Activists on right fear waning influence

11:26:51 PM    

Keeping Journalists Out

And what happens if you write about something you saw in the US while visiting for pleasure, Like a new restaurant or a new movie.. Well, that would put you in the database as someone who has defrauded the US and subject you to whole body searches the next time you came to the US, before you were thrown out. Now, does writing about things on a web site make you a journalist? WHat happens if the database is incorrect? The scary thing is that I think this was just done to be abusive to some French journalists, demonstrating the petttiness of some groups.  11:20:56 PM    

Backup flaw found in new Windows. Microsoft is working to solve an incompatibility issue that prevents backups made with Windows Server 2003 from being read on previous versions of the operating system. [CNET News.com]

Is it a bug or a feature?  11:11:09 PM    

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You. A great opinion piece ripping apart the arguments of the Direct Marketing Association as they try to stop the national Do-Not-Call list from going forward. He goes through the basic arguments that their right to free speech stops at our front door, but then makes some more great points and challenges many of their assumptions. They argue that people love telemarketers since they buy $660 billion worth of goods via telemarketing - which he figures out to mean $3,573 per person. He wonders who is buying his share. More to the point, he wonders, even if some people are buying ten times that, shouldn't the people who don't want it be able to opt-out? Even the DMA's own "fact sheet" says they don't want to spend time marketing to those who don't like to shop by phone. Shouldn't they be encouraging this list? It would mean that the people they do bother during dinner are much more likely targets. It's like getting a free targeted leads list. However, the best response concerns the DMA's claim that the do-not-call list would throw thousands of Americans out of work, and destroy our economy. While first wondering why he never heard about how the American economy rises and falls with the fate of the telemarketing industry, he makes the analogy: "This is like arguing against the polio vaccine on behalf of America's wheelchair manufacturers." [Techdirt]

Read this article. It aptly describes the convoluted logic that groups who are missing the cluetrain have to use in order to prove that they did not want to ride the train anyway.  11:04:55 PM    

Why Voice Over Wi-Fi Has Telcos Dialing 911 [elearningpost]

After spending billions buying spectrum from the government, the telcos are being undercut by Wi-Fi phones whose spectrum no one controls. How long before we here their howls in Washington trying to stop voice over Wi-FI. The bottom-up will always beat the top-down in these situations. The sooner these companies understand this and adapt the better off we all we be.  10:51:42 PM    

Foam Seen As Key in Shuttle Disaster [AP Science]

Some people at NASA thought there was a problem. Some people at NASA ignored them. Why does this continue to happen? The shuttle is the most complex, yet jury-rigged device ever created and NASA management treats continues to view defects improperly. The engineers know but the people who actually make decisions do not appear to. Apollo I was destroyed in 1967. Challenger was destroyed in 1986. Columbia was destroyed in 2003. Until NASA make major changes, I would imagine that we will continue to see deaths every 20 years or so.  10:46:46 PM    

Why Oh Why Does Donald Rumsfeld Still Have a Job?.

Billmon bangs his head against the wall:

The Cup is 80% Full: U.S.: Barrels Missing From Iraq Nuke Site: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Some 20 percent of the known radioactive materials stored at Iraq's largest nuclear facility are unaccounted for, and U.S. nuclear experts have found radioactive patches on the ground where looters dumped out barrels believed to contain hazardous materials. However, a senior commander said the great majority of the dangerous waste at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was still secure and was not leaking radiation. "Eighty percent of the barrels are where they were before," said Col. Tim Madere, a specialist in unconventional weapons for the U.S. Army's V Corps.

[Semi-Daily Journal]

I hope that they just miscounted or miscalculated how many barrels were there but I am not sure we will be that lucky. This scares me more than anything else since some of the possibilities are frightening. WHy did it take so long to secure the plant?  9:37:46 AM    

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Part CCXXI.

The New York Times beats up on the Bush administration Treasury:

... stature gap... Paul O'Neill the gaffe-prone... John Snow... credibilit... impaired... policies which are now discredited... credibility in question, Mr. Snow... antagonizing America's trading partners... dangerous confusion in currency markets...

