Posted 6/15/2003 01:01:41 AM

'The Bug': The Postmodern Prometheus

...T-shirts trading puns around a conference table. Enter Roberta Walton, a Ph.D. in the ''linguistics of poetics'' from Yale and something of a refugee from academia, where all of her colleagues have ''gone postmodern'' and given up ''on the notion of meaning.'' Berta is hired by Telligentsia to do Q.A., or quality assurance -- testing the code for bugs. Contrary to her expectations she becomes enamored of the ''separate, artificial reality inside the machine,'' even as she puzzles over the philosophical implications of this strange world made of ''pointers to pointers, arrays of pointers, pointers to structures containing pointers to strings'' and the distancing effect it seems to have on the lives of the people who write code. ''I didn't know it at the time,'' Berta recalls with the mordant hindsight that distinguishes her voice, ''but I was quickly becoming what I hated most about programmers: impatient with anyone who couldn't code. So it was,'' she reports, ''that I missed the death of Foucault.''

Posted 6/15/2003 12:06:40 AM

via Mel-x: a photographer's angst

current mp3:
trust.company::the.fear

Posted 6/14/2003 11:59:59 PM

daniel responds to some of my off-the-cuff musings on working groups by rightly pointing out that breakthroughs are often the genius of a single person. he uses the Semantic Web RDF/RSS situation to emphasize his point.

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web he was an individual. Then the whole thing exploded and he helped create the W3C. Now he is trying to execute on the Semantic Web from within that institution, and it ain't gonna happen. It is only going to happen when a few of us lonely mavericks create applications that take the true idea, get through all the institutional diarrhea, and create something meaningful for real people.... Basically, bullshit is just bullshit as long as it's just laying around the pasture. It's when you take it and spread it over your crops that things get interesting.

my thoughts are pretty much in line with daniel's. i would add that breakthroughs (such as the WWW) are not paradigmatic, but catalyze a certain paradigm shifting. this was the effect of TBL's singular work on the W3. between shifts it is the work of committees, whether in the form of a W3C working group, the UN or the U.S. Senate, to guard, govern, extend and eventually burry the paradigm that authorizes it. the challenge is that this authorizing function of the world that the singular breakthrough opens can often never be burried and is defended by the authorized because of the identity and empowerment that their place in the world's unfolding provides. this is the cadence of the stereotypical behemoth beurocracy of design/creation/leadership-by-committee. often this state is only subverted through the whim of mass problem-solution adoption patterns (an example, in our present discussion, being RSS functionally dominating a space that a committee is trying to evolve and control). so, while i agree that the WWW was not originally invented by committee our experience of the web today rests not simply upon the work of the maverick, but upon the collective tensions of this work at the center of an economy of committees and world-wide adoption patterns--creating something much more than was originally envisioned in CERN not so many years ago.

Posted 6/14/2003 11:59:46 PM

if you run XP on any of your machines MS just released a Media Player/Blogging plug-in that automagicly inserts what is currently playing into blog posts.

this is not an example of such automation:

current mp3:
trust.company::slipping.away

Posted 6/14/2003 10:58:34 PM

Atheist premier attacks lack of Christianity in EU constitution

Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski, denounced the "Godless" tone of the European constitution yesterday, calling it shameful to highlight the pet ideologies of the Left but omit any mention of Europe's Christian heritage in the opening words.

"I am an atheist and everybody knows it, but there are no excuses for making references to ancient Greece and Rome, and the Enlightenment, without making references to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe," he said....

"The most significant feature of every city and town in Europe is either a cathedral or a church."

Posted 6/14/2003 10:31:10 PM

Spike^TM Lee is claiming to have rights over the usage of the English word, "Spike," as it relates to the entertainment industry.

Mr. Lee and Mr. Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. are valiantly fighting off Buffy's 19th century English vamp lover and Tommy's dog who are also claiming rights to the name.

Posted 6/13/2003 04:44:28 PM

Doubting Danish priest suspended

Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town near the capital Copenhagen, said in a recent interview that "there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection".

Local bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel suspended the priest for a week after a meeting with him on Tuesday at which she demanded that he retract his comments.

The Raving Atheist writes:

Now, there are some things you apologize for and others you don’t. What, exactly, do they expect Rev. Grosboel to say? Do they want him to simply turn around the next day and say “I’m sorry -- there IS a heavenly God, there IS an eternal life, there IS a resurrection”?

