Things I Know I Know

According to an AP report at Boston.com, Senate Democrats are going to beasking questions about Iraq weapons intelligence:

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee announced Friday plans to stage their own inquiry on the credibility of prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its links to the al-Qaida terror network.The announcement by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel's top Democrat, marked an unusual split with Chairman John Warner, R-Va., on an issue with strong political overtones ahead of next year's elections. Warner and Levin are longtime colleagues on the committee and repeatedly stress bipartisan cooperation.

Posted by debco at 08:41 PM | Permalink

Miriam Rainsford, a composer, musician, graphic designer and writer, is publishing a book called copyleft: creativity, technology and freedom?:

'Copyleft' rises controversially against the concepts of so-called 'piracy' and 'intellectual property', believing that these words are in fact propoganda, devised by the corporations which make money off the artists' backs, and are rarely in use by artists themselves (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html). To quote Richard M. Stallman, "piracy is storming a ship": he believes that all materials should be free to share, in the same way that, on purchasing a book, one is free to lend it to friends, read from it in public, or donate it to a secondhand bookstore where another person may benefit from buying and reading it. Under copyleft licensing, one is free to do all this and more, in order that society may benefit from the learning experience.

Information is not just a privelege, but a basic human right, and our rights to education are threatened by the rise of so-called 'Digital Rights Management' laws. What is at stake is whether we wish to have not only our software and creative artwork, but also our hobbies, our culture and the music that we listen to controlled by multinational corporations and force fed to us in sanitised, pre-packaged and politically acceptable forms, becoming as it were a method of propaganda akin to the control in which Communist governments of the Cold War era asserted over the thinking of their populations. Is it possible for us to preserve our rights to freedom of information, freedom of thought, and freedom of speech through a licensing system that better provides for learning, understanding and progress in invention? Copyleft asserts that this is possible through the use of free licenses such as the GPL.

'Copyleft' in itself is a unique book, as it will be released under the copyleft principles of the GNU licenses, and available concurrently with book sales for free download from the Internet. Verbatim copying of the book will be freely permitted, as long as any quotation or reproduction is itself subsequently permits redistribution. By setting an example through the use of this license, the author seeks to demonstrate that such an idea has legal precedence and can be practically applied in not only in the software industry but also in the arts and creative media.

I am a writer. I've made money from writing and I hope to make money from writing again. But the absolutism of RIAA and MPAA and the idea that intellectual property is 'just like' real property, that ideas can be locked up and available only for a price is wrong. Free exchange of ideas is essential. Compensation and support for artists is also essential (I would say 'just' compensation for artists, but it's not just now--the 'best' artists don't always make money). We have to find a balance and we have to let everyone participate in the conversation.

Posted by debco at 08:35 PM | Permalink

Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos, who often has excellent, thoughtful posts has a particularly excellent one about Eight reasons why WMD matters

In part, he says:

In the real world away from the Beltway, real people are being harmed....

...There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda in any way, shape or form, and focus against a deadly terrorist sponsor was lost to invade and occupy Iraq. The only loigical reason to invade and occupy Iraq was due to WMD....

...It matters if we find them or not because the President said they were there in quantity and that America should risk their sons and daughters to eliminate this threat. Saddam is gone and in hiding somewhere, US troops are still dying, this time in a nasty guerrilla war and someone needs to be held accountable for this. Waving the dead Shia about will not protect Bush and his cronies from the justifiable rage of those burying their teenage sons.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Posted by debco at 07:17 PM | Permalink

Okay, listen up. This is the sure-fire dog training tip. And I'm giving it away for free. For free!

A dog can't jump while it's sitting.

That's it. It should be, like, a law or something.

People ask me all the time, "How can I keep my dog from jumping on people?"

And this is the one sure-fire answer:

A dog can't jump while it's sitting.

More people than you'd think don't like this answer. They want to knee their dog in the chest or tell it "No!" very loudly or grab its paws until it gets uncomfortable. Or anything that will be quick and fast and almost like magic. And for some dogs, some of the time, those things do work. But the sure-fire, works-everytime, one-thing is to teach your dog to sit when you tell it to.

Because a dog can't jump while it's sitting.

