May 31, 2003
Lightning Bug Sighting
Just now, at around 1:20am, I've spotted my first lightning bug of the season. It was crawling up the window, blinking its booty. (0000XP)
This is good. (0000XQ)
May 30, 2003
Pure Purple Plugin Testing
Until now the code for doing the PurpleNumbers on this blog involved some hacks down inside lib/MT. This made for some nastiness for trying thigns out. I've made some adjustments to make it all work from a plugin. This is a test of that. My fingers are crossed. (0000VB)
It's working, at least so far. (0000VC)
May 29, 2003
Sig Change
I changed my email sig recently, but there's no room for a link to the source, so I'll put it here. Here's the text: (0000UJ)
then i fantasized the future i want..i wanna be walkin in a crowd smiling n luffin..waving at evryone i know..no one is faking it..no one has hatred hidden in them..evryone's honest frank cool and easy.. (0000UK)
It comes from the blog of someone calling themself 'squid'. Poupou found it in her wanderings. (0000UL)
The blog is something of a spectacle. At first I found it depressing: I had the reaction of an oldster: "Oh, what's becoming of kids these days, this is nonsense." (0000UM)
And then I found the bit I've quoted and things looked up. Those are words to live by. We could all do with being a bit more honest, frank, cool and easy. (0000UN)
purple transclusion proxying
Putting this here because I want to remember it for later. (0000UD)
Now that I have the blog and wiki doing TransClusion, I want it in my email. I often want to reuse content from the email I send and the email I receive. (0000UE)
A hacky way to do this, using the hacky way that TransClusion is curerntly done would be to deliver all email to a modified mhonarc archive that purples messages using the same sequence genrator as the blog and wiki. Outgoing messages could be filtered either through the PurpleWiki parser or a simple text filter that would expand transclusion tags. (0000UF)
At first glance this may seem a bit bogus as the archive content never changes: why transclude instead of copy. Well, for starters it gives you easy access back to the original content. (0000UG)
And having purple numbers on all of one's mail would be handy. (0000UH)
I'm to the point now where I'm hesitant to write something if it isn't getting purple numbers. (0000UI)
May 28, 2003
Planetwork IRC TrackBack
Planetwork Chat Log for 2003-05-28 (0000UA)
This is a test of TrackBackAutoDiscovery on the irc logs from the planetwork channel at freenode. IRC is being used as one of several mechanisms for supporting online collaboration before, during and after the conference. (0000UB)
The logging is still being tested. The colors are a bit problematic but fixable. (0000UC)
May 27, 2003
Becoming Tool
In a draft accepted for the 8th International Working Conference on the Language-Action Perspective on Communication Modelling AldoDeMoor and Mark Aakhus present a useful definition of tool: (0000TG)
...a plethora of technologies exist that are not necessarily tools. A technology only is a tool if it serves the purposes of the community in which it is used. (0000TH)
This model helps to emphasize the particular task needs of a community instead of a technological prescription that may or may not help. On the flip side it also helps to show that some technological efforts while inadequate in some environments may be helpful in others. (0000TI)
A PDF of the paper is available. (0000TJ)
Aldo pointed out the paper during some philosophical mumbo jumbo about Wikis working in some groups and not others. (0000TK)
May 26, 2003
Purple Number Coolness Draft
Draft, Work In Progress, Usual Disclaimers Apply, Help a Brother Out. (0000SO)
(Explaining the value of PurpleNumbers without a show and tell has proven challenging. Suggestions for improving this document are encouraged: I'm convinced PurpleNumbers are a good thing and I'd like to convince other people but I'm so deep in kool-aid now that I have trouble seeing.) (0000SP)
PurpleNumbers are a system for enabling granular addressability in networked documents. While in essence this is a pretty simple concept, the way it works and how it is used deserves some explanation. (0000SQ)
One of the many benefits of the internet is the way in which it makes a vast quantity of information available. News, research and the drama of human life are available at the click of a link. Access to this information allows us to participate in many aspects of human communication over distances. (0000SR)
Making use of this information (using it again), though, is somewhat constrained. Consider the following example: (0000SS)
