I am blogging at The Blogging of the President: 2004 now as well as here. Check it out!#

Lisa Williams and Richard wonder how many blogs I read and if I'll post an OPML file of my syndication list.#

I currently am subscribed to 793 RSS feeds and that list can be downloaded in this OPML file.

Krystal and I saw Love Actually tonight. She wrote about it,#

I had skimmed two reviews of the movie and they were both pretty negative. I, however, thought the movie was the cutest thing since....well....the last super cute movie I saw. I really enjoyed the intermingling couples in the plot. And Hugh Grant....ohhh Hugh Grant. We love him. ALOT. (Not to mention I would kill to have his love interest's hair, so good.)

I liked the Christmas atmosphere of the movie as well. I enjoy the Christmas season, minus the fact that I work in retail and will want to kill myself everytime I go to work for the next 8 weeks.

Anyways, back to the movie. I think the 11 year old love struck boy was my favorite character. So young and so in love. He learns to play the drums just to impress "the coolest girl in school." All he wants is for her to know his name! How simple things are when you are 11. I was so rooting for him the entire time.

It was trés cute.

Carl Zimmer clarifies the Boston Globe story about monitoring your brain for racial bias.#

Here's one take, from Boston Globe, "To the litany of arguments against prejudice, scientists are now adding a new one: Racism can make you stupid." In other words, biology supports a political stance. But you could use the same sort of argument to make a very different (and very loathsome) argument: it's not racism that makes you stupid, but the social pressure to keep your racism bottled up. If a racist person was comfortable with his racism, then presumably he wouldn't have to use up his cognitive control suppressing stereotypes. If you want to elevate a brain scan to social commentary, the meaning of the scan itself becomes slippery. Is the scan I've pasted above your brain on racism, or liberal guilt?

[...]

Before we all start making grand statements about social policy, it's necessary to take the Dartmouth study with a few grains of salt. The Globe's use of the word "stupid" is actually way over the top. Taking an extra tenth of a second to answer a Stroop test question doesn't translate into imbecility. And some neuroscientists from the University of Michigan and Temple University wrote a commentary that will be appearing in the same issue of Nature Neuroscience, and they point out that even the IAT itself may not mean what some researchers claim for it. The black/positive lag may, for example, represent not a personal bias, but a knowledge of widespread stereotypes. And there has been precious little work done on the responses (both on the IAT and in the scanner) of black people.

The PhotoDude comments on Jay Rosen at the Politics that is dumber than spam.#

"Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager ... likes to remind reporters that winning all the Gore states plus New Hampshire would put Dean in the White House. Because the Bush states gained seven electoral votes as a result of the 2000 Census, Trippi's math is a bit off -- in 2004, that combination only yields 264 electors, six shy of the magical 270 threshold."

Yep, I'd say there's a lot of politicians with math problems. In the process of reducing their message to the lowest common denominator, and aiming it at what they deem as the most important 5% or so of voters, their micro-math has caused them to lose track of the problem they are trying to solve.

In a nation of 250 million citizens who appear equally divided politically, you don't win by ignoring people. You just piss them off.

Betsy Devine is making trouble today for a better tomorrow over the last free-speech zone in America.#

Anti-Bush protesters are now relegated to what are euphemistically called Free Speech Zones. These areas are cordoned off as far as a mile away from the president and the main thoroughfares, so that Bush cannot see the demonstrators, or their signs of protest, nor hear their chants.

The free speech enclosures are only for those who disagree with the administration's current policies. Those citizens who carry pro-Bush signs are allowed to line the street where the president's motorcade passes.

Critt Jarvis on Dennis Kucinich.#

I'm reading A Prayer for America, by Dennis Kucinich. For me, the Kucinich candidacy can best be described as a reestablishment of the relationship "between the claims of the community and the claims of commerce; Between the requirements for economic justice and the imperative for profit; between the public interest and private interest." Hmmm... What could be the common ground between community, economic justice, public interest and commerce, profit, and the private interest? How about security, national security?

