Later today (the 11th) I'm going to New York City for ILC 2003, and I'll be there until Wednesday (the 15th.) During this time I won't be doing my normal blogging - I'll mostly be writing, reading, and taking notes of the presentations, etc.#

Jim Moore writes about the meaning behind the Clark "case."#

What is the significance of the Clark case? We are living in a new "demand environment' for candidates. Consider this: much of what a candidate or a president must do is manage the demands of an ecosystem people, groups and interests. This issue is fundamental in the study of political science. The demand environment includes various segments of the general public, as well as the press, plus what we think of as "special interests" including both advocacy groups and donors (and often these later are one in the same).

The demand environment can be examined for both content and structure. Content includes people's and groups views on particular topics, such as the economy, foreign policy and diplomacy, and social issues. Structure refers to the relative power, activation, and activation speed of particular groups.

The blogosphere's involvement in politics is changing the structure as well as content of the demand environment of the candidates. The Draft Clark movement—blog-enabled—has real power. It is self-organizing and internally coherent, it is activated, and it is capable of very rapid activation speed. The movement is a critical part of Wesley Clark's demand environment. His new team seems to miss this fact, or hope that by ignoring the movement, it will fall in line with their agenda. This is unlikely to happen. Power groups that are locked out seldom go away—rather, they become more aggressive in asking for their place at the table. If they do not get their place, they will look for another table at which they are welcome—or they may go negative and seek to undermine the power of their former host.

Jim Moore posts his thoughts on regional unions of governments.#

There will be a set of powerful regional federations within just a few years. They will perhaps come together in a new world organization--or at least club--made up of these regional organizations. Such an organization--if it also included regional organizations from the rest of the world--would be as comprehensive as the UN, as manageable as the G8, and potentially more democratic than the WTO. The Belgian president has been pressing for this concept for several years, by the way.

The EU will become an important model, and perhaps the model, for how other regional federations design their unions. So it's important to get it as right as possible. The EU and Europe as a whole already have certain issues for which they do a better job. In my view the EU deals with environmental issues much better than the US, and of course these will become more and more crucial as time goes on, along with global social and economic development matters. In the US we are truly in the vanguard with our protection and encouragement of individual freedoms, and thus entrepreneurship and individual creativity. We are not so great at addressing the big worldwide problems such as poverty and global climate and population explosion. Thanks to Adam for raising these issues at BloggerCon and keeping them alive in his comments on the conference.

Ryan Overbey writes that we should not pull the myth of "Writing be done" over our heads. Writing is a dialogue, a conversation, it evolves.#

In academia, we have an antiquated model of finished product. We write a paper or article or book, we send it off to reviewers or professors or publishers, and then we're done. The factory has spewed forth a widget, and the widget can be evaluated and sold in the market. The manufacturer reaps prestige, the publishers reap a (modest) profit. Yet ask any professor what they think of stuff they've written ten years ago- very many of them will have changed their conclusions, even their methods, in significant ways. In academia, everything is always in draft. So how do we represent the process more authentically? Open it up. Like Dave said at Thursday's meeting with reference to political campaigns, get the flashlight in there and see what's going on.

So as I think about blogs and scholarship, I'm going to venture a modest working hypothesis: Abandoning the notion of finished product, publishing your in-progress thoughts, assumptions, and insights, and giving people the ability to comment and challenge you during the writing process itself will increase the quality of your writing and thinking.

Ryan Overbey posts his thoughts on Kill Bill: Volume 1.#

Kill Bill is deliciously manipulative- from the numb shock of the violent opening the film takes us to a colorful suburb straight out of Edward Scissorhands. After a beautifully choreographed battle, the innocent child enters, and stares blankly at two blood-drenched women in a room of shattered glass. This dark underworld of assassins and samurai honor is interrupted by our simple realities- a child getting off the bus, daddy coming home from work, a bowl of cereal being made. And then, when the girl returns to stare blankly at her dead mother, we are drawn back into the romantic samurai world- we are left with the impression that this girl will one day grow up, take up a sword, and seek her revenge. It's the same kind of tension between the epic and the quotidian that made Ghost Dog work so well.

Again and again, Tarantino pulls us in and out of these worlds. The film's strength comes from the collision of the gross and the subtle. There's a tidal regularity with which the otherworld of kung-fu action and anime unreality is interrupted with this-worldly American comedy, with rednecks and trucks and spanking jokes. Beautifully ornate and dramatic Japanese is interspersed with blunt, flatly delivered English dialogue. The aesthetics of Japanese animation- oceans of blood, the face's reflection in a sword, the focus on twitches of the eye and face, are rendered with devotion, but there's a disarming physicality to it all, as jarring as Uma Thurman's yellow outfit.

Raymond Chen explains why the Windows taskbar clock doesn't display seconds.#

On machines with only 4MB of memory (which was the minimum memory requirement for Windows 95), saving even 4K of memory had a perceptible impact on benchmarks. By blinking the clock every second, this prevented not only the codepaths related to text rendering from ever being paged out, it also prevented the taskbar's window procedure from being paged out, plus the memory for stacks and data, plus all the context structures related to the Explorer process. Add up all the memory that was being forced continuously present, and you had significantly more than 4K.

