Wednesday, March 12, 2003

War is GOOD.... (Thomas P.M. Barnett) Let me tell you why military engagement with Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good. When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point-the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization. That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein's outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence. (SOURCE: The Pentagon's New Map) Oh boy. Just trying to present a wider spectrum of opinion. Like we like to do in a democratic society. 7:28:04 PM    comment [] Telemarketers Beware! Do Not Call is LAW! President Bush on Tuesday signed legislation creating a national "do-not-call" list intended to help consumers block unwanted telemarketing calls. The bill allows the Federal Trade Commission to collect fees from telemarketers to fund the registry, which will cost about $16 million in its first year. The do-not-call program should begin operation by summer. Telemarketers say the registry will devastate their business. The Direct Marketing Association, an industry group, filed a lawsuit against the FTC last month on grounds the registry unlawfully restricts free speech. (cbsnews.com) via ip Someone should remind the Direct Marketing Association that their right to free speech ends at my front door in much the same way that one's right to swing one's fist ends at another person's face. And if this law will "devastate their business", I submit that perhaps they were in the wrong business to begin with. (Jason, on ip) We will keep you posted on how and where to sign up for this. 7:12:54 PM    comment [] If not War, then what? (Kim Campbell) It's easy to wonder if the antiwar movement is ridiculous or sublime. If it's peopled by the anti-Bush left, or thoughtful Americans of all political stripes. If it is strident or reasoned. The reality is, it's all of the above - and every- thing in between. In adopting a "big tent" philosophy, organizers have welcomed all comers, all shows of support. And their efforts have resulted in the fastest-growing antiwar movement in US history, allowing them to draw crowds the size of which only showed up in the Vietnam era after years of conflict. Its factions include clergy and anarchists, college students and veteran '60s protesters, internationalists and Hollywood celebrities - all united, at least for now, under the No War With Iraq banner. (SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor) 7:01:34 PM    comment [] Brain Prosthesis: Artificial Hyppocampus Unveiled (New Scientist) The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease. * * * No one understands how the hippocampus encodes information. So the team simply copied its behaviour. Slices of rat hippocampus were stimulated with electrical signals, millions of times over, until they could be sure which electrical input produces a corresponding output. Putting the information from various slices together gave the team a mathematical model of the entire hippocampus. (KERSHWING! Thanks boing boing!) 6:51:05 PM    comment [] Playing Cards Through the Ages The Bob Lancaster Gallery of Unusual Playing Cards is a collection and celebration of the beauty of playing cards. The site is over 7 years old and is still updated when Bob comes across a new find. Personal favorites are Le Florentin and the very intriguing Transformation Decks. After viewing the decks, you may wonder why the ace on the ace of spades is larger than the others. (metafilter) 6:35:54 PM    comment [] ...And the Winners Are: SXSW: 2003 SXSW WEB AWARDS WINNERS Links to bunch of great looking websites. WARNING: This one is a time sink. Dive in! 6:27:14 PM    comment [] Top Antispam Tips (Sean Carroll) 1. Guard your in-box. Don't give out your e-mail address to anyone but the people you actually expect to correspond with. For dealing with everyone else, see tips 2 through 4. 2. Use free Web mail accounts. For merchants and legit others you don't correspond with regularly, use Web mail, such as Hotmail's or Yahoo!'s. You can abandon it if it gets spammed. Many have spam filtering built in. 3. Use a disposable e-mail address. Disposable e-mail addresses are great in-box insulators. Give them out in place of your real address, which remains hidden. You can always dispose of the address if it gets spammed. (For more, see the sidebar "Disposable E-Mail Services.") 4. Use fake addresses. Most Web-based sign-up forms require an e-mail address, but ask yourself, do they really need it? If you don't want to hear from the site (and don't need a confirmation e-mail or tech support), don't give a real address. 5. Don't post your address. Resist the impulse to post it on Web sites, guest books, contact lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, and so on; spammers harvest from these places. If you absolutely must reveal yourself, use a Web-mail account or a DEA. You can also put something extra in your e-mail that humans will know how to read but harvesting robots won't: sean@pretend.com could become sean AT pretend DOT com. 6. Don't answer spam. Ever. You won't stop spam by writing to the spammers, even if you ask nicely. At best, you'll flame a robot, which won't mind. At worst, you'll confirm that your e-mail address belongs to a naive human being-a valuable commodity for spammers. Ignore the "remove me" e-mail addresses, too. Many of these lead to dead or inactive e-mail addresses. 7. Opt out. When you do sign up for or buy something online and you have to give out an e-mail address, remember to opt out of everything you're not absolutely sure you want to receive. 8. Read the privacy policy. Make sure you understand what a Web site promises to do (and not to do) with your e-mail address. If there's no privacy policy, see tips 2 through 4. 