This site is currently broken
my president got a little heckling down under while addressing the australian parliament..
“I love free speech, ” Bush said as the senators were ordered out of the chamber.
as an american, i need some clarification… is the aussie parliament a “designated free speech zone” or does being escorted out mean it’s not? it’s so hard to tell these days.
update: perhaps they were escorted to the free speech zone.
this week i spent just a bit less than 18 hours straight doing production work for the discovery channel young scientists challenge award ceremony.
this is apparently the 5th year for the event, which brought 40 talented young (middle-school-aged) scientists together and awards something like $25, 000 in scholarships.
these kinds of corporate events are usually pretty tedious – uninspiring and i’m not big on award ceremonies either. they’re annoying. and this one had its annoying moments (they’re not “all winners” if you give one of them a “first prize” – even kids this young can see through that kind of contrived crap and there was absolutely nothing in the ceremony about what these kids actually DID to get there)…. but….
seeing a group of 40 really young people celebrated for their brains was inspirational.
i want to take some space here to name names and give these kids a nod of encouragement.
Samantha Bates (13) – Do Mutations in the Gag Gene Impact the Ability of HIV-I to Kill T-Cells?
Peter Borden (13) – The Effect of Neem Oil on the Ochlerotatus taeniorhychus Mosquito: An Effective and Environmentally-sound Approach to Mosquito Control
Bogna Brzezinska (14) – Robocrops: Precision Agriculture
Anthony Burnetti (14) – Effects of Multi-tasking and Aging on Driving Ability: How Should Drivers Be Screened?
Rachel Clements (14) – The Effect of Bosque Fires on Saltcedar Growth
Leah Crowder (14) – The Effect of Bosque Fires on Saltcedar Growth
Ian Cummings (15) – Who Penned the Bard?
Erica David (13) – Get the Drift! Year Two: The Effect of Snow Fence Variables on Wind Pattern and Speed, and Snow Drift Geometry and Volume
David Edwards V (15) – Which Enzyme Works Best to Reduce Grease in a Grease Trap: Liquid or Solid?
Dana Feeny (12) – The Receding Night: The Effect of Artificial Light on the Migration Pattern of Daphnia
Bobby Fisher (10) – The Effect of Water Temperature on the Color of Fish
Sarah Gerin (14) – The Impact of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke on Orb Weaving Spiders
Jennifer Gutman (14) – A Study of Arsenic Levels in Plants in Contaminated Soil
Zachary Hopkins (14) – Nuts and the Dark Side of Oxygen
Sravya Keremane (13) – Cloning a Cold Tolerance Gene in Agrobacterium for Citrus Transformation
Lorren J. Kezmoh (13) – Frog Formation Station
Tyler Kirkland (14) – Which Enzyme Works Best to Reduce Grease in a Grease Trap: Liquid or Solid?
Michael Klein (13) – A Study of the Effects of Object Recognition on Vision Testing Results
Justin Koh (13) – Aspirin: How Much is Too Much? Creating an In-vitro Model to Determine Minimum Daily Aspirin Dosage (MDAD) for Anticoagulation Purposes
Luis Lafer-Sousa (14)- The Effect of Active Metals in Cosmetic Products on Protein Aggregation: Implications for Human Disease
Spencer Larson (12) – Stomata Count Differences of Selected Coniferous Trees
Ryan Lee (13) – How Does the Angle of Attack Affect Lift?
Jeffrey Luttrell (15) – Do Dogs Make a Difference?
