Ethan Zuckerman, who, unlike me, is a data-driven guy who happens to have a heart that isn’t stopped by borders, re-considers the disputed-until-ignored Lancet report that said there were about 100,000 more Iraqi deaths during the war than there would have been without the war. Ethan thinks there’s good reason for thinking the report’s methodology and numbers are pretty reliable.

As Ethan says: “It’s hard to have a debate about what to do about the morass we face in Iraq. But it’s lots harder to have it if the numbers we’re working with may be low by a factor of six.”

And I repeat my question: Why doesn’t our government have its own estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians killed? Instead, Bush is relying on media reports. Does he really not give a shit? Or does our government — our government — have a number it doesn’t want to let its citizens know?
[Tags: iraq EthanZuckerman]

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Haitham is a Palestinian blogger who went to the Global Voices conference in London last week. As the result of a long walk and conversation — and who knows what else happens in someone’s heart — he has changed his mind, in public, an act of personal and political courage.

In his post you see hope gaining an ally. Thank you, Haitham.

“It is not incumbent upon us to finish the task, but neither are we free to refrain from beginning it.” — Rabbinic quote, cited by the Velveteen Rabbi.

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I just got a call from Domain Registry Support asking me to confirm the contact information for a domain I recently transferred from one registrar to another (neither of whom is DRS). When I refused to confirm anything, the fellow asked me to call 800 591 7398.

This smells a lot like a registry transfer scam. Anyone know for sure? [Tags: registrars scam DomainRegistrySupport]

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I ate at restaurant in Watertown yesterday. I had trouble enjoying the food because the place is so in love with itself, starting with its menu descriptions, that it was like watching a Chevy Chase movie.

Here’s a scene from The Matrix done as ascii animation. [Tags: marketing ascii matrix]

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JP Palfrey is testifying at the Massachusetts State House’s forum on the Open Document Format procurement policy issue and is looking for ideas. After him come the lobbyists. f you’ve got any something you think he could use, send it on over to JP ASAP… [Tags: JPPalfrey OpenDoc]

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Nip and Tuck’s serial rapist has his own blog at MySpace. This is not the first time fictitious characters have been given their own blogs, but this one seems to be extraordinarily popular. Grant McCracken points out that “the narrative signal is less predictable, less scrutable, and less controllable. This, in turn, may increase the character’s, and the show’s, powers of engagement.”

It’d be very cool if the character blog survived the show. [Tags: blogs NipAndTuck]

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Derek, the first undergraduate Student Fellow at the Berkman Center, is giving a lunch time talk. He’s leaving next month to work for the EFF.org. He’s going to talk about the study he just released, written with Mike McGuire of the Gartner Group.

The key findings: 1. People like talking about the music they listen to. They want to make recommendations, sometimes by sharing the music. 2. We should embrace consumers wanting to share their tastes in these ways because it’s good for both business and culture.

But (Derek says) we shouldn’t think of music sharing only as the sharing of peer-to-peer sharing that doesn’t compensate the artists. “Imagine that we were simply to do away with all illegal file-sharing…We would still have reason to embrace to consumers as distributors of content and as taste-sharers.” Hence, no matter what you think of free p2p sharing, we should focus on enabling all the other forms of sharing.

Examples of ways people are sharing:

In the iTunes music store, people can publish their play lists. Also at musicstrands.com. You can listen to 30 seconds and buy songs you like. There have been 500,000 playlists published there, 330,000 at iTunes.

At coverville.com (for example) people become DJs, creating podcasts

People are creating mp3 blogs, e.g., fluxblog.org

The study surveyed 435 “early adopters” who have started using a music service in the past three months [whom I would call “recent adopters”].

About 50% listen to playlists at least once a week, about the same percentage that listen to music CDs on their computer.

About 25% see the ability to share as a valuable part of an online music service.

50% say they’re being exposed to a greater diversity of music.

So, (says Derek) online music providers ought to enable sharing in some form. These sharing tools are the new form of word of mouth, a recomendation system that can drive people to niche content. It’s also good for cultural diversity. They enable us to shape the way we view music, as opposed to only being molded by mass media DJs; creating a playlist is a creative list. And these tools can form bonds between people.

Call to action: Business leaders and policy makers ought to find ways to license more sharing.

Prediction: By 2010, a quarter of online music transactions will be driven by sharing.

Q [me]: For people who share entire songs, does your study have any data about how that affects buying patterns?

A: Nothing conclusive. It wasn’t our focus.

Q: [me]: Does anyone not allow 30 second snippets?

A: Formerly, yes. Now, we’re seeing some licensed forms of p2p file sharing. But these other ways of sharing have been ignored, e.g., enabling bloggers to provide a full song to their readers that the readers can listen to once or twice. [Tags: berkman DerekSlater music]

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Rebecca MacKinnon reports on the recent Global Voices meetup. Fascinating and heartening. [Tags: GlobalVoices RebeccaMackinnon blogging]

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White House officials later said the 30,000 figure was not an official U.S. tally, but the best estimate available based on media reports
LA Times

Why doesn’t our government have its own estimate of how many Iraqis have died? Isn’t that a key piece of information as you’re assessing a war? Or do we really care so little that we don’t bother tracking, counting or estimating dead Iraqi civilians? [Tags: iraq GeorgeBush]

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Livia Labate has taken Ambient Findability‘s bibliography (Ambient Findability is Peter Morville‘s highly readable and provocative book on, well, findability), entered the URL of each entry into her page at del.icio.us, and tagged each “ambientfindability,” thus making the bibliography entries more ambiently findable. For example, you’ll notice that 13 other people have bookmarked Gene Smith’s “Beyond the Page,” making it a good jumping off point to amble findably through related works. [Tags: tagging taxonomy PeterMorville AmbientFindability EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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