Another restaurant dinner with my boring girlfriend, another lecture about how I never really listen to whatever she’s yammering on about.

But how can I listen — how could anyone? — when across the room, alone at a table, reading the newspaper and nursing a glass of white wine, is a silent confection like you?

Four Short Crushes

At the end of the day, he remembered thinking, "I can't believe I found all those answers in one place."

I mean, at the end of the day, is this a great language — or what? I mean, it's a language to die for.

At the end of the day, I, like everyone else, just sidestepped the helpful knowledge, eager to continue fucking up. No one ever learns lessons. You just smile and continue bullshitting. That’s the American way.

Priest recognizes the barriers women have conquered but suggests that even the most successful professional woman wants a man at the end of the day.

"At the end of the day, nobody is above the law of physics." [ Before lunch, however ... ]

Some people would argue that working at Google is more exciting, but [Google employees] are working incredible hours. And at the end of the day, you have to ask, ’Is that a good deal?'

At the end of the day, we all pile into each other's hotel rooms ...

At the end of the day diversification is what matters most.

"Every race has its good and bad. At the end of the day it's not what they look like, it's about what they do, their actions."

At the end of the day, when I’m old and decrepit, I can give it to my grandkids and say, ‘here, this is what your grandpa used to do.’

And at the end of the day we were proud of what we did.

There are not that many guys who see it on as consistent a basis. At the end of the day, I love to get sacks, but if I don’t, as long as my teammates are getting the benefits, I’ve got to swallow it ...

Furthermore, at the end of the day, you’ll be able to say with conviction that you left all that you had on the floor.

Answers may vary, but one thing is for sure, there is no escaping the fact that at the end of the day, this is just another popularity contest.

... at the end of the day it is still ... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

David Gleich is doing some interesting work; in particular, see his Personalized PageRank paper.

In this paper we investigate the use of Semidefinite Programming (SDP) optimization for high dimensional data layout and graph visualization. We developed a set of interactive visualization tools and used them on music artist ratings data from Yahoo!. The computed layout preserves a natural grouping of the artists and provides visual assistance for browsing large music collections.

Check out the visualization.

Also of interest is this talk on Numerical Linear Algebra for Data and Link Analysis.

The World of Music: SDP layout of high dimensional data

This might be of interest, particularly to those who think of themselves as having been "online" "back in the day."

Every field of history has a basic need for a detailed chronology of what happened: who did what when. In the absence of such a resource, fanciful accounts flourish.

This book provides a rich narrative of the early development of online information retrieval systems and services, from 1963 to 1976 -- a period important to anyone who uses a search engine, online catalog, or large database.

Drawing on personal experience, extensive research, and interviews with many of the key participants, the book describes the individuals, projects, and institutions of the period. It also corrects many common errors and misconceptions and provides milestones for many of the significant developments in online systems and technology.

A History of Online Information Services, 1963-1976 - The MIT Press

A new project from the author of Witko.

Who at the NSA uses Gmail?
Which NASA employees are using Myspace/LinkedIn?
Which people in Kabul are using Skype?

This is some interesting code.

He also claims to be working on an automated identity hijacking capability.

Evolution

This op-ed may be OBE:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Sunday he was ordering a halt to construction of the wall around the Adhamiya neighborhood. And American officials, who did not immediately concur, indicated today they would go along with Mr. Maliki.

I had flagged this news in my Sunday NYT sampler. This is an op-ed in today's Washington Post; he's lamenting the short attention span theater that is the contemporary news media.

Meanwhile, back in Baghdad, we're building a wall. Actually, quite a few walls.

...

Basically, we're turning Baghdad into Belfast.

Mr. Robinson may favor the IRA analogy. Meanwhile, Iraqis are comparing themselves to Native Americans:

A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would transform the residents into caged animals.

“It’s unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane manner,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re trying to isolate us from other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will be much greater between the two sects.”

“The Native Americans were treated better than us,” he added.

I don't know about that ... at least the Iraqi population isn't dying of "germs" ... (which is actually surprising, since most of them don't have regular access to clean water.)

For their part, the soldiers are comparing it to China:

The wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence. ... The soldiers jokingly call it "The Great Wall of Adhamiya."

Residents are comparing themselves to Palestinians:

Some Adhamiya residents have compared the wall to barriers erected by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

The reaction on the street was pretty clear:

Eighteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, history seems to be moving backwards here in the Middle East. More than a single wall of separation and suppression are now in demand for each country, once in the name of sects, and another time in the name of extremism and moderation, but always with the aim of redrawing maps.

Walled City

Originally a geologist, Ballen explains his career progression from documentary photographer in South Africa to fine artist whose goal is to "expand human consciousness hopefully in a positive way."

See also:

Roger Ballen was born in New York City in 1950 and has lived in Johannesburg South Africa for almost 30 years. Beginning by documenting the small dorps or villages of rural South Africa, Ballen’s photography moved on in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s to their inhabitants; through the late 1990’s Ballen’s work progressed. By the mid 1990’s his subjects began to act where previously his pictures however troubling fell firmly into the category of documentary photography, his work then moved into the realms of fiction. His third book Outland produced by Phaidon Press in 2000 was the result.

In the fall of 2005, Phaidon press produced its second book by the artist, entitled "Shadow Chamber". The book focuses on the interactions between the people, animals, and or objects that inhabit Ballen’s unique image space. Ballen’s recent work enters into a new realm of photography—the images are painterly and sculptural in ways not immediately associated with photographs.

A Conversation with Roger Ballen

This is interesting. NAB is as dysfunctional as MPAA or RIAA.

While satellite radio still seems to be figuring out how to make a profit, it's soaring in popularity, winning over 14 million paid subscribers in just a few years. Of course, that may not be a reflection of XM or Sirius' quality so much as the mundanity and drollery of Clear Channel America.

Of course, the harder the NAB fights and the more money the NAB spends to promote this message, the clearer it becomes that the NAB fears the competition posed by an XM-Sirius alliance. In effect, the more the NAB fights the merger, the more it undermines its own argument against it.

Dinosaurs vs. Satellites

Looks like some good stuff here.

From cell biologists to quantum physicists, researchers are struggling to work out how systems involving large numbers of interacting entities work as a whole. In this collection of Essays, scientists explain how a systems approach, in parallel with the reductionism that dominated twentieth-century science, promises to yield fresh insight, and in some cases, to challenge the most widely held concepts of their field.

Subscription required for access to full text.

Connections: Essays in Nature

Some fundamental principles of colour vision, deduced from perceptual studies, have been understood for a long time. Physiological studies have confirmed the existence of three classes of cone photoreceptors, and of colour-opponent neurons that compare the signals from cones, but modern work has drawn attention to unexpected complexities of early organization: the proportions of cones of different types vary widely among individuals, without great effect on colour vision; the arrangement of different types of cones in the mosaic seems to be random, making it hard to optimize the connections to colour-opponent mechanisms; and new forms of colour-opponent mechanisms have recently been discovered. At a higher level, in the primary visual cortex, recent studies have revealed a simpler organization than had earlier been supposed, and in some respects have made it easier to reconcile physiological and perceptual findings.

This article is freely available (with registration).

The machinery of colour vision