ecto sounds nice, but it's not for me

I wish ecto worked on Windows. I keep trying different blogging clients for my nilsnet.com blog, and none work. This may actually be because, as a geeky person, I decided to host my own blog software on nilsnet.com - Serendipity - and I suspect its xml-rpc interface is not quite correct. So the real solution is not to bemoan ecto, but to use different blog software. That's harder, though.

Build a tensegrity tower (from Make)

If you've ever stared in wonder at the Needlepoint tensegrity tower in the Hirschorn Sculpture Gallery in Washington, DC, you'll be as thrilled as I am to see these instructions on how to build your own.

Brrreeeport - A bodily function after eating cheese -- look it up!

I went to dictionary.com to look it up, just on the off chance that Scoble wasn't making it up. Turns out he wasn't. It's actually defined there.

 

Just so you know.

 

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Check out my career blog at nilsnet.com

I have two blogs - this one for personal and hobby posts and nilsnet.com for more career and professional-type posts, especially related to product management, product marketing, and technical innovation. You can see it at http://www.nilsnet.com.

Me!

I just thought this would be interesting. I can send pictures directly from the camphone to the blog -- very cool. They need editing, though.

Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker articles (second try)

As Fast Company says:

"By the time you finish a Gladwell article, you feel as if you've watched a movie and read an academic journal all at once. Your brain is exercised and entertained, your perspective changed. Many of his New Yorker pieces inspired parts of The Tipping Point and Blink."

This guy's articles are always fascinating, and many of them have specific application to business, doing it better (and how not to do it worse). Check out The Talent Myth (about Enron and all the really really smart people who worked there) and Big and Bad (about the safety of SUVs).

Malcom Gladwell's New Yorker articles

As Fast Company says:

"By the time you finish a Gladwell article, you feel as if you've watched a movie and read an academic journal all at once. Your brain is exercised and entertained, your perspective changed. Many of his New Yorker pieces inspired parts of The Tipping Point and Blink."

This guy's articles are always fascinating, and many of them have specific application to business, doing it better (and how not to do it worse).

"Managing Incoming Email" from Good Experience

I haven't read it yet, but if it's any good -- as Good Experience stuff often is, this guide to Managing Incoming Email will be a godsend.

Christopher Hitchens on Slate -- wrong wrong wrong

Especially the part at the end.

Christopher Hitchens published an article on November 9 in Slate called "Bush's Secularist Triumph: The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them." He's got some very wrong-headed ideas in there.

George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?

Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Robert Ingersoll* or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without.

It's clear that, at the very least, the human race has a fairly common "religion gene." Apparently Hitchens doesn't have this gene, and I don't either, but between the two of us secularism is not going to defeat religion. What secularism might hope to do is defeat extremist religionism, and unfortunately the way that's going to work is by being nice. One of the essential ways that extremists multiply is via demonizing an oppressor -- remove the oppressor and often the moderates are much more able to moderate. At any rate that's a theory as reasonable as Hitchens' about killing all the extremists.

Very late post-election comments

This was originally started way back in mid-November, and just got lost. Thought I'd at least get it up in the blogosphere.
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Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) was on "The Daily Show" last week (this was actually on November 3 or 4), right after the election. Jon Stewart asked him about what the Dems did wrong to lose the election. He said the Democrats needed to "clarify their new programs better" and that would have made the difference. I believe that this illustrates the exact problem that the Democrats had. No one is really interested in the details of the plan, and no one believes that the plan makes all that much difference, do they?

The reaction of the people I know to the election was "how could so many people be so dumb?" And I don't mean the religious right. In fact, the religious right is the only group that had a legitimate reason to vote for Bush, given his opposition to abortion and his litmus test for judges. What makes us wonder, though, is the moderate Republicans who voted for Bush. The segment on This American Life was exemplary. Dr. Gig Hackett disagreed with every one of Bush's policies, with the war, with the huge deficit, with the way he's fighting the war on terror, and with his stance on abortion and gays. But he still voted for Bush.

And I think that indicates a deep structural problem that the Dems have to grapple with. With the immense tilt to the right of the Republican party, the Democratic party has to figure out how to recapture the votes of the "moderate" Republicans. They aren't represented by their party, but their party long-term strategy has done so well at demonizing liberals that the moderates don't realize their interests are better served by the liberals.

So one question is are liberals really liberal any more? I think you have to say that one many fiscal issues, in particular, Democrats are really Republicans -- fiscally conservative in that they want a balanced budget and want to pay for what they buy. The differences are that Democrats are willing to spend to help people, while Republicans aren't, and that Democrats are possibly more likely to reduce the huge defense budgets. Are the Democrats any less corrupt than the Republicans as regards pork barrel projects? No, of course not. That may be an intrinsic problem with representative democracy.

In order to win elections in the future, the Democrats need to turn the moderates in the Republican party against the far right nut cases who believe the world is going to end and they are all going to be pulled up to heaven leaving their shoes, and all the non-saved, behind.

UI Patterns and Techniques: Introduction

If I ever need to design a UI, or critique a UI design (which I actually do all the time as part of my job, I can use these UI Patterns and Techniques as a guide.

