] The woman told my wife what the fine is (about $135), but
] told her that she could not accept payment for the fine,
] because the ticket is not in the database. My wife is not
] allowed to attend driving school, either, because the
] ticket isn't in the database.
]
]
] The woman instructed my wife to call the court every day
] week, to find out if the ticket had been entered into the
] computer yet. Once it shows up, she is supposed to drive
] to the ticket office the very next day to take care of
] it. And once the ticket has been entered, she is going to
] be hit with a penalty and possibly a warrrant for her
] arrest, because once the information goes into the
] computer it'll see that she hasn't paid the fine yet, and
] it will be flagged as delinquent. My wife will then have
] to explain the situation to another helpful city
] employee.

[ Sadly, this kind of complete bullshit hardly even surprises me anymore. -k]

Boing Boing: A Kafka day at the Los Angeles traffic ticket office

Everyone should be drinking green tea. It has various health benifits listed here. most exciting is it helps you lose weight.

[ I love green tea. Probably don't drink enough of it though. -k]

green tea and health

A sampling of noteworthy memes in the year 2004, loosely ordered for effect. Enjoy.

The most important -- and interesting -- questions are structural.

"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency. "We don't play games at The Washington Post and use dashes." "I felt better after I had done it."

Teenagers nowadays are both more connected to the world at large than ever, and more cut off.

cellphone-based alibi clubs

More research anywhere creates more possibilities for innovation everywhere.

Do you understand the difference between "Is it worth buying?" and "Can it be sold?"

The era of cheap oil is over.

The Internet peering model is fundamentally broken.

"The thing is, this is a lousy business."

Let's talk about the consequences of the aging baby boomers.

Relationships can be hard work, but they are worth it.

When was the last time a talk show changed a mind?

Intelligence is moving to the edges and the edges are found on the Asian mainland.

In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears.

All entertainment concepts must be run through the Vulgarizer.

"I need to be managing a sexier project."

Values Voters Are Prone To Sinful Behavior.

Its sole function is to sell the naughty lifestyle.

Why the granny panties?

The Middle East must be Born Again!

War may be hell, but infowar is making a bid for heaven.

Personality is destiny.

"There's a certain tone in politics that I aspire to, that allows me to disagree with people without being disagreeable."

"chicken hawks"

Saudi Arabia is the golden egg.

Powell: "Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong." Bush: "I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why."

"It takes half a second for a baby to throw up all over your sweater. It takes hours to get it clean."

typical postwar "untidiness"

Bush: "I've made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV."

"No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey."

America, partnering with the best-armed insurgents, allying with the weaker against the stronger.

"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists. "Nooooo!" the audience roared.

Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.

"Bush might be unpopular in Italy, the Iraqi war is not popular in Italy, but Italians know damn well that in 1944, they were liberated by America from the Nazis."

Fight the cult of process.

"You can't fight here! This is the war room!"

It is definitely interesting getting shot at for the first time.

"If you go ahead, we will do everything possible to discredit you... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

2004 - It Was a Very Noteworthy Year

Mr. Klein said last night, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise."

[ Well, it's a day late and a dollar short, but I guess it's a start. -k]

CNN Is All Tuckered Out

eiron wrote:
] In Memestreams, each link is considered a seperate Meme,
] despite the fact that two links may be involved in the same
] concept or idea. For example, the recent tsunami disaster has
] generated a wealth of links for donations sites, news updates,
] weather data, etc. It would seem that many of these links are
] part of a larger Meme, a greater idea. Despite this, the
] memes, that is, the individual links, as represented by
] Memestreams, remain separated, independent of one another.

[ This is a general issue, i won't say problem, necessarily, which Tom and I have talked about before. I have an interest, though not a great deal of actual expertise, in the application of knowledge management technologies to collections of raw data. It's something I've encountered in my work, and something I've devoted a good deal of time thinking about for personal use. The concept here would be that the greater Meme, as you call it, is a somewhat emergent property. In the best possible scenario, the software is intelligent enough to group data (links, commentary, or articles) based on recognition of common topical elements. Of course, and this is why KM is so necessary when dealing with a large corpus of information, a Meme of this sort can, and will, have multiple facets. The stories, and subsequent discussions, linked up regarding the tsunami cover matters related to Aid Organizations, Disaster Relief, Missing Persons, Philanthropy, Human Trafficking, GeoPolitics, Geology, Earth Science, etc. These all, generally, tie back to what is effectively a single event, which occurred, but I don't really see that as the meme. Rather, the memes are the things people are thinking and, more measurably, saying about the event. Thus, each discrete aspect of the story is a meme in and of itself, once it attains the critical mass to have a distinct existence.

