rebecca's pocket

.: 2005 --> august

august

@ Mark Nottingham ruminates on the proposition that, contrary to conventional wisdom, in real life, it is employees who take all the risks. I think this applies more to corporations than to small business owners. (via rc3.org)
[ 08/01/05 ]

@ Whose Work Is It, Anyway? The use of 'orphan works' of art and literature, whose creators cannot be identified, puts scholars and artists at odds over changes in copyright law. [more...]

Works like those add up to a great deal of published material, according to studies conducted by research libraries. Five years ago Carnegie Mellon University's library studied a sample of about 270 items from its holdings; librarians could not find the owners of 22 percent of the works.

In response to the U.S. Copyright Office's request for comments, Cornell University librarians added up the money and time spent clearing copyright on 343 monographs for a digital archive of literature on agriculture. Although the library has spent $50,000 and months of staff time calling publishers, authors, and authors' heirs, it has not been able to identify the owners of 58 percent of the monographs.

Those who argue that registering work is an "undue burden" fail to understand that artists who can't be found, simply can't be paid.
[ 08/01/05 ]

@ NPR: Larger-than-life Memoirs. (Added.)
[ 08/01/05 ]

@ The ugly side of beauty, about radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys, is absolutely worth reading. You won't agree with all of her views — in fact, I'll bet you won't agree with most of them. I think she oversimplifies. On the other hand, if you're open-minded enough, her perspective will lead you to some interesting questions.
[ 08/02/05 ]

@ Why being a hipster is no longer cool. One: it's a purely marketed conceit. Two: some things are worth taking seriously. Three: it's annoying. [more...]

Just what is hip has become nebulous in a digital age of microtrends, when a cultural blip goes from underground to overexposed in one season. Likewise, the original concept of hip as something outside the purview of the mainstream has been replaced by the hipstream: mainstream cool packaged by corporate marketing departments. [...]

"The whole point of being hip in the pure sense of the word is to essentially be oblivious to it," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Now the only thing you can describe a hipster as being is a 'hipster' in quotation marks. Almost by definition a hipster is a wannabe."

If you want to understand the mass marketing of street culture, I recommend NoBrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture. It's a flawed book, but he has the basic trend and lifecycle down perfectly. Also: the Center for the Study of Popular Television.
[ 08/02/05 ]

@ Science fiction writer William Gibson on sampling. [more...]

I already knew that word processing was another of God's little toys, and that the scissors and paste pot were always there for me, on the desktop of my Apple IIc. Burroughs' methods, which had also worked for Picasso, Duchamp, and Godard, were built into the technology through which I now composed my own narratives. Everything I wrote, I believed instinctively, was to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, seemed a matter of adjacent data.

Though rarely used this way anymore — everyone seems to think the value they add is their opinion, not filtering or contextualizing — blogs are perfect for this very practice. A news item can take on a whole new meaning just by being placed next to another article. Think Harpers Index.
[ 08/02/05 ]

@ After an airplane overshot the runway at Pearson International Airport by 200 meters, a spokesperson said lightning was causing technical problems with the airport's lightning-detection system. (thanks, lizard!)
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ A Manifesto for Taking Wikipedia into the Physical World is the participatory media counterpart to Bruce Sterling's brilliant talk on Spimes.

Today, most consumers know little or nothing about their possessions. They might know the brand, because brand awareness has been forced on them for years, at great expense, by massive product advertising. A Spime, by contrast, is an object that can link to and swiftly reveal most everything about itself.

(via worldchanging)
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ Religion in America: Atheists claim discrimination. It's just a matter of time. I keep saying that all it will take for fundamentalists to suddenly decide to pull creationism/classroom prayer/you name it out of the public school system, is for one school district to start teaching the Hindu creation myth in science class, or celebrating Ramadan, or adding a Wiccan module to the World Religions unit.
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ Researchers have found that men react to their masculinity being challenged by becoming stronger supporters of war, displaying more homophobic attitudes, and wanting to buy an SUV. We report, you decide. (thanks, neil!)
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ Bravo. [more...]

