterson for his advance thoughts on this article.
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How to Save the World
ECONOMIST NEWSPEAK.
The newspapers
were full of 'joyous' and 'encouraging' news about the economy this
past week, and there was little mention of the fact that, on the heels
of this 'good news', several businesses announced another round of
layoffs.
It's infuriating to me that newspaper and television reporters are so ignorant of how
the economy works these days that they are unable to see what this
'good news' really means to their readers. Let's break the recent
euphoric announcement down into its components.
WHAT THE ECONOMISTS TOLD YOU
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WHAT THEY DIDN'T TELL YOU
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"The GDP rose 7.2% mainly on the strength of a 6% annualized
rise in consumer spending"
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That means consumer costs,
mostly reflected in the leaping cost of home purchases, are growing at
a 6% annual rate. Most of those costs are fixed,
non-discretionary costs like mortgage, transportation and health,
which have increased 3-to-10 fold in a generation while spending on
food, clothing, recreation and furniture has plummeted in that time,
because there's just no money left over. Since incomes are
not growing at all, this means consumer debt is rising yet again,
and if interest rates spike the consumer is toast. And if you need a
reality check, consumer spending dropped
in September, showing that consumers are tapped out.
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"Profits are soaring"
|
The reports indicate that this has occurred almost entirely
by cost reductions, not increased sales. The primary means of cost
reduction have been layoffs, exporting ("offshoring") jobs, contracting
out, and downsizing. In other words, profits are soaring on the backs
of American workers.
|
"The risk of deflation is largely forgotten now"
|
When people are forced to spend more than they can afford on
the above-noted non-discretionary items, and incur record levels of
personal debt, the risk is inflation.
A sudden spike in inflation would crush already over-burdened
consumers, put the economy in free-fall, accelerate the collapse of the
US dollar, and prick the housing bubble. The only significant asset
most Americans have, the family home, would then lose much of its
value, and foreclosures would soar. And economists do expect rates to rise soon.
|
"Unemployment has leveled off"
|
Half a million Americans a month are giving up
looking
for work every month. In more ways than one, they don't count in the
economists' numbers. |
"Employment will have to rise to keep pace"
|
There is every reason to believethat
net new employment by large corporations will almost all be in India,
China, and other
third-world countries. Hiring overseas not only reduces costs, it puts
money in the pockets of consumers in those countries who are more
likely to spend it on the crap these companies produce (most of which
is now manufactured in these countries anyways) than debt-ridden
Americans would be.
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So now you know what this important economic news means. Don't you feel
better now?
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How to Save the World
GEORGE ORWELL ON WRITING.
Above the Fold, the free daily
technology summary from NewsScan, has
the following interesting quote
from George Orwell (from The
Writer's Demon) on what motivates people to write. Perhaps it
applies equally to bloggers:
- Sheer egoism. Desire to seem
clever, to be
talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on
grownups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to
pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this
characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers,
soldiers, successful businessmen-in short, with the whole top crust of
humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After
the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition and live
chiefly for others or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is
also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live
their own lives to the end, and writers belong to this class. Serious
writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered
than journalists, though less interested in money.
- Esthetic
enthusiasm. Perception of beauty
in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right
arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the
firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share
an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.
Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from esthetic
considerations.
- Historical
impulse. Desire to see things
as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of
posterity.
- Political
purpose -- using the word
"political" in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a
certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society
that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free
from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do
with politics is itself a political attitude
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How to Save the World
FRIDAY QUICKIES.
THE NEW RULERS OF THE WORLD
 Dick Jones' Patteran Pages introduced me to the remarkable work of writer, film-maker and award-winning British investigative journalist John Pilger. I recently picked up his prescient book The New Rulers of the World,
written shortly before the US decided to invade Iraq.
The book consists
of four very substantial essays and an introduction that pulls them all
together. The introduction, a scant 14 pages, is a breathtaking and
articulate summary, a perfect snapshot, of the political and economic
world we find ourselves in right now.
Here's how it begins:
When American
Vice-President Dick Cheney said that the 'war on terrorism' could last
for fifty years or more, his words evoked George Orwell's great
prophetic work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. We are to live with the threat
and illusion of endless war, it seems, in order to justify increased
social control and state repression, while great power pursues its goal
of global supremacy. Washington is transformed into 'chief city of
Airstrip One' and every problem is blamed on the 'enemy', the evil
Goldstein, as Orwell called him. He could be Osama bin Laden, or his
successors, the 'axis of evil'.
In the novel, three slogans dominate society: war is peace, freedom is
slavery and ignorance is strength. Today's slogan, 'war on terrorism',
also reverses meaning. The war is terrorism. The most potent weapon in
this 'war' is pseudo-information, different only in form from that
Orwell described, consigning to oblivion unacceptable truths and
historical sense.
Dissent is permissible within 'consensual' boundaries, reinforcing the illusion that information and speech are 'free'.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 did not 'change everything', but
accelerated the continuity of events, providing an extraordinary
pretext for destroying social democracy. The undermining of the Bill of
Rights in the United States and the further dismantling of trial by
jury in Britain and a plethora of related civil liberties are part of
the reduction of democracy to electoral ritual: that is, competition
between indistinguishable parties for the management of a
single-ideology state.
Central to the growth of this 'business state' are the media
conglomerates, which have unprecedented power, owning press and
television, book publishing, film production and databases. They
provide a virtual world of the 'eternal present', as Time magazine
called it: politics by media, war by media, justice by media, even
grief by media.