Anti-Pixel breaks the news: "Apple Releases 42-inch Plasma iMac."#

Ken Masugi on Governor Schwarzennger's speech.#

Governor Schwarzenegger's inaugural address was filled with beguiling suggestions. He appeared to be challenging the failed Progressive California Gray Davis epitomized with another version of Progressive California, but one that draws on the federal convention of 1787. The differences between the Founders' practices of secrecy and what the Governor sees as a possible "Miracle of Sacramento" are considerable, of course. And the Governor did not specify what he admires most about the Philadelphia Constitution. Yet the emphasis on his having to take "a citizenship test" raises issues of what any citizen (not just an immigrant) ought to know about American and California political principles. Will Schwarzenegger's own good sense be sufficient to overwhelm Progressivism? "Perhaps some think this [vision of the California dream] is fanciful or poetic, but to an immigrant like me, who, as a boy, saw Soviet tanks rolling through the streets of Austria, to someone like me who came here with absolutely nothing and gained absolutely everything, it is not fanciful to see this state as a golden dream."

Atrios asks Big Media why it's priorities are so out of whack.#

Hey, how you guys doing? Yah, I know, I'm a bit hard on you sometimes. But, you know what? You have some pretty special constitutional protections which, at least in my opinion, imply some equally special obligations. Besides, this whole Democracy nonsense kinda depends on you, at least a little bit. And, you have to admit, you have been slipping somewhat lately. I mean, what's up with equating the head of state with the country? Whose idea was that? Not even those silly Old European countries with their Silly Hereditary Monarchies do that kind of thing. Bush is not America. America is not Bush. But, I digress.

Anyway, here's why I'm writing you. Apparently there's an arrest warrant for Michael Jackson, at least according to someone on the Larry King Live show. Yeah, that Michael, always good for a bit of fun, and Lord knows you guys love the 24 hour story. Condit, Lacey, OJ... it's just so easy. Point the camera and babble. Point the camera at other people and let them babble.

But, hey, you know what? We've got a couple soldiers dying every day in Iraq. I almost never even see their names or faces flash across the screen. Italy had a full day of national mourning over some of their guys - don't ours merit at least a bit of a tribute? And, hey, where are all those reporters you sent to Iraq? You didn't really fall for that "end of major operations" nonsense did you? Hey, even if you did - it's not too late to send them back! Who knows? Maybe they'll find Michael Jackson there!

Liz Lawley links the best quote ever from a teacher.#

"I teach for free; they pay me to do the grading."

Phil Windley on The Rise of Connected Democracy.#

If the last 50 years can be called the era of broadcast democracy, fans of the Internet should rightly be asking "when will the era of connected democracy begin?" We've seen eBay bring a new way to scale garage sales and flea markets using the connectedness of the Web. How does the eBay experience inform our views about democracy?

The Dean campaign may be the first and best example of how the Web can be used to change the nature of politics. In stark contrast to the standard

Raise money
Broadcast
Vote
Rinse and repeat

formula of the last 50 years, Howard Dean's campaign has been using simple, Internet based tools to connect to the grassroots and mobilize them for everything from letter writing to raising funds. Most campaigns don't want volunteers because they're too hard to manage, but the Dean campaign has figured out how to used principles of decentralization familiar to any open source developer to let volunteers act. This is a huge leap of faith because it requires letting go of the central command and control (C&C) structures that are the hallmark of modern campaigns.

Many would argue that the Dean campaign hasn't done this. All it has done is turn "Raise money" into "Raise money the traditional ways and then also on the Internet." But the ideal campaign will be a truly connected democracy. Except, it will not be the campaign of a single candidate. It will be the campaign of the people - they will discuss what it is important, create their own platform, and one will be lifted up to fill shoes of the one to get it done. It cannot be any other way.

Faré on the Black Magic that works, and that that doesn't.#

There does exist some black magic that works. Indeed, what else to call young infants crying and moaning, and this causing giant benevolent creatures to provide for them? It's Wishful Thinking crowned with success! Well, of course, it depends on parents being there who love their children and somehow gather the wealth that they spend on these lovely cuddly helpless creatures. The premise may not be always true, but come to think of it: it has somehow been true for all of us as well as of all of our ancestors for thousands of generations and more, during our respective infancies.

