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Sunday, August 18, 2002 |
It just clicked for me.
. . .
What I just "got" this morning is that every project should have a blog. Every ongoing endeavor deserves a journal. Frail memory cannot support our multiphased planet-culture soaked consciousness without the aid the outboard (or backup) brain.
In a way we're seeing a trojan horse to what many have touted as the next computer interface, an array of time-ordered events and documents (with the UI to be a spacial representation of the timeline, I suppose also browsable by categories), in the infectious adoption of blogs—not just by writers, techies, and artists who, like pornographers, always pioneer a new medium and exploring its expressive range, but as a knowledge format.
Oh, and as an experiment, if anyone links to this entry, please consider using the following linktext: xian gets it. Thanks! I'd like to track the meme.... [Radio Free Blogistan]
3:39:50 PM 
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I wrote (in May, 2001) on why pursuing a strategic defense, missile shield, Star Wars thingamabob is a bad idea over on X-Ray Net. Today, the Washington Post reports, in a story by Bradley Graham, that Donald Rumsfeld has warned the White House that the ''Star Wars'' approach is misguided, because
Cruise Missile Threat Grows, Rumsfeld Says: Bush Urged to Boost Defense Against Low-Flying Weapon.
The Bush administration
has made development of
anti-missile systems a top
priority. But its focus has
been on defending against
ballistic missiles, which
arc through the sky after
launch and tend to be
bigger, more costly and
longer range than cruise
missiles, which are
self-propelled,
lower-flying and more
transportable, therefore
posing a different set of
defensive challenges.
[ . . . ]
What worries U.S. authorities is the prospect of such states
as Iraq, Iran or North Korea or such terrorist groups as al
Qaeda taking existing aircraft or anti-ship missiles and
converting them into unmanned drones that could function
as crude but still very deadly cruise missiles.
Your car has in it all the sophisticated technology that's
necessary to feed a little actuator inside of a guidance
system to make a missile fly more or less where you want
it to go, the Rumsfeld aide said. If you can buy it in your
automobile, you begin to get a sense of how practical it is
for those kinds of weapons systems to be developed.
3:26:28 PM
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April, 1970: . . . [O]n Lily Street, a little half-watt FM signal appeared over New
Monterey on the lower end of the dial. [. . .] In April 1972, KUSP in Santa Cruz began broadcasting from behind the kitchen of a restaurant near downtown. At nearly the
same time, KKUP turned on their small ten watt transmitter on Mt. Umunhum (high atop the mountains between Santa Cruz
and San Jose) and began by playing the Doobie Brothers nonstop for a week. The little station and myself moved from David
Avenue to Scotts Valley. As if by magic, there was now a new station one could hear in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and also
across the bay into Pacific Grove, but only if the fog was just right, calling itself "Experimental Radio, North Bay". Despite
the growing variety of choices on the FM dial, it still had something different to offer. It also still had no license. It's The Early History of KAZU.
1:16:46 PM
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What's going to happen the Salon blogosphere when the 30-day trials of the
early adopters expire? I paid my fee and mean to be around for a while,
but it'll be kinda creepy if many other low-numbered blogs are abandoned.
G h o s t _ _ b l o g s . . .
1:09:38 PM
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GASP! I'm shocked, shocked to find war dialing going on in a telephone poll! According to Fixing "American Idol", at E! Online News,
Producers of Fox's summer hit American Idol admitted Friday that the show has
been victimized by dozens of so-called "power dialers" who can cast thousands
of votes in an attempt to sway the outcome.
Shocked, I tell you. Should anyone of us care?
11:37:12 AM
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So, yesterday, when
I posted about the no-call registry in Pennsylvania, I promised some
remarks. Here's what I've been wondering:
It looks like an automated process. What's to keep someone from writing a
webbot that hits the form repeatedly and enrolls every phone number in
every Pennsylvania area code on the no-call list?
Um, if that wouldn't be bad.
[More posting by mail.]
[Title added later. Is there a way to do that in post-by-mail?]
9:09:00 AM
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Misery Loves Company: Introducing the Pro-Anorexia Web, Where the Ultimate Control Freaks Find Friendship, by Natalie Davis, in the Baltimore City Paper.
Good piece that not only covers the "pro-ana" movement, but also some of the goings-on around it since stories began turning up in the mainstream press.
8:26:06 AM
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