Anita Bartholomew, a freelance journalist who has contributed to Reader's Digest, wrote in a resignation letter, "The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment."

This articulates perfectly why I have always felt that Miller and Cooper were terrible poster children for shield laws and First Amendment rights. Reporters have no ethical responsibility to shield anyone who is trying to game them. The civilians I've spoken with share my view: they see the Plame leaker as a criminal, and are sorely offended at the thought that reporters would want to protect that person from prosecution. Most journalists, of course, see this as an absolutely bright line — a stance which, like any article of faith, allows them the luxury of always knowing what is right.
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ I didn't attend Bloghercon last weekend (but I hear it was just terrific). So can't comment on the discussions about being stalked or putting their families in danger by going online. But I will question Jay Rosen's conclusion that this thread at the conference was part of "a kind of terror that is by now deeply associated with the Internet". I'm inclined to think that it's more about being female. [more...]

Jay can't possibly understand the "safety" messages women are inundated with from the time they are born. Don't go out after dark by yourself. Don't walk in dangerous parts of town. Don't accept rides from strangers. I don't hear these women expressing a fear of the Internet — in these issues I hear a very familiar fear of the world.

Note that I'm not commenting on the wisdom or foolishness of this fear. I'm just proposing that what Jay experienced was more fundamental than he realized: a very real difference in the way men and women habitually experience the world.

The tendency is so fundamental — so pervasive as to be nearly invisible — that I'll bet most of the women at that conference, seeing this, would be inclined to write defending either their fearlessness, or their common sense. Perhaps to note how empowering blogging has been for them. I'm not criticizing anyone. I just think we're more saturated with this message than we ever realize.
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ What happens to the First Amendment when the US government recognizes Indian land as holy ground?

In one case, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against an 8-foot cross that had stood since 1934 on a hill in the Mojave National Preserve in California commemorating US soldiers lost in World War I. Yet another panel of judges from that same appellate court ruled that the owner of property in Arizona could not extract sand and gravel for commercial concrete from his land because Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni tribes considered it to be sacred.

Critics say that declarations of hallowed ground by the federal government — just as in cases involving Christmas creches and other religious displays — go against the First Amendment.

At first consideration I see a difference between a monument or statue and sacred space, but this is an awfully interesting question nevertheless.
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ Why being a hipster is no longer cool. One: it's a purely marketed conceit. Two: some things are worth taking seriously. Three: it's annoying. [more...]

Just what is hip has become nebulous in a digital age of microtrends, when a cultural blip goes from underground to overexposed in one season. Likewise, the original concept of hip as something outside the purview of the mainstream has been replaced by the hipstream: mainstream cool packaged by corporate marketing departments. [...]

"The whole point of being hip in the pure sense of the word is to essentially be oblivious to it," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Now the only thing you can describe a hipster as being is a 'hipster' in quotation marks. Almost by definition a hipster is a wannabe."

@ Science fiction writer William Gibson on sampling. [more...]

I already knew that word processing was another of God's little toys, and that the scissors and paste pot were always there for me, on the desktop of my Apple IIc. Burroughs' methods, which had also worked for Picasso, Duchamp, and Godard, were built into the technology through which I now composed my own narratives. Everything I wrote, I believed instinctively, was to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, seemed a matter of adjacent data.

@ A Manifesto for Taking Wikipedia into the Physical World is the participatory media counterpart to Bruce Sterling's brilliant talk on Spimes.

Today, most consumers know little or nothing about their possessions. They might know the brand, because brand awareness has been forced on them for years, at great expense, by massive product advertising. A Spime, by contrast, is an object that can link to and swiftly reveal most everything about itself.

(via worldchanging[ 08/03/05 ]

@ Bravo. [more...]

Anita Bartholomew, a freelance journalist who has contributed to Reader's Digest, wrote in a resignation letter, "The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment."

