Year: 2004

  • The Bush Administration’s War on Tsunami

    The Bush Administration today announced its new policy: to wipe tsunami from the face of the earth. “We will find the tsunami where they live,” said one extremely senior administration official, speaking from an undisclosed vacation hideaway. “And we will smoke them out.”

  • Lessig to revise book by wiki

    This spring, Lawrence Lessig will try to get his 1999 book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace updated by wiki for paper publication later in the year. He’s inviting volunteers to serve as “Chapter Captains”; Lessig will donate his advance and royalties to Creative Commons. (Link via The Volokh Conspiracy.)

  • If you watch one voter suppression in Ohio movie this holiday season

    Make it one of these.

  • language

    what today is dismissed derisvely as “politically correct” used to be called “being considerate.”

  • Another piece of Mizzen

    Reading Building an Address Book as a Modern Web App, I see that deus x has brought up another major facet of the personal social-network web app I’m speccing out in my mind: So, in the spirit of pico-projects, I’ve started building that address book application I mentioned awhile ago and I want to start…

  • Lovely, interesting

    A 30,000-year-old instrument is uncovered in southern Germany: His early experimentation suggests that the old flute would have allowed a relatively sophisticated level of musical variation. “The tones are quite harmonic,” he says. They don’t seem to follow a diatonic scale, he notes, but rather the rules of the pentatonic scale that predominates in Asia.…

  • The Graphing Calculator Story

    In The Graphing Calculator Story, the author explains how a useful software utility for the Macintosh PowerPC was developed (almost) entirely by stealth: I view the events as an experiment in subverting power structures. I had none of the traditional power over others that is inherent to the structure of corporations and bureaucracies. I had…

  • Pogue welcomes advice

    David Pogue welcomes suggestions about how to improve his new weblog.

  • xian's favorite blogs of 2004

    OK, I took a crack at my current subscription list and started off by narrowing it down to 30 or so favorites split among several (sometimes semi-arbitrary) categories: Politics and Media: The Poor Man (feed) James Wolcott (feed) PressThink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, by Jay Rosen (feed) Fanatical Apathy (feed) Daily Kos:…

  • Craigwatch: Newsweek calls craigslist 'a sleeping giant'

    Quoting from Susan Mernit’s blog: Ever see someone you know get really famous for what they’ve accomplished?It’s definitely happening to Craig, whose Craigslist has the media marveling. The latest story, in Newsweek, has a clever pix of Craig with “Where the Wild Things Are” fuzzy feet.Quote: “…The list is a sleeping economic giant that’s already…

  • Best blogs of the year?

    Fimoculous.com: Feeding On Itself lists the 26 (or 7) best blogs of the year. What are your picks? I’d start with my current OPML reading list and have to whittle it down somehow. Update: Here are Kottke’s favorites.

  • IDG announces RSS conference in New York

    Quoting RSS Conference in NYC (Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion): IDG announced a new conference focusing on content syndication. The theme of the inaugural show will be RSS: Risk, Reward and Revolution. The conference is billed as executive-level, and created for content owners and producers, media execs, corporate marketers, advertisers and PR professionals.

  • 'The Long Tail' (book and the blog)

    Quoting from The Long Tail the book and the blog: Chris Anderson is writing a book about The Long Tail which started as one of my favorite articles that he wrote for Wired. He has also started a blog about the Long Tail. The original article is online at Wired.

  • Do Economists Indulge in Parenthetical Witticisms?

    Thursday 12/16/2004 ———————————————————– RELEASE: In October, Czech retail sales continued to follow the trend of the preceding months and increased…1.1% on a seasonally adjusted month-to-month basis. On a year-ago basis, retail sales advanced 1.7% (not seasonally adjusted). DKo: A full-year seasonal adjustment? It must make sense somehow, but it does sound funny. Economists don’t indulge…

  • Social book recommendations

    Books We Like is trying to build a community of book-recommenders, and offers price-comparison shopping for recommended books. This is a good step in the direction of collabortive review communities. I often want to write about a book I’m reading on my blog but I’m frustrated by the impoverished data structure (cue Marc Canter, et…

  • Exley praises his shortcomings

    Christian posted a long quote from the Berkman School living-web wonkfest last week. At that, Kerry online honcho Zach Exley told everyone that Kerry-Edwards focused too much on means and not enough on ends: The Democrats had no shortage of goatee-chinned web designers, but they were trounced by the Republicans’ superior top-down organization. “The difference…

  • Joi finds the edge of Orkut

    Joi Ito fills up his Orkut dance card, wonders what happens after “game over” (The edge of Orkut): I just got the following message on Orkut. Limit reached for number of friends You have 1024 friends. You can only have up to 1000 friends. Before you can add more friends, you need to remove friends.…

  • Chilling times

    According to an article on MSNBC.com, 44% of Americans “believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans.” Further: The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent…

  • How an unconscionable punishment became an enlightened incentive.

    DKo: Boldface is mine. USA TODAY, 6-22-04 On Nov. 27, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved 17 “Category Two” interrogation techniques….He also approved one “Category Three” technique,…”non-injurious physical contact.”….Rumsfeld rejected three proposed Category Three techniques: exposure to cold weather or water;… DKo: So in November, punishment by exposure to cold was unconscionable, not allowed even…

  • Don’t They Know It Hurts?

    “Remember, more than 90 percent of American homes celebrate Christmas. But the small minority that is trying to impose its will on the majority is so vicious, so dishonest–and has to be dealt with.” –Bill O’Reilly, Fox News: Cited in NYT, 2004: The Year of ‘The Passion’, by Frank Rich I was reading the Newsweek…

  • Ed Cone on local alternative media

    Quoting from Greensboro sees birth of new alternative media: A new kind of alternative press is emerging in Greensboro. The writers are local people who publish at their own Web sites. As individuals, these bloggers offer reporting and commentary that is useful, provocative and addictive. Collectively, they are building what could become the most important…