meta-roj

there was once a tradition that you mostly named things after and built icons and homages to great people after they died.

today, i heard about the ronald reagan dime act (and the request by mrs. reagan to withdraw the proposal). i have to agree, but for a different reason. this is a wimpy proposal.

we have no time for tradition, the man can’t even feed himself, we should act now to honor this great former american president while he’s still breathing, but completely unaware of our bold gestures.

accordingly, it’s time to unveil the “united states of reagan act,” which would rename the western hemisphere as “the gippersphere.” north america would become north reagan. south america, of course, south reagan. and, naturally, this would become the united states of reagan, or “usr” which is, incidentally, a homage to reagan’s great defeat of the pinko communist evil empire that was once known as the “ussr.”

resistance is futile, you will be reaganated.

oh, and jelly beans for everyone!

today was the first day with snow on the ground for the season…. and there’s a freaky late-season tropical storm odette.

that reminds me of a business-model-of-the-hour idea…

educator

it just sucks to be the executioner.

some time ago, kevin marks stuck a little gem in the back of my brain about ethical archetypes. this comes from jane jacobs, and defines the “commercial” and “guardian” archetypes.

some time later, kevin followed up on a tip from crw about a third archetype described by chris phoenix. in addition to the guardian and commercial archetypes, chris adds an “information” archetype.

with these three archetypes firmly embedded in the back of my fully-associative memory, i dared to wander about the internet, and i came upon a bit of light that caught my attention.

all very interesting stuff, but i didn’t have a lot to contribute until i read the bubble of american supremacy by george soros. now i will add my breadcrumb to the trail. i hope it leads you somewhere.

the bubble of american supremacy

A recent Council on Foreign Relations publication sketches out three alternative national-security strategies. The first calls for the pursuit of American supremacy through the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action. It is advocated by neoconservatives. The second seeks the continuation of our earlier policy of deterrence and containment. It is advocated by Colin Powell and other moderates, who may be associated with either political party. The third would have the United States lead a cooperative effort to improve the world by engaging in preventive actions of a constructive character. It is not advocated by any group of significance, although President Bush pays lip service to it. That is the policy I stand for.

i think i hit all the steps along my path to discovery… a quick nod to everyone who left me breadcrumbs to follow.

i had one of those deep-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feelings of irony as i was reading about political happenings.

it seems that president bush is thinking about going to the moon. i’ll leave the comments about scientific value and national pride and budgets to others, but the thing that got my attention is that i read that right after i read a whole bunch of things about bush’s environmental policies, prompted by the “healthy forest act.”

the thought i had with this terribly coincidental timing was… “why bother going to the moon when we can make one right here?” 🙂

con·serve transitive verb to keep in a safe or sound state; especially : to avoid wasteful or destructive use of

and just outed himself.

no cell phone? i think i just found the reason the tech bubble burst.

… and i thought *i* was late to this party

generally, i try to refrain from the “pile-on” mentality that pervades blogspace with some issues. tonight, i’m going to make an exception.

professor lessig broke with his schedule to take some time and explain just how clueless darl mcbride (ceo of sco) really is.

it’s truly amazing.

i have 39 cents sitting on my dresser that i’m willing to contribute to the buy-a-clue fund.

in the meantime, i think i’ll go get a business method patent on “legal action as a revenue model.”

this blog actually started with the hecklebot, because, well, i had something to say on the subject. and i’ve had a few things to say since. i went way off the deep end (as i tend to do, i guess), but it’s interesting to see that there are some others out there who are “getting it.”

todayi thought i’d share an example. not a broad, sweeping, academic paper, but a short news piece on the disruptive nature of wifi combined with instant messaging (they almost got it all the way to the hecklebot).

the triangle news observer.

Today’s presenters had better be on their toes, because the wireless Net becomes a quick fact-checking tool.

the triangle news observer.

Can wireless drive even the most well-prepared speaker crazy? I should think so. Sperano says we’re all getting good at multitasking; We can do more than one thing at a time. But some people will use wireless to check with Google on each fact, correcting and annoying the speaker with the same ease that the kid in my sixth-grade class kept raising his hand before anyone else in the room.

the only thing missing is that i don’t have to be present to be a disruptive force. ask anyone who attended that session to explain…

rakesh agrawal stole my stuff!

ok, not really. but i think i can see this person in my future.

i’ve been working on a few things that involve the preservation of privacy in a large collection of data that can still be analyzed. i ran through a couple ideas – generally:

hashing, where the data is manipulated permanently before it’s analyzed (but that can destroy relevant information)
black-box queries, where you can ask a question, but you don’t get to see the raw data (but that can put a real screw to reproducing results, and so confirming valid work)
compartmentalization, where only data important to the analysis is made available (but that means multiple analyses might piece together private information)
randomization, where the data is randomized as a set, and statistically-relevant results are still valid (but this generally means a big raw data set)

well, i didn’t really come to any conclusions, except that any of these methods might be useful depending on the circumstances. in the particular circumstances i’m thinking on, the randomization approach seems the most useful.

…off into the wild internet i go and amazingly enough, it’s been done.

here is an interview version. this [pdf] is one from acm. (see his page for papers).

the combination of protecting individual privacy and building an enormous database that can be combed (well, raked) for trends and historic comparisons is critical to improving my diet. i’m glad i don’t have to invent this wheel.

so this is all old news to me – why bring it up? rakesh was recently honored by scientific american as one of the top 50 contributors and contributions to science and technology. so he’s going to be a really popular guy now.

i just thought i’d get a number now… save me a place!