i spoke briefly about flashmobs the other day with dan chang from his the miami herald, the article is a nice, short culture piece. have a look.

Donald Davidson dies. IN MEMORIAM Donald Davidson (1917-2003) Professor Davidson died yesterday in Berkeley. As soon as memorial notices are available about his… [The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates]

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Oh i remember reading some of his work when i was an undergrad.

while it might appear that i experienced death in a remote manner above, it should also be clear that i experienced it by relating it to my life, and that through that i sympathized with others or would not have posted it.

Bush and The Philosophers. Speaking of memes, check this one out. Back on August 5, Mark Kleiman wrote a post that concluded with the observation that “There's a great essay to be written about the second Bush Administration as our first truly post-modern Presidency.”… [Matthew Yglesias]

wierd thing is that i just had a discussion with a colleague on this who argued that bush's presidency is the highest perfection of machiavellian modernism, where i argued that under the conception of 'pluralist idealological conflicts' it was post-modern.

Tax the rich the same as the average people, Camejo says

Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo on Thursday unveiled one of the recall campaign's most detailed and liberal proposals, one he contended would lift California out of its budget morass.

Camejo, who heads an investment brokerage firm he founded, called for strikingly higher income tax rates on Californians who earn more than $500,000 a year, changing Proposition 13 to allow reappraisals of many corporate properties and tax cuts for low-wage earners.

“We have a crisis,” Camejo said. “At least (the wealthy) should pay what the average person pays, and that would balance the budget.”

Heck, maybe the rich need to be taxed even more than the average person…

Disparity in wealth is killing democracy, scholar warns

One scholar argues that representative democracy is effectively dead ö done in by the biggest shift of income and assets to the super-wealthy since the 1920s.

“President Bush's tax cuts increased the political power of the richest Americans,” says Walter Williams, University of Washington professor emeritus of public affairs. “Their gains fueled the huge increase in campaign contributions and made big money the driving force in national politics.”

[Politics in the Zeros]

Walter Cronkite clears his throat. Walter Cronkite's Ten propositions for the Democrats I respect Cronkite like I respect my grandmother. I'm also a democrat. Please someone, anyone, destroy Walter Cronkite's levelheadism here. Please. [MetaFilter]]

everyone should read this, it is about democracy, and equality in the future.

well, news just hit slashdot that Virginia Tech, where i teach, is building a top 10 supercomputer cluster out of Apple G5's. it is supposed to attract researchers interested in using it to virginia tech, though there are already several groups on campus with clusters and grids opeational already…. well, it is a good way to maintain our reputation in this area at least.

lots of people are viewing this, there is just as much info at slashdot.

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/08/20030830151942.shtml

http://www.computing.vt.edu/research_computing/index.html

http://www.eng.vt.edu/odlc/computing/advanced_computing.shtml

evidence
http://www.ita.vt.edu/archive/docs/tabsheets/FY2004/646457.txt

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