rebecca's pocket

.: 2004 --> december

december

@ The year is drawing to a close, and for many people that means it soon will be new car time. Here's what you need to know: safercar.gov. (via megnut)
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ How to Beat Priceline.
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ If you receive a traffic citation in the mail, watch out! Check with your local traffic department to make sure you haven't been targeted for the fake traffic citation scam. (via boingboing)
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ Researchers have found evidence that it is harder to tell a lie than to tell the truth.
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror.

The Pentagon in 2002 was forced to shutter its controversial Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), which was opened shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, after reports that the office intended to plant false news stories in the international media. But officials say that much of OSI's mission - using information as a tool of war - has been assumed by other offices throughout the U.S. government.

Although most of the work remains classified, officials say that some of the ongoing efforts include having U.S. military spokesmen play a greater role in psychological operations in Iraq, as well as planting information with sources used by Arabic TV channels such as Al Jazeera to help influence the portrayal of the United States.

[ 12/02/04 ]

@ In Chile, instant Web feedback creates the next day's paper.

This revolution has occurred, says the paper's publisher Augustine Edwards, thanks to his decision to listen to "the people." Three years ago, under Mr. Edwards's guidance, LUN installed a system whereby all clicks onto its website (www.lun.com) were recorded for all in the newsroom to see. Those clicks - and the changing tastes and desires they represent - drive the entire print content of LUN. If a certain story gets a lot of clicks, for example, that is a signal to Edwards and his team that the story should be followed up, and similar ones should be sought for the next day. If a story gets only a few clicks, it is killed. The system offers a direct barometer of public opinion, much like the TV rating system - but unique to print media. [...]

"This is very experimental, and it seems to be working," says Axel Pricket, a senior editor at LUN. "But," he hesitates, "how are you going to get a journalist to cover an important visit, say, of the Chinese trade minister when you know in the evening everyone will click on the story of the scantily clad girls?" No editor, he points out, is going to be able to say: "Let's showcase an issue which is totally uninteresting to the public."

How indeed?
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ Sandhill Trek is conducting a survey of the weblog community, asking the question: Why do you blog? People sure have some elaborate responses (not me--'to share information'), and they just keep coming.
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ Oh, yikes. Allyoucanread.com.
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ Craft Books in Braille.
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ Lou Henry Hoover's Double-knit Baby Blanket. Speaking of that, I've been adding a lot of links to my knit/crochet page. At this point, I think it's a pretty useful resource for knitting, and to a lesser degree, crochet.
[ 12/02/04 ]

@ The oldest living American has died at age 114.
[ 12/03/04 ]

@ What makes you happy? A new methodology for studying happiness is giving researchers a window into the real lives of women: how they spend their days, and what makes them happy.

"[W]e are trying to get a better idea or sense of what people's daily lives are actually like, what it is they do with their time."

One of the most consistent findings in the study was how little difference money made. As long as people were not battling poverty, they tended to rate their own happiness in the range of 6 or 7 or higher, on a 10-point scale. After controlling for other factors, Dr. Kahneman and his colleagues found that even differences in household income of more than $60,000 had little effect on daily moods. Job security, too, had little influence. [...]

By far the two factors that most upset people's daily moods were a poor night's sleep and tight work deadlines. According to a scale the researchers developed, women who slept poorly reported relatively little enjoyment even when relaxing in front of the TV or shopping.

[ 12/03/04 ]

@ Restoring female sexual desire.

While Intrinsa is sometimes popularly called the "female Viagra" it is not really equivalent. Viagra deals with a physiologic problem involved in arousal while Intrinsa is meant to restore desire.

"Desire was not the problem for men - erections were," said Dr. Kingsberg. "For women, desire really is the problem." Indeed, Pfizer, which makes Viagra, gave up trying to broaden the drug's use to women this year, saying it did not work.

[ 12/03/04 ]

@ The Plum Book, government appointments, and you.

Last May, Anne C. Mulkern of the Denver Post's Washington bureau documented the presence of a hundred-plus high-level officials in the Bush administration "who helped govern industries [that] they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates." [...]

Among them, according to Mulkern: Ann-Marie Lynch, who moved from a job as a drug-industry lobbyist who fought price controls to a post at Health and Human Services, where she helped decide prescription-drug policies; Charles Lambert, a one-time lobbyist for the meat industry who claimed mad cow disease was not a human health threat; and J. Steven Griles, a lobbyist for oil and gas clients, appointed to the number-two job at the Department of Interior, which oversees national parks and rangeland, including the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This isn't strictly a Bush administration problem, of course--the patronage problem is embedded in our political system. Read the whole thing.
[ 12/03/04 ]

@ Beware the perchlorate in your food.