E-Paper will change the world

I believe that e-paper, either from Epson or from other vendors (E Ink) is going to be a world-changing technology. I don't know exactly how it will change the world, aside from -- I hope -- reducing the piles of paper that are all over my office, but it seems to me to have the promise of a true paradigm changing development. Here's another article on e-paper, though, that thinks the killer app for e-paper hasn't been found yet. Maybe I need to come up with one. I actually have an idea along these lines...

Sorry Everybody and Apologies Accepted

This one's for the sorry 49% (Sorry Everybody) and this one's the response from the rest of the world (Apologies Accepted - the world's answer to sorryeverybody.com). I guess it makes me feel a bit better, anyway. (Did everyone else already know about these?)

It's not a black and white issue

Kerry's loss was partly because of the religious right, but it was partly because he is a liberal (I think that's good but the left/Democrats have let the Republicans spend 20 years demonizing the word "liberal" and turning it into a code word for all things bad), and partly because Bush's big corporate donors delivered a lot of cash, and partly because the folks in the "red states" think the folks on the coasts are intellectual snobs and elites, and partly just because Bush is a Republican and Kerry's a Democrat, and Republicans vote for Republicans and Dems vote for Dems (listen to the first segment of the October 30 2004 edition of This American Life if you don't believe that).

Even in California, a strong blue state, more than 40% of the voters went for Bush. In Ohio, a "red state," 48% of the voters went for Kerry.

There's no one thing that really made it all fall apart for the left/Democrats. So there's no simple solution. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

What progressives need to do

I had a few ideas on what progressives need to do to take the country back from the radical right wing.

• Take back "liberal"
• demonize "conservative"
• Work on local school boards - kill creationism
• Work on California's text book buying process -- boycott any publisher who puts out textbooks that skip evolution or teach creationism
• Make sure Dems get a majority in the House in the next election, Senate if possible

Key points

• No compromises in this Congress, Dem's will have to filibuster constantly Can we limit it to one Supreme Court appointment in the next two years?
• Take advantage of "still Enlightened" states like California and New York/New England.
• What can be done about strongly red states in the mid-West? They are just hurting themselves. How can they be made to see that?
• Find out how people reconcile "the bible is the literal Word" with things that the Bible says that no one believes. Need to take advantage of that. I think progessives may need to start learning the Bible.
• Join the NRA

I've decided I'm going to start blogging more. Yay!

Adam Felber captured the basis of the angst of the "blue states" in his Concession Speech. It raises a good question, though.

We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about 'em. We in the blue states are the only ones who've been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling "Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!"

Given all that -- especially the fact that we create the culture -- how come we do such a poor job of convincing the red state people?

Apparently, according to this article (MercuryNews.com | 07/07/2004 | 36 percent of software worldwide pirated, trade group says) there are a bunch of people saving billions of dollars on software by stealing it. What I wonder, and what is never asked by the journos, is how much of this stolen software would be purchased, if it couldn't be stolen? I suspect that the answer to this question is "Not frigging much." So how much are the software companies really losing? Someone needs to do a study on this number.

My daughter wants an Ipod for Christmas but we decided it was too expensive. Then I saw a link for the new Rio Karma (review on CNET at Rio Karma (20GB) - Design - MP3 players - CNET Reviews) -- I think she should get this one instead. It's cheaper, and not tied to the iTunes service. On a related point, Boing Boing pointed out this interesting article about Apple and innovation. The point being that Apple makes technical innovations, rather than business process innovations. Of course, it's easy to copy and improve on technical innovations, and in particular to make them cheaper, once someone makes the first one. (Like the Karma, vs. the iPod.)

For Christmas I got to buy myself a Sprint PCS Sanyo xxx video phone. Now that I can take pictures and surf the web from my phone, it seems like I should be able to do some posting directly from the phone. Joi Ito's Moblogging, Blogmapping and Moblogmapping related resources as of 6/10/2003 is one source of information I found about "moblogging," as it seems to be called.

Yawn! Just another way for humans to fly -- Airborne Humans describes the "Skyray" wing, which allows a human to fly "faster than a Cessna-class aircraft" for many miles. You still need a parachute to land, though.

OK, this is cool! My first visit to Disneyland was when I was eight, and the Journey Throught Innerspace was, and still is, my favorite ride. Now this guy has created a 3D model of the ride. His site shows his models and renders -- ATIS CGI RIDE-THRU PROJECT. (Thanks to Boing Boing for mentioning this.)

outravez is the site of my daughter's friend Sierra. I just learned about it tonight. She's an industrial design student at Stanford who already has some designs in production for the company she interned with in Berlin.

Recomendo

I try to take a look at this site every week or so -- great product reviews and recommendations, in the tradition of The Whole Earth Catalog by a long-time Whole Earth and Coevolution contributor and editor: Kevin Kelly -- Recomendo

I went to my 20 year college reunion two weeks ago. I was amazed how many people looked just like I remembered them. I had some trouble with a few people, but mostly it was as though I'd seen everyone last week. On the other hand, no one recognized me.

The name: A "balance and swing" is a dance move from contra dancing, a kind of folk dancing from New England, like square dancing or the Virginia Reel, which I used to do a lot of and still love. But wait, there's more. "Balance" is always good on a blog, particularly if one might occassionally post items that reflect an opinion. And I also do a lot of swing dancing. "And" doesn't really have an explanation.

This is my first posting to my new blog. Stayed tuned, there might be comments, probably coming in at a fairly slow pace.