Bryce Melton (14) – SPF: Some is Good, But More is Better
Austin Minor (12) – A Colorful Solution to Paint Recycling
Elizabeth Monier (15) – A Comparison of the Antimicrobial Capabilities of Raw Honey with Raw Honey Treated with Heat, Ethanol or Ultraviolet Radiation
Michael Montelongo (14) – Recycling Dryer Lint: Effects on Plant Growth and Soil
Elena Ovaitt (14) – Purification by Ozonation: The Effects of Ozonation on Ascorbic Acid and Bacteria Colonies in Unpasteurized Apple Cider
Scott Presbrey (14) – The Response of Gerontology and Non-Gerontology Populations to Caffeinated Coffee
John Reid (12) – The Effect of Biuret and Urea Fertilizer on Citrus Leaf Necrosis and Growth
Ethan Roth (11) – Up with Math: Direction Matters
Jacob Rucker (13) – Quantifying the Effect of Skyglow on the Visibility of Stars
Patrick Saris (14) – Positive Effects of Turbulence on Wind Turbines
Taylor Simpkins (13) – Industries’ Foul Little Secret: Pre-Production Plastics Found on Beaches Come Directly from Industrial Sources
Katharine Sloop (13) – A Honey of a Question: Fall Nectar Sources in East Tennessee
Daniel Steck (14) – Wind Power
Joseph Stunzi (13) – The Effects of Cell Phones on Pacemaker Patient’s Hearts
Aron Trevino (13) – Could Soap Companies’ Advertising Be Making You Sick? Year Two
Ryker Watts (14) – Nuts and the Dark Side of Oxygen
Bryan Yancey (15) – The Effectiveness of Caffeine as a Pesticide Against South Florida Snails, Bulimulus guadalupensis
do amazing things, all of you. i’m not picking winners. you all rock.
i was tooling around the web, and finally wandered into joi’s space, where i found this.
apparently, joi’s been noodling. and thinking. i know from personal experience that this is a dangerous combination. please put on appropriate safety gear before proceeding.
i’m going to throw some wrenches into the works, based on the language if nothing else. it’s entirely possible we’ll end up talking past each other, but he did ask for comments (and unfortunately, my comment turned into a graphic, so it can’t really be a comment-comment, it’ll have to be a reference-comment).
IE low context is stuff like CD’s and books which don’t change, are worth approximately the same amount to most people and don’t have much timing or personal context.
i disagree with this. the first thing i’m going to do is split the concepts of “context” and “don’t change” – i think things that don’t change can have a lot of personal context, and a lot of [personal] value. “our song” doesn’t change, but is very context-rich. so are “my baby[‘s] pictures.”
The far right is very personal, very timing sensitive, high context information such as information about your current “state”
again, i think there’s a natural and important split here. to emphasize, “very timing sensitive” information isn’t necessarily personal. the first example that comes to mind is “evacuate” (see what happens when you live in a constant state of terror alert?). anyway, the point is that time-sensitive material could be incredibly relevant to one or a million people.
i’m going to avoid joi’s layers and mapping things to this space for now. i came up with this:
i’m not entirely comfortable with all the labels, but i think this generally reflects my view of “the space.”
probably one of the most important points i want to make with the graphic on the table is that things move through this space. they don’t just “appear” and “stick.” consider a transition from the “media” sector – a book or song or film is a static entity – but as it is “remixed” (quoted, parodied, rewritten, clipped, edited) it becomes more and more a part of the culture. “i’ll be back” rides a vector from “media” to “culture.” also consider the personal equivalent – the line from the first movie you saw on your first date with your soulmate – the one where you both looked at each other and it “clicked.” this becomes a touchstone in the relationship – and a vector from “media” to “identity.” (that is, the identity of the relationship).
finally, since joi did mention value, i think there’s also an important aspect to “content” here, and perhaps this leads to a third axis. there’s a range from “low content” (which might be an sms message) to “high content” (which might be a fully immersive experience). an important aspect of this axis is that “low content” can refer to “high content” if it has “high context” – that line from the movie can be a metaphor for the whole first-date experience – but only for the two of you who shared the context.
this was a quick post- time to rush out the door, but i’ll let the rest of you hack this apart while i’m out.
ok, so this isn’t quite what you might expect, but what a great tangent….
as i was wandering, i ran into barry ritholtz – and he points to an interesting example of how transparency is working for at least one company.
i just felt like giving a little nod to someone who has recently created some very nice bits of code.