I've just read a fabulous story that I found on the web. It's fairly long but it contains one paragraph that I think is just beautiful that I'd like to share with you. A usual routine might go something like this: I cut and paste the URL in an email to you and describe where in the document this beautiful passage can be found--"It's the paragraph that starts with 'It was a dark and stormy night' about halfway through"--or perhaps I can cut and paste the entire paragraph along with the URL. (0000ST)
In either case you have to do some searching around in the document to find the original text. With granular addressability I could point you directly to the beautiful paragraph in one link and you can browse there and read Snoopy's extraordinary prose, in context. Here are three more examples: (0000SU)
You and I are world famous researchers. We've been collaborating on a paper about the finer points of quark charm. We want to make sure our paper is well supported so we've been reading a large number of papers that we've found on the web. You want to tell me about several pieces of research that seem to contradict our conclusions. In an email, you give me the URLs and describe where to find the salient points: "In the Smith piece, look in the intro. In Jones, it's towards the end of the discussion". You don't want to just cut and paste the points because the context helps to explain. (0000SV)
Your group at work has decided to be collaborative-software-enabled. You believe that blogs, wikis and email archives are going to facilitate the knowledge capture essential to fostering a culture of innovation. Your team is motivated and disciplined; knowledge once tacit has been made explicit in the bowels of your intranet. Someone in the group has a question, and you've remembered that you wrote a lengthy mail message about this some time ago. You're able to find it relatively quickly with the search engine, but when you give the URL to the group, they complain they don't understand which part of the message is the important part. (0000SW)
You're in a workshop to discuss a paper that was made available on the web. Everyone has printed up their own copy. Somebody says, "I think this bit about Lacan misrepresents the development of language in the infant." Everyone else says, "Huh, what, where are you?" The original critic says, "My page five." Someone else, who used a small font, says, "I don't have a page five!" (0000SX)
Granular addressability is a small, simple tool to help with these situations. It is not a new idea: The Bible provides easy access to Book, Chapter and Verse. Many works of classic literature are published with line numbers. It is also not an idea without a future: the Xpointer standard is specifically designed to provide (when browsers support it) granular addressability in valid XML documents (when they become more common) such as XHTML. (0000SY)
PurpleNumbers fit in between printed line numbers and Xpointer as a tool for making reference to existing documents as well as creating documents that enable easy reference. PurpleNumbers provide handles to sections of documents that can be used as links in electronic documents that refer to the sections or used as labels in conversation about the sections. PurpleNumbers can address each of the scenarios above. In the first three cases PurpleNumbers allow the discovery and use of a direct URL pointing to the content being discussed. In the latter case, PurpleNumbers can provide a human readable label that points to the text and can be used in speech: "It's at purple number 52". (0000SZ)
The PurpleNumbers systems that exist today are based on the addressing features of DougEngelbart's Augment system. The systems come in two forms: (0000T0)
- Document Processors (0000T1)
- These systems take new or existing content and process it to create a new document that has PurpleNumber identifiers and links in the text. Such systems are good for applications where filters can be used at the moment of storage such as mailing list archives, wikis and document transformation. Because of the way documents are processed, even in the event of changes the PurpleNumbers stay with the text they are originally associated with. (0000T2)
- Document Proxies (0000T3)
- These systems take existing documents and dynamically present them with PurpleNumbers attached. This works well with documents that are not expected to change and for which creating new documents may not be useful. (0000T4)
See PurpleWiki and PurpleSlurple for links to more information on the tools used to create PurpleNumbers. (0000T5)
Most graphical web browsers have a feature to copy the URL of a link to the clipboard. In some operating systems when using Internet Explorer and Mozilla you can right click on a link and "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link Location". When a document has PurpleNumbers there is a link, represented as a numeral or a '#' associated with each paragraph, list element and header in the document. Right click the PurpleNumber and, copy the shortcut and paste it into another document. The result? An instant granular reference, in context and with less navigational confusion. (0000T6)
