Monday, March 25, 2002
Budapest Open Access Initiative
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.
New Plan Redesigns Plumbing of Everglades
Andrew C. Revkin
By turning some sugar land into marshes to filter nutrients, transforming old quarries and other tracts into reservoirs, tearing out levees and restoring some of the natural water cycle over the next two decades, the plan's designers foresee environmental recovery in many remaining wild places. It is the most ambitious ecosystem recovery project in history.
The Most Seductive Equation in Science: Beauty Equals Truth
Dennis Overbye
Rare indeed is the scientist who has not at one point or other been seduced by the beauty of his own equations and dumbfounded by what the physicist Dr. Eugene Wigner of Princeton once called theunreasonable effectiveness of mathematicsin describing the world.
The CBDTPA Is Immune to (Conventional) Criticism
Jeremy Bowers
I don't like to chime in on a topic unless I have something interesting to say [ ... ] The CBDTPA takes the form of legislation that bans the ability to commit a negative behavior. [ ... ] When, in the entire history of mankind, have we ever legislated an undesirable behavior out of existance?
Note to Self
When using tack cloth, be sure to wear gloves. Damn, that stuff is sticky...
How Quickly a City Can Grow
Witold Rybczynski
New York should not simply replace the destroyed towers with new ones, even if they are lower. The 16-acre site is a so-called superblock, the result of a misbegotten theory of 1960's city planning that replacing streets and sidewalks with windswept plazas was a sign of progress.
Monday Morning Coffee Notes
With apologies to Dave Winer, his "coffee notes" tradition is too good not to copy.
Colombia Nariño Supremo, obtained from the friendly baristas at Starbucks in Arlington Center. (This first cup is an integral safety feature of my Corolla. Try to drive more than one mile before noon without stopping for coffee and the engine shuts down.)
Ethiopia Sidamo, made with Brita filtered water and a Melitta #2 cone filter. I'm drinking it out of my Starbucks cup from Vancouver. It's a huge cup that holds, well, I don't know how much, but it holds a lot.
Note to Radio users. There's a checkbox on this page that controls the deletion of old news items from the aggregator. The help text says, "We highly recommend that you enable this option."
Holy smoke Batman - they're not kidding!
I like to stay away from the computer on the weekends - you know, take a walk, get some fresh air, that sort of thing. But I don't want to "miss anything", so I thought, why not let the news items in the aggregator accumulate over the weekend? Now I've got a gazillion items to sort through.
Nah, I'll just delete them and start fresh.
That feels much better...
Twinings Irish Breakfast Tea. Um, it's OK to drink tea, right? (Technically, I suppose this should be considered a "pot" of tea.)
It occurs to me that the reverse chronological style of most weblogs has some problems. Ideally, I'd like to be able to move items into whatever order makes sense to me. I can already do that by futzing with the weblogData.root file, but I'd rather not. And, of course, I can edit a single item, like I'm doing now, but then I lose time stamping.
More coffee from Starbucks.
You know, it's entirely possible that I consume way too much caffeine.