The 'global economy' is their most important media enterprise. 'Global
economy' is a modern Orwellian term. On the surface, it is instant
financial trading, mobile phones, McDonald's, Starbucks, holidays
booked on the net. Beneath this gloss, it is the globalisation of
poverty, a world where most human beings never make a phone call and
five on less than two dollars a day, where 6,000 children die every day
from diarrhoea because they have no access to clean water.
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You can read the entire introduction here.
But buy the book. The research is impeccable and well-documented, and
Pilger has an uncanny ability to bring what look like disparate and
unrelated events into blinding focus, and expose the terrifying,
systematic and ruthless logic behind the activities of the massively
powerful business/political elite, the New Rulers of the World.
MEDIA CENSORING NEWS OF THEIR OWN UNPOPULARITY?
Last week there was a rash of
news stories lamenting an across-the-board disastrous drop in
viewership of television. The drop was most marked in young men, a key
demographic for advertisers, and in viewership of the season's new,
mostly dirt-cheap 'reality' shows. There were dire warnings that if
viewers didn't return soon, huge rebates would be owed to advertisers
who had been guaranteed a certain minimum number of passive consumer
eyeballs. What's interesting is that all of these 'bad news' stories have disappeared behind the 'pay-per-view' archive windows of the newspapers and network websites. All that's left are choppy abstracts. Are the media prematurely burying stories that threaten to hurt their own advertising revenues?
CAMILLE ON WHAT BLOGGERS NEED TO DO BETTER
In her semi-annual revisit to Salon.com, Camille Paglia takes shots
at Bush, Rumsfeld, Clark and some other Democratic presidential
candidates, Hannity, and Madonna, and then dismisses blogs as "endless
reams of bad prose" with "a lack of discipline" and "dreary
meta-commentary". I can only assume that Ms. Paglia hasn't done much
research on the subject, and has (as many others have done) judged all
bloggers by a handful of unrepresentative A-listers. She says a good
blog should have:
- a sense of drama and theatre, energy and vision
- a flair for language
- strong use of visuals
- conversational style, an antidote for "the inept writing of glossy magazines"
- less focus on political minutiae and "gotcha" arguments and more attention to broader cultural issues
I'd argue that the best blogs have all this, and more. Maybe Ms. Paglia
should look more closely, or at least hire a better researcher. It's
too bad interviewer Kerry Lauermann didn't show her what some of
Salon's own bloggers have been doing.
TECHNOLOGY THAT MAKES THE WORLD BETTER
The annual Tech Museum award
winners have been announced. Winners are those that have developed and
deployed innovative technology that improves the world: in education,
equality & diversity, environmental protection, third world
development or health. Read the stories: They're modest but inspiring
successes, and demonstrate that not all businesses are greedy and
careless, and not all technology is bad.
WHAT HAVE WE LOST SINCE 9/11?
This multimedia flash presentation is a year old, but still relevant and moving.
CARD COUNTING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
The MIT Blackjack team's amazing story is now a best-seller. Wired broke the story last year. Mezrich is an engaging writer, and if you've watched the new James Caan series Las Vegas you'll get a kick out of Mezrich's view from the other side of the surveillance cameras.
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Joi Ito's Web
Fast Company article by Seth Godin on "the posse".
Seth Godin did an article for Fast Company about how I use my blog and IRC and am adapting my work-style to the social software. His perspective is interesting. I hadn't thought of it as a "virtual organization". I'm also glad he got this part right:
Seth Godin
It's important, though, to not think of this as Joi's powerful new network or Joi's group. "Joi Ito is no longer a name, it's a place," he says. He coordinates a collective, one in which he's a member, not the chief.
Thanks Seth!
By Joichi Ito
jito-mt@bee.puberteny.com.
Joi Ito's Web
Japan Society Roundtable - New Currents in Japanese National Identity.
Participated in an interesting roundtable discussion this morning organized by the Japan Society. I was told I could write about it but I couldn't attribute quotes without permission.
There were representatives from the US, China, Taiwan and Korea.
An interesting point that was raised was that the older generation conservatives in Japan were unrealistic because they had been protected by the US, whereas the conservatives in South Korea were realistic enough to deal with the unrealistic Japanese. On the other hand, the younger generation in South Korea were unrealistic because they had not experienced the Korea war and the threat of North Korea, whereas the Japanese younger generation seemed to be more realistic. The point was that when the South Korean younger generation became more realistic, a stronger tie to Japan might be realized.
I think it was the consensus of the group that the constitution of Japan should be revised to allow Japan to participate in peacekeeping operations, improve self-defense and improve the alliance with the US. Everyone agreed that the relationship with the US was in good shape right now, but that failure to deal with the North Korea situation could lead to a disagreement about whether Japan should go nuclear, the US should attack or a variety of issues on how to deal with North Korea. However, the North Korea crisis in any event is helping the US/Japan relationship for now and the trend is probably to push for strengthening the alliance and try to get Japan included in the US missile defense system. The other area where the relationship my become problematic is if the US is not supportive of Japan's efforts to help organize ASEAN+3 and other Asian economic trade organization that exclude the US. Both of these seemed to be manageable issues.
