Salon.  Today, NASA released details of the e-mail exchanges (that occured days before the failed re-entry of STS-107) between NASA engineers on whether the shuttle would come apart on re-entry.  In my view, if NASA was using weblogs throughout on their organization's Intranet, it would have helped surface the concerns of these smart engineers.  In reality, the relevant decision makers were operating in a vaccum.  A simple Intranet search on "wing or wheel well damage" before making the decision to recover the vehicle would have pulled up a plethora of interesting information and viewpoints that weren't considered. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

The potential effects of weblogs would have been more powerful than a simple exchange of emails. More eyes and more knowledge.  8:44:39 PM    

Davos....  Here is some back of envelope calculations on why the power elite at Davos (depicted so well in Laurie Garrett's recent public e-mail) are so mad at the US.  It's pure economics.  The delayed recovery of the US (the only major economy in the world not mired in the muck) and the huge run up in oil prices has body slammed the global economy.  I am fairly sure that the case could be made that this war has already cost the global economy ~2% in growth.  On a $40 trillion combined GDP that is a $800 b loss, 3/4 of which is borne by people outside the US.  That's $133 in income for every man, woman, and child on the globe that is now gone forever.  If the potential 5-10 year global stagnation (ala Japan's situation) scenarios some economists are predicting come true as a result of this shock, we may see this "lost" growth extend across the decade.  It may now be possible to become the Herbert Hoover of the global economy. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

In the end, it IS the economy. Spending money we don't have on a war that has no end point does not sound like a good plan.  8:42:49 PM    

Open Access Literature Part III. Here's a proposal for solving the problems of access to scientific literature while retaining the integrity of the peer review process: The International Research Review Authority (IRRA), a non-profit organisation responsible for peer review of the world's scientific literature, would receive submissions from authors accompanied by a $1000 fee, paid by the authors' institution. The submitted paper would be sent to 5 reviewers, who would each receive $100 on completion of a comprehensive review. The paper would be given a rating by each reviewer on a scale of 1 to 10. Any paper that was rated above 6 would be accepted by the IRRA and therefore indexed in MEDLINE (the 'journal' field would contain 'IRRA' followed by the rating, eg IRRA8). Before indexing, irrespective of the rating given, the author could take back the paper for corrections and further work in an attempt to improve its rating (resubmission being accompanied by a further review fee). All papers accepted by the IRRA would be stored as XML files in a central archive that would be linked to from PubMed and other central subject indexes. Each paper would be assigned a DOI to facilitate long-term access. No access charge would be made... [HubLog]

This is, in many ways, pretty close to a really useful system. It all gets down to how well the peer review works and how much of a difference there is in papers that get a 6 or a 7. I know for most of the papers I wrote, good peer review was collaborative. The reviewers would often see holes in the work, suggest ways to fill them. Simply giving a rating might really short circuit this. Having to pay again would really hurt also. I would be worried about what might happen with work that was truly original. Would it get mostly 10s or get a low rating? Or would everything get between a 4 and a 7? But, I'm just thinking here but maybe it would work. Because it could create a niche for a journal for find articles that may have a low rating but had some real kernals of truth. They could help re-edit these for publication and gain a reputation for finding great hidden gems. It does fit into Clay Shirky's publish then filter. It would be an interesting experiment.   8:30:56 PM    

Science Citation Index. Following a few earlier papers on the same subject, in 1964 Eugene Garfield set out his vision of a unified Science Citation Index as an integral part of the World Brain, a descendent of Vanevar Bush's Memex. Almost 40 years later, how far have we come? [HubLog]

This is something that needs to be done well and needs to be a lot cheaper. I think the Highwire Press (www.highwire.org) is working its way to something as useful.  7:52:34 PM    

Medscape Headlines in RSS. Medscape now has RSS feeds of all its articles, organised by subject.... [HubLog]

Very, very nice. I think the number of newsfeeds I am going to be subscribing to is going to increase a lot.  7:49:41 PM    

DigitalRecorder.tv Pretends to Repair TiVos.

Ernie says don't let DigitalRecorder.tv repair your TiVo! How stupid of a company do you have to be to mess with Ernie the Attorney, a lawyer with one of the most popular lawyerly blawgs?!

Note to customer service reps everywhere: if you're going to screw over a customer, make sure s/he doesn't have a popular blog first!

