Chris Rhodes writes a little bit about the history of SBCL and strange bugs when porting it to 64-bit.#

PhotoDude writes about the leaking irony that is the Plame Affair.#

Leaking Irony - It's really the only amusing aspect of the "Plame Affair" (which sounds like a James Bond knock-off movie from the 60's). And it's only amusing if you have a decent sense of irony.

Right now, there are literally millions of people who want to know the full story behind the leaks. The web is filled with dump trucks of speculation, and train loads of whitewash. No matter your position, we all want to know, and it looks like we will have to await an investigation by the Justice Department before they deign to pass on to us the eventual redacted truth.

Lisa Chau writes about those crazy French!#

Vive L'internet?!

Anna: and it's not L'Internet

Anna: The Académie Française has a quite stern position on that one.

Lisa: Do tell.

Anna: By the way, in case you were wondering, the format of this page, called a blog in English, is known as un blogue in French, at least for now.

Anna: July 12, 2003
Courriel - c'est officiel
The Académie française, aka the French language police, recently surprised the francophone world with its choice for the official French translation of email. Deciding that the terms commonly used in France (e-mail, mail, and mèl) were too close to English, the Académie chose the Québécois word courriel. It surprises some and pleases others that Québécois French, which is sometimes belittled as not being "real" French, had the Frenchest word after all.

Grant Henninger ponders the large blogroll that you often don't actually read.#

I'm starting to think I should rebuild my blogroll. It has gotten too big and I'm just not reading most of it. There are a number of sites that I check every day by hand, Joi Ito, BoingBoing, Slashdot, Dave Sifry, Larry Lessig, Lisa Rein and Wil Wheaton. Even though all of these sites are part of my blogroll, I find it easier to just check them quickly by hand than having to run my aggregator and hunt down these sites in the long list of other sites that I tend not to read. [...] For the most part, other people don't have things to say that I find consistently worthwhile. I'm sure people often don't find what I have to say worth their time, but that is why I don't have people flocking to my site. Every once in a while there is something worth reading, on mine and other blogs, but most of the time there is not. So I think I might start my blogroll fresh.

Ryan Overbey thinks about technology in scholarship.#

Ever since working with Peter Scharf back at Brown, I've been convinced of the power of technology to revolutionize scholarship, to make scholars in the humanities more efficient and productive, connecting us with rare resources and automating our time-wasting tasks. Just think of the day when we don't have to waste grant money and precious time hopping from library to library, searching through shitty catalogues for texts we may or may not find. Once the Dunhuang project is completed, any scholar with an Internet connection can browse through the entire Stein collection, and work on anything she wants.

Jeremy Hylton gives us a peak into the amazing world of Mathematics and Origami.#

Ethan Berkove gave a fun talk titled "Mathematics and Origami" today. He covered several interesting mathematical problems related to folding. He also brought some impressively detailed pieces, including an eagle and a leopard.

The first problem was folding a paper into thirds, which is equivalent to trisecting an angle or duplicating the cube. The latter two are classic problems from ancient Greece; it is impossible to solve with a straight edge and compass. It is possible via folding.

Gen Kanai links and excerpts an article by Daniel Gross about 'New Luxury' goods.#

Part of the allure of luxury goods was that other people couldn't easily afford them. By contrast, New Luxury goods are supposed to be inclusive. "New Luxury goods also provide a way for consumers to align themselves with people whose values and interest they share—to join the club." But what club precisely are people who buy the new $27,800 BMW 3-Series joining? The club of people who can afford to pay $27,800 for a cheap BMW but can't afford a "real" one?

...

The American narcissist, [author of The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher] Lasch wrote, "does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire." The impulse driving the New Luxury isn't so new.

You may be wondering how you can tell if a woman is lying - and I don't mean in a pond. Here's the method:#

I can only suggest that you look them in the eye. When they go cross-eyed, or when they tell you implausible things (for example, "You're absolutely wonderful!"), or when they are explaining why they bought another pair of shoes... well, you get the idea. There really is no way to tell.

But in my experience, when you think they're lying, they probably are.

The Daily Kos points to Sexual Misconduct Allegations on Arnold.#

Six women who came into contact with Arnold Schwarzenegger on movie sets, in studio offices and in other settings over the last three decades say he touched them in a sexual manner without their consent.

Mike Snider write about rhyming in English and the sonnet as a great thing.#

I'm finally getting around to my very limited response to the brouhaha over Paul Lake's "Enchanted Loom." No sane person thinks that the English 14-line iambic pentameter sonnet, in any of it's common rhyme schemes, is an inevitable product of the course of human evolution. Nevertheless, the sonnet exploits, in its memish way, a number of evolved human characteristics and along the way enlists some of the properties common to all Englishes since the late 14th century. Let me name the ways, in no particular order and with no claim to completeness--this is a blog. Please don't think that I am arguing that the sonnet is the quintessence of the poet's art or anything silly like that. I only want to show that it is equally silly to call the sonnet structure merely conventional.