So out it went, and our benchmark numbers improved. The fastest code is code that doesn't run.

Jorrit Wiersma writes about Einstein's scientific evolution.#

This month's Dutch Physics Magazine contains an article by Jeroen van Dongen of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin about Einstein's (four) publications in a dutch journal (interesting detail: the ideas in those articles have turned out to be wrong). He describes how the first set (1915, just before Einstein published his relativity theory) is about physical experiments and how the later articles (1933) are much more mathematical in nature. Einstein's early publications seem to show much more interest in empirical confirmation of the ideas that are presented. However, his relativity theory showed Einstein that some physical results just seem to follow from elegant mathematical derivations. This led him to believe, later on, that elegant mathematics is more important than emirical confirmation, which sadly also led to a number of "results" that he thoroughly believed to be correct due to their mathematical elegance, but turned out to be false.

In my opinion this shift towards more confidence in (purely) mathematical results characterizes a lot of twentieth century physics. This is probably caused in part by the rise of quantummechanics, which describes physical phenomena on such a small scale that empirical methods have great difficulty in obtaining results and one has to rely on (theoretical) mathematics much more heavily. This is a dangerous thing, of course, and, for example, the Nobel price is still only awarded when findings have also been confirmed through experiments.

Wendy writes that it's not society, it's YOU.#

Well, the hell with that. I realize, people, that our society is such that various people feel entitlement to certain things. I realize that men have been taught that sex is their right. But that is a problem. It's not something to shrug your shoulders and shake your head at! It is your fault, not society's, if you aren't outraged by rape. It's your fault, not society's, if you look at a woman and see something to be taken, not a human being. It's your fault, not society's, if your children grow up thinking that they are owed something.

It's my attacker's own fault that he is a would-be rapist. It's the guy who wouldn't stop trying to kiss me's fault that I never wanted to see him again. It's the guy who used a "dating service" to find women for himself's own fault that he'll never date in this town for the rest of his life. These were not oppressed guys, or guys with histories of sex crimes, they were just regular middle class guys. These things will follow these men. Kobe Bryant will never be assumed to be safe again - it's unclear at the moment whether that's his fault or not, he's still innocent until proven guilty - but if he did it, if he sexually assaulted someone, that's his fault, not society's, that no woman will ever want to be alone with him again. If he didn't actually do it, sucks to be him. But maybe, just maybe, with a famous athlete on trial, one or two guys - just them, I'm not expecting the world to change - will realize they are not entitled to sex, no matter what they think they've done to deserve it. One or two fewer rapists in the world is a step in the right direction.

Wendy writes about losing her virginity, very brave.#

Here's the kicker. I found out a few days later that he was 41. I thought he was like 30! Black men age very well! Can you imagine, this 41 year old dude, how much he was into deflowering this 22 year old innocent redheaded girl? Yikes, I was like, every dirty old man's fantasy. Hehehe. And now I see him on Law & Order sometimes in tiny bit parts, and in movies. Won't tell you which ones. But every time I see him onscreen, I hear, "Suck on this, baby." And I laugh, and am grateful that I got it over with in the way I did, because really, who wants it to hurt with someone they love? And who wants to be a virgin at 22 in 1997? (OK, some people did, but not me....)

Richard links an article on whether sex makes you healthier or not.#

"Researchers have noted, parenthetically, that sexual etiquette usually demands the brushing of one's teeth before and/or after intimacy, which, by itself, would help promote better oral hygiene." That's my favourite part, the reasons for which are none of your damn business and I'll thank you to stay out of my personal affairs. (Emphasis mine.)

Richard has thoughts on Lance Arthur and 80% guys.#

I'm an 80% guy too, except unlike Lance I'm not 41 but rather 25 and not gay but rather heterosexual. The concept of an "80% guy" validates my newfound tactic of literally, physically avoiding beautiful women as they approach, or worse, that I'm walking behind. (Best way I've come up to avoid walking behind beautiful women is walking in front of them.) That way, I don't have to look at them, and don't have to think "I could never have her".

A case in point. The other day, I'm sitting on a bus in the seats which are parallel to the windows, where the people who are sitting on both sides can see each other. (In short, the seats facing sideways, duh.) It's only me sitting on one side and a very pretty Asian girl with long, beautiful hair with red highlights sitting on the other. She starts fixing her lipstick—a rather pretty shade of pink—using her combination brush-slash-mirror and then proceeds to call further attention to herself by brushing her hair. In a very much "guy" moment, I stare dumbfounded, my mouth no doubt agog, but I thankfully not only catch myself doing so, but think to myself "she's doing that on purpose to get my attention!" (as if I had proof that she was doing it on purpose, but that's the way I think) and then "I can't take it anymore!" and I get up and in a huff, walk to a different seat where she's not in view. Relief.

Via Matrix Essays is a set of links to stunt websites from by WB from inside the Matrix world.#

Starting in late September, MetaCortechs's site became active. Within days, people began to realize how deep the rabbit hole really goes, with the WB (Watchowski Brothers) creating an authentic-looking hosting company to host MetaCortechs's site, as well as several other sites that were created by MetaCortechs "employees".