I cannot disagree: for someone used to Bentsen-Rubin-Summers O'Neill and Snow seem a long, long, long way down. But then the Times tells why it is beating up on the Treasury Secretary, and in the process reveals how pitifully little those who write--and review, and edit--it know about finance and economics:

The dollar's decline... certainly amounts a vote of no confidence in America... it isn't as if Europe is attracting investment on its own merits...

This makes me want to say, "But... But... But..."

Over the past year investors have become convinced (rightly, I believe) that the Federal Reserve is seriously concerned about the dangers of deflation and is willing to keep interest rates low to prevent even a shadow of a chance of a full-scale deflation, while the European Central Bank is not. This means that European interest rates are likely to be significantly higher than American interest rates for years to come. This makes euro-denominated bonds more attractive--they pay higher interest rates after all. So investors sell dollar-denominated bonds and buy euro-denomninated bonds. The value of the dollar drops. The value of the euro rises. The value of the euro rises until fear balances greed: until the fear that the euro is overvalued and due for a correction (in which case owners of euro-denominated assets suffer a capital loss) is just enough to balance the higher interest payments on $1,000 invested in euro-denominated bonds.

Right now we are in the middle of this process. Investors and foreign-exchange traders are (slowly) recognizing that the difference in Federal Reserve and European Central Bank reactions to the recession has implications for forecasts of relative levels of interest rates years into the future. It is this relatively recent and ongoing recognition of important differences in policy that is at the root of most of the recent rise in the euro--and most of the recent decline in the dollar.

You see, Europe is attracting investment on its own merits: European interest rates are higher than American ones, and likely to stay higher for some time to come, hence euro-denominated bonds are relatively attractive.

But is there anyone who works on the Times editorial staff who read "...vote of no confidence... isn't as if Europe is attracting investment on its own merits..." and said, "Hey! Wait a minute! Elementary considerations of uncovered interest parity would have led one to expect a considerable decline of the dollar againt the euro!"? If there is, they are staying very, very quiet indeed.

[Semi-Daily Journal]

This is the same sort of thing when I read most mainstream publication on biotech. A few writers really understand but many times the writers are so far off it makes you sick. Catch phrases are much easier than actually explaining complex systems. It will get worse.  9:34:22 AM    

Best SARS graphs yet. The best SARS graphs I have seen yet is this series of SARS graphs on Diaspoir.net by David O'Brien, an engineer in Hong Kong. He has a separate graph for every country that has reported a case of SARS! The graphs neatly show the number of deaths and recovered patients, and the big areas that represent people who are still sick with SARS. Highly recommended.

Thanks to RH for the tip. [SARS Watch Org]

Some very nice information.  9:26:08 AM    

Tech Impact.

A WSJ special report on Technology writes: "Digital technologies are upending the competitive balance across the corporate spectrum."

It adds: "Safely profitable niches aren't secure anymore. Longtime industry leaders are being forced to re-examine their basic ways of doing business. Upstarts are on the rise. And who will emerge victorious is anyone's guess."

A related story on Linux states: "As Linux grows, it not only stands to win lucrative parts of the server market before Microsoft, but it also threatens to lessen the value of the very software that Microsoft has built its empire on: Windows. It's a challenge that finally has awakened the industry giant."

