Category: observations

Dark Age Ahead by JANE JACOBS (kottke.org on books)

Jane Jacobs hates cars. Absolutely can’t stand them. I thought this book was about a possible coming dark age, not her dislike of automobiles.

Alas, perhaps Jason Kottke is too subtle for me, but this is the second review I have read that seems to think Jacobs’ new book is about cars. I finished it last night and even having read a really lame writeup that complained that the whole book was about her dislike of cars, I still didn’t get that.

What she dislikes/hates is the accomodations we as a society (in North America) have made to cars instead of to people and communities. She’s pointing that choices were made to favor auto users over everyone else in many cases and we’re all poorer for it. Her insights into “traffic engineering” are eye-opening, especially here in a state where a vocal minority thinks that more and wider roads are the answer to every question.

But there’s more to the book than that — much more — I recommend it.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: May 30, 2004 – June 05, 2004 Archives

A snippet from today’s Nelson Report …

4. If it’s possible to imagine anything more damaging to DOD [than the Iran/Chalabi revelations], and perhaps also to White House staff, it is the CIA’s conclusion that some information Chalabi turned over to Iran was available to only “a handful” of senior U.S. officials. That would be Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, and Cheney’s consigleiri, Scooter Libby, our sources helpfully explain.

— perhaps not entirely by coincidence, the Vice President’s office is already on extra orders of TUMS, as it awaits the promised Grand Jury indictments of those responsible for leaking the name of a secret CIA officer to newspaper columnist Bob Novak, allegedly to “punish” the agent’s husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, for revealing that President Bush used faulty intelligence about Iraq and Niger in the State of the Union Address two years ago. From our own days as a police and court reporter, we can tell you that Grand Juries often grind exceeding slow, but that if they report, not much gets left out.

More soon.

— Josh Marshall

If treason is defined as “betrayal of a trust against the interests of the United States”, I think a case could be made.

(Alternate title: dance with who brung ya)

The announcement from SixApart explains (in a convoluted way) that the good old days of free versions for small sites are over and it’s payware from here on in.

I am continually amazed at how poorly SixApart communicates with its users, its fans. They profess to be all about enabling communication but do such a terrible job at it. I only ever hear about developments in their software by reading other sites and following the news: they never contact their users/supporters directly (yes, I donated, back in the day), whether it’s to announce new versions or bug fixes, to solicit feedback on pricing or spam prevention strategies, whatever. The announcement of 3.0 is case in point, as was TypeKey, MT 2.6661, etc.

Time will tell if TypePad and TypeKey generate enough revenue to offset the loss of MT revenue and user goodwill (companies have a spot on their balance sheet for that: a satisfied or even enthusiastic customer base is considered an asset, as anyone at Apple can tell you). Releasing a new version that removes features (unlimited users and unlimited weblogs in single instance) seems like a really bad idea. Either the folks at 6A are nuts or they ran out of features to make 3.0 compelling, so they removed some from 2.x.

<update> There’s a lot of related commentary here as well. Apparently, Drupal is another option and someone is working on a migration HOWTO right now.
Continue reading “the folks at WordPress must be delighted”

cloudy, chance of sun breaks: pointing iTunes “now playing” links to either Amazon or iTunes:

I suspect an automated process could be implemented with a Perl script.

My goal would be to have ecto (where I craft these scintillating posts) drop in the correct Amazon link when I tell it to post what I’m listening to.

So this snippet that links to a Google search on the artist’s name:
now playing: Svefn G Englar from the album Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros

becomes this which also takes you to the product page on Amazon.com:
now playing: Svefn G Englar from the album Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros

As it happens, there’s a perl module ready-made for the task: Net::Amazon – Query amazon.com via SOAP:

Net::Amazon is a Perl module providing an object-oriented interface to amazon.com’s SOAP and XML/HTTP interfaces. This way it’s possible to create applications using Amazon’s vast amount of data via a functional interface, without having to worry about the underlying communication mechanism.

But I don’t see any sample code that suggests I can pass a CD name and/or artist’s name and get back the exact ASIN so I can fix my iTunes database.

More investigation is required. I’m sure someone has done this already or something close to it.

I’m not a reader of National Review, but this post led me thither:

William F. Buckley Jr. on Abu Ghraib & Donald Rumsfeld on National Review Online:

Lieutenant William Calley, whose infantry company killed the civilians in My Lai, pleaded the fever of the war, but he was convicted to life in prison.

Convicted to life? Whatever: as noted below, it’s not the same as being sentenced to life in prison.

William Calley – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Calley was seen by some as a scapegoat for the Army’s failure to instill morale and discipline in its troops. Nevertheless, despite having ordered his troops to commit a massacre, he ultimately received a light sentence. He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison. Calley served 3 1/2 years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia and was then released in 1974 by a federal judge. He is now in the insurance business.

