Things I Know I Know

It wasn't a dark and stormy night.

It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is finished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

But don't let the fog (with rain later, temperatures dropping to around forty-five degrees) give anyone a false sense of security. Just because it's a mild night doesn't mean that dark forces aren't abroad. They're abroad all the time. They're everywhere.

They always are. That's the whole point.

Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Lurk," these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been packing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

...from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Posted by debco at 05:26 PM | Permalink

No it is not Halloween themed...

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.

This means that sometimes a society gets stuck. Sometimes these unquestioned ideas interfere, as the cost of questioning becomes too great. In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.

...from The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig

Posted by debco at 05:17 PM | Permalink

If you work with or live next door to or (god forbid) are related to a computer support person and you see them in the hall or walking the dog or delivering Xmas packages, try talking to them about

!!!ANY BLOODY OTHER SUBJECT!!!

than why your computer doesn't work the way you want it to.

Thousands will cheer.

Posted by debco at 05:35 PM | Permalink

This month four people have come to this website by searching on:

diversity of living things (rottweiler)

I think they're looking for a paper written by a man who lives in the city of Rottweiler, though I'm willing to admit that Rottweilers, the dog breed, do definitively add to the diversity of living things.

Four people also came because they searched for:

millenium slogan

Now, I have an entry titled, Slogan for the New Millenium, but Google at least sends them to the empty comments page for that entry, not to the entry itself(it's not a particularly wondrous and good slogan, don't bother to look it up).

Lots of people are trying to figure out how to hookup a dvd and vcr (build them right in the first place is my advice). One person was looking for information on building your own dirigible (which I only wish I had on this site).

And one person wanted to know: does advertising make us buy things we want but don't need. Yes.

Posted by debco at 04:30 PM | Permalink

I’ve owned Rottweilers for almost thirteen years. As I’ve said before, I think they’re the perfect dog. Charming Billie believes that she was put on this earth for people to pet and make a fuss over and tell her that she's beautiful.

I was in Petco one day with Billie when a man told me about his 200 pound Rottweiler who bit small children. Not what you want to hear about a breed you love. But it bothers me, too, when people come up to Billie and throw their arms around her (it’s never good practice, by the way, to do this to a big dog you’ve never met) and say, oh, they’re so misunderstood, I love Rottweilers, they’re so sweet and gentle and they’d never hurt a fly.

This is what Rottweilers are: protective, strong, and driven. They are not sweet creatures who wouldn’t hurt a fly. If Charming Billie ever caught a fly, believe me, she would hurt it. I think they are a joy. My dogs have never attacked anyone, turned on me, or gotten in a serious dog fight. It is my responsibility to ensure that within the bounds of possibility, they never do. And they are misunderstood.

But, to me, saying they are sweet gentle creatures who would never hurt a fly, is a way of saying that you don’t need to pay attention to them, that people can wander in and out of your yard at will, that loose dogs can stick their nose in your Rottweiler's face, that they would never eat a cat or knock over a child or hurt a baby if they were left in a room alone together. But you know what? It doesn’t work that way. Rottweilers aren’t toys. They’re dogs. Big dogs who don’t understand things the same way you and I do. Who can’t tell friend from foe unless we help them. Who don’t know that cats and kids can get hurt if we don’t teach them. Who could get in big trouble if we don’t watch them.

If you get a Rottweiler be prepared for responsibility and challenges (both physical and mental) and shredded socks and broken windows. Be prepared for a dog that watches everyone who approaches you, who sometimes barks really loudly, who protects your car in parking lots. Who may also be sweet and who may, in the normal way of things, never hurt a fly. But more because you and they together make it possible than because they don't have it in them.

And if you play your cards right, in unexpected ways, there will be joy.

Posted by debco at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Biotechnologists in Taiwan are making luminescent birthday cakes. The glow comes from a phosphorescent protein extracted from red algae.

It would definitely save on the birthday candles.

Here's an interesting quote, though:

...but is not a health concern to consumers as it is completely natural and edible.

like 'natural' and 'edible' just always go together.

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 08:29 PM | Permalink

So what do you suppose Joseph Epstein thinks of this?

Even the name (which stands for National Novel Writing Month) sounds kind of like 'Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!'

Posted by debco at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Dogs like classical music.

