Mail August 29 - September 4, 2005 (original) (raw)
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Would someone explain to me what "Creative Commons" is? I have read Dvorak http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838251,00.asp and to the best I can make out what we are talking about, I agree with him. But then there is http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/21/creativity/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/29/creativity_computers_copyright_letters/ and after a while I begin going beedee, beedee, beedee... I don't know what Creative Commons is, or what we need it. Perhaps I am just stupid? Or uninformed?
See Mail for discussion (which has grown fairly extensive)
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WARNING: Hurricanes and Phishing.See mail.
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Malaria For Brains Posted by Carl Zimmer
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/08/23/malaria_for_brains.php
IMG: http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/malaria%20cross-section.jpg
The red blob in this picture is a human red blood cell, and the green blob in the middle of it is a pack of the malaria-causing parasites Plasmodium falciparum. Other species of the single-celled Plasmodium can give you malaria, but if you�re looking for a real knock-down punch, P. falciparum is the parasite for you. It alone is responsible for almost all of the million-plus deaths due to malaria.
How did this scourge come to plague us? In a paper to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have reconstructed a series of molecular events three million years ago that allowed Plasmodium falciparum to make us its host. They argue that a change in the receptors on the cells of hominids was the key. Ironically, this same change of receptors may have also allowed our ancestors to evolve big brains. Malaria may simply be the price we pay for our gray matter.
To uncover this ancient history, the researchers compared the malaria humans get to the malaria of our closeest relatives, chimpanzees. In 1917, scientists discovered Plasmodium parasites in chimpanzees that looked identical to human Plasmodium falciparum. But when some ethically challenged doctors tried to infect people with the chimpanzee parasites, the subjects didn�t get sick. Likewise, chimpanzees have never been known to get sick with Plasmodium falciparum from humans. In the end, scientists recognized that chimpanzees carry a separate species of Plasmodium, known today as Plasmodium reichenowi. Studies on DNA show that Plasmodium rechnowi is the closest living relative to Plasmodium falciparum�just as chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans.
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Reuters: Swazi princess whipped for loud music http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/08/28/swazi.princess.reut/index.html
EZULWINI VALLEY, Swaziland (Reuters) -- The king of Swaziland's daughter was whipped by a palace official at a party of teenage virgins ahead of a festival where more than 50,000 maidens are available to become her father's 13th wife, media said on Sunday.
Princess Sikhanyiso, 17, told the Times of Swaziland a palace official whipped girls, including beauty queen Miss Swaziland, at the party as a punishment after they refused to turn down the music. She was pictured showing her bruises.
Thousands of bare-breasted virgins will dance for Africa's last absolute monarch in Monday's Reed Dance ceremony, which King Mswati III has used to choose new brides.
Critics say the ancient ceremony, meant to celebrate womanhood and virginity, has become little more than a shop window for the 37-year-old king to choose young brides.
The official, who was charged with supervising the princess and her friends ahead of the ceremony, denied he had whipped the girls, the paper said.
No one at the palace was immediately available for comment.
Thousands of girls, some swathed in drapes bearing the king's image and some in beaded mini skirts, streamed into the royal compound on Sunday singing songs and carrying towering reeds to present to the Queen Mother -- also known as the Great She Elephant.
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Nun reprimanded for dirty dancing at Papal fete:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050823100309990001
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The above are, uh, interesting. The next one you ought to read:
Victor Davis Hanson on War
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/
printpage.p?ref=/hanson/hanson200508260909.aspAugust 26, 2005, 9:09 a.m.
The Paranoid Style
Iraq: Where socialists and anarchists join in with racialists and paleocons.
It is becoming nearly impossible to sort the extreme rhetoric of the antiwar Left from that of the fringe paleo-Right. Both see the Iraqi war through the same lenses: the American effort is bound to fail and is a deep reflection of American pathology.
I will have my own comments on this later. Note I say you should read his essay; not that I am in agreement with all of it.
My objections to the Iraq war are the same as they always were: we should not go abroad seeking monsters to destroy for the sake of killing monsters. I saw no national interest in invading Iraq. I see a great deal of national interest in leaving Iraq better off -- from our view -- with a friendlier government than it had, now that we are there. Probably the best thing that can happen now is that we set up a reasonably stable government that does not hate us, and the cost was so high we are not tempted to try that experiment again.