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

The world is changing right now and few are noticing. When the early years of the 21st Century are written about, the authors will not be able to understand why so many sat by and just watch one of the greatest revolutions in human history. But, then that is pretty typical. It usually takes 20-40 years to get any sort of perspective. Luckily for me, I already do.   9:21:07 AM    

Catching Criminals Before They Act. With all the talk about surveillance cameras being everywhere these days, a new company has come up with more sophisticated surveillance camera software that is designed to notice if you do something questionable - and quickly alert people about it. In other words, if you go into a public restroom with a package, but leave with out it - the system will alert security. Of course, this brings up plenty of issues about being innocent until proven guilty. Should you be stopped for questioning just because this software notices you did something different? [Techdirt]

This is why Minority Report may be one of the most prescient movies of the last few years (Yeah, I know.) I think this will again break along the lines that Virginia Postrel discussed in her book, The Future and Its Enemies. Statists will say that there is no problem. If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear. Dynamists will realize the possibilities for intimidation and retention of control.  9:14:37 AM    

Patriot Act Used Against Hackers, Thieves. The broad surveillance powers of the PATRIOT act were designed to catch terrorists, but the latest report on how it's being used shows that the government is taking advantage of the greater power to spy on hackers and identity thieves. Not that I have anything against catching scammers and identity thieves, but I think that there are reasonable ways to do so within previously existing laws - going through a standard process that includes much more accountability on the part of authorities. The system as it is now leaves open too many areas for abuse - and it's clearly being used beyond the scope of the original intent of the law. [Techdirt]

We may be willing to give up some of our civil rights in order to capture terrorists. The need to protect the group may override the normal checks and balances. But when the government uses these extraordinary powers against ordinary crimes, we are all placed in a precarious position. Then the extraordinary becomes the ordinary. Government intrusion and intimidation becomes the norm. Political activism becomes terrorism. This is the classic slippery slope. Disagreeing with government policy can result in all sorts of unconstitutional attacks all under the guise of terrorism.  9:08:29 AM    

On the complexity of scientific literature.

Just how complex is scientific literature compared to other writing? Quantifying the difficulty of a text is in itself difficult but an article in tomorrow's Nature talks about this issue.

Perhaps the best known metric for reading difficulty is the Flesch Reading Ease scale because that is used in Microsoft Word. However, it is primarily based on the lengths of words and sentences to rate the difficulty of a piece. Some writing may contain lots of long words but still be relatively simple and that is where the Flesch scale breaks down.

An alternative is Donald Hayes' LEX scale. It essentially rates a text based on how commonly used its words are. The text in question is rated by using a list of the most common 87,000 words in English. The proportion of words more common than some level of commonality is plotted as a graph against the level of commonality. This means we get a line that rises as we get to less common words. The slope of the line is a basic indicator of the complexity of a text. The steeper the slope, the easier the text (it contains a greater proportion of words that are common).

If we consider the baseline for measuring complexity as that of a newspaper, we can make some comparisons. We can even quantify this by comparing the area under the graph we drew from one text to another. If we set the complexity of a newspaper as the zero on our scale, we find that fiction for nine-year olds gets a rating of -32 (i.e. easire than a newspaper). A transcript of a farmer talking to his cows gets a -59. At the more complex end, papers in Science and Nature get an average rating of 30.

What is most startling is that in 1900, papers in Science and Nature had a rating of 0 - similar to the level of complexity of the New York Times.

As science has split into subdisciplines and new vocabularies have been invented for each, the number of common words in papers has dropped dramatically. Interestingly, the most difficult papers seem to be those in subdisciplines of biology, where entirely new sets of jargon have been needed. For example, Cell has a rating of around 40. Some of the easier-to-read papers are found in physical science journals. Physical Review D, devoted to particle physics and gravitation (one of the more esoteric and complex areas of physics) has a rating of 22.

Because of the increasing complexity of scientific writing, there are moves afoot to simplify language. Techniques include the use of more appropriate grammatical structures, and better editing and more practice. Some journals, such as Nature, place a lot of emphasis on crafting a strong and simple first paragraph - the journal's editors tend to have a significant influence on this paragraph.

Whether or not it will be possible to simplify scientific writing back to level 0 texts is unclear. It would seem very difficult to get ratings down close to newspapers, and I would guess that even popular science writing is rising in rating as the number of science-literate readers increases and the reading market specialises even further.

Still, clear writing is a noble goal and something that more journals should aim for.

Read the technical details of Hayes' LEX analysis at his webpage.

