The 'New Working Class'. I'm reading an ancient *cough* 1960 *cough* article, titled The 'New Working Class' (Lockwood, David (1960) “The 'New Working Class',” European Journal of Sociology, Vol…. [Fragments]

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frank gives some good advice for new article writers… I think it is somewhat important… tell people what you are talking about before you start talking about it.

sugar and snails. Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them – in the latest iteration of crude preteen fashion, some girls are sporting anti-boy slogans as part of that “faux girl power” look. Further corrosion of civility…or are boys in fact smelly? [MetaFilter]

“'Action Will Be Taken': Left Anti-Intellectualism and Its Discontents” [Interactivist Info Exchange]

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someone said that untheorized action is fascism, i think that's right.

Something New to Worry About: Loss-of-Identity Theft. The ever-wonderful RISKS Digest brings warnings of Loss of Identity Theft I was recently the executor of a relative’s estate and was shocked to discover that I was able to cancel his private health insurance, his veteran’s health benefits, one dozen credit cards, and all of his retirement direct deposit payments with simple phone calls. At no time did anyone ask me to prove that I was who I said I was or whether I had executor power over his estate. I simply presented a plausible sounding story, knew his social security number and his account numbers and was able to close his accounts over the phone. To make it even more interesting our last names are not even the same!… [Discourse.net]

Valparaiso Declaration for Improved Scientific Communication. The presentations from the recent meeting in Chile, Strengthening Editors and Scientists Capabilities in Electronic Publishing (Valparaiso, January 14-15, 2004) are now online.

During the conference, the 120 participants from 15 countries drafted the Valparaiso Declaration for Improved Scientific Communication in the Electronic Medium, which was released today. Excerpt: “Journals must improve their production processes by using online technologies in order to reduce their publication times….Assessments of reading habits and analyses of the market for electronic journals clearly confirm the fact that the Internet is already a place of convergence and the preferred medium for the transmission of scientific knowledge….Managers of scientific journals are responsible for achieving their maximal dissemination, bringing with it greater visibility and accessibility. They should not only ensure that their contents and format are standardized but also that they are indexed in the greatest possible number of data bases and indexes, and that the complete texts are immediately available in multiple repositories….The gradual reduction in publishing costs as a result of electronic publication (given the fact that the costs of the production process are more and more being borne by the authors and readers) must inexorably lead to systems of communicating science that are open and managed by the scientific community itself.” (PS: I've linked to an email copy of the declaration in our forum archive. If the conference posts an official version online, I'll blog the URL.) [Open Access News]

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this sounds like it could be the start of something good, but where did the berlin declaration go? why are there 100 different movements? i'm not sure, but i'd like to work on it a bit…..

Dean is tumbling.. Dean is out of cash. Somehow he blew through $40 million and still managed to leave the first Super Tuesday without a first or second place finish, anywhere. No mistake about his Meet the Press interview, though, which was felt as an incredibly strong and persuasive performance. It's obvious that Dean overestimated his grass-roots support, which has currently dried up, but the amount of publicity he has generated is surely a huge advantage. Two options come to mind: blow out the Washington Insiders (as he alluded to in his latest interview), or become more of a traditional candidate. [MetaFilter]

How to make spam unstoppable. A researcher has found a way to get past the filters many people use to stop junk mail reaching their inbox. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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this isn't really a find or a discovery the logic of bayesian filtering in spam dictates that it works like this, which is why i'm only for end user filtering, not in transit filtering, all in transit spam should be managed via rbl.