Posts from — August 2006

Gurkha: Super Armored SUV.:

From the website:

It can stop a bullet from an AK-47, shrug off a roadside bomb, and it makes a Hummer look like a chick car.

The $200,000 (U.S.) Gurkha is coming to a road near you — thanks to a King City-based company that is finding itself in demand because of the global war on terror.

The Toronto Star Article | Armet’s website – via digg

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the unobvious problem of the suv is that they make people less safe in general terms. they up the ante in the virtual war of the road, encouraging people to feel safer, or less safe, increasing stress, and encouraging bad decisions. i just wish they would police and enforce the 3 ton limits more effectively.

Activist’s remark starts FBI probe – Yahoo! News:
“I told him, `How could you possible think this is a terroristic threat? Don’t you have something more to worry about?’” Bensman said. “He said: ‘We have to investigate everything.’”
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you are a terrorist until they prove you are not to their own satisfaction:)

World Trade Center, September 13, 2001:
These photos were taken at Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in New York, on September 13, 2001.

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lest you forget the pictures that you never saw…. i guess

The Gullibility Factor test at NewsTarget.com:
Free Thinker
Welcome to the top 5%. You’re a true free thinker and a person who is well informed about the reality in which you live. Although you may have been easily manipulated earlier in life, you eventually gained lucidity and developed a healthy sense of skepticism that you now automatically apply to your observations and experiences. You are endlessly curious about human behavior and the nature of the universe, and you have one or more lifestyle habits that most people would consider odd or unusual. You are not only of very high intelligence, you are also extremely creative in one or more areas (music, art, software development, inventing, etc.)

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well… maybe… this seems a bit too congratulatory to me… i scored an 85

TPAC – Technology Policy and Assessment Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology:
NSF Workshop on Social Organization of Science and Science Policy

Draft Agenda

NSF Workshop on
The Social Organization of Science and Science Policy
July 13-14, 2006

National Science Foundation, Room Stafford II-555
All participants must sign in at the main NSF building, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA

The workshop will explore the social science foundations of science policy in the context of today’s complex, global, and technologically-mediated society. Understanding the fundamental social processes involved in the structure and organization of science policy are crucial for maximizing the ability of science policy to enhance scientific development and innovation. This understanding requires more than an examination of economic inputs, outputs and the rational deployment of economic resources towards scientific goals; these criteria are necessary but not sufficient. In order to fully understand the formulation, acceptance, dissemination, and impacts of science policy, we also need to understand its social organization and the political, economic, and sociological context within which science policy and science succeed or flounder.

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the papers are here…

EC calls on Member States to contribute to the European digital library:
The European Commission urged EU Member States on 25 August to set up large-scale digitisation facilities, so as to accelerate the process of getting Europe’s cultural heritage on line via the European digital library. In a Recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation, it calls on Member States to act in various areas, ranging from copyright questions to the systematic preservation of digital content in order to ensure long term access to the material.
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yet another point of resistance in google’s ‘all your book belong to us’ campaign. oh… and… it means that citizens get access to books instead of consumers… same people, different perspective.

To be referred to, to be quoted, sorted, circumscribed by the gesture of the upturned commas, single or double: what does this mean? To be linked to, to be pointed at, made part of a discourse, drawn in, made party to it, beholden to it, responsible, culpable? A with-writer, a conspirator, a friend? To reference, be drawn in, made party to….. this is a dizzying thing, a moment of radical alienation (is it me? Really? Am I really part of this – am I here at all in all this?). To reference, to draw in, to conjure up, to evoke…. oh this of all things, this more than anything is to make neurotics of us all.

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but.. does authenticity, or authorial identity matter beyond the constructs of others? yes.. i want to be me… but i have as much control of other’s constructs of my ideas and opinions as i have in deciding which cars will pass by my window on any given day. to be cited, thus in my mind, is to contribute to someone else’s work and understanding of the world. i do not see that there is anything that needs to be profoundly deeper, or cared for at the identity-level of alienation. in short, i think the assumption that ‘you’ are being cited when someone uses your work is being overextended. I think it is better to think that someone found your writing useful

ONLamp.com — What Is OpenDocument:
The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an emerging file format standard for electronic office documents. Representing a triumph of common sense over the methods conceived before the rise of the Internet, ODF’s goals are both exciting and controversial. Early adopters of the format include state and municipal governments in some near- and far-flung places, and this makes the format’s progress a thing to watch. Yet innovation theory tells us there are some hurdles we all must overcome before ODF becomes a regular topic of conversation at the ballpark. Those in the know, however, recognize that we’re in about the second inning of a barn-burner. So, grab a hot dog and a beer, and settle in for a classic.

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Here’s something infrastructural that could change several business models….

The Journal of Electronic Publishing:


The Journal of Electronic Publishing – Summer 2006 edition now available
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some of these articles are interesting.

I Am Not A Terrorist:
I am not a terrorist.
Say it in Arabic, because free speech is for everyone.

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buy the t-shirt…