The problem is with people expecting the same trick to work where the premise is invalid. Many adults cry and moan, and believe that this giant creature, the State, will come and provide for them, magically. No negative side effect involved, only love and the will to tap a magic fountain of riches that is beyond understanding. And all it takes is crying and moaning, or its virile version, taking arms and shooting around. At least that's what the Statists tell them, with the unison of all the mass-media on which they have any control (which in France means almost all of it). And come to think of it: it would be so nice if it were true! That's what say all those who have faith.

[...] the State promises to solve all your problems (someday soon), but, in exchange, demands that you should solve all its problems (now), including the problem to attempt to solve those among your problems that it promised to solve (yesterday). And that's where it all breaks up. The State doesn't offer anything that it doesn't seize first; it is not a loving Being above and beyond the citizens, tapping an external source of riches; it is an emanation of them, tapping whatever resources they produce. It doesn't create anything, it only destroys liberty and responsibility.

Lisa William comments on Cities and links the City Comforts Blog.#

Ever since reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, I've looked at cities in a new way. Well, maybe that's not entirely accurate. I like cities, and I like living in an urban area. I like the fact that there is a sidewalk outside my house and I didn't mind when I lived in an area so dense that when I walked outside I could reach out and touch my neighbors house while touching my own house with my other hand. I like living someplace where I can walk to get the necessities of life -- from groceries to a post office, hardware store, and the like -- and a bit more (like a library or a coffeeshop). Jacobs' book gave me a new language to talk about why these things are good in the face of a sort of poorly-thought-out disapproval of city living (where do you park? isn't it dangerous? don't you miss having a yard? Somehow countering these with, "How can you live so far from a bookstore?" just seemed crabby, and furthermore an inadequate defense of the pleasures of urban living).

Wendy, the resident Red Head, wonders about justice in the universe.#

A conversation I just had got me started on my last relationship. Earlier in the day I was thinking about the men who've been in my life more recently and those who are now, and the contrast in the way I think about them versus the way I think about B. is just...enormous. And then there's the ex I saw over the weekend, whom I never loved but who made a big impact anyway.

It's just...how does it work? I know you don't choose for whom you fall, but what does make that decision? I never had deep feelings for anyone with whom I was really involved until I was, what, 24? How is it that some people find their soulmates (if there is such a thing) at sixteen? Why is it so different for everyone? Where are all the beautiful souls in this city (they're too young, or they're married, or they're smokers, or they're in love with someone else)? How can I even ask these questions?

Tell me about it!

Michael Feldman has the best Gay Marriage headline: "Mass Legalizes Gay Marriage - Pets Next"#

Stirling Newberry on what Clark signifies and why the Internet is powerful in new campaigns.#

The politics of polarization favors the Republicans, since polarization can be about anything, or nothing at all. Polarization favors the party with money and media. Which is not the Democrats.

But to seek definition is to seek clarity, and that is what is lacking in the Clark message - it has neither his cadences, nor does it burn in the mind. It is not, in the language of the mechanics of the internet as a medium "insertable". Clarity comes from two parts - a poetry of meaning and sound to make the definition memorable, and a single point of focus. Find this formula, and people will understand that Clark stands for a new politics, a new patriotism and a new presidency - fail to find it, and he is forced to use the blunt instrument of an all out air campaign - which is not necessarily going to work against Dean, in fact, it may well backfire precisely because Dean stands for, whether this is true or not is beside the point, a change in politics as usual.

It will also tell the print press that Clark will represent a continuation of their slide in importance and relevance. One of the most important reasons for the rise of the internet as a political tool is that it is based on words and static pictures, it is a medium which is most friendly to print, and to the people who think in print. Thus the print medium's wordsmiths have flooded on to the internet to boost their positions, their ideas and their ability to shape the debate.

