Book 1,  Book 2

FT2 astutely comments:

the predictable twitterpedia sequel follows:
- user#217869: pov warring!!
- @83476238 not so!
- @217869 is so!!
- @83476238 not so!
- @both: u blocked 24 hrs 3rr
- @admin plz no?
- @217869 o ok
- @admin kthxbai
- @83476238 u block I not u suxxor pov war!!!
- @admin u involved,, @arbcom plzdesysopkthx?
- @user no wai!!
- ……….

A tip of the hat to all involved for scrying the essential parts of our post-singularity knowledge landscape.

Bonus: When Photo Credits Go Bad :

Seen on the latimes blog : “Photo credit: Somebody who’s dead“. Why is it so hard to get these things right?  Isn’t this what photo archivists are for?

UPDATE:  Our street was lucky.  Our house is good as ever, having no enormous trees nearby.  My mother reports the only noise it made was a loud humming from the gutters at a certain windspeed (I could hear it over the phone!).

UPDATE 2: A house across the street had its roof aerated by falling trees from both adjacent properties, and the ancient oak in the open lot next to us (vacated and cleared after the last big flood) was ripped down.  Flooding wasn’t bad; only 2 ft of water in the street.  The local bayou is far from the main channel, and was a good 3 feet from flowing over when high tide passed at 4pm.  10 blocks away things were worse…  Now everyone just has to make do without power for the next fortnight.

UPDATE 3: Only 1m are still without power; we expect to do without for another week.

And this is why we went into space 40 years ago: an image of Ike from the International Space Station… with a little ’station finger’ over the lens.  Great buildings such as the Pyramids and the Wall are, despite what they say, hard to see from space.  But massive atmospherics?  You can see those from Saturn.

More below the fold.

From the coast:

How Texans prepare for the London olympics.

Update : Now It Can Be Told — this winsome creation comes from Winona of the Weecast.

Noting ages to four significant figures is going to be all the rage soon, mark my words.

Sometimes I do that reflexively while thinking, practiving a little Langerfulness. So it was that I found myself tonight seven pages into the discussion threads for the YouTube video “Why Chuck [Norris] endorsed Mike [Huckabee] – Episode One [of Five]“, where I ran across the following exchange between BuckDresser and jtm04d; those of you who know my favorite tests of familiarity with good scientific method may appreciate it…

BD : Being a professional engineer, a nuclear scientist, and an agnostic until age 40 when I “for fun” did the research to realize that the God of the Bible is real…I realize this: “A little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him back.” You don’t need to leave your brain behind to appreciate the Bible – in fact, unless you challenge the conventional wisdom of sound-byte “scientists” you probably never will.

jtm: I doubt any rational scientist would believe the earth is 6000 years old(bible) and evolution is false[Huckabee ]. The Scientific community is whole heartedly supportive of evolution. I’m a Biology major and we study evidence for evolution on the chromosomal level. On the bible if you want to defend it you have an extremely difficult job ahead of you.

BD: jtm04d, mutation & natural selection are real – evolution is contrary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. On the chromosomal level you witness rearrangements, not new more highly ordered structure. Evolution implies an increase in order. The 6000 years is the date when Adam was created, not the earth. You might read “the Science of God” by Gerald Schroeder (not a Christian) which is a plausible reconciliation of a 15 billion year universe, the 6000 years + 7 days of creation. Seek & guess what..

jtm: Buck I think your a smart guy, much smarter than the creationists I usually debate on my campus. But the fossil record does not agree with your 6000 year old Adam theory. In fact the record points to Homo Sapiens being around 250,000 years. And I know you think homophobia, misogyny, racism, genocide and totalitarianism are wrong too, but the bible contradicts you on all those points. I’m just saying its time we educated people reevaluate Bronze Age texts.

jtm: oh and my chromosomal evidence has nothing to do with rearrangements during Meiosis or even the similarities between primate DNA and human DNA(though they are relevant), I could give you a link to a lecture on that if ur interested, oh and add slavery to the list of immoralities the bible approves of

BD: jtm, I must sign off for several days, but… a debate is just a competition, & no debate will lead you to truth. An open mind, enough open books, and a humble heart might. My experience is, that until the Lord created a spirit of life in me, I had no idea I had been dead. And I still don’t know why He did it – an arrogant SOB like me didn’t/doesn’t deserve such grace. But He’s the King, & He does what He will. Thank God! Good night, jtm. Buck.

jtm: You’re right about debates, and I respect your belief and your experience. But its time our society had an honest debate about the bible and religion and its effects. I personally turned from religion when a friend of mine was murdered by someone on a divine mission in Iraq. I’m not saying that all theists are terrorists, but it made look at my beliefs outside the box.