The FDA found that of the various food items it tested, iceberg lettuce grown in Belle Glade, Florida, had the highest concentrations of perchlorate. The greens had 71.6 parts per billion of the compound, the primary ingredient in solid rocket propellant. Red leaf lettuce grown in El Centro, California, had 52 ppb of perchlorate. Most of the purified, distilled and spring bottled water tested around the nation tested had no detectable amount of perchlorate.

Whole organic milk in Maryland, however, had 11.3 ppb of perchlorate.

Nice. Given this list of things, I'm inclined to think the percholate is in the water. Of course, the government says not to worry or change your eating habits.
[ 12/03/04 ]

@ Meet the Mine Wolf. Because a land mine is not so very different from a sugar beet.
[ 12/03/04 ]

@ Getting fat? Get some sleep.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Smart: New York's Wastematch is like freecycle for industrial waste. [update...]

One company's by-products can be another company's raw materials. The Materials Exchange is a free service that matches generators of valuable commercial waste and surplus goods with organizations that can reuse them. Waste producers sell what they once paid to throw away; reusers obtain materials for free or at low prices.

Ohio is doing the same thing. I wonder how many other states are? (via worldchanging)

UPDATE: Paul says that Seattle has a similar clearinghouse website, featuring everything from hazardous waste to recycling bins and composted manure.
Scott says: Oregon, too.
Jessamyn says: And Vermont.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ What Japanese women want: A western husband.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Brilliant: the Laundry Rug. (via dansays)
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Doesn't this series look fascinating? [more...]

Of course, I've been meaning to re-read my Braudel, and then maybe move onto the other two books in his series, and I have a huge stack of books waiting to be read....
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Amazon Listmania: A Civilian Civil War Reenactor's Core Library.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ You may not have realized this, but the College Board thinks it owns your SAT scores. (via hidden agenda)
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Evidence suggests that heavy computer use may reduce student learning. [more...]

From a sample of 175,000 15-year-old students in 31 countries, researchers at the University of Munich announced in November that performance in math and reading had suffered significantly among students who have more than one computer at home. And while students seemed to benefit from limited use of computers at school, those who used them several times per week at school saw their academic performance decline significantly as well.

"It seems if you overuse computers and trade them for other [types of] teaching, it actually harms the student," says lead researcher Ludger Woessmann in a telephone interview from Munich. "At least we should be cautious in stating that increasing [access to] computers in the home and school will improve students' math and reading performance."

Isn't that kind of a big duh? Computer use sure has replaced my book reading to a significant degree. The technorealists saw this coming years ago.

5. Wiring the schools will not save them.

The problems with America's public schools -- disparate funding, social promotion, bloated class size, crumbling infrastructure, lack of standards -- have almost nothing to do with technology. Consequently, no amount of technology will lead to the educational revolution prophesied by President Clinton and others. The art of teaching cannot be replicated by computers, the Net, or by "distance learning." These tools can, of course, augment an already high-quality educational experience. But to rely on them as any sort of panacea would be a costly mistake.

Side note: I love the CSM's clear correction policy. (via dangerousmeta)
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Are you a member of any Yahoo! groups? You should know that Yahoo! is tracking your movement even outside the Yahoo! network using Web beacons. Click here to opt out. [update...]

UPDATE: (Paul points out that you should be careful not to click the button once you've opted out. I did it, he did it, and it opts you back in. Since we both made the same mistake, I'm inclined to think this is a sneaky attempt by Yahoo! to get most of their opt-outs back in. Either that or Yahoo!'s designers are completely inept.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Hilarious.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Kool aid will dye your nylon and natural fibers to a brilliant color (or a deep one, if you start with gray wool). Here are more directions, a color chart, and references. Now, which flavor can I use to get a good black? (via the excellent knitlist)
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ Matthew writes in with his formula for Group Gothicity:

I propose that the gothicity of a group of event be measured in on a scale of 1-100, based on its BAD (Black Apparel Density). The formula would be ((total number of participants) / (persons clad entirely in black) x 100).