The Yeti sends wonderful praise that fulfills my intent here.#

Makeoutcity is an exceptional site. It's moniker aside, it's an aggregate of posts that span technology, science, politics, relationships, popular culture and academia. And it's all run by one person who just likes to read blogs.

What I really like about it is the fact that the author is much further to the left than I am, and yet manages to not piss me off with his choice of material. He actually makes me think through arguments, and oftentimes the links he has challenges what I know or forces me to go back and rediscover topics I thought I had down cold.

It's a talent that even tacitus, the paragon of reasoned debate in the blogosphere, has not achieved. Perhaps it's because he doesn't have comments. Regardless, MakeoutCity is for me at least, an irreplaceable resource.

Thank you very much The Yeti. I hope I can continue doing this for you.

Richard takes Joi Ito's words and makes them his own.#

Although I am a conservative (in foreign policy, not so much in social policy), I find some of the pro-American stuff a bit over-board and I find some of the liberals arguing convincingly on many issues. I may become emotional at times, but I'm trying to keep my thinking above the emotional level. I'm not really interested in trying to present what I believe is a balanced view here but I want to thank all of the people who have posted here and sent me thoughtful disagreements and urgings.

In my own words (or at least in a paragraph which has a higher proportion of words that are my own), I'm more interested in making my biases known than fighting them, so that people can disagree with me or judge me for what I think. There's nothing wrong with judging people, so long as you have all—or at least enough of—the facts at your disposal.

In life and writing, we can't fight who we are. We must admit what we think and if in thinking and learning our mind is changed, then that's great... maybe.

Tony Pierce on his Audblog first post.#

Look out world, soon I may even have a license!

Tony Pierce is forever my hero.

Intellectual Poison needs an RSS feed. And the Feedster tool doesn't work.#

Danny Ayers "+1"s an idea Doug Miller and I have about categorization and hierarchy.#

Doug Miller: I guess the bottom line for me is that I've generally stopped trying to develop a pre-defined set of categories for organization of my personal data. There's just too much, with too many relationships. I need tools like Jay describes that allow me to perform ad hoc queries on my data quickly and easily and that let me link one item to another on the fly to establish relationships. It's far easier, more efficient and useful to be able to just toss everything into one big pile of stuff, and let the computer do the sorting.

I think Dave Winer's tool is the first step.

The Onion reports that a "Sorta-Attractive Girl [was] Half-Heartedly Hit On."#

"Look, it was either talk to Theresa or hang out on the sofa and eat Baked Tostitos with Warren's weird friend Phillip [Barger]." Elsing said his conversation with Scobel was "civil," but also punctuated by awkward silences and nervous laughter.

"Halfway through my conversation with Theresa, my urge to hit on her ebbed a little," Elsing said. "But I went on anyway. Force of habit, I guess."

During their conversation, Elsing learned that Scobel earned her undergraduate major in Latin American studies at the University of Delaware, can speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese, recently returned from a three-week Mayan art and culture study-seminar in the Yucatan Peninsula, and has nothing whatsoever in common with him.

Margie A. Hoyt comments on the first set of Rhythm Tracks.#

To sum up, each human is like one facet of an insect's compound eye. We all see images, but it is slightly offset from the others. In some cases though, the images may be as different as front and back and arguments can erupt as to the nature of what we are looking at, but ultimately, we are still looking at the same thing, human existence and its conundrums.

We need to come together and start drawing the picture of what each of us sees, not as a contest to see who has the best picture, but for us to combine what we see so that we can understand how front and back are connected as a whole.

We all need to work together in figuring out what the world is really like. I'm glad Margie is here to help.

Johnathan Ichikawa writes about Pascal's Wager and gambling with the devil.#

e is from Felicia Ackerman, given in class: suppose I'm offered a highly experimental drug, which has a 99% chance of torturing me to death (finite disutility), and a 1% chance of eternal bliss (infinite utility). I wouldn't take the drug, and I'm not inclined to think I'm therefore being irrational.