According to a recent study in Ireland, dogs are more relaxed when they're listening to classical music, noisier when listening to heavy metal, and pretty much see no difference at all between pop music and silence. Apparently dogs have no position on jazz and the blues.

I like this quote best:

At Battersea they play "middle of the road" pop as well as classical music, but she [Becky Blackmore] says that variety is crucial. "If you just play them Classic FM all day they quickly filter it out and ignore it."

Posted by debco at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today's quote is again from The Art of Possibility, about why it's sometimes better to have heart than precision:

Stravinsky, a composer whom we tend to think of as rather objective and "cool," once turned down a bassoon player because he was too good to render the perilous opening to The Rite of Spring. This heart-stopping moment, conveying the first crack in the cold grip of the Russian winter, can only be truly represented if the player has to strain every fiber of his technical resources to accomplish it. A bassoon player for whom it was easy would miss the expressive point. And when told by a violinist that a difficult passage in the violin concerto was virtually unplayable, Stravinsky is supposed to have said: "I don't want the sound of someone playing the passage, I want the sound of someone trying to play it."

Posted by debco at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Oh, just read the article.

Posted by debco at 04:26 PM | Permalink

I have lost my brain.

If you find it, please treat it kindly and return it as soon as possible.

Posted by debco at 06:16 PM | Permalink

I am number two on Google, if you search for 'how to have a rational conversation.'

I'm sure this is a temporary condition....

Posted by debco at 06:14 PM | Permalink

This quote comes originally from a commencement address by John Jay Chapman at Hobart College in 1900. I lifted it from the Cluetrain Manifesto (2000):

...I have see ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messsages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I will use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought. His ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.

Posted by debco at 06:12 PM | Permalink

I'm sitting in a coffeehouse on what is apparently 'MLM Friday'; (MLM being Multi-Level Marketing) trying to research ideas for innovative technology projects. Here are my notes interspersed with MLM commentary:

MLM guys
Why I am the center of the universe. Why my presentation sounds canned even when I'm acting like I'm just your friend.

From the Cluetrain Manifesto

However much we long for the Web is how much we hate our jobs.

Note to self (regarding MLM guys)
Next time someone gives me a presentation where they ask me stupid questions all the way through, please make me ask them to stop.

Me on web potential
What can we build from the promise of voice and our authentic selves? What does this mean in practical everyday organizational terms? What can we do that's exactly our mission and something no one else is doing yet?

MLM guys
There are four kinds of people in the world--employees, self-employed, business owners, investors (Which one do you want to be? Right, investor.) Business owners are really franchise owners and the self-employed are really big, fat failures.

From the Cluetrain Manifesto

Artists have a stubborn faith in their ability to create newness from next to nothing.

MLM guys
They are using the language of spirit and longing to suck people into commission work. We make no investment in you. We don’t pay you unless we have to. And--ohmygod--the MLM guy actually says this, I have put off my promotions to help people like you make the kind of money I’m sure you can make. Because I’m a people person.

Me
What is information? What is knowledge? What is wisdom? The web is about moving bits. The web loves information. But what does it think of knowledge? And wisdom? How do we disseminate knowledge? Is there wisdom on the net? Where does it come from?

MLM guys
We don't cold call. We exploit your friends and family (only we call it something better than that).

Me
The energy has to be with the people. You can't say, come and do this because it will be good for you. They either won't come or won't do what you want unless it's something they want too or care about. We can't reach people in new ways if all we're doing is putting our old content up on the web. We have to give people voice and allow more chaos into the system.

MLM guys
We are the chosen people. Don't you think you're just a little bit better than everyone else? Exactly. That's why you're meant to work in multi-level marketing.

Me
So, the meaning of the web comes from us. And planning becomes something that can easily be overdone. Yet, we never leave behind the world of liability and bad press and misinterpretation. We can take no risk and change things hardly at all. Or we can take some risk and invent things we haven't even thought of yet.

Posted by debco at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The reason I bring up the 40 women party is because at one point all the women had to write down on a name tag the one thing we wished for. People had to guess who would wish for what and see how close we could come to knowing each other.

I wished for independence.

Now, you might think that's an odd wish for someone who has two dogs, a house and few other encumberances. The other women at the party did. You should have this obligation, they said. Or this one. Then, you'd see.

