too many topics,

    too little time.

News UPdate. Yes, I broke wordpress again, or it was still broken. Jeremy helped me work through the logic to find the missing file(s). Now just have to fix something else… but I'm keeping away from rampant computer use and doing other useful things. Like starting to work again on the Medieveal Latin British vampire stories. I did two papers on these fragments in the works of Walter Map and William of Newburgh last year, and have done nothing since, but now Quinn Yarbro is co-editing an anthology of old and obscure vampire stories with college level articles, and I'm submitting the map/newburgh stuff. One of my two major summer projects. The other will be on blogs and hacking with KAT! I hope.

In the mean time, thanks go out to Rochelle for giving me a gmail account… [Team Polysynchronous - Just Differently Intelligent - - Just Differently Intelligent -]

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mumbles something about fixing it friday, where is that rm-f command anyway…. no, if asked, i'll fixors it, as per my contract with the world, some sort of permanent penance for portending to be a realist in a former life i think.

EFF Publishes Patent Hit List. Winnowing a field of nearly 200 questionable patents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation decides to challenge 10 of what the group considers to be the most dubious and abused technology patents. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

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i wish they didn't have to do this, most of those patents are completely improper in regards to what a patent should be.

i downloaded this earlier today on my every so often on interesting uses of political economy. having just read it, i find that it makes the pertinance of political economy for those interested in librarianship, but it doesn't really go as far as i'd like talking about the becoming part of librarianship that is part of the political economy, nor does it really deal in any depth with the obvious relationships between andrew carnegie's recognition of the library as state economic driver and the role of the librarian. however, it is a fantastic marker of a future direction of research.

this looks like it might be interesting….

this sort of speaks a wee bit negatively toward the way the republican party thinks about sex. but maybe they just believe it should be deregulated? no, their marriage policy somehwat contrary to that, hmmm…. well, remember tailhook?

New WSIS papers from APC. A grant from Canada's International Development Agency enabled the Association for Progressive Communications to commission two studies on the hottest issues emerging from WSIS-1: Internet governance and funding ICT development in the “South.” Both documents have just been posted on… [InternetPolicy.net]

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worth the read….

this looks like an interesting group

the switch is soda, it is also pure juice, it is carbonated. it isn't sweetened. it is good.

Waging War On Wal-Mart. George Will’s piece in the current Newsweek, “Waging War On Wal-Mart” argues that Zoning and other laws used to block Wal-Marts from opening are, in effect, tariffs serving domestic protectionism. Talk about protecting “a sense of community” often is avarice masquerading as altruism. It is rent-seeking—the use of government to… [Outside the Beltway]

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if there was ever a thing to wage war on…..

Group promotes “digital ubiquity” at home. “The job of connecting all the consumer electronics devices in your home is getting a boost with the formation of an alliance of some 145 consumer and electronics companies,” Michael Singer wrote on Wi-Fi Planet . “The consortium [is] now… [InternetPolicy.net]

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ubiquity is the big question here.

it looks good, very very good. the new osx tiger server.

while i can see the argument, i can also see that more people are seeing the issues involved in graduate school, the expectations, etc…. and actually being fairly critical.

Scientists Now Need OK to Consult WHO. Now specific US government scientists can't even be selected to advise
international bodies without approval - the government will choose who
gets to give advice. I wonder whether or not those chosen will have
opinions in line with what the administration wants rather than what
the science says… silly question, isn't it - we already know the
answer.

Scientists Now Need OK to Consult WHO (AP).
AP - Government scientists must now be cleared by a Bush political
appointee before they can lend their expertise to the World Health
Organization, a change that a Democratic lawmaker said fits a pattern
of politicizing science. [Yahoo! News - Science]

[David Harris' Science & Literature]

The continuing degradation of American science by politically appointed hacks. This is beginning to sound like the old Soviet Union where only scientists who had been vetted by the government could speak outside the country, and Nobel prize winners were kept in house arrrest. I wonder what Linus Pauling would do (the only winner of a science Nobel and the Nobel Peace Prize)? [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

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i imagine he would be very disturbed by this sort of things, i know that it disturbs me, and that in the normal human course of events it should disturb everyone. even the possibility of blocking expertise from the world health organization is morally wrong.

Jon Stewart Nails Cheney In An Outright Lie. This is from the June 21, 2004 program. Stewart: “Mr. Vice President, I have to inform you: You're pants are on fire.” Cheney said he never stated that it was “pretty well confirmed” that meetings had taken place between Saddam's Officials and Al Queda members. The Daily Show dug up the Meet the Press coverage from December 9, 2001 that proves otherwise. As a blogger and “traditional” journalist, I always hesitate to throw the word “lie” around unless I can validate my statement. How wonderful that we live in an age where I can present my case and back it… [On Lisa Rein's Radar]

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this is just a small lie, the big lies are the ones that support it.

No more sex for American youths.

AlterNet

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Condom Wars

Lethal new regulations from President Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans' goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Reminds me of this billboard.

via Bopuc

[Joi Ito's Web]

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one more example of the replacement of knowledge with ideology…..