BD: I’m sorry. That misguided fanatic may represent the face of religion, but not God. Don’t let him kill you along with your friend. Your mind and your heart testify that the Creator is not some atavistic being which we in our current highly-evolved state can now judge. At best, we may be better positioned to understand Him than our fathers could thousands of years ago. At least from a scientific & historical knowledge perspective – I’m not sure our hearts have evolved much at all. G’night for real

jtm: Buck, I can honestly say you give the strongest argument for theism than I’ve heard from any of my professors or scholars

jtm: PS: entropy does not refute evolution, don’t you think the scientific community recognizes that? or do you think that I and the scientists are part of an “evil conspiracy” to “Satanize” the world. As for your argument of irreducible complexity, thats been refuted too, nice try though. (I may seem condescending, i don’t think theists are stupid, they’re just wrong[)]

A few things here aside from the obvious. 1) it would be neat to have spanshots of life on earth 6000 years ago, for all sorts of reasons. 2) jtm forgets in the end he’s talking to a scientist. 3) I’m waiting for an excuse to nest that thing with the brackets one level deeper.

I can’t get enough. I want the crew responsible for character and clothing design, those responsible for sociology and scientific resarch, and those charged with spicing up the interwoven threads outside the flash but within the site (the brand incubation, the public relations crew, those who loaned outfits and music), in more than living color.

I inspected its central page on Wikimedia Commons to discover this last tidbit via the check usage tab… Commons also had a small descriptive page and gallery about Bouguereau and his works, where I found a second image similarly astonishing and underused. After marvelling on his works for a few long minutes, I realized I had found two extraordinary works in no time at all, and almost nothing of their origins; something was amiss.

It was no surprise to discover that his legacy had been somehow submerged for over half a century. Many compare him with Rembrandt, ignored for far longer and more actively in his own lifetime. Wikipedia had a short biography which alluded to this, and the first artsite I found with a page about him had a rant-like paean at once upholding his fine qualities and denouncing slanders that had kept him from public texts and encyclopedias and hidden his work from entire generations.
I then added his Tricoteuse and portrait of his future wife, Elizabeth Gardner, to the Wikipedia gallery dedicated to his works. Only as I was leaving that gallery did I realize I had seen — and bookmarked — one of his images before: a work of Nymphs and Satyr, again so striking that without remembering the artist’s name I had brought it to mind on a few occasions. And is this delightful piece entitled L’enlèvement de Psyché or Le ravissement de Psyché ? Rapture seems to suit it better.
At any rate, time spent with Bouguereau’s works is time well spent. Enjoy!

I don’t know how he does it, but Zvi has certainly done it again.  He is over at Kiva.org, making their amazing site render faster, load more stably, and run on a lean, mean pile of code.  I can only hope his work will be open sourced one day so that other sites with similar audiences can benefit from a working toolchain for community-centered design and bounty or feedback processing…

I want to start a series of children’s books of the form “Zvi Boshernitzan:Boy Wonder” and “Zvi Boshernitzan:nighttime at the Cancel Corral“.  Think they would sell?

Zvi Boshernitzan:Boy Genius …

Essjay, my eponymous Wikipedian colleague, was renowned for years for many things — his devotion to Wikipedia and meticulous attention to detail, his clear writing and sense of visual style, his ability to stay cool when discussions got hot, his comprehensive knowledge of religious details, and his enticingly half-revealed life history — a gay professor of theology with long academic credentials, who did not want to share his name or location.

Two months ago he joined the ranks of Wikia, and confessed that he was really just a young polymath who had been playing a role he set for himself, very carefully.  In the process, he had fooled most Wikipedians, and even given a telephone interview as his alter ego — the result of which was an excellent essay by Stacy Shiff in the New Yorker.  Everything in the essay remains true, save for the personal details about Essjay — and a new footnote at the end about his actual identity highlights some important elements of the site not explicitly laid out in her original prose.

Since his revelation, however, a growing number of Wikipedians and anti-Wikipedians have been asking him and eachother what to make of all of this. The person who wrote to tell the New Yorker the news was an anti-Wikipedian who had been wondering about his true identity for a long time…  one of the many interesting sidenotes in the aftermath is that almost noone mentions this point.

What distresses me most about the whole affair is: this was an extraordinary opportunity for Wikipedia, and its strongest proponents and most active members, to educate the world in a positive way about how it works.  Wikipedia does not privilege credentials.  Skill in writing?  Yes.  Demonstrable expertise in referencing their work, constructing arguments and presentations, and mediating disputes?  Certainly.  Level-headedness and willingness to consider alternate points of view?  By all means.  But not credentials as such.

So it pains me to see so many people – including people whose wiki work and philosophy I respect – repeating sound bites about Essjay misusing the trust of others, without qualifying every such statement with a similar discussion of the ways in which his actions in every sphere spoke louder than any fabricated identity.  I trusted in the quality and reliability of his work, both written and social, something unmatched in my experience with Wikipedians. I would continue to do so in any circumstance. 

…to be continued.

Wiki-twin falls afoul of fact-finding fisticuffs after fabrication …

Wiki-twin falls afoul of fact-finding fisticuffs after fabrication …

Paul Di Filippo’s latest is pure genius. 

WikiWorld: this world is our world …