Thinking about the genesis and consequences of the Iraq War and the recently passed FISA law that authorizes wholesale wiretapping, I recalled a relevant party game described by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in his book "Consciousness Explained." It's a variant of the familiar childhood game requiring that one try to determine by means of Yes or No questions a secretly chosen number between one and one million.

In Dennett's more interesting and suggestive game, one person, the subject, is selected from a group of people at a party and asked to leave the room. He is told that in his absence one of the other partygoers will relate a recent dream to the other party attendees. The person selected then returns to the party and, through a sequence of Yes or No questions about the dream, attempts to accomplish two things: reconstruct the dream and identify whose dream it was.

The punch line is that no one has related any dream.

War, Spying and Party Game Delusions

Publishers Weekly Starred Review:

Alford and Duguid, authors of the acclaimed Mangoes & Curry Leaves, explore the food and peoples of the outlaying regions of present-day China, historically home to those not ethnically Chinese. Part travel guide and part cookbook, this collection looks at the cultural survival and preservation of food in smaller societies including that of the Tibetan, Mongol, Tuvan and Kirghiz peoples, among others. The authors include vivid color photographs of food, people and places of cultural significance. Recipes are tantalizing and mostly simple, and ingredients are surprisingly easy to find. The book is sectioned by food type rather than ethnicity, covering everything from condiments and seasonings to fish and meats to drinks and sweets. Dishes have the hint of the familiar, such as Oasis Chicken Kebabs, Tibetan Pork and Spinach Stir-Fry, and Market Stall Fresh Tomato Salsa, while others are less common but equally tempting, including Kazakh Pulao, Steamed Tibetan Momos, and Home-style Tajik Nan. Peppered throughout are the authors' personal stories, which provide insight into each culture. A handsome and engaging collection suitable for travelers and cooks alike, this book will delight anyone with an interest in this part of the world.

From the Slate review:

The yogurt-based, covered-pot-baked Kazakh bread smells exactly like good dinner rolls from a Midwestern supper club, but the moist, absorbent texture seems closer to an underwater sea sponge.

(h/t TC)

Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China

The Drizzle project is building a database optimized for Cloud and Net applications. It is being designed for massive concurrency on modern multi-cpu/core architecture. The code is originally derived from MySQL.

A Lightweight SQL Database for Cloud and Web in Launchpad

PolicyMap is a revolutionary, easy, new way to explore geographic data through maps, tables and reports.

PolicyMap

With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.

Google Insights

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a “pseudo-naïve” tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.”

Today the Internet is much more than esoteric discussion forums. It is a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others. Teenagers groom their MySpace profiles as intensely as their hair; escapists clock 50-hour weeks in virtual worlds, accumulating gold for their online avatars. Anyone seeking work or love can expect to be Googled. As our emotional investment in the Internet has grown, the stakes for trolling — for provoking strangers online — have risen. Trolling has evolved from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt.

Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling

Stan Kelly-Bootle:

Fads and faddisms come and go thick and fast; fashions, thin and thinner, in a snowclone of clichés. In C++ terms:

white = new black;
purple = new white;
hiphop = new rock_and_roll;
small = new big;
subprime = new affordable;
michigan = new florida;
C# = new C++;

Thus, wisdom-free information is not just here-and-there and now-and-then but all-over, all-the-time.

There's a Lot of It About: And everybody's doing it.

In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be "demographic inversion." Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so.

Developments like this rarely occur in one city at a time, and indeed demographic inversion is taking place, albeit more slowly than in Chicago, in metropolitan areas throughout the country. The national press has paid very little attention to it. While we have been focusing on Baghdad and Kabul, our own cities have been changing right in front of us.

Atlanta, for example, is shifting from an overwhelmingly black to what is likely to soon be a minority-black city. This is happening in part because the white middle class is moving inside the city borders, but more so because blacks are moving out. Between 1990 and 2006, according to research by William Frey of the Brookings Institution, the white population of Atlanta has increased from roughly 30 percent to 35 percent while the black population has declined from 67 percent to 55 percent. In this decade alone, two of Atlanta's huge suburban counties, Clayton and DeKalb, have acquired substantial black majorities, and immigrants arriving from foreign countries are settling primarily there or in similar outlying areas, not within the city itself. The numbers for Washington, D.C. are similar.

So ... Atlanta's still just as hosed as Munich, right?

The Economist ran a story on this back in February:

Victorville has no traditionally white areas because it has no traditional areas of any kind.

At the moment, one of the engines that has driven this migration is stalling. Victorville and Apple Valley are mired in a housing crisis: San Bernardino county had 22,000 foreclosures last year, compared with 7,800 in 1996. Fewer people are moving as house prices fall. Yet this seems to have slowed, not stopped, the black exodus from Los Angeles.

The pull of the suburbs is strong.

Trading Places: The Demographic Inversion of the American City

The White House is expected Thursday to unveil the largest overhaul of intelligence powers in a generation, spelling out the responsibilities of each intelligence agency in the wake of several reforms following the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to government officials familiar with the plans.

The revised order states that the new law will be the only law that governs surveillance, in an attempt to quell the concerns of lawmakers who contend that Mr. Bush ignored the law when he authorized a warrantless-spying program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Some on Capitol Hill were frustrated that the administration kept Congress in the dark on this historic overhaul. "They did not consult Congress at all," said one congressional official.

Overhaul Elevates Intelligence Director

Barack is making America cool again!

All you people want is more, more, more, more, more!

(pnsfw audio)

From last year:

Leave Britney Alone!

Leave Barack Alone!!!