With respect to the "identity of Japan"... There was an opinion raised that Japan should push to democratize Asia as the leading democracy in Asia. There were some opinions that "democracy" was politically touchy since there were friendly non-democracies in ASEAN countries and words like "governance" or "open and tolerant societies" might be better. I argued (as usual) that Japan was not a democracy so it was strange for Japan to that democracy was Japan's identity. Also, democracy requires embracing diversity which we do not do at home. Until we embrace diversity at home, we will not be very convincing when going to try to promote democracy abroad. I said that we should focus on dealing with diversity and racism at home and become and example rather than trying to push it abroad. I said that I thought we shouldn't under-estimate the emotional rift between Japan and other Asian countries and that we needed to deal with this before trying to be an Asian leader.
I also pointed out that the baby boomers were still in power in Japan and the bureaucracy including the foreign ministry didn't represent the young people in Japan. I said that until the changing of the guard it was unlikely that things would really change much. I thought that social entrepreneurship, weblogs and other non-traditional foreign relations between young people was probably going to have a larger effect on reaching out to Asia. I asserted that I thought the grassroots movements and activating the voice of the people, not more bureaucratic deliberations about foreign policy were probably more important.
Also, the point of whether national identity should have anything to do with foreign policy was raised.
By Joichi Ito
jito-mt@bee.puberteny.com.
Joi Ito's Web
Katsurakunchi.
We went to the Katsurakunchi festival Katsura near Fukuoka. We had an great meal including the incredibly rare kue fish. I uploaded some pictures of our meal. There were 14 floats that went past our restaurant. I've uploaded a 2MB mov file of the a float.
By Joichi Ito
jito-mt@bee.puberteny.com.
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Confessions of a guilty pleasure: Average Joe. Okay, I'm outing myself: tonight I watched the amazingly tacky Average Joe --for those of you living on a desert island this is the NBC reality show that puts a beauty-queen style babe--who says she's ready to settle down now that she's hit 25--in a Palm
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Poynter: Especially good e-media tidbits today. E-Media Tidbits has some especially good items today: Nick Denton's product line will add DC and LA blogs to tools, porn and NYC media gossip; Cell phones pay for emedia and parking fees abroad, location-aware storytelling (bet you didn't know what that
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Always On: Scott Rosenberg and Marc Canter on Valley VCs. On AlwaysOn: Are the VC's funding Friendster entranced by the potential of social networking or looking to turn a quick buck?
Valley vet Marc Canter thinks the latter:
"...But what's really going on here? GREED.
These guys don't really know what's g
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Dept of Only in NY: NY Mag logs the blogs. Smart piece in NY Magazine by Simon Demenco about NY bloggers including Anil Dash, Elizabeth Speirs,and Jeff Jarvis, as well as Nick Denton, who seems to be developing into the Rupert Murdoch of the blogosphere.
The game is always to think of NY media
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Judith Meskill: Social Software & then some. Enjoying Judith Meskill, particularly this post on Social Software, Microsoft, and Wallop. A friend just sent me links to the Social Computing Group, and she's got'em too, right here.
By the way, one of the members of this team, GM Lili Cheng, is appare
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Tony Karon: Time columnist gets a blog. Kudos to the Time Inc team for adding a blog to their online roster-- Once you find your feet with the format, guys, how about turning comments on for selected items?(Via Paid Content)
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Microsoft: Will Wallop pack one?. Marketing Wonk's got an item on Microsoft's Wallop, a reported blog-indexing tool a la Popdex, Blogdex, etc. Heiko Hebig from Germany (aka the Schmutzblogger, love that), picked up a post from a Microsoftie, Corey Gouker:
"...And now there's some thing r
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
BlogAds--Kerry buys in. Kerry's campaign's bought online paid political ads from Henry Copeland at Blogads. Jeff Jarvis has a smart post on it, with links to XXX and XXX. He quotes Copeland saying:
"...Jeff Jarvis gets my particular thanks for speaking so warmly of blog adverti
Susan Mernit's Blog: Navigating the Info Jungle
Dog Tales, aka Fall Hikes with Winston. As the Bay area's version of early winter creeps in, days feel like crisp, sunny fall --almost Indian summer--back east. We've spent a lot of the weekend out walking with the dog at the Jackson Street dog park, the Ulistac Natural area off Lick Mill Road,
WHATEVER
To the Comments. Rather than posting an entry today, I invite you all to peruse the comments thread on yesterday's entry, in which I beat on someone for saying something I consider to be incredibly stupid. It's me in high dudgeon. The tragedy...
WHATEVER
Something Sad. I note the burning of artist James Hubbell's home in By the Way. This is a very sad thing....
WHATEVER
It's In!. Look what arrived via Fed Ex today: No, not the girl. She was already here. And when we do ship her, she usually goes UPS. I mean the book. The arrival of the book here means they'll be arriving in...
WHATEVER
Wow.. This is disturbing. Yet another reason I don't ingest aquatic mammals. Update: Boing Boing gets the scoop on "That photo has got to be Photoshopped."...
WHATEVER
Cover Art. Amazon finally got around to replacing a horrible blue "temp art" cover for Book of the Dumb on its order page with the actual cover, which you'll see below: This is something of a relief, as I was the opinion...
WHATEVER
The Downside. Pamie went looking for her book at a bookstore and discovered that not only was it no longer on the shelves, but that the copies that had been on the shelves had been sent back to publisher. This is part...
World O'Crap
Weapons of Mass Detraction has an excellent item about a book from the golden age we call the Reagan years, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency by Mark Hertsgaard.
