I just posted a code update, which clears up some minor annoyances with the recommend function.

1. Escapped unicode characters in html selected by the bookmarklet should now be handled properly.

2. When you click recommend in the site there is no longer a pop-up.

3. You can now include HREF links in your posts. Standard html format.

Let me know if there are any problems.

] Last year, another Brookings economist, Charles Ferguson,
] argued that perhaps as much as $1 trillion might be lost
] over the next decade due to present constraints on
] broadband development. These losses, moreover, are only
] the economic costs of the United States' indirection.
] They do not take into account the work that could have
] been done through telecommuting, the medical care or
] interactive long-distance education that might have been
] provided in remote areas, and unexploited entertainment
] possibilities.

This article oversimplifies this issue by focusing too much on the executive. There are cultural, infrastructural, and economic differences between the United States and places like Japan and South Korea which have a far greater impact on broadband development in those regions then federal policy. This is not "Bush's fault."

However, the Clinton administration clearly provided leadership in this area, and that leadership was clearly useful, and the Republicans are clearly less interested in telecommunications policy.

The question that I have is, where are the applications? What do my friends in South Korea do with their high speed internet access? They download movies off of p2p networks. This is not the kind of application that is likely to spur trillions of dollars in GDP. It IS possible to overbuild infrastructure.

They've got it. What are they doing with it? Broadband is not a core capability. It is a means to an end. Once you can clearly demonstrate the ends that Japanese can reach, that we cannot, you'll have a compelling arguement for serious government leadership. This arguement skips over this matter as if it was a forgone conclusion. It is not. Someone on this board knows what these applications are. Maybe I ought to be tracking down these brookings reports.

It is also wrong to say that US has always led this race. The US was about 10 years behind the French in development of basic network information services like email and behind nearly everyone in the development of good mobile phone service. The US has a slow tech adoption rate and is very cautious about moving forward. Getting the internet to happen in the US was like mice trying to get an elephant rolling down a hill.

In 1990 it was obvious to me, even as a kid, that I wanted a digital network connection in my house that plugged into my computer. It was obvious to me what I'd do with it. It is not obvious to me what I'd do with 40 megs a second in my house ('cept possibly cancel my colo contract). I promise its going to be obvious to me long before its obvious to the FCC.

Down to the Wire

noteworthy wrote:
] Creating a communications infrastructure that fosters a
] healthy democracy has been a concern of the United States
] since its founding. Newspaperman and intellectual Walter
] Lippmann once noted that the real trouble with both the press
] and representative democracy is "the failure of self-governing
] people to transcend their casual experience and their
] prejudice by inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery
] of knowledge." In MemeStreams, that machinery may finally have
] arrived.

I think this article makes a critical logical fallacy that has been bothering me about this whole blogosphere business.

He worries about... "spin doctors" (people who deliberately post misleading items). But he explains how the communal character of blog culture mitigates many potential excesses: bloggers who are uninteresting don't get linked to;

First, if I could please be pointed to the blogger who isn't a spin doctor, I would very much like to read his or her blog. Furthermore, it seems that interesting and knowledge might be mutually exclusive for most people. The fact that uninteresting bloggers don't get linked contributes to the excesses of the spin doctors rather then mitigating it. Dan Gillmore has rose colored glasses on. I think the interesting blogs are the radical ones with the most emotionally devisive content. Or the funny ones. The ones that make you feel, and not the ones that make you think. In particular, blogs that criticise popular delusions are likely to be unpopular particularly with the people who most need a cluestick.

The stuff at the top of the powerlaw is going to be crap. Its going to be pop. Its going to be brittney spears. Instapundit and Kos are not what you're looking for. These are merely the greatest common denominators.

Neither, I think, may be using reputuation systems to plumb the depths of the long tail. This is an escapist strategy.

The heart of building a "machinery of knowledge" is having a culture which is actually interested in doing so. This requires, at its heart, people who beleive in critical thinking, particularly when it comes to their favorite conclusions and their political allies. Today our culture is just the opposite. Coddled on broadcast media we expect that we should never have to think critically. The only time we bother is when we are talking about our political enemies.

This is a people problem and not a technology problem. It is only a technology problem in so far as the media is the message and we can build a media that engenders the kind of thought process that we desire. I'm not sure what follows from that observation, but we ought to be thinking about it.

RE: Group Rethink

] The Bush administration has launched a high-level
] internal review of its efforts to battle international
] terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has
] stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders
] since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official
] called a broader "strategy against violent extremism."

Al Q is not an organization. It is a scene.

Review May Shift Terror Policies

] We all know someone that's intelligent, but who
] occasionally defends obviously
] bad ideas. Why does this happen?

This is not a bad set of observations, but it avoids the fallacy I think is most common.

You're emotionally invested in a particular outcome, and you see the idea at hand as being related to that outcome, and so you are unwilling to sacrifice it because you feel that sacrificing it means sacrificing your ultimate objective.

Why smart people defend bad ideas - scottberkun.com

] Its tiny, but visible enough to send a warm fuzzy through
] the hearts of original trilogy fans. In the establishing
] shot of the expansive Senate docking bays, there's a tiny
] Millennium Falcon easing into frame.

Star Wars: Episode III | Episode III Easter Egg Hunt

] Mr. Posadas Carriles is a terrorist who believes he
] fights for Cuban freedom. He is also an old friend of my
] parents.

I've posted several incredulous missives about the fact that the US let this guy and his buddies into the country with little more then a meep when we are supposedly engaged in a war on terror. This perspective perhaps sheds light on another side of the story. Ironically, this comes from a left wing website, but that makes it slightly more believable as its obviously not in the partisan interest of the radical left to promote the idea that Carriles is anything but a monster.

(Its worth clarifying both that DailyKos is not really radical left, and also that there were innocent people who died in that bombing.)

Daily Kos :: Luis Posada Carriles: Cuban Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?

Jello wrote:
] This guy rides his bike between mountains, and climbs them,
] for months at a time, in over 50 countries so far. He is so
] hardcore, he brings his own morphine, scalpels, thread and
] needle in case he has to perform self surgery and stitch
] himself up in the middle of nowhere. He is my hero. Oh my
] god, this guy is tough. Hello bicycle cowboy.

Wow...

RE: Corax: Around the World by Bicycle

] More than a third of the mortgages written in the
] Washington area this year are a risky new kind of loan
] that lets borrowers pay back only the interest, delaying
] for years repayment of any loan principal. Economists
] warn that the new loans are essentially a gamble that
] home prices will continue to rise at a brisk pace,
] allowing the borrower to either sell the home at a profit
] or refinance before the principal payments come due.

] The loans are attractive because their initial monthly
] payments are tantalizingly low -- about $1,367 a month
] for a $320,000 mortgage, compared with about $1,842 a
] month for a traditional 30-year, fixed-rate loan. If home
] prices fall, though, borrowers could lose big.

All those expensive ass houses everywhere that seem to have cropped up like weeds in the last few years despite the serious lack of an economic boom. Yeah. Those people are fucking doomed. There is a reason you don't own one. You're not an idiot.

Many Buyers Opt for Risky Mortgages

] Husain Haqqani, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar now
] teaching at Boston University, remarked to me: "When
] people like myself say American values must be emulated
] and America is a bastion of freedom, we get Guantánamo
] Bay thrown in our faces. When we talk about the America
] of Jefferson and Hamilton, people back home say to us:
] 'That is not the America we are dealing with. We are
] dealing with the America of imprisonment without trial.'"

Friedman is fucking pissed about Gitmo.

Just Shut It Down - New York Times