So many flavors of nerdy, nerdy goodness.
[ 12/07/04 ]

@ The Rev. Ben writes in to alert me to the Xtracycle Sports Utility Bicycle. As a very satisfied owner, he tells me the SUB is practical and fun. (Plus, a blogging Episcopalian Priest! Maybe we should introduce him to AKMA?) His entries on bookstacks and meditation are right up my alley, and probably pretty far up your alley, too. Go take a look.
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ The 2004 list of Good Gift Games. (via randomwalks)
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ In a world where disadvantages are usually weeded out by natural selection, how have left-handers survived? With their unstoppable fighting technique.
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ Reacting to the recent murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan, the Dutch government has announced plans to require non-EU citizens residing in the Netherlands to take citizenship tests.

"The aim of the system is that everybody who wants to live for a long time in the Netherlands sufficiently masters the Dutch language to be able to participate in society," Verdonk said on Tuesday. "They must also know enough about how society works."

[ 12/09/04 ]

@ Goodbye privacy, hello microchipped passports. Wouldn't you know mine is due to be renewed next year?

The RFID (radio frequency identification) chip in each passport will contain the same personal data as now appear on the inside pages - name, date of birth, place of birth, issuing office - and a digitized version of the photo. But the 64K chip will be read remotely. And there's the rub. [...]

What prevents surveillance is that "the passport can only be read at a distance of 10 centimeters or less," explains Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, an industry association that represents the four companies that produced prototype chips for the State Department. [...]

The idea that the chips cannot be read beyond 10 centimeters (four inches) doesn't fly with him. "There is no impossible," Mr. Schneier says. "So they [the manufacturers] guarantee that there will be no technological advances in the next 10 years that will change that? It's absurd."

[ 12/09/04 ]

@ Schneier on personal privacy in the digital age. [more...]

Last week, I stayed at the St. Regis hotel in Washington, DC. It was my first visit, and the management gave me a questionnaire, asking me things like my birthday, my spouse's name and birthday, my anniversary, and my favorite fruits, drinks, and sweets. The purpose was clear; the hotel wanted to be able to offer me a more personalized service the next time I visited. And it was a purpose I agreed with; I wanted more personalized service. But I was very uneasy about filling out the form. [...]

Secrecy wasn't the issue. The issue was control. In the United States, information about a person is owned by the person who collects it, not by the person it is about. There are specific exceptions in the law, but they're few and far between. There are no broad data protection laws, as you find in the European Union. There are no Privacy Commissioners, as you find in Canada. Privacy law in the United States is largely about secrecy: if the information is not secret, there's little you can do to control its dissemination.

Part of Bruce Schneier's review of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age by Daniel Solove. This sounds like an updated version--or just a good companion--to Simson Garfinkel's Database Nation, which I read last year.
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ Phone-owner Beware! News: Identity thieves may be phishing by phone. Remember not to give your social security number or passwords to any caller, live or automated. [more...]

This reminds me of a problem I have with those courtesy calls from the credit card agent to alert you to unusual charges on your account: usually they call, identify themselves, and then ask all sorts of personal information (your mother's maiden name, your mailing address). Hey, you called me. I want a challenge question I can ask you before I give out any of the details that will supposedly keep my information secure. I suppose the best thing to do in this situation is to hang up and call them back.

Meanwhile, Brad DeLong wonders whether a recent overseas call was an attempt at foiling the do-not-call list or just a variation on the famed 419 scam?

[ 12/09/04 ]

@ Lawrence of Arabia's Seven Pillars of Wisdom was No. 2 of 100 recommended books for US commanders in Iraq on a list compiled in a survey of officers by the Inside the Pentagon newsletter last month.
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ The latest film sensation? A Hajj road movie.
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ When Babs, a lowland gorrilla in the Brookfield Zoo recently died, zookeepers allowed the other gorillas to hold a wake. [Warning: tissue alert!]
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ NASA research suggests that changing your sleep cycle slowly is more effective than changing it all at once.
[ 12/09/04 ]

@ Request for my Spanish readers: ~~can any of you find me a copy of iWorld nr. 77?~~ Thanks, Enrique! It would appear that I am mentioned in the current issue.
[ 12/10/04 ]

@ Pricenoia is an international Amazon price comparison engine. Search, click the link of the correct result, and compare prices. I wonder how long this will last? (via cool tools)
[ 12/10/04 ]

@ RealClimate.

Real Climate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.

(via worldchanging)
[ 12/10/04 ]

@ Mia Hamm retires.

That may have been her greatest achievement in winning two world championships and a pair of Olympic gold medals - to escape assessment qualified by her gender. Because of Hamm, young girls grow up believing that they can be more successful at soccer than men, not less successful, a rarity in team sports.