The drug case, Pascal's Wager, and the bargain with the devil all have in common that they involve comparisons of infinite utility with finite utility. So one possible conclusion is just that infinite numbers just aren't allowed into the expected utility game -- this is rather unsatisfying, though, because I want there to be a correct answer to each of these cases. Another, more drastic, possible solution is that there is no fact of the matter what a rational person would do in general -- personal risk-affinity should be a factor... but this doesn't seem right to me, either.

Kevin at nonDependent writes about the goal of nonDependent.#

I want this site to be an example of the statesmanship of our founding fathers. I want to show our elected officials that we're tired of the state of political discourse in this country.

There are a lot of goals Dawson and I have for this site, and I think we're having a hard time getting started, because picking that starting point is difficult. We want not only to find, learn about and hopefully organize this middle third of the country we keep talking about, but also educate ourselves (ourselves being Dawson, me, and all of you) about what's important to us, what our government should be, and how the political process should work.

Benjamin Franklin said, "A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins." I'm ignorant. I know that I don't know everything, and I'm freely admitting it here. In order for us to affect the system, we need to know the system. We need to see the problems with it with clear minds and willing to talk about all facets of it. We must become scholars of not only the system we want to see, but the system as it stands today and the system as it was intended.

David asks the blogosphere to take some responsibility with using certain words.#

Put "open source" before anything and it sounds more advanced, 21st century, democratic and savvy. For instance, here's blogger Jeremy Wright discussing "Open Source Business". And then there's me talking about "Open Source Lawyering" here. I'm not dissing. I think Jeremy is correct, and very much on to something, just as I was in that interview. Indeed, I'm working on a law and technology open source project right now. But we should be very careful lest we turn "Open Source" into the kind of empty buzz-phrase that becomes hollow, bereft of meaning, and is then abused - flagrantly - by the marketing departments of companies whose ethos' are the exact opposite of open source.

Vigilance is the key here. Anything calling itself open source that is not really open source must be called out. This is something for which the blogosphere must take responsibility.

Dean Esmay writes about how Michael Williams reminds him why he renounced Christianity.#

My assessment would be that if God intends to punish for all eternity everyone who fails to accept that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of all mankind, then God is fundamentally evil.

That would be it in a nutshell, yes.

Mind you, I accept that it might well be true that Jesus was the one and only Son of God and that God has determined that all who do not affirm this belief are doomed to eternal torture. I merely assert that if that's how God really works, then God is evil and unworthy of my worship.

Michael Williams responds in great detail.

Others have presented me with the same position as Mr. Esmay does, and I'll respond as I did to them -- with a question of my own. Is it evil to use force to compel others to behave according to your desires, or is it evil to allow others to choose their own way? I expect that Mr. Esmay would answer as others have done, and admit that any God who would force anyone to be good against their will would, in fact, be evil. If God admitted unrepentant sinners into Heaven, this is exactly what he would be doing -- taking those who chose to disobey him and forcing them into compliance.

Mr. Esmay sees an eternity of horror as an unjust punishment for a mere lifetime of evil actions, but I think he misunderstands the nature of sin. We are not condemned to Hell because we violate some whimsical list of rules, we are condemned because we purposefully decide to reject God's way. God then -- graciously, in a sense -- allows us to make the choice to cast him aside, despite the agony is causes him to be seperated from us. God loves us incredibly and deeply, and he mourns for the lost; nevertheless, he gives us the choice to reject him and face the consequences. Furthermore, it's important not to underestimate God's holiness and his hatred for evil.

Real Live Preacher writes about his daughter's (?) loss of her bifocals.#

I handed the guy her glasses. He popped out the old lenses and put in the new ones. There was an adjustment or two, and we were out the door.

When she looked down at her feet, she froze in terror.

"Daddy, something's wrong. I can't see. Everything is funny and not the right way."

[...]

My little girl lost her worldview, her way of seeing things, and that always hurts. This is good pain, leading to new ways of seeing, so I put my hand on her leg and kept driving. I let her cry. And I was proud of her. Proud that she is so little and bravely shedding her old way of looking at the world. Bravely she takes up this new way of seeing.