[David Harris' Science and Literature]

Very interesting study. I do wonder if the complexity of newspapers has decreased since 1900. Is USA Today or the NYT the baseline? I do not doubt that scientific jargon has gotten more complicated but I thinkmainstream papers have also gotten more simplified.  7:27:49 AM    

The I-Word Revisited. The I-Word Revisited - Oh Imperialism! Are you the right word or not? Consider this passage from the NYT story... [Unqualified Offerings]

I find it ironic that Iraq will have to begin importing oil when it has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. Are we losing the peace? I guess an imperial power does not have to worry about these things.  7:16:49 AM    

No Slippery Slope Here!. No Slippery Slope Here! - From an Oakland Tribune article on CATIC, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, which played a... [Unqualified Offerings]

It is exactly this sort of thinking that will get us all into trouble. Tarring nonviolent protesters with a broad terrorism brush will only cause a lot of difficulties. Not having a definition of terrorism allows the government to intimidate anyone whose views it disagrees with, simply by placing the tag terrorism. I guess political activism can cause terror in certain politicians (i.e. like they might get voted out) but that is not what most people think of when discussing terrorism. I bet most of us would say that terrorism is exactly bombs going off and people being killed. Blocking an intersection may be illegal but it is not terrorism.   7:12:31 AM    

Emergentism.

Mitch Ratcliffe is working on a book to flush out the political ideology of Emergent Democracy, hence, an -ism:

Emergentism's principles can be described briefly:

• Because the lower cost of communications and the logistical infrastructures available around the world allows groups to address their own needs or the needs of others in more efficient and targeted ways, it is no longer necessary for majority rule to dominate all social, economic and political decisions. Instead, we are at the beginning of a collaboration of many minorities.
• Power can be used for good or evil, regardless of the system that wields it, so emergentism strives to bring all perspectives and parties to every issue to the table in a world where the cost and complexity of making connections has fallen by orders of magnitude since the founding of the United Nations and, even, World Trade Organization. Every decision must be representative of the concerns of people impacted by the results.
• Every individual has the right to participate in any decision that will have an impact on their lives and, since the global environment is a single complex system, each person has the right to express their opinion and vote on every issue. Every individual has an absolute right to free speech and freedom and the responsibility to own the consequences of their words and acts of expression.
• Debate and compromise, not violence, are the preferred means of resolving differences of opinion. Violence carried out by any individual or force against a significantly weaker opponent is a crime against humanity; violence in general, while a human habit, should be reduced and ultimately eliminated from society.
• Every individual, in the interest of expediency and the greater good, may assign their individual vote on any or all issues to a proxy who, in turn, may federate with other proxies to represent the interests and opinions of self-organizing communities. Each person is accountable for their votes and may not sell them, even if they are disinterested in a particular issue; they may only abstain in a case of disinterest.
• Each individual may have multiple proxies representing their interests on different issues, but no individual may, by their own action or through a proxy, cast two votes on the same issue.
• Every individual has the right to reclaim their vote from a proxy if they wish to participate directly or believe the proxy has misrepresented them, on any issue at any time.
• Emergentism recognizes that modern institutions will continue to exist and shall not be violently overthrown but eroded by obsolescence as more efficient and fair alternatives emerge; Emergentism seeks to create social decision-making environment where ad hoc and trans-national organizations can interact and coexist with existing institutions, with which it may share many values while simultaneously being in sharp conflict with those institutions.
• Emergentism is politics for the people by the people that transcends national boundaries, cultural and ethnic differences, religious dogma and personal prejudice by identifying shared interests and facilitating collaboration using modern communications and transportation. It is virtual community embedded in a physical world with its eyes wide open to the realities of emerging global and local identities that have less to do with people[base ']s locations and more to do with what they care about than the past.

 

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

A good summation of a lot of work by Mitch. Read it all. Whether any of it ever comes to fruition, it does serve as a point for discussion. Big ideas may not always be realistic but they do lead to conversations of value. It will be interesting to see where this goes.  6:38:11 AM