Feedback is very welcome. More pages like this will appear. (For Movable Type, Manila, and so on.)

These most recent pages are all by Robert Daeley, author of PHPosxom. [inessential.com]

9:01:32 PM | # |  |

I bought a copy of Kenneth Pollack's Threatening Storm, considered to be the foremost argument for the American invasion of Iraq.  Thanks to my friend Peter for suggesting it and for also supplying me critiques of the book. 

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I got email from http://www.moveon.org/ asking for me to pledge 8 hours of my time to help in their anti-war campaign. 

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John Perry Barlow, in an interview in Mother Jones, with the following exchange:

MJ: What little resistance there is right now in terms of an antiwar movement seems to be organizing online. Is that a good thing?
JPB: Actually I'm discouraged with the role of the Internet in the antiwar movement. Because so far what I see happening is that cyberspace is a great place for everybody to declaim. There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it. It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions. I don't care how many individuals you have marching in the streets, they're not going to pay attention until there's a leader for those individuals who can come forward and say I represent the organization of those individuals and we're going to amass the necessary money and votes to kick you the hell out of office. Then they pay attention. But not until. And so right at the moment it would strike me that the Internet is counterproductive to peace.

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The UC system had a three hour videoconference about MIT's OCW project today.  I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness of OCW's work so far.  The conference left attendees a lot of big questions of vision for the University of California.  Should we get in the business of giving away course materials as MIT is?  And if so, to which audience in particular?

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From CETIS, "The One Standard, LOM, and the Semantic Web", an analysis of a talk by Stephen Downes: "In a lengthy and characteristically thought provoking presentation, Stephen Downes challenges both the need and the demand for just one Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard. That done, the very existence of such beasts as learning objects is called into question. We examine the argument."

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Should I go to Vancouver for the IMS Open Technical meeting and Library SIG?  If I stay for the closing talk, I'd get to hear Mr. Downes for myself....

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Great thread on the future of the web browser -- what do you want?  A lot of discussion about web aggregation.  See for instance, the idea of a microcontent client.  (thanks to Scripting.com for pointing out the discussion).  I've been wanting to interject by telling people to look at the Multivalent Browser.

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Karin, I've never thought of you as a pessimist!  You cheer me up often....

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I installed Groove 2.5 because of its new web services functionality. Can't wait to try it out.  But first, I must finish a grant proposal.