I really like it when people read great books.#
Bill Dennis quotes a column that describes the different between a cynic and skeptic and good and bad journalists...#
Cynics make bad journalists. Cynical reporters are determined to find dirt under every carpet, whether it's there or not. That's unfair.
Skeptics make good journalists. Skeptics are nosy reporters who question everything and everybody, including their own mother. But they report the good as well as the bad, the glad as well as the sad. That's fair.
John describes an experiment.#
For the past few years I've been secretly conducting a subtle but daring psychological experiment. I've not told anybody about this so you're the first to hear it right now. At first glance - just as soon as I explain to you what this experiment is - you're going to think that it's a bit pointless and inane, but the more you think about it the more questions you're going to be asking yourself. Hell, you might even try to reproduce my test (under laboratory conditions of course). So here goes.
A Different John posts a link to I Hate Cheese, a short documentary by Daniel Hsia. It is very, very funny and so are his other movies.#
A NYT Article writes about soldiers in politics.#
George Washington understood that, and assiduously avoided flaunting his Revolutionary War credentials, in part, historians say, to ensure that the presidency was not dominated by a succession of soldiers.
"He regarded Cincinnatus as his model," said the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. "Cincinnatus saved Rome, then retired to his farm."
Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing reports...#
Douglas Rushkoff's new book, Open Source Democracy, was commissioned by Demos, "an independent UK think tank with a strong interest in democratic renewal and emergent political systems. We think that Douglas Rushkoff is one of the most interesting thinkers on the new forms of social interaction that have grown up around the internet. And, as he argues in his new book, these networked, decentralised forms of communication have a lot to tell us about political organisation."
Michael Feldman has an interesting theory.#
It has come to my attention that 70% of Americans believe that what they say, do and think in the privacy of their homes can affect the outcome of televised sporting events hundreds or thousands of miles away. While this statistic may at first appear laughably to refer to the same 70% of Americans who think Saddam was responsible for 9-11, on closer inspection and after much thought I am inclined to believe that not only is it a true statistic, but that it is rational and derived from good old American observation and common sense.
Haven't you ever thought, "If I close my eyes he'll make these free throws" or conversely, "If I cross my eyes he'll miss these free throws". Next on this slippery slope come those bargains with the sports gods: "If I DON'T have another drink they will hold onto this one-goal lead for the next 5 minutes and 32 seconds" or "If they just win this game I promise I will throw away that Chocolate Forest Cheese Cake in the freezer". In extreme cases victims end up watching games with their lucky teddybear, refrain from changing their lucky socks for an entire season, or become hysterical if you phone at an inoppertune moment, breaking the spell they are weaving for the telly.
Tim Shey links to Falling Down.#
"Falling down", by Barbara Card Atkinson, is still another story of how hard things have become for many people who, not long ago, were counted as prosperous and successful in this country, and if you're reading this, their story may cut pretty close to home. Atkinson's description of the "underemployed" shows the inadequacy of reporting on unemployment statistics alone in trying to report on the health of our economy, and how little there is in place to help catch anyone who's falling.
I hope this isn't coming for people like Bob.
Bob knew a little bit about programming, a little bit about fixing PC's.
He stumbled into a job where he made $70,000 a year basically telling computer idiots they should reboot their PC's when they ran into problems with that Excel spreadsheet.
Lucky for Bob, that usually worked. Sometimes he had to clear out a cache, or perhaps uninstall a Garfield screensaver when things really got complicated. When he couldn't fix something, he usually just blamed Microsoft and everyone in the room had a nice chuckle.
In a late 90's market with such a shortage of techies, Bob was anything but uncommon. Overvalued, over-appreciated (despite poor hygeine), and primarily overpaid.
In the comments of Joi Ito's post with a link to trampolining Nazis, Alex Halavais writes...#
The sad thing is that this is exactly how it will enter the consciousness of most Americans. They will have missed the point: that this kind of athletic and camp gathering among the Hitler Youth had a perniciously evil effect on the psyche of a society.
I think the Daily Show is great--and I am an avid fan--but when the majority of under 25s count it as their major source of news, you get a bunch of folks who don't get it: who see this only as Nazis on Trampolines. As Riefenstahl said, "The object of propaganda has little to do with truth. Its object is to make people lose their judgment."
Tony Pierce writes about the woman who's taking America by storm.#
you think jessica would make a good blogger? i do.
if she wanted i would be her ghost writer. but only if she never mentioned her husband. who doesnt love her. who really seems gay for most of his day until he goes to strip clubs.
he just married his peice of ass wife and she complains, ive probably only seen you 5 days this whole month, and his response is, well whose fault is that?