This articulates perfectly why I have always felt that Miller and Cooper were terrible poster children for shield laws and First Amendment rights. Reporters have no ethical responsibility to shield anyone who is trying to game them. The civilians I've spoken wiuth share my view: they see the Plame leaker as a criminal, and are sorely offended by the thought that reporters would want to protect that person from prosecution. Most journalists, of course, see this as an absolutely bright line--a stance which, I suppose, allows them the luxury of always knowing what is right.
[ 08/03/05 ]

The tendency is so fundamental — so pervasive as to be nearly invisible — that I'll bet most of the women at that conference, seeing this, would be inclined to write defending their either their fearlessness, or their common sense. Perhaps to note how empowering blogging has been for them. I'm not criticizing anyone. I just think we're more saturated with this message than we ever realize.
[ 08/03/05 ]

@ What happens to the First Amendment when the US government recognizes Indian land as holy ground?

In one case, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against an 8-foot cross that had stood since 1934 on a hill in the Mojave National Preserve in California commemorating US soldiers lost in World War I. Yet another panel of judges from that same appellate court ruled that the owner of property in Arizona could not extract sand and gravel for commercial concrete from his land because Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni tribes considered it to be sacred.

Critics say that declarations of hallowed ground by the federal government — just as in cases involving Christmas creches and other religious displays — go against the First Amendment.

At first consideration I see a difference between a monument or statue and sacred space, but this is an awfully interesting question nevertheless.[ 08/03/05 ]

@ In April I discovered the delightful Banksy, the art world's reigning prankster. Now Wired has discovered him, and their piece includes a little (gasp!) biographical information. (via the artful manager)
[ 08/05/05 ]

@ A few years ago, I was impressed by an interview with Bush administration speech writer Matthew Scully on his book Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. Now it seems that George Will has taken up the conservative case for the humane treatment of animals. (via US Food Policy)
[ 08/05/05 ]

@ CSM: Why flying is safer now. Short answer: Science![more...]

Twenty years ago, the chances of surviving a crash were indeed minimal. While the accident rate has declined only slightly since then, the seriousness of the those crashes has declined significantly.

Read your safety card, and at the very least, check for your nearest exit.
[ 08/05/05 ]

@ Help the Blogger Twins.
[ 08/05/05 ]

@ Wired: Brain workouts may tone memory. [more...]

That said, Ceridwyn isn't convinced that all the brain exercises being offered today are practical. She wonders whether workbooks that ask adults to do pages of math problems to get their brains in gear might be unnecessarily torturing people in their twilight years.

Not math! Not in my twilight years! I'm interested in checking out the recommended books, though: The Better Brain Book and The Memory Bible. I really have been having trouble thinking of words lately. It would be nice just to regain access to my vocabulary.
[ 08/09/05 ]

@ Women who flirt at work receive fewer promotions.
[ 08/09/05 ]

@ As I suspected, the hand-wringing over this season's poor box office has been exaggerated. [more...]

"Tales of a slump are premature," [boxofficemojo.com's Brandon Gray] says. "It's a down year, but Hollywood is coming off three boom years. 2002 was the most-attended year in nearly 40 years, and that's in the era of DVD and home video." 2002 attendance also spiked in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he adds, "so in many ways [that year] was unique."

Moreover, Gray says, last year featured "The Passion of the Christ" -- "a once-in-a-lifetime touchstone," he says -- that attracted people who seldom attend movies. And even with its down indicators, 2005 is still ahead of 2001's pace in ticket sales and "will be on a par with the late '90s."

I'm always irritated with any business that describes its business in a "slump" if it's just not as good as a year or two ago. Maybe that was a "peak". I'm also irritated with analysts who characterize business performance that is equal to the prior year as "stagnant". You could call it "level" or "sustainable" and be equally accurate. Things don't have to always be growing to be healthy.
[ 08/09/05 ]

@ Banksy decorates the West Bank barrier. Really beautiful. Also, the Guardian gallery on the same event and more pics. [more...]