This may not seem like much, but with use the value of granular addressability increases until its absence feels quite the hindrance and an itch grows to add purple numbers wherever possible. They've been used on traditional web pages, mail archives, wikis, blogs, dialog maps, chat logs and many other places. (0000T7)
Social Software As Tool
The people at HeadShift have released a paper called Smarter, Simpler Social that's being discussed here and there. It's an overview of SocialSoftware that reviews what's different in that arena and what must be done. It starts with a review of the current state of affairs and points out some future directions. (0000RR)
I was happy to see that it cited my ComputersAsTools paper, referring to the way in which future computing applications will need to augment human communication rather than automate processes. I agree with this and for the most part I think the paper is quite good, but I think their analysis of how we got where we are today misses some important points. (0000RS)
The paper argues that it is the failure of existing software to adequately model human process that created the need for software that is more social. While this is certainly true in part, it misplaces the emphasis and repeats the common error of overemphasizing the technology over its users. (0000RT)
There is an enormous mass of existing software automating many processes of data-transport and repeatable computation. That software is performing so well that, for the most part, we don't notice. Content (transported as raw data) makes its way from server to client and between peers in such a reliable fashion that when in the rare chance it doesn't work, it is a real disruption. (0000RU)
Automation software has provided an infrastructure that lubricates communication. As communication becomes easier, we desire to improve that communication: make it work better and be more fulfilling. Now that we have automated the process of getting the data that represents communication from one place to another we need to augment how we are able to manipulate the communication. (0000RV)
SocialSoftware is a new name on an existing concept. From ComputersAsTools: (0000RW)
Landauer distinguishes between two phases of computer applications. Phase one applications automate tasks “replacing humans” for the performance of “almost any process that science, engineering, and statistics have captured in their theories”. Phase two applications, on the other hand, are applications that assist humans in tasks for which there is no established theory of action. Phase two applications include the very large body of office productivity applications, web browsers, and desktop operating systems; anything where the human uses the computer throughout the process. They are the applications we use to process information in flexible and potentially undefined ways. (0000RX)
Phase one applications are close to ubiquitous and are fading into the background. We now have the infrastructure to work on phase two applications. Or, if you prefer, SocialSoftware: applications humans use to manipulate language, to communicate. Communication is not a process that can be fully captured in theories. (0000RY)
Personal computing devices, especially devices that are highly available in both time and space (laptops, wireless PDAs, cell-phones, etc.), are promising tools to help achieve the view of computers as language representation manipulators provided by Winograd and Flores in Computers and Cognition. It is only very recently that the network and networked communication tools have become pervasive, reliable and cheap enough to enable social software. The communication tools run on top of a network that is automatic and transparent: it has faded into the background and for the most just works. It is stupid. (0000RZ)
The HeadShift suggestion that social software be adaptable is appropriate but it is important to distinguish between human adaptability and software adaptability. Too often people want computers to act like people but they are not the same and it does us no good to hope for such a thing. Computers are tools and something to be utilized, worked and taken advantage of (lot's people seem to feel the same about humans; they can rot). (0000S0)
If we think of computers as acting like people, and having intelligence like people, we grant it intention (from ComputersAsTools again): (0000S1)
