A lovely new liberal site to replace the others

BloggingHeads .tv, a video dialogue, between Mickey Kaus and Robert Wright, two New Republic style liberals. Very well done and informative. It's basically a lot of video files with the two principals on splitscreen.

An interesting concept and well executed.

Friday roundup

• Do your children determine your politics? The gender of your children that is? VIA MR
• Husband and wife entrepreneurship.
• Sugar in the Gourd - Old time radio.
  

This is an interesting concept

Splitscreen conversation on Blogging Heads.

Funny

Spongebob meets Iron Maiden.

More NSA

So now the NSA is under fire in the media for using cookies? Speaking as a web developer it's difficult to do anything interesting without using them.

On a more troubling note, it seems to have occurred to no one in the punditsphere as to why should the NSA eavesdrop on Americans at all? I recall reading somewhere a while back that there was a reciprocal arrangement with the British version of the NSA that would allow the NSA to eavesdrop on Britons and the Brits would eavesdrop on Americans? It was all nice and legal, and accomplished the same objective.

As I said before, I had just assumed they were already doing this.

Two reasons come to mind as to why not:

1. They didn't want the British to know, which doesn't really seem that likely
2. They're using, if not a new technology, then a new technique to determine who to wiretap, and they were applying it retroactively to already recorded conversations. Also they're monitoring patterns more than anything. This would allow them to profile effectively, without actually saying the word profiling, which makes everyone happy.
   

This is interesting

Sacco and Vanzettis look even guiltier! And Sinclair Lewis knew!

Actually that isn't that interesting, but notable none the less.

Actually I thought it was assumed by everyone that Sacco was guilty, and Vanzetti probably wasn't. Now it would seem they both were guilty, according to their lawyer.

A blog for Dave

New Donkey, a Democratic blog that avoids most of the thing I dislike about democrats. It even reads a bit like it's written by Dave Henson.

Merry Christmas!

And

White Heat

I just got done watching White Heat for the first time. Not quite a film noir, but still excellent. I recommend it highly.

Christmas a day early

David Friedman is now blogging! Now if we can only round up Michael Sheaur we'd have a very thought provoking internet.

A good interview

With Markos of the Daily Kos. It seems his personal style is a lot like his writing style.

Via Althouse.

It's as if the internet is all about Nick

I cruise on over to Marginal Revolution, and I see Why people don't like Wikipedia (and blogs) which references The Probabalistic Age over on The Long Tail

When professionals--editors, academics, journalists--are running the show, we at least know that it's someone's job to look out for such things as accuracy. But now we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge; the intelligence is simply emergent. These probabilistic systems aren't perfect, but they are statistically optimized to excel over time and large numbers. They're designed to scale, and to improve with size. And a little slop at the microscale is the price of such efficiency at the macroscale.

But how can that be right when it feels so wrong?

There's the rub. This tradeoff is just hard for people to wrap their heads around. There's a reason why we're still debating Darwin. And why Jim Suroweicki's book on Adam Smith's invisible hand is still surprising (and still needed to be written) more than 200 years after the great Scotsman's death. Both market economics and evolution are probabilistic systems, which are simply counterintuitive to our mammalian brains. The fact that a few smart humans figured this out and used that insight to build the foundations of our modern economy, from the stock market to Google, is just evidence that our mental software has evolved faster than our hardware.

RTWT

Changing people

• Photo retouching - a nifty tutorial in flash on how one can photoshop people
• A creepy form of surgery for women.
  

Links of the moment

• Tigers Kill Man Suspected of Mugging in South Africa
• Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors
  

Random thoughts, quotes and links

Quote:
If you want to get even with someone, make sure it's someone who's done something nice for you.

Thought One:
The more I read about the NSA eavesdropping thing, the more it seems like a colossal data mining operation. Question: Is it actually wiretapping if no one listens (or reads) and communication? Does the fact that someone notes that a call or email takes place constitute an surveillance?

Thought Two:
Am I the only one who thought that the govenrment was doing this already?

Links:

• Clinton claimed roughly the same authority to wiretap.
• Bruce Shneier has a lot of history about eavesdropping.
• Wired's page on domestic data mining projects.
• More PlameGate
• Always Be Cobbling (everyone check this one out, it's the opening scene from Glengary Glen Ross, but with elves.
  

Quote of the moment

From Tucker Carlson's blog

If Bush ends up being right about Iraq, it will be through luck and accident and God's grace, not through any skillful calculation of his own. Success there will make him a great president the way Powerball makes crackheads rich: they have the money to show for it, but they're not fooling anyone.

I don't quite agree with this, largely in that I don't think the current endeavor is something that can be done well. It's quite the zinger though.

Bandow

So it comes out last week that Cato Institute fellow Doug Bandow, was taking payola from Jack Abramoff to write favorable columns. It's sad and annoying that this crap happened. I doubt he actually wrote anything he didn't believe in, but who is to say now? From the few times I actually saw him in DC he seemed like a decent person (and very smart one), but who is to say now?

Via Instapundit

Behold

My newest project to go live, DerbyDesignContest.com

Becoming unburied

After my longest work week ever.

Link of Journal: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica.

