Lisa Williams describes her ideal aggregator.#

The Worldview Management System

I believe that a truly great aggregator can be developed around the idea of The Worldview.

Each of us has a specific and unique way of viewing the world. Our worldview is informed by our life experience, our way of thinking, our culture, our family, and for many of us, the things we read, watch, and listen to -- the media products of others' worldviews informing and (sometimes) enriching and expanding our own worldview.

The best aggregator, to my mind, would be much more than a list of sites with handy update notifications. It would be a Worldview Management System for the user.

Steven Noels ponders an interesting question...#

Matthew, Bertrand and Sylvain are commenting on the aspect of friendship in the context of social networks and blogging. Matthew comes up with an ethical dilemma: "Let's suppose I were to write that I was having an affair or I had beaten up my wife or children today. Would you link to that? Would you comment? Or just ignore the post?". I have a compound answer to this.

Jen Chung has news of what sounds like an exciting/good movie.#

It looks like Martin Scorsese will be trying his hand at the double cross of Hong Kong's hit film, Infernal Affairs: Variety reports that Scorsese is in negotiations to direct the remake. Brad Pitt, who bought the remake rights with his Plan B production company (with co-partners Jennifer Aniston and Brad Grey), is discussing taking a starring role in this tale of a corrupt cop and a cop undercover in the mob who cross paths. Infernal Affairs, snubbed for a best foreign film nomination, is one of the most popular Hong Kong films in recent memory, spawing two other films. A beautifully shot film, IA is one of the most interesting good cop-bad cop double cross films to come along in a while. Gothamist hopes it's set in New York.

Heidi writes about following the law or following principles.#

I mean, we can level the exact same accusation against supporters of Moore--they were all up in arms about how he was being treated, and those same people are now essentially decrying the marriage licenses.

In the same vein, we think that someone who murders someone because they think justice requires that people wear green hats is a kook whereas Rosa Parks sitting down on a bus is a hero. Where is the respect for the rule of law?

The point is not "we must blindly follow the rule of law"--the point is that sometimes we agree with the law and sometimes we don't. People who criticize Moore and salute Newsom aren't just saying that the law is important because it is a rule, but because it embodies important principles.

Danah writes about personal and professional distinctions.#

First, just because i spend a bulk of my life fighting to end violence against women does not mean that i abhor BDSM. In fact, anyone who knows me knows that i'm one of the most ardent supportors of consensual BDSM out there. I don't believe that it's violence and i have always supported the BDSM community both inside of and outside of V-Day. I am completely supportive of others' sexual preferences; that's not the point here.

Second, i believe in social mores and social decorum. It is outright inappropriate to advertise a professional party in the way that one would advertise a play party. Different social contexts require different social norms. Images set expectations, intentions. Certainly, people have the right to offend, just as i have the right to be offended and state that offense. The point of my frustration is that offensive adverts are not the way to build community or encourage proper decorum that is inclusive.

Dean Esmay writes about "framing" on both sides of the political seesaw.#

Not long ago there was some idiotarian running around saying that the political right had been winning key political battles in recent decades because it had begun using what he called "framing." Left-wingers being thoughtful intellectual idea-oriented people, you see, in his view this meant that everyday people were being bamboozled by the trickery of the word games of the right. As opposed to the thoughtful but complicated ideas of the left.

(You have to wonder where the left gets its reputation these days for elitism, don't you?)

But anyway, let's take an honest look at this idea of "framing." It's another way of saying, "words which concisely capture an idea, and put a subtle spin on them." There is no doubt that the political right does this. But the left is and always has been good at it. All that's really happened, if anything, is that the right finally started to learn how to do it more effectively--quite possibly as a result of the mass movement of a number of liberals in the 1970s and 1980s into Republican ranks. In any case, we now have plenty of "framing" on both sides.

Julie Leung feels like a sheep herder.#

This weekend, this past slow Saturday, in the middle of the morning with dishes undone cluttering countertops, with children crying, in the midst of my frustrations, I saw what it was. Although these routines create stress for me each day, as I try to maintain momentum from A to B to C, they create comfort for my kids. Without Mommy to guide them, without explicit instructions, they don't know what to do in a day. They need a shepherd. They need order. The routines that give me stress give my children rest.

James Leroy Wilson writes about the intersection of Christian and Libertarian beliefs: non-violence.#

Enforcing the government's unjust policies — even if the rulers are duly elected — is not a command for a Christian or any moral being. God's command for us is to love God, and his second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves, is not a contradiction, or a set of priorities in which God would force love for Him to "trump" love for neighbor: Sorry, neighbor, you die because I love God more. That's not the point. Rather, the more we love God, the more we love our neighbor, and the more we love our neighbor, the more we love God.

There's a difference between fictional, fantasized violence that provides a metaphor for the world's spiritual and philosophical struggles, and the gory violence that de-humanizes the select enemies of the United States government, such as drug-dealers and citizens of certain countries.

Mike Walsh writes about targeted advertising in politics.#

The current strategy for both sides is to concentrate their efforts on the "swing" voters. Now, with their extensive databases, the direct marketing guys can custom tailor a pitch (a letter, phone call or ad) specifically for your personal hot buttons. So if you're a SUV driving father of three with one kid in college and two in high school, Kerry's letter to you will go light on the environmental angle and emphasize anything and everything he did to ease the financial burdens of parents with kids in college.

Personally, I don't like this idea of the chameleon candidate...the instantly morphable, infinitely plastic man who is constantly trying to size me up so he can deliver the perfect sales pitch. Yes, I understand the technology is available to do it, but I don't have to like it.

