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Politics & Controversy

Homer Simpson Nuclear Safety Simulator

Here: have at it with a Swedish nuclear power plant simulator. Raise and lower the control rods, turn pumps on and off, open and close valves, just make sure you don’t blowup anything.

Go look at the Chernobyl tour to see what happens when you mess up.

The original page includes this context:

The control-room operators of the Kärnobyl nuclear power plant are telecommuting and are running the plant through the Web. However, the mean time between failure for the components of Kärnobyl is not great. Try to keep the reactor stable when component failures occur!

Social Geography: Common Census

CommonCensus Map Project: The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to show how the country is organized culturally, as opposed to traditional political boundaries. It shows how the country is divided into ‘spheres of influence’ between different cities at the national, regional, and local levels. tags: […] » about 100 words

The Conservatives vs. Freakonomics

Conservatives hate Freakonomics, that book by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner that takes on more than a few sticky issues that most people don’t normally consider to be within the purview of economics. (See also the Freakonomics blog). Publisher’s Weekly notes: There isn’t really a grand theory of everything here, except […] » about 400 words

Pravda and McCarthyism

Don’t worry. I’m right on top of whatever happens in Pravda, the leading newspaper of the Russian Federation. Or, at least, I’m right on top of whatever they report in their English language version. The thing that had me choking on my onion and boursin cheese bagel this morning was the story headlined FBI arrests […] » about 300 words

Findability, The Google Economy, and Libraries

Peter Morville, author of Ambient Findability, stirred up the web4lib email list with a message about Authority and Findability. His message is about how services like Wikipedia and Google are changing our global information architecture and the meaning of “authority.” The reaction was quick, and largely critical, but good argument tests our thinking and weeds […] » about 400 words

What Bloggers Need To Know About Cahill v. Doe

Wendy Seltzer alerts us to the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Cahill v. Doe, a case that tested our rights to anonymity online, as well as the standard for judging defamation.

As it turns out, the court decided against the plaintiff, a city councilman, and protected the identity of “Proud Citizen,” who the councilman accused of posting defamatory remarks in an online forum. Further, it also decided that the context of the remarks “a chatroom filled with invective and personal opinion” are “not a source of facts or data upon which a reasonable person would rely.”

In short, as Seltzer points out, the ruling hold readers responsible for seeing materials in the context they’re presented in:

The standard empowers a wide range of bloggers’ speech. Because readers can use context to help them differentiate opinions from statements of fact, bloggers are freer to publish their choice of opinionated gossip or citizen journalism. And thanks to courts like Cahill and Dendrite, they can do so using pseudonyms or their real names.

Priorities

So long as I’m talking about change I want to bring attention to some commentaries by Chris Farrell in Marketplace Money. On September 16th he noted that hurricane Katrina (Rita hadn’t hit yet) “ripped the veil off poverty in America” and wondered aloud weather the voting public would continue to support the Republican obsession with […] » about 400 words

ChangeThis

Worth looking at: ChangeThis, started by Seth Godin and “a sharp team of change agents.” The quote comes from Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer, who also reminds us of the ways that conservatives in every field favor traditional views and values and oppose change:

  • Stay the course
  • Don’t fix what isn’t broken
  • Ignore all critics
  • We don’t have time
  • Keep out anything foreign to us (actual or metaphorical)
  • Destroy anyone who opposes us or our way of thinking

Who cares that Godin and McConnell are marketers. Valuable change comes in seemingly small and insignificant ways, then all at once.

…And The Floods Moved North

The rains this weekend swelled the rivers to flood stage in south-western New Hampshire. As much as half of Keene is said to be under water. Further north, the small and historic downtown of Alstead has been washed away. This picture comes from the Portsmouth Herald, and reports in the Washington Post from Keene and […] » about 200 words

Open Test Sites

I guess not everybody in Nevada loves the Test Site as much as this postcard might suggest, but hey, what do tourists know? The image comes from _roberta‘s Flickr photostream, and she doesn’t seem too critical. About 850 miles southeast today, the Trinity Site — where the world’s first atomic weapon was detonated in a […] » about 200 words

Game Law Redux

Matt says my attempts to analogize online roleplaying games to more familiar contests like chess or automobile racing are “just silly.” But his response appears to reinforce my point rather than refute it. It is the responsibility of the gamers and gaming organizations to create and enforce rules. People violating those rules are subject to […] » about 300 words

The Potential Of Political Campaigning in Online Games

Matt and I have been talking about online role playing games lately. He’s more than interested in the new challenges they pose to our legal system, the new media opportunities they offer, the ways they’re altering culture. We got into a conversation about how companies are taking advantage of them in marketing campaigns, so I […] » about 300 words

Recycling Tips From Our Physical Plant

Along with the energy saving and water saving tips previously, our physical plant folks have sent out these recycling tips: Recycling of Aluminum Cans — saves 95% of the Energy required to make the same amount of Aluminum from its virgin source. One ton of recycled Aluminum saves 14,000 KWH of Energy, 40 barrels of […] » about 300 words

Water Saving Tips

Our physical plant folks sent out this list of water saving tips to followup on the energy savings tips they sent previously. Again, I think they should be blogging them, but what do I know? (It’s a rhetorical question, please don’t answer.) Limit the use of domestic hot water — use cold water whenever it […] » about 300 words

PowerPoint. Killer App?

Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post wonders if PowerPoint is a killing app. She’s not the first to note that NASA administrators make decisions — sometimes fatal decisions — on the basis of PowerPoint presentations that mask or misrepresent details. I wrote about Edward Tufte’s Cognitive Style of PowerPoint essay in a previous post. Marcus […] » about 300 words

[FWD:] Katrina Eyewitness Report

(about the photo) The following report comes from CosmoBaker.com, which includes this preamble: EDIT: The following is an email that was sent to my mother from one of her colleagues. Although I cannot substantiate the contents, after all the horror stories that I’ve heard so far, I though that this one was important to tell. […] » about 2700 words

Trusted Computing: The Movie

Benjamin Stephan and Lutz Vogel at Lafkon bring us this wonderfully engaging animated story of Trusted Computing. There’s lots more to the story at AgainstTCPA.com, and I need to thank David Rothman at TeleRead for alerting me to both the video and the site. I haven’t had much to say about TCPA, but I think […] » about 100 words

Wide World of Video Games

Matt started talking up the weird issues developing around multiplayer online games a few weeks ago. Then soon after he blogged it, a story appeared in On the Media (listen, transcript)

Short story: online gaming is huge — one developer claims four million paying customers. More significantly, the interplay between real and virtual worlds might create new challenges for this real world legal system. “Theft” of in-game money and equipment among players in the online world is possible, but it’s lead to the real-world arrest of at least one person and the murder of another when authorities refused to act.

One argument is that these games occupy players time and cost money, so in-game theft results in real-life loss. Baloney. Chess and Monopoly occupy great deals of time, but try telling the cops I rooked your knight. Money? A huge number of Americans invest time and money on building and racing cars on the approximately 1800 racetracks around the country. Real time and and hard-earned money are lost when cars crash, but the track has its own rules “rubin’s racin, Cole” — and none of us would excuse a driver for off-track violence against a competitor.

If I Close My Eyes, Does It Go Away? <br />Can Bush Censor His Shame Away?

Reuters: FEMA accused of censorship: “It’s impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story,” said Larry Siems of the PEN American Center, an authors’ group that defends free expression. Brian Williams’ MSNBC Nightly News Blog: While […] » about 300 words

Axe Gang Security Bumbles Again

We laugh at the single minded foolishness of the Axe Gang in Kung Fu Hustle Jackie Chan’s The Legend of Drunken Master, but do we laugh when we see it in our own security policies? To intelligence staffers and border guards working under a policy of hammers, all the world is a nail. Here’s an […] » about 400 words

Energy Crisis

Mike Whelan posted the above photo to his Flickr photostream recently. Back in April, when gas prices were still well below the $3-per-gallon mark, it looked like sales of SUVs were starting to slow. Interestingly, we’ve crossed the threshold Keith Bradsher quotes in High and Mighty, his book detailing how the US auto industry became […] » about 200 words

Time-Picayune In Exile

Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss answered questions for On The Media‘s Brooke Gladstone. Amoss and his staff have been covering the catastrophe in New Orleans as only locals can.

Some of the best reporting I’ve seen on this has come from the Times-Picayune, and I was quite amazed when I discovered the electronic edition Wednesday. Despite the damage, they appear to have start releasing a print version again and are distributing it in the city and in communities where refugees have fled. For so many displaced people, and in areas where power prevents other communications, I can imagine how valuable this thread is.

Things Go To Hell

DefenseTech’s Noah Shachtman writes:

Organizing thousands and thousands of people, in hellish conditions and in a hurry, is tough work. Let’s take that as a given. But still: We’re now a work week into a natural disaster that had been forecast for years, and New Orleans “is being run by thugs,” the city’s emergency preparedness director tells the Times. “Some people there have not eaten or drunk water for three or four days, which is inexcusable.”

In another post, Shactman asks how the DHS could fail its job so badly?

Meanwhile, Pravda declares George W. Bush has abandoned Americans and it turns out that FEMA is directing donations to Rev. Pat Robertson, yes, that same Pat Robertson who put a fatwa on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and is now wanted as an international terrorist.

Extra: Earl Hutchinson explores How to Create a Crisis.