Saturday, July 23, 2005

Copyfighter to trademark bully: I own "freedom of expression" [bOing bOing] 10:33:47 PM    comment []

Iran Tells Europeans It Insists on Right to Make Nuclear Fuel. Iran said Saturday that it had delivered a message to European foreign ministers in London last week, telling them not to try to solve a nuclear dispute by asking Tehran to surrender atomic technology. By REUTERS. [NYT > International] 10:33:42 PM    comment []

Power of the blog. This FT.com article, Internet study warns politicians on power of the blog, says that "websites played an important role in swinging public opinion against Europe's constitutional treaty,according to an internet study by two researchers at the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC)".Below is a "visualization demonstrating how two-thirds of the websites & blogs devoted to France's recent referendum about the European Constitution favoured the 'No' campaign.The original dataset contained 12.000 sites,of which only 295 sites commented on the referendum.The graph shows the hierarchy of hyperlinked connections between those blogs, & explores the potential influence of blogs on the referendum & its aftermath".The blue dots are "OUI",the red are "NON". blog impact visualization [Smart Mobs] 10:31:38 PM    comment []

Finding Spreadsheets With Google. Automate Excel, which I am still enjoying very much, has a 'blog entry on finding spreadsheets with Google. ( http://www.automateexcel.com/index.php/2005/07/23/google_for_spreadsheets ). More power to you but you can have even more fun with this if you use a couple other special syntax. For example, try adding site:edu to your search in addition to the keywords. For an international flavor try adding site:uk. And of course you can also do title searches as well. Try this: intitle:gantt filetype:xls site:edu Always more fun to mix syntax. Also remember that XLS isn't the only kind of spreadsheet; ever thought of searching for filetype:csv? Or ( filetype:csv | filetype:xls ) ? As far as I can tell Google doesn't try to confirm a filetype; it simply searches for the string at the end of the file name. Therefore these are legit searches and at this writing do present results. filetype:weatherwax inurl:weatherwax filetype:feathers inurl:feathers filetype:hamburger inurl:hamburger filetype:montypython inurl:montypython (You can't use the filetype: syntax alone in a search, but you can work around that by teaming it with the inurl: syntax.) There are some files out there tagged as xls variants; with a little creativity you might be able to go beyond the basic filetype:xls results... [ResearchBuzz] 10:31:17 PM    comment []

In the Words of the Welches. If you're a recent college graduate anxious about the future, John F. Welch Jr. wants to say just one word to you: biotech. By C. J. SATTERWHITE. [NYT > Business] 10:27:02 PM    comment []

Iran militant is now hero of US right. Akbar Ganji was once a loyal Revolutionary Guard and veteran of the religious revolt that brought clerical rule to Iran. He became an operative for the country's intelligence services and spied on enemies of the regime. But now Ganji has become the Republican Party's darling and a hero to its neo-conservative wing who are pressing for a hardline US policy on Iran. President George Bush has spoken glowingly of Ganji, who has become a vocal critic of Iran's ruling mullahs and the country's leading political dissident. 'His calls for freedom deserve to be heard. His valiant efforts should not go in vain,' Bush said. It is a remarkable turnaround. Now a reform-minded journalist who has turned his back on religious rule, Ganji is serving a jail sentence in Tehran after publishing a book that chronicled his government's complicity in a series of killings of journalists and dissidents. He is also on a hunger strike that has lasted more than a month and, according to some reports, left him near death. Ganji's case has been taken up enthusiastically by leading conservatives in America and followed almost daily in such right-wing media outlets as the New York Sun and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Senator Rick Santorum, the leading 2008 presidential hopeful from the evangelical wing of the Republican Party, and several other senators have joined in demanding that Ganji should be released. On Observer: International [NewsIsFree: Popular Items] 10:26:57 PM    comment []

The Green Machine That Could Be Detroit. What if a major automaker decided to be the first green car company, producing only high-efficiency vehicles? By DANIEL AKST. [NYT > Business] 10:25:54 PM    comment []

50 Films to See Before You're 14. Usman sent in this great list of movies you should see before you turn 14. It's missing a few titles, but it's got some great movies on the list that even adults will enjoy. [Hacking NetFlix] 11:19:27 AM    comment []

Anti-Abortion Advocacy of Wife of Court Nominee Draws Interest. Jane Sullivan Roberts's pro bono work for Feminists for Life is drawing intense interest in the Supreme Court confirmation debate. By LYNETTE CLEMETSON and ROBIN TONER. [NYT > Washington] 11:16:32 AM    comment []

Testimony By Rove And Libby Examined [Washington Post: Top News] 11:15:20 AM    comment []

Was It Real for You, Too?. The day my plane troubles became entertainment. By Bob Greene. [NYT > Opinion] 11:15:08 AM    comment []

Consequences. The buzzphrase-du-jour in the right side of the national dialogue these days seems to be "Elections have consequences." These words are brandished in the general direction of Democrats and liberals who have the temerity to ask questions about President Bush's choice to replace Sandra O'Connor on the Supreme Court. The implication is that, having re-elected President Bush in 2004, the American people -- even the 59 million (48 percent, for 252 of 270 electoral votes) who voted for the other guy -- should now return to their homes, shut up, and let the Republicans have everything they demand. The debate over John G. Roberts will proceed nonetheless, as it should; the Senate will ask questions, as the Constitution says it must. At the end of it all, it seems extraordinarily likely that Roberts will be confirmed. . . . .  . . . . . . . But if the Bush appointments result, as they might well, in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I think we might be in for some "consequences." The conservative movement has deluded itself that its extremist anti-abortion stance is shared by the majority of Americans. Those of us on the other side believe that the majority of Americans continue to think decisions about pregnancies are best left in the hands of individual women, not courts and politicians. (Polls? Well, they tend to vary depending on the wording of the question, so you can really push them in any direction you want.) If Roe goes down, then I think it's quite possible that a wide slice of American voters who think of themselves as moderates, and who bought into the Bush/Rove positioning of the Bush Administration as essentially centrist, will finaly wake up and understand that they bought a Republican pig in a poke -- that their votes for Bush and for other Republicans of his generation have ushered in an era of radical cultural overreaching on the part of religious conservatives, whose agenda is anything but mainstream. We'd have to wait until 2006, or 2008, maybe even beyond, for such awareness to "have consequences" -- even longer, certainly, to restore the Supreme Court itself to some kind of balance. But those consequences could be potent and lasting. I am not arguing that Democrats should welcome a decision overturning Roe because it will galvanize support for them; there's too much at stake in individual lives and families for anyone with a heart to embrace that sort of intensify-the-contradictions thinking. But it's time for those of us in the opposition to think about what happens when conservative state legislatures start outlawing abortion. Elections have consequences, indeed. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 11:14:38 AM    comment []

Why the C.I.A. Wants M.B.A.'s. Crooked chief executives and increased terrorist threats are proving to be a boon to newly minted finance professionals, CFO magazine reports this month. By PAUL B. BROWN. [NYT > Business] 11:13:39 AM    comment []

News from TOURBUS: In honor of the 36th anniversary of the moon landing, our friends at Google have launched a new service: "Google Moon". Like Google Maps [at http://maps.google.com ], Google Moon offers a dragable, zoomable map of the Moon. Zoom in all the way for a wonderful "Easter egg." :) http://moon.google.com/ 11:08:15 AM    comment []