Someone heard me on CNET radio over the weekend and was stimulated to send me an email suggesting that the Internet is becoming conscious. I think the Internet lacks two essential ingredients: First, consciousness has everything to do with the ability to pay attention, and attention requires that we care about ourselves and our world. Second, consciousness needs a body because thought isn’t a formal process. Nevertheless, there are some important ways in which the Internet and consciousness are similar. For example:

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AKMA is clear and thought-provoking once again, this time ostensibly on the nature of confiding but actually on the importance of trust versus rules.

Tom M. compares knowledge and vines. Fibrous and foliated writing!

Knowing my family’s religious commitment to the Simpsons, Kevin Marks passes along a link to an article that carefully explains why Bart is not a Nietzschean Ubermensch.

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We’ve had four loose 2″ tiles in our bathroom for a year. Every couple of months I try a different way of cementing them in. Every couple of months they loosen and come out again. Two days ago, I scraped their backs down to the original tile and chiseled the wood to which they attach in order to get a nice, clean fix.

They are already loose.

This morning I woke up, trembling with excitement, for I have realized how to fix them for good.

[SPOILER BELOW]
 
I’m going to buy a throw rug.

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Two million people have been killed in Sudan over the past ten years, “more than in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda and Burundi combined.” One hundred thousand refugees were intentionally starved to death. As a result of a “Taliban-like Muslim regime” that is “waging a self-declared jihad on African Christians and followers of tribal faiths in South Sudan,” the slave trade has even started up again.

No matter where you stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no denying that the Sudanese government is far worse than even the most right-wing Israeli government.

So, why do the US media report daily on Israel but not Sudan? Why are anti-Israeli actions common on US college campuses but there’s nary a word about Sudan? Is anti-Semitism the only way to explain the disparity?

That never seemed right to me. Oh, sure, there are big chunks of the world where Jew-hatred is taught early and often. But I know too many people outraged by Israel who are not anti-Semitic. I am one of them. (Spare me your email on the topic; I am also outraged by the Palestinians and the Arab states. In fact, I don’t like anyone.)

A column by Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, in the Boston Globe today explains it so clearly that I felt like I must have known this all along:

“…to predict what the human rights community (and the media) focus on, look not at the oppressed; look instead at the party seen as the oppressor. Imagine the media coverage and the rights groups’ reaction if it were ‘whites’ enslaving blacks in Sudan. Having the ‘right’ oppressor would change everything. … The human rights community, composed mostly of compassionate white people,. feels a special duty to protest evil done by those who are like ‘us.’

“Not in my name’ is the worthy response of moral people.”

This is a type of racism, of course, but it is not the expected one — not anti-Semitism but a feeling of identity with the Israelis; a society that is generally white, educated and democratic stands for us generally white, educated and democratic people. Nor is it the more pernicious racism of “expecting more of the Israelis.” It is our sense of identity with the oppressor, not our racist antipathy, that makes us pay more attention.

Which is a way of saying that “Not in my name” is not a worthy moral response. … unless and until our name includes all people.

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I went with my family to the annual Ig Nobel Awards last night. The Ig Nobels, honoring scientific achievements “that cannot or should not be reproduced,” are the brainchild of Marc Abrahams, editor of The Annals of Improbable Research, a humor magazine that is somehow related to the old Journal or Irreproducible Results. (AIR’s free newsletter is quite funny.)

I’d been to an Ig Nobels about eight years ago and it is as studiously zany as ever, from the continuous fusillade of paper airplanes showering the stage to the ostensibly sweet 11 year old who serves as time monitor by repeating “Please stop. I’m bored” monotonously until the offender steps away from the microphone.

The awards themselves are very funny, and because they come from the scientific community — genuine Nobelists escort the winners to the lectern — they’re not offensive the way Sen. Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards were. The winners, who flew in from around the world at their own expense, are uniformly good natured, although I’m not convinced that the Japanese inventors of a dog-to-human translator understood they were being mocked. On the other hand, given the laughter, the paper airplanes and the intentional cheesiness of the event (the prize itself consists of chattering teeth on a stick), it’d be a prize-worthy achievement not to figure it out.

So, we had some laughs. But mainly I thought my family would enjoy the sudden immersion in the world of seriously geeky scientists at play. Entertainment or anthropology field trip? You be the judge.

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According to the “compromise” the Congress has worked out with the Bush adminstration “limiting” Bush’s ability to wage war against Iraq, “The president would also be required to inform Congress in advance of a military strike or no later than 48 hours after the attack,” reports the Boston Globe.

Two days after Bush has started bombing Bhagdad he’s going to have to mention it to Congress? Wow, that’s strict! Maybe he can just write a letter to the editor in The Washington Post to let them know that he’s started a war.

At least this opens up a new alternative power source: attach generators to the Founding Fathers as they spin in their graves.

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From Peter Kaminski, one of the leading sources of leads to sources, comes a page with links to the world newspapers he likes to read. And there’s more here.

Sites include:

Le Monde
Die Welt
El Mundo

And, in English to see how we look to others:

Yomiuri
Ha’aretz
Mail & Guardian

Of course, don’t leave out the three most essential sources of news: 1. The Onion, 2. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and 3. Rumors that support what you already believe.

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The estimable Jerry Michalski has started a wiki (= gang-edit) page to debunk “common sense” misunderstandings such as that good fences make good neighbors and that “My country right or wrong” means you should support your country when it’s doing what’s wrong.

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I was interviewed bythe CNET WebTalkGuys a couple of days ago. It will air on Saturday. You can hear it here with the RealAudio player or here with the Windows Media Player.

They asked good question, to which I responded, as best as I can recall, like a rambling, self-important asshole.

Here’s info from the WebTalkGuys about play times for the actual broadcast:

The show will broadcast on CNET Radio Saturday, 10/5 from 10-11am PST in San Francisco/San Jose (910 AM), and the XM Satellite network on channel 130. It will repeat on Sunday, 10/6 at 5pm PST. It will stream live on CNET at http://www.radio.com at those times. It will be available on demand for listening on any phone via the Mobile Broadcast Network, SonicBox and at our website. It is also broadcast in Seattle on KLAY 1180 AM on Saturday at 11 am. CNET has put up the brief description of your topic at the Weekend Shows page.

If I really suck, there’s not any requirement that in the spirit of frankness you must tell me so.

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Dan Gillmor writes about the semi-hopeful sign that Apple hasn’t jumped into bed with the content dominatrixes who rule Hollywood and Congress. In fact, he points to coverage of legislation that actually looks out for the interests of the the rest of us: the Digital Choice and Freedom Act would explicitly permit us to copy digital works for personal use, just as we can currently make a tape for a friend. (As Dan said at the OS X conference yesterday, he hopes the fact that a friend is taping The West Wing for him when Dan’s traveling doesn’t make his friend a pirate.)

If I were Apple, I would seize the opportunity to kick Microsoft in the nuts by coming out squarely on the side of the listener/viewer. Team up with Amazon to provide an alternate model for distributing music over the Net with terms that make sense in the networked age. Because if and when Microsoft becomes the only Authorized Operating System for playing content from Hollywood, we will all have been given a compelling reason to Mac users overnight.

Here’s my crack at an Apple ad I’d like to see.

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