As it turns out, this stuff is all pretty hard, and completely different than the existing infrastructure. Not to mention, the things I'm describing may not actually be the vision for this community. As it's not my project, I wouldn't presume to argue strongly for such a shift. As a concept, only a bare germ at this stage, i think there's merit, but I know there are other priorities right now, even if this was a direction for the future.

Anyway, I found your proposal interesting -- essentially a non-automated version of what I'm describing, in which the users, by grouping links, are responsible for building up the larger context. As a purist, and based on my experience and minimal research, i think this mechanism is fraught with peril, because people tend to be, fundamentally, bad at handling complex categorization tasks. Actually, that's not true. People have trouble, particularly when faced with the vast quantity of data they see daily, maintaining an object in multiple contextual frames. This leads to strict hierarchical scheme... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Links, Memes, and Memestreams

Excerpt: "And what of the people born on dates that no longer exists in the new calendar, such as 31 January, or during Newton Week? Henry suggests they celebrate on either 30 January or "consider themselves to be born on the fourth of July" (which falls on a Wednesday)."

An it doesn't stop there: "And he is not stopping with dates - Henry says the entire world should operate on Greenwich Mean Time. People in the eastern US, for example, would have to get used to eating their midday meals when the clocks read 1700. "People are adaptable if benefits are there," says Henry."

That'd be a confusing set of changes for a while. -Pk

Novel calendar system creates regular dates

] Today, we can do more. And do more, faster. And do more,
] faster, from anywhere, all the time. You can work at home
] or the coffee shop or even the beach. Is this a good
] thing? How do we navigate these rapids without eventually
] drowning? Are we allowing life to be the sum of tasks,
] the short term always the priority? Are we so connected
] that we're actually disconnected? And has anyone had
] enough time to focus long enough to mull a question that
] requires a long, complicated answer -- if there is
] one?
]
] ...
]
] Gloria Mark, a UC-Irvine professor, has been studying attention
] overload and multitasking among workers in a financial-services
] office. So far, she's found that the average employee switches
] tasks every three minutes, is interrupted every two minutes and
] has a maximum focus stretch of 12 minutes.

[ Fascinating, and hugely relevant, article. Gold star. -k]

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine

] Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has won Ukraine's
] presidential election by more than two million votes,
] electoral officials have said after completing the count.

[ Not that otherViktor has conceded defeat. It's not quite over yet. -k]

Yushchenko wins Ukraine's Election

] Prof. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Senior Strategic Researcher at
] the U.S. Naval War College, is maybe the hottest military
] thinker in the world right now. His work, which focuses
] on the connections between development and security, and
] in particular his book, The Pentagon's New Map: War and
] Peace in the Twenty-First Century, has become deeply
] influential with forward-thinking members of the
] military.

[ There were at least a dozen quotes I thought would be good to hook this article, but I couldn't decide on one, so I chose the above, deliberately general, introduction.

I found the interview to be filled with fascinating thoughts. There's a lot to think about here, and I feel like this is sort of a doorway to a whole lot of things I hadn't thought much about previously. I imagine the rabid right and the rabid left will be equally dismissive of this work, but the rest can, at least, find room for sensible debate.

I encourage people here to read it... it's somewhat long, but well worth it. A gold star, if not for this interview itself, then for the extended discussions surrounding it around the web, and, hopefully, here. -k]

Thomas P.M. Barnett: The Worldchanging Interview

] Someone who is very close to me (who will remain nameless
] for the moment) just presented the opinion to me that,
] for various reasons, she strongly suspects there are no
] lawyers who work for the ACLU who are also Christians,
] since she was also of the opinion that the ACLU isn't
] interested in the constitutional rights of Christians --
] a theory which I attempted to pop by bring up two
] examples in the last year of the ACLU being very much
] interested in their constitutional rights. Nevertheless,
] she continued to profess her opinion that there were no
] Christian lawyers at the ACLU.
]
]
] Naturally, I was appalled at this statement and told her
] that I would make it my mission to find her an ACLU
] lawyer who was also a Christian, and that upon finding
] such a specimen, that I would ask her to consider the
] possibility that one could be a Christian and a lawyer
] and consider as one's mission the constitutional rights
] of all Americans. I have a call in to my local ACLU
] branch, but I imagine they'll listen to the voice mail
] and suspect I'm insane, so:
]
]
] If you are a lawyer who loves Christ and are either on
] staff or has worked for the ACLU, would you please come
] forward to say hello? Also, if it's not too much trouble,
] if you could explain how being an ACLU lawyer is
] consistent with your faith, that would be greatly
] appreciated. Just go ahead and leave a message in the
] comment threads.

[ Mostly linking for myself. There's a comment about a third of the way down by a law student named Casey Holland who's got a handle on a lot of what i feel, but don't always articulate well. -k]

Whatever: Yes Virginia, There Are Christian ACLU Lawyers