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Tuesday, October 18, 2005 |
'Style' Gets New Elements. The first illustrated edition of "The Elements of Style" features artwork by Maira Kalman, and an accompanying song cycle by Nico Muhly. By JEREMY EICHLER. [NYT > Books]
10:15:14 PM 
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James Cascio: Safety in Knowledge.
When researchers at the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland sequenced the genome of the 1918 influenza strain and posted it on the web, they may well have saved the lives of millions.
For some readers, this may seem like a counter-intuitive proposition. After all, the 1918 flu killed up to 50 million people. And while the bioscience needed to re-engineer the 1918 strain is far more demanding than many might realize, remaking the virus is clearly possible: reseachers at the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta used the viral sequence to do just that.
But those who decry this research and the publication of the genome as a "recipe for destruction" -- such as the erstwhile antagonists, Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy, who put aside their differences to write an editorial in the New York Times making such an argument -- both underestimate the value of widespread knowledge of how this virus works in efforts to combat similar pandemics and overestimate our vulnerability to this particular virus. The most important result of the sequencing of the 1918 flu is the knowledge given the world in its preparations for the next major pandemic flu.
This isn't speculation; the sequencing of the 1918 virus has already paid off with new insights. Most important is the determination that the 1918 virus, known as "H1N1," was an avian flu, similar to the "H5N1" bird flu now spreading from Asia to Europe. Humans contract H5N1 only through contact with infected birds, but the 1918 flu virus mutated to allow it to spread from human to human. While this underscores the potential danger of a human-transmissible H5N1, it also means that the 1918 genome gives us important clues as to its likely nature. Because we can study the 1918 viral sequence, researchers around the world will be better-positioned to understand and respond to a human-transmissible H5N1 pandemic.
Critics like Kurzweil and Joy claim that making the flu genome public information empowers those who would do the world harm, but they seem to believe that the only way for people with evil intent to gain access to potentially dangerous information is through its publication by others. This is simply not true. Sequencing a genome requires less knowledge and less sophisticated biotechnology than engineering a new one. . . . .
. . .
[WorldChanging: Another World Is Here]
10:09:52 PM
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Hackers no hassle: Hoff, by Jane Holroyd, theage.com.au.
Baywatch star David Hasselhoff, who arrived in Australia this morning,
says he's flattered by his cult hero status among hackers.
Hackers have defaced websites worldwide - including the Fremantle
Dockers homepage this year - with images of the the US actor and
singer. The practice is known as 'Hoffing'.
"I don't really know how the whole thing started but I take no
offence," he told theage.com.au at Melbourne Airport this morning.
"I think it's a wonderful form of flattery and it's a lot of fun. And
it's nice to be recognised for doing shows that actually save lives
and not take lives," Hasselhoff said.
"Knight Rider and Baywatch have always been synonymous with heroes and
are about love, and about action, and humour, and I think that's what
the world is about.
9:02:52 AM
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For the Record....
Just in case anyone was confused, the following two sites are distinct.
Ask a Philosopher is a service run out of Sheffield that has been in operation for years. Its purpose is to solicit questions from the public of a broadly philosophical nature and have professional philosophers answer them.
Ask Philosophers is a service run out of Amherst that has been in operation for weeks. Its purpose is to solicit questions from the public of a broadly philosophical nature and have professional philosophers answer them.
I was told by a former graduate student at a leading philosophy program that there is some professional tension between the sites. There certainly is a notable lack of linkage between the two sites, despite their apparently complementary aims. Anyway, feel free to peruse, or contribute to, either site. [Thoughts Arguments and Rants]
6:13:52 AM
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St. Louis Pulls Ahead of the Astros in the Ninth. With Houston only one out from its first World Series, Pujols saved St. Louis by hitting a stunning three-run homer off Brad Lidge in the ninth inning, and the Cardinals rallied for a 5-4 victory Monday night in Game 5 of the NL championship series. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. [NYT > Sports]
6:13:45 AM
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Four or more from Cory and the gang:
- Dance Dance Revolution for pocket-calculators
 Some Texas Instruments graphing calculator enthusiast has ported the dancing videogame Dance Dance Revolution to the pocket calculator. Instead of dancing as instructed on a dance-mat, you have to hit the correct keyboard keys in the correct order. Link (via Wonderland)
- Daily Show on bird flu
 Lisa Rein has posted Jon Stewart's scathing and brilliant Daily Show piece on bird flu. Best video I've watched all week. 10.6MB Quicktime Link 6.7MB MP3 Link (via On Lisa Rein's Radar)
- Poe/Seuss mashup
Horton Hears a Heart is a pitch-perfect mashup of Dr Seuss's Horton Hears a Who and Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, two of my very favorite poems. The combination is made especially wonderful by the illustrations:
 I buried him under the theedlewog bush
And jumped in a pool to rinse blood off my tush.
How smart I was, Sam! How sane was my plan!
So sure I'd be implicated by no man! -
It was then I stopped splashing. I heard a queer sound...
A faint tumpata-tump - but there's no one around!
Then I heard it again. But - who was it? Where?
... From the theedlewog bush? No! It can't be from there!
Well, it's not from the theedle that I hear this thumping
It must be Sam's compacted heart - it's still pumping!
My ears are quite large, and I do hear this sound
and I feel his cold stare through all six feet of ground.
The thump grew and grew like a clockwork in Hell
'til a glum kangaroo could have heard it as well...
and all of the beasts of the jungle, I'm sure,
could hear the percussion I scarce could endure!
Link (Thanks, Tim!)
- Nielsen's top-10 blog usability mistakes
Jakob Nielsen, the legendary usability curmudgeon, has released a list of the top-ten usability mistakes on weblogs. I agree with nine of them but take exception to "8. Mixing Topics" in which he advises bloggers to restrict themselves to narrow subject-ranges. I believe that the thing that makes blogs so exciting to read is that they represent a view into the diverse interests of their authors. But the others are very good:
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
Sadly, even though weblogs are native to the Web, authors rarely follow the guidelines for writing for the Web in terms of making content scannable. This applies to a posting's body text, but it's even more important with headlines. Users must be able to grasp the gist of an article by reading its headline. Avoid cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context.
Your posting's title is microcontent and you should treat it as a writing project in its own right. On a value-per-word basis, headline writing is the most important writing you do.
Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting. Even if users see a short abstract along with the headline (as with most search engines), user testing shows that people often read only the headline. In fact, people often read only the first three or four words of a headline when scanning a list of possible places to go. Sample bad headlines:
* What Is It That You Want?
* Hey, kids! Comics!
* Victims Abandoned
Link
- Katamari Damacy nerd pride tee
 For fans of the extraordinary, mind-bending and addictive Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari Damacy games: this t-shirt depicting the Prince and his rolling ball, with the caption, "This is how I roll." A true nerd pride item, but they won't manufacture it unless they get enough pre-orders. Link (via Wonderland)
[Boing Boing]
6:09:10 AM
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