In it, Hertsgaard demonstrated that (contrary to conservative urban myth) the press was not the evil "liberal" media denounced by folks like Pat Buchanan and Reed Irvine but in fact, served pretty much as stenographers for "the palace court"; re-writing press releases instead of doing what real journalists once did--"comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," as the old saying goes. A wonderfully written book, Hertsgaard discovered soon after that pretty much all of the avenues for promoting his tome were roadblocked as a result of his being a little too critical of his media comrades.
There's more--it's a nice little review of a book on a timely topic. Thank you for telling us about this book, Mr. Weapons, for the way things are going, we sure won't be hearing about it on TV.
World O'Crap
CBS Is Said to Cancel Reagan Mini-Series
Under pressure from Republican and conservative groups, CBS is expected to announce as early as today that it is canceling its plans to run a two-part mini-series in November deconstructing the Ronald Reagan presidency, two people close to the decision said last night.
They said the film would most likely instead be handed over to CBS's pay-cable sibling, Showtime.
The announcement would perhaps the first time a major broadcast network has ever removed a completed project from its schedule because of political pressure and under the threat of an advertising boycott.
And a scary precedent to be setting. Here's a quote from NY Newsday
"This decision goes beyond a television movie; it's precedent-setting in bowing down to conservative fringe groups," said a person close to Sony Pictures Television who asked for anonymity. Sony is the production studio for the project. "It creates a whole new environment for censorship on TV," the person added.
And here's a snippets from the always fair and balanced ChronWatch:
At this time, there are reports that CBS may be trying to sell this movie to Showtime. This would be most welcomed news, as it would prove that the networks are concerned with our opinions and are listening. If that is the case, then we will have emerged victorious.
So, now that the Reagan-worshiping element of the Republican right has won the day and has seen that the networks ARE concerned with their opinions, expect more of these kinds of demonstrations. And expect no network documentaries to be made dealing with anything which might be seen as unflattering to home-schooling, religious fundamentalism, or Republicans.
World O'Crap
Free Porn
Well, we got the word via TBOGG (whom we congratuate on his well-deserved 115,000 hits last month, and his very large. . .readership) that "Donald Luskin is a Stalker Day" has been postponed. So, I guess I'll just turn the tapes over to the FBI and try to find something else to write about.
Hmm, how about this editorial from today's Washington Times: Porn Goes Mainstream. It's by Dave Berg (who is apparently NOT the "Mad Magazine's Dave Berg Looks at the Wacky World of Porn" Dave Berg, but instead some "Dave Berg is a Hollywood television producer and a columnist" guy). In it he complains about how TV has become really pornified lately, mostly because of Fox's new drama "Skin." But the rest of the culture is also going to hell, due to crossovers from the porn world.
Dave says:
Perhaps biggest foray into the mainstream comes from porn queen Jenna Jameson, who was described by one Internet porn addict as a "cultural icon.
Dave doesn't make it clear if HE's the Internet porn addict, or if he was just in rehab with him, but in any case, Dave clearly has his finger on the pulse of the Internet porn addicts, in regards to their choice of cultutral icons. So lets hear more about Jenna:
Her book, "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star," comes out in May. She recently appeared on the cover of New York magazine and was featured in an E! True Hollywood Story profile in August. . . .Her picture currently graces a three-story-tall Times Square billboard. Abercrombie & Fitch, Pony and Jackson Guitars have used her in ad campaigns obviously aimed at a young demographic.
Network television offered her "Who wants to Be a Porn Star," a knockoff of "American Idol," in which she would have played a Simon Cowell-like role. She turned down the gig, citing her concerns about influencing young girls. At least she has higher standards than the networks.
Well, Jenna told Entertainment Weekly that she was offered the "Who Wants to Be a Porn Star" hosting role, but since nobody else has mentioned the offer OR the project, I'd take this story of "the corrupt networks and the porn star who's looking out for young girls" with a grain of salt.
And Jenna isn't the first porn star to write a sex book (I believe that would have been Bill O'Reilly with Those Who Trepass). And since Dave doesn't say how the fact that she's been in porn movies makes Jenna's billboard and ads more detrimental to the morals of youth than, say, Victoria's Secrets ads and billboards, I don't know why he expects us to get all worked up now.
Well, actually this is why:
I think moral relativism has never been more, well, relative. I've witnessed an unbelievable coarsening of values in the media ever since Monica Lewinsky became a household name.
In the common era we'll call Before Monica, there were no references to oral sex in prime time or even late-night television. But in the contemporary After Monica era, the floodgates have opened.
So, it's Bill Clinton's fault that our culture has become depraved and that Fox is now showing programs like "Skin" (AKA "Romeo Corona and Juliet the Pornographer's Daughter"). It's also his fault that porn stars are popular. While many have alleged this previously, now that we have expert testimony about the absence of late-night TV blow-job refs prior to Monicagate, it's been proven.
And Dave Berg IS an expert -- per the bio-line on a piece he wrote for "The Institute on Religion and Democracy," he's "a segment producer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
(FYI, here's a link to his IRD piece Commentary: Anti-War Protestants, in which he reveals that "one of the strongest regiments" in America's wicked, godless, secular anti-war army is "mainstream Protestant leaders." While this might seem counterintuitive, it turns out that the Methodists and such are "mainstream Christians in name only, for they gird themselves for battle with the breastplate of left-wing ideology," which makes them non-Christian, because Jesus was okay with war. The piece, written in the simpler days of May of this year, begins with the ringing statement, "The war in Iraq is coming to a victorious close.")