But every day there are choices that I feel are out of my reach, obligations that I don't want and didn't ask for that I must fulfill. If I were the person I want to be, I'd be independent. Not separate from people. Just powerful in a way that lets me make decisions independent of my next paycheck, of the people next door, of the clock and the guilt and the things that ought to be done because someone else needs them.

You can say it's a state of mind (though I'd argue that dependence on a paycheck diminishes that idea somewhat), but it's a state I haven't found yet. And it's one I'd like to try.

Posted by debco at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A friend of mine, on her fortieth birthday had a party to which she invited forty friends. "So it will be 40 women on my 40th birthday," she said.

Another friend of mine was very concerned about the whole idea. "Does that mean she's inviting 40 women? Or that 40 women are coming? What if she invites 40 women and only 37 women show up? Does it still count? What if she needs last minute substitute women? Where will she find them?"

It will work out fine, I told him.

Posted by debco at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've just started reading The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander.

In chapter 3, there is this passage:

Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we were to apply this visionary concept to education, it would be pointless to compare one child to another. Instead, all the energy would be focused on chipping away at the stone, getting rid of whatever is in the way of each child's developing skills, mastery, and self-expression.

This is the way I've trained dogs for years. Every dog is different. Every dog responds to different things, dislikes different things, wants different things. It's the way I try to teach other people to train dogs, too. It's a perspective that allows for potential in everyone.

Posted by debco at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As you know, Bob, Eldred v Ashcroft is the legal challenge to the copyright extension act (passed in 1998, I think), which extended copyright on both previous and future works another twenty years. There's been a lot of discussion of the upcoming case and the entire issue of copyright and the rights that copyright law attempts to balance over the last months all across the blog-o-sphere.

Last week, Eldred v Ashcroft was argued before the Supreme Court.

Lawrence Lessig, one of the primary attorneys on the case, provides a post mortem on his Supreme Court appearance and the case itself. He writes not only with great clarity about the case and what's at stake, but also about his own hopes and fears:

...as someone who believes this the rare case where the law, properly and carefully read, yields one right answer, there is no way I will ever be able to escape the thought that if we lose, it is because I am not the advocate that some could have been. It is the particular hell for lawyers that after an argument, we live in the purgatory of constantly reliving the argument. Every night since Wednesday I have awoken in the middle of the night, to spend the rest of the night reanswering Justice Ginsburg, or asking Chief Justice Rehnquist just how he could distingiush Commerce from Copyright. The kind words of so many notwithstanding, I know and have always known I am not Larry Tribe, or Kathleen Sullivan. And if, after getting this so close to the right result, I have lost this by not being them, then I am not quite sure how I will live with that fact.

All around the net there are reports from people who were there.

Some of them waited in line to get in:

from Lisa Rein:

I thought there would be a ton of people in line, but it has turned out to be just us for the first few hours (from 7pm till around 10 or 11pm). So we may have overdone it a bit showing up at 7pm, but there was just no way to know for sure and we didn't want to risk it. (As it turns out, only 25 members of the general public were admitted!)

Jace Cooke got there first at 7pm (right when I asked him too!) -- I was still packing up my friend Doug McVay's car with the blankets and things I was bringing, so that made me second in line when I got there around 7:30.

[...]

So now it's 3:00am in front of the Supreme Court and I can't sleep. Jace, Kevin and Seth have gone for a walk around the Capitol, and most of the others are bundled up in blankets sleeping or trying to sleep. (I can hear snoring so I know somebody's sleeping.) It's extremely quiet and beautiful here out in front of the Supreme Court. I'm taking video of it so you can all see for yourselves when I get back home next week.

from Seth Shoen:

At about midnight, a group of about eight law students from Virginia showed up. People trickled into line gradually after that. After looking around the Court, we sat down to play a round or two of Set. Next, after dropping my suitcase and suit off in Lisa's hotel room a few blocks away, Aaron and I went off for a while to use some wireless net access he'd discovered on a corner. We must have been a funny sight, standing together on a residential street corner after 1:00 in the morning, intently working on a couple of laptops. (Aaron's laptop backlight was also dead, so, when his laptop's display became too hard to read, he started up a VNC server on the laptop, I started a VNC client, and we used the wireless network to allow him to use my laptop as an interface into his laptop so he could run software there. However, in order to make the wireless reception work right, I had to walk about thirty feet away and hold his laptop up in the air!)