Sincerity, I always thought, was an integral part of any apology. Perhaps something like this is going on right now in Copenhagen:

Rev. Grosbeol: I’m sorry.
Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel: No, say it like you mean it.
Rev. Grosbeol: I’m sorry.
Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel: No, say it like you mean it.
Rev. Grosbeol: I’m sorry.
Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel: No, say it like you mean it . . .

[Repeat 10 billion times . . .]

Related: The Church in Denmark

I want to see the full text of this sermon before I comment. I can't find it on Google. If you see it send me an email.

Posted 6/13/2003 03:15:28 PM

In 1943, one research group interviewed 291 boys to find out what it was that gave them erections. The boys dutifully provided an exhaustive list. It included, among other highlights, sitting in class, sitting in church, sitting in warm sand, and setting a field on fire. The national anthem was also responsible for a few erections. So was finding money (understandable) and, for a few unfortunates, being asked to go to the front of the class.

kids and sex

Posted 6/13/2003 01:32:04 PM

This is a test post from the wireless Axim.
No, I am not on the toilet.

Posted 6/13/2003 12:45:48 PM

Students Roil Iranian Capital in 3rd Night of Protests

The protesters chanted "Death to Khamenei," a slogan that can bring a jail term in this country, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, goes unquestioned.

"I've been lashed, jailed for having a satellite dish," said a student, underscoring the simmering social frustrations behind the riots. "It's time to stand up for what we want."

fascinating... in '79 the revolution was about standing up for what they believed.
{not that wants and beliefs are really all that different...}

Posted 6/13/2003 12:24:03 PM

EU: Convention Agrees On Draft Constitution

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the chairman of The Convention on the Future of Europe, presented the draft EU constitution this morning.

"We are a convention constituted of different parts and multiple nationalities, cultures, and histories. We had to progressively search to find a consensus between the different requirements and sensibilities. This consensus is the one which is described in the document you have in front of you." - Valery Giscard

This is a fascinating moment in Europe's continued political unfolding.

As I was reading this my first thoughts were how these discussions, negotiations and agreements were not unlike the working groups that hammer out public tech specifications. There seems to be such a palpable difference between your average committee and your average working group. The former seems so often to imply oversight and enforcement while the later a collective process of creation; the former commissioned indefinitely and the later a bombastic birthing process with outcomes and end points.

Posted 6/13/2003 12:03:01 PM

Bézenville ::
Cocking a snook at urban pollution
via
boingboing

Posted 6/13/2003 11:50:19 AM

Posted 6/13/2003 10:52:11 AM

Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech

i walk away from reading this excerpt from Stanley Fish scratching my head and saying, "yes, now what?"

tolerance as a starting position is simply the political/ideological privileging of humility. this outworking of humility is a fundamental, "yes," to the dignity of the neighbor who is different that clears the space for the long work of negotiation that is the precursor to a layered set of agreements that form the relationships that allow for tolerance as a first principle--means and ends ineluctably intertwinded.

platitudes are the embodied phobias of a supposedly enlightened society.
tolerance is a multi-generational relationship.

Posted 6/13/2003 07:34:23 AM

wanna try that wireless card out at Starbucks?

300 free minutes in T-Mobile Hotspots without further commitment.

Posted 6/12/2003 08:46:50 PM

meaning is local.

human-mediation is at play in all meaning. meaning has a location, a smell, a taste, a certain passion that is plausible because of the confluence of shared history, vocabularies, biochemistry and lived events that well up together to form a common dwelling whose remainder speaks to something quite like meaning.

Posted 6/12/2003 08:36:43 PM

the other kingdom is always already local.

Posted 6/12/2003 08:22:42 PM

funny
frightening

via jordon and
jason respectively

Posted 6/12/2003 02:18:04 PM

Posted 6/12/2003 02:14:32 PM

i made it into miller's blogparody.

from this moment on i will be ensuring that each of the posts that make it onto TheyBlinked.com first go through the newest blogger tool: the vocabulary throttle.

i am setting the threshold property to 400 words and the dictionary web service to "Reader's Digest."

Posted 6/12/2003 01:50:23 PM

current mp3:
evanescence:my.immortal
...your voice it chased away
all the sanity in me

Posted 6/12/2003 10:51:21 AM

trey and i are having a little back
and forth over wifi and spiritual
gatherings in jordon's
comments.

