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Sunday, July 24, 2005
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Here's a nice post about Mike Benjamin's remarkable little hitting streak: 14 hits in three games, 10 years ago for the San Francisco Giants. What a treat that was!
(Via Jay's Giants Blog.)
8:16:16 PM 
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Wow, I don't know where they came from. Probably from stuff dug up for the forthcoming Martin Scorcese documentary, but someone has found and liberated outtakes from the filmed-in-1965 Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back. Available on fine BitTorrent sites. The findings add up to 2 DVDs worth of stuff -- live performances, rehearsals, sitting around in hotel rooms, just like the original film. I've watched only about half the first DVD; t's very exciting to see, a great early birthday present for yours truly, and you can bet I'm going to spend the next few days obsessing over this stuff.
Speaking of that Scorcese documentary, we had a nice coincidence about it yesterday evening. Genevieve and I were on the way to the Giants game (biggest loss at PacBell Park!), and I mentioned to her that Gary said it was going to generate a lot of traffic to this blog, and asked if she knew why. Before she could answer, she was hitting presets on the car radio, and the next thing we heard was Bob singing "no direction home!" Nice bit of coincidence; especially since one never hears enough Bob on the radio.
8:05:26 PM
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ERIC STERLING, CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY FOUNDATION - First, the consequences of drug enforcement and convictions reduce the purchasing power of at least five million American consumers. Second, the crime, violence, and disorder from drug prohibition make hundreds of urban commercial districts undesirable for retail and other commercial development. Third, the crime, violence, and disorder from drug prohibition make hundreds of urban residential districts undesirable for housing and housing development. Fourth, the direct costs of drug enforcement, now exceeding $50 billion in federal, state, and local spending each year, are a terrible opportunity cost—as taxation that restricts investment and profits. This is taxation withdrawn from the productive economy, a wasted public expenditure that does little to improve public safety and the economic climate. There are substantial indirect costs from enforcement that accrue to the business community and hurt profits. These include, for example, fifth, the costs of compliance with onerous and ineffective money laundering regulations; sixth, the inflation of insurance premiums to pay for underwriting losses attributable to drug-prohibition crime; seventh, the significant costs of added security; and eighth, the slowing of international trade to search for contraband and as a result of growing reporting requirements in financial matters and shipments of industrial chemicals. Ninth, still other costs are the lost productivity from drug enforcement. Among the factors reducing productivity due to drug prohibition is incarceration. Between 1992 and 1998, the productivity loss due to incarceration grew by 9.1%, according to the White House report on the economic costs of drug abuse issued in September, 2001.
(Via UNDERNEWS.)
7:05:35 PM
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Chimezie Ogbuji describes Versa, one of the first RDF query languages to be pathcentric, taking cues from XPath.
(Via XML.com.)
6:47:28 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 8/1/2005; 9:49:42 AM.
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