Surrounded By
Christopher Lydon interview Stirling Newberry, and it's great.#
Chris writes, "Yo, kids: Stirling Newberry gets it! So will you."
Stirling Newberry speaks here about a telltale struggle with the Wesley Clark campaign which he helped create. He is the blogger who wrote earlier this month: "By the time you read these words the bell will be tolling for Wesley Clark's candidacy." And thus he crystallized a contest between people who drafted Clark and those who manage him; between analog and digital politics; between the Pyramid and the Sphere, as Newberry likes to illustrate it. It's a contest that isn't over between Internetizens and the Clinton alumni, between blog spirit and Democratic memory. Because Newberry remains a fierce Clark loyalist (to the candidacy if not the campaign) and because he is still blogging regularly to the Clarksphere, the fight defines a nice puzzle about politics in the Internet era: can dissension actually promote a campaign when it's an exercise of independent initiative on the wide-open Web? My guess is: yes.
There was a great moment in the interview where Stirling Newberry is talking about what a "New Campaign" should be like, he says (roughly), 'If a campaign can bring in it's networked electorate, it can suddenly have thousands of people who can do more than hold signs, where t-shirts, and sell candy bars-although those are still important to the campaign-they will have thousands and thousands are "part-time professionals" who can contribute a day of professional work.'
The other thing that was interesting in the interview was the emphasis on how the blogosphere, new campaigns, new media, and, in Stirling's opinion, General Clark were truly authentic. This authenticity means that they are real opinions that matter, not just watered down centrist sound bites.
Listen it up!
Kaye Trammell ponders sharing research in "Blog Style," rather than sticking to the "Old Academia."#
I was recently talking to someone about my dissertation. Celebrity blogs, what is not to love. He asked if I would post pieces of my data or my findings as I go along. [...]
Quite frankly, I didn't think that anyone cared. I mean, who wants to read a dissertation? Heck, in 3 months I'll barely want to read my own!
But, that has me thinking. Every once & awhile academic bloggers will post pieces of their research "blog style." A little graphic of data, a bulleted list ... just something easy to digest. You can get feedback, ferment over the findings & who knows, maybe someone will find it interesting.
I would enjoy reading this very much.
The Marmot links to this criticism of Feng Shui.#
Note to anyone who believes in feng shui: You're an idiot. Please refrain from filling the comments section with stories about how you got a raise after moving your couch. Thanks.
In the comments of Marmot's post:
I'm a scientific skeptic, which is one of the things that attracts me to the more rarefied forms of Zen Buddhism (probably more a Western convention than an Asian reality). While I'm suspicious of the whole "Buddhism Without Beliefs" or spiritual-not-religious trend, I simply can't cotton to the superstitious trappings in any religion or belief system. Like Sagan, I'm wary of pseudoscience and what he calls "bamboozlement."
If I sounded condemnatory the last time I spoke out about the zodiac, etc., I apologize-- for tone, if not content. Like Kevin, I do take a dim view of things I feel we as a species should move beyond, and like Sagan, I think the universe as it is already provides us with more than enough numinous wonder, without our having to manufacture stuff on our own.
The mind reaches a singular state of awareness when it is rinsed in alcohol, wrung out, and deprived of sleep. After several nights of staying up late, I played poker with the kids at home till four in the morning, drinking sweet sticky Sac-sac with vodka and smoking furiously. Then, slightly buzzed, got up to go to the cooking show at eight the next day - sat throughout the show with barely any food and no water; on the way home, walked around the Met in a happy daze. Came home just in time to head out to shabu-shabu, with cold unfiltered sake; came home again and stayed up talking till two in comforting female company. Just got up at eight to make breakfast and see the kids off - one home to Chicago, the others to work. And now I'm watching an Outkast video and I'm humming, my vision is shimmering, the world retreats from me behind a veil but other things come into focus sharply and unusually.
Marya Morevna had a dream.#
This week, 33 years ago, I started wearing out my first pair of iron shoes on my very first journey. This week, 6 years ago, I came home after wearing them out. And 7 lucky years ago this very week, I had the dream that sent me to the 10th kingdom past the thrice-ninth tsardom.
