Monday, March 17, 2003

ART ALERT: Snotbomb 11:22:02 PM    comment [] Excess of sorrow laughing... De Terminator   http://www.gradis.net/xray.htm What to do in the event of an actual emergency... 11:15:52 PM    comment [] "Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."   (Nietzsche) 11:13:00 PM    comment [] War Prayer   (Mark Twain) "O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolate land in rags and hunger and thirst." 11:11:48 PM    comment [] Domestic policies give cause for fear   (Dan Gilmor) The news from the edges is almost uniformly bad. It's getting harder to look at America's social and economic condition without a deep sense of trepidation. In too many ways, we're moving in the wrong direction, and accelerating. It's pretty simple, actually. In America, we're borrowing -- far beyond our means -- against the future of our children. This is dangerous and unforgivable. President Bush and Republican congressional allies are sending America down the most dangerous economic and social paths in generations. Their borrow-and-spend fiscal policy, combined with alleged conservatism that is anything but compassionate, set a modern standard for irresponsibility and radical thinking. This year -- ignoring the cost of the war, which will not be trivial -- the deficit will come in around $340 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and it will be about $1.2 trillion during the next five years. Economists don't agree on much, but they do agree with the truism that big deficits force the government to borrow a lot more money. That competes with borrowing by businesses and individuals, and interest rates go up, taxing the economy's potential. The minute rates go up, the last remaining bubble from the 1990s will start to deflate. Housing's continuing rise in such a so-so economy is fueled by two things: a sense that it's the only good investment left -- a partly irrational notion, when you think about it -- and low mortgage interest rates. If you're hoping that deflation will keep rates low and home prices high, you're kidding yourself, because real deflation will torpedo the economy and hurt everyone. The Democrats are also participating in imposing unfunded federal mandates for ``homeland security,'' such as protection of seaports, on state and local governments, contributing to their already vicious fiscal woes. They have to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government. They're doing it in large part by cutting vital services. Schools and basic infrastructure are feeling much of this budget-whacking: more borrowing against our future. Bush and his crowd say the answer is to cut taxes, giving disproportionate benefits to the wealthy and corporate interests that already have such an advantage over the rest of us. They're betting that more money at the top will lead to enough more investment that some cash will trickle down. In the long run, they say, the economy will be better off even though the tax cuts will do little or nothing to improve things now. That's bad long-range thinking, but at least there's some logic. Borrowing on tomorrow goes beyond mere money. Every time Bush and his radical clique turn back the clock on environmental protection, they leave our kids less for tomorrow. If we had an opposition party, a real one, we'd hear about alternatives. The Democrats could talk about investing in our children's future, not stealing from it. For example, they could insist on a coherent plan to invest in a crash program to make the United States much more energy-efficient. Imagine that, a policy designed to make us much less vulnerable to political instability in the Middle East and other oil-producing regions, and to reduce the horrendous costs we pay for our fuel-guzzling ways. They could insist on health care for all, not the patchwork of insurance that ultimately will collapse on itself. They could work for investment in fiber-optic cables to all homes and businesses, to jump start the 21st century economy once and for all. And they could do what Bush refuses to do -- talk about sacrifice. If we are going to fight a war to depose a monstrous dictator and help bring pluralistic, open government to the Middle East, we're going to sacrifice lives and treasure. If we're going to have a nation at home that lives up to ideals of fairness and justice, we're going to have to recognize and accept the risk that comes with liberty. If we're going to have sane energy policy, we'll have to spend what it takes to achieve it. Instead, we're borrowing endlessly for an unjust, unfair and unsustainable future -- rewarding the people at the top and leaving the sacrifice to everyone else. If we keep going this way, our children and grandchildren will hate us. They'll have reason. I abridged this. The full article can be found here. 11:02:30 PM    comment [] Jumping on the Bandwagon   (justin) If our new foreign policy is to invade every foreign country whose leader violates basic human rights--we've got a lot more invading to do, so let's get this party STARTED.  The sooner we topple Saddam, the sooner we can invade Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria and Egypt--and that's just for starters! For a more complete list of under-invaded nations, see http://www.hrw.org/countries.html, Human Rights Watch's comprehensive listing of human rights reports by country. I'm ready if you are--but we have to start now, or else there's no way we'll be done before the next election.   (via ip) 10:50:55 PM    comment [] And so it goes...   (Leo Tolstoy) "The killed will be covered with earth and lime, and once more all the crowd of deluded men will be led on and on till those who have devised the project weary of it, or till those who thought to find it profitable receive their spoil. And so once more men will be made savage, fierce and brutal, and love will wane in the world... And so once more the men who reaped profit from it all will assert with assurance that since there has been a war there must needs have been one, and that other wars must follow, and they will again prepare future generations for a continuance of slaughter, depraving them from their childhood." (via abuddhas memes) 10:36:35 PM    comment [] Smart Memes: Time to change our ways of thinking Actually way way way past time. What can I/you/we do now? smartMeme I: Direct Action at the Points of Assumption weaves a tapestry of direct action aiming at a tipping point - strategizing by EarthFirst.       (abuddhas memes) "Living at such a critical time compels us to search for those convergence points and exploit them. With this effort, we hope to expand the current debates and push our movements to explore new frontiers of struggle. We hope to provoke further and deeper action, as well as to challenge all of us to weave these actions together and provide a tapestry of reality more vibrant and compelling than the one that is currently unraveling." 10:30:20 PM    comment [] The Second Eigenvalue of the Google Matrix (Search Day) "Want an analytical peek at some of the core components of Google's famous PageRank algorithm? These two papers from Stanford offer some heavy-duty insights into Google's operation. The abstract of the first paper, "The Second Eigenvalue of the Google Matrix," is likely sufficient for most people. Authors Taher Haveliwala and Sepandar Kamvar state: We determine analytically the modulus of the second eigenvalue for the web hyperlink matrix used by Google for computing PageRank. Specifically, we prove the following statement: 'For any matrix $A=[cP + (1- "We determine analytically the modulus of the second eigenvalue for the c)E]^T$, where $P$ is an $n times n$ row-stochastic matrix, $E$ is a strictly positive $n times n$ rank- one row-stochastic matrix, and $0 leq c leq 1$, the second eigenvalue of $A$ has modulus $|lambda_2| leq c$. Furthermore, if $P$ has at least two irreducible closed subsets, the second eigenvalue $lambda_2 = c$.' Got that? Wait! There's more!" (SOURCE: Search Day Newsletter) I was going to provide links to the two articles, but they are currently unavailable. Looks like someone doesn't want us to know... 4:57:33 PM    comment [] Whuffie Watch: Social-Network Mapping Tools (Roland Piquepaille) Links and information about a variety of social network visualization tools. Mentioned in the first post are InFlow, the TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, and the (soon-to-be-released) anacubis. The floodgates swing wide open in the 2nd post which gives us email constellations, Apache Agora, NetVis Module, EtherApe, inGridX, Proximity Search, Surf3D Pro, Kartoo, and Visual Thesaurus. This list of links is for my convenience, but there is more information about all of the above in these 2 posts, and (yeah!) an orange XML button. I will be adding Mr. Piquepaille's blog to my reading list. Information overload here I come! 3:42:16 PM    comment [] World Prayer Project "I always believe that it is much better to have a variety of religions, a variety of philosophies, rather than a single religion or philosophy. This is necessary because of the different mental dispositions of each human being. Each religion has certain unique ideas or techniques, and learning about them can only enrich one's own faith." -- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama Introduction. The purpose of this website is to gather the great prayers written by the spiritual visionaries of our planet into an online database representing all life affirming traditions. Many of these prayers have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Others are from spiritual contemporaries in today's intricate global fabric. Though these sacred verses arise from divergent paths, voices, languages, cultures and heritages, they all carry within them the same burning flame - the same impassioned love for life and the divine mysteries. Guiding Principle. The World Prayers archive attempts to be representative of all affirming faiths and spiritual practices without preference to any one. It is our goal to make these great words available to everyone for study and appreciation. The prayers have been intuitively divided into four categories for the purpose of organization and navigation. From whence I have gathered the item: 1:55:19 PM    comment [] Top O' the Day! (from the gaelic) Go n-éirí an bóthar leat Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl Go lonraí an ghrian go te ar d'aghaidh Go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna Agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís, Go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand. 1:53:14 PM    comment []

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