If the {Vietnamese|Iraqis|whomever} place no value on human life, how are we doing? Calley’s sentence worked out to 6.7 days of house arrest for every civilian killed on his orders. It seems we don’t put all high a value on it.

the modesty of Bill O’Reilly

WHYY reports that Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor, will not authorize Fresh Air to relicense segments from his amazing appearance on Terry Gross’s amazing show. Speculation why he’d ban the repeat of his worlds elsewhere is growing. But it is obvious to this writer that it is nothing more than a flash of modesty by this engaging figure, no doubt motivated by a desire to drive traffic to Fresh Air’s site (again, it is here). Yet another example of commercial media reaching out to help noncommercial media.

[Lessig Blog]

From the accounts I’ve seen and having not listened, it seems he walked off the set in disgust. Since his guests regularly get cut off mid-sentence, I guess it amounts to the same thing.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > What’s Next: Playing Old Records (No Needle Required):

“The real excitement for me is that the method has the potential to rescue recordings,” said Daniel P. Sbardella, a sound engineer at the Rodgers and Hammerstein archives of recorded sound of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. A recording could even be scanned in bits and pieces, Mr. Sbardella said, and then converted to audio files that can be edited to reconstruct the whole recording.

“The mission of a sound archive is to preserve as much sound as possible,” he said, “so even if that means rescuing a few seconds that are one of a kind, it’s really worthwhile.”

Interesting. When you consider how many perfectly usable recordings are archived but not accessible, I wonder if these rescued recordings — the libraries will likely make them available as part of their mission — will serve as a goad to the RIAA cartel to liberate similar artifacts from their vaults.

Hey, a music lover can dream . . .

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig

I just finished this last night. It’s worth reading. It spells out a lot of the background in the copyright wars (a phrase Lessig isn’t fond of but admits is an apt description). What I found most useful was the historical review of how each new medium has built on and derived content from its predecessor.

The last part of the book — detailing Lessig’s failure to win the Eldred case before the Supreme Court — seemed a tad self-indulgent and whiny at the same time. Yes, we know the court was unreceptive to the argument, but part of me wonders if Lessig himself isn’t a lightning rod for issues like this. The whole Special Master business in the MSFT/NSCP case is not so long ago.

Anyway, it dragged a bit. Perhaps that’s an artifact of this being a book for a general audience but having constitutional law as its subject matter: most general readers have managed to avoid taking a graduate level Con Law course.

What did ring true was his unhappiness with the legal profession and its role in fencing off the public domain. And the insight into what kind of money we’re talking about when an estate decides to extend its copyright — a million dollars in campaign contributions and other lobbying expenses might protect a given estate’s annual income of $100,000 — was also informative. A million dollars, even to the millionaires club known as Congress, is still an eye-catching sum of money, and it’s easy to see how the copyright extensions keep on coming.

Between this and the abolition of the inheritance tax, we look to be headed toward a return of the feudal society with aristocrats and their inherited holdings versus the rest of us who have to work for a living.

Freedom to Tinker: Is the U.S. Losing its Technical Edge?:

The U.S. is losing its dominance in science and technology, according to William J. Broad’s article in the New York Times earlier this week. The article looked at the percentage of awards (such as Nobel Prizes in science), published papers, and issued U.S. patents that go to Americans, and found that the U.S. share had declined significantly.

The charts that accompany this are carefully designed to buttress the point that US-based scientists are losing their lead against Asian and European counterparts. But it would have been more helpful to see the numbers in context: how many more patents are being filed, how many more papers being submitted, how many more PhDs are being earned, worldwide. The article suggests that all these numbers are rising, but it obscures that by sticking to the argument that somehow US scientists are losing out.
Continue reading “a smaller slice or a bigger pie?”

The more articles I read about the brutal treatment of prisoners in US custody, it becomes more and more clear that what upsets the administration and its supporters is that there are photographs, detailing facts some of them have know for almost 4 months. The sadistic treatment, the brutality — none of that is what’s being discussed: it’s the fact that we now know there was documentary evidence of these crimes, an investigation into them, and a report detailing them.

Another facet to this is the incurious nature of the president: he receives facts — that Al Queda is planning attacks in the US, that US troops are violating the Geneva Convention (it’s assumed here that he was told earlier this year) — but doesn’t feel compelled to dig under the problem and lead.

<update> The Red Cross has been aware of all this since last year but has been unable to get the US authorities in Baghdad to address it.

TheIowaChannel.com – News – Bush Apologizes, Defends Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse:

Red Cross: We Demanded Action On Abuse Before New Allegations

The international Red Cross said it knew what was going on.

The agency says it had repeatedly asked U.S. authorities to take action over alleged prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers at a prison near the Iraqi capital before the most recent allegations surfaced.

The Red Cross had previously refused to comment on conditions at the prison. A spokeswoman says “We were aware of what was going on.” She says agency officials had been visiting the prison since last year and had talked to prisoners in private.

What did [the president|the sec’y of defense|the sec’y of state] know and when did he know it?