Ryan reviews Celibacy.#

The biggest joke in society is preaching celibacy until marriage. The one thing I learned about Nick Lachey from him marrying Jessica Simpson is that the man is a prime candidate for As Seen on TV products.

I give Lachey benefit of doubt of course assuming that they are both indeed telling the truth. Simpson said she wanted to remain a virgin until after she was married, and Lachey said it was "challenging".

What Lachey really wanted to say was that Simpson was a prissy bitch and he could be out screwing any other celebrity in Hollywood, but ended up with this virgin retarded whore of a brat.

It seems most modern people have a try before you buy mentality - so why not extend it to women? Are you going to get married only to find out during your honeymoon that your wife is horrible in bed? If you are going to live life having perpetually atrocious sex with a stone, you'd better have alot of money. Your credit card bills will baffle Wall Street. Half of your fiscal gain will be spent on Kleenex, Tawney Roberts, and Super Glide.

An article on Kuro5hin about John Gilmore.#

John Gilmore, probably most well known as "that dude that started the alt.* newsgroups" is one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a foundation dedicated to civil rights and civic responsibilities online. As a life member of the Libertarian Party he is , not surprisingly, in favour of drug policy reform. Unlike others, Gilmore holds a unique perspective on why "illegal" drugs should not be banned: The right to speak freely is irrelevant if the citizenry does not have the right to think freely.

A quote from John,

Just as adults keep immature children away from matches and hot objects, though there is no law prohibiting the possession of matches by children, parents and social feedback should be used to teach children how to handle drugs responsibly. The War on Drugs has certainly not kept children from being able to get drugs! By eliminating the black market and the threat of prison, and allowing straightforward talk from people who know the dangers first-hand, children can learn the real reasons why some drugs are best avoided, and learn the line between use and abuse of other drugs. Today's situation teaches children that it's best to sneak and lie about what they're doing -- both because they are afraid of prosecution, and because they see drug-using parents doing the same thing.

J got her Librarian Action Figure.#

A box of Simplot Classic Petite Asparagus Spears arrived just a few minutes ago containing my librarian action figure. Maybe the best thing about the toy is model Nancy Pearl's quote on the box: "The role of a librarian is to make sense of the world of information. If that's not a qualification for superhero-dom, what is?" What's particularly nice about having an action figure with sensible shoes is that she stands up on her own.

The back of the box has a timeline of library history and a list of famous librarians (like Immanuel Kant and Batgirl). There's a trading card and bookmarks, too, and URLs for finding a near-by library and book club.

For all of those who are horribly offended by the "Amazing push-button Shushing Action!," I'll let you know that the shushing arm bends, so that you can turn her "Amazing push-button Shushing Action!" into an "Amazing push-button" pointing action instead. She's totally awesome and now stands in a position of honor in my office: atop my computer monitor.

She later writes Why Librarianship is a Dream Job.

4) In a knowledge economy, the people who have the information have power. (One day the world will act like this is true. I'm sure of it.)
5) I like learning and, in my job, I'm always learning.
6) I like so many subject areas I couldn't pick just one. My job allows me to be a generalist.

Lisa Williams on the Citizen Journalist Blogger.#

A citizen journalist is a person who goes to a public event -- a rally, a ballgame, a city council meeting, a book reading -- or interviews another person, and then provides that information to the public by writing about it or providing audio or video, usually via their website or weblog. Typically, the citizen journalist has no journalism training or background, although they may. They do not get paid for their efforts, and they do not work for a newspaper, tv station, or radio station. (That said, some people who do work as journalists and get paid for it like journalism so much that they do it in their spare time for free).

Matt Webb links to Paul Thurrott on user interfaces.#

Paul Thurrott on computer interfaces metaphors, on the subject of XP (task-based, iterative) versus Mac OS X (the desktop). The Mac interface is consistent with clear differences between applications, documents and the file-system -- but Windows is contextual and makes use of "special folders exposed through the Start Menu that make handling photos, music, and other documents simple. When you launch these (and other) folders--directly from the Start Menu that Mac users think to be so silly--you'll see good examples of the task-based aspect of XP in action. Select a photo, open a folder full of photos, or whatever, and you'll see a list of tasks applicable to those file types. Including print. You don't have to worry about the app. There's nothing like this in OS X, which make you think app first. An odd approach: Shouldn't the computer do the heavy lifting?" Wizards (Windows' iterative approach to common tasks) also get a mention -- the Mac has previously tried to make all tasks atomic so there's no special mode to follow a process (modeless interfaces being a good thing), but this is lapsing in recent years. Could the Window's alternative make sense?

Armin Ringo writes a paper.#

A case against standards in software composition and data exchanges

This draft recalls a variant of a classic model, a cross between category and ontology models of data representation and execution, and proceeds to suggest how the model could be used as a basis for actual execution without having to agree on a standard formal syntax to express the model in.

More generally it is a case against standards in the computer research and industry, defending the point of view that they are unnecessary and counter-productive for software composition, interoperability, and data exchange formats and protocols.