[The Shifted Librarian]

The problem with ticking off someone with a blog, especially one that is well-linked, is that Goggle may very well place this item quite high on its Page Ranks for all to see.  7:40:11 PM    

The Scobleizer Weblog writes "I like Mike Sanders weblogging advice" and points to know why you blog:

1. Physical Pleasure - advance your professional career and make more money.
2. Positive Emotional Pleasure - increase and enhance your relationships with your fellow Earthlinks.
3. Other Emotional Pleasure - draw more attention to yourself to convince others (and yourself) that you are (or should be) at the true center of the Web.
4. Pleasure of meaning - blog for a worthy clause.
5. Pleasure of creating - create something to educate, enlighten or entertain others.

[Universal Rule]

Of course, a lot of the blogging I do is for my own pleasure. It serves as a nice journal for me, as an extra piece of memory and as a means for me to formulate the stories I tell myself and others. If this also helps others or provides joy, that is an added pleasure.  7:37:32 PM    

Academic Blog Compilations.

"I uncovered an annotated list of weblogs (k-logs) that Jill Walker is collecting that are used by researchers and academics as a part of their research practice. There is another called Ph.D weblogs.net which is attempting to bring together PhD students' weblogs from all around the world. If you are preparing a PhD, and have a blog about your research interests, you can register there." [James R. Regan's Weblog]

It's pretty obvious we need a classification scheme for blogs, although I'm not sure yet how anyone would truly index and classify them. This should provide some interesting fodder for EBN, Weblogs at Harvard, and others.

[The Shifted Librarian]

The problem with categorizing, with using metadata to put hings in groups, is that it is usually a top-down approac, and often lacking in recognizing the emergent properties of the technology. Many weblogs simply can not be categorized. What might be useful is something like Amazon's 'other people who liked this book also liked this book.' Maybe Goggle could use this with blogrolls. Technorati has some of this. We may not be too far. But it has to be something that recognizes that weblogs cover a huge number of 'types'.  7:28:27 PM    

Powerpoint is evil: "I hate Powerpoint. [...] Actually - I don't hate Powerpoint. I hate the presentation culture that expects me to stand up and talk in front of a screen full of silly dot points. [...] I write well, and I speak fairly well. I love telling stories as part of my presentations - I watch the audience, and stories are the parts that people really listen to. [...] However, when I'm forced to distil an otherwise good story into a few dot points, all of the power of the story and the elegance of the narrative disappears. I am held to the rigid listing of points on a screen. They control me and try to make me elaborate on each as a point, rather than weaving them together into something lovely." [DonnaM] [Universal Rule]

I hate Powerpoint also, since it seems to engender a lot of presentations that have little narrative, with people simply repeating what the slide says. I'm planning on trying out Keynote. It seems like a reasonsable approach.  7:22:38 PM    

NASA's Worst Fears Realized. Senior engineers debated in e-mail the possibility that Columbia's left wing had been damaged badly enough during liftoff to lead to a catastrophe upon reentry. They were right. [Wired News]

But other news reports are saying that these emails are only seeing the light of day because of Freedom of Information requests. FOI is something that Ashcroft would prefer did not exist but I am glad that NASA is at least responding to them.  4:28:37 PM    

A musical better than the movie. Tonight "Great Performances" presents the revival of "Kiss Me Kate" on most PBS stations (check local listings). The production which won five Tony awards in 2000 was taped in London (the original Broadway staging in 1949 also won five Tony awards). If you miss it tonight, a DVD will be... [TV Barn]

This is the link to the TV Barn that reminded me of 'Kiss Me Kate." Thanks.  4:03:50 PM    

Shuttle Investigation Gathers Pace

2:00:08 PM    

Turning the Desktop Into a Meeting Place

12:55:01 PM    

Sunshine Patriot - Tom DeLay and the party of appeasement. By William Saletan [Daypop Top 40]

Excellent article. Not necessarily because of the content but because of the nice rhetorical device he uses. In junior high school in 1968, we were supposed to pick a candidate and provide reasons for why he was the best. I went to Nixon headquarters (or someone did) and got some nice literature all about the two-faced comments that Humphrey was making. How he said one thing in front of one group and other things in front another. It was very effective!! Taught me that, heavens, most politicians say a lot of things simply for political gain.  12:53:19 PM    

"Blog publishers stealing Web limelight" [Daypop Top 40]

I am sure someone is trying to figure out how to commercialize this. Only they will not really understand it. In my mind, the true power comes from tha combination of weblogging WITH news aggregation. Then the conversation loop is completed and information can be dispersed very rapidly. And, in many cases, the links can be seen that demonstrate how this information is dispersed, making the network more effecient the more it is used.  12:45:35 PM    

"MP apologizes for calling Americans 'bastards' " [Daypop Top 40]

Oops. The mikes are always on.  12:44:29 PM