Posts from — July 2003

Soft money loophole reopens.

AP via NYT: Big companies and unions banned from donating to elections under a new law will be able to whip out their political checkbooks after all — at least to contribute millions for fireworks, silver-tray shrimp and other glitz at next year's presidential nominating conventions.

The Federal Election Commission decided Thursday to keep one of the oldest avenues for soft money open, ruling that the law's strict limits on campaign donations don't apply to fund raising by the local committees that help the parties stage their conventions.

[The Agonist]

well, once again, large amounts of money will be funneled into an american election and it will function basically as a form of once removed purchasing of votes and cause undo influence onto the incoming regime, maybe we'll invade france to gain control of swiss cheese this time to underwrite the u.s. dairy industry….

In praise of plodders.

There was an article a couple days back in the Chronicle of Higher Education called “What People Just Don’t Understand About Academic Fields.” (Unfortunately, I can’t link to it because apparently you have to be a subscriber—but it doesn’t really matter for this post.) The article included a few paragraphs from a handful of professors in different fields each talking about what most people don’t seem to understand about what they do or why they do it. None of the entries struck me as all that interesting, but they did remind me of an essay by Isaiah Berlin which has been bothering me for awhile. The essay is called “Philosophy and Government Repressession” (1954) and was printed in The Sense of Reality. In trying to correct what he thinks is a common “misunderstanding of what philosophy is and what it can do,” Berlin argues that second- and third- rate philosophers are essentially worthless, except as obstacles to be overcome by truly great thinkers.

[Crooked Timber]

I'll add that for 99% of people that actually stay around long enough to really get a taste, academic philosophy is not philosophy, but it is some long developed set of skills and techniques tied to some very narrowly defined problems and issues, that really in the end seem to have little application in the real world, not that philosophy in general has any application, but that to understand philosophy is to have perhaps a richer life in some respects.

Insider talk Rice will resign.

US News and World Report: As White House officials try to control the latest fallout over President Bush's flawed suggestion in the State of the Union address that Iraq was buying nuclear bomb materials, there's growing talk by insiders that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice may take the blame and resign.

For most insiders, it's inconceivable that Rice, touted as a future secretary of state, California governor, and even vice president, would go, but the latest revelations that her shop and deputy Stephen Hadley mishandled CIA warnings have put the NSC in the bull's eye of controversy.

While it's unclear how serious the talk is inside the administration about the future of Rice or Hadley with the NSC, a few top aides are already suggesting replacements for Rice. They include former Bush administration National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, NASA chief and former Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe, and Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq.

ed: i almost always treat US News “Washington Whispers” with a decent amount of skepticism

[The Agonist]

Condi is one of the few believable people in the current regime, if she leaves, that'll be a real hit against them. Though i encourage her to go elsewhere and remove the legitimization that her presence lends them.

Military Discounts.

Veterans and military members: check out the new Discount Center Index!

[Electric Venom]

there are some great discounts here….

douglas adams in mp3. douglas adams mp3 audio archive … “The Douglas Adams media archive is presented here by the wi2600.org groups for your enjoyment. This allso is to serve as a tribute to Mr. Adams's great, but suddely shortened career. Those who have not heard his voice and those who know it well will both enjoy having this material available. We will miss him!” [MetaFilter]

Douglas Adams is dead:( has been for some time now, but his work lingers ever onward.

FOAF-a-matic — Describe yourself in RDF.

I'll admit to not having paid a lot of attention to the 'Friend of a Friend' format to date, but a couple of things I've read recently made me pay a little more attention to this XML-based personal profile that can help connect you to others through the people you know.

Today I stumbled on this – a simple yet useful javascript-based form that helps create an initial FOAF RDF file to get you started.  Very handy! In theory, and in practice, XML was meant to be 'human readable' and fairly straightforward to create. But little applications like this are so helpful – once you've structured data you already understand, expanding it by hand becomes much more straightforward. – SWL

- via [Channel 'social_software'] and [WebDawn]

[EdTechPost]

soon i will do this, i can see how it could be useful to some folk, and it is certainly one way of extending your network.

Girls Gone Wild!. Like many of us, I enjoy the bad women, from your garden variety betrayed women to the problem girls, the untamed youth running wild. An all too brief gallery of documentary films about this fascinating subculture is up over at retrocrush. [MetaFilter]

subcultures upon subcultures upon subcultures upon subcultures, are any of them real?

Doc Saves the Net. Doc's Linx Journal article on saving the Net is setting new records for page views and comments. Jeez, all it does is tell the truth. I don't see what the fuss is about … [Joho the Blog]

this is an important article

Knowledge game.

Something I missed earlier [via Joy London]

Knowledge game  by Dave Pollard

This post contains The Knowledge Game, a tool you can use to educate yourself, or a group of business colleagues, about intellectual capital, innovation and knowledge management, and their importance for modern organizations. It's played as a game, with two to eight teams who compete against each other. Each team acts as the Board of Directors of a fictitious consulting firm, and the objective is to make investment decisions that provide the best ROI. Those decisions require choosing between investing in traditional physical and financial assets, and among six forms of intellectual capital: human, structural, customer, social, risk and innovation.

[Mathemagenic]

I could use this when i teach my political economy course that focused on intellectual property… mmmm gooood.

Schools stay mum on file traders' names. Boston College and MIT are the first to contest subpoenas from the recording industry demanding information on alleged file swappers, but others may follow. [CNET News.com] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

this is the way it whould be.