I'd also like to recommend Banksy's very moving manifesto. (thanks, nick!)
[ 08/09/05 ]

@ USDA: What's in the foods you eat? Search Tool. It's a little hard to use, but the information is great. For example, a fast food kid's meal of chicken nuggets contains 217 calories, 12.24 grams of protein, 14 grams of total fat, 10.38 grams of carbohydrate, 42 mg of cholesterol, 348 mg of sodium, and 0 grams of dietary fiber. (via US Food Policy)
[ 08/10/05 ]

@ New rules in global rivalry for oil: The growing Asian demand for energy could alter US strategy.

Japan's thirst for oil was a catalyst for its war with America 65 years ago, Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, warned in testimony to Congress last month. Although China has not taken a military approach in its quest for oil, "We ignore at our peril ... the fact the Beijing is engaged in an even more ambitious effort to acquire legal title to energy resources," Mr. Gaffney said in opposing CNOOC's bid for Unocal. [...]

"One of the assumptions, and they were obviously wrong, was that a liberated or democratic Iraq ... could break the back of OPEC," and supply additional oil on world markets, says Frank Verrastro, who specializes in energy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

[ 08/10/05 ]

@ Meanwhile, US plays both Venezuela sides. [more...]

While the Bush administration engages in a war of words with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the US government has been giving permits to American arms dealers to sell weapons, tear gas, and other riot-control equipment to Venezuela.

At the same time, the US Congress has indirectly funded anti-Chávez pro-democracy groups.

Remember, Venezuela is one of US's top oil suppliers.
[ 08/10/05 ]

@ Why the rise in pupils' test scores? The South. Decades of region's school reform pay off.

But by the late 1970s, a new generation of leaders, who came of age during the civil rights struggles in the South, took on education as their top priority. Governors like Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee, Richard Riley (D) of South Carolina, Bill Clinton (D) of Arkansas, William Winter (D) of Mississippi, James Hunt (D) of North Carolina, and Charles Robb (D) of Virginia poured resources into schools and, in return, promised taxpayers higher student performance. [...]

Perhaps more remarkably, Southern governors, Democrats and Republicans, stuck to the program, resisting the reflex of new governors to trash the reforms of their predecessors.

[ 08/10/05 ]

@ As a followup to yesterday's brain workouts: An 8-Step Plan for Preventing Alzheimer's. Turmeric! (thanks, John!)
[ 08/10/05 ]

@ While reporting on the vast amount of information Google has indexed and amassed, CNET reporter Elinor Mills put together a dossier on Google CEO Eric Schmidt--by Googling him. In retaliation, Google has now imposed a year-long news blackout on CNET.[more...]

Google employee Jason Shellen responds that there is a difference between public data and publicizing data. He's right, and that, I think, was the reporter's point in using Google to collect the surprisingly detailed picture she did.

This is also a caution for bloggers. As you know, I rarely talk about my personal life on this site. So I was surprised one day to read an entry on another blog that laid out a fairly clear picture of my recent history. It was all from my blog. Bits and pieces of information that in isolation revealed very little. Assembled, they told more than I would have realized.

With blogs, with Google, with the Internet as a whole, we are entering an age in which our current ideas about privacy and public-ness are being blurred. Privacy has been defined very differently through the ages. (In the 16th century, nobility were constantly surrounded by servants, for example. There was not necessarily any available private space, as we would understand it.) We are in a transition. It will be interesting to see what will be considered "private" in 75 years.

I suppose this is also the place to note that improved privacy laws would have an effect on what could be published by organizations like CNET — and what could be traded, by organizations like Google.
[ 08/11/05 ]

@ Schneier on Orlando Airport's CLEAR Program.

[T]he only purpose of his card is to divide people into two lines -- a fast line and a slow line, a "search less" line and a "search more" line, or whatever....