Via Richard Tallent to Wired News is "Wise Words from a Rapper" - A little insinuation that rappers don't normally have wise words? I don't think so, just an expression.#

"The record industry is hypocritical and the domination has to be shared. P2P to me means 'power to the people,'" Chuck D said. "And let's get this to a balance, and that's what we're talking about."

Richard Tallent links to something strange.#

Texas high school band director thinks that a World War II retrospective during half time, complete with Nazi flag waving to the tune "Deutschland Uber Alles," would be a neat idea for Rosh Hashana. The crowd thinks otherwise.

Jorrit Wiersma links a wacky picture.#

Richard comments on an article about Internet dating.#

But seriously, going with my general motto that "if it feels creepy, then it's creepy", I removed the my online dating profiles, along with the Friendster profile. Not worth it. I have enough allies and enough enemies, thankyouverymuch. And dating as an extreme sport? No thanks.

[P]revailing trends that promoted the rise of Internet meet-and-greets -- long work-hours, marriage deferred for career, the loneliness of city-living -- aren't going away. And because the dating sites offer secure conversations where neither person knows the other's contact information, many women say flirting with men via their keyboards is preferable to being bombarded out on the town. On-line encounters mean no sticky obligations, no awkward pauses in the conversation and no chemistry-crushing expectations. It's an anonymous orgy of convenience that can translate off-screen and into your social calendar.

Oh, and words like "sucking", "sticky" and "penetrating" have no place in an article about hooking up through online personals. Unless irony was intended, of course.

Probably the best quote of the article is this: "The Internet is a great tool for those who want to conflate technology and sex to augment their self-image or make a quick buck."

Morendil writes about a very interesting book, Anthropologie du projet.#

I'm currently reading Jean-Pierre Boutinet's Anthropologie du projet, which might explain the binge of project-related entries. The concept of the "project" is becoming ever more pervasive in our industrial culture. Boutinet's fascinating preface lists seven abuses of the notion of "project" which can lead to detrimental effects in individuals or cultures.

Elizabeth Lawley writes about the change at RIT from an institutional culture of teaching, to one of broadly defined scholarship. The problem is that many of professors did not sign up for that and may have difficulties. Secondly, Elizabeth feels the institution is not putting the emphasis on the right parts of scholarship.#

What's happening, alas, is that most of them are seeing the scholarship emphasis only as a bean-counting exercise for tenure and promotion, rather than as an opportunity (facilitated through lower course loads) to expand their intellectual and creative abilities. And as a result, the focus seems to be on process rather than product, quantity rather than quality. To someone who's not familiar with scholarship, there's no difference between Academic Exchange Quarterly and Harvard Educational Review. Both are peer-reviewed, therefore both are "beans" to be counted and put into the tenure jar.

As I was driving home today, I was trying to think about how to explain the difference between these to someone putting together their plan of work for the upcoming year. The key concept that's missing from our scholarship documents and implementation plans is reputation. It's not just that something is peer-reviewed. There's more value to the faculty member, and the institute, and to our students, in my being asked to be a speaker at SuperNova than in my being asked to speak to the local PTA. There's more value in my publishing an article in Wired than in publishing one in the local free-at-the-grocery-store computer rag. There's more value in exhibiting my work at SIGGRAPH than in putting it up on the college web site. It's not that there's no value in those secondary options, but if I have to focus my energy on one or the other, the choice is clear.

Derek points to "a great parody of Yahoo!Maps, detailing Directions from Bag End, The Shire to Cracks of Doom, Mordor."#

Kasia writes that you can measure maturity of the "human female" by their attraction to Lord of the Rings characters.#

Pre-teen girls are drawn to the boyish appearance of Frodo. An adult woman attracted to him is probably in need of therapy. Badly.

Teenage girls (and men worldwide) are attracted to Legolas. Girls to the long blond hair and boyish good looks, men just want to look that cool when mounting a horse.

Adult, grown women, of course, Aaragorn. He's full of raw sexuality and ragged masculinity. If your teenage daughter is attracted to him, buy a very large lock for her bedroom door.

Older women, of course, the wisened and yet brave and never-fearing Gandalf. The ones who can still remember what sex is like probably prefer Aragorn though.

A new free LWN.net Weekly Edition is available.#

Razib at Gene Expression writes, "A friend of mine is taking a sociology class. He sayeth: 'The worst of all is Sociology- what a bogus study! "The study of the freakin' obvious".."#

Michael Watkins has a new book,#

I haven't posted for a while, I know. Lots going on, but the most exciting thing is the Harvard Business School Press launch of my new book, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels (Barnes and Noble purhase link, Amazon.com purchase link). It's about how you can accelerate yourself (and people who work with you) into a new job. (Also helpful for job-seekers, preparing for interviews etc). Topics include working with a new boss, building coalitions, learning more quickly about new organizations, and getting early wins.

