Michael Feldman writes about John Kerry, firefighters, and President Bush.#

This is starting to shape up as the best Presidential election match up since Kennedy-Nixon, or maybe even Lincoln-Douglass, like a knife fight between between octopi on MDA. A much better matchup than last time, even though that one went the distance, and then some. It should be a memorable slugfest, full of low blows, backstabbing, dirty tricks and bizarre plot twists. One would expect no less from two Yale guys...

Michael Feldman on the "Women and Blogging" session for BloggerCon II.#

Inevitably, she was attacked from all sides. Many women objected to the word "chick" and the girly-girl sensibility reflected in the "pajama party" comment. Others objected to the whole categorization thing, saying they preferred to be thought of as just "bloggers". Then there were the men who wondered if they would be welcome at a session of this sort, or whether the conference should even be presenting session at which some attendees might not feel comfortable.

At some point the idea was floated of combining the "women's session" and the "gripe session". People started telling stories about weak ties and strong women. By this stage the Dowbrigade was grinning like a hog in a synagogue, and the discussion leader asked why. Because, we answered, the whole area of "gender studies" is such an intellectual minefield that one must be constantly careful where one steps or the whole thing could blow up in ones face.

Richard links to Sacha about Martha Stewart.#

The more she whines and complains about the trial, the stiffer her sentence will be since it will be obvious to any judge that she doesn't realize the gravity of the crimes that she has committed. It's ironic that she talks about how if the justice system is fair that they would release her. The simple matter is that the justice system did its job: Martha Stewart committed a crime and will get punished as such. To do otherwise would be the sign of an unfair justice system where only the rich can buy their way out of the crimes they commit.

Last week Scott Burgess began writing about the "Church of Scientology."#

The obvious question at this point is: how could anybody believe this?

First of all, the Scientologst has been lead in small stages from relatively plausible ideas about communication and psychology - via an unending series of of "courses"and "rundowns" that essentially brainwash the subject into believing the lext level material.

And of course the comittment you've made, both emotionally and financially, makes it very difficult to leave the group. Not to mention the peer pressure that sometimes crosses the line into the criminal.

Yesterday, he posted Part II.

By 1957, Scientology was thriving, Hubbard was making about $250,000 annually, and there arose an early example of the sort of legal problem that would become ever more frequent. The US Food and Drug Administration took a dim view of the "radiation sickness" pills that Hubbard was selling, and confiscated the lot. Two years later, he bought a large estate in Surrey that became Scientology's headquarters.

It took until 1966 for the first "clear" to be produced (actually, one had been exhibited on stage in the early 50's, only to be humiliated when audience members disproved her purported powers of "total recall" on the spot). Later that year, the US tax authorities began investigations of the group, prompting Hubbard to begin a project which aimed to prevent any government's interference in his activities. He would found a private navy - the Sea Organisation (Sea Org). The following year, the "OT3" training materials were developed, introducing the galactic overloard Xenu and the frozen entities that he brought to earth 75 million years ago.

Tyler Cowen reports on some crime research.#

The researchers expected that the number of crimes committed per person would fit a statistical distribution shaped like a bell if the criminal acts were being committed by random people in the selection: only a tiny fraction of boys would commit no crimes or lots of crimes, and most boys would fall into the average slot of committing a medium number of criminal acts.

Instead they found that that crime rates fell into a mathematical pattern called a power law, in which large deviations from average behaviour are more common.

Doug Miller writes about Tinderbox again.#

Tinderbox sounds very interesting but I can't wrap my head around how I would use or like it. What I'm mostly worried about is if I can use multiple computers or integrate it with a version control (like subversion.)

I think I may goto the Tinderbox weekend mentioned earlier today.