"We are living in affluence, so we don't expect anything special."

It's nice that the kids get the day off for President's Day.

North Koreans Celebrate Birthday of 'Dear Leader'

The telecommunications equipment industry is quietly pinning its hopes on a quick Iraqi war that would be followed by an American-led effort to rebuild the country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Memo to France: play ball, or Alcatel won't be winning any contracts in post-war Iraq.

Memo to telecom news desk: Accounting scandals and economic downturn are tired. If you want your story above the fold, give it an international relations spin.

Looking Beyond a War in Iraq

Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!

Cypherpunks write code.

Microsoft and the Commoditization of Software

France has staked out a position on Iraq in opposition to the American one. But it has also been nervous about the rise of strong anti-French sentiment in the United States. The French ambassador to Washington, Jean-David Levitte, has been trying to assure the American public that France is a loyal ally grateful for American help in the world wars of the last century.

Where is the evidence of "strong anti-French sentiment"? (More simply, where is the evidence of any sentiment about France?) It seems more like a sentiment of indifference about France.

Europe's Groundswell: Public Opinion

This people browser groups the CHIplace members by the CHI roles specified in their user profiles. It uses the number of roles in common as a similarity measure. After grouping the members into similar clusters, a spring model places the clusters in two dimensions.

People Browser

A health director ... reported this week that a small mouse, which presumably had been watching television, attacked a little girl and her full-grown cat ... Both mouse and cat survived, and the incident is recorded here as a reminder that things seem to be changing.

Have you read your McLuhan lately?

McLuhan: Understanding Media

I'm posting this now as a personal reminder to locate more information later ...

Bruce Berkowitz has a new book coming out in March (or April, depending on who you ask). He's a reseach fellow at the Hoover Institution; he consults for OSD; he's also on the staff at RAND and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

According to Barnes & Noble and Powell's, the subtitle of the book is "Lethal Networks in the Information Age." However, the image of the cover indicates that the subtitle is "How War Will Be Fought in the 21st Century."

The New Face of War

Jaron Lanier: Dolly, you were born at the most optimistic moment imaginable. ... You were both an inspiration and a challenge. ... Oh Dolly, let's hope we have many second chances, and that your legacy will recall the world as it was at the start of your life more than what it has come to be at the end of your life.

Remembering Dolly | Edge.org

] 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

There is no connection between Cayce and Case; no meaningfulness. Gibson explains that as part of his novelist craft, he goes through a complicated artistic ritual in order to summon his characters out of the ether. In this ritual, coming up with the right name is the crucial first step. And the process by which he came up with Cayce, he declares, had nothing to do with Case. "Cayce" was its own "found object" -- much as the name Case, from "Neuromancer," was also a found object, inspired originally by Case pocketknives.

Nodal point