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December 12, 2005
My phrase ‘before we had language, we had pointing’ in my article on The Year of Unique IDs” reminded Matt Jones of Tom Coates’ wonderful post “The Age of Point at Things” from last April. Brilliant stuff from Monsieur Coates. [Tags: TomCoates]
Now that he’s turned down the appeal for clemency, Governor Schwarzenegger should have to kill Tookie Williams with his own hands.
The death penalty, torture, preemptive war…it’d be good if we Americans could forswear at least one of our barbaric practices. [Tags: TookieWilliams CapitalPunishment schwarzenegger]
The Boston Globe reported on Saturday, in an article by Stephen Kurkjian, that Peter Quinn, the Commonwealth’s CIO, did not violate any rules by going to 12 tech conferences over the past year. The trips, it turns out, were all approved by his boss, and the reimubrsements he got for travel expenses were all legit.
The charges came as the controversy grew over Quinn’s decision that the Commonwealth will only buy office software that supports open document standards, a policy that has apparently driven Microsoft apeshit.
It does make you wonder where the Massachusetts government got the wrong information that prompted the false accusations and the article in the first place. Did the Romney administration fall for a Microsoft smear? I’ve sent Stephen Kurkjian an email, asking. [Tags: BostonGlobe microsoft PeterQuinn massachusetts opendoc]
My home town is looking to provide free wifi in public spaces and low-cost wifi in private spaces.
Excellent! [Tags: wifi MuniWifi brookline]
Good piece by Ross Mayfield over at Many2Many on the dangers posed by John Siegenthaler’s complaint about Wikipedia. [Tags: wikipedia RossMayfield JohnSiegenthaler]
The Guardian has a story by Mark Honigsbaum about an attempt to identify gay-related items:
Backed by the museums documentation watchdog, MDA, the group Proud Heritage this week began sending out a two-page survey requesting that institutions throughout the country list the gay and lesbian documents and artefacts in their collections. “For the first time ever, we are asking museums, libraries and archives throughout Britain to revisit their holdings and reveal what they have that is queer,” said Proud Heritage’s director Jack Gilbert. “At the moment these are not classified correctly, or held completely out of context and never see the light of day.”
…
Proud Heritage has also been working closely with local authorities. At the Lllangolen Museum in Denbighshire, north Wales, for instance, there is an exhibit commemorating the lives of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. Known locally as the Ladies of Llangollen, they lived together in a small cottage from 1819 until their deaths in 1829 and 1831, and were renowned for wearing dark riding habits, an eccentric choice of dress for the time.
“They would never have used the word lesbian to describe their relationship but there is no question that they lived together and shared the same bed,” said Mr Gilbert. “We think there may well be similar examples in other archives, but because people didn’t use words like lesbian and gay 200 years ago archivists have either overlooked it or simply don’t realise it’s there.”
Great example of why authors/creators/publishers are not the best or final taggers of their own stuff. (Thanks to Phil Edwards for the link.) [Tags: taxonomy tagging EverythingIsMiscellaneous gay museums]
December 11, 2005
Having chided the O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference for its gender imbalance, it’s only fair to praise it for working on the issue. This year’s list of twenty-two speakers includes five women, up from last year‘s one out of twenty featured on the home page. And the agenda is better for it. Gender aside, it looks like a great line-up.
E-Tech is one of my favorite conferences because it combines community-building (hence the extra special need to get more gender balance) and sessions that are over my head enough that I learn lots. See you there, March 6-9 in San Diego.. [Tags: EmergingTech oreilly MakeMagazine technology gender]
The PR department at O’Reilly sent me a copy of Make magazine’s coffee table book Makers by Bob Parks. The stuff is just so cool, from the voice-activated Cuisinart to Bathsheba Grossman’s 3d sculptures to the steam engine made entirely out of paper, to a shirt with 38 fans which is worth it just for the photo of Mikey Sklar on the beach embodying the word “geek.” This is technology so smart and original that it’s funny.
The Maple Tree
The maple tree that night
without a wind or rain
let go its leaves
because its time had come.
Brown veined, spotted,
like old hands, fluttering in blessing,
they fell upon my head
and shoulders, and then
down to the quiet at my feet.
I stood, and stood
until the tree was bare
and have told no one
but you that I was there.
—Eugene McCarthy, 1916-2005 [source]
I went through every phone book in Africa, and I didn’t find one goddamned Pryor!
— Richard Pryor (1940-2005) [source]
December 10, 2005
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