“It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.” – Robert E. Lee

Phil Greenspun (wait, my philg?) suggests that the demise of the Media Lab at MIT is imminent. He sheds some light on management that explains things a lot more to an outsider. It is a sad day though…I don’t know what the ML has been doing lately, but their groundbreaking work ten years ago on wearable computers has been a great inspiration for me, and reading about all of their Big Ideas in Wired and other places has made me feel a lot better about life and the future.

Media Lab…*sigh*, that’s where I wanted to work! 🙁

Clay Shirky’s talk at ETCON, blogged by Cory Doctorow, was about social structure is collaborative software. He gives a cool example of group dynamics:

You were at a party and you got bored. They you don’t leave. Why don’t you leave? But 20 min later, someone gets his coat and everyone leaves. Everyone else was bored too, but the triggering event let the air out of the group.

This is called “the paradox of groups.” There are no groups w/o members, but there are also no members w/o groups.

I’m reading about the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies conference and its just the coolest thing ever. I so wish I could have been there, and the timing actually worked out, but the whole $1500 registration fee is what hurts. What about normal people who want to go to these things? 🙁

I need some good music to study to and work to. I used to have a bunch of great iTunes playlists, only there is no such thing as iTunes on Linux, and all my moving music around has resulted in my Mac playlists being dismantled. 🙁 Music is an important and integral part of my life, part of the tapestry of thought, and I almost always need it playing…only now I have no idea what to listen to. I want things that are uplifting and instrumental without being too strong. I can’t really describe it. Melanie Doane has a great song called “Mel’s Rock Pile” that I really like, I have some songs from movie scores that are great, but I can’t find enough to keep it going. The thing is, I probably have a bunch, just no good way to rediscover it. Add on the fact that I constantly find corrupted audio files and destroyed music, and I continually wonder what I’ve lost or am missing that I used to love to listen to. Dave says EMusic is great for jazz…maybe I need some jazz. When I listen to Kenny G, which is somewhere around what I’m looking for for study music, everyone laughs at me. 🙁 I have 5,000 songs, and I don’t know where to start!

This article is deep and thought-provoking. So, of course, the radical right has called for the author to leave the country. Listen to Rush? Watch The Factor? Maybe you should read it yourself.

So apparently Bechtel is the recipient of the first contract to rebuild Iraq, starting at $680 million dollars over 18 months. Wait, that name is familiar…aren’t they the people in charge of this? Why yes, yes they are. This is the same company whose construction gaffes have cost taxpayers over $1 billion.

The Globe article, with a year of research, is scattered with such words as, “overrun,” “errors,” “failure,” “deficiencies,” and “serious flaws.” Sound encouraging?

On more than 3,200 occasions since 1991, the state paid extra money to contractors to compensate for design flaws, some big, some small.

For example, the drawings for the Ted Williams Tunnel left a 4-foot gap between tunnel sections, which was discovered by perplexed workers only after the massive tunnel tubes were eased into position, records show. The problem caused at least $307,000 in new work.

The time to pack up my things for shipment home is fast approaching. This is probably the case for many people. Said people (and anyone who ships things) will probably find this article enlightening.

I worked as a package handler for roughly ten months, and in that time I handled many packages. I couldn’t even hazard a guess at the number, as I moved several thousand some nights. The point being: I’ve seen a lot of packages. From this I’ve learned something: Most people have no idea how to pack cargo. Not only do they not know, they don’t even try. In fact, I believe most of them to be under the delusion that I, the Package Handler who was paid but a pittance for hours of physical labor, was in some way concerned with the welfare of their package(s).

Read up to find out how to correctly pack a package. Good stuff.

Jon Lee Anderson’s segment in the New Yorker this week weave an amazing tapestry of Iraqi life. I really love stories like these — raw experience put elegantly in words, not to shove a political ideology down our throats, but just to tell what someone is seeing. Very poignant, and very important.

Dr. Saleh said that the hospital had taken in about three hundred people who had been injured by the bombing. The doctors had managed to save everyone so far, although twenty people were already dead when they arrived. “War always brings tragedy, fear, pain, and psychological trauma,” he said. “Personally, I feel that problems can be solved by discussion and negotiation and collaboration. When you use military power, it means your brain has stopped. As an Iraqi, I feel that this is my country, and that I should work to maintain it and protect it from invasion, whatever invasion it is. I think any person would take this position when his country is attacked.”

Probably true.

It has been a few days, but nothing has changed.

Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq’s National Library, leaving a smoldering shell Tuesday of precious books turned to ash and a nation’s intellectual legacy gone up in smoke.