I want this to be my gift to her. I want to be the one that helps her see things in new ways. I would like to always rest my hand on her knee while she gets used to the view.

Edward Bilodeau writes about bureaucracy at McGill University.#

This is bureaucracy at its worse. Rather then deal with the exceptions, they force all students to submit to this process. I mean, they have my birth certificate on file. What are the chances that in the past two years that I was no longer born in Quebec?

The sad thing is that even if I can effectively demonstrate that the policy makes no sense whatsoever, even if I can convince Principal Munroe-Blum, the chances of the policy changing is almost zero. Why? Because the frame of reference in which these decisions were made is the frame of reference of the bureaucrat, and within that frame of reference, the decision is a rational one and makes perfect sense.

God save them if anyone ever puts me in charge of anything.

Dave Winer calls the presidential campaigns to help protect the Internet from Media companies.#

[It] would signal that the candidate is not beholden to the media companies. I would happily give money to candidates for ads that warn that the media industry is trying to rob us of our future, and explains how important it is to protect the independence of the Internet. Use the media industry channels to undermine their efforts to the control channels they don't own, yet.

Think about it. It's a poison pill that a candidate we can trust would happily take. Both Clark and Dean have raised prodigious amounts of money on the Internet. Now, how about using that money to keep the Internet free. And even better if Dean and Clark make a joint statement about this, that no matter who gets nominated, they will work to fight control of the Internet by the media companies. The Democratic Party has a very spotty record on support of the Internet. By making the statement in unison, that would change, overnight, the political balance.

Jeff Jarvis responds.

Dave, I just spent last weekend in big rooms filled with big media and, believe me, I saw little cause for alarm.

They're more scared of the Internet than the Internet should be of them.

Before we launch into a Lessigesque bout of media paranoia and hatred, I'd like to see more evidence of why you think this is so necessary, Dave. I don't see that in your brief essay.

And, besides, such negatives -- such prohibitions against anticipated but unrealized behavior -- aren't very productive. I don't want to see McDonald's take over Taco Bell, either, but I'm not ready to get candidates to make statements about it and then pass laws and regulations about it.

Liz at misbehaving.net writes about what the goal of misbehaving.net is and isn't.#

we've been taken to task for "claiming to represent women's issues," and "seeking to represent 'women'."

When I replied that we weren't trying to represent women, or women's issues, Anne quoted our about statement, up at the top of the sidebar. But there's a significant difference, I think, between saying that you'll be writing about something, and saying that you represent it. My personal weblog, for instance, is about parenting, technology, teaching, and librarianship...but I don't claim to represent parents, technologists, teachers, or librarians. Only to discuss issues related to those groups, filtered through my own personal experiences and perceptions.

The reaction that many people have had to misbehaving.net is interesting and at times disheartening to me, because it's indicative of exactly the pressures that often cause people from underrepresented groups not to speak out--the fear that you'll immediately be pegged as speaking "for your group" can be paralyzing, and the resulting backlash when people in "that group" don't see you as speaking "properly" for them can be even worse.

Jane writes about breaking up and dividing video game possessions.#

We broke up. I moved out. We divided our possessions. All the hardware was mine - the Xbox, the Gamecube, the PS2; most of the software, his. A sad sifting of the content of two lives once shared.

It all went fairly smoothly - until we discovered that we both had large game files on one Xbox. No problem, Justin said, I can probably copy them over using ethernet. So he bought a new Xbox and I brought over mine one afternoon and we tried to transfer our respective games. Just to be on the safe side, I had brought along an official Xbox-approved memory card.

Turns out the saved games we want the most - KOTOR, which we both love - won't fit on a Microsoft-licensed Xbox memory card.

I'd let her take anything without second thought. If I can do something to hurt someone I've broken up with less then I do it. I wouldn't want to feel like, or present the attitude, that my games were more important than her to me.