But let's get back to Dave's claim that our society was fine and unrelative until Bill Clinton forced us to hear all about his sordid affair with Monica (by trying to keep it secret, thus obligating The Starr Report to reveal every salacious detail). Is this really true? I mean about the "no blow-job references on late-night TV prior to Monicagate"? To find out, I did a Google search, looking for mentions of oral sex on TV prior to January 1998. And what this search revealed is that the web contains LOTS of disgusting stuff. Who knew?
So, while I had to abandon my research after about 40 minutes to avoid becoming one of those Internet porn addicts that Dave is always asking about cultural icons, during my time online I did learn that:
(a) Howard Stern used to talk about oral sex on the air at least once a week prior to the Clinton revelations. While this blow-job talk wasn't on TV, presumably kids had ears back then, and could be corrupted just as badly by the radio as by C-SPAN.
(b) There were lots of jokes about Marv Albert and Hugh Grant on Jay Leno's show in 1996-97. While the term "oral sex" may not have been used, people knew from the news accounts that that's what the references were to.
(c) Back in January 1997, this joke item appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, per the network's "highlights for the week" press release:
Last night, police in New Jersey pulled over what they thought was a drunk driver and it turned out to be a couple engaging in oral sex. The officers then issued a stern warning and a high five.
(d) In December 1995, David Letterman held up a copy of a fake book titled "Martha Stewart's Drive-In Movie Guide to Back Seat Oral Sex".
(e) That if you go to TV ACRES: Sex, Love & Naughty Bits, you can read about Martha's various Guides, and also learn many other interesting bits of trivia, such as:
On a February, 1987 episode entitled "Bad Timing" on the sitcom THE HOGAN FAMILY [NBC/CBS/1986-90] the word "condom" was used for the first time in a sitcom script.
And then there's this first:
The first lesbian kiss on network television occurred on the 2/7/91 episode of the legal drama L.A. LAW [NBC/1986-94] which featured a prolonged kiss between two female lawyers, called by Gay Activists as a "lesbian kiss." The two "perpetrators" were the female attorneys C.J. Lamb (Amanda Donohue) and Abby Perkins (Michelle Greene). The C.J. Lamb character described herself as being sexually attracted to men but also as being "flexible." This episode was denounced by Reverend Donald Wildmon and his Christian-oriented American Family Association (aka "The Pervert Patrol") who monitored prime-time TV programs for what they perceive as sinful acts.
And THIS!
While undercover at a prison farm Farrah Fawcett in her role as female detective Jill Monroe exposed part of her right breast and nipple when she bent over during the October 20, 1976 episode "Angels in Chains" on the detective drama CHARLIE'S ANGELS [ABC/1976-81].
I think Bill Clinton is responsible for them all.
Anyway, while it is obvious that there were many more mentions of oral sex (by my estimation, a gross ton of them) on Leno's program after January 1998 than there were prior to the Lewinsky scandal, shouldn't the producers of The Tonight Show bear more blame for this than Bill Clinton? Seriously, don't the people who MAKE the show have some responsibility as to what appears on it?
While we ponder that question, let's go back to Dave Berg:
The new mainstream acceptance of porn is particularly dangerous because some of the most authoritative conservative voices, who would have spoken out, have been weakened for now: the pope and other Catholic leaders, Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh. As a result, there seems to be little awareness that a hideous trend is building up in Hollywood and mainstream media.
The thieves who have been stealing our children's innocence are no longer doing it in the shadows. They're now operating in broad daylight
Presumably only God is to blame for the failing health and speech of the Pope, but whose fault is it that Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh's conservative voices have been weakened? Yup, Bill Clinton's.
But surely there are other people who could take take on role of "authoritative convervative voice against porn." How about Bill O'Reilly? He likes to see himself as an authority figure. He has a loud voice. And best of all, he works for the Fox News Channel where he hosts "the most influential program in prime time." Just think what he could do if he began denouncing "Skin" and the other sleazy programming on the Fox network. I can only hope and pray that Dave Berg invites him to do this -- somebody must think of the children.
World O'Crap
And speaking of NRO Corner Nonsense, here's Rich Lowry commenting on Mark Shield's Time to Take the Dover Test:
THE JUMPING-FROM-TOWERS TEST? [Rich Lowry]
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- At Harvard on January 19, 2000, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton provided a valuable standard, both to determine whether the United States ought to send the nation's warriors into combat and to enlist "the support of the American people as well as the Congress" needed to sustain that involvement. In Shelton's judgment, such a grave decision: "(M)ust be subjected to what I call the 'Dover test.' Is the American public prepared for the sight of our most precious resource coming home in flag-draped caskets into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware -- which is a point entry for our Armed Forces?ä
DOES THIS MEAN SHIELDS IS ASKING ALL OF HIS EMPLOYERS, INCLUDING CNN, TO START SHOWING SEPT. 11 REPORTING AND PICTURES OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER?? OR ARE THOSE PICTURES STILL TOO DISTURBING FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE??ä
Um, Rich, are you saying that American people would feel just fine about seeing the flag-draped caskets (if the Bush administration allowed anybody to see them, which they don't, which is the point of Lowry's article) if CNN would only show them the really graphic 9/11 images continually? And you are saying that you feel that the American people could easily be duped into thinking that the insurgent attacks in Iraq had something to do with 9/11, in only CNN would do its part? Are you advocating using the deaths of innocents to justify the sacrifice of American soldiers engaged in a fight that has nothing to do with 9/11? Is so, I have to say that you're pretty despicable. But maybe I just misunderstood the point you were trying to make.