Seven years ago, I lived impatiently in the faded palette of the desert, where we were inhabiting that stretch and yawn of time and space that seems endless and pointless, but is, in fact, preparing one for the Next Big Thing. The dry lightning there was beautiful, and we'd watch it circle the city from the fields behind our apartment, and I'd wonder if that was what was left, if all the magic had left me and if the rest of my life would be as colourless and comfortable as a rock bleached by the sun.
Kieran Healy catches the connection.#
War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength.
Bush Says Attacks Are A Sign of U.S. Progress.
Criteria for identifying a lack of progress to follow. Presumably will not include "fewer attacks."
The article:
The president, speaking after attacks on police stations and a Red Cross facility in Iraq killed at least 35 people, said such attacks should be seen as a sign of progress because they show the desperation of those who oppose the U.S.-led occupation.
"The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," Bush said as he sat in the Oval Office with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq. He added: "The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society."
Dave Winer is the master of one paragraph essay on inflaming rabid supporters while saying something important.#
Reality lies somewhere [between] Cringely and Ballmer and Linus. How about this. Both guys (Ballmer and Torvalds) make really shitty software. Microsoft, after decades of Windows development still can't make a robust operating system that a normal person can use. And Linux ships with every security feature wide open. An end user who actually installed it (an amazing accomplishment in itself) would end up (instantly) hosting a playground for script kiddies everywhere. And the user interface of Linux sucks. Windows isn't totally terrible. It's a huge embarassment that with many billions of dollars, dozens of years, and billions of man-hours, this is the best the human species can produce.
Kasia debunks.
Information that can be very easily verified as false.. at many levels, but for the sake of argument let's pretend we're talking about RedHat, undoubtedly the most popular linux distribution, which 'ships' (and has for a couple years now) with a fully configured firewall, turned on by default, and all insecure (telnet, ftp) services turned off.
One less weblog for me to read.. anyone who refuses to correct an obvious error that's been pointed out to then by numerous people (yet takes the time to call them 'zealots') isn't worth my time.. Not a great loss for Dave, I'm sure, but still a disappointment to me.
Dave Winer responds!
This is what passes for respect among Unix fans. It's also the first clear statement that Red Hat closed the huge security holes that were present three years ago. I stand corrected. Mea culpa. Anyway, the Linux community has been plagued by flamers for ages, it's deeply integrated in the culture, so much so that they had to write an Advocacy Howto, to have some hope of attracting ordinary users. Unfortunately it is widely ignored. That's also part of making shitty software, having an arrogant, xenophobic community that keeps smart hard-working people from joining up.
Merde in France reports on France's new defense strategy.#
La France modifie sa politique de dissuasion nucléaire afin d'inclure des concepts qu'elle a précédemment condamnés lorsqu'ils étaient véhiculés par la doctrine américaine: 'les Etats voyous', les bombes nucléaires miniaturisées, et la guerre préventive. C'étaient bien les fwançais qui fustigeaient la politique de Bush pour son manque de crédibilité. En matière de crédibilité, les fwançais ont des choses à apprendre de la part de l'éclaireur Bush.
AKMA gives advice on how to make important decisions and react to differing opinions.#
I haven't read the article; there are ill-considered, inflammatory ways of tackling our contemporary sexuality headaches, and the article may have been a fiery blast of liberal ignorance. More likely, from the tone of the report, the editorial just espoused a position unpopular with the school's donors.
Either way, the administration's hasty convulsions reflect the unproductive kind of panic reaction that so often substitutes for deliberation and reflective response (witness Gregg Easterbrook). The ways we might deal with unwelcome talk, disagreeable perspectives, or flat-out dumb mistakes, surpass what we imagine — but we typically jerk our knee and fire, blast, purge, shout down, stifle those whom we identify as transgressors. I'm willing to insist, though, that the vast preponderance of productive, healing, educational responses fall into the unhurried, imaginative category rather than the sudden, sweep-it-out-the-door-and-under-the-carpet category. I'll apply that claim to international relations, to theological disputes, to child-rearing and spouse-coping, to domestic politics, to parish crises.
