Category — General

today was my first day… I actually got a fair amount done today academically, just didn’t get much done where it needed to be done. as usual… in any case, i also signed up for my health insurance, and all my other bennies. I think I’m going to change the blog a bit. I am actually going to blog a fair more about what i’ve do in the day… perhaps diary like, but likely i’ll post a bit of writing, a bit of work and generally just log things. For instance, today I spent a good bit of time talking on AoIR about privacy, property, and data. I also read an interesting Zygmunt Bauman article and read an article on design. I also spent some time working on my syllabus, which I’ll finish off tomorrow morning.

Blog Meme:
Here are the rules:

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

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i did not get to 5 sentences……
http://www.tmttlt.com/archives/2002/12/30/30/

Rumsfeld ‘offered help to Saddam’. Declassified papers leave the White House hawk exposed over his role during the Iran-Iraq war. [Guardian Unlimited]

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why, isn’t this surprising?

Today is technically my last day as a full-time instructor of political science at Virginia Tech. It has been a great time with a great department. We’ve accomplished so much at VT, much of it unrecognized except by the community that it served. My colleague Brent Jesiek will now be the manager of the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture. Of course, I am still an STS student there, but we’ll hopefully end that soon enough:)

DevilDucky – Speeding Hurts: Collision:
Speeding Hurts: Collision

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a great public service announcement from denmark….

Viewing and hearing this file properly may require Quicktime 6 or greater.Please be patient while your media loads.

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.

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

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

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…

Making Light: Terrorists:
he says “I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists”. Bruce may not be saying that, but I am.

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I have to agree, and I think it is morally wrong for our own president and political parties to encourage their populace to be afraid of each other and the rest of the world. They should be trying to build a trust in the people of the world, trying not to cause blood enemies in other countries, etc.

one thing that we have to realize is that all humans in all states of the world are equal in their moral worth. citizens gain extra worth to the state, but that is not extra ‘moral’ worth. once everyone starts to realize that ‘People are not different, not monsters, and they are thinking, caring, human beings that are trying to make a better world’ If we can get people to stop thinking ‘better world for me and my friends (or others sharing similar transcendental beliefs’ and start thinking ‘better world for everyone, here, now and immanently’, then we’ve made progress.