Saturday, August 27, 2005

If Your Home Utility Bill Is Zero, Is It Still a Bill?. In the struggle against the rising cost of energy, Larry Schlussler is way out front. His home is a model of efficiency, and his utility bill is zero. By BARRY REHFELD. [NYT > Business] 8:58:11 PM    comment []

Show Me the Science. Why "intelligent design" doesn't deserve to be taught with evolution. By DANIEL C. DENNETT. [NYT > Opinion] An excerpt: It seems obvious, doesn't it, that there couldn't be any designs without designers, any such creations without a creator. Well, yes - until you look at what contemporary biology has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt: that natural selection - the process in which reproducing entities must compete for finite resources and thereby engage in a tournament of blind trial and error from which improvements automatically emerge - has the power to generate breathtakingly ingenious designs. Take the development of the eye, which has been one of the favorite challenges of creationists. 8:58:03 PM    comment []

Virtual Facilitator Improves Team Management. If you ever have had to moderate meetings with interdisciplinary groups, you know it's difficult, especially if these groups come from different countries. And a skilled facilitator can be expensive if he's not part of your organization. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri-Rolla have developed a virtual facilitator which will improve a team performance by helping people share ideas and stick to the original agenda of the meeting. They've already successfully used their software tools with more than 100 student teams. And now, they're working on customized versions of this software for specific applications, such as soldiers training in Iraq, where real facilitators might be hard to find. This overview contains more details and comments about this software. [Smart Mobs] 8:30:59 AM    comment []

Hitchens takes a beating. Jon Stewart lets Christopher Hitchens have it in a "Daily Show" debate on Iraq. [Salon.com] We've criticized Jon Stewart for pulling his punches with conservative guests, but Thursday night he went straight at Christopher Hitchens, the stubbornly entrenched war hawk whose support for the Bush administration's Iraq venture has left former allies on the left in a state of disbelief. Hitchens, who in recent weeks has viciously attacked war critics Cindy Sheehan and Joe Wilson, appeared on "The Daily Show" to promote his new book, "Thomas Jefferson." But Stewart wanted to talk about Iraq. And though Hitchens must have known that his pro-war stance would come up -- he recently told the New York Observer that his devotion to "Operation Iraqi Freedom" has caused his friends to "think that I must have "taken leave of my senses" -- he seemed a bit ill-at-ease throughout the conversation. Hitchens defended the war by citing Saddam Hussein's violations of U.N. rules, the danger posed by his unstable regime and his ties to al-Qaida. But Stewart was having none of it. He responded nimbly, asking why the U.S. invaded Iraq when numerous other countries in the Middle East had closer ties to terrorism and more highly developed weapons of mass destruction. Stewart defended liberals who oppose the war -- "They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility and without competence" -- and slammed Bush for stoking liberal distrust: "He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults, and falls back on platitudes and phrases and talking points, [which] does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince." By the end, it was hard to tell whether Hitchens had enjoyed their polite round of sparring or was quietly seething. Either way, he didn't stick around for the usual post-interview pleasantries. He shook Stewart's hand, said, "It's been real," and walked off the set. From Crooks and Liars: Hitch and Stew had a little debate over Iraq. Video-WMP                            Video-QT This was a heavily requested piece. Jon was very focused tonight and   made Hitchins lose his place a few times. (How did he ever do that?) When intelligence is met against blind ideology, intelligence usually wins. (I just made that up) 8:25:18 AM    comment []

Wes: Tim Bray on open source DRM: "What all the DRM dreamers don’t want to admit is that 95% or more of the population hasn’t yet encountered DRM, and when they do, they aren’t going to like it. They’re going to scream and scream and scream and get mad as hell and not take it any more." The Register: How Napster and DRM arrived at University of Washington. "The threat of lawsuits against our students for their use of university networks has put the higher-education community squarely in the middle of the relationship between consumers and distributors of online music, for better or for worse." No it hasn't. Why don't the universities just make students responsible for their own misbehavior? [Hack the Planet] 8:17:10 AM    comment []

F.B.I., Using Patriot Act, Demands Library's Records. The F.B.I. is demanding library records from a Connecticut institution as part of an intelligence investigation, the American Civil Liberties Union said. By ERIC LICHTBLAU. [NYT > Washington] 8:14:15 AM    comment []

First, a love letter from Michiko Kakutani, now this: 'Indecision': Getting It Together. Benjamin Kunkel's coming-of-age novel seems to want to move beyond the genre's typical irony and youthful nihilism. By JAY MCINERNEY. [NYT > Books] 8:14:07 AM    comment []

Om Malik: "The record business is split into two camps -- one that wants price of downloads to stay at 99 cents, and the boneheads." [Scripting News] 8:13:30 AM    comment []