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Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out.

Compare with Rory Stewart's latest comments. Contrast the captains' experiences with the recent RAND report on The Civil-Military Gap:

What is the potential for a divergence in views among civilian and military elites (sometimes referred to as the civil-military gap) to undermine military effectiveness?

RAND concludes:

Overall, concerns about a civil-military gap and possible erosion of the principle of civilian control of the military appear to be overstated.

However, the captains report that:

Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.

...

This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.

Have you seen In the Valley of Elah?

The Real Iraq We Knew

It is encouraging that computational social scientists are trying to anticipate threats to trust that are implicit in their work. Any data on human subjects inevitably raise privacy issues, and the real risks of abuse of such data are difficult to quantify. But although the risks posed by researchers seem far lower than those posed by governments, private companies and criminals, their soul-searching is justified. Abuse or sloppiness could do untold damage to the emerging field.

Rules are needed to ensure data can be safely and routinely shared among scientists, thus avoiding a Wild West where researchers compete for key data sets no matter what the terms. The complexities of anonymizing data correctly, and the lack of experience of local ethical committees in such matters, calls for an institutionalized approach to setting standards and protocols for using personal data, as rightly recommended recently by the US National Academy of Sciences. Solid and well thought out rules for research are essential for building trust.

See also a news article (subscription required) on the same subject.

A matter of trust | Nature

Until now, I was firmly pro-gossip.

Facts Prove No Match for Gossip, It Seems

How indie rock lost its soul.

Latest by SFJ.

See also: The Well-tempered Web, The Happy Little Minimalist, and Beyond the Musical Avant-Garde.

A Paler Shade of White

Anecdotal evidence suggests the Google effect could be on the wane.

This could also be filed under Local Information ...

The Google effect

Cassini's ten years in flight are celebrated with a parade of movies and spectacle returned from its unprecedented explorations of the ringed planet.

Since the prospect of a Personal Moon didn't seem to float anyone's boat (click through), I'll try real space objects.

Cassini Imaging Diary

David Jennings says that Web 2.0 will enrich our cultural lives immeasurably.

Oh, I don't know, it seems pretty measurable to me ...

The new seekers

There are three great cities in the United States: there's Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York – in that order.

I love Boston; I even love Denver; I like Miami; I think Washington DC is habitable; but Los Angeles is Los Angeles. You can't compare it to Paris, or to London, or to Rome, or to Shanghai. You can interestingly contrast it to those cities, sure, and Los Angeles even comes out lacking; but Los Angeles is still Los Angeles.

No matter what you do in L.A., your behavior is appropriate for the city. Los Angeles has no assumed correct mode of use. You can have fake breasts and drive a Ford Mustang – or you can grow a beard, weigh 300 pounds, and read Christian science fiction novels. Either way, you're fine: that's just how it works. You can watch Cops all day or you can be a porn star or you can be a Caltech physicist. You can listen to Carcass – or you can listen to Pat Robertson. Or both.

L.A. is the apocalypse: it's you and a bunch of parking lots. No one's going to save you; no one's looking out for you. It's the only city I know where that's the explicit premise of living there – that's the deal you make when you move to L.A.

The city, ironically, is emotionally authentic.

It says: no one loves you; you're the least important person in the room; get over it.

What matters is what you do there.

Now seems like a good time to offer some quotes from Swingers:

Mike: What the fuck are you carrying a gun for? What, in case somebody steps to you, Snoop Dogg?
Sue: Hey man, you're not from here, alright. You don't know how it is. I grew up in L.A.
Trent: Anaheim.
Sue: Whatever, man. It's different out here.

And this one, a bit longer, from the script:

                             MIKE
                        (indicating the ladies)
                   I'm going in.  Will you be my wing-man?

                             ROB
                   I'll be your winger.

        They make the approach.  With a great deal of effort, Mike
        catches their attention...

                             MIKE
                   Good evening, ladies...

        ... only to be interrupted by the party STOPPING to check
        another entrance.

        Beat.

        The party RESUMES and the blondes redirect their attention to
        Mike.  He is a little put-off but, God love him, he gets back
        in there.

                             MIKE
                   How are you ladies doing this evening?

                             BLONDE
                   What do you drive?

                             MIKE
                   I'm sorry?

                             BLONDE
                   What kind of car do you drive?

                             MIKE
                   Oh... a Cavalier.

        The blondes immediately enter back into their conversation as
        if they were never approached.

        Mike and Rob exchange defeated glances.

        One more try.

                             MIKE
                   ... It's red?

Greater Los Angeles | BLDGBLOG

The Internet has transformed the world by bring information into our lives ubiquitously. Information when delivered in a timely, relevant, and personalized fashion can be powerful. In the past it has been the prerogative of the news industry to educate minds, entertain readers, and empower citizens with information. However, the net has taken on this role more broadly. The union of computing and journalism was both logical and natural and has yielded a plethora of online news channels. Also, it has brought us value added citizen reporting in the form of blogs and recommendation networks. While connecting people to news and to social networks is very important, this is not the only way in which computing can help journalism. Computers can analyze vast news collections in an efficient and scalable way. They can extract information, induce structure, and transform and categorize text in ways that makes news easy to browse and search for both readers and journalists. This is a ripe area of research with tangible social benefits. If we can apply computers to make news more efficient to produce, distribute and absorb and fundamentally more truthful, it can better inform the actions taken by both individuals and nations.

ACM Recommender Systems 2007

Recommenders exemplify consumers' growing power to focus on what they like and filter out all else. "This becomes telling when we consider that recommenders increasingly affect not only the music and movies we see but also, through customized newspapers, the news and political views we are exposed to," says Fleder, adding that, as legal scholar Cass Sunstein notes, filtering and focusing on people's interests creates a diverse society with many points of view, but commonality creates one whose members can understand each other.

The above is from a news article about the subject paper:

This paper examines the effect of recommender systems on the diversity of sales. Two anecdotal views exist about such effects. Some believe recommenders help consumers discover new products and thus increase sales diversity. Others believe recommenders only reinforce the popularity of already popular products. This paper is a first attempt to reconcile these seemingly incompatible views. We explore the question in two ways. First, modeling recommender systems analytically allows us to explore their path dependent effects. Second, turning to simulation, we increase the realism of our results by combining choice models with actual implementations of recommender systems. We arrive at four main results. One, some common recommenders lead to a net reduction in average sales diversity. Because common recommenders (e.g., collaborative filters) recommend products based on sales and ratings, they cannot recommend products with limited historical data, even if they would be rated favorably. In turn, these recommenders can create a rich-get-richer effect for popular products and vice-versa for unpopular ones. This finding is often surprising to consumers who express that recommendations have helped them discover new products. In line with this, result two shows it is possible for individual-level diversity to increase but aggregate diversity to decrease; recommenders can push each person to new products, but they often push us toward the same new products. Result three finds that recommenders intensify the effects of chance events on market outcomes. At the product level, recommenders can 'create hits' out of products with early, high sales due to chance alone. At the market level, in individual sample paths it is possible to observe more diversity, even though on average diversity often decreases. Four, we show how basic design choices affect the outcome. Thus, managers can choose recommender designs that are more consistent with their sales or product assortment strategies.

See also here.

Blockbuster Culture's Next Rise or Fall: The Impact of Recommender Systems on Sales Diversity