General Musharraf now appears to be more concerned with perpetuating his rule than with furthering the cause of “enlightened moderation” that he had claimed to champion. He has never been particularly popular, but he is now estranging the liberals who previously supported his progressive ends if not his autocratic means. People like me are realizing that the short-term gains from even a well-intentioned dictator’s policies can be easily reversed.
General Musharraf must recognize that his popularity is dwindling fast and that the need to move toward greater democracy is overwhelming. The idea that a president in an army uniform will be acceptable to Pakistanis after this year’s elections is becoming more and more implausible.
Pakistan is both more complicated and less dangerous than America has been led to believe. An exaggerated fear of Pakistan’s people must not prevent America from realizing that Pakistanis are turning away from General Musharraf.
Originally best-known as an Italian-born model who had affairs with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, Bruni has matured into a remarkably talented and self-possessed singer-composer-guitarist. Her debut album, sung mostly in French, could best be described as neo-chanson. Bruni's whispery, wobbly, husky voice, wryly deadpan delivery and introspective lyrics recall Francoise Hardy, Barbara, Jane Birkin and Nico. But unlike her forebears, who so often posed as waif-like child-women and doormat-like victims of passion, Bruni remains firmly on top. Her lyrics can and do celebrate true love but she also praises the delights of female sexual empowerment in no uncertain terms, as on J'en Connais ("I've Known A Few"). Musically, the tunes range from folk Français to echoes of le jazz hot to bluesy torch numbers. The spare, mostly acoustic instrumentation is unfussy and atmospheric, while the I-couldn't-care-less ambience is occasionally punctuated by chimes, insouciant whistling or an impudent, sly giggle.
Carla Bruni is an Italian supermodel and this is her first album. Like Milla Jovovich's debut, this caught everyone by surprise. It's a very good effort, far beyond what one would have expected. It's an acoustic and intimate album, and the songs are from her own harvest. She also plays guitar. The talented French guitarist Louis Bertignac produced the album. Although she's Italian, most of the album is sung in French with some Italian touches, like in "Le Ciel Dans une Chambre." The result is a kind and smooth album that mixes folk and chanson Française in equal parts. Although she's not breaking any new ground, the result is compelling.
Linked here is a live version, with concert video. You can also listen to the album version, for which there is no video.
Her new album, No Promises, is out now (in the US, via import).
This is very direct and physical party music ... It's music that is conducive to dancing or doing other carefree things in the sunshine ... [but] below the surface is a lot more than anyone's basic idea of a good time. The blend of styles -- a dense, often chaotic collage of garage from the U.K., dancehall from Jamaica, crunk from the Dirty South, electro and hardcore rap from New York, and glints of a few others -- is unique enough to baffle anyone who dares categorize it.
It's the best kind of pop album imaginable. It can be enjoyed on a purely physical level, and it also carries the potential to adjust your world view.
... irresistible, yet mysterious ... a contagious vocal chant that sounded simultaneously jubilant and menacing ... fleeting glimpses of hip hop (especially crunk), ragga, bhangra, reggaeton, '80s electro, and even punk rock ... her own, highly unique, bastardized form of pop music is the extraordinary end result.
Putting People on the Map: Protecting Confidentiality with Linked Social-Spatial Data
Topic: Politics and Law
12:53 pm EDT, Mar 26, 2007
Precise, accurate spatial data are contributing to a revolution in some fields of social science. Improved access to such data about individuals, groups, and organizations makes it possible for researchers to examine questions they could not otherwise explore, gain better understanding of human behavior in its physical and environmental contexts, and create benefits for society from the knowledge flows from new types of scientific research. However, to the extent that data are spatially precise, there is a corresponding increase in the risk of identification of the people or organizations to which the data apply. With identification comes a risk of various kinds of harm to those identified and the compromise of promises of confidentiality made to gain access to the data. This report focuses on the opportunities and challenges that arise when accurate and precise spatial data on research participants, such as the locations of their homes or workplaces, are linked to personal information they have provided under promises of confidentiality.