The reality is that the existence of the card creates a third, and very dangerous, category: bad guys with the card. Timothy McVeigh would have been able to get one of these cards. The DC sniper and the Unabomber would have been able to get this card. Any terrorist mole who hasn't done anything yet and is being saved for something big would be able to get this card. Some of the 9/11 terrorists would have been able to get this card. These are people who are deemed trustworthy by the system even though they are not.

And even worse, the system lets terrorists test the system beforehand.

[ 08/11/05 ]

@ Lisa recommends The Memory Bible for anyone who is fearful that their cognitive abilities are slipping.
[ 08/11/05 ]

@ I'm going to be in Amsterdam and Copenhagen in early November. Would you like me to speak to your business group, university, or organization? Please drop me a line.
[ 08/15/05 ]

@ This week I'll be at the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco at the end of this week. Please come introduce yourself.
[ 08/15/05 ]

@ Is the ICE campaign a cleverly engineered mobile phone virus? Answer: No.
[ 08/15/05 ]

@ Alzheimer's News: A new nasal spray clears plaques from the brains of affected mice, and will be tested in humans in 2006. (via dangerousmeta)
[ 08/15/05 ]

@ Scientists have finally proven that sex really does make you go blind.
[ 08/15/05 ]

@ Check it out. The modern day equivalent to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13 1/2 is this book: The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez, published in April of this year.
[ 08/15/05 ]

@ Red Tomato describes itself as a Domestic Fair Trade program that works by establishing the systems and networks that enable small farmers to compete in today's marketplace. (via US Food Policy Blog)
[ 08/16/05 ]

@ Oh, boo hoo hoo. Now the RIAA is saying that burned CDs are a bigger threat to the recording industry than file-sharing. [more...]

North American album sales down about 7 percent this year compared to a year ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Yet, the recording industry has seen a lift from online music sales, which when factored in with album and sales of CD singles boost overall music sales through July to 21 percent over last year.

I agree that consumers need no more than 3 or 4 burns of a CD for personal use, but the entertainment industry has developed a knee-jerk "blame piracy" reaction for any poor sales performance. And it's become apparent that, if they had their way, you'd pay a dime every time you got a song stuck in your head. There is exactly one secret to thriving in the marketplace: offer a product that consumers really, really want to have.
[ 08/16/05 ]

@ Physicists in Singapore have developed a urine-powered paper battery for disease detection, or emergency power to cell phones. (thanks Chris!)
[ 08/16/05 ]

@ White House wants to lower expectations about model democracy, US military victory in Iraq. Remember how inept the Democrats were at running for President? That's how inept these guys are at running the country.
[ 08/16/05 ]

@ Attention authors: I've just discovered TitleZ which aims to be a more sophisticated Junglescan. (Why hasn't anyone acquired Junglescan by now?) Currently in beta: try it now before they start charging for access.
[ 08/17/05 ]

@ GM rice: a revolution waiting to happen.

To be sure, farmers are producing more bioengineered crops every year. Farmers have found many of these genetically modified crops quite useful. GM soybeans are cheaper to grow; GM papaya has saved Hawaiian growers from a virus that had made their traditional crop unmarketable. But these remain first-generation GM varieties with only indirect consumer benefits.

The next generation — offering consumers better-tasting, more nutritious, or longer-lasting food — is taking longer than the industry's optimists expected, Mr. Rodemeyer adds.

[ 08/17/05 ]

@ Case in point: Northwest Missouri State hopes to transform Missouri's farm economy by creating a market for high-value, genetically modified rice to be used in pharmaceuticals to create life-saving foods for children in developing countries. But would GM rice revitalize the region, or threaten the existing farming economy? [more...]

[W]hen Ventria tried to plant rice in southern Missouri this spring, [Anheuser-Busch] threatened not to buy any rice grown in the state. The company feared a consumer backlash if people thought gene-altered rice could end up in their bottles of Bud.

For Missouri's farm economy, the risk of growing pharmaceutical rice is high. More than half of Missouri's rice is sent abroad, to the European Union and Caribbean countries that are especially sensitive about genetically modified products.