a small plague of comment-spam (and a threat of trackback spam) has been getting a lot of discussion lately. one of the participants, james seng, got beyond the talk and wrote some code, and has not one, but two comment-spam tools available for movable type. neither is a universal solution, but both are great little bits of code. first is a turing test screen. second is a bayesian filter.
now, for the meta-roj blog, comment spam is a minor problem at best. there are certain advantages to having only a few readers :). i’ve implemented a cost-imposition concept here. if i actually end up spending time cleaning out blog spam, you can bet i’ll be looking at his solutions.
i was doing some thinking (after hacking the constitution) on the problem of peace. it’s been stated often (and perhaps not sufficiently questioned), that democracies don’t go to war with democracies. i thought of a simple reason for this, and it comes down to the idea that war is a negative-sum game. even the most limited, most restrained wars involve the death of people, the destruction of property, and the expense of operating a war machine.
how is it that democracies avoid playing these negative-sum games? well, in general, they are constituted to involve a deliberative process somewhere along the path to war. if you have a deliberative process, where people actually look at the costs of war, in all its forms, it’s not easy to make the case. and if both sides of the potential war are having trouble making the case to go to war, (perhaps because they both have this deliberative process checking the machinery of war) then it’s really hard to get enthusiastic enough to actually engage in war.
i suppose that reasonable deliberation generally avoids negative-sum situations.
it seems, more and more often, we don’t have a functional deliberative process in america. we have the short-term economic and re-election interests of a small group of individuals. this, of course turns a negative-sum big picture into a positive-sum small picture in the only place it matters – congress.
in modern war (at least as far as the united states is concerned), the cost of running the kind of overwhelming war machine that ensures “minimal” loss of life (particularly on the part of the united states) and “minimal” destruction is amazing. perspective matters too – if you’re in the building that gets bombed, that “minimal” damage looks pretty “maximal.”
since running the war machine is “just dollars” it’s easier to spread the blame around enough that nobody actually has to take responsibility. it gets harder when you have to account for the deaths of constituents and destruction of their property. this time around, the costs and bodies are adding up faster than congress expected, and this little war is dragging on into a new election cycle. maybe they’ll wake up.
the message: war isn’t cheap or fast. ever. don’t write blank checks.
as usual, someone did it better than i. sadly, they did it 200 years ago. i’d like to [re-]introduce you to immanuel kant.
today, i present for your reading enjoyment, a legal hack.
some time ago, i posted a brief thought that in order to make progress, we need to redefine “money” as “not speech” – i mean this on several levels, but the most obvious is in the sphere of the political campaign.
to do so, i’m bringing together a few threads you’ll find here. the first, is of course, the goal – to do something about splitting the concepts of money and speech. another thread is the ongoing exposure of sunncomm (and friends) to the light (1, 2, 3, 4). also of interest is a little bit of refocusing that would be useful, honesty, and that silly problem of running an election (which i really should address in some depth sometime).
not making much of an apperance on the blog (yet?) are concepts of democracy, governance, and political dissent.
i’m also going to do something i generally disagree with, and that is to hack the legal system. i don’t like creative prosecution, on several levels. i suppose if you put on the white-hat and use the process to expose flaws in the system, then it’s not so bad. and, of course, as with most weapons (and i do mean to use the law as a weapon), it’s great as long as “we” use it, but when “they” use it, then it’s bad.
it’s very likely that despite my oversized introduction, all of this is entirely pointless. i don’t pretend to be a constitutional scholar, and certainly don’t swim in the ocean of legalese and court decisions that govern my life here in the united states. but, every once in a while, i get a little lawyer voice sitting on my shoulder, and sometimes it’s interesting enough to think about. so, i should state this idea in the form of a question [cue jeopardy theme]…
if, according to buckley v. valeo, money is somehow equivalent to speech, can that decision be used as a way to prosecute perpetrators of fraud and theft for violating the civil rights of the victim?
if so, would the burden (or potential burden) of turning every case down to the level of the pickpocket into first amendment issue create enough weight to change the decision?
any scholars have a thought?
Powered by WordPress