Critt Jarvis criticizes Dennis Kucinich.#
Mr. Kucinich, you are a successful Congressman, and certainly you have the support of your staff. However, you are a ferocious micromanager. You say you want to be President, and I believe you mean what you say. Your strengths are obvious to me. You have a sacred awareness of the world commons and a vision of an America that lives by peace and diplomacy. You understand your constituency at the level of conversation - generating ideas, making promises, keeping promises, holding yourself to public accountability. You inspire listeners with passionate speech, peacefully organize from the floor of Congress, and fairly confront a President. But, absent the ability to assemble and sustain a core campaign staff, people who are comfortable telling you when your campaign plan is full of shit and with whom you are willingly uncomfortable while listening, illustrates you're not electable as President. The President's staff members are key participants who negotiate the daily complexities at the highest circles of governance, I need to see a leader who trusts his delegates. In this campaign for the Democratic nomination as President, you've demonstrated a profound inability to trust your key people. Therefore, in my opinion, you have disqualified yourself as a legitimate contender for the nomination.
Richard links an article in the New York Times from Sara Rimer about college relationships and peer pressure.#
Sara Rimer: "The study, which included a small number of men, found that both men and women were dissatisifed with their social lives. Instead of formal dates, students attend parties in large groups, followed by "hook-ups," which the study described as fleeting, alcohol-fueled sexual encounters." The key word here, folks, is "fleeting". It almost makes me glad I didn't "hook-up" during college. Almost.
Here's a silly thing to say: "Brooke Palmer, an undergraduate who was interviewed for the study, said, "I know a lot of people who have never had a typical date where you have dinner or go to a movie with someone."" If nobody has gone on that type of date, then it is by no means "typical". Myself, I'm not a fan of the movie as date, except for the possibility of snuggling (which, I found out recently, is possible at the Tinseltown theatre in downtown Vancouver). Sitting down and not looking at and not talking to a pretty girl doesn't sound like fun to me. Dinner and, I dunno, 5-pin bowling sounds a lot more fun.
Richard writes about how people value their degrees.#
It also depends on how you value your degree. Some think in monetary terms, but since my degree was in political science, yeah, you can finish that sentence better than I can. But I was at least exposed to some bright minds and learned, to an extent, how to think on my feet. I'm sitting in first-year classes, and thoughts come to me at light-speed compared to these people, which isn't as big a dis as it could be, because I was rather slow-witted myself in my first year.
It doesn't seem to me like they're challenging the first-years as much as they were before. I mean, c'mon, 5-page papers? Gimme a break! I was expected to write a 12-pager in my first-year political science class, and it was 12 days late. (Lucky I got 84% before 12% was taken off!) Anyway, yeah, to an extent, they're giving them away, but with the increases in tuition, you're probably going to see a higher value placed on degrees by employers: if people are willing to go into that much debt to get an education, they also must be willing to work hard at it in order to get a job that can pay off said debt. (The people who have mommy and daddy paying for their education, well, good luck to them in the real world.)
Slashdot links to Mark Thomas and his X Windowing System Replacement, Y.#
Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing posts a transcript of Bruce Schneier's keynote, "Following the Money, or Why Security has so Little to do with Security" from ToorCon.#
Aligning interests with capabilities
* We want to get the most security for the least trade-off
* Determine the acceptable risk-level
* Figure out the trade-offs
THE BEST WAY TO DO THIS IS TO MAKE THE PERSON WHO CAN FIX THE PROBLEM ON THE HOOK FOR FIXING THE PROBLEM.
We have no choice but to accept some residual risk. "No terrorism is acceptable" in nonsense: there IS an amount of rat-droppings that are acceptable in your breakfast cereal. Some risk is inherent in everything. We've decided that 40k auto deaths/year is OK. In the end, there's an amt of danger that we are willing to accept.
Joi Ito is reading "Beyond Fear" by Bruce Schneier. He quotes and thinks about it...
"In America, automobiles cause 40,000 deaths every year; that's the equivalent of a full 727 crashing every day and a half -- 225 total in a year. As a society, we effectively say that the risk of dying in a car crash is worth the benefits of driving around town. But if those same 40,000 people died each year in fiery 727 crashes instead of automobile accidents, you can be sure there would be significant changes in the air passenger systems. (I don't mean to harp on automobile deaths, but riding a car is the riskiest discretionary activity the majority of Americans regularly undertake.) Similarly, studies have shown that both drivers and passengers in SUVs are more likely to die in accidents than those in compact cars, yet one of the major selling points of SUVs is that the owner feels safer in one."