When the computer is viewed as having intention “the personification of the machine is reinforced” (Suchman). The interaction between the user and the computer is the locus of negotiation for performing the task. The computer takes a privileged stance, above the task. When in that stance we expect the computer to truly have, given the intention we have granted it, the intelligence, inferential power and adaptability that Suchman says we expect in social interaction. This is unfortunate because the computer is not intelligent; it cannot compare arbitrary and dynamic categories. It has no true and general inferential power; it cannot create links between categories. It is not truly adaptable; it can only create new classes of distinction according to a limited rule set. The expectation of intelligence sets up a poor mental model of the real situation. (0000S2)
Humans, on the other hand, are very adept at comparison and linking. SocialSoftware should augment this behavior by providing tools that ease search, discovery, browsing and linking. (0000S3)
Human adaptability comes from our ability to work with the truly unexpected and do something smart with it. Computers need a little more guidance. Therefore an adaptable piece of software is not one that is smarter as HeadShift suggests, but is simpler in the sense that it makes clear what it can do. Adaptable software is software that can be adapted by someone or a group, not that adapts itself. It is software that people may use in unintended ways. These adaptations are allowed by at least two factors: (0000S4)
- Clear and simple affordances (0000S5)
- Adaptable software makes it clear what it can do, what inputs it can accept, what outputs it can produce and provides handles to doing more. (0000S6)
- Replacability and loose coupling (0000S7)
- Adaptable software is a replaceable link in a chain of tools. Replacing the link can change the function or enable trials of different tools. Replacing a link does not break the rest of the chain. Loose coupling at the application level is good for the same reasons that loose coupling is good in programming: it encourages and enables the flexibility necessary to benefit from inevitable change; it allows unintended uses. (0000S8)
These factors allow interoperability, which is a complicated word meaning talking. (0000S9)
Social software is about talking. Two characteristics make adaptable software social software: (0000SA)
- People (0000SB)
- people, in groups loose or tight, use social software. It's as simple as that. It's not the computers that are being social. (0000SC)
- Reference, reuse and notification (0000SD)
- Social software allows people to talk about what people are talking about, reuse what people are talking about and tell people that people are talking about what they are talking about. (0000SE)
Blogging and the tools it uses, especially those that allow RSS syndication and TrackBack, are good examples of social software. They help to create groups without a visible system of central arbitration and control. Groups are created by the participants rather than something they join that mediates their participation. Participants exist in the group with a sense of identity and ownership over their content while still allowing reuse and reference of what they have created. (0000SF)
There's no doubt that the SocialSoftware phenomenon is an important development. It deserves some of the hype. However, care must be taken: the exciting part about social software is people not software. (0000SG)
May 25, 2003
Productive Debate in the Blogosphere
Discussion and Citation in the Blogosphere... (0000R7)
Tom Coates makes some excellent and lengthy comments comparing debate in blogs with debate on centralized threaded media such as web boards as well as with academic debate carried out in peer reviewed journals and the like. He suggests the mechanics of commentary and linking effectively weed out some of the fluff. (0000R8)
Much of what he says is not too new--the blog crowd has been congratulating itself on this feature for some time--but it is well explained. (0000R9)
An additional aspect that is touched upon is that of reputation. Since a blog acts as a fairly high resolution standin for a person's identity, the distributed commentary supported by blogging grants more exposure to the full context of someone's thought than happens in a mailing list or web board. The context helps to grant authority and meaning to the comments. (0000RA)
More on these sorts of things in earlier entries and, if I can manage to poop it out, a forthcoming entry in response to the HeadShift Smarter, Simpler Social paper. (0000RB)
May 22, 2003
Self Reference and Self Expression
In a comment to Insight versus Answers Andrea says all kinds of interesting things about the tension between developing shared understanding and effectively communicating ideas outside of the near group. Go read it. (0000R0)
Here are some teasers, brought to you by TransClusion: (0000R1)
