|
 Sunday, March 9, 2003
Get it straight.. It's not about being nice to the bad guys. It's about actual goddamn security. You know. Being safe, the real... [Electrolite]
More on torture.. All I can say is, that (1) the French did it a lot in Algeria; and (2) they still... [Electrolite]
Some very nice quotes about torture and why we should never do it. 9:20:51 PM 
|
|
The Horror of Blimps.
Scylla: Some blimps are better off dead.
I laughed so hard, tears came out of my eyes. Thanks
Ingo! [Sam Ruby]
I read this out loud to my son and we both ended up in convulsive laughter, unable to continue. Very well done. 9:09:44 PM
|
|
Morons in the News: Zero-Tolerance: The 'Tolerance' Stands for 'Intelligence'. If there's one thing I love as much as I hate zero-tolerance policies, it's clever use of a system... [Morons Dot Org]
Oh. What a wonderful Catch-22. A 6 year old is facing expulsion for having a plastic butter spoon in his backback. A spoon he got in the cafeteria and wanted to take home. So if they press for expulsion, the parents will sue the school for provding a dabgerous weapon to their 6 year old. Zero-tolerance is for morons. I hope the parents get a ton of money. 6:22:22 PM
|
|
Richard Gallagher has an editorial in the March 10 .... Richard Gallagher has an editorial in the March 10 issue of The Scientist, Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down? Half the piece is on the open-access journals forthcoming from the Public Library of Science. The PLoS "editorial board reads like a Who's Who of the biology community" and if its journals are successful, then the open-access model "will trigger a seismic change in academic publishing". The other half is on the defensive strategies of traditional journals, which are liberalizing their copyright and self-archiving policies, though perhaps not enough to meet the open-access competition. "Now that there is a choice of publishing model, the wishes of the author community remain to be seen. Over to you...." [FOS News]
I may have to get a subscription to The Scientist. They keep having really good articles. 6:14:10 PM
|
|
'Groupthink' Is 30 Years Old, and Still Going Strong. At NASA, the decision makers really are rocket scientists. But a body of research shows that the ways smart people work collectively can be dumber than the sum of their brains. By John Schwartz and Matthew L. Wald. [New York Times: Science]
The problem with groupthink is that the organization has created a setting in which information is not actively dispersed because it could lead to knowledge that the organization does not want to see. Knowledge is required to make decisions but many top down organizations do not really want to make decisions that change its direction. The way NASA is set up is almost doomed to fail at some point. 5:03:35 PM
|
|
SXSW Sunday Afternoon: Lessig. Have I ever mentioned that I love Larry Lessig? He begins with a sanctimonious quote from Jack Valenti. Morals, democracy, integrity. All being corrupted by sharing. Sharing has introduced a moral decay. Lessigs says: In 1923, you could renew your copyright for another 28 years. Over 80% of copyright holders did not renew their copyrights. In 1998, works from 1923 were to pass into the public domain (because of the copyright extensions after 1923). 98% of the protected work were sitting unavailable because they were out of print in one way or another; copyright wasn't protecting those works so... [Joho the Blog]
Larry Lessig is on the right side of history on this issue while many of our political leaders are not. It will be interesting to read the histories 20 years from now discussing this issue. As Lessig said, DIsney started by creating Mickey Mouse to copy a popular movie. His whole career was based on copying other people's material into a new medium, usually using public domain stuff. Disney now just wants to make sure no one else can ever do this. I guess that is the American way. 3:41:06 PM
|
|
As Bush said in his State of the Union Address:Let's put it this way, "they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."QB" 12:14:46 AM
|
|
|
Ebert steps out from his movie reviews to write one of the best essays about prayer I have ever read in a newspaper. I will reread it every time someone brings up prayer. 12:10:22 AM
|
|
|
|
|