The availability of these data makes it possible to do valuable new kinds of research that links information about the external environment to the behavior and values of individuals. Among many possible examples, such research can explore how decisions about health care are made, how young people develop healthy lifestyles, and how resource-dependent families in poorer countries spend their time obtaining the energy and food that they need to survive. The linkage of spatial and social information, like the growing linkage of socioeconomic characteristics with biomarkers (biological data on individuals), has the potential to revolutionize social science and to significantly advance policy making. While the availability of linked social-spatial data has great promise for research, the locational information makes it possible for a secondary user of the linked data to identify the participant and thus break the promise of confidentiality made when the social data were collected. Such a user could also discover additional information about the research participant, without asking for it, by linking to geographically coded information from other sources. Open public access to linked social and high-resolution spatial data greatly increases the risk of breaches of confidentiality. At the same time, highly restrictive forms of data management and dissemination carry very high costs: by making it prohibitively difficult for researchers to gain access to data or by restricting or altering the data so much that they are no longer useful for answering many types of important scientific questions.
CONCLUSIONS
CONCLUSION 1: Recent advances in the availability of social-spatial data and the development of geographic information systems (GIS) and related techniques to manage and analyze those data give researchers important new ways to study important social, environmental, economic, and health... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]
This Ross Anderson paper from 2001 is worth (re-)reading. I'd be interested in any pointers to further reading along these lines.
I particularly liked this quote, from the French economist Jules Dupuit in 1849:
It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriage or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches ... What the company is trying to do is prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich ... And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class customers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.
Here's the abstract of the paper:
According to one common view, information security comes down to technical measures. Given better access control policy models, formal proofs of cryptographic protocols, approved firewalls, better ways of detecting intrusions and malicious code, and better tools for system evaluation and assurance, the problems can be solved.
In this note, I put forward a contrary view: information insecurity is at least as much due to perverse incentives. Many of the problems can be explained more clearly and convincingly using the language of microeconomics: network externalities, asymmetric information, moral hazard, adverse selection, liability dumping and the tragedy of the commons.
This is the tale of the failed love affair in the heart of many who have embraced America and felt horrified by its post-9/11 transformation.
Booklist gave it a starred review:
Presented in the form of a monologue, which is a difficult technique to manage in a novel because the author has to ensure plausibility while guarding against monotony, Hamid's second novel succeeds so well it begs the question--what other narrative format than a sustained monologue could have been as appropriate? Generally, this is a 9/11 novel or, rather, a post-9/11 one. But to see it on its own terms, which, because of its distinctive scenario, is impossible not to do, it eludes categorization. A young Pakistani man, educated at Princeton and employed in a highly prestigious financial-analysis firm in New York, was about to start a brilliant career and had fallen for a young woman whose commitment to him, it must be admitted, was partial and elusive when the terrorist attacks occurred. Answering to his own conscience, he could not remain in the U.S. By the pull of his true personal identity, he must return to Pakistan, despite his reluctance to leave the enigmatic but beguiling young woman behind. From the perspective of a few years later, the young man relates his American experiences to an American man he meets in a cafe, whose visit to Lahore may or may not have to do with the young man's recent anti-American activities. This novel's firm, steady, even beautiful voice proclaims the completeness of the soul when personal and global issues are conjoined.
It is recently reviewed in Tehelka, "India's leading weekly independent newspaper":
Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s provocative new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is as much about America as it is about Islam. It makes one rethink the meaning of fundamentalism, writes Salil Tripathi.
Simon, Burns and Wright wrote the screenplays for all seven hours. Burns and Simon will also serve as co-executive producers. Other producers will include Nina Noble (a producer of The Wire and The Corner, another Burns-Wright miniseries) and Andrea Calderwood (The Last King of Scotland). The film will be shot over six months in South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.
This website makes available our most recent collection of forgotten communication and entertainment media, to anyone unable to attend the exhibition in December 2006.
These nine exhibits were donated by a group studying Interactive Media Design, who lovingly restored each to working order. Their discoveries were made whilst researching examples of interaction design that pre-dated digital technology. They also uncovered archive film, photography and packaging which places each artefact in its historical context.
I know that everyone involved has been affected by the surprising similarities and profound differences between these and contemporary designs, and of how interchangeable technologies often are but how much more important social change can be. This experience should make these young interaction designers both more inventive and more reflective when they come to create the interactions of our future.
We hope you find the collection equally informative and inspiring.
