Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Felton Earls’ term for the single most important determinant of a neighborhood’s violent crime rate is “Collective Efficacy:” “Trust, reciprocity, and a willingness among people to look out for one another.” “Our national ideology gets spun off in the direction of individualism,” says Earls. “But maybe the survival of our country demands that we balance [...]
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Catagories are a kind of precursor for violence. In Tilly’s book about violence he enumerates three precursors for violence one of which is to invent catagories. All three means are used sharpen the boundry between groups. Before you can get Canadians to fight with each other you have to sharpen up a catagorical division. What [...]
The user gives commands by pointing the cursor at graphic symbols on the screen, such as a paint brush and an eraser to enable the user to draw a picture, or a trash can to destroy a document. … Because the machine now has one drive and 128K of RAM, several sources said users might [...]
“The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.” - Reverend Billy Sunday on the Prohibition
Photoshop Tatoos – Hehe, the media office at BYU decided to hide the tatoos on their basketball players. Longhorn – Good reasonably short overview of longhorn by a VC. I’m Above Average (pdf) – An amusing essay about the puzzle presented by reading the liturature that shows that people tend to rate themselves above average. [...]
“It is as important to be of a size that does not fit in someone else’s mouth as it is to have a mouth suited to the size of one’s own prey.” I can not too highly recomend Paul A. Colinvaux’s classic book “Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare.” I learned dozens of deep important [...]
Worse Mistake – Jarred Diamond opines that agriculture was a lousy deal for most of the population, but good for the elites. I think “Diamond” is a great example of a high signal value name. Top Ten Lists – Is there anything more elite? … “The publication of multiple ten-best lists is probably a well-intentioned [...]
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Group forming! Planet Apache joins the universe. I predict a group blog forming website startup before night fall. Looks like mr. planet needs to get to know mr. tidy. I’m in western Massachusett’s this morning. Tonight we are forecast to get -20F (-29C). ek!
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Clay writes a excellent overview of some of the means for engineering the shape of the power-law curve. It’s nice to see another voice talking about that problem rather than just railing about the meer existance of the curve. While I have a few minor quibbles with Clay’s posting I’m so pleased!. For example I’m [...]
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
The image on the right is a fragment from an ad that O’Reilly runs. One of the reasons you want smart friends is that they can put a bee in your bonnet that gets stuck there for a long time. Eric von Hippel has done that to me at least twice now. First asking how Open Source solves the [...]
Fresh Links…