Draft Clark writes about the desire in the country for a better political implementation.#

This is important because only by restoring people's faith in leadership to make decisions based on sensible rules sensibly applied can we begin to move forward - rather than simply float the economy on a massive borrow and squander binge. The financial system, the diplomatic system, the economic system have all been, and let us not mince words, looted. Looted for short term gain, by people who knew, or thought, they could get away with it. The old system relied on an elaborate system of gatekeeping to make sure that no one who had authority was unacceptable. The elevation of Bush, the financial scandals, the invasion of Iraq, the politicization of information, the partisanisation of politics - all point to a failure of this system. When the Dr. Paul Krugmans of this world are angry because they feel they don't have a voice, it is a sign of a deep illness in who is listened to in the counsels of government and politics.

This cannot be fixed merely by changing the people on the top, because whatever mechanism elevated Bush, DeLay, Lay and assorted others to power will then begin to work again to find others like them. And we will, in some short period of time, be back where we are now. I say this because Bill Clinton ran on the idea that the system was fine, it just needed smarter people running it. And while it did, indeed, function better under better management, it left behind no legacy, and within 3 years, all of the hard work of such leaders as Robert Rubin, Robert Reich, Larry Summers, Richard Holbrooke, Madeline Albright and, yes, General Wesley Clark - was erased. 8 years of struggle was pushed aside in a few rubberstamp votes of a trembling Congress.

John Sequeira questions the idea that killing all the spammers is the only way to get rid of spam. Surely we're not being creative enough.#

I attended the New Scientist salon on spam on Monday (also attended by Gregor. It was actually hosted by Simson Garfinkle and Paul Graham. Simson's claimed that only about 200 people accounted for the world's supply of spam. His (yes, facetious) theory was that only extrajuditial means would solve the spam problem -- meaning hunting down and killing a number of spammers sufficient to deter the remainder (30, maybe 40), like John Travolta at the end of Operation Swordfish.

The reason this is the only method likely to succeed is the spammer-cracker axis that has developed. Spammers have provided a profit motive to previously harmless crackers, and as a result we now have armies of compromised machines which will make future attempts at implementing end-user counter-measures like micro-payments and digital signatures pointless due to impersonation. In other words, what good is requiring postage for email if the spammers can simply use their network of zombies to bill joe end-user?

Tim Bray has some cool pictures from Japan. Look at the van.#

Kim writes about the code essayists at her work who don't understand the tragedy of her code poetry.#

As a body of code gets larger and larger, it requires more and more effort to make any changes to it. I do my best to fight this inevitable bloat, but my current place of work doesn't seem to care much about this. We have people routinely pump out 10,000-15,000 lines of code in only two or three months, to solve a problem that probably only needs a third as much code. I've actually heard people say, "Yeah I didn't put too much thought into how to make the code more compact, because I knew I was going to have to type a lot of code, so I decided to just get started."

When I try to explain that this is a bad thing, I can't seem to get any traction in my arguments. I'm greeted with blank stares or, worse, implications that if I can't handle reading through 10,000 lines of code, I must be lazy or stupid. "Ten thousand lines of code really isn't a lot of code!" I beg to differ; I have better things to be doing than reading thirty lines of code that has been cut-and-pasted a hundred times, each with slight modifications.

Gnomon, in a comment, writes:

[My] general philosophical argument in favour of code brevity goes something like this: you can represent a program as a mapping from inputs to outputs. Said mapping could be a simple table... well, perhaps not so simple, depending on how many inputs we're talking about, but the concept holds. The point is that no computation aside from lookup is really strictly necessary: it's really the ultimate space-vs.-time tradeoff. The entire point of programming is not to produce these mapping tables, but to create the methdology for doing so - to codify the underlying rules of the system. So the discipline of programming is fundamentally just data compression (though, as some have shown, this line of reasoning can be taken too far).

Jay Rosen writes about the current politics, and how it is dumber than spam.#

Via email, I receive about one Nigerian investment scam letter a day, and immediately delete it. I get one Joe Lieberman for President letter a day, and immediately delete that too. Whatever small inclination I might have had to consider voting for Joe, (he's always Joe in the text) disappeared when I realized that his campaign intended to keep sending me daily "news" of Joe's genius, courage, success, and all-but-certain victory-- though I never asked for it, and I never respond.