Posted by debco at 07:07 PM | Permalink

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
Awesome book! Awesome writing! I hadn't really paid much attention to this book because it didn't seem like my kind of thing, but it was recommended to me by a good friend so I tried it. You don't have to care about racing or horses (though everyone cares about horses, don't they). It's good.

And a bunch of entertaining but more or less forgettable mysteries:

The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria by Laura Joh Rowland
Okay, this one's good and I'd recommend the whole series. They take place in Japan in the seventeenth century.

Murder of a Snake in the Grass and
Murder of a Sleeping Beauty by Denise Swanson
These are about a school psychologist who lives in one of those small towns where people are always dying under suspicious circumstances. The world of school and kids is fun and interesting.

Murder in Hell's Kitchen by Lee Harris
I admit, I had to look at the back cover blurb to remember what this one was about, but it was decently written. Plus, I liked the part where she went to Omaha.

Equivocal Death by Amy Gutman
If you're young and beautiful, bad things may happen to you, but everything will be all right in the end, particularly (and of course, completely surprisingly, as one cannot be crass) financially.

Posted by debco at 06:55 PM | Permalink

Short break, pretty much unplanned. I think my brain went on vacation without me. But I think I'm back now. Of course, it's summer and it's getting hot and humid so one never knows what will happen next....

Posted by debco at 06:42 PM | Permalink

From an interview in New Scientist:

Interviewer: Did you find scientific language difficult to penetrate?

Bill Bryson (author of A Short History of Nearly Everything): I rather expected it to be worse than I found it. I was quite delighted with how accessible most of the writing in Nature is. The part that I sometimes found hard was sitting with a scientist as they explained their work to me. I had one scientist who was extremely patient at explaining particle physics to me, and I simply couldn't grasp it at all. It seemed like the sort of thing that someone on LSD would be telling you. It is such a completely different world from the one I know.

Posted by debco at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A 360 degree view from the top of Mt. Everest....

...via The Shifted Librarian

Posted by debco at 04:01 PM | Permalink

Check out this sign....

...via The Shifted Librarian

Posted by debco at 03:58 PM | Permalink

Billmon has a great collection of quotes over the last few months on the promise of democracy in Iraq. I've posted a few here, but you really need to go there to get the full impact:

First -- and this is really the overarching principle -- the United States seeks to liberate Iraq, not occupy Iraq . . . If the President should decide to use force, let me assure you again that the United States would be committed to liberating the people of Iraq, not becoming an occupation force.

Paul Wolfowitz
Speech to Iraqi-American Community
February 23, 2003

I think what we are so proud of is governments which permit their populace to be involved in a process that provides them freedom, provides them liberty. And I think what we will see in the months and years ahead in Iraq will provide a bit of a model for how that can be done . . . . because, Tony, it will be the Iraqi people who decide how to do that, and they will do it on their terms.

Gen. Tommy Franks
Fox News Interview
April 13, 2003

I think you'll begin to see the governmental process start next week, by the end of next week. It will have Iraqi faces on it. It will be governed by the Iraqis.

Gen. Jay Garner
Press Conference in Baghdad
April 24, 2003

I would think we are talking about more like sometime in July to get a national conference put together.

L. Paul Bremer
Remarks to Reporters in Baghdad
May 21, 2003

Question: When do you think there might be a government in place, even a provisional government in place in Iraq?

Rumsfeld: I don't know.

Donald Rumsfeld
Infinity Radio Town Hall
May 29, 2003

Posted by debco at 03:14 PM | Permalink

NH state Representative Corey Corbin has changed party affiliations from Republican to Democrat:

Example: The GOP proclaims itself the party of fewer taxes, of lower burdens on the people. Yet just last year, it was GOP-crafted legislation that led to the largest business and telecommunication tax increases in state history. In addition, the republican majority voted three times in one day, just this year, to increase the property tax burden on home owners by enacting the "C" budget in the House.

Example: The republican party advocates a good and "adequate" education for all children. Yet GOP actions in the House have repeatedly thwarted the efforts of public school systems to better educate our kids. How? By supporting legislation that ends the state's responsibility to pay for education; by pushing for funding for charter schools when the money doesn't exist; by refusing funding for programs like early literacy and programs for children with disabilities.