"We are still having to make statements to our customers that the rice we export is not genetically modified," said Carl Brothers, the vice president for marketing at Riceland Foods, which markets more than half of Missouri's rice. "We are concerned longer term that if Ventria and others get involved that will get harder to say."

There are lots of reasons to oppose GM crops. And, in my view, potentially lots of reasons to support them. In order to gain widespread support, companies need to be able to prevent their product from contaminating any other crops, a very difficult proposition. The only thing I can think of is enclosed shelters, but surely that's not feasible if part of your aim is to revitalize a dying farm economy. It's incumbent upon the biotech companies to devise strategies that really will prevent GM plants from propagating in the wild — especially if they hope to profit from every plant grown with their engineered genes.
[ 08/17/05 ]

@ Who says there's honor among thieves? Computer worm writers are exploiting a recent security hole in Windows 2000 to contaminate machines, erase viruses written by their rivals, and gain dominance over the network of infected computers.

"It's a mess," says Mikko Hyppönen, director of anti-virus research at Finnish company F-Secure. "Basically, it's a pissing contest between botnet herders."

[ 08/17/05 ]

@ For those of you who were at my session at the Blog Business Summit, here is the link to blog policies I mentioned.
[ 08/19/05 ]

@ Synthesizer innovator Robert A. Moog has died at the age of 71.
[ 08/22/05 ]

@ In 1996, economist Robert J. Shiller was the lone voice arguing that argued that the stock market had risen to irrational levels. Four years later, it finally crashed. Now he's arguing that historic trends indicate that we are in a housing bubble, and that it may eventually fall by 40%.

Home prices soared in the first half of the 17th century, around the time of the tulip mania. But they came crashing down in the 1670's, when the prime minister was killed, and partially eaten, by a mob of angry Dutch, and the country nearly disintegrated.

Let's hope our market has a softer landing than that. (thanks, jjg!)
[ 08/22/05 ]

@ Branding for the Lord.

"The church in more ways than not is mirroring Wall Street and the world and Madison Avenue," says H. B. London, vice president of pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, a national resource network for evangelical Christians. "We're [lagging] behind them to a certain degree, but we're using all their techniques."

What would Jesus do?
[ 08/22/05 ]

@ In addition to their summer reading lists, elementary students in Gaithersburg, Maryland were given summer writing practice.
[ 08/22/05 ]

@ Egypt's growing blogger community pushes limit of dissent.

"I had never heard the word blogger until May 25," says Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, and an opposition activist. "But now I know them well because of all the amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more credibility than the mainstream media."

Activists in Egypt rely on blogs like Fattah's to find out the time and place of future demonstrations, to learn who has been arrested and where they have been taken, and to debate the effectiveness of opposition strategies. In short order, Egypt's bloggers have become a political force, capable of more than merely commenting from the sidelines. [...]

"Egypt's bloggers seem to have been able to make the transition from spouting hot air, to political organization and political work and that's impressive," says Marc Lynch, a political science professor specializing in Arab media at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

Indeed.
[ 08/25/05 ]

@ Nothing succeeds (with black readers) like success

Before Johnson scraped together seed money using furniture as collateral, there had long been black-run local newspapers that blended activism and information.

Yet Johnson's photo-oriented monthly, Ebony, and the weekly news digest Jet were revolutionary — not for advocating social change but for depicting social change. The publications chronicled the successes of black Americans in their incremental as well as monumental achievements.

[ 08/25/05 ]

@ Eco-Friendly Burial Sites Give a Chance to Be Green Forever is worth reading if only for the freelance embalmer.[more...]

The presence of Fernwood, where the official hearse is a black Volvo S.U.V., in the cool verdant shadows of Mount Tamalpais, reflects Northern California's status as the nation's capital of alternative, artisanal death. The area is home to the death-midwifery movement, supporting home funerals, as well as a cottage industry in plain pine boxes and Funeria, a fraternity of funerary artists who have their own Biennale in San Francisco.