Read Strange Women Lying in Ponds today.#
Upon learning that my previous career was in the film and advertising business, people often ask me why I didn't go into entertainment law. My short and simple answer is that, had I wanted to continue hanging around the people in that business, I would not have gone to law school.
In particular, I developed an impassioned hatred of celebrities. In no other walk of life is an individual's cultural influence (and self-importance) so disproportionate to his or her supply of gray matter. There are probably a few exceptions, but SWLiP is hard-pressed at this moment to think of any.
After reading what he then talks about, what I think is, "At least they are trying."
Michael at 2Blowhards makes some observations and predictions on Book Publishing and the future.#
The trade-book biz -- the "you might buy it in a typical bookstore" end of the book-publishing business -- is in a recession. Aside from the occasional "Harry Potter" bonanza, the biz doesn't seem able to move much product; you don't have to sell many copies of your book to get on the bestseller lists just now. When will the biz come out of this cyclical slump?
But is the slump in fact cyclical? Many people in the biz worry that it may not be. Hey, book-publishing people aren't blind; like you, me and everyone else, they've noticed that young people aren't reading in the same way young people used to. What if the business has simply lost the younger generations?
What kind of book-reading do the younger people you have contact with do? The ones I see don't seem to get through many books at all, especially fiction. The young women go through a little chick-lit, and do a little of what a book critic friend calls "worthiness reading." The young men barely read fiction at all, although they seem eager enough to spend time with certain kinds of nonfiction books (Nascar biographies), and books relating to their jobs and businesses. And these are bright kids from snazzy colleges.
Read the whole thing and look for this theme: The full circle of the media world.
A quick bit of book-publishing history. Early books were very much like the web. They were mixtures of images and text; few of them were made entirely of words, and even fewer were meant to be read straight through. They were often compilations, often of work by many different authors and artists. In other words, when you interacted with these early books, you were ... that's right: browsing and grazing. Playing with media.
Although, I really like read-it-through books, and I'm not sure this is really media returning to it's roots. I think that every media goes through an evolution of form and locates the place where it fits most. We shouldn't turn books into websites or websites into books. They should be allowed to be what they are. Although we read both that doesn't necessarily mean they compete and have to find ways to oust each other.
Jorrit Wiersma comments on Hasan's blog about how to do Powerpoint slides.#
The point that slides should be used as aides to what you are saying and not as full summaries, however, is one that I have tried live by when I designed the presentation that I gave last week. It is a point that Saskia often made when I asked her opinion of my previous presentations (if you look at those you might see why). Looking at my last presentation and counting the number of words on each slide I seem to have done a little better this time. Perhaps I could have split up one or two of the slides into smaller portions, but I specifically designed them to be rather static backgrounds for what I was saying (which you can judge from the amount of text that goes with each slide) as opposed to the very dynamic slides of Mr. Lessig. I guess that the Overview slide at the start and the Conclusions slide at the end are the worst offenders. Interestingly, Lessig's presentation seems to present the conclusions as a "refrain" that is repeated several times in the presentation, instead of putting them all on one slide at the end. Such a refrain is perhaps a bit odd, but spreading the conclusions over several seperate slides is probably much better than the usual summary slide that tries to cram them all together. I'll try to think of that next time.
Wendy notes that the web changes everything.#
I am now a photographer. And a journalist. And famous. All because I work at the Berkman Center. It's kind of wild. My virtual fingerprints are all over the web now.
The photography is completely hilarious, because I never pretended to be good at it, but since I'm the one who wants the photos for the Berkman home page, I end up being the one to take them more often than not. I'm not shy, as I said earlier today, about being in front of a group of people, and it seems that this includes crouching in odd corners and walking straight up to very fancy people and setting off a flash in their faces.
Wendy: Just do it. Just Write.#
Richard notes that Nice Guys are Neither Lovers nor Fighers.#
[Richard is quoting.]
The answer is invariably no, because it's obvious that the man will not even stick up for himself. While nice guys will argue that they WOULD stick up for the woman, she has no proof that this is fact. So she dates an asshole, feeling that if worse comes to worse, he'll go to bat for her. This isn't true, but there is more evidence to support that than the nice guy doing it.