If you can, please do me two favors. (1) Tell people you know who are looking for or starting new jobs about the book, and (2) Let the Human Resources and/or Leadership Development folks in your organization know about the book. Details and endorsments below.

Tim Bray has practical note on using Mac OS X.#

Clean Out the Dock This is a two-parter. First, take each and every icon out of the Dock, except for the Finder and the Wastebasket. (You don't need to launch apps from there because, remember, you have TigerLaunch). Then, while you're running, never minimize anything. Then, what's in the dock is all the running apps and only the running apps. You don't have to remember which is a minimized window and which is a running app and which is a non-running app and so on.

Your screen gets tremendously cluttered and busy after a while, but this seems to be part of Mac culture and OS X actually deals pretty well with it.

Of course, implicit in this is the notion that the default workings of the Dock, which whimsically mix shortcuts, applications you can run, applications that are running, minimized windows, and the wastebasket, are totally B.A.D. (Broken As Designed). With my brutal-minimalist approach, the Dock is actually pretty useful. Now if they'd give CMD-Tab a memory stack more than one deep, application switching would be nearly as slick as on Windows.

Interconnected points to an interesting paper.#

The Extended Mind, by Andy Clark and David J Chalmers: "Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?" This paper proposes that there are functions of the mind that are embedded in the physical world, a so-called "active externalism".

The premise: "Epistemic actions alter the world so as to aid and augment cognitive processes such as recognition and search. Merely pragmatic actions, by contrast, alter the world because some physical change is desirable for its own sake (e.g., putting cement into a hole in a dam. [...] Epistemic action, we suggest, demands spread of epistemic credit. If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.

"In the cases we describe, by contrast, the relevant external features are active, playing a crucial role in the here-and-now. Because they are coupled with the human organism, they have a direct impact on the organism and on its behavior. In these cases, the relevant parts of the world are in the loop, not dangling at the other end of a long causal chain."

Ray Ozzie writes that "Workspaces Work"...#

Anyone who is doing a critical business process online that involves substantial dialog between individuals should NOT be using email at this point in history, and many no longer are.

Maybe you're doing joint design, joint development, customer support, developer support, supply chain exception handling, work with outside counsel on patents, business development work on a merger, preparation for a product launch, making a decision on product naming or pricing or packaging, working with others to open a new store in a new region, collaborating on an audit, working with others to nail a global account, doing joint selling with a partner, working with another agency on a criminal investigation, or just working with someone to review a contract or a presentation ... you name it. If you're doing a critical process in e-mail now, you won't be doing it there for long.

Think about it. Think about the rate of increase of "noise" in email over the past two years, which is a very short time. Think about where we'll be in as short as five years. Can you imagine?

Ted Leung comments, wondering if workspaces are a way to do collaboration better - or just avoid spam?

My personal killer e-mail volume come from the ASF. It's so large that I have a separate e-mail address that I use for dealing with ASF stuff (and other large mailing lists). Some of this e-mail is informational, and now that the ASF has a semi-reliable mail archive, I can probably unsubscribe from some. But there's a lot that I can't unsubscribe from. I'm not sure that Ozzie's notion of workspaces would really solve some of the issue that I face when trying to participate in multiple projects and conversations. I'm not saying that e-mail is great, but it's hard for me to imagine using Groove to do what we do with e-mail. Even if Groove gives me a workspace where I don't get spam and where everything is "on topic", I don't see how it solves the problem of too much legitimate input. Not that e-mail is solving that problem either.

Doug Miller calls Ozzie on his self-promotional rant and points out the goodness of email.

E-mail, for all its warts, works on any OS you'd care to name. It's also simple. It's based on standards, so anyone can implement an e-mail client or server. Because the protocols are well known and freely available, those server and client implementations can be as simple or feature rich as the user cares to select. Further, the thirty year legacy you scoff at ensures that communications I had years ago are still accessible to me - something I really doubt will be the case with information stored in any Groove database I might happen to use - because once Groove is gone, those databases might as well be smoke.

[...]

Ray, you and a bunch of the other talking heads can continue ranting about the "death of e-mail" all you want. Just don't be surprised when the rest of us happen to notice that every one of these rants ends up proposing some technology that you and your colleagues have some vested interest in promoting. I suspect e-mail will be around a long time after your companies are nothing but a memory.

Dave Winer has a comment similar to Doug Miller, but it's much more tactile - surprisingly ;)

As I read it, and hear him pitch his product, it would be more convincing if Groove were open to competition, or at least open to being built on. When they came out with web services interfaces, finally, after years of waiting, the excitement was dampened because it didn't work with the programming environment I use. Maybe they are open to be extended, but, practically are there any extensions from people who are not working at or closely with Groove? It's clear that Ray is passionate about this, and I'm sure that passion is genuine. But it would be easier to join his cause if there was a way to participate without necessarily depending on his company.