They also looted and burned Iraq’s principal Islamic library nearby, home to priceless old Qurans; last week, thieves swept through the National Museum and stole or smashed treasures that chronicled this region’s role as the “cradle of civilization.”

US response?

“I don’t think anyone anticipated that the riches of Iraq would be looted by the people of Iraq,” U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at a U.S. Central Command briefing in Qatar.

Well, no one except the UN, aid workers, Iraqis, pundits, and even US officials…

From Bloghdad:

Simply put, the number of innocent people who are dead because we ousted Saddam is dwarfed by the number of innocent people who are dead because we didn’t. The use of American force is on one side of the ledger, and mass killing is on the other. Trends in military and media technology make this dilemma increasingly likely where belligerent murderers rule. You can keep your hands clean, or you can keep many more people alive. It’s up to you.

Hmm.

The news organizations seem to think the Apple/Vivendi talks for Univeral Music are real. Yay, Apple! And they are still saying things like this:

Vivendi had been leaning towards holding on to its music arm until the industry emerged from a slump brought on by rampant piracy, economic uncertainties and competition from other entertainment media.

Excuses, excuses for not giving people what they want, not expanding their markets by embracing technology. Excuses for terrible license agreements that hurt artists. And yet, at the same time, independent record labels are doing great, or so says the Christian Science Monitor:

At a major label, most artists are unlikely to earn anything unless they sell at least 1 million albums, and even then, they could wind up in debt. Everything from studio time to limo rides are charged against their royalties, which might be only $1 per disc sold. That compares with an indie artist, who can sell a disc for $15 at a concert. If they make $5 profit a disc on 5,000 discs, they pocket $25,000.

“That’s the difference between us and them,” Mr. Strang says. “Artists on our label who sell 200,000 copies make a very good living.”

Of course, this might help:

But perhaps the biggest difference is that they let artists keep the rights to their work.

Goodbye, RIAA. And good riddance.

I’m making up for missing the TMBG concert by listening to their music today. Sigh. I wanted to participate in Union government and all, but only maybe half of the people to be transitioned actually showed up, and not a single member of the old executive board who was not re-elected showed up :(. I didn’t have much to add, although I learned a bit…but maybe I should have gone to the concert instead…

I have really loved the last few days. Hanging out with good people doing good things — it is Bronstein weekend and so far I’ve gone to a bounce house/ball dance, watched some great fireworks, eaten barbecue, and made brownies in the East Quad office with Dave, Adam, and people who randomly showed up.

I agree with Adam now that people who aren’t in East don’t like it because of the architecture, but there is something about that quad — a sense of community that is lacking in other, more spread out and private quads. By virtue of having to be in everyone’s face every day, people are forced to learn to get along.

It gives me a lot of hope for the new quad. I am very very excited about getting to live there next year.

A week ago my mom asked me if maybe I wanted to come home for my last two years in school. Ha!

Of course the anti-war protesters were not worried about the US losing. To say that is to completely miss the point. They were worried about what would happen after the war, how unstable the region would become, what would happen to Iraq and its people. According to the most recent reports, soldiers were completely unprepared, or unwilling, to stop looting in Iraq. This is just one singular example at the beginning of the occupation, so there is no evidence it indicates a trend, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

“We were ready for the bombs,” Amin said. “Not the looters.”

As she quickly walked through more than three dozen rooms, Amin did not catalog what was missing or damaged. There was just too much. But every few minutes, she would stop in front of an empty pedestal or a decapitated statue.

“This was priceless,” she sobbed as she pointed to two seated marble deities from the temple at Harta that had been defaced with a hammer. Later, after observing more damage, she broke down again. “It feels like all my family has died,” she wept.

Aid workers, Iraqis, even US officials all believe that this action was predicted by all and the US should have done something to stop it. And yet, our military, our very effective and powerful military, which did do a very good job of taking the country, was unprepared for this?

Privately, some U.S. officials involved in reconstruction have expressed concern that failure to quickly crack down on looting could have worrisome, long-term consequences for the transitional government that the Bush administration wants to set up here. “By not being more aggressive now, there is the risk of bigger problems later,” one official said.

Wonderful.

I saw a course listing for a writing class and it said you had to submit a three page short story to be considered. On a whim I opened a text editor and composed this terrible little story. There was no thought, no plot, and it is certainly not three pages. I’m just posting it because otherwise I would throw it away.

We approach the Protagonist on a hot spring day. Spring, yet snowing. The snow appears yellow. It is not snow at all, it appears to be sand. Interesting. The Protagonist appears unfazed. He is circumventing the natural order in his mind.