Nathan Hamm writes about his hometown's Cold Case Cowboys.#

My hometown is rarely considered a breeding-ground for innovation, but the Douglas County Sherrif's Department has something that no one else in the country has: an all-volunteer cold-case squad made up of retired police officers. They were recently featured in the LA Times (avoid that silly registration and read the whole story in the extended), recognized as this week's "Nobles" in The Washington Times, and are getting a lot of national attention from TV shows and other police departments that want to copy the program.

Michael Feldman relates the experience of two lectures he recently attended.#

The first was with the former Chief Economist at the IMF.

Perhaps his most surprising pronouncement to the Dowbrigade personally was that any and all of the developing countries in debt crisis could pay their debt, if they only had the political will to do so. He made is sound so simple.

He called the present free-lending atmosphere a recipe for disaster, and ended on this sobering note, "Debt crises are as old as international lending, and call me crazy, but I don't think we are going to have to wait too long for the next one."

The next, with an "Explorer-In-Residence" at National Geographic, who spoke about human diversity and related an intriguing story about a relocated Arctic Indian:

His family was determined to move him to the new village along with them, and were convinced he had acquiesced as his protests diminished with time as the relocation date moved closer. In order to keep him from striking out on his own, they confiscated all of his tools and resources; his knife, sled, boots, snowshoes, etc., leaving him with just the furs on his back. But one night just a few days before the final departure, under cover of darkness and into a gathering blizzard, the old man slipped from the final family igloo.

Behind a protective wall of ice he squatted and took a sizable shit. Carefully, he reached down and retrieved it, and as the Arctic cold solidified it he carefully molded it into a shit-knife. After the basic form was set, he used his saliva to create a hard, sharp edge.

AKMA has been doing drugs recently.#

Henry Farrell writes about the failings and features of anonymous review in various contexts.#

The NYT has an article on anonymous reviews on Amazon, and how they're manipulated in different ways by authors, authors' friends, and authors' most bitter enemies. It's a real problem with a system that allows uncontrolled anonymity or pseudonymity - the information content of the average review quickly drops to zero, unless (like Tyler Cowen you're interested in the degree of controversy that surrounds the book, rather than the ratio of positive to negative reviews). For an academic, the obvious point of comparison is peer review.

John Quigin remarks that the ideas of John Locke and Sir Robert Filmer related to descent from Adam may be able to be put to task with modern technology.#

By careful analysis of DNA, we can now postulate a mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam from whom we are all descended (of course, there's no reason to suppose the two were contemporaneous). Suppose, following the practice of various hereditary monarchies, we identify the rightful heir of Y-chromosomal Adam as the man with the smallest number of accumulated mutations (defects from the point of view of a strongly hereditary principle). In principle, this man could be identified uniquely. In practice, I imagine it would be possible to identify the ethnic group to which this man belongs, probably somewhere in Africa, and crown some prominent member of that group. A feminist version, with descent on matriarchal lines, is equally reasonable and, on the current state of scientific knowledge, a litte more practical.

Russell Dovey describes the Massively Multiplayer Freeform Gameverse.#

Imagine a game which followed the freeform ideal to the limit. A game that incorporated all genres from first-person shooters to space trading sims to 4X space operas.

A game where someone could fight as an FPS grunt, in a battle directed by a tactical squad commander, as part of a wide battle front directed by an RTS general, which was but one part of a planetary war planned and executed by the ruler of a galactic empire.

A game where you would never go on a cookie-cutter mission stamped out upon request by a vending NPC, because all "missions" would be requests from other players for a particular service, such as transporting a combat team to an enemy stronghold, designing a corporate headquarters, or tracking the movements of a spy working for a foreign power.

An addition: Let people become deities by convincing people to worship them, only these players can actually create anything completely new or change the landscape drastically.

Ryan Overbey describes the difference between Catholics and Episcopalians.#

Now, this is a very good question, one that deserves a thoughtful response. See, in the church I grew up in, Episcopalians were considered to be like heroin addicts on methadone: they still had many of the same Satanic idolatrous inclinations of the Papists, but at least they had gotten off the hard stuff and were on the road to recovery. We all held out hope that our Episcopalian brothers and sisters would one day wake up from their slumber, leave their stained-glass citadels of spiritual deadness, read the Book of Acts for a change and join us in some good-old fashioned glossolalia, magical healing, wild exorcisms, Holy Spirit intoxication, and blind faith.

Home is where the broken heart is.#

Gina Smith points to a report from Reuters that vegetarians are less likely to get cancer.#

Razib writes about the evolution of ideas.#

It strikes me that many Marxists I've met have read tertiary works and further. Some nouveau Marxists would put a Talmudic exegetist to shame. What if Marx came back to the modern world and saw what "Marxists" espoused. What if he was in cognito, could anyone deny that he would be rejected by his erstwhile "followers," perhaps as a reactionary who opposed the revolution?

The parallels to Christianity should also be obvious, followers warping the utopian message of the founder out of shape to suit their own interests. But it also can be seen in the "Post Modern" movement, or the "Objectivist" movement (I have met Objectivists who haven't read Atlas Shrugged, just The Fountainhead). It seems an inevitability of social movements that "drift" & "selection pressures" change the idealistic seed to a practical mature form. The rank & file adhere to simple maxims rather than drinking from the well of original works ("What would Jesus Do?" "Come the Revolution!"). Sectarianism and cant overwhelm genuine intellectual discourse and individual conscience.

Part of my quest is to return to the sources.