from jewishbuddha.org:

After they let the first 50 in, the rest of us stayed in line. They had to see if all of the invited guests showed up. There might be more seats. Hope springs eternal and all that. But the guests kept coming. "Yes, I have a ticket reserved. I think I'm supposed to go to the Marshall's office to pick it up. This is Congresswoman Bono. She has a ticket also." "Hi, I have a ticket reserved from Justice Kennedy." and so on. Then the clencher:

"Hi, I'm Jack Valenti. I'm on Scalia's list." Not "Justice Scalia." Not "I have a ticket reserved by Justice Scalia." No deference whatsoever. Just "I'm on Scalia's list." Whether or not the security guards knew or cared that he was the president of the MPAA didn't really matter. After he went in, those of us at the front of the line mocked him...

"Hi, I'm Jack Valenti. I bought a ticket from Scalia."
"Hi, I'm Jack Valenti. Antonin said to stop by here."
"Hi, I'm Jack Valenti. The VCR will destroy the movie industry."

But really, we were just jealous.

And others:

Mr Swartz goes to Washington

One Justice asked how extending the copyright of a dead person by twenty years would give them extra incentive to promote science and the useful arts. "Was [famous classical dead author] sitting there and thinking, well I'd write some more if only copyright lasted another 20 years after my death? (Laughter from the crowd.)" Olson said that the publisher would be able to distribute more. Ah, one Justice joked, I guess we should give someone the copyright to Shakespeare, since there apparently is no incentive to distribute his works.

Lawmeme

My impression of the argument itself is hazier still. Lessig went first, and I thought he got a good drumming from the Justices. But then Solicitor General Olson made his argument, and I thought he received a worse beating. Because of the difficulties hearing, seeing, and staying awake, I honestly wasn’t able to follow Lessig’s arguments. I was awed that the facts surrounding the Statute of Anne were cited and precedent in 2002. I thought we learned history just for the sake of knowledge. I would never have guessed that events of almost 300 years ago would be as relevant as they seemed in that courtroom Wednesday.

See Copyfight for a pretty good roundup of even more reports and reporting from around the Web.

I just think this is is SO COOL.

The web isn't just information. It's people and voice and experience laid out for us in ways we've never had access to before. Eldred v Ashcroft is something that affects us all. Reports from regular people as things happen are something that newspapers and CNN and sound bites and live action don't give us. Contact with people with different life experience and different perspectives and motivations helps us see that it's not just us, that it's not just showboating or esoteric subjects beyond our reach. It's us out there standing in line and getting excited about obscure points of information and caring about the way government and the law works.

It's hanging suits on trees and getting pizza delivery information from security and oversleeping at a crucial moment and random acts of generosity and discovering the sheer exhilaration of history in the making.

It's da bomb.

Posted by debco at 04:26 PM | Permalink

I was driving past a construction area while I was up near Chicago and I saw a big utility vehicle with one of these signs on the back that said:

Don't Follow Into Work Area

And I thought, well, you--the casual driver on the highway--would never follow it into the work area on purpose. You'd only follow it into the work area if you thought it was still the highway--if it was dark or rainy or there were too many big vehicles with bright lights driving around and you couldn't see clearly. And if you'd only follow it if you didn't know you were following it into the work area, then what good, exactly, does the sign do?

My favorite all-time unexplainable sign, by the way, was in front of a house in northeastern Iowa:

Chainsaw on Hand

for all your chainsaw emergencies.

Posted by debco at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Everyone I met at the hotel who was not attending the dog show seemed to be from Germany.

Posted by debco at 10:09 PM | Permalink

Had a great weekend. Watched many dogs, bought much stuff, talked to lots of people.

I've decided that SF cons are like dog shows (or dog shows are like SF cons, depending on your perspective). At dog shows, the panels are 6 to 9 Month Puppy Bitches and Bred by Exhibitor Dogs and Open and Novice and Utility. In the dealers' room (which is really the space outside the rings), they're selling clothing and art and other important, must-have stuff. The people wear odd clothing, talk about esoteric subjects, engage in philosophical debate (prong collars vs slip collars, jump heights, head shape), greet with enthusiasm people they haven't seen since the last dog show and start the conversation pretty much right where they left off. First time con goers/show participants and visitors from the outside ask many questions, wonder what the heck it all means and worry about the sanity of the participants.

