I am kneeling in the silt at the edge of the Madison River, halfway down the Madison Valley north of Yellowstone Park. The afternoon light is dropping, and the clouds hover just above the asphalt on the highway across the river. Snow is coming down hard, skidding upstream as if it were falling in horizontal threads. I am casting a trout fly no bigger than a snowflake, letting the wind carry it above the fish - rainbows and browns - that are feeding in the shallows in front of me.

Fishing is never simple

This text sets out a series of approaches to the analysis and synthesis of the World Wide Web, and other web-like information structures. A comprehensive set of research questions is outlined, together with a sub-disciplinary breakdown, emphasising the multi-faceted nature of the Web, and the multi-disciplinary nature of its study and development. These questions and approaches together set out an agenda for Web Science, the science of decentralised information systems. Web Science is required both as a way to understand the Web, and as a way to focus its development on key communicational and representational requirements. The text surveys central engineering issues, such as the development of the Semantic Web, Web services and P2P. Analytic approaches to discover the Web’s topology, or its graph-like structures, are examined. Finally, the Web as a technology is essentially socially embedded; therefore various issues and requirements for Web use and governance are also reviewed.

A Framework for Web Science

Google works from the bottom up. If you have a great technical idea, you don’t have your V.P. send out a memo telling everybody to use it. Instead, you take it to your fellow engineers and convince them that it’s good. Good ideas spread fast, and this approach keeps us from making technical mistakes. But it also means that the burden falls upon you to spread your idea.

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

From the Automatic Bob Herbert Department:

What is clear is that the conditions surrounding trafficked women and children include all the classic elements traditionally associated with slavery: abduction, false promises, transportation to a strange place, loss of freedom, abuse, violence, and deprivation. Those involved are isolated, controlled by various emotional and physical techniques, made dependent on drugs and alcohol, duped and terrorized into submission. Smuggling of migrants, with which trafficking is too often confused, is fundamentally different: smuggled people have consented to travel, and when they reach their destinations they expect to be free; the trafficked, even if they have initially consented, remain victims of continuing exploitation at the hands of their traffickers. Sold on from owner to owner in a long cycle of abuse, women make excellent commodities: the profits are immense, the chances of being caught small, the penalties derisory, and the women can also be forced to pay back the costs incurred in their purchase and transport, their supposed "debt" a further device to enslave them. A CIA report has estimated that traffickers earn an average of $250,000 for each trafficked woman. But there is no reliable information about how much is paid out at each stage on the long road from enticement to prostitution, who gets what cut, and how much is paid to the men and women who act as "chaperones" and "couriers" along the way.

Have you seen Eastern Promises? How about Season 2 of The Wire?

Women and Children for Sale

Gold Star!

Every art form had to deal with the arrival of the atomic age in one manner or another. Some artists were reserved and intellectual in their approach, others less so. The world of popular music, for one, got an especially crazy kick out of the Bomb. Country, blues, jazz, gospel, rock and roll, rockabilly, Calypso, novelty and even polka musicians embraced atomic energy with wild-eyed, and some might argue, inappropriate enthusiasm. These musicians churned out a variety of truly memorable tunes featuring some of the most bizarre lyrics of the 20th century. If it weren't for Dr. Oppenheimer's creation, for example, would we have ever heard lines like "Nuclear baby, don't fission out on me!" or "Radioactive mama, we'll reach critical mass tonight!"?

Supremely sampleworthy. Be sure to check out the Conelrad podcast.

"The baseball stadium has been completed, and as I pass, I remember I have tickets for tomorrow night's game. I know now there will be no tomorrow night, because death does not attend a baseball game."

This is not a test!

ATOMIC PLATTERS: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security

Despite all the claims of victory by NATO, the Taliban has managed to become far more effective in widening its networks of support and in building its operational and propaganda capacity.

If the Karzai government enters a coalition with the Taliban, it will not only amount to the defeat of what the United States and its allies have been promising in support of building a secure, stable and democratic Afghanistan, but also runs the risk of igniting a savage ethnic conflict in the country.

No one should underestimate the wider regional implications of such a scenario.

In the zero-sum game that is the management of US Army deployments, the consequences of The Surge are as predictable as a game of Whac-A-Mole.

Don't cave in to the Taliban

This film opens in the US on March 14. (I saw it Friday night.)

In this provocative and brutal thriller from director Michael Haneke, a vacationing family gets an unexpected visit from two deeply disturbed young men. Their idyllic holiday turns nightmarish as they are subjected to unimaginable terrors and struggle to stay alive.

Remade from his own acclaimed 1997 film, "Funny Games" is written and directed by Michael Haneke ("Caché"), and stars Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, and Devon Gearhart.

Watch the trailer.

Funny Games (2008)

This site uses census data to report on demographics of zipcodes.

ZIPskinny - Get the Skinny on that ZIP

While I sat at my desk one day, two of my classmates figured out how to overwrite the entire screen, which seemed kinda naughty at the time. They giggled, did it again, then giggled some more. From curious children, hackers were born.

What Became of the LOGO Programming Language?

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Idiocy