The emphasis is added, because "invariably" means "in every single case", not "probably", which I suspect a lot of people (myself once included) think. So by showing that there is one case that is the opposite literally disproves Amber's case. But if Amber said "probably", her case would have been stronger, since I'd argue that, in most cases, nice guys would say they'd stick up for a girl (partly because nice guys actually believe it—in error, usually—and partly because to say otherwise would be suicidal in terms of dating potential), but when it comes to putting up or shutting up, the latter is usually the case. There's a line in the book 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter (which I'm misquoting, having picked up the book, skimmed it, and set it back down), where the father is speaking to his daughter's boyfriend or potential boyfriend that goes something along the lines of "if you make my daughter cry, I'll make you cry". It's a noble sentiment, and it's a sentiment I share: on at least one occasion I've offered to speak to a female friend's boyfriend who was being a jerk to her. That in the wildly inaccurate belief that there was anything I could actually do about it.
Adam replies,
My conclusion: Richard has what it takes to get a date. He just hasn't reached the point where his need for action outstrips his fear. Or maybe he hasn't found someone worth fighting for. Either way, I expect that it'll happen eventually.
In The New York Times are Letters to the Editor in reply to the "Genetically Gay?" article over the weekend.#
Tobias Barrington Wolff:
While I applaud the sentiment underlying "Gay at Birth?," by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, Oct. 25), his essay misses the mark. The important question is not whether being straight or gay is "a choice." What is important is that there is no rational reason for excluding people from our most basic social institutions because of their sexual identities.
Joe Thornton:
Nicholas D. Kristof (column, Oct. 25) writes that studies suggesting a genetic role in sexual orientation make anti-homosexual policies wrong, because we do not discriminate against people on the basis of circumstances that they cannot choose.
Mr. Kristof's call for tolerance is laudable, but his emphasis on biological determinism to justify this position is off the mark. Americans are supposed to be free to define our own visions of the good life. That includes the freedom to decide whom to love and how to express it.
Peter Van Roy, at Lambda the Ultimate, attempts to make the distinction between Macros and High-Order Programming.#
I want to understand clearly what all the hubbub is about. What are the respective advantages and disadvantages of macros (i.e., Lisp style) and higher-order programming? To me the situation seems to be as follows (caveat: it has been decades since I actually did real programming with macros). Higher-order programming is more expressive. Macros are syntactically more concise and give more efficient code. (Note that expressiveness and verbosity only have a tenuous connection!)
Only Tony Pierce could have ever written this:#
some people look great no matter what they do. i always look like a dumbass. this one chick sent me some pictures this morning of she and i one drunken night getting down. shes a photographer. in one of the pictures shes capturing me climbing into bed with her. if it wasnt so embarrassing of a picture i would post it, but its terrible. it makes me wonder how on earth i get any.
but i guess women get lonely too sometimes.
and drunk.
Kim wrote the best thing ever.#
From the New York Times:
It turns out that when males and females are exposed to a loud noise, they blink in somewhat different ways — except that lesbians appear to blink like men, not like women.
In case you missed it, let me point out the subtle homophobia in that sentence. Lesbians are women. Therefore they blink like women, by definition.
John Gruber debunks Proteron's Samuel Caughron.#
Let us count the ways that Caughron's claims are ridiculous.
Caughron writes:
For tens of thousands of users the feature has existed since May 2002. A developer at Proteron first conceived of it. Proteron developed and published it.
Oh, really? For hundreds of millions of users, the feature has existed for over 10 years, after it debuted in version 3 of Microsoft Windows. The feature was a hit, and was clearly one of the few good UI designs in Windows 3 that didn't come from the Mac. Nor did it take long for third-party developers to bring the feature to the Mac OS; e.g. Michael Kamprath's Program Switcher debuted in 1994, and continues today on Mac OS X as a part of Keyboard Maestro.