I've wanted to be buried in a plain pine box ever since I read that wood bio-degrades at the same rate as the human body. On the other hand, I can't see taking up space that a living person can use. Cremate me and scatter my ashes onto a nearby compost pile. There's no such thing as waste in nature — she'll know what to do with my remains.
[ 08/25/05 ]

@ Information Week has a very strong piece on using wikis in business. I've been saying for years that the wiki is the best solution for knowledge management in business — far better than blogging for many applications. In every job I've had, employees have carried in their heads, essential, practical information on how to do their job. Who to contact to solve a particular kind of problem; the history of that set of invoices; where to send misdirected mail. This is the kind of information that rarely gets written down, but is crucual for getting things done. Every organization I've ever worked for would have benefitted from a constantly updated, living document of this kind.
[ 08/25/05 ]

@ Absolutely fascinating, and really sort of sweet: It takes a lot more than testosterone to make a father out of a man.

[A]mong the best fathers, it turns out, testosterone levels actually drop significantly after the birth of a child. If manhood includes fatherhood, which it does for a majority of men, then testosterone is hardly the ultimate measure of masculinity. [...]

[R]esearchers asked couples to hold dolls that had been wrapped in receiving blankets worn by a newborn within the preceding 24 hours. (After their wives gave birth, fathers held their actual baby.) They listened to a six-minute tape of a real newborn crying and then watched a video of a baby struggling to breast-feed. The investigators took blood from the men and women before the test and 30 minutes later.

What they found is startling: Men who expressed the greatest desire to comfort the crying baby had the highest prolactin levels and the greatest reduction in testosterone. And testosterone levels plummeted in those men who held the doll for the full half-hour.

My sister always says: Father is a noun; Dad is a verb. Perhaps it's also a hormone. (thanks, neil!)
[ 08/25/05 ]

@ After wind, bees are the second source of pollenation, making them critical to food and plant production. But between 1985 and 1997, the number of colonies in the US dropped by 57%. Now it appears that naturally managed land strips beneath power lines may provide a haven for bees.
[ 08/26/05 ]

@ A little weekend reading: Mark sent me links to a huge compendium of comparative graphs of historical use, import, production, export of energy, oil, etc, from the Energy Information Administration, a division of the US Department of Energy. He points in particular to a short PDF, entitled Perspectives and a huge (435 page) annual report, entitled: Annual Energy Review 2004 [pdf]. (Beware when downloading the large report! It took over my machine for a good 5 minutes, and I had to finaly quit my browser to go forward.) He writes: [more...]

In the above big report, on page 44 it can be seen interestingly that coal use has been very steadily increasing since 1960, and used primarily for electricity generation.

We're already entering a revived coal age; apparently the US is using more coal per year than we ever have, apparently coal surpassed oil around 1986, and natural gas around 1983, for electricity generation.

Source for their archive of publications.

I can't wait to dig into this (though I really wish that long report were available in a text version or HTML). My only question: Why doesn't Mark have his own blog?

@ Update: Mark sends a correction and some additional information:

I mis-read that chart on page 44 of the big PDF. It's of "production," meaning domestic production (exhuming from the earth, etc.), not electricity generation. The US is "producing" from domestic sources more energy out of coal than any other source, right now, and more coal than it ever has, as well. A Coal Age is still upon us--especially in terms of "homeland (in)security" perspective where oil is relied upon from non-US sources.

Apparently graph item I cited on page 44 of the big report is the same chart as figure 11 of the smaller Perspectives PDF.

And the correct domestic electricity graphic is also found at figure 44 of the smaller "Perspectives" PDF. Coal has been number one in electicity since before 1950, but coal is proportionately running away from nearly all the other sources.

Nuclear Electricity generation has been rising not because of new domestic plants, but because of greater on-line efficiencies and operations, which comes to a limit soon. Without building new plants: no new permits issued since 1979, there are limited increases to come from that sector; operating nuclear plants actually declined since 1990. See figure 52 and 53 of "Perspectives"

For what it's worth, Here's a more general access page for that giant annual energy/information report, and the "perspectives" PDF too, at the Energy Information Administration.

