Shuttle Columbia has been lost durring reentry.

Update: That is now confirmed by NASA. A large explosion has been reported in the Dallas FtW area. NASA is saying to say away from any wreckage found.

A sad day:(

TURN ON THE TV, RIGHT NOW, ANY CHANNEL

Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback.

Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read ought to be your own business.

However, what you recommend is not exactly the same as what you read, and this is reflected in the reputation data. When you recommend something you are telling the site that you like it. Telling the site implies that you don't mind the site knowing. In fact, you want the site to know. If I do a little digging I can see who you got an article from, directly. This is a bit of an oversite. Something that can be "matured" out of the code. Thats one direction to go in from here. Keep the reputation data as private as possible.

However, if I monitor the site, and I see a certain person recommend an article, and then you rerecommend it, I'll know where you got it from. I do this often enough, in an automated fashion, for long enough, and I'll get a pretty good understanding of who you are reading. The site can't protect you from this. By recommending articles you are making them public. By making them public, you are giving up some of your privacy.

The only way to truely protect the fact that you are reading someone's recommendations is to never recommend their recommendations. They will still show up in the agent, but this information, I think, is private and ought to stay that way.

However, and as I've hopefully illustrated, the recommendations are public in a very real way. What I want to ask the site is if the recommendation DATA ought to be public too.

The reason I want to ask you this is because Rattle has assembled another visualization. This visualization is interactive. You can see a graph of the people who are highly connected to you, click on their names, and see a graph of the people who are highly connected to them, and so on.

Right now this data is amusing but not all that rich. There are about 15 people who regularily post to the site, and they hold all the reputation capital. Everyone's graphs look pretty similar, because we are all really recommending content from the same 15 people, even those of us who don't often recommend content and who aren't often read.

This is going to change.

As this site scales, clusters are going to form. I think the one that currently exists will always exist, but there will be others. People will begin to have different perspectives on the data, based on their interests. Thats what this site is designed to do.

And as those different communities of interest begin to form, the maps of the reputation data rattle is developing will become richer, and you will be able to surf through MemeStreams via the reputation system, hopping from person to person in search of interesting ideas.

I think this is a very compelling feature set, and I want to enable it. But, I've promised to keep your reputation data private. All of it. This promise may not have been very well thought out, but I did make it. So I can only break it with your permission, and that is what I am asking for.

I want to publish your recommendation related reputation data. Your clickthrough related reputation data will stay private. What is published is the number of times you have rerecommended articles from another person on the site, in the form of a graph.

Its similar to the graph on the "Visualizing Memestreams" page, but it is labelled, and interactive.

An important privacy question

Children's Books That Will Never Be Published:

"You Are Different and That's Bad"
"Dad's New Wife Timothy"
"Pop! Goes The Hamster....And Other Great Microwave Games"
"Testing Homemade Parachutes Using Household Pets"
"The Hardy Boys, the Barbie Twins, and the Vice Squad"
"Babar Meets the Taxidermist"
"Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence"
"The Boy Who Died from Eating All His Vegetables"
"Start a Real-Estate Empire With the Change From Your Mom's Purse"
"The Pop-up Book of Human Anatomy"
"Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will"
"The Care Bears Maul Some Campers and are Shot Dead"
"How to Become The Dominant Military Power In Your Elementary School"
"You Were an Accident"
"Strangers Have the Best Candy"
"The Little Sissy Who Snitched"
"Some Kittens Can Fly!"
"Getting More Chocolate on Your Face"
"Where Would You Like to Be Buried?"
"Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her"
"The Attention Deficit Disorder Association's Book of Wild Animals of
North Amer- Hey! Let's Go Ride Our Bikes!"
"All Dogs Go to Hell"
"The Kids' Guide to Hitchhiking"
"Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia"
"What Is That Dog Doing to That Other Dog?"
"Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Become Friends"
"Controlling the Playground: Respect through Fear"
"Daddy Drinks Because You Cry"
"Bi-Curious George"

] In his speech, Bush again called for a ban on all forms
] of human cloning. His opposition to therapeutic as well
] as reproductive cloning has angered scientists who claim
] this stifles important biomedical research in the US.

Fuck....I should have known that Bush was anti-therapeutic cloning. Arg. Human Cloning and Therapeutic cloning are NOT even in the same ball park.
le sigh

New Scientist (recap of state of the union address)

] You'll be able to buy a humanoid as early as next
] year.

Popular Science | Here Come the Two-Legged Aibos

] When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with
] their tedious
] diatribes about how hard things were when they were
] growing up; what
] with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning
] uphill both ways
] through year 'round blizzards carrying their younger
] siblings on their
] backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained
] a straight-A
] average despite their full-time after-school job at the
] local textile
] mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help
] keep their
] family from starving to death!
]
]
] And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there
] was no way in
] hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids
] about how hard
] I had it and how easy they've got it!
]
] But....
]
] Now that I've reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I
] can't help but
] look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it
] so fuckin'
] easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a
] goddamned Utopia!

1987 Reprezent!

"ENFIELD, Conn., Jan. 24 -- LEGO Company today announces one of only two existing scale replicas of the famous Stanley Cup is missing since the close of the annual Super Show that took place in Las Vegas earlier this week."

Those bastards!

Just what is this world coming to?

LEGO Stanley Cup Stolen

] A new smart bandage, designed to selectively pinpoint and
] absorb destructive enzymes oozing from non-healing
] wounds, may soon become a staple in hospital supply
] cabinets.

What *will* they think of next?:)

Wired News: What to Do About Nasty Boo-Boos

] His theory is that Americans like to make lifestyle
] changes the easy way. We'd rather eat low-fat food than
] eat less. We prefer Prozac to psychotherapy. The newest
] passive solution, he says, will be his three-tiered
] cigarette series - the Quest 1, 2, and 3. The first two
] deliver 17 and 58 percent less nicotine, respectively,
] than the average light cigarette by blending regular
] tobacco with Vector's genetically modified, nicotine-free
] product. Quest 3 contains only the nicotine-free tobacco.
] Try as you might, it won't give you a buzz. But, as
] Vector execs admit, all three still contain almost all of
] the carcinogens present in other cigarettes. They'll give
] you cancer and heart disease just like regular smokes.

An article found in this months issue of Wired about a new way to stop smoking by smoking. They genetically modified tobacco so that it doesn't generate nicotine, so you can work on cutting your addiction to nicotine before working on your addiction to the habit of smoking. Sounds pretty interesting....now, where do you get these smokes?

Wired 11.02: Come to LeBow Country

] I am a Breakout Bat.
]
] I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort
] of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the
] box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular
] ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life
] going along.
]
] (If you were not a Breakout Bat you would be an
] Asteroid.)

What Pre-1985 Video Game Character are you?

What Video Game Character Am I?