Of course shorthands and special vocabularies can help encourage shared understanding. But I also think that if your goal is to connect disparate ideas, you need a constant review of what you're talking about _outside_ of the context of your own last breakthrough, so that you can hop around on various levels of abstraction, zooming in and out. And I think that to do this effectively, you have to keep moving away from your own private language, even as it develops. T (0000R2)
I think an interpretation of what Andrea is saying is that communication of ideas outside social or disciplinary circles is good for the ideas and good for the thinkers. In much the same way that it is helpful for an individual to write something down to get it out and into something other than private language it is good for a group to do the same. (0000R3)
And I should point out that whether you're consciously focussed on developing an idea or on articulating it, parenthetical context tends to be the stumbling block. It's blisteringly hard to keep digressions general enough so you don't lose focus, but specific enough to be useful. It's a difficult thinking problem; serving with your favo(u)rite hypertextual sauce can only take you so far. T (0000R4)
I agree. One of the problems with these PurpleNumber things is that they make it possible to make an email, wiki or blog posting that is nothing but a series of links. I've heard these referred to as a HomeworkPost. They cut down on the narrative flow which is often necessary for language to be persuasive. (0000R5)
May 21, 2003
A WikiWiki World
The New York Times has an article about Wikis: (0000QJ)
I like this part: (0000QL)
The creative anarchy of the wiki is the philosophical inverse of conventional corporate groupware software. Groupware's highly structured rules and processes do not always reflect the way people really work. Employees often ignore costly corporate-sanctioned software and revert to informal social networks The creative anarchy of the wiki is the philosophical inverse of conventional corporate groupware software. Groupware's highly structured rules and processes do not always reflect the way people really work. Employees often ignore costly corporate-sanctioned software and revert to informal social networks -- whether simply e-mail or impromptu water-cooler discussions. (0000QM)
Elsewhere in the article they mention SocialText and their product that apparently tries to bridge the gap between traditional office software and Wikis with an integrating suite of stuff. (0000QN)
Done right (loosely coupled) such a thing could be quite cool. Done wrong (too many features, too much prediction of what a user will or should be doing with the integration, too many constraints on data reuse) such a thing ends up as a monolithic beastie. (0000QO)
Nodes in a network--people, tools, info--bobbing in a moving sea. (0000QP)
PurpleWiki Transclusion Test
The next indented paragraph should be a transclusion from elsewhere on this blog. (0000QA)
A primary goal is to get this stuff more out there and for that I could do with help and advice from anyone who happens to be reading this. If you are familiar with PurpleNumbers and have some comments about them, please leave them here. If you see them, but just don't get it, let me know, as that's valuable too. If you have suggestions on how to build some bridges with other developers to integrate Purple ideas into their tools, that would be good too. T (0000QB)
By transclusion I mean that text is there by reference, not by copy. If the remote text is changed (and the blog rebuilt) the text will change here too. (0000QC)
If you click on the purple 'T' you'll go to the original, in context. (0000QD)
If this still doesn't make sense, here is the content of this entry in the database, before I added this paragraph, and word wrapped for readability. (0000QI)
May 20, 2003
Flexing your time into the toilet
I'm not sure how I found this, but at a clever sheep is a posting that deserves some thought. (0000P1)
We need flexibility... to screw ourselves: (0000P2)
This one snuck under the radar, while we were being barraged by war news: In an article entitled "Fleecing The Family", Molly Ivins reports on a pair of bills making their way through Congress which, in the guise of providing flexibility in working hours to employees, actually serve to undermine many of the goals of the New Deal-era Fair Labor Standards Act. The Senate bill (S.317), entitled The Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act and the House bill (H.1119), entitled the Family Time Flexibility Act, amend the law requiring employers to pay time-and-a-half for hourly workers who work more than 40 hours in a given week. (0000P3)
Instead of paying for the extra hours the employer, with the "voluntary" permission of the employee, may bank those hours as compensation in the form of time-off at a later time. (0000P4)
At first it sounds good but the details, as described by the clever sheep, shows that this is a fine way for a clever employer to get overtime out of the workers without having to pay. (0000P5)