This really illustrates how subjective people's feelings about risk are. Looking at and talking about risk statistically compared to how we mentally deal with risk is interesting. Media coverage of human rights issues based on the closeness of the culture to ours is similarly subjective. The fact is, mentally, the value of a life depends on the context. We are all very subjective. Acting like we aren't clouds the issues. Journalists who say they are impartial and politicians who represent "everyone" all run this risk. Bruce's book takes a very pragmatic approach to risk, trying to describe the actual quantifiable risks, but also describing all of the factors that are involved in the decisions about security methods to deal with those risk.
Dave Winer wrote an essay called Why they hate me.#
Anyway, the clue came to me when I explained why I hated Apple, and then Netscape and now Google. And then it hit me, that's probably why these people hate me! Poor little old me. I mean well. I work hard. I just want to make software. And then I realized that's exactly what they say at Apple, Netscape and Google.
The reason I hate Google. I feel I helped them get where they are. I want them to stay true to what they were when I helped them. I thought their values would remain constant. I wanted to believe they would always just be a great search engine, I never imagined they would compete with me. But now they do. And I feel betrayed. I resent how they used my help against me. I cringe when I see them diluting RSS, I feel betrayed when they blow me off, sometimes very personally. Hate is betrayed love, and that's exactly how I feel about Google. Same, in the past, with Netscape and same with Apple.
Via Boston Common is Andrew Sinclair with photographic proof why some dude should move his car.#
Ted Leung on Computing Mono-cultures.#
Today's computing environment is far more monocultural than is being discussed. It's not only the monoculture of Microsoft operating systems. It's a monoculture of statically typed languages derived from a C base. It's an operating systems monoculture where most of the ideas are derived or recycled from Unix. It's a hardware monoculture that results in hardware that is optimized to run C programs.
Pointy Haired Boss Tells All#
Dave Winer writes about music "piracy".#
Dave:
Calling it piracy views it only from the perspective of an obsolete distribution system. They see their revenue declining because the service they provide isn't worth anything. The Internet provides efficiency in distribution that cuts out the middle man. Since the industry pays little or no money to the artist, the users can have the music, if you cut out the distributors, for $0. To blame that on people who use music is to miss the historic trend. Users are just behaving economically, not unethically; and it's even arguable that they are behaving legally.
Further, the music industry is applying a moral principle to music users that they don't hold themselves to, that musicians should be paid for their work. They need to clean their house first, and that's going to mean disclaiming ownership of some of their supposed property, and deciding what they want to be paid for, and then asking for (and maybe receiving) help from the online community, in much the same way the US presidential candidates are. And paying some portion of their past profits to musicians to make up for the horrible abuses that have come to light since the Internet music revolution started in Y2K.
Richard comments...
Dave also says that musicians aren't getting any money for their music. That's flatly wrong: many get lump sum payments for signing (and yet, for some reason, musicians don't ask for publishing rights), where the real money is. Evidently starting your own record company will get you a bigger percentage of profits from your music, if not a bigger absolute sum of money.
I recently bought an excellent album by Kenna, which was distributed by a heartless multinational corporation. I don't believe for a second that Kenna is making bucketloads of money from the sale of the album, but in purchasing the album, I'm placing my hopes that Sony will take more risks in signing bands like Kenna, because at least they will get my hard-earned (ha!) money. It's also in the economic interest of labels like Sony Music to invest in digital music trading technology and profit it from it, at least from a guy like me, because I believe in rewarding good music with dollars. The vast majority of the CDs I've bought over the last two years were a direct result of having listened to the songs on MP3 format. That's worth repeating: my sole reason for making my purchase decision was having listened to them before-hand on an inferior-to-CD format. It's the part I don't get about these lawsuits: why sue when you can simply co-opt?
Don Park comments as well...
I sympathize with musicians who are being enslaved by the music industry labels and believe Internet technologies can and will free them eventually. But using them to justify ethical failures or advocate new business models amounts to cowardly and selfish acts. If people really wants to solve this problem, they should first learn to see straight instead of making up false and delusionary images.
[...]
Just as atrocities are made easier by demonizing opponents, we are demonizing the music industry and planting seeds of wide-spread self-justified corruption into our young in the name of newage morality. Piracy is piracy whether the pirate is a sleezy character or a 13 year-old girl. Whether she should be punished or not is irrelevant to the definition of the word.
My opinion! If you don't like what the RIAA and their associated record companies are doing then stop giving them your money and stop listening to their bands. Only when their actions hurt their bottom line will they care about making it better. If you still want to listen to their bands or support them, then call them or write them letters and asked if you can send money directly to them and go over the heads of the record companies you dislike. You should fight the law, not break it. And you should fight the company practices, not support them.