Posts from — June 2003
our narcotic is oil, what's our narcosis…
from the atlantic, through arts and letters daily:
A dependence that's so strong it's almost like a narcotic. You don't question the pusher.” It may sound like the language of drug addiction, but in fact Robert Baer, a former CIA agent in the Middle East, is describing American dependence on Saudi Arabia and its oil. In “The Fall of the House of Saud” (May Atlantic), Baer details the United States's absolute reliance on oil from a country that is deeply, dangerously unstable.
i say the narcosis is latent industrialization and desocialization. by which i mean the industrialization, and replacement of certain aspects of our life with technologies. This is combined with the growing tendency of people not talking to each other, and not being social.
June 8, 2003 No Comments
Sun, 08 Jun 2003 14:01:02 GMT
The Effects of Global Aging on the Global Workforce..
The Effects of Global Aging on the Global Workforce from the Hudson Institute. A bit of depth on the formula:
Global Aging
+ Regional Factors
+ Policy Options
+ Wildcards
= Workforce Outcomes
This article, by Hudson's Gary Geipel, cites:
- Beyond Workforce 2020, coming in 2004.
- United Nations (UN) projections
- The Aging Vulnerability Index
Sorta scary, and the choices aren't attractive. Worth scanning.
wow, handy stuff
June 8, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 22:37:39 GMT
US Cybersecurity Agency launched. You can all now sleep safely [The Register]
through centralization you can create a monoculture, and through that you end up making your position weaker than a plural and decentralized system…
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 21:42:37 GMT
Not Rocket Science. Simon Willison is collecting his excellent series of writeups on practical CSS magic under the rubric CSS ain‰??t Rocket Science. He should be wrong, it should be like rocket science: predictable, deterministic, with an engineering ruleset saying How To Do It. Except for the tools are broken. To be specific, Microsoft‰??s tool is broken. And in recent news, apparently they don‰??t care. Which is maybe just fine. … [ongoing]
this is nifty, handy, and all that…. the problem of coruse is that rocket sceince isn't very predictible, deterministic, or heavily governed by an engineering ruleset, though many believe it to be. at its heart, it is a science, which means that it is only as determinate as human error allows it to be, it is only as engineered as social structures allow for, and in the end, it is broken and disastrous, but it does make good tv.
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:21:01 GMT
Agile programming and analogies. Boundary objects and software development is the topic of one of the papers (pdf) for Analogy Fest. [Link by Tesugen.com.]… [Imaginary magnitude]
sounds like a cool paper….. its a topic I'm intersted in.
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:20:03 GMT
STS blogs. Blogs by people in the Science and Technology Studies field: an index… [Imaginary magnitude]
so anyway, i added Gustav to my blogroll, so here is where he linked to me… there has to be more STS blogs out there in the world, come on people speak up.
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:18:22 GMT
Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The Hellenic Ministry of Culture The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and its many guides and maps for hundreds of Greek archaeological sites, monuments and museums. Here's one of Herakleion, in Crete. [MetaFilter]
for those who are planning on hitting greece this year, I'd like two, but i think depending on my situation, that i will do a greece/turkey think next year because i just have to see http://www.olympostreehouses.com/
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:14:12 GMT
Comment on the Department of Education's third
National Education
Technology Plan.
See also the USDE
press
release. [A blog doesn't need a clever name]
if you haven't commented comment soon, comment loud….
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:12:46 GMT
Harvard Chief, at Commencement, Vows Change. Speaking on Harvard's 352nd commencement day, Lawrence H. Summers, the university's president, pledged to reshape the undergraduate experience, including the core curriculum. By David M. Herszenhorn. [New York Times: Education]
If i were he, which i am not, i would propose the following changes. The core curriculum should be 10 3 hour classes, and each student would have to complete 2 more 10, 3 hour class majors or one extended 15 class major with a 5 class minor. for those 90 hours, 3 years, they would receive their B.A. in Liberal Arts with their majors/minors listed. There would be no professionalized degrees at that level. There would be no 'engineers' for instance or Business majors. they would be awarded with a masters in their specific area after 2 more years of study, the first would be an honors b.a. year, the second would be a master's year. this would be a leadership move in solving the problem of the professionalization/technicalization of the bachelor's degree.
June 7, 2003 No Comments
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 20:03:10 GMT
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
this is a good quote, for a long time, t.r. has been my favorite president.
June 7, 2003 No Comments