Like me, Mark has had trouble getting that huge pdf file to download completely.
[ 08/26/05 ]

@ What do you get when you cross a preacher with a geek? Godcasting. Remember when I asked who the first Internet evangelist would be? Maybe this provides a direction.

[Says the Rev. Mark Batterson,] "I can't possibly have a conversation with everyone each Sunday. But this builds toward a digital discipleship," he said. "We're orthodox in belief but unorthodox in practice." [...] Pastor Batterson says he believes that podcasting will have an impact on the church as profound as that of the printing press when the first Bibles were printed in the 15th century.

[ 08/29/05 ]

@ A new study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology purportedly demonstrates that men are more intelligent than women.

There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, for example, a level said to correspond with people getting first-class degrees. At scores of 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

[ 08/29/05 ]

@ I cried when I read the headlines this morning. CNN was unconscionable: "You can't hold me...take care of the kids" was the title of one video report. Here's something less lurid: Big relief effort meets Katrina [more...]

Hot meals are also on their way — 80,000 per day — thanks to the Texas Baptist Men, a ministry with a history of disaster response. It plans to have available more than a dozen kitchens in Louisiana that can serve "one-pot meals," such as stew, chili, or chicken and rice. The kitchens are self-sufficient, with generators, water purifiers, and propane. To get to the most devastated areas, the group's members bring their own chain-saw units, along with chaplains and portable showers for those in need.

The Red Cross typically pays for the food, and the Texas Baptist Men prepare it. The Texas chapter alone has 18 mobile units. Seven are on their way, and the rest are on standby, says Gary Smith, disaster relief coordinator for the Texas Baptist Men in Dallas. "Earlier this year we mobilized for hurricane Emily," he says, "but it was nothing like this."

You can help: contact the Salvation Army or the American Red Cross.
[ 08/30/05 ]

@ Everything you know is wrong. But this is the very definition of the scientific method, isn't it? Scientific understanding is iterative. The scientific method is premised on the idea that people will get it wrong, and that by opening the inquiry to all scientists, over time, collectively, the group will be able to uncover those errors and get closer to the truth. (thanks, neil!)
[ 08/30/05 ]

@ Martha Stewart's electronic bracelet comes off tomorrow, and all I can say is: I told you so.

As Stewart's home confinement ends, many media-watchers believe Stewart is about to become even more successful than before she was convicted of lying to federal agents.

"By the time this happened, the whole Martha Stewart style was beginning to show its age," says Robert Thompson, director of the study of popular television at Syracuse University in New York. "What is strange is her being elevated beyond her fan base to world-class celebrity, thanks to a trial and conviction, and brought to a place in our culture that is much bigger than before."

[ 08/30/05 ]

@ Summer's almost over, and you hardly cracked that stack of books on your bedside table. Maybe you didn't even get around to stacking them up. There's still time: The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland Faculty & Deans Offer Top 10 Summer Reading List for Business Leaders. They recommend books ranging from The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth, to The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, to Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (described as "a masterful snapshot of modern consumer culture and hipster esoterica"). (Added.)
[ 08/30/05 ]

@ I'm very pleased to announce the latest in my Bloggers on Blogging series. This month, Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com talks about her brother's barometer, living in public, and finding something to say.

I think there is an interesting phenomenon when it comes to starting a personal website. There seems to be a set of phases that everyone goes through and bloggers either come out the other end of these phases with a different set of boundaries or they give up blogging because the consequences are too hard to handle.

I started out thinking that I could say anything in my space and that everyone else needed to get over it, including my family and friends. Of course, I ended up alienating my family and losing my job and pissing off my friends, and it took WAY TOO LONG for me to figure out that while there is great power in personal publishing, there is also great danger.

[ 08/31/05 ]