People in the US already work far too much. Many in the group self-servingly called the creative class or knowledge workers have already given away their options for overtime while the boss walks away with the cash. (0000P6)
I did that for several years, and while I certainly gathered a lot of knowledge my creativity was flushed. (0000P7)
There are, though, some signs of improvement: GlaxoSmithKline shareholders have voted against a new executive compensation package. (0000P8)
May 18, 2003
Candygram, Landshark, Bunker-Buster
Push for smaller nuclear arms stirs Congress (0000OX)
Dem Ellen Tauscher responds to plans to relax restrictions on the development of smaller nuclear weapons: (0000OY)
It's part of a mosaic of this neoconservative positioning that is deeply troubling, I think some of these folks would put nuclear tips on ice cream cones if they could. (0000OZ)
I know, I know, this issue has been beaten to death, but these apocolyptic neocon fundies, secure in their righteousness, paving their way to their own heaven on earth with cheap SUVs, polished teeth, and no interest on corporate dividends are ruining it for the rest of us. While some of us hope for a world where open dialogue and thoughtful compromise work to lower barriers to sharing, heaven on earth has a giant gated country called the US. A country with secret codes for entry and subjugated workers delivering product from client nations. Nations brought under the thumb of the mighty US who support their right in antiquated notions of god, country and family. (0000P0)
May 15, 2003
Blue Sky Blogging
I suspect someone else has had this idea, perhaps it is part of what motivates ThreadML, but I'd really like to replace mailing lists with blog-based conversations. (0000OQ)
The Insight versus Answers thread at BlueOxen is continuing and I feel like I've said some things in the thread that I'd like to remember, or to put it more accurately I would like to have here on my blog so that the identity that it represents (pseudo-me) satisfies my ego more effectively. (0000OR)
My latest message continues investigating a running theme in the collaboratory: language, thought and development barriers between what could be called reductionists and holists but with slight adjustments of the variables get called lots of other things. DavePollard has a blog entry about the communication difficulties between conservatives and liberals. (0000OS)
My inner lit crit theorist thinks of this as the conflict between those that desire or need an Author to exist and those that want or need to participate in Authorship. (0000OT)
I'm well aware that my inner lit crit theorist has no respect for discipline, disciplines or accuracy. That's on purpose and a price I find acceptable. (0000OU)
PlaNetwork Conference
June 6-8, 2003 PlaNetwork is hosting the Networking a Sustainable Future conference. Blue Oxen is helping out by facilitating online collaboration for participants and distant observers before, during and after the conference. (0000OI)
With help from EricSinclair I drafted a strategy for encouraging blogging by using the InternetTopicExchange and Blogrolling. (0000OJ)
The first topic created at the InternetTopicExchange is a general one simply called Planetwork Conference. (0000OK)
May 14, 2003
Insight versus Answers
There's a discussion going on at the Blue Oxen Collaboratory that started out with BillSeitz wondering if mashed together wiki words were the best presentation. (0000OB)
The conversation has since wandered in some interesting directions. one of my contributions inquires about the importance of new insight compared to the value of retrieving answers to known questions. (0000OC)
This division seem to be central to many discussions about the Semantic Web, Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, and relations. (0000OD)
My basic conclusion is that it takes many kinds to make the world go round but the message makes it obvious where my bias lies. (0000OE)
The entire thread is very interesting. Check it out. (0000OF)
May 10, 2003
More fun with Purple Numbers
This evening I spent some time with MovableType and PurpleWiki to get PurpleWiki parsing working in blogs comments instead of just entries. This enables a few features in comments: (0000MJ)
- PurpleNumbers (0000MK)
- WikiWord parsing (0000ML)
- WikiFormatting possibilities, such as headers, lists, italics, bold (0000MM)
Because of the way MovableType is set up, all comments get the same text formatting options, so PurpleWiki for comments is either on or off. It's on now. For those of you who don't care, just keep on as before; there shouldn't be any disasters. Give it a try. (0000MN)
A project for this month is to merge the several disparate branches of PurpleWiki development into a new release and in the process: (0000MO)