Yeah, I probably just misunderstood. Maybe Rich meant that Bush was only trying to protect Americans from the horrific experience of seeing just how these soldiers died, just like CNN didn't air some of the more disturbing footage of people jumping to their deaths from the burning Trade Tower. Except that the article wasn't about not showing grisly deaths, it was about not showing flag-draped coffins. So, I don't know WHAT Rich is talking about. I guess I'm just not smart enough to follow his logic because I'm not a genetic conservative.
Oh, and Rich adds:
GOOD POINT, RE DOVER [Rich Lowry]
E-mail:"If Mark Shields wants to ensure that these patriots receive the `glory and public honor' that they `earned and deserve[],' CNN should spend at least as much time reporting on their accomplishments as they do reporting on their deaths."
So, unless CNN spends more time reporting on those schools and hospitals opening, then Mark Shields is a hypocrite! .
birdhouse.org
Gypsy Feet. Hoho...
birdhouse.org
Holy Mind. Blazoo....
birdhouse.org
What's This?. Whoza....
birdhouse.org
Jackpot. Hmmm....
birdhouse.org
Test Post - Ignore. Poo[p...
birdhouse.org
First Album. The first record I ever owned* was the Partridge Family's "Up to Date." Actually, I acquired this and a copy of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at the same time -- they were given to me by a...
birdhouse.org
Good Karma Ballot. The author of Bolinas' Measure G wears burlap around her legs and neck, and paints her face in dark chocolate sprinkled with black pepper. She's lived on the streets and in the woods for ages. The measure she wrote reads:...
birdhouse.org
Panther Notes. I'll skip the detailed Panther observations -- plenty of excellent overviews and reviews out there. A few scattered notes after working with it for a few days: - Move over sliced bread - Expose' is even cooler. - Finally, Cmd-Tab...
birdhouse.org
Mike's Accident. Just returned from the emergency room. Friend Mike (who comments here occassionally as "baald") was hit by a car while on his motorcycle. In very bad shape, but alive and talking. He will be fine, Insh'Allah. Accident happened on the...
birdhouse.org
If Voting Could Change Things. Mary Hodder posted an entry in the J-School's bIPlog on the leak of certain internal Diebold memos. Diebold is sending cease and desist letters to universities whose students link to said leaks, and Swarthmore is falling for it. What's really...
birdhouse.org
Longhorn. Next version of Windows previewed to developers. Executive summary: Copy Apple, copy Apple. Copy Be, copy Apple. Easy peasy! Music: Cocteau Twins :: Five Ten Fiftyfold...
birdhouse.org
rsync redux. Completed the new backup system last Friday. Now have a perfect daily mirror of half a dozen backup locations, as well as incrementals rewinding every day for a month. The cool thing about rsync is that it doesn't need to...
birdhouse.org
So Crazy Japanese Toys. Mystery envelope arrived today, padded, manila. Addressed to me. No return address. No card, no note, no clues as to origin. Only that the order was fulfilled by King's Books in Tacoma, WA. Inside, a book titled So Crazy...
birdhouse.org
Like an Asteroid Hitting the Earth. Oops, Dave Barry's finger slipped and he ended up accidentally publishing the phone number of the American Telemarketers Association. Hope that didn't inconvenience anyone there who, I dunno, maybe didn't want to be called? Oops, looks like the ATA got...
birdhouse.org
Beyond Interview. Andrea "hawksmoor" Scatena interviewed me a bit ago for Beyond Magazine : "BeOS, AmigaOS, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD." He wanted to know my thoughts about the various BeOS variants floating around today. Pulled no punches in my answers. In fact,...
Pesky the Rat
Susan the Human, my agent and manager, has decided that my weblog doesn't offer enough opportunity for her to express her human views. I might point out that the proliferation of snakes and fleas and unnaturally chatty bits of wood has also cut into my own screen time around these parts. Anyhow, she's got her own space over here. Her first post starts like this:
My mother spent last weekend setting off anti-theft alarms in retail stores.
She plans to post occasionally, especially when that damned snake is hogging the blog around here. She says she likes Janet, but I know better. I saw her haul an electric de-snakeification device up the stairs the other night.
Pesky the Rat
CBS Censors Reagan Miniseries, says film does not properly reflect personal fantasies of Sean Hannity.
In a stunning development, the CBS television network has decided to censor a miniseries about Ronald Reaganâs life. The network says that exhaustive scientific testing has determined that the miniseries did not contain several key elements of conservative guy Sean Hannityâs fantasy life, which are considered essential to any portrayal of Reagan on film:
1. Ronald Reagan naked on a horse, galloping down a beach in Malibu with golden light streaming off of all relevant portions of the anatomy.
2. Ronald Reagan, naked, frolicking in Nicaragua with happy children, begging him to tell them stories about the brave Contras who were busy getting rid of all that countryâs pesky liberals.
3. Ronald Reagan wallowing naked in a vat of cream cheese with aforementioned horse.
4. Ronald Reagan, naked, covered in cream cheese, riding a horse through San Francisco, generously counseling sexual deviants on the evils of homosexuality while simultaneously saying absolutely nothing nasty about gay people whatsoever.
5. Sean Hannity, naked, covered in cream cheese, riding a horse with Ronald Reagan through the Getty Museum in Southern California, stopping occasionally to pose in front of baroque paintings of men hunting.
