Sunday, March 31, 2002
Thursday, March 28, 2002
US' illegal witholding of information on terror suspects is condemned by courts for the first time since Sept. 11th.
Sunday, March 24, 2002
"`You understand Google, person? I index many things and if I am very good I get to go to Bot Park and have more processors. And an oiljob! Thank you Google! Must come inside apartment and index. Must!'' His video eye winked up at me." --Robot Exclusion Protocol
Friday, March 22, 2002
Vague and unsubstantiated references to 'links' or 'ties' to infamous names and organizations should not be a substitute for credible evidence.
Thursday, March 21, 2002
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
spamradio: listen to speech-synthesized junk mail with soothing music in the background....
mmmm... spam! spam! spam! spam!
mmmm... spam! spam! spam! spam!
"For too long the file system has been semantically impoverished in comparison with database and keyword systems. It is time to change!"
--The Naming System Venture by Hans Reiser (of ReiserFS fame)
--The Naming System Venture by Hans Reiser (of ReiserFS fame)
HashCash: a weapon against spammers, protection against anonymous remailer abuse, and access control for other unmetered resources
Monday, March 18, 2002
Sunday, March 17, 2002
Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention
of Vice kills 15 schoolgirls in an attempt to prevent them from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress
Thursday, March 14, 2002
Max More and Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity:
"Epochal events such as two world wars, the Cold War, and numerous economic, cultural, and social upheavals have failed to provide the slightest dent in the pace of the fundamental trends. As I discuss below, recessions, including the Great Depression, register as only slight deviations from the far more profound effect of the underlying exponential growth of the economy, fueled by the exponential growth of information-based technologies... Occasional ethical and legal impediments to fairly narrow developments are rather like stones in the river of advancement; progress just flows around them... Already, at least two dozen of the several hundred regions in the brain have been satisfactorily reverse-engineered and implemented in synthetic substrates. I believe that it is a conservative scenario to expect that the human brain will be fully reverse-engineered in a sufficiently detailed way to recreate its mental powers by 2029."
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
a 10,000-year marking system to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion:
This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us.
This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location...it increases toward a center...the center of danger is here...of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us.
This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location...it increases toward a center...the center of danger is here...of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
(More and an earlier, related project.)
Monday, March 11, 2002
Sunday, March 10, 2002
"It cost me less than $300 to discover the geographic distribution my patrilineal kin in Europe. I obtained all this personal genetic archaeological information by swabbing the inside of my mouth for a sample of my DNA, sending it to Oxford with a check, waiting for 3 months for my Y chromosome "haplotype" results, and then submitting a query form on a haplogroup database web page after filling in 5 blanks with the test results."
Thursday, March 07, 2002
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
Tuesday, March 05, 2002
'President Bush has not been forthcoming about progress in the war on terrorism
or about a "secret government" operating since Sept. 11, Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle (D-S.D.) said Sunday.'
Monday, March 04, 2002
The name of this blog was inspired by a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
I originally read the story as a teen (as part of an amazing high-school English class), and have just re-read it for the first time tonight. It is every bit as good and magical as the first time I read it.
I originally read the story as a teen (as part of an amazing high-school English class), and have just re-read it for the first time tonight. It is every bit as good and magical as the first time I read it.
Sunday, March 03, 2002
Saturday, March 02, 2002
"...the United States cannot support a court that lacks the essential safeguards to avoid a politicization of justice." --Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, in a comment made in opposition to the proposed international court in The Hague, completely ignoring the lack of, or lack of effectiveness, of the same safeguards in American courts.
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