- Create a technical specification so that other tools can implement purple numbering features. (0000MP)
- Create a roadmap for future developments. (0000MQ)
- Write a Why Is PurpleWiki Cool evangelical sermon of sorts that spreads the good word and acts as a tutorial. (0000MR)
- Address some usability issues that come about from conflicts that occur when optimizing for the internal (invisible) and external (visible) representations of the PurpleNumber. (0000MS)
There are some more thoughts about this stuff at PurpleWikiScratchpad. (0000MT)
A primary goal is to get this stuff more out there and for that I could do with help and advice from anyone who happens to be reading this. If you are familiar with PurpleNumbers and have some comments about them, please leave them here. If you see them, but just don't get it, let me know, as that's valuable too. If you have suggestions on how to build some bridges with other developers to integrate Purple ideas into their tools, that would be good too. (0000MU)
What's lacking is a salient bit o' info that captures what makes these little purple things helpful. Thus far people either get it quickly or don't get it, and that's not good enough. (0000MV)
May 08, 2003
Weekend In The Park
McCormick's Creek, April 2003 (0000LD)
Follow the link to some pictures and words from a trip to a nearby Indiana State Park. (0000LE)
Slow connections beware: 30 pictures between 50 and 150k each being loaded onto one page. (0000LF)
Dark
Oops. (0000LA)
Through a complex series of events that can, in the final evaluation, be blamed on spam, the burningchrome.com domain expired at the end of April and last night coughed its dying breath in DNS caches around the world. If you came by for a visit, I'm sorry there was nothing here to greet you. (0000LB)
The magic of credit cards and e-commerce have returned the domain to me. (0000LC)
May 07, 2003
Knowledge Craft
Paul Graham discusses similarities between hackers and painters in an essay all about craft that never uses the word "craft". In the process of saying that hackers are more like painters than engineers or scientists he (again, sometimes indirectly) criticizes academia, supports extreme programming and agile methods, explores and explains some economics of innovation, trashes formal knowledge representations, suggests a model for collaborative software development and a bunch of other fun stuff that somehow fits together. (0000JD)
Throughout it all he maintains a notion of activity where how things are done and what is being done are not separated. This is craft. (0000JE)
So, with that in mind, I think it is time Knowledge Management Consultants went in for a name change. It's Knowledge Craft. (0000JF)
(Which means, according to google I need to read: Knowledge Work As Craft from Jim McGee?, but that will have to be tomorrow.) (0000JG)
May 06, 2003
Weird Economy
I've started doing my part to help the economy by doing my short story reading at Borders. (0000IN)
If a collection has about twenty short stories and costs around seven dollars to take home but I sit down to read one and only one chapter with one double soy latte at $3.71 per sitting (including tax), after a few hundred years I should have fixed things up nicely. (0000IO)
I reckon I shouldn't have to pay sales tax as I'm providing a charitable service. (0000IP)
Current reading at Borders is The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson. If you liked the Mars trilogy a great deal (I did) you'll probably like at least some of these stories. If you think Robinson is a windbag (some do, with good reason) pass on this one. (0000IQ)
Pictures from the Red
Chris and Ding Go to The Red: April, 2003 (0000IL)
Follow the link to some pictures with descriptions of the trip Ding and I took to the red. (0000IM)
May 05, 2003
Huh and/or Neat
San Francisco hosts "Masturbate-a-Thon" (0000IA)
More than 100 men and women have gathered in famously liberal San Francisco this weekend for what organisers said was the city's second annual public "Masturbate-a-Thon". (0000IB)
May 03, 2003
Others Rights
Toby's Political Diary continues to deliver compelling analysis of how the world looks. Go read In Every Generation and let it sink in for a while. Some exerpts: (0000I6)
For it seems to me that indeed every generation faces the same struggles for freedom and liberty, over and over again. Why is it that there is no single victory, no point when freedom for all, equality, abundance is ever achieved. (0000I7)
... (0000I8)
The destruction comes in little bites, as more and more people in America are defined as outsiders, as enemies, as "other", coupled with the idea that the “others” have no human rights. (0000I9)
May 01, 2003
Oh god, no
Found via, poupou: oh god, sorry
I must be having a bad day. I'll have to try again tomorrow.