Our Protagonist stands by the bank of a river. He glances around at the vast expanse, sees people behind him but only water before, an insurmountable barrier, an ever-flowing yet immutable obstacle, an unforeseen wrinkle in his most carefully laid plan.

And yet, the Protagonist is unfazed. He looks around again. He stops. He scratches his bearded chin. He stands, he squats, he perches, he totters. He grabs his walking staff for support. He smiles.

He stands, he struts, he moves forward…slowly, but with a power his people had not before seen. A few whisper questions, ask questions aloud, shout questions, but the Protagonist does not speak. He is committed, he is calculating. He is ready for this, his greatest act.

He stands atop a rock, shields his face from the sun and sand, and looks at the river ahead, the army behind, the ever expanse of yellow leading to a yellow sky as the yellow sun creeps slowly lower.

It is time to act.

He raises his staff and thrusts his arm outward, upward. He shouts words in an ancient tongue. He leaps about comically. And, amazingly, the water begins to part. You see he is wearing one of those new-fangled digital watches.

You wonder what time it is. You hear a ring.

You hit pause. Pizza is here, Charlton Heston will have to wait.

(It might have helped had I seen the movie)

With this war mess, America has gone farther then ever before in scaring off the world:

In fact, while the United States has the backing of a dozen or so governments, it has the support of a majority of the people in only one country in the world, Israel. If that is not isolation, then the word has no meaning.

Newsweek takes a look at what can be done. It is about time this issue got a cover story.

I like it when people call my cell phone from their cell phone. Campus phones just list caller ID as “Brandeis University,” which is unhelpful. We have a complicated little ritual here in America. “Hello?” “Hello, is Frank home?” “This is Frank.” “Hi Frank, this is Bob.” It is a silly, four-part process for establishing something that should be readily apparent. Why the questioning hello? Why the challenge response? In Germany, you answer the phone with your name, and the other person resonds with theirs. *ring “Frank Brown.” “This is Bob Jones.” And so on. Much more convenient.

I might not want to put arbitrary “value” on my time, but I do know when I feel I can be disturbed and when I would whether not be. What is tremendously helpful in these situations, which include most times of the day, is to know who is calling me. I can prioritize calls based on necessity, schedule, and feelings, and take only those calls that are important. At the same time, I can avoid the tedious four-step process and just answer the phone with, “Hello Bob.” This instantly establishes that I am myself and I know who the person is who is calling. We can get to the point quickly and without awkwardness. This is only effective, however, with personal phones, which today means cell phones, because home phones can be shared, dorm phones are without caller ID, and pay phones are anonymous.

Finally the powers that be are allowing us number portability so that we can carry cell phone numbers with us across carriers and throughout our lives. The next step are whitelists and blacklists, explicitly allowing or denying access to our phones based on various criteria, the first being who is trying to call us. Since phones are increasingly location-aware, the next step can be restricting calls based on proximity. No business calls while I’m on vacation, unless it is the boss. No non-urgent calls during class. Etc. These advances will make telephone conversations much more useful.

As I get more involved in student government, I start to rely on my cell phone more and more.

I’m not living my life deeply enough. I fell asleep last night at 11:00pm or so, which is 10 plus a daylight saving hour, and I woke up this morning in the 8s, which of course is 7 plus a daylight saving hour, and I felt much more excited then I normally do when I wake up.

The morning is full of possiblities and excitement and change. It becomes lighter as the sun rises, people begin to awake and to scurry, I can see them out my window. The guy sleeping in the plexiglass box on the side of Chapel’s Field begins to stir, he opens a book, sits and takes in the world.

The morning is full of possibilities for change. I eat eggs and potatoes and bread smeared with cream cheese, I sit and read a book, I get up and wander around aimlessly. There is no hurry, no rush, nothing that needs to get done NOW must be turned in NOW, must be finished NOW. It is morning.

They say it will snow tonight. And the world turns. The American mystery deepens.

Maybe it is because of budget cutbacks, or maybe this is just a strange year, either way, I can’t for the life of me find any classes to enroll in next semester. Since I can’t find anything exciting, I’m trying to finish the last of my requirements — a non-western, a quantitative reasoning, and, somehow, a creative arts, although I can’t find anything in that area. Humph.

If the rockets filled with chemical weapons are confirmed, and these rockets violate UN regulations, and they are “weapons of mass destruction” (and that does not mean the same or less destructive than a conventional weapon), then I will admit I was wrong. But until that happens, I have to maintain what I have continued to say — I do not believe Iraq has WMD. They have weapons, yes, some very nasty weapons, but not weapons of Mass Destruction, with a capital M and a capital D. And if our major justification for invading Iraq rests on Iraq having WMD, our justification is wrong.