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Saturday, August 5, 2006
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 Saturday, August 5, 2006
started 8/5/2006; 5:55:36 AM - last post 8/6/2006; 12:51:35 AM
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Doc Searls - Saturday, August 5, 2006 
8/5/2006; 9:55:36 AM (reads: 5306, responses: 2)
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An optimistic view 
Quotes du jour
| | The idea that information is property is one of the really bad ideas of the twentieth century. — Brewster Kahle, at Wikimania |
| | Also, If there's one lesson from the Library of Alexandria, version one, it's "Don't have just one copy". |
Required blogging
| | The people, and the bloggers, of Lafayette, Louisiana, are fighting the good fight for real broadband in that town, rather than i-gravy that their local duopoly would rather give them on top of cable TV and phone service. It's a tough fight, because private utility monopolists don't like any more competition, or public accountability, than they already have. Worse, they're litigating and lobbying against local control at every level. I've written about this before. The Lafayette Pro Fiber folks noticed and responded here (which I'd missed when it ran last week). Go read it. Not for their kind words in my direction, but for news that they lack attention and support from others who care about this very real fight, which is going on across the U.S. |
| | If we care about this fight, and we should, our allies in Lafayette deserve more support than they're getting. Let's give it to them. |
Flying long
| | My seat on the 757 out of L.A. was a nice one for shooting pictures: near the back of the plane, on the shady side. But the window was terriby scratched up. And the air below was cloudy, hazy or both, most of the way. So there aren't too many shots. I also went back to my old Nikon Coolpix 5700 (a model now pushing 5 years old), since the new Canon 30D is in the shop. But I did shoot some stuff that's interesting as subjects, if not photographically distinctive. One example is the Lockheed Martin Helendale RCS Facility, where stealth airplanes and stealthy materials are tested. Here's a very interesting story about that. |
Air America is running out of gas
| | Pure spinnage, of course. Nobody who knows anything about New York radio is eating it. |
| | I was just talking with Dean Landsman about it. (Dean is a veteran broadcaster and broadcast consultant — one with a long and strong track record with urban programming.) He put the coverage issue much less kindly than the maps in the last paragraph. WWRL's signal, to put it mildly, is not competitive. At night it barely gets into all the boroughs, and it's nowhere in the suburbs where much of the listenership ought to be. |
| | This blog post pretty nails it: this new "Flagship" is sort of like moving from the "QE II" to the "Titanic". |
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JTH - Re: Saturday, August 5, 2006
8/5/2006; 7:52:12 PM (reads: 954, responses: 0)
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Experts: follow up
SciAmerican:
http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945
"Without a demonstrably immense superiority in skill over the novice, there can be no true experts, only laypeople with imposing credentials. Such, alas, are all too common. Rigorous studies in the past two decades have shown that professional stock pickers invest no more successfully than amateurs, that noted connoisseurs distinguish wines hardly better than yokels, and that highly credentialed psychiatric therapists help patients no more than colleagues with less advanced degrees. And even when expertise undoubtedly exists--as in, say, teaching or business management--it is often hard to measure, let alone explain."
But it goes on to track Chess expertiese - and prove the practice makes "better"
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Earl Mardle - The Legroom
8/6/2006; 4:51:35 AM (reads: 952, responses: 0)
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Whenever I check in for a flight longer than 60 minutes, my first question is, "can I have an exit row?"
On a jumbo the best seat in the house is the middle seat in an exit row. I'll swap the minor hassles of armrest stowed trays for unlimited legroom and the ability to stand up any time without disturbing anyone every time.
As for pics and tech on board, I also spend a lot of time on Cannel 9, which at least changes regularly instead of recycling every 40 minutes, or about 20 times between Sydney and SF.
But the best deal of all is the nose cam on SAS and Lufthansa. I still get a kick out of watching the glide path and the landing from the business end.
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