Sunday, November 21, 2004

Two from NYT > Education: Bill Clears Way for Government to Cut Back College Loans. The federal government will be able to require millions of college students to shoulder more of the cost of their education under the new spending bill before Congress. By By GREG WINTER and DIANA JEAN SCHEMO. School District Challenges Darwin's Theory. A Pennsylvania school district Friday defended its decision to discount Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and teach what critics say is a version of creationism. By By REUTERS. 9:55:55 PM    comment []

Bill reports on first two weeks at Microsoft Bill, thanks for lunch the other day, and congrats on surviving your first two weeks at Microsoft. I told him to build an email system now because it just gets busier and busier. [Scobleizer] 8:37:08 PM    comment []

BTD SUNDAY COMICS [Begging To Differ] 7:05:02 PM    comment []

Iranian blogs: A book. I have always wondered why no one shows interest in the cultural and political implications of blogs in Iran and looks at it more seriously. I know there are already many press articles about the topic, however nothing can beat a well-written book. The good news is that there is a book, written specifically about Iranian blogs and different implications of them. The author is Nafiseh Alavi, a British-Iranian who gladly is able to read Persian. So there are a lot of translated blog posts in the book, along with dozens of photos of contemporary Iran. But the bad news is that the book has no publisher at the moment. She apparently had a contract with a well-known UK publisher, which due to financial problems later refused to publish the book. But the entire book is ready for print, in PDF files. So here you go, a fascinating book with an enthusiastic author, ready to be published. Anyone interested? Email me please. [Editor: Myself (English)] 7:04:52 PM    comment []

Edited version of Roland's Sunday Smart Trends #33. Let's start with some cooking news. OK, it's not really smartmobby, and I can see Howard frowning. But sharing things with you is also a smartmobbing idea. I just published on my blog "Some Like It Hot, Some Like It Mild," about a brand new mild habanero pepper grown in Texas. But what is more important is that when I cooked dinner tonight, it was with pili-pili, another pepper from Haiti, which carries in French the poetic name of "Langues d'Oiseaux". Enough of sharing my private life, it's time to deliver you some more important news. Neighbornet Does the Internet encourage personal contact or simply distance people from the outside world? One MIT professor believes the former and has built a website to prove it. Keith Hampton, assistant professor in the department of urban studies, created I-neighbors to serve as both a free Web service for local communities and a research tool for studying how communities use the Internet. [Note: if you're interested, you can sign up and create or join a neighborhood site at i-neighbors.] Source: MIT News, December 2004 How To Steal Wi-Fi -- And how to keep the neighbors from stealing yours. Here is a very short excerpt from an author who has been consistently on my blogroll for more than two years. Every techie I know says that you shouldn't use other people's networks without permission. Every techie I know does it anyway. If you're going to steal -- no, let's say borrow -- your neighbor's Wi-Fi access, you might as well do it right. Source: Paul Boutin, Slate, November 18, 2004 [Smart Mobs] 7:02:49 PM    comment []

U.S.-Chile Security Dispute Forces Cancellation of Dinner. Another dispute between United States and Chilean security agencies forced the cancellation of a formal, official dinner. By By DAVID E. SANGER. [NYT > International] 7:01:51 PM    comment []

The Global Language Monitor on How the 2004 Presidential Election Impacted the Way Americans Speak Perhaps the one point of agreement by both Republicans and Democrats in the immediate aftermath of the campaign was that moral values played a vastly more important role than had hitherto been estimated.  This was re-enforced by the exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research with Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, which distributed their information to the media through the Associated Press.   The PQ Index picked up this trend months earlier, when issues related to moral values would surface and then, actually, gain in strength as the campaign progressed.  By the end of the campaign, these moral values-related words and phrases dominated the pre-Election PQ Index (Political-sensitivity Quotient) of Hot Political Buzzwords released on November 1.    Specifically, thirteen or more of the top 20 words and phrases that dominated the media in the run-up to the election,  can be classified as directly related to the moral values.  Also, same site, this: Myth of 24-hour News Cycle Directly Impacts (and Undermines) the 2004 Presidential Campaign Though it is commonly assumed that the media is now on a 24-hour news cycle, the opposite appears to be true, according to an exclusive analysis of The Global Language Monitors PQ Index (Political-sensitivity Quotient).  Though the day-to-day headlines of the 2004 Presidential Campaign are relatively transient, the ideas encapsulated in the political buzzwords that GLM tracks take several months to cycle through the electronic and print media, the internet, and cyberspace, particularly the blogosphere.  10:34:04 AM    comment []