Average percentage of Americans asked to participate in Gallup polls who do: 40

Who's your democracy?

Harper's Index | December 2003

A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Pay retail. Save lives.

I can hear the store manager now, addressing the customers ...

"My friends, I beg of you, be calm, and do not despair. Rest assured that there will be no rain checks today. My cut-rate Chinese laborers have been working around the clock since August to assemble enough $29 DVD players for all of you."

Not So Smart Mobs

"It's the original thought that counts."

-- a holiday advertisement for Borders Books, heard on the radio.

Since I can neither reply to my own post nor link two URLs with a log entry, I'm posting this separately.

Listen to it after you've read the RAND memo.

Followup to 'Comments on RAND Building Program' [WAV]

After a few years in rented quarters, RAND began to plan for its own building to house its staff, including about 250 researchers. John Williams, head of the Mathematics Division, surfaced the idea for creating a building that would increase the probability of chance personal meetings. Such meetings, he argued, would promote the interdisciplinary aspect of RAND -- the use of mixed teams of analysts in addressing a problem. Williams memo to RAND staff, "Comment on RAND Building Program," December 26, 1950, built the case for a system of closed courts or patios -- which led him to the theory of regular lattices, with average distances between points shown in a two-element matrix. The resulting set of patios, he felt, would ensure the maximum number of chance meetings and at the same time enhance, for the RAND staff, the qualities of privacy, quiet, natural light and air, and spaciousness.

During the dot-com boom, did any startups put this kind of thought into the architecture of the extravagant buildings they constructed with VC funding?

(RAND headquarters is just a few miles down the road from me ...)

Comments on RAND Building Program | December, 1950

] Google, which runs the Web's premier search site, has
] purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that created
] some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs, the
] increasingly popular personal and opinion journals.

Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time

Decius wrote:
] ] "Our grand reopening is planned for Nov 30th, 2002."
]
] Some streams are available now... :)

And now, we must give thanks where thanks is due ...

SomaFM is back on the 'air'

Howard Rheingold: "Social swarming involves sharing your life with others in real time. It means pulsing to the rhythm of life with one's posse. It means a nonstop emotional connection to one's swarm."

The Word Spy - social swarming

When Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, steps out of an Air Force Gulfstream into the Kansas heat, it is not just an overdue courtesy call and not just a peace overture to a rankled service. (He has just killed the Army's prized new $11 billion artillery piece, the Crusader.) It is one more engagement in the war over the coming war.

A profile of DepSecDef Paul Wolfowitz, in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

The Sunshine Warrior

Nissan will offer its own line of high-performance add-ons for the tuner set.

Nissan 350Z Is Certain To Delight Fans