Gulfstream

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,52397,00.html Lowercase sound: small sounds made lounder pose as music. Pretty! 15:54

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/020603ta_talk_mead “Thirty-five editors of the international editions of Cosmopolitan were in New York last week for a conference…” 15:26

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html “Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race”

I'm interested in why some cities are seemingly more successful than others too. I had put success down (somewhat imprecisely) as being related to “hustle.” This article (a teaser for a book) ranks cities according to a “creativity index.” I didn't look at the numbers, but these statements were interesting:

“Places that thrive in today's world tend to be plug-and-play communities where anyone can fit in quickly. These are places where people can find opportunity, build support structures, be themselves, and not get stuck in any one identity. The plug-and-play community is one that somebody can move into and put together a life—or at least a facsimile of a life—in a week.”

…

“Talented people seek an environment open to differences. Many highly creative people, regardless of ethnic background or sexual orientation, grew up feeling like outsiders, different in some way from most of their schoolmates. When they are sizing up a new company and community, acceptance of diversity and of gays in particular is a sign that reads ‘non-standard people welcome here.’ ”

…

“A vibrant, varied nightlife was viewed by many as another signal that a city ‘gets it,’ even by those who infrequently partake in nightlife.”

Update: An article in the NYT discussing the book mentions two alternative theories that attempt to explain a city's measure of success: the “social capital theory” developed by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam, which says economic growth is tied to the amount of civic participation and social cohesion in a community and the “human capital theory” associated with Mr. Glaeser and the University of Chicago economist Robert E. Lucas, which says economic growth is driven by concentrations of educated people.” (Florida's theory is described as the “creative-capital” theory.) 14:17

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066250 Anne Applebaum: “Is India's nuclear rivalry with Pakistan completely unlike the old nuclear rivalry between United States and the Soviet Union—is it so unique, in fact, that Cold-War-style nuclear deterrence between the two rivals is destined to fail?” (She mischievously uses the fact that twenty near-disasters—but no disasters—have occurred as evidence that one won't happen.)

Some people, she claims, argue that the situation is particularly dire because neither Pakistan nor India appreciate the effects of nuclear weapons. She calls this argument “borderline racist”—but I'm sure the people making these arguments were saying the same things—about Americans and Russians—during the Cold War. Anyway, would a nuclear exchange really lead to “the death of the subcontinent”? I mean, people still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 11:58

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/27/1022243311153.html Padraic P. McGuinness: the hunting (he says “fishing”) of whales should be allowed to resume now that the whales are no longer in danger of extinction. (Tim Blair suggests a compromise: “Let's just kill the whales, but not eat them.”) 10:36

http://gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm Are good fund managers simply lucky fund managers? About stocks, Nassim Taleb is sure of only one thing: that the probability of exceptional events—S11, say—is invariably underestimated.

This is a New Yorker piece, so as well as arguments you get pretty flourishes:

“He was always so conceptual about what he was doing,” says Howard Savery, who was Taleb's assistant at the French bank Indosuez in the nineteen-eighties. “He used to drive our floor trader (his name was Tim) crazy. Floor traders are used to precision: ‘Sell a hundred futures at eighty-seven.’ Nassim would pick up the phone and say, ‘Tim, sell some.’ And Tim would say, ‘How many?’ And he would say, ‘Oh, a social amount.’ It was like saying, ‘I don't have a number in mind, I just know I want to sell.’ ”

(I suppose a similar observation is behind index funds.) 17:21

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/23/international/23BOYC.html “Some U.S. Backers of Israel Boycott Dailies Over Mideast Coverage” 09:59

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?critics/020527crat_atlarge Malcolm Gladwell on one the inventors of television: “Philo Farnsworth's travails make a rather strong case for big corporations, not against them.” (Another recent Gladwell article was remarkably big-business friendly—is “capitalism, the benefits of” the subject of his next book?) 12:40

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/biography/story/
0,6000,718044,00.html “Catherine Millet does not look like a person who has slept with the whole world.” 23:47

http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Caranddriver/features/2002/
february/200202_feature_lap_of_kosovo.xml On patrol with the US Army in Kosovo. (A Humvee's door weighs 400 pounds!) 17:05

