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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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A Race to the Top, Or, An Obit For Old Europe |
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| Topic: International Relations |
8:54 am EDT, Jun 3, 2005 |
French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck. Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top.
Do you suppose Tom Friedman columns will soon show up on BitTorrent networks? A Race to the Top, Or, An Obit For Old Europe |
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| Topic: Military |
8:38 am EDT, Jun 3, 2005 |
On the morning of Jan. 26, while I rush my daughters through their bowls of cereal, brush their hair and get them ready for school, I learn that a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter has crashed in western Iraq, killing 31 men. Twenty-six of them are part of my old unit: Company C, First Battalion, Third Marine Regiment, stationed at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay. Later, at work, I struggle to explain how surreal it is to learn that marines from the infantry company I served with in the Persian Gulf war have been killed in this one. I sit at my desk, processing insurance claims, surrounded by gray cubicle walls instead of sandbags and dirt, behind a computer instead of a machine gun, thinking about the business card from the recruiter tucked in my wallet. He says there's a slot for me in a reserve unit if I want it, and that I'd get a chance to go overseas again, to be part of something larger and greater than myself. To go to the war. I think about what my daughters would say if I told them that I'm leaving, and that I might not come back. I wonder how to justify it to myself if I don't go. My co-worker looks over at me from his desk and says, "Did you know any of them?" Decius recently wrote:
I think the interesting blogs are the radical ones with the most emotionally divisive content. Or the funny ones. The ones that make you feel, and not the ones that make you think. Although this article appears in a newspaper and not a blog, I think it fits the description. Over There |
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Whats New in NetNewsWire 2.0 |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
2:31 am EDT, Jun 3, 2005 |
There's a new NetNewsWire. It's been "streamlined", includes a tabbed browser, automatically downloads podcasts, supports "smart lists" like iTunes, and more. Best of all, upgrades are free. Whats New in NetNewsWire 2.0 |
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All The News That's Fit For Print |
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| Topic: Media |
2:02 am EDT, Jun 3, 2005 |
As more people start digesting even super-sized stories on the Internet, they will demand [prompt Web access to the content] of their favorite publications. If they don't get it, they will go elsewhere.
Is the Washington Post taking pot shots at the Gray Lady? All The News That's Fit For Print |
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Extension 720: Utterly Implausible Radio |
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| Topic: Media |
12:23 am EDT, Jun 3, 2005 |
Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg is utterly implausible radio, whether the topic is international politics, the state of the English language, the latest discoveries in astrophysics, the history of baseball or what local chefs cook for their own dinners. You won't hear anything, anywhere, quite as stimulating or quite as fascinating. Recent shows discussed Stanley Milgram, Iraq, Nepotism, Rwanda, jazz, Afghanistan, the great books, Freakonomics, the Rapture, and more. Extension 720: Utterly Implausible Radio |
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Confused About Blogs? The State Department Is Here To Help |
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| Topic: Blogging |
10:12 pm EDT, Jun 2, 2005 |
Yes, this is for real. No, I am not kidding. Yes, these are your tax dollars at work. Yes, this is the State Department's idea of public diplomacy. No, you cannot go and heckle the speaker. Dear Journalists: The Washington Foreign Press Center is pleased to announce a special workshop on "Figuring Out Blogs: The Best Blogs FOR and BY Journalists and How You Can Join the Blogging Revolution as a Reader and/or Creator of Blogs," to take place on Tuesday, June 7, 2005, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. The workshop is the second in a series of programs the Foreign Press Center is planning on "Information Technology and Journalism." The workshop will be taught by Sreenath "Sree" Sreenivasa, Professor of New Media Journalism at Columbia University and a tech reporter for WABC-TV. His work explaining technology to lay readers has appeared in the "New York Times," "Business Week," "Rolling Stone," and "Popular Science." Professor Sreenivasa taught the first workshop offered by the FPC on "Smarter Surfing: Better Use of Your Web Time." Why attend the workshop:
There is much confusion about blogs, bloggers and blogging. Is this the end of journalism as we know it? Or is it just another small step in the evolution of media? Are any worth following? You will get answers to these and other questions at this workshop.
