Mapping Scientific Topics With Social Networking Tools. BoingBoing reader Roland Piquepaille says,

In "Mapping the landscape of science," the National Science Foundation discusses the contents of a collection of articles published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), "Mapping Knowledge Domains." Basically, all these scientists are using software social networking tools to build graphical representations of scientific knowledge or science communities. [Please note that the full version of all articles is available.] This overview contains selected excerpts and illustrations extracted from some of these articles, like the top 50 highly frequent used in the top 10% most highly cited PNAS publications during the 1982-2001 period.

Link [Boing Boing]

I want to find these later.  comment []11:57:30 PM    

The truth about camel spiders. Here's the myth about camel spiders, the monsters of the Iraqi desert.

"Supposedly they leap onto the backs of camels and suck out the blood. I've been told that a couple of these things can kill a full grown camel."

Link

"Here's the lowdown on camel spiders, which aren't spiders at all:

In reality, camel spiders aren't some mysterious Arabian creature -- we have them in the United States and in Mexico, where they are called matevenados. They are slightly smaller than the human hand, and while they do run quickly, their top speed is 10 miles per hour, not 25. But they also make no noise, they excrete no venom, and although they can be voracious nocturnal predators, they don't eat camels. They eat delicious crickets and pillbugs, and sometimes scorpions."

Link [Boing Boing]

This is enough to give anyone the gollywobbles!! Those things look nasty. I had never seen one before. 10 miles an hour is a six minute mile. faster than most people could run. Unless you were in a panic because a huge spider like thing was chasing you.  comment []11:42:50 PM    

I learned a new acronym - LIHOP

The new line from Condi, repeated by McClellan and other Bushies, is that if they had known that New York and Washington were going to be attacked, they would have moved heaven and earth to prevent it.

Methinks they are revealing more of the truth than they realize.

The fact is, they didn[base ']t think New York and Washington would be hit. They thought the attack would be overseas. And they did nothing.

Why? They needed a cassus belli to attack Iraq. A few dozen sailors on a destroyer, or even a few hundred[~]mostly local people[~]at an embassy would be a small price to pay for an excuse to attack Iraq.

That was the thinking behind their complacency. They weren[base ']t thinking that attacks would bring down the World Trade Center or strike at the heart of the government in the Pentagon. Had they known that, they would have tried to do something. But they thought the attack would be smaller and overseas, and that it would actually play right into their hands.

Damn this Administration for making a a bad movie plot sound almost plausible. I would rather believe that they were incompetent for ignoring the importance of a PDB about al-Queda attacks, followed by the capture of an al-Queda agent 9 days later who could have provided important links to the hijackers if the trees had been shaken than they LIHOP because they thought it would be an overseas target that they could manipulate to provide an attack on Iraq. But, knowing some of the awful things Rove has done in the past, knowing that many of these same people had been involved in Iran-Contra and the October Surprise, well... when you create an Administration built on secrecy and iron loyalty, you should expect some really good tin-foil conspiracy theories to flourish. I wonder if this will get more play that "Roosevelt knew."  comment []11:25:46 PM    

Condi, Clarke and the Millennium Plot

In the former, a chance capture of one terrorist, planning to blow up the LA airport, caused Customs, the FBI and others to shake the trees (because Clarke was there to make sure that it reached the highest levels) and discover many other terrorists. These were stopped. But they also learned by 2000 that there were cells IN the US. So, Clinton's Administration responded to the capture of one terrorist by going into hyperdrive.

Now, this Administration received a briefing on August 6 about Terrorists In the US. On August 7, Bush left Washington for a month-long vacation. On August 15, Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, was arrested and questioned by the FBI. Moussaoui had been trying to learn how to fly jumbo airliners. The agents wanted to go into hyperdrive after finding out from the French that he had links to al-Queda and had been trained at terrorist camps. This excerpt from a Seattle Times series presents this Administration's response to this, a response in sharp contrast to the Clinton's adminstration.

Rowley and other Minneapolis agents were convinced Moussaoui was a terrorist threat. So was the veteran Ghimenti. But for reasons still unclear, the counterterrorism section in Washington would not seek the warrant.

Clinton's administration responded to the capture of a terrorist by going in high alert. This administration responded to the capture of a terrorist by getting a process in place to decide how to respond. That their ill-conceived approach so rapidly resulted in tragedy is something that historians will write about for years to come.  comment []11:06:06 PM