Shockingly, experts say the final cut of the miniseries produced by the director contained absolutely none of these required elements, and therefore the show will be chopped to bits and thrown over the fence to Showtime, which everybody knows only uppity liberals watch anyway.
Daily Kos
Off-Year Elections. It's election day in a number of states, including the...
Daily Kos
OPEN THREAD. We have a new baby and a parent gone, in...
Burningbird
When I heard the Learned Astronomer. When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. When I Heard the Learned Astronomer by Walt Whitman...
Burningbird
Dixie Land. Last week, the worst part of the trip and traveling past those confederate flagged homes wasn't that the flags were some kind of symbol of the NRA or racial hatred, whicheveryoneisagainst. The worst part of the day, for me, personally, was when I saw all those confederate flags and thought about walking in those woods all by myself, and remembered those men and their mirror sunglasses, I felt relieved that I was white, and not black. The year is 2003 and it was the middle of the day in the middle of the United States and I'm driving in my car thinking to myself that I'm glad I'm white and not black. No wonder I couldn't look anyone in the eyes at the park.
Burningbird
State of Geek: Postponed. I'm postponing releasing the rest of the State of Geek essays. The timing puts them too close to other events that have happened around the immediate weblogging vacinity, and I really want them to stand alone as what they are -- expressions of my thoughts and offerings of my writing.
Burningbird
A Weblog Renaissance. Reading my own writing, I damn near talked myself out the Internet there for a sec. But what do sandy beaches, ocean breezes, warm weather, nudity, and rum have that could possibly make me want to give up all of this?
Burningbird
Week at a Glance. DDoS and the comment spammers and all these other crackers that go hack in the night are going to become a more frequent problem rather than less; might as well know what's happening then not. Especially since webloggers have now become a cracker target of choice, with out influence on Google and making such a satisfying noise when our sites go down. Worse, we react, and then we get all tangled up in the effects of our reaction. Like me. Today.
Burningbird
The State of Geek: Part 1 -- Temp Job, No Health. The dot-com explosion fueled a lot of changes that are going to continue to negatively impact on technology jobs in this country, and the rest of the world, for years to come. This impact is going to be significant enough that if people were to ask geeks like me whether we would recommend that their little Bobby or Susan study computer science in college, we would have to honestly say, "No"; an answer that has serious consequences to the state of geek.
Burningbird
Bitches Club. I think that's what defines a bitch to me. It's not that you fight all the time; it's that, at a minimum, you don't accept what's happening around you without at least trying to understand what that 'acceptance' means in the long run.
Burningbird
The Illusion of Perfection. However, the appearance of consistency and pattern in nature is really an illusion; a trick to make us think we have the answers. Just when we think we've found the key to understanding it, nature changes. We're then left grasping at our tattered assumptions, gazing in bewilderment at our math where two plus two does not equal four. We learned a lesson about this from the sun this week -- if something so primal to our lives can suddenly change behavior, what can we depend on? Do you feel your world rocked?
Burningbird
But Young Women don't want Role Models. Halley Suitt wrote at misbehaving.net about .NET developer Julie Lerman and her attending the PDC (Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference). Halley mentions the usual bad ratio of men attendees to women, which is not a surprise to any of us. I wasn't going to respond to Halley's post, which was fine. But I could not let a comment Julie Lerman made go without response. First, to set the scene as to the skewed demographics of the conference (white/male, as usual) , Werner Vogels' wrote: The demographics are skewed not only for gender but also race and age. To dominant type: geeky white guy in the 20-30 year range and balding slighty heavyset white guys between 40-50. Hardly any African or Asian Americans. The presenters are almost all fit this stereotype. I can agree with this assessment -- it fits the conferences I've been to, and I've written about this in the past. To which Julie responds with: Werner is right about the race demographics. You do have to discount the fact that it's difficult for people from far away to get there. We know through INETA that there are huge .NET developer communities all over the world including places like Latin...
Burningbird
Cue the Aircraft Carrier. CNN has an article on the efforts made by President Bush's keepers of the image. Considering the current state of the economy, I was given pause when I read the following: The White House efforts have been ambitious and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island. The story mentions that during one of the many trips Bush made to St. Louis to speak at a manufacturing plant, his staff covered the "Made in China" words on the genuine boxes in the background and then brought in some fake boxes with "Made in the USA" printed on them. Hard to give a speech on the glowing economy when you're literally surrounded by the evidence of the increasing, and alarming,...
Burningbird
Wiccan Barbie. I don't normally do the link to major publication/major story thing, but Mark Morford's Barbie The Hot Pagan Witch is too good to pass up. It would seem that Mattel has now come out with a Wiccan Barbi, though the Wicca may not survive the honor. Mark writes: Secret Spells Barbie is, despite her potential and much like every one of the 150,000 weird sub-subniche Barbies on the market, entirely pointless and disposable and, unless the girls who end up with her somehow tap into their inner badass witchiness and suddenly get inspired by some divine funky moonscream to rip off Barbie's arms and paint her hair bright red and tattoo her nipples with a Magic Marker and impale her on a red-hot hair pin and suspend her upside down from a dreamcatcher, well, she does nothing to further the cause of funky gorgeous goddess-thick witchness and nothing to further the cause of earthly luscious pagan interconnectedness or divine feminine power. Not that she claims to. Not that this was ever Mattel's point, or Barbie's raison d'etre, really. And I suppose it's sort of wildly unfair to hope that Barbie might actually inspire girls beyond the hair-twirling saccharine fetishism of...