Posted by debco at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is where I'll be the rest of the week.

Posted by debco at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here's a page that tells you how to use lasers to neutralize spy cameras.

Posted by debco at 10:13 PM | Permalink

TalkLeft has an entry about explosive new evidence in Central Park jogger case. Also here and here and here.

What bothers me most about this is not just that people went to prison for a crime they weren't guilty of, but that the original trial affected our entire zeitgeist, infiltrating the way we look at age and race and violence, the way we talked about 'youth today,' who we trusted and what we did.

It made nothing better for the woman who was attacked and raped and beaten, that the wrong people went to jail. Nothing takes back what happened to her. But it makes a difference to those who were wrongly convicted, to the victims of the man who has now confessed (and to whom other evidence seems to point).

And it makes a big difference to us. Rules ought not to rule the world. But principle and procedure are important. And though emotion, instinct and experience are all part of who we are (important parts we should never give up), we have to care about the rights of suspects, about fair trials, about rules of evidence and doing things the 'right way.' Because if we don't, then we are the Wilders and we give up the things that make us who we want to be, if not always who we are.

Posted by debco at 07:06 PM | Permalink

Get tomorrow's news today from FutureFeedForward.

And if you want to know who FutureFeedForward is, well, you can tell a lot about a company from their corporate culture:

We value inspiration without substance, plans without ambition, and technological innovation without engineering. We are a free-wheeling, independent hierarchy without a capital. Ours is a culture of fellowship among underachievers.

Sign me up.

Posted by debco at 10:31 PM | Permalink

You know, when I was in graduate school, I actually used research on how much time, on average, an average cow spends lying down or standing (for the record, they spend about half their time lying down and half their time standing), so I'm inclined to see value in, well, almost anything.

But I have to admit, when reading about the Ig-Nobel Awards at New Scientist, that I was particularly taken by the researchers who developed a device to translate dog barks into Japanese.

And, of course, you have to love this:

The economics prize was shared among a long list of corporations for "adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world."

Posted by debco at 09:52 PM | Permalink

In A Beautiful Mind, John Nash and others do some of their most brilliant work when they are working at places whose sole purposes are to make it easy for them to do and learn and talk--no monthly reports, no project management, no weekly staff meetings, no prioritizing or what-did-you-do-for-me-lately.

In his book, Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, David Weinberger says:

The computer-based view of knowledge [that we think like computers compute] that leads us to think of decision-making this way is just the latest--and most extreme--version of our culture's knowledge anorexia; it seems that every time we look at knowledge and see something that isn't purely fact-based and objective, we feel bloated and go on a stricter diet.

Charles Dickens has a novel, Hard Times that deals in part with the idea that education should be all about the facts and never about the fantastic:

"You are to be in all things regulated and governed," said the gentleman, "by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. you are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact...You must use," said the gentleman, "for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste."

Facts are not knowledge. Knowledge doesn't exist without people and people are not just mind but heart and body and soul and feelings.

Here's another quote from Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, because he says what I'd say, if I were better at saying it:

Realism is strong medicine that must be used cautiously because it suspends ways of thinking that are essential components of human existence such as dreaming, imagining, supposing, wishing and hoping. Worse, it presents a view of our relationship to the world that misses the heart of that relationship...To say that we are social creatures is to say that our relationships make us who we are. Knowledge, language, events, even the very perception of real things like rocks, all depend on living in a world that is a deeply interrelated context of meanings.

Posted by debco at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The new Two Towers trailer is out.

Looking real good.

Posted by debco at 04:25 AM | Permalink

MIT has put the first of its courses on the web. Their goal is to eventually have all their course materials available to anyone who wants them. Now, they have course materials for

• Linguistic Theory and the Japaneses Language
• Numerical Methods applied to Chemical Engineering
• Logistical and Transportation Planning Methods
• Electricity and Magnetism
• Marine Hydrodynamics

and a bunch of others.

It won't be the same, in any way, as actually taking a class at MIT, but it's cool in one of those 'I don't know how I will ever use this' ways. And I admire it for both for its tremendous contribution to the public good and for helping to demonstrate the idea that information, knowledge, and wisdom are not the same and maybe we don't have to be afraid of sharing information after all.

Posted by debco at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)