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Friday, August 4, 2006
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 Friday, August 4, 2006
started 8/4/2006; 3:14:43 AM - last post 8/5/2006; 3:42:27 PM
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Doc Searls - Friday, August 4, 2006 
8/4/2006; 7:14:43 AM (reads: 8343, responses: 4)
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After watching Larry King. Coincidence? 
| | Have you noticed that the leading experts in the fields you know most about are better at being leaders than being expert? That¹s because expertise is the stepchild of status, and a wholly different attribute. It¹s a little like the absolute rule of male blood supply: few males have enough blood to operate a brain and a penis simultaneously. The "leading expert" corollary might be that few people have enough character to be a leader and an expert simultaneously. |
| | Meanwhile, Stacy Schiff's July 31st New Yorker article on Wikipedia (regretably not online), William F. Buckley Jr. (a Yale guy, we should note) is quoted saying he would sooner "live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the faculty members of Harvard University." A number of whom were in attendance at Wikimania. |
Pressback
| | Nick Lemann's article will help if it lowers expectations for "amateur hour." For I don¹t think we know how to do users-know-more-than-we-do journalismŠ yet. My favorite moment was when he wrote: "Great citizen journalism is like the imagined Northwest Passage — it has to exist in order to prove that citizens can learn about public life without the mediation of professionals." |
| | That really made me smile. |
Analnymity
Here for yourself
| | Jimmy Wales: In the next year, we will have a quality initiative. And, We need to turn out attention away from growth, and toward quality. Those are as close to verbatim as I could get. His speech, and everything at Wikimania, is being streamed. (Yes, it did open with Colbert's now-infamous broadcast.) |
Guess we have to keep talking
Sometimes the Net finds damage and routes into it
Who new?
Coolness
| | As we were flying from L.A. to Boston today, we diverted north to avoid weather, having already been told that Boston was, like the whole East Coast, in an awful heat wave. Somewhere over Wyoming we turned east. And then, near Toronto, the pilot came on and said "The Weather has turned. The wind is now out of the East, off the ocean, and the temperature has dropped to the low eighties." Right now, on Harvard Square, it's 67 degrees. People are out walking, just to take advantage of the natural air conditioning outside. |
| | There are thunderstorms to the north and south, the weather map says, and the forecast is for more tomorrow. |
| | Funny thing about the flight. It was a United 757, an old workhorse plane with TVs in the ceiling over the center aisle, and headset jacks that barely work. Mine did, and, as usual, I listened to Channel 9 on the audio system, which carries cockpit chatter with air traffic controllers. On most cross country flights, most of the chatter concerns turbulence, or "chop". If the going gets bumpy at the plane's altitude, there's a chance that it's less bumpy at other altitudes. You'll hear Denver Center say "you've got light chop for the next fifty miles or so at thirty-seven, and it's not much better at thirty-five". Or, "Continental 460, how's your ride?" Meaning that the Continental pilot can provide useful information about conditions for its flight path." |
| | Generally pilots go out of their way to keep the seat belt sign off, and to avoid bumpy conditions, even though they're used to it. Not our guy. We had a couple of long choppy stretches that I'd call "light to moderate". I only heard him request information about conditions at other elevations once, in the region controlled by Minneapolis Center. The controller polled seveal other planes, all of which reported no chop. But our pilot didn't say anything and stuck at 37,000 feet. (Or, in aviation parlance, three seven zero.) What's more, he left the seat belt sign off most of the time. Turbulence didn't impress him, and I guess he didn't expect it to impress the passengers either. I don't think I've been on a flight in which the pilot left the seat belt sign off for longer in bumpy conditions. Some passengers appreciated it too, since it meant they could use the toilets, even though they had to hold onto seats and brace against walls. |
| | Anyway, it's cool to be here. Hope it stays that way the next week. |
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Steven Tulsky - Re: Friday, August 4, 2006
8/4/2006; 2:36:12 PM (reads: 1016, responses: 0)
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Hey Doc,
From the Trivia Department--
"Flight Level 370" is not technically 37,000 feet above sea level, as one might think. Instead, it is the altitude at which a plane's altimeter will read 37,000 feet when the sea level pressure is set to 29.92 inches of mercury, which is considered the "standard pressure". The actual sea level pressure at a given location varies day by day, hour by hour, which is why when planes are flying at lower altitudes (and most importantly, when they're about to land) they need to be told the actual pressure at the nearest available location so they can set their altimeters to local conditions and get an accurate reading of their altitude. At high altitudes, however, it is less important that they be at an accurate altitude than that they all be at the same altitude relative to each other. Since they don't all want to be resetting their altimeters every ten minutes to reported local pressures, instead they all agree that when they fly above 18,000 feet they all set their altimeters to the standard pressure of 29.92, and then their altimeter reading becomes their "flight level", and it is described with the last two zeroes truncated. So, to use your example, Flight Level 370 is the altitude at which a plane's altimeter reads 37,000 feet above sea level once its been set to a pressure of 29.92. This altitude could be substantially above or below 37,000 feet depending on whether the actual pressure is below or above 29.92, and as the plane flies into areas of higher or lower pressure, its actual altitude goes up or down even as its altimeter continues to read 37,000 and it considers itself to be flying consistently at Flight Level 370.
More than you wanted to know, huh!
Cheers,
Steve Tulsky
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Michael O'Connor Clarke - Re: Sometimes the Net finds damage and routes into it...
8/4/2006; 7:50:47 PM (reads: 1000, responses: 1)
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Hmmmm...
Somewhat Frank's comment ("The moral of the story: don't break the web!") jars. As a certain very smart gent once said, isn't part of the joy of the web predicated on its inherent brokenness?
Better expressed, here: http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/nprbroken.html
OK - I know deliberately breaking an important set of links, as in this story of the Katrina blog, is certainly dumb. I think that if it's possible to avoid breaking the Web, then we should do all that we can to do so. But - and it's a small, pedantic point - the comment springing up around this story that there should be a "Rule #1: Don't Break the Web" just sits uncomfortably with me. Perhaps I'm just over-reacting to the idea of rule-making, more than anything else. Having a low caffeine moment, I guess.
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Doc Searls - Re: Sometimes the Net finds damage and routes into it...
8/4/2006; 8:12:49 PM (reads: 1162, responses: 0)
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It jarred with me too. Should have said that, I guess; but I was in a hurry.
I don't think there's disagreement here, fwiw. Just using "broken" in two different contexts. Frank's point was about breaking links. (Links = Web being the context.) David's point was about the Web lacking central control and leaving room to screw up.
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JTH - Re: Friday, August 4, 2006
8/5/2006; 7:42:27 PM (reads: 1003, responses: 0)
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Doc:
1) sent email, hope it works
On aerial photos, tectonics, Ted Abrams etc.
2) "Have you noticed that the leading experts in the fields you know most about are better at being leaders than being expert"
Current (newstand) SciAmerican (much diminishted pub) on "Expert Mind"
Practice practice practice makes near perfect
Not sure it's right, but interesting
All patterns to ideas by my friend Jim Bower (http://bower-lab.org/)
Rock on
Chip
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