These are not the actions of a party that truly wishes to better the lives of the people it pretends to represent.

And so, after much deliberation and soul-searching, I decided that my efforts were better spent advancing the cause of the common-man. I decided that I would join a party that champions the family, the little guy - the work-a-day people who make this state the great place to live, work and raise our kids we know it to be. I became a Democrat.

I lived in New Hampshire for several years in the early 80's and it has, as Corbin mentions in the article, always been one of the 'leanest states in the nation'. And not in a mean-spirited way either. The citizens of New Hampshire would decide that this, and this, and this were important and all the rest was...well, not. And they knew that if they didn't pay for it, they wouldn't be getting it. Old-style conservatism is highly prized in New Hampshire, but it appears that perhaps, at least for some, radical party ideology is not.

Posted by debco at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Paul Krugman in the New York Times, talks about the Bush administration and lying:

It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's. But the important point is that this isn't about Saddam: it's about us. The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history — worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra. Indeed, the idea that we were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility.

But here's the thought that should make those commentators really uncomfortable. Suppose that this administration did con us into war. And suppose that it is not held accountable for its deceptions, so Mr. Bush can fight what Mr. Hastings calls a "khaki election" next year. In that case, our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.

Posted by debco at 02:46 PM | Permalink

Interesting paper on how important relationships are in multi-payer online games:

From ou comparison between why and how the social networks are formed in the mafia and in EQ, we have seen that there are some striking similarities....Lappainen[13, p. 74] suggests that the mafia initially grew out of an ancient honor system where elders were entrusted to negotiate in conflicts and pass judgements that the others were obliged to adhere to. The fact that Sicily historically hs been targeted by outside interests such as the Spanish and fascists has also contributed to a need for organized resistance against outside oppression. The transition into a criminal organization came later, possibly more or less because the mafia realized that they could use their powerful organization to achieve fortune for themselves. This pattern is repeated in EQ. The strong emphasis on reputation in the creation of social networks grows out of a need from the players to self-govern their gaming environment in order to secure a positive experience in the presence of potential disturbance and a simultaneous absence of an effective and reliable governing system. But ultiimately these networks are also used to take shortcuts through, or trick, the formal rules of the system.

Posted by debco at 04:39 PM | Permalink

Newsweek has an interview with Robin Cook, former British foreign secretary, on the issues of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the justification for pre-emptive war with Iraq and what it means for the future. I particularly liked this response:

Isn’t it possible that Saddam Hussein ordered their destruction, as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has suggested?

No. I don’t think it’s even remotely possible. I just cannot follow the Rumsfeld logic; that watching CNN and seeing the American build-up Saddam said to his generals, “It’s obvious that the U.S. is going to invade; we had better destroy our biggest weapons, so that when I am toppled there might be some very difficult questions for Donald Rumsfeld to answer.”

But it's all good....

Posted by debco at 04:04 PM | Permalink

The Electronic Freedom Frontier has issued a review of the May 20th Report on Total Information Awareness:

On May 20, 2003, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued its "Report to Congress regarding the Terrorism Information Awareness Program" (TIA). The Report, mandated by Congress and written to "assess[] the likely impact of the implementation" of TIA on civil liberties and privacy, was an opportunity for DARPA to make a careful review of the components of TIA and require accountability for each of these components. Unfortunately, the Report did not take advantage of this opportunity.

The Report makes one thing quite clear: TIA is being tested on "real problems" using "real data" pertaining to U.S. persons, apparently from Defense Department (DoD) intelligence files.

Among the things mentioned:

New Name: TIA now equals Terrorist Information Awareness
New Programs: Rapid Analytical Wargaming; Futures Martkets applied to Prediction; Global Autonomous Language Exploitation; and Next-Generation Facial Recognition among others
Cost of TIA: for FY 2003 to 2005--53,752,000 (includes only the line item for TIA). Budget for all TIA programs--140 million in 2003; 169 million in 2004

The review also indicates that the report still does not address critical privacy and civil liberties issues

Posted by debco at 04:01 PM | Permalink