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Tuesday, January 27, 2004
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 Watching Tim Russert interview Wesley Clark this morning, it occurred to me how dysfunctional the system is. I saw the Great Dean Scream another dozen times. I heard the chief of the Democratic Party asked if he thought it was the end of the Dean campaign and he said the obvious -- it wasn't, and it should't be. Then they asked if Clark had screwed up by letting Michael Moore call the President a deserter. Later Russert repeatedly asked Clark to denounce Moore for saying that, but he wouldn't. The system is so perverse that Clark just danced instead of coming out and saying the obvious, yes, he's President, and yes, he got elected without his character getting the kind of examination the Democrats are getting. "So Tim, let's turn it around," Clark might have said, "Why didn't you grill Bush on that during the 2000 election? How did he become President without that getting vetted?" I might go further and wonder how he got the nomination without his military service being fully examined. If the Republicans cry bloody murder, let's go back and figure out who painted Dean with "angry" label. Yeah, it was the Republicans, in case you were wondering.  [Scripting News]
9:44:40 PM 
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Sci-Fi Is a Splash at Sundance. Science-fiction films make a big impression at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Computer-generated imagery and grad students' physics projects help express the dark side of science. Jason Silverman reports from Park City, Utah. [Wired News]
9:26:35 PM
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Jesus, I hope his wife knows what she's got here...not a God so much as a visionary, innovative genius who gets it. Fundamentally gets it.
Linus as Antidote. Linus just has a way with words, don't you think? BusinessWeek did an interview with him, and he said some useful and some memorably funny things about SCO. My favorite first: "Nothing to lose is a bad situation to be in. They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot. I'd rather not get too close to them." He was asked what he thinks is motivating SCO: "I think there was a fair amount of bad feeling when IBM dropped out of the Monterey project [a joint-development project with SCO]. That was a big deal for SCO, and they had a hard time with that. Never mind the fact that it had long since become clear that the project wasn't going anywhere, and IBM would have been crazy to continue with it. "So you have some pent-up anger at IBM, a failing business that was losing its market, and put it together with a greedy new CEO who has fought legal battles before, and what do you get?" Linus totally gets it that the Novell-SCO copyright dispute has no significance in the greater IBM context, because their claims, in his view, are shaky anyway, even if the copyrights were theirs, because they can't seem to come up with any copied code: "The validity of their claims has always been very shaky, even regardless of the fact that Novell claims SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights in the first place. "The SCO claims have been shaky from the start because they haven't actually been able to show any particular copied code. It's like me claiming copyright on some article you wrote for BusinessWeek [without being] able to specify which article and which part of it I would have written. The fact that Novell now contests the SCO copyright ownership just makes them even more shaky." There is lots more in the interview, so hop on over and have a nice visit with Linus. Passing time with Linus is a good antidote to thinking about and writing about Dark Darl. [GrokLaw]
9:20:31 PM
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New Project for Cataloging Personal Collections.
From time to time, somone will email or IM me and ask for a recommendation for software to catalog their personal library. I'm happy to report that there is a new solution called LibDB on the horizon.
"This is the development wiki of LibDB, an open-sourced Perl/MySQL library and asset management system based on and inspired by the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (pdf), triples from the semantic web, and "the end-user doesn't, and shouldn't, need to know this stuff". In English, this means that you'll be able to smartly and easily catalog your movies, books, magazines, comics, etc. into your own computerized "personal library".
Further information is available under ProjectGoals (including user profiles).
LibDB is still in the very early planning stages, and we're currently focusing on movie-related cataloguing. As such, most initial concrete and forward movement will be catered to movies, but realize that the final versions will be far more than just movies. The LibDB database is defined in such a way that you could describe books and other forms of media, even if the interface assumed you were entering film."
There are lots of reasons to note this project. I don't pretend to fully understand the intricacies of this, but it's "based around the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records" (FRBR), but it will be very extensible and will allow librarians and other anal-retentive types to slice and dice their collections in multiple ways. Oh, and it will be free!
Brought to you be the ever resourceful Morbus Iff, creator of AmphetaDesk. [The Shifted Librarian]
9:10:42 PM
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Sorting the Wheat From the Chaff. As we often point out, most of the high profile billion dollar "anti-aging" industry is based on exaggeration, bad extrapolation and outright lies. It causes great harm to legitimate science, but how do we, the consumers, learn to separate out the wheat from the chaff? What is legitimate, and what is not? This article from the Edmonton Journal gives an overview of that issue, although the author does make the classic Tithonus error in assuming that a longer life is a more unhealthy life. The points to take away are, we thing, to be skeptical, and to read the Longevity Meme. [Longevity Meme News and Commentary]
8:44:25 PM
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If you have not read this remarkable man's book "Ghost Rider", do so immediately. I mailed this book to a close friend who had lost his wife after a long illness, and he kept it for his library, and sent me a fresh copy. It was that resonant.
Neil Peart speaks about lyrics. "Writing lyrics is a tremendously demanding form of discipline; it requires precision. ... I'm not happy with spontaneity musically either." [Blogcritics]
8:26:52 PM
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Just Say 'No' to Record Labels. Rockers Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno rally for a bright digital future in which musicians take charge, cutting traditional music biz players out of the money stream. [Wired News]
8:19:00 PM
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Madness In Gotham. Since their earliest years, the stories of the Batman comics have been intensely psychological. Over the years plotlines have explored the motivations, drives and significant experiences of Batman, as well as the major criminal characters who variously populate the halls of Arkham Asylum and the streets of Gotham City. Batman is one of the most successful and enduring of modern myths, read and watched by millions. As a genre with the concept of mental illness at its core, it is perhaps one of our most popular and enduring representations of madness. [kuro5hin.org]
8:17:51 PM
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This is your brain in love. In a fascinating new book, evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher examines the chemistry responsible for the giddiness, fixations and overarching lunacy associated with romantic love. [Salon.com]
8:17:21 PM
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Wise words from the creator of many Radio Userland themes...including mine...
Bryan Bell: "I am constantly looking over my shoulder at Win-IE just to make sure the my sensible decisions are not being overturned by that freaking-lunatic of a browser." [Scripting News]
8:16:47 PM
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© Copyright
2004
Gail Marsella.
Last update:
6/27/2004; 7:20:37 PM.
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