Kaye Trammell posts the first glimpse of her research on Celebrity blogs.#
Kaye's Dissertation Definition of Celebrity:
Celebrity is operationally defined as one who is paid for creative services and widely known, building on the Boorstin (1992)* definition of "a person who is known for his well-knownness" (p. 57). He asserts that "entertainers are best qualified to become celebrities" (p. 65) because they are known for their personalities. Celebrities are distinguished by their image or trademark, considered a "human pseudo-event" (p. 57), and made by the media (Boorstin, 1992). A rule of thumb in asserting "celebrity status" is that if the person is likely to appear in People Magazine then he is likely a celebrity. The distinction between the currently operationalized definition of celebrity and Boorstin's (1992) is that people who have been made famous by an Internet presence ("famous blogger") or from public appearances where they played themselves (reality tv contestants) are not considered celebrities. Additionally, in this study politicians (such as Howard Dean) and toys (such as Barbie) are not considered celebrity for this study. Celebrities in this study can be actors, authors, or musicians.
She writes that because of this definition people can be celebrities in varying domains, such as just on the Internet, and thus they qualify for her study. I think it's a better way to look at it, as opposed to people in People, and it makes it more interesting to the blogging world. My assumption was that the feel of the dissertation would be, "How are these people using the new tools?" but now I get the feeling it's more, "How are these tools making new celebrities?"
Jorrit Wiersma responds to my questions about his presentation (PDF.)#
n astronomy practically everything that we know about the objects that we are studying (stars, galaxies, the universe as a whole) we have to deduce from the radiation that we receive from them. With the exception of the sun and the closest planets in the solar system, these objects are too far away to visit and examine physically so all we have is the radiation they emit. This means that astronomers have become very good at interpreting radiation. Most astronomers do nothing all day but process observational data and think of theories to explain how the observed radiation was generated.
This goes for Gamma-ray Bursts as well. For example: how do we know that Gamma-ray Burst sources involve relativistic shocks? We know this from the fact that, theoretically, the spectral distribution of the radiation that they emit can only be produced by a plasma moving close to the speed of light. This has been known for some time now. In the mean time, the observational techniques are getting better and better and we are now able to study the properties of the Gamma-ray Bursts' emission in much more detail, in particular their afterglows.
He make allusions to the discussion over whether or not theoretical studies and exercises are important to the furthering of the human race and says that his desire is for his results to be able to be used by other researchers and that they may not necessarily say much on their own. Interesting!
Dave Winer posts on Dean and the Internet in Politics.#
Imho, the Internet race will go to the candidate that unlocks the eBay-like secret to Web politics and keeps them coming back for more. Get out of the hub and spoke mode. No rock stars. Knock down barriers. Let's crack the blog hosting problem and figure out how to give everyone who wants one, no matter what their party, persuasion or political affiliation, a modern weblog with all the bells and whistles. Take a chance that all those voters may not choose your guy. What exactly do you have to lose? Will politics-as-usual get your guy elected?
Via KurzweilAI is a story in Scientific American about the amazing "Methuselah Worm."#
To understand the processes that govern longevity, scientists often look to the simple worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Researchers report in the current issue of the journal Science that variants of the lowly creature can live 144 days--the equivalent of a human reaching his 500th birthday.
Scientists had previously engineered C. elegans worms to alter signaling pathways for a protein known as insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and found that they lived about five times longer than normal worms. The increased lifespan had its drawbacks, however: it left the worms very lethargic. Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California at San Francisco and her colleagues perturbed genes in C. elegans that affect the activity of insulin and removed gonad tissue, which affects endocrine hormone levels. Worms treated this way lived six times longer than normal worms and remained active for most of their lives, according to the report.
Ray Kurzweil posts his Foreword to Virtual Humans.#
By the end of this decade, we will have full-immersion visual-auditory environments, populated by realistic-looking virtual humans. These technologies are evolving today at an accelerating pace, as reflected in the book Virtual Humans. By the 2030s, virtual reality will be totally realistic and compelling and we will spend most of our time in virtual environments. By the 2040s, even people of biological origin are likely to have the vast majority of their thinking processes taking place in nonbiological substrates. We will all become virtual humans.
[...]
If you ask what is unique about the human species, you're likely to get a variety of responses, including use of language, creation of technology, even the wearing of clothes. In my mind, the most salient distinguishing feature of the leadership niche we occupy in evolution is our ability to create mental models. We create models of everything we encounter from our experiences to our own thinking. The ancient arts of story telling were models of our experiences, which evolved into theater and the more modern art of cinema.