Burningbird
Burningbird's Diet for Life. Usually our minds turn to dieting when Spring is here and our thoughts are on bathing suits and shorts for the summer. However, a couple of webloggers I know have been talking about dieting lately, and this is something also on my mind. Frank Paynter is on a diet that has him eating plenty of vegetables, but little fruit and he's counting scallops. I can't eat scallops -- shellfish allergy reactions -- but I wouldn't be amenable to anything that cuts into my fruit. I love fruit. I love veggies, too, but the grocery stores are all on strike here and it's hard to find anything fresh. Norm Jenson recounts a very funny tale of coffee and donuts, with some problems with number and other forms of perception. Personally, its hard for me to bypass a Krispie Kreme, but luckily the only time I go past the nearest store is on my way back from some of my favorite hikes. (Then there's Jonathon Delacour's Ozu DVD boxed set diet. When I first read the story I thought Jonathon had written I've stopped eating, I've given up drinking..., until he had all of the Ozu DVD box sets. I was reminded...
Burningbird
Be Afraid...be very afraid. qB, in Red or Dead aka How to Kill grey squirrels: I find my antipathy to our grey furry red-genocidal disease-toting verminous arborial cockroaches is not unique. There's even a National Squirrel Awareness Week site with imaginative suggestions from readers as to things to do with squirrels. I particularly enjoy 'I will run over a squirrel with my tractor' and the positively glowing 'im gonna shove a light bulb between every squirrels hairy cheeks and make sum rodent lamps'. Our apartment complex is crawling with the little grey buggers, but supposedly these critters are native to this area, and therefore not considered a pest species. Still, we put out food for the rabbits and the birds, but none for the squirrels who get plenty from all the nut-bearing trees around. Grey squirrels were a pest back in the Northwest, and virtually killed off the native, less aggressive red squirrel. We also used to have problems with them getting into our bird feeders, but nothing prepared us for the day they discovered the cat door. My ex-husband was an M & M junkie at the time, and we usually had a bowl of peanut M & M's in the family...
Burningbird
Fraud, Fiction, and Flaws. Visiting Scovil's web site to once again look at and admire his photographs of minerals, I discovered the name of the green mystery mineral I discussed yesterday. It's Vivianite. It's not a perfect sample, but at least it's not blackened as so many Vivianite samples are with exposure to light (she says as she looks at her sample, sitting in the sun). Obvious holes in the matrix show where better crystals have been pried loose, probably to be sold separately. Personally, I think imperfections in the piece adds to its character. I have always collected based on beauty and character rather than value and perfection. Because of my undisciplined approach, my collection is interesting rather than profound. That's not to say that the collection isn't worth money -- sometimes beauty and character do go hand in hand with monetary worth, as demonstrated with this virtually flawless rhodochrosite. Still, there are a few of my samples I shouldn't include in the collection photos because they're obvious fakes, or novelty items and of no serious value. When you show your collection, you don't show these rocks. You certainly don't photograph them. Mineral collectors will only show you their good pieces, the ones...
Burningbird
Don't Search on Me. Following on the heels of the recent excitement about searching within pages of books at Amazon, there's now a growing backlash against this facility from, among others, the Author's Guild. According to Volokh Conspiracy and numerous publications, such as Ziff-Davis News in the UK, and The New York Times the pushback occurs because each search returns five surrounding pages of a book, and the Guild says that this could be used to get all the pages for a relevant section of a book so it need not be purchased. Ultimately, according to the Guild, this violates contracts between authors and publishers. I'm an author, and currently have several books out at Amazon. From test searches, it would seem that my Practical RDF book has not been added to the database yet. Personally, I hope it does get added, because it can only help sales. For instance, a person is interested in an RDF API called Jena, and searches on this keyword, rather than RDF. My book shows up in the results because I cover Jena. This is good for me as an author because the more I put my book in the front of readers' eyes, the better chance it...
Sam Ruby
Ted Leung joins OSAF. Ted Leung: I'm very pleased to announce that I've accepted a position
with the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF), where my primary
job responsibility will be working on the Chandler repository,
particularly as it relates to querying. Sweet!
CNET News.com - Front Door
Dell introduces new printer
CNET News.com - Front Door
Sun's Java Enterprise System stays in school. The computing systems maker unveils low-cost Java software that it will license to schools, in a continued effort to get a larger piece of the vast academic pie.
CNET News.com - Front Door
All shook up in Linux land. Longtime Microsoft foe Novell signs an agreement to acquire SuSE Linux for $210 million in cash, while IBM will make a $50 million investment in Novell.
CNET News.com - Front Door
Veritas announces data-tracking product. Continuing a tech industry push on regulatory compliance, the software maker announces a product to help companies abide by rules and manage their data.
CNET News.com - Front Door
IBM, Corning look into supercomputer optics. The Energy Department awards IBM and Corning $20 million to develop high-speed-connection hardware for supercomputers.
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Jesus?. I've never seen the Big Lebowski, but Sean's costume seems to be a pretty accurate take on John Turturro's character....
Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
Reagan's Legacy. Congressman John Dingell releases Dingell Joins Republicans to Protest CBSâs Mini-Series "The Reagans" "As someone who served with President Reagan, and in the interest of historical accuracy, please allow me to share with you some of my recollections of the...