You will learn about:
- Blog basics
- What's to love and what's to hate about blogs
- The best blogs FOR journalists
- The best blogs BY journalists
- Blogs that are changing America and the world
- Blogs that are over-hyped and a waste of time
- How to read blogs without drowning in too much info
- How to create a blog and raise your Google rankings
- Why journalists should be blogging
- Why journalists should NOT be blogging
Confused About Blogs? The State Department Is Here To Help |
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The Technium, by Kevin Kelly |
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| Topic: Technology |
7:36 pm EDT, Jun 2, 2005 |
For most of my life I owned very little. Until I was 30 I was a vagabond. I wandered remote parts of Asia in cheap sneakers and worn jeans. The cities I knew best brimmed in medieval richness; the lands were green in agricultural outlook. When I reached for something in those days it was almost surely made of wood, fiber or stone. I ate with my hands, trekked on foot through mountain valleys, and slept wherever. I carried very little money and even less stuff. My personal possessions totaled up to a sleeping bag and some cameras. I fully embrace the transforming power of technology. Yet our family of five still doesn't have TV. I don't have a pager, or PDA, or cam-phone. I find a spiritual strength in keeping technology at arm's length. At the same time I run a daily website called Cool Tools where I review a broad range of highly selected consumer technology. These obvious contradictions have prompted me to investigate my own paradoxical relationship with technology. How should I think about new technology when it comes along? It's a question at the heart of many other questions that baffle us these days. I am not the only one perplexed about the true nature of the increasing presence of technology in our culture. The best way I know to think about things is to write about them, and so in order to force me to go beyond the obvious I am writing a book about what technology means. The Technium, by Kevin Kelly |
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Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference 2005 |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
6:36 pm EDT, Jun 2, 2005 |
The "ubiquitous network society", which will make it possible to connect anytime, anywhere, by anything and anyone, is now rapidly becoming more than just a concept. In a ubiquitous network society, everyone and everything can be connected, and new innovations that will completely change the current dimension of ICT are anticipated. In the ideal ubiquitous network society, smooth interaction, reflection of users needs and points of view as well as the tapping of individual energy are set to be realized. Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference 2005 |
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| Topic: Science |
5:29 pm EDT, Jun 2, 2005 |
It turns out that male and female brains differ quite a bit in architecture and activity. Research into these variations could lead to sex-specific treatments for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. Not so long ago neuroscientists believed that sex differences in the brain were limited mainly to those regions responsible for mating behavior. That view, however, has now been knocked aside by a surge of findings that highlight the influence of sex on many areas of cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces and the brain's response to stress hormones. His Brain, Her Brain |
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The Carter Family: Will The Circle Be Unbroken | American Experience on PBS |
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| Topic: Music |
3:34 pm EDT, Jun 2, 2005 |
Almost nothing beats the Carter Family when it comes to honest, earnest music-making. In August 1927 three musicians arrived at a makeshift recording studio in Bristol, Tennessee, to audition for a talent scout from the Victor Talking Machine Company. The songs A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and her cousin Maybelle recorded that day drew upon the rich musical traditions of their native rural Appalachia. The Carter Family sang of love and loss, desperation and joy, and their music captured the attention of a nation entering the darkest days of the depression. In the coming years, with the release of songs such as Keep on the Sunnyside, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Wildwood Flower, Carter Family record sales exploded. Success, however, brought sorrow to the Carter's personal lives. As the demand for their music grew, A.P. Carter traveled across the Blue Ridge mountains seeking inspiration for new songs. During his long absences Sara fell in love with A.P.'s first cousin. Sara divorced A.P. in 1936, but the trio continued performing together until their eventual disbanding in 1943. The production draws upon rarely seen photographs, memorabilia and archival footage to tell the bittersweet story of these influential musical pioneers whose songs and style laid the foundations for American folk, country and bluegrass music. The Carter Family: Will The Circle Be Unbroken | American Experience on PBS |
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