Posts from — March 2004

Schneier on Security As a Delusion: “Security always involves compromises. As a society we can have as much protection as we want, as long as we're willing to sacrifice the money, time, convenience, and liberties to get it. Unfortunately, most of the government's measures are bad trade-offs: They require significant sacrifices without providing much additional safety in return.” [GrepLaw] [Universal Rule]

The Libraries That Time (and Budgets) Forgot. Michael Winerip’s On Education: At Poor Schools, Time Stops on the Library’s Shelves is a deeply depressing story, and the sort of journalism we need don’t get nearly as often as we need. It seems that in poor neighborhoods — predominantly black neighborhoods — the schools have been starving the libraries. The books in the school library mostly date from before the schools were integrated. Not only do they lack the biographies students need for Black History Month, but they are innocent of four decades of modern technology, politics and literature. They don’t even have Harry Potter — the books that are credited with sparking a new generation of readers. What better example of our national shame of unequal class-based (which often in effect means race-based) public education? That said, I do have one tiny criticism of the article: do not make fun of Freddy the Pig…. [Discourse.net]

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this is a sad state of affairs. one thing that my h.s. library had going for it was the fact that several people donated books, not crap books, but new books in their field that they thought high school students could use. school libraries need to build communities. the other thing that my elementary school did was have library class, where we would go to the library and they would read, or we would get a book off the shelf and read, etc. this is conducive toward engaging students in learning about libraries.

Introduction to the Gumstix tiny linux computer. 10 Mar 2004: Rich Gibson reviews the Gumstix tiny linux computer.”The Gumstix computer (also see Gumstix.org) is a tiny 200 or 400 Mhz single board computer based on the Intel XScale processors. with Linux Kernel 2.6.0 in flash ram. They have 64 mb of RAM. You can get your Gumstix as a tiny little board, or a 'full fledged' computer.” [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]

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oooo, i wants one, gimme gimme…. dunno what for though….

sometimes it is difficult not to assign subjectivity to nature….

The ignorance society. Today I submitted a column in which I discussed the so-called 'information society' or 'knowledge society'. Perhaps we are not building a knowledge society at all, and instead are moving from 'data society' towards 'ignorance society'. Those who decide what kind of society we live in the future are more interested in the behaviour of computers than the behaviour of people. At least this seems often to be the case in Finland. [Universal Rule]

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the information society isn't a knowledge society, it is a control society ala deleuze and others. the knowledge society can be an enlightened society if it isn't heavily capitalized, then too it turns to a control society. and in a control society you construct technologies of control that create and define the roles of haves and have nots for the informational and knowledge elites.

Questions Raised About Ashcroft's Fundraising. by TChris Did John Ashcoft tell a fib to the Federal Election Commission? By renting out a political mailing list,… [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

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it seems he is fine with law breaking when it is him breaking the laws. the whole bush administration seems to have an 'above the law' vibe to it… but this is particularly ironic.

virii is not a 'proper' plural of virus, which is apparently viruses…. which sound icky to me, to use another improper word….

apparently the u.s. had a man prosecuted for throwing snowballs at our embassy in norway.

Susan Moller Okin.

edited personal report from ct

An obituary will appear in tomorrow’s edition of the Stanford Report. Here is the press release:

Susan Moller Okin died of unknown causes last week at the age of 57. Okin was Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and professor of Political Science at Stanford University. At the time of her death she was on leave with a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[Crooked Timber]

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oh, this is too bad, her book was interesting, we read it in my graduate class on the principles of justice…..

Pure Freedom. Like Josh Chafetz I scored a mere 21 out of a possible 160 on the Libertarian Purity Test. I might have gone a bit higher if some of the questions had been better specified. For instance one question asks, “Would… [Matthew Yglesias]

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i scored a 32…..

31-50 points: Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly you will become more extreme as time goes on.