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Here is another to pay attention to:
Left Behind, Way Behind
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/opinion/29herbert.htmlBy [3]BOB HERBERT
First the bad news: Only about two-thirds of American teenagers (and just half of all black, Latino and Native American teens) graduate with a regular diploma four years after they enter high school.
Now the worse news: Of those who graduate, only about half read well enough to succeed in college.
Don't even bother to ask how many are proficient enough in math and science to handle college-level work. It's not pretty.
Of all the factors combining to shape the future of the U.S., this is one of the most important. Millions of American kids are not even making it through high school in an era in which a four-year college degree is becoming a prerequisite for achieving (or maintaining) a middle-class lifestyle.
The Program for International Assessment, which compiles reports on the reading and math skills of 15-year-olds, found that the U.S. ranked 24th out of 29 nations surveyed in math literacy. The same result for the U.S. - 24th out of 29 - was found when the problem-solving abilities of 15-year-olds were tested.
Of course if you want to be sure your kids can read, buyRoberta Pournelle's reading program and USE IT before the children get to school. If they can read then the public schools have some good resources, and while not very good, are not as harmful as they are when the only source of information is what the teacher says and wants them to know.
Teach them to READ. It's easily done (well, it's an hour or so a day for several months, but that's not all that onerous.)
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ALL YOUR THOUGHTS ARE BELONG TO US: Has anyone contemplated this:
http://news.com.com/Legal+argument+could+hamper
+high-tech+job-changers/2100-1022_3-5843773.html
in all its implications? I am not sure I understand what is said here, but I am glad I do not work for a company I want to leave. The road to serfdom? Law making business for itself? Or just a tempest in a teapot?
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In Bangalore, India, a Cuddle With Your Baby Requires a Bribe http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/international/asia/30bangalore.html
By [3]CELIA W. DUGGER
BANGALORE, [4]India - Just as the painful ordeal of childbirth finally ended and Nesam Velankanni waited for a nurse to lay her squalling newborn on her chest, the maternity hospital's ritual of extortion began.
Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want to see your child, families are told, the price is 12foraboyand12 for a boy and 12foraboyand7 for a girl, a lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The practice is common here in the city, surveys confirm.
Mrs. Velankanni was penniless, and her mother-in-law had to pawn gold earrings that had been a precious marriage gift so she could give the money to the attendant, or ayah. Mrs. Velankanni, a migrant to Bangalore who had been unprepared for the demand, wept in frustration.
"The ayah told my mother-in-law to pay up fast because the night duty doctor was leaving at 8 a.m. and wanted a share," she recalled.
The grand thefts of rulers may be more infamous, but the bitter experience of petty corruption, less apparent but no less invidious, is an everyday trial for millions of poor people across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Increasingly, it is being recognized as a major obstacle to economic development, robbing the impoverished of already measly incomes and corroding the public services they desperately need.
It's the same the whole world over, it's the poor what gets the blame, it's the rich what gets the gravy...
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RSS Feeds
I confess it: I have never seen an RSS Feed (and apparently I never will so long as I continue to use Internet Explorer) so I do now know what all the shouting is about. I gather that it's a means for sending bits of a web site to a list of subscribers.
I would presume also that this is far better adapted to places like Drudge where timely news items are important; which is certainly not true here. I may respond to some timely event, but I usually regret doing it because much of the time I don't have enough information to have an intelligent opinion or judgment --
and that's what this place is about. Intelligent opinion. Informed judgments. If it is not that it is not worth maintaining. And who would want a big essay sent unasked for by RSS feed? Here you can decide just how much of what issue you want to read about and go on to something else if you don't care for it. We have a long discussion on CREATIVE COMMONS that sort of erupted here and went on to mail. We have discussions of marriage age. We have a story of extortion in India. We have stories of looting. We have an exhortation to make sure your kids can read before they go to school. And that's all since last night.
Who in the world would want all that fed to them? And how should I select what to broadcast?
My friends and associates are working to make it possible for me to do this, but am not not sure it's a necessary effort. I spend about at much time here as I can afford. Indeed, if we don't get some more subscriptions, I'll have to cut back a good bit. And I do not see that RSS feeds would help in getting subscribers.
But not being familiar with it, I am not sure of that. You will understand, I get more mail than I can conveniently read now: I certainly do NOT need any forced links to other web sites. You readers all filter what you send to me, for which I thank you, and I get pointers to the best stories in the world, all sent by an intelligent reader who thought I might like to see it. What more can I ask for?