Posts from — May 2004

How to Build Open Information Societies. Amy Mahan and Yuri Misnikov at UNDP's regional center in Bratislava, Slovakia, have edited a book on How to Build Open Information Societies: A Collection of Best Practices and Know-How. “Case studies and examples from 19 countries illustrate different e-governance… [InternetPolicy.net]

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interesting free book

Sweating the small stuff.

Last year, I fell off my bike, and had to have my arm in a sling for a couple of days. I don’t care, even a little bit, that Bush had a spill. It happens.

But if the White House is going to come out and blame the fall on “what the White House described as soil loosened by recent rainfall”… (Here’s the quote: “It’s been raining a lot. The topsoil was loose.”)

Well, I can check that. There hasn’t been any rain in Crawford all week. The last day with more than an inch of precipitation was May 1.

Again, not a big deal, but why would they say that? And do you share my suspicion that Caren Bohan, who wrote the Reuters report from Crawford, knows perfectly well that there wasn’t any rain?

UPDATE: Kos has a similar post, with a different data set but the same conclusion.

[Crooked Timber]

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lying is a habit, a practice, you do it repeatedly and you learn to do it all the time. this is not so to speak 'good'. it is a vice, a viciousness, an insociability, and that in the end, is problematic.

Something like Fire, or the Wheel. I spent a lot of a flight from London to Singapore reading Tragically I was an Only Twin, a well-edited collection of the comedy sketches, monologues and occasional journalism of Peter Cook. It turns out that Cook addressed many of the issues that preoccupy us at CT. Like intelligent design theory:

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling: Well, I’d like to say I believed in God, of course, but I’m afraid that, as a thinking person … there are two very good reasons why I simply can’t. … A — Wasps. Can’t see the point of a wasp, can you? And B — caviar. I mean really, what is the point of having caviar locked away inside sturgeon? So inaccessible. I’m sure if there were a real God he’d have arranged for caviar to just sort of toddle over to your house on a pair of little legs in a self-opening jar.

Or sociobiology:

Interviewer: [B]ut isn’t an anthill a very organized society?
Prof. Henrich Globnik: If your view of an organized society is thousands of ants milling around in corridors, bumping into each other with bits of twig and other rubbish in their mouth then I understand why you elected that woman.

Or political theory:

Arthur Grole: No you don’t [speak Russian], you poor sod. And you have an inalienable right not to speak Russian in this country. In Russia you have to speak Russian. But in this country we have an inalienable right not to speak Russian.

And philosophy of language:

Ludovic Kennedy: Do you speak any Lap yourself?
Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling: I have a smattering — or a smeurtering, as they call it. They don’t in fact call it Lap. They call it Leurp. But I do have a smeurtering of Leurp. A few words … I like to think if I found myself in fourth-century Lapland I could get by — probably. Or preurbeurbly.

So obviously you should just buy it.

[Crooked Timber]

this seems like a book that i might like to read……

UN official: terrorism justifies info control. “The threat of terrorism has made it more important for nations to control the flow of information through the Internet, United Nations ICT Task Force Deputy Executive Coordinator Sergei Kambalov told Interfax during an interview at the 4th Annual Forum… [InternetPolicy.net]

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information control is a certain kind of population control and can easily turn dominating and fascistic….. it should be avoided.

DrupalEd and DrupalBlog: Preconfigured Drupal Distributions.

Getting the word out to see if anyone has any feedback. This was originally posted on cyberdash.com:

One of the biggest complaints about Drupal is that it's difficult to configure. I'll agree. As I've said in this discussion thread on drupal.org, most Drupal users know “that the reason that Drupal is difficult to customize is that it's like a block of clay–has to be molded for the particular site configuration.” And I firmly believe, despite some of the comments in the same thread, that this is the number one obstacle stopping many people from adopting it.

Well, I'll admit. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to take the Linux kernel, assemble the necessary packages, and configure everything. That's what Linux distributions are for.

So in the interest of making Drupal easier for newbies, I've assembled two Drupal distributions:

• DrupalEd is intended for the writing classroom. I say that not because it can't be used for other classes, but writing teachers are generally more interested, I believe, in discourse and community interaction more so than content delivery. And in this area Drupal excels. Looking for testing and grading modules? They won't be here. It's simply the configuration that Terra and I have been using for a few semesters now.
• DrupalBlog is setup as in individual blogsite, much like what Terra, Clancy and I use. By modifying a couple of permission settings, it can easily be configured to allow for multiple authors like Kairosnews.

[Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

note well the norms that certain universities are trying to establish and note who those norms serve.

uh-huh. from the facinating essay :: phpPatterns() – Templates and Template Engines “So… [IA? EH.]

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could be interesting, but it goes nowhere.

Think Secret: Virginia Tech cluster awaits G5 Xserves. And we're behind them in line. [Hack the Planet]

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this is not really news, but falling off the list might be somewhat important.

i've always liked this wesite, i don't know why. it pops up on my radar about once or twice a year and always makes me smile.

Infocus: TCP/IP Skills Required for Security Analysts. This article guides users new to the security field through some of the key skills required to work as a security analyst. The focus is on core TCP/IP competency and related technologies such as intrusion detection systems, firewalls and routers. [SecurityFocus News]

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i'm not an expert and even i agree that this is a required skill. i have a little book of tcp/ip that breaks it all down for me that i occasionally review. others should also be up on this info.