Votester: new P2P technology for digital activism

Smart idea for creating virtual demonstrations. Possible in principle, but — alas — only vapourware at present.

SARS isn’t just a health problem
Guardian story.

“The economic impact of Sars is terrifying world leaders and financial institutions. Singapore’s Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, warned yesterday: ‘If we fail to contain Sars, it may well become the worst crisis our country has faced.’

Estimating it has cost the city-state $847 million (£540m) so far, he added: ‘Sars will knock you backward, it may even kill you, but I can tell you Sars can kill the economy and all of us will be killed by the collapsing economy.’ …”.

The Economist has come to the same conclusion:

“the effects are now so widespread that some analysts believe SARS will be more damaging to East Asia’s economies than the war in Iraq. Standard & Poor’s, a credit-rating agency, reckons the disease’s impact could cut Hong Kong’s GDP by 0.6%-1.5% this year, Singapore’s by 0.4%-2%, and China’s by up to 0.5%. The United Nations said on Thursday that the combined effect of SARS and the war would cut almost half a percentage point off economic growth throughout Asia this year.”

The death of the Media Lab?

Philip Greenspun has posted this scarifying analysis of how the MIT Media Lab pulled in so much corporate money over all those years. The Lab’s problem, of course, is that corporate America has run out of money for that kind of thing. Only the Department of Defense left…

NetNewsWire — the penny drops

I’ve just downloaded NewsWireLite and have had one of those epiphanies. It’s as if the last piece of a puzzling jigsaw has just dropped into place. Am still sorting out my thoughts. More later.

Hitler’s library

Interesting piece by Timothy Ryback. In the spring of 1945, in a German salt mine, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division (now where have I heard that name recently?) discovered 3,000 books belonging to Adolf Hitler. More than a thousand of them are now in the Library of Congress. Ryback claims that the books–and their marginalia–reveal Hitler’s deep and disturbing interest in religion and theology. Hmmm… Pity the 101st didn’t display the same concern for Baghdad’s ancient libraries.

More on hats

One should remember that hats are a big deal in certain cultures, just as moustaches are in others. Texas, for example, takes hats very seriously. Which reminds me of what Governor John Connally (a native Texan) once said about the Bush family after they moved to the Lone Star state and tried to pass themselves off as Texans. “All hat, no cattle” was his terse analysis.

Ed Felten’s summary of state of play on ‘super-DMCA’ bills

This must be one of the most depressing reads on the Web. As Larry Lessig says: “What is so frustrating about this business is not the people (like these governments) who disagree with you. But that their disagreement reveals that they have not done anything to understand the issue. We are over 5 years into this battle, yet these laws look like they have been drafted by people who have lived on another planet these past 5 years.”

RSS for beginners

Terrific how-to article by Search Engine Watch.

To hat or to hat not? — that is the question

Not sure if this is a sartorial question or one for a psychiatrist. Like many ageing hippies, I do not have as much hair as hitherto. My friends look at me going about hatless in the sun and mutter warnings about melanoma. So I need a hat. (Or should that be an hat, as in ‘an hotel’?) But what kind of hat? Not a baseball cap, surely, because that would be absurd for a father with young children who have baseball caps welded to their heads in the summer. They woiuld think I was trying to be ‘cool’, which in their eyes would be very Sad. [Note: ‘sad’ in this context is a technical term signifying behaviour too embarrassing and pathetic for words.]

Two years ago I bought a Tilley hat which is wonderful. It has brass ventilation holes and floats if it should fall off during white-water rafting and the brim can be snapped up to make one look like an Australian crocodile-hunter etc. But there are several problems with it from my point of view. (a) It’s a bit heavy in really hot weather; (b) I’m not the white-water rafting type; and (c) it’s not quite the thing to wear on days when one has to put on a suit and meet bankers and other men in suits (which, for my sins, I sometimes have to do).

So, in a fit of madness the other day, I went out and bought a Panama hat.

This is an echt-Panama too — the kind you can roll up and put in a tube while awaiting embarkation to some colonial outpost. It’s wonderfully light and comfortable, but…

The problem is that the Panama’s not really my kind of hat either. In fact, it’s the kind of headgear my grandfather would have worn in the summer if there had been any summers in Ireland. (Grandpa wore a homburg in the winter, as befitted a dominant male of his status.) So what to do? Hmmm… Perhaps I’ll seek the advice of my friend Quentin, who has almost as little hair as me. Perhaps he has a secret hat habit?

Afterthought: of course it could be that what’s really going on is that I am turning into my grandfather…. Deep waters, eh?

How to preach the (We)Blogging Gospel

Interesting Harvard Gazette piece about Dave Winer’s evangelising within Harvard. Dave is very good at explaining what a weblog is — and isn’t. Quote:

“A blog is like a personal newspaper,” says Winer. “It’s sort of publishing on a small scale.” Blogs are generally chronological, updated regularly with the most recent posting at the top, and relative: “You’re often writing about something other people have written,” he says. A recent post on Scripting News, for instance, refers readers to The Crimson’s article describing Dean Harry Lewis’ efforts to crack down on students caught sharing copyrighted songs and movies online, as well as to Palfrey’s blog that comments on that matter. Palfrey’s blog, in turn, points readers to resources for copyright law.

A blog is not, Winer is quick to note, a mail list or a discussion group, where many parties can participate equally. Indeed, he says, this autonomy of voice gives blogs what he feels is a distinct advantage.

“Mail lists often grind to a halt because they have to get consensus. Blogs don’t have to get consensus,” he says. “The magic of a Weblog is that it can move.” Indeed, Winer’s and other Weblogs are unabashedly personal in their editorializing, commenting without abandon on everything from technology-related rulings to new products to Boston’s harsh “spring” weather.

“It really is what a personal Web site is in 2003,” says Winer.

John Palfrey (also from the Berkman Center) has added his own distinctive take on this, citing historian Bernard Bailyn.:

“The American Revolution, Bailyn tells us, was really about the preservation of political liberty.  Blogs, no doubt, are about the preservation of political liberty in the online environment, in a digital era.  Rick’s analogy rings true to me, given a recent experience testifying against the mini-DMCA proposed in Massachusetts.  In a centuries-old hearing room, dozens of technologists had come to testify against a lousy bill, with one special interest lobbyist representing the other side.  How did the techies know to show up in that hearing room off Nurse’s Hall?  They read today’s online pamphlets, just as our forebears read paper pamphlets.  The spirit, it seems to me, is precisely the same.  Blogs are just faster, more powerful, with greater reach.  We should learn how to use them, yet better — not just in Massachusetts, either, but in other states and in the world at large.  It’s no time to claim victory, of course, but rather to celebrate a new means of political organizing and figuring out how to put it to yet greater use.

Prof. Bailyn was on the committee that reviewed my work as an undergraduate in History and Literature and grilled me at my orals.  He is a so-called University Professor, which is probably Harvard’s highest honor; it means, some say, that he’s so smart that he can teach in any discipline.  He is a giant of an historian and a wonderful man.  To be able to claim him on our side would be quite a coup.  Perhaps we should invite him to one of Dave’s blogging sessions here at the Berkman Center on Thursday nights.”