] In the old days, staff members in the nine-branch Santa
] Cruz Public Library System would destroy discarded
] paperwork as time allowed, typically once a week.
]
] But at a meeting of library officials last week, it was
] decided the materials should be shredded daily.
]
] "The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical
] information as possible," said Anne M. Turner, director
] of the library system.
]
] The move was part of a campaign by the Santa Cruz
] libraries to demonstrate their opposition to the Patriot
] Act, the law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks
] that broadened the federal authorities' powers in
] fighting terrorism.

Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to New F.B.I. Powers

UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism is hosting an event entitled "Weblogs, Information, and Society" on April 10.

Speakers include: Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News; Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext; Donna Wentworth, Harvard's Berkman Center; Ed Felten, Princeton; Scott Rosenberg, Salon; and Ernest Miller, LawMeme.

Description: The Weblogs Information and Society panel draws webloggers from academe, business, and journalism to explore how weblogs continue to change the way groups and individuals work, learn, and communicate.

The panel will also explore how weblogs, and social software in particular, facilitate civic and creative engagement by increasing the fluidity of information between individuals and organizations. This developing relationship between weblogs, information, and society is significant and deserves further discussion.

Weblogs, Information, and Society | Event at UC Berkeley

] Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, New York, management consultant,
] must get FBI clearance every Monday and Thursday when he
] flies to and from Syracuse for business. Iqbal can't get
] off a government watch list because he shares the same
] name as a suspected terrorist.
]
] What's more, the suspected terrorist Iqbal has been in
] U.S. custody at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
] since January 2002 when he was captured in Afghanistan.

Transportation Security Administration = Totally Stupid Assholes?

If you haven't read about it yet, you should follow the link through to CAPS II... Think all this added anti-terror security is temporary? Think again. Of course, they are promising that the institutionalized revision will actually include a way to remove yourself from the list ( :-O, these people are absolutely BRILLIANT). How one gets on the list will, of course, remain secret. So, basically, if everyone flies, and they need to get rid of someone they don't like, its really easy, and its impossible for anyone to ever find out what occured. You can bet your ass a hell of a lot more then "due process" will be "vanishing" under this system (Mike Hawash anyone?). Look for it to eventually get applied to every single mode of transportation in the country. Look for the Supreme Court to "interpret" that this is "legal." I'm sure that one or two of the justices will agree to "take one for the team" and write a dissent, if that makes you feel any better.

Wired News: Due Process Vanishes in Thin Air

I will be at Interz0ne this weekend.

Decius informed me last night that he may not be able to make it, so I may be doing the MemeStreams panel alone. Lets hope he makes it, because I don't have as much prepared as I'd like to (as usual), and will likely wind up roughing most of my talk. Users, come armed with questions and comments.. This is a good opportunity to get some feedback, discuss ways to use the system, etc.. Expect the answer for a number of things to be "its on the way, but we gotta do a bunch of stuff first"... [U: I've just been informed that Decius will make it.. ]

There may be another update to the Social Network portion of the site for the con, but I'm not entirely sure yet if I'm going to have enough time to finish it.. Time is tight and this week turned out to be more chaotic then expected.

The MemeStreams panel is going to be on Saturday in room A1 at 3PM CST, directly after Randal Schwartz's panel on "Learning Perl". I learned perl from his books, and MemeStreams is in perl, so I'm in awe of this..

I'm also booked for a panel in the same room on Saturday at 8PM CST. Its tentative title is "RANT!". I have no idea what I'm expected to talk about at this one. I'm pretty sure I'm being setup for something. Judging from the title picked for me, I'm just expected to stand there and rant. Fine, I can do that. Done it in the past.. Infact, I'm pretty much expected to do it at these.. Its shocking.. Based on con history, this panel will go on for about 30 minutes before I completely lose control of it.. 8PM on Satuday night a con like Interz0ne means one thing, most people who show up to the panel will be consuming large amounts of booze.. I expect people to be mixing things in buckets and such madness.. The slot after me is something about girls and webcams. This is clearly the point in the night where it has been determined that madness will decend, and its been handed to me.. Yum yum.

I'll be available for private consulting sessions and drunken debauchery all weekend.

MemeStreams at Interz0ne

] He had turned to God at the age of 40 as a way of kicking
] alcoholism, and his faith had kept him on the straight
] and narrow ever since, giving him the drive to reach the
] White House.
]
] But all that changed on the day of the attacks on the
] Pentagon and World Trade Center.
]
] Those close to Mr Bush say that day he discovered his
] life's mission.
]
] He became convinced that God was calling him to engage
] the forces of evil in battle, and this one time
] baseball-team owner from Texas did not shrink from the
] task.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush puts God on his side

] There doesn't seem to be much awareness in the Bush
] administration of the terrible distress of the unemployed
] American worker. This is an ache that does not extend to
] the gilded towers of the very wealthy, which is where the
] administration has always focused its concern.
]
] The White House response to the latest job loss figures
] is the same response it has had all along to bad economic
] news: more tax cuts are the cure.

Workers Who Feel Discarded

] Over the last two weeks, nobody has been paying much
] attention to economic news; even the ups and downs of the
] Dow have reflected reports from the battlefield, not the
] boardroom. But the economic news is quite worrying.
] Indeed, the latest readings suggest that our recovery,
] such as it is, may be stalling.
]
] Actually, the recovery can't officially stall since it
] hasn't officially begun: the committee that rules on such
] matters still hasn't declared the recession that began in
] March 2001 over. There are good reasons for the
] committee's hesitation: while G.D.P. started growing in
] late 2001, the job situation -- which is what matters
] to most people -- has more or less steadily worsened.
] In particular, fewer people are working now than were
] employed a year ago. Since the working-age population
] continues to rise, jobs have become steadily harder to
] find.

Gun, Germs and Stall?

As expected, the second big economic shoe dropped this week and hit with a resounding thud: another big job loss in March and an even bigger one in February than was previously announced. Add that to news this week of a downturn in manufacturing and what do you get? Two important recession signals flashing the same message: Danger Will Robinson!
...
Here's what matters in trying to figure out where the economy is heading, the four main indicators of recession:

1. Employment - the number of jobs created each month
2. Industrial output -- mainly manufacturing
3. Personal income -- think monthly paycheck
4. Business sales -- wholesale and retail

The Hays Files: Shades of recession

What if Fox News reported various famous moments in history. Mildy entertaining, and bi-partisan!

Fark vs. Fox News

] In the case of physical property, we take it for granted
] that the ownership right should have the potential of
] persisting as long as the physical object itself. In the
] case of an idea, however, we have chosen to strike a
] different balance in recognition of the chaos that could
] follow from having to trace back all the thoughts
] implicit in one's current undertaking and pay a royalty
] to the originator of each one. So rather than adopting
] that obviously principled but unworkable approach, we
] have chosen instead to follow the lead of British common
] law and place time limits on intellectual property
] rights.

I'm rerecommending this. I've read it now. Greenspan explains the changing nature of the situation just as I have in the past, and this talk offers itself as a good reference for such an explanation, as people usually don't want to take my word for it. :)

Intellectual Property is broken. You heard it here from the guy that runs the economy. So don't tell me I'm being silly.

Of course, Greenspans perspective on how to fix it is probably 180 degrees from mine.

FRB: Speech, Greenspan-Market economies--April 4, 2003