...spiritual communities are always already dwelling with their technologies: the oil lamp, multi-story architecture, the codex, cuneiform, pneumonic device, etc. the question is not whether one can exist outside of human creation (technology), but rather does the community deem the technology under question appropriate--is there an **agreement** at some level that opens the space to coexist with a particular technology.

we dwell with and through our tools. we always have. there is no pristine origin that one can attempt a return to that is somehow "toolless," somehow outside of the influence of the human capability augmentation of technology....

anybody wanna jump in?
backstory

Posted 6/12/2003 09:39:50 AM

Israeli Forces Take Aim at Hamas in Third Strike in 24 Hours

"Bush, too, cannot compel Hamas to stop terror,'' Israeli commentator Sever Plotzker wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. "And the all-powerful Bush cannot compel Sharon to stop the assassinations (of Palestinian militants). The cause and effect, the effect and cause, it's all jumbled. Who remembers who started?''

Posted 6/10/2003 03:47:05 PM

America's Mullah

We often hear that Muslim leaders refuse to separate religion and politics. But just how different is the United States in this regard? Just ask Mullah Calvin. But who is Mullah Calvin?

The Calvinist legacy

Jean Calvin was the Reformation leader who gave the "Protestant Ethic" its edge — and not just in theology alone. He believed the laws of The City (meaning worldly politics) should conform to the laws of God. As a consequence, he turned Geneva into a religious republic.

Very early on, America too had its own Calvinist religious republic, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its preacher-rulers like Cotton Mather — “Very tremendous Things will be done to those Enemies of God, who go on still in their trespasses” — really put the sulfur into “fire and brimstone” sermons.

Think of these preachers as America's very own mullahs. And they are still with us, even now. In times of national crisis, moreover, Puritans still rule....

Posted 6/10/2003 01:31:17 PM

Who Really Helps the Poor?

Foreign Policy: Ranking the Rich

...The CDI results are critical for two reasons. First, helping impoverished people worldwide build better lives is the right thing to do, and this index can educate policymakers, provoke public discussion, stimulate research, and guide activists seeking that goal. The hard truth is that even the best-performing nations in the CDI have a long way to go to make their policies as helpful as possible for poor families in developing countries. The Netherlands, even though it ranks highest, averages merely 5.6 points on the 10-point scale. Second, what rich countries do to and for the rest of the world comes back to affect them—poverty and instability do not respect borders. Surely the United States would benefit if Mexico were as stable and prosperous as Canada. Surely West European nations would benefit from an economic resurgence in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Call it trickle-up economics: When the poor become better off, so do the rich.

...

The CDI measures rich countries’ barriers to developing-country exports, as well as the income that poor countries forgo due to internal production subsidies in rich nations. The World Bank estimates that trade barriers in developed economies cost poor nations more than $100 billion per year, roughly twice what rich countries give in aid. [See the chart on how trade trumps aid.] Among the most protected industries in high-income nations are agriculture, textiles, and apparel—not coincidentally the precise areas where poor countries are most competitive, and where they could create the most jobs absent such protectionism. Producers in rich nations benefit from a combination of government subsidies and tariffs and quotas on imported goods. Japan, for instance, imposes a 490 percent tariff on foreign rice, while the average cow in Switzerland earns the annual equivalent of more than $1,500 in subsidies....

::Commitment to Develoment Index of 21 Rich Nations::

1. Netherlands
2. Denmark
3. Portugal
4. New Zealand
5. Switzerland
6. Germany
7. Spain
8. Sweden
9. Austria
10. Norway
11. United Kingdom
12. Belgium
13. Greece
14. France
15. Italy
16. Ireland
17. Finland
18. Canada
19. Australia
20. United States
21. Japan

Posted 6/9/2003 11:49:19 PM

Revolution is the opiate of intellectuals.
-gu

via scratched surface

Posted 6/9/2003 11:33:24 PM

i owe many of you email.
i will dig out eventually.

Posted 6/9/2003 11:27:12 PM

i got the new metallica today.
the vocals are mixed oddly.
it's not commercial...
but neither is it classic Kill/Ride/Master.

the best comparison is Garage Days Re-revisited.
the rythmn guitar/base/drums are good.
there is no solo work per se.
there are no singles.

if you are not a metallica fan,
but must sample some pick up S&M
before you do St. Anger.

if you must have St. Anger
you can get it at Target for ~$9.
not bad for a CD/DVD release.