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=34802 The Liggett Group is introducing nicotine-free cigarettes. (Made from genetically modified tobacco.) 13:17

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_1998000/
1998218.stm “The invigilator, maths teacher Richard Jowett, appeared to have been looking at the material on his personal computer, forgetting it was linked up to the monitor.” 18:06

http://www.wma.net/e/policy.html Policy statements of the World Medical Association. e.g. World Medical Association Declaration on Hunger Strikers. 12:17

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/archive/A085459.PDF Joy Oriola wanted to take out a restraining order against Adam Thaler under California's Domestic Violence Prevention Act (DVPA). Did their four “social outings” amount to a “dating or engagement relationship,” as was required by the Act? And so the court defines “dating”: “It is a social relationship between two individuals who have or have had a reciprocally amorous and increasingly exclusive interest in one another, and shared expectation of the growth of that mutual interest, that has endured for such a length of time and stimulated such frequent interactions that the relationship cannot be deemed to have been casual.” Oriola lost her case. (She was able to, and did, obtain a conventional restraining order.)

Other interesting aspects of this opinion: a section on the history of dating in America (“The practice of ‘dating’ evolved in this nation during the 1920’s…”) and a footnote explaining why Thaler is seeking sanctions against Oriola and her attorney for serving him “in an unduly humiliating manner” (“Respondent was distraught and began to cry in front of his coworkers…”). 14:09

http://www.thereverend.com/brick_testament/instructions_
for_women/1co11_04.html 18:38

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2065878 In 1978 the Supreme Court decided that affirmative action is legal because it promotes “diversity.” This argument (which was advanced just one judge—the one who broke the 4–4 tie) has over the years become more and more difficult to sustain. The problem, writes Dahlia Lithwick, is that the principle fails to elevate racial diversity above other kinds of diversity—the diversity that would come from admitting Alsation goat herders, for example, or Wiccans. 10:56

http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/images/beaver.jpg Banknote folding fun. What country are these from? (From Post No Bills.) 10:41

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/
000/001/237czhmw.asp The media couldn't deal with Pim Fortuyn's apparent contradictions. Also: “… Fortuyn was socially tolerant, even libertine, and it was for that reason he felt he could not be a multiculturalist.” 12:56

http://www.theage.com.au/frontpage/2002/05/15/frontpage.jpg Heh. I'm so proud of the Age for busting out the wood for “gangbusters” on their front page today. (The accompanying article.) 11:14

http://www.nypost.com/business/41040.htm K9 Billboards: “Dogs are magnets; they're ice-breakers—and even the hardest-edged New Yorkers love them.” 11:35

http://www.latimes.com/la-050302nike.story “Corporations can be found liable for deceptive advertising if they make misleading public statements about their operations and conduct, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.”

The court found that commercial speech—defined as anything “likely to influence consumers in their commercial decisions” (for a long time companies have not been allowed to lie in advertisements)—was not protected by the First Amendment. (The court did not find that Nike had lied, only that it is not allowed to do so—though I don't know would you'd mount a First Amendment defence if the truth would suffice.)

Does this rule apply to religion? Religions are more powerful than the mightiest corporations (and not only economically). How about those marketing campaigns! John 3:16 is: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Is this true? If false, it would surely rank as one of the greatest lies ever told.

(The decision—haven't read this yet.) 11:29

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1823_304/84184701/
print.jhtml A very long, very sad story: forty years ago the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world; by 2010, it is estimated, it will be completely gone.

The region has suffered great environmental and economic damage. (Evidence for both: the “fishing town” of Moynaq is now eighty miles from the sea.) And there has been attendant social damage. Even the dogs seem to have lost hope. In one incident, the author sees two boys (brothers) in the street. He asks the younger his name. Before the boy can reply, he is inexplicably set upon by his brother, who hits him from behind; the blow knocks him to the ground. As he tries to rise, his brother again pushes him to the ground, and then walks away, “having satisfied some obscure but insatiable impulse.” This is what happens next:

I waited for tears, the shrieks and cries of fraternal terror. Nothing. The naked dusty child was silent. The dog trotted over, and as the boy picked himself up he searched the ground blindly with a small hand. Finally he stood holding a triangular rock. He turned and threw it at the dog, hitting him full in the ribs; the dog flinched but otherwise took the blow in silence. The boy simply walked away. I made soft kissing sounds to summon the dog, who was understandably skittish. I persisted. I didn't know what else to do. When it slinked over, head lowered and panting, I saw a strange red spiderlike creature embedded in its collarless neck. I extended my hand. The dog bit me and staggered off.