9. Use a spam filter. Even if you follow tips 1 through 8, you're going to get spam. If you get more than you can handle, try one of the products we reviewed in this roundup. Our Editors' Choice is SpamAssassin Pro. (SOURCE: Top Antispam Tips, PC Magazine) Personal Antispam Tool Roundup (PC Magazine) 6:22:36 PM    comment [] Playing with Time (Jim Regan) Time flies when you're having fun. Time drags when the bus is late...and it's raining...and you have a hole in your shoe. Of course, such distortions of duration are purely internal, but there are also external methods of altering our chronological perspectives, and Playing With Time has some prime examples of - and instruction in - the art of temporal transformation. A creation of Red Hill Studios and the Science Museum of Minnesota (home base for a traveling exhibit of the same name), Playing With Time uses QuickTime movies to reveal changes that occur either too fast or too slow for us to see in real time. With a basic layout contributing to fast, easy access for most web browsers (you'll need to activate JavaScript), the site saves its gee-whiz moments for the exhibits themselves. (SOURCE: Take a few seconds for 'Playing with Time', csmonitor.com) 5:03:36 PM    comment [] I know it must sound weird but all of these things here are things that disappear... - Rhett Miller 4:39:15 PM    comment [] Peaceniks to Pope: Become "Ultimate Human Shield" (Defense Tech Blog) Anti-war movements usually attract quite a number of, shall we say, eccentric ideas. But this has to be one of the strangest pleas for peace ever: activists are begging the Pope to go to Baghdad and become "the ultimate human shield." Dr. Helen Caldicott, a former Harvard professor, is urging people from around the globe to e-mail, fax, call, and snail mail the Vatican, and ask the Pope to "travel to Baghdad and to remain there until a peaceful solution to this crisis has been implemented." The idea, Caldicott writes, is that the Bush Administration wouldn't risk a bombing campaign in Iraq if the Pope's life were in danger. There's been no official word from Rome in reaction to Caldicott's entreaty.   Pope to Peaceniks "Are you nuts?" 4:36:46 PM    comment [] Pope to Prez: God is Not With You (Guardian Unlimited) Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials are unleashing a barrage of condemnations of a possible U.S. military strike on Iraq, calling it immoral, risky and a ``crime against peace.'' The unwavering stance has made the pope one of the most visible opponents of war in current circumstances, and a rallying point for peace groups and politicians who seize on his words counseling against war. Even those supportive of a U.S.-led strike, including the prime ministers of Britain, Spain and Italy, have recently lined up to see him, aware of his leadership role. President Bush, who has rarely met with opponents of his Iraqi stand in recent months, did receive an emissary from John Paul last week. Upon returning to Rome, the emissary, Cardinal Pio Laghi, said American officials had been friendly but that "friendship is not enough.'' * * * Aides have repeatedly said the pope is not a pacifist, pointing to his support of humanitarian intervention to ``disarm the aggressor'' in Bosnia and East Timor and his repeat condemnations of terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks. But in some of the Vatican's strongest language against a possible war, its foreign minister Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran said a unilateral military strike would be a "crime against peace'' with no justification on grounds of self-defense. (SOURCE: Vatican Becomes Anti-War Rallying Point, Guardian Unlimited) 4:35:42 PM    comment [] Pop to Prez: "Chill Out Junior" (Roland Watson) In a speech at Tuft's University, Bush senior expressed his concern that Shrub will defy the United Nations, causing much harm. (boing boing) Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations. * * * He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany. Mr Bush Jr, who is said never to forget even relatively minor slights, has alarmed analysts with the way in which he has allowed senior Administration figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, aggressively to criticise France and Germany. (SOURCE: Bush Sr warning over unilateral action, Times Online) 4:35:37 PM    comment [] God to Prez: You go boy! Unfortunately none of the above will sway el presidente. Mr. Bush is taking his marching orders from a higher authority. He reads the bible every day. This in itself is not problematic, but basing your policy -- and gambling the fate of the nation and the world on the belief that you are doing god's work is, to put it bluntly, nuts. It's what the equally nutty muslim fundamentalists believe. And I'm sorry to point out the obvious: George Bush Junior is no Albert Einstein or Mahatma Gandhi. Normally, people who believe deep in their souls that they are doing god's work do not have access to vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (to borrow a phrase) and the largest standing army on this blue planet. Unfortunately, this is not the case here. I'd like to close this out with something pithy, funny and/or hope filled, but -- sorry folks, I am just not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling here. It's almost as if there is something to these biblical prophecies, that some things are written in stone and our puny little interventions will not prevent this coming age of death and destruction. Thus it has been spoken by the prophets (profits?), and thus it must come to be. Yee-hah, Sweet Jesus, take us home! 4:34:06 PM    comment []

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