Spam is usually explained as a consequence of the marginal cost of sending an email, which is close to zero. Thus, spammers can make money if only one person in 100,000 responds. But there are other factors. Spammers pay no cost for annoying the 99,999 who do not buy the toner cartridge. It is a dim intelligence indeed that assumes this is so in politics. Via e-mail, the Lieberman campaign lost me as a listener, and he now has zero chance to change my mind. That's a cost. After all, I am Jewish, blessedly undecided, a registered Democrat in New York, which is a Super Tuesday primary state, so I fit his profile. And I doubt the campaign knows or cares whether these costs are greater than the gain from sending "Liebernotes" out en masse.

Spam is a stupid medium, knows it's stupid, does not care that it's stupid, and knows you hate it for its stupidity. Lieberman's spam (telling me of the "Joe-Vember to Remember outreach program") is stupid, but does not know any of these things. So there's another cost: advertising your own cluelessness, which the Lieberman web site also does in most every detail. On top of that, spam is not supposed to be solving the spam problem in Congress, but Lieberman is. [...]

Do we need a new pattern in presidential politics? Yes we do, because this kind of politics is dumber than spam.

Kaye Trammell answers and asks: how do people find out about blogs?#

I even went so far as to mention a recent event that was talked about on about half of the blogs I read. The event was so new, few newspaper articles had been published about it. Yet, the blogs picked it up. A quick Internet search found the first page of results leading you to blogs.

Then, tools like Feedster help those in the blog find other blogs you might enjoy.

So how do people who don't even know about blogs find blogs? Well, they use tools that they trust to take them there. They may not know that they are reading a blog, but chances are that after a few different "exposures" they will start to figure it out.

Brian Weatherson writes about cloning at Crooked Timber.#

Cloning diminishes bio-diversity
If everyone cloned, the gene pool would lose some of its characteristic diversity and luster. But I take it this is a very remote risk. Even if we allow cloning for everyone, non-cloning reproduction involves having sex, and casual observation suggests that many, perhaps most, people prefer ceteris paribus courses of action that involve having sex to those that don't. (The last premise is slightly less certain than 0=0, but probably more certain than the premises in Descartes' cogito.) So I think there will still be plenty of diversity to go around even with cloning.

Cloning is against God's will
I don't know - I think if He didn't want clones he wouldn't have invented scientists. Slightly less frivilously, we're meant to be fighting wars with people who base legal codes on religious documents, not imitating them. Somewhat more seriously, when someone proposes banning the consumption of shellfish, I'll take seriously their "God's will" arguments about other things. But right now we have better evidence that God doesn't want you to eat shellfish than that He doesn't approve of reproductive cloning. So I think it's very hard to motivate a religously based ban on cloning but not shellfish eating. (Could one argue that perhaps shellfish eating is more important to human values than reproduction, so we are justified overriding God's wishes on that point? I somehow doubt it.)

Bruce Schneier has a new Crypto-Gram out.#

He writes about the kid who "tested" the airline's security systems.

Point 1: This is extraordinarily silly. Every traveler I know has stories of knives being missed by airport security. No one who flies regularly thinks that the TSA is doing a good job of keeping sharp objects off airplanes. Even worse, no one who flies regularly thinks that keeping sharp objects off airplanes makes us all safer. Most of what the TSA does is security theater -- window dressing. It keeps up appearances, and maybe (hopefully) makes the terrorists a little less sure they can smuggle their weapons aboard airplanes. Probably not.

Point 2: This is, and should be treated as, a crime. "I was only testing security" is not a valid defense. For years, we in the computer security field have been hearing that excuse. Because the hacker didn't intend harm, because he just broke into the system and just looked around, it wasn't a real crime. Here's a thought experiment for you. Imagine you return home and find the following note attached to your refrigerator: "I was testing the security of back doors in the neighborhood and found yours unlocked. I just looked around. I didn't take anything. You should fix your lock." Do you feel violated? Of course you do.

Maps and Territories and its RSS Feed from Feedster.#