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September 6, 2004
From Dan Gillmor comes a link to Enkoder, a site that creates JavaScript you can put on your Web page that will display a link to your email address in a way that spam harvesters can’t find it. If it works, you should see the phrase “My email address” expressed as a link here:
…We interrupt this blog entry and remove the script that was here because, although the script worked, it also made my RSS un-parsable. Ack. (Thanks, geodog, for letting me know.)
Please don’t tell me that we got the identity wrong of a person named Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Do you know what this means? Puns have supplanted irony as the chief law of the universe.
At least it can’t get much worse.
September 5, 2004
Here’s how yesterday’s front-page NY Times article about Bill Clinton’s heart surgery ends before the leap to page 15:
“My husband is doing very well, ” she [Hillary] said, noting that he had beaten her
After the jump, we get the rest of the sentence:
and their daughter, Chelsea, at card games.
W. David Stephenson blogs that the Dept. of Homeland Security …
… has chosen “Victim Relief Ministries”which The Baptist Standard calls “an interdenominational nonprofit organization related to Texas Baptist Men” to “take the lead in mobilizing the country’s faith community in the event of a terrorist attack or mass-casualty crisis.
What is this all about???..
It’s actually unclear what it’s about. The article David’s blog is based on (note the “postnuke” in its url) may be exaggerating a tad, since “taking the lead” may just be puffery. On the other hand, the article says “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security enlisted the national organization to train volunteer victim-relief chaplains during sessions in southern California, Dallas and New York City.” If this strikes you as perfectly ok, ask yourself how you’d feel if the DHS had tapped any other religion to train the rest of the nation’s “volunteer relief chaplains.” I’m not outraged, just slightly more depressed, if such a thing were possible.
But I’m perked up by the inappropriately cheery headline on the page the article links to:
Announcing Association Name Change &
Introducing New Category –
Victim Counselor!
September 4, 2004
Bill Clinton is “a little scared, but not much” of bypass surgery. Good for him. We need to make it safe to admit to honest fear. If that makes me a girlie man, then I take it as an accolade.
Besides, while only 1-2% of bypass patients die, that’s a lot higher risk than I’m facing today (knock wood, salt over the shoulder, and plant a smacker on Arnold’s muscular lips).
Found another wifi hotspot in town, so now I can post the table of contents of the new issue of my newsletter, JOHO…if my anonymous benefactor doesn’t decide to pull the plug and call it day.
| Why Dewey’s Decimal System is prejudiced: The DDC’s aging value system shows the pernicious influence of reality.
In
Cool Email: |
September 3, 2004
I’ve published a new issue of my newsletter, which you can read here. It’s got an article about why the Dewey Decimal System is prejudiced and why small talk (chit chat, not the programming language) is so important. Plus some other stuff. But I’m almost out of time here on the public library’s computer…
We arrived at my family’s house in the Berkshires to discover that both phones and many of the lights are fried. Apparently, there was a lightning strike. Or maybe it’s just my bad electrical mojo running ahead of me.
So, I had to drive around with Netstumbler to find a working, open wifi hotspot in town. (Yay for free wifi.) It’s gone this afternoon, though. So, I have 12 minutes remaining on the public Internet in the local library. Must type faster…
September 2, 2004
My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend.
He was once a lieutenant governor — but he didn’t stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984.
In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington.
Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so.
John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. Business Week magazine named him one of the top pro-technology legislators and made him a member of its “Digital Dozen.”
John was re-elected in 1990 and again in 1996 – when he defeated popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the country.
John is a graduate of Yale University and was a gunboat officer in the Navy. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three awards of the Purple Heart for combat duty in Vietnam. He later co-founded the Vietnam Veterans of America.
He is married to Teresa Heinz and they have two daughters.
As many of you know, I have great affection — some might say an obsession — for my two Labrador retrievers, Gus and Woodrow. It turns out John is a fellow dog lover, too, and he better be. His German Shepherd, Kim, is about to have puppies. And I just want him to know … Gus and Woodrow had nothing to do with that.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Senator John Kerry.
Zell Miller, introducing John Kerry, at the Democratic Party of Georgia’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, March 1, 2001
Philadelphia is considering investing $10M to blanket 135 square miles with wifi coverage.
Some people for whom I have the highest respect, and from whom I’ve learned a lot, I anticipate are going to denounce this. Their argument is that the government is exactly the wrong entity to make decisions best made by the market. Why? Because:
Government agencies are ill-equipped to make technical decisions.
Governments are corrupt. The incumbents have too much influence.
Even if Philadelphia makes the right decision, it will lock the city into one technology that will be hard to displace.
There is no such thing as “the” right solution. That’s why markets propose multiple solutions.
Providing government subsidized access kills innovation. New ideas won’t be able to compete.
Access prices are already dropping. The market will solve this problem without the corrupt and leaden hand of government.
If people want access, generally they can get it. Most of the country already is within range of a broadband access provider, and most people could afford it if they thought it were worthwhile.
No, providing broadband access is not like building highways. The nature and economics of real property are far different from the nature and economics of bits.
These are serious arguments (which I’ve abridged too much) and I find them persuasive. And yet, both my head and my heart say “Woohoo! Go, Philadelphia!”
I agree with my friends that free markets work better than governments when it comes to creating and delivering innovative technology. I take that as a rule of thumb, not a principle: It’s what we should assume is the case unless there are reasons to think otherwise, but there’s no taint to violating it when it makes sense to do so.
And in this case, I think delivering free (or very cheap) wifi to Philadelphia for $10M makes too much sense.
It would knock one rail off the fence of the digital divide. It would hurt the market’s ability to innovate at the infrastructure layer but give a huge boost to citizen innovation at the creative works layer. And, by the way, I bet there would still be market innovation in providing services that are economically feasible only if wifi is made a part of the assumed infrastructure of a city…just as the market will start providing infrastructure innovation that, yes, competes with free. Most of all, once a physical metropolis has virtual connectivity as part of its geography, we will see unpredictable, emergent effects, especially in group-forming.
I am certain that Philadelphia will make a sub-optimal decision about how to deliver on the promise. I am certain that the decision will be tainted by political considerations, including some marginally corrupt ones. I am certain that within 2 years, the market will have advanced significantly beyond how Philadelphia has implemented wifi. But the potential benefits are big enough to make this worthwhile. And I have enough faith in the market to believe it will jump in at the first chance to improve and extend the government-issue connectedness Philadelphia may provide its citizens.
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