"She laid to rest the insult, 'You play like a girl.'"

[ 12/10/04 ]

@ What a Great Idea News: Children's food allergy t-shirts. (via a whole lotta nothing)
[ 12/10/04 ]

@ 'Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.'
[ 12/14/04 ]

@ Bruce Schneier has posted a dozen things the average Internet user can do for Safer Personal Computing. Read them, learn them, live them.
[ 12/14/04 ]

@ Understanding the Rebel Consumer. [more...]

What we need to see is that consumption is not about conformity, it's about distinction. People consume in order to set themselves apart from others. To show that they are cooler (Nike shoes), better connected (the latest nightclub), better informed (single-malt Scotch), morally superior (Guatemalan handcrafts), or just plain richer (bmws). [...]

In many cases, competition is an intrinsic feature of the goods that we consume. Economists call these "positional goods" - goods that one person can have only if many others do not. Examples include not only penthouse apartments, but also wilderness hikes and underground music. It is often claimed that a growing economy is like the rising tide that lifts all boats. But a growing economy does not create more antiques, more rare art, or more downtown real estate, it just makes them more expensive. Many of us fail to recognize how much of our consumption is devoted to these positional goods.

The author's upcoming book is Nation of Rebels : Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (apparently being sold in Canada as The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed). Go buy it! (via randomwalks)
[ 12/14/04 ]

@ 'All that merchandise "doesn't interest me at all, not with Target up the street," she said, loading groceries into her SUV. "I come for the Starbucks. That's so shallow, I know."'
[ 12/14/04 ]

@ Found a good price on photo equipment at, say, Broadway Photo? A way better price? Buyer beware! Buying a Camera Online is a good tutorial in any type of online shopping.
[ 12/14/04 ]

@ OPEC upshot: Pricey oil here to stay. And with that, sustainable energy is much closer to affordable.
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ A new plant in Minnesota will create clean power for 55,000 homes by burning turkey dung.
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ Scientists now tell us that, a result of global warming, spring is coming earlier.
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ In this era of religious/political intolerance, some Christians feel that their faith has been hijacked by politics.
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ Thanks to the popularity of the films, Lord of the Rings sword replicas are a popular item with a new market--children...who then play with them.
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ Hara Estroff Marano asserts that the recent US culture of child-coddling has produced A Nation of Wimps. I couldn't agree more, though I think the this coddling might produce more of a sense of inflated self-entitlement than the deflated self-esteem the author describes. Maybe they are flip sides of the same thing. Bonus: the cell phone as eternal umbilicus. (via dangerousmeta)
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ Catprin: Tailor for Cats[more...]

CATPRIN, a tailor for cats. Ever imagined dressing up your lovely cat into a fabulous beauty? You don't have to dress her everyday, in fact she might not feel comfortable with a dress on for days. Just dress her up only on special occasions like her birthday, takes a photo and that should leave you lots of memories and fantasies.

Don't miss the Frog Hat, Rabbit's Hat, and the ever-popular High School Girl's package.
[ 12/16/04 ]

@ Mathematicians at Bristol University have crocheted chaos.
[ 12/17/04 ]

@ What Corporate America Can't Build: a Sentence. [more...]

Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion. [...]

Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest spent on new hires. The corporations surveyed were in the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, finance, insurance, real estate and service industries, but not in wholesale, retail, agriculture, forestry or fishing, the commission said. Nor did the estimate include spending by government agencies to improve the writing of public servants.

It sure seems like an enterprising blogger or two ought to be able to parlay their online writing experience into a business writing consultancy. Best sentence in the piece:

"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen."

Oh, wait.
[ 12/17/04 ]

@ A Little Weekend Reading: The Ledger is a twice-a year 'economic education newsletter published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston for educators and the general public. Each issue contains information on economic education resources - programs, organizations, pamphlets, books, web sites - plus brief articles on economics topics - economic concepts, questions related to "everyday economics," facets of New England economic history.' [more...]

The Spring/Summer issue is focused on Credit and Financial Literacy.

The Winter 2003 edition was on Standard of Living.

Introduction
How Do We Measure Standard of Living?
The Luxury of Reconnecting with Nature
"Outfits Sold Separately"
Don't Set the Time Machine for 1873!
Things to Think About
Standard of Living Shorts
Range Wars: The 1959 Kitchen Debate
Go to the Source (a very interesting-looking reading list)

[ 12/17/04 ]