Posted 6/9/2003 10:59:43 PM

i'm writing from a new server that i just brought up in the Hughes Data Center on the third floor.

overall today has been excellent. i had coffee with al-haqq and spent some quality time with david as he played on our bandwidth... talked to mem, senator and shananana and accomplished mucho techno stuff around the house: all of my machines are now on the network; i tweaked some wireless stuff; setup a new development box with VS.Net 2003 and organized/cleaned the physical space around it all. good feeling.

in the midst of it all i needed a couple of things--a 12 volt adapter, an RJ-45 cable and various and sundry other inconsequential items. the one problem: it was 9:30pm when i ventured out to get some nuts, bottled water and my needed tech items. i went to Fry's. no luck. they close at 9pm. poseurs. after checking off all of the other possibilities in my mind... Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. etc., i wrote off my tech needs and decided to go to Target to get my nuts on the way home.

allow me to now sing the praises of Super Target. they had every friggin' thing on my list.

next time i need anything late at night i'm walking to the 24-hour Super Target.

Posted 6/8/2003 09:10:05 PM

a little depression and disillusion combined with too many other meaningless responsibilities... i suck. thanks, btw. i'll get back with you soon, daniel. peace.

Posted 6/8/2003 08:59:15 PM

Salon.com Technology | "0wnz0red"

"The codebase! Haven't you figured it out yet? It's a startup! We go into business in some former-Soviet Stan in Asia or some African kleptocracy. We infect the locals with the Cure, then the interface, and then we sell 'em the software. It's viral marketing, gettit?"

"Leaving aside CIA assassins, if only for the moment, there's one gigantic flaw in your plan, dead-man."

"I'm all aflutter with anticipation."

"There's no fucking revenue opportunity. The platform spreads for free -- it's already out there, you've seeded it with your magic undead super-cock. The hardware is commodity hardware, no margin and no money. The controller can be built out of spare parts from Fry's -- next gen, we'll make it WiFi, so that we're using commodity wireless chipsets and you can control the device from a distance --"

"-- yeah, and that's why we're selling the software!" Liam hopped from foot to foot in a personal folk-dance celebrating his sublime cleverness.

Posted 6/8/2003 08:04:49 PM

the bits for BlogX are here.

more info on Chris' site.

Posted 6/8/2003 08:01:52 PM

Hackers and Painters

Posted 6/8/2003 07:52:59 PM

Thou shalt play.

Posted 6/8/2003 03:52:10 PM

if spiritual direction, pastoral work, religious engagement in a vocational way is to be deemed an art form the patrons of such a vocational calling must be willing to deal with the oddities of the creative cadence; the unregimented eccentricities of the artist's way in the world. or those engaged in said art must be willing to live outside of the structures of economic exchange that define what it is to fashion a life, a practice, that carries on ancient patterns of existence that are living reminders of what once was and yet can be.

{it's easier to run a corporation, be a celebrity and sell salvation.
this might explain why getting your MDiv and your MBA are such similar processes.}

Posted 6/8/2003 03:33:40 PM

Gollum's 'Best Digital Performance' acceptance speach

Posted 6/8/2003 02:29:03 AM

Standard Reference Material No. 2387

Posted 6/8/2003 02:25:10 AM

jordon mentioned Fellowship Church and their wifi setup last week. i commented about my negative experience of that particular jesus "cyber cafe"--leaving a bit of my perspective on the church wifi thing:

it's not as impressive as it seems. i've used it. terrible really. there is no throughput. they must be running that entire jesus disneyland on a DSL line.

i think that the real test is not so much bandwidth (sufficiency in that area should be assumed), but range. at fellowshipchurch.com the range is very, very narrow (which means they have stumbled on both fronts). the cafe is pretty much the extent of it.

a mini-revolution ensues when IP is open and abundant in spaces of teaching and worship. when this happens the competing monologue effect comes into play. all of a sudden the possessor of the bully pulpit is accountable to the dozen bloggers and curious fact checkers in the audience. Clies and IPaqs, laptops and cellphones at the ready these hyper-literate parishioners are verifying historical claims, sending comments across the room on IM and publicly rough blogging the sermon/lesson warts and all.

a capability like this would be a tangible sign within the church of something akin to Dan Gillmor's WeMedia (http://www.cjr.org/year/03/1/gillmor.asp). though a phenomenal way for leaders to learn and a metric for gauging response my guess is that the lack of control would be a show stopping issue in many churches.

pity.

Posted 6/8/2003 02:14:40 AM

i realized tonight--walking up my stairs and rounding the corner toward the kitchen--that somehow, unbenounced to me, i became Chas Tenenbaum; a single father of two living his frenetic life in a red Adidas tracksuit.

having rounded that corner i saw, as if for the first time, one large and two medium whiteboards in a row.