(From the April 2002 Harper's.) 16:59

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/technology/ebusiness/12NASA.html NASA gets spare parts from eBay! 00:31

http://www.sorabji.com/2002/may/8/ 16:14

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020429/020429-9.html Rats can be controlled by little computers strapped around their heads. Most interesting is the information that the effect is in part achieved through the stimulation of the portion of the brain that mediates pleasure. Is it acceptable to make animals do our bidding because they (in a fairly strong sense) “enjoy” it?

One character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a pig who, when presented to a table of diners, begs them to eat him. (He nominates his choicest cuts and so forth.) Would it be right to breed animals that behave in this way? They can't be said to suffer—so to what degree is suffering irrelevant? 11:04

http://www.nerve.com/PersonalEssays/Archer/MissionaryPosition/
“In Praise of the Missionary Position.” Nerve's got a lot uglier (and “busier”) since the last time I looked. 10:19

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13004 Naomi Klein: anti-Semitism pays political dividends to Sharon and so it must be checked.

For Sharon, Jewish fear is a guarantee that his power will go unchecked, granting him the impunity needed to do the unthinkable: send troops into the Palestinian Authority's education ministry to steal and destroy records; bury children alive in their homes; block ambulances from getting to the dying.

This is an extraordinary piece, especially for a Klein. The facade of a synagogue near her house was “just badly scarred by a suspicious fire”; the tragedy (and thus the reason why the globalisation movement should condemn anti-Semitism) is not that it was attacked, but that the attack led to a sign on the door that read, “Support Israel—now more than ever.” (I am also amused by the “just.”) 00:37

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/magazine/_05WTWT.html Doctors who smoke. (A Times article of a few years ago described the smoking culture of Denmark. Dr Bruno Timmerman (presumably a smoker) said: “You have to weigh it up and find a balance between what is dangerous and what your need for relaxation is. I don't see that a few cigarettes a day will harm you. It is better than being stressed.”) 15:13

http://www.verisignagreement.info/ Why does VeriSign's service agreement have its own URL? (Redirects to a netsol.com site.)

beebo.org is coming up for renewal soon; I'm going to move it somewhere else, partly because of the hoopla.com incident and partly because their system for changing DNS entries is really awful. Recommendations? 14:33

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/lapriest1.html 11:33

http://www.royaljournal.com/found_art/200203/worlds_shortest_
easter_p.shtml 11:09

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2065250 Any UN inquiry into what happened at Jenin will necessarily be less about facts than it is about analysis and spin:

Israel's critics want the investigation to focus on what Israeli soldiers did to Jenin; Israel wants to include what Jenin's terrorists did to Israel. Critics want to begin with the assault; Israel wants to begin with events that provoked it. In evaluating the Israeli military's behavior, critics want to treat the camp's residents as civilians; Israel wants to treat them as abettors of terrorism. Critics want to ask whether Israeli soldiers distinguished civilians from fighters; Israel wants to ask how the fighters got mixed in with the civilians. Critics say a massacre should be defined by how many civilians were killed; Israel says it should be defined by whether the killing was deliberate.

11:07

http://www.jessamyn.com/journal/02/trivia.html Jessamyn asks great trivia questions. Hard ones but. 23:31

http://www.canada.com/national/features/mandate/story.html?
id={5F5BDF34-59FF-4F8E-9BA4-72C0F483324A} Canadians don't know the difference between right and left. (I was pretty surprised recently to find conservatives and liberals so neatly split over the present Middle East crisis.) 17:01

http://tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express;s=cottle042402 “Want to see a woman go berserk? Try tossing out these tidbits at the next office happy hour: Female fertility begins to decline at age 27.” Michelle Cottle asks why is this an issue for women only: “Sure, we're the ones who carry the babies—but that only lasts nine months.” (Men should take certainly more responsibility; this translates to greater decision-making power; and this, I think, translates to the power to veto a decision to forgo an abortion.) 12:34