Thought of the moment

Problems are avoided, not solved.

More Blech

I'm working my first 100 hour plus week in quite some time.

On the other hand Amazon is set to ship Visual Studio before the end of the year (tomorrow actually) which is a pleasant surprise.

Prediction

While taking a short break from coding I saw the article Leaders urge calm if Williams dies on CNN.com and was stuck by two thing:

1. "Dies"? He is due to be executed by the state, and they use the broadest term possible. A lame and evasive headline.
2. What calamity has been correctly predicted recently? There were warnings of mass anti-semitism after Mel Gibson's movie, warning of 10,000 or more dead after Katrina, an economic recession due to high gas prices and so on. Here's a question: what calamity have the pundits in the media correctly predicted beforehand? They seem to have enough problems predicting the past.
   

MARTA at it's finest

Subway Rider Busted for Selling a Token

Transit police handcuffed and cited a man who sold a $1.75 subway token to another rider who was having trouble with a token vending machine. Transit authority spokeswoman Jocelyn Baker said Friday that the officer "acted within the law" after he spotted Donald Pirone, 42, selling the token Nov. 30 inside the West End subway station

Instead of giving Pirone a warning, the officer decided to handcuff him and give him the misdemeanor citation under a 1992 state law that bars passengers from selling Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority tokens, she said.

via the Agitator.

By all impression Marta would seem to have more employees than riders, but this is just ridiculous.

Today's clear concise phrase

Today's line comes from Jim Wooten of the AJC.

"The fleas come with the dog". Stated in reference to federally funded universities banning military recruiters.

A site for my many readers

As my brain is soft and fuzzy right now, I'll suggest this one without much comment.

Crime Library - tons of great history.

A thought

Whilst contemplating my working night (after a working day) I think of the adage that "Hard work never killed anybody". Then I think, yes, it has. Millions in fact.

Thoughts on torture

According to this Instapundit post, large majorities in many modern countries support the legal use of torture in extraordinary circumstances. There is even the line that it should be "legal, safe and rare".

I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. I am willing to say that it is a trade-off. While we gain information we lose some degree of moral high-ground and reputation (which has other long run costs), and there will inevitably be lots and lots of mistakes as with any government endeavor.

But what does one do in the ticking time-bomb situation, or what you reasonably think is one? You've got bloody hands either through action or inaction.

This is cool

The Cat-Fox of Borneo.

A new site to bring you

I give you NeighborsHome.com. It just went live. Built (but not designed) by Creative Plumbing.

It's odd

During the Clinton 90s anger with Clinton and the status quo seemed to manifest itself as a general anti-government feeling, with the "party of limited government" Republicans being the mechanism for the anger. That and a lot of demographic changes anyway. Now it seems like all the dissatisfaction is specifically anti-Bush.

We really need term limits more than ever

Nick agitates

And Wikipedia reponds. Registrations seems like a small price to pay.

A cooler part of the blogosphere

Mountain Runner- a good design and a lot of information. Where else can one find out about Somali Piracy, as well as more current info about the region?

Observation

I think the worst part of being homeless would be not being able to enjoy camping.

Of truly minor concern

As I sit here and watch the database do it's magic, I have time to actually see what's on my desk. Lo and behold there are two boxes of dental floss, one waxed, the other unwaxed. Naturally I decide to compare the two.

Waxed beats unwaxed in taste, feel and durability, it wasn't even close in fact.

I'll keep you appraised of any other important matters as they arise.

A quick one while uploading

• Make Magazine's gift guide is pretty cool.
  
• Sexomnia? A bit ridiculous if you ask me. If it's "often brought on by alcohol" how it different than intoxication?
• And from the same paper "Man Pleads Guilty In Horse-Sex Case". The guy in question was videotaping the magic event, when evidently the horse kicked it's human lover to death (or that was what I drew from the description). There are very strange people in the world, and they seem to find each other with great ease.
  

While I'm waiting

As my extraordinarily long SQL statement processes, here are some things I've been wanting to blog about

• A very funny morning
• An interesting article on the old (mostly 19th century) practice known as "Catch Wrestling". It was the original predecessor to today's pro wrestling, and was real. They mostly worked out of carnivals and consisted of extraordinarily tough men who could take on all comers.
• Bolivia is about to elect a president who promises to legalize coca production. That would be a much needed dose of reality for South America, and help to stop their slide into a continent of gangster states. Sadly he seems to be in the Chavez/Castro/Mussolini mold on everything else, so any gains would probably be wasted. It's surprising that's not getting more attention.
  
• A very good password generator.
  

Useful and soon to be obsolete

Visual Studio Add-Ins

Technology is moving my way

Bluetooth coming to home phones? From Uniden. It seems horribly insecure (like all Bluetooth devices) but the lure of the wireless headset is powerful. At $200 a bit too expensive though.

Looks interesting

Another good tech podcast. It's with Leo Laporte and someone I've never heard of. It's called "Inside the Net" and it's about the so-called Web 2.0 thing happening right now. Quite a lot of potential.

Humbug

So I join Experts-Exchange and then I think of a better way to fix my problem. Crap. Oh well, I'm only out $9.99.