Come over to the dark side.. of the shire. Welcome to Pushington Downs This amusing fairy tale is brought to us from some of the fine folks from MST3k. Edward the less is an amusing bit of comedy based in a universe almost completely unlike that of JRR Tolkien. It never made it past series […]

Black helicopter alert? Via MetaFilter Saddam's spiderhole photo was taken in August, or what? The fruit on the date palm behind the soldier is yellow. Date fruit grows from March-August (see 'Iraq' in table 23) and is harvested in early fall. Dates are yellow (ie. just ripened) in August, not December. I'm not invoking conspiracy […]

Big news…. Via Wired News: WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by the recording industry to compel the nation's Internet providers to turn over names of subscribers suspected of illegally swapping music online. The ruling from a three-judge… [Epistemographer]

Over at Kickass…. Tina is advocating teaching grade five kids (that's fifth grade for you americans) about wet dreams. i love my wife! The wee tomato is going to know so much that he'll be the one telling the teachers what's what…. [Eat Your Vegetables] More than half of all the (college-educated) women in one […]

Strike ballot for lecturers [Ananova News]

Lessons from studying open-source communities. Mike Martin, Scientific Research Backs Wisdom of Open Source, NewsFactor Sci-Tech, December 15, 2003. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) New scientific studies of how open-source communities build and debug software conclude that the process is more complex and more effective than usually thought. Quoting Walt Scacchi, a senior research scientist at […]

A Telling Account of WSIS. Maria Farrell, who works as a lobbyist for an undisclosed international membership organization based in Paris (OECD? ICC?) writes a great account of WSIS at Crooked Timber. Below I include a sampler, but it’s worth clicking the link to get the whole thing. Other interesting WSIS links include:An interview with […]

Chair of 9/11 Commission: Attacks Were Preventable. The Chair of the independent 9/11 commission says the attacks were preventable: “This is a very, very important part of… [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

Where is Bush Getting These Numbers?. Andrew Sullivan on Bush's “conservatism”. Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan on Bush's “alleged fiscal conservatism”: MORE SPENDING: Monday, president Bush touted his alleged fiscal conservatism. If he's fiscally conservative, I don't know what fiscally liberal would look like. Here's what he said: “I want to remind… [Dean Independents] [The Mediaburn […]

WSIS Misguided. From an Editorial in the Baltimore Sun: “…Even more misguided is the international movement to take registration of Web addresses from a U.S. nonprofit – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – and put it and other coordination under the United Nations. At the 200-nation U.N. World Information Summit last […]