Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:48:26 GMT

Jack Valenti’s Views On The Digital Age [Slashdot]

Some very interesting comments. WHat I find really novel is that the original interviewer has a blog where you can read his comments based on the discussion of his article. There has got to be nothing more satifiying to an author than to have this sort of conversation with his audience.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:45:21 GMT

New September 11 tower collapse theory. New Scientist Feb 5 2003 2:38PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

This will be interesting to see develop.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:30:06 GMT

Deficits and Interest Rates Once Again.

Ah. Here’s what’s going on:

[Semi-Daily Journal]

Okay, this is a very useful article and provides a background for the graph below. See, Bush’s accountants are saying that there will be a $200 billion deficit this year but, somehow, miraculously, it will completely disappear next year. That way they can argue that deficits will have no effect on the economy. But, if you never repay that deficit back, and just let your repayment schedule return to normal, it will have a large effect on the economy. Very disingenious. It is like my credit card. Say I owe $1000 and pay back $20 a month. Then I spend $100. If I pay $120 the next month, there will not be much harm and I’ll pay off my debt about as fast as I normally would. But if I still pay back $20 and my debt is now $1100, it will take me a lot longer to pay it off and I will end up paying a lot more in interest, money I could have spent on useful things. Bush’s economists tacitly argues the first, without providing any clue how we will come up with more money (I guess magic does happen.) This is fiscal responsibility?

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:18:13 GMT

Why Are We Ruled by These Fools? Department.

Don’t these guys ever even consider telling the truth about what they are doing? I mean, just as a theoretical option…

“We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations…” (George W. Bush, 2004 State of the Union Address)

[Semi-Daily Journal]

I’d feel better if he provided attribution for the graph. Extrapolation may be incorrect but it is better than ignoring the consequences of your actions, as the accountants in the administration are doing.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:03:15 GMT

Well, I am sitting here in Apple’s Rendevous Lounge writting wirelessly. They do not have any of the 17 inch powerbooks but some of the attendees have the 12 inch. Nice.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 00:58:03 GMT

Stein Gives Bioinformatics Ten Years to Live. Lincoln Stein reflects on the role of bioinformatics in his keynote address at the O’Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference. [O'Reilly Network Articles]

Here is a link to Lincoln’s discussion. It was quite provocative.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:57:57 GMT

Jack Valenti’s Lies. For a while now, I’ve been wondering why no one ever seems to confront Jack Valenti about his claim many years ago that the VCR would be the “Boston Strangler of the movie industry”, when just the opposite came true. Finally, someone has done the right thing – and then let Valenti slip right through. This interview at Harvard (yes, found over at Slashdot) confronted Valenti about his strangler claim, and Valenti proceeds to
lie his way out of it, by saying that everything he predicted about the VCR has come true. He conveniently ignores the fact that the movie industry is doing many many many times better than it was at the time – in large part due to the VCR. If that’s what it’s like to be a victim of the Boston Strangler, sign me up. He also denies that “fair use” actually exists (before giving an example of fair use). He also says that DVDs are indestructable (not true), and so no one would ever need to make a backup copy. It’s funny because he almost trips himself up here. He points out that no one should ever need to make a backup of a digital copy because it will last forever (though, plenty of articles on data extinction prove this isn’t true). What he seems to be missing is the reason digital can last forever is because you can make a perfect copy of it. However, by denying people the right to make the copy, he’s guaranteeing that it won’t last forever. Though, he has a perfect solution for this: if your DVD breaks, you just buy a new one.
[Techdirt]

And there is ample evidence that DVDs may rot and become unreadable in a short time. Prfecluding me from having a backup means that I have to buy another one, IF they still sell it. There are already lots of DVDs that are out of print and totally unavailable. This is the horrible thing that the Content Cartel is doing. This material will be lost becauseno one can archive any of it before it rots, just like most silent films were lost because they were stored on nitrate.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:55:29 GMT

HP Pulling All NASA Promotional Materials. It’s becoming more and more common for companies and organizations to use the easily changeable nature of the web to rewrite history as it suits them. This explains how, when the anger rose over the Total Information Awareness group, suddenly key member bios (and the scary logo) quietly disappeared from their website. So, it’s not a huge surprise when Vik writes
“In the light of the Columbia crash, HP immediately went through their web site and removed any references to one of their ad capaigns that included NASA. Of particular interest is the online transcript of Carly Fiorina’s Comdex speech
The current version omits any reference to NASA, while Google brings up the cached page with the following missing paragraph: ‘The challenge that NASA faces today is that they send some of the most brilliant minds in our country into space, and then they bring them back home.
Obviously, there is very little room for error in that scenario.
HP has the honor of being one of NASA’s technology partners š and we see it as our job to help the astronauts get home safely, so NASA can focus on its real mission: to explore, to discover and to inspire.’”
[Techdirt]

The web can make it very easy to change history. I wonder what historians will do with this sort of revisionism. Good thing that Stalin is not around. Sure is a good thing that our government is not removing important scientific information simply because it is problematic to the current administration. Wait. They already are. Luckily the web makes it much easier to cache information for later retrieval, so much of this information never does disappear.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:51:13 GMT

Calif. jurors convict, then decry marijuana verdict [Reuters Health eLine]

Whenever any conservative starts talking about ’state’s rights’ I’ll show them this, since it is being prosecuted by a conservative Justice Dept. It indicates that the only time conservattives care about state’s rights is when it is a Democratic fed and a Republican state. State’s rights do not hold for the other case, apparently. There are a lot of drugs that can be abused and are addictive but that have extremely important therapeutic uses. Marijuana has ample evidence that under the proper uses it can have large therapeutic results. So just control it like you control morphine.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 22:19:56 GMT

Steven Brenner’s talk was a great example of where the field is taking us. By using databases, his lab was able to find some clues to some very interesting biology. His group examoined sequences that most people ignored, figuring that they were just noise in the system and had no biological use. On the contary, there were able to use this data to do ‘real’ biology and show that these sequences could be very important when it comes to regulating translation. These processes, in fact, may help explain why splicing of mRNAs came into existence and how it evolved througout the metazoa. Very nice stuff.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 17:45:47 GMT

Steven Brenner gave an excellent presentation that amply demonstrates how the tools of bioinformatics can lead to new biological understanding. I’ll write more as the next talk is starting.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 17:30:59 GMT

Day 3 and there have been some great talks this morning. Lincoln Stein discussed why bioinformatics will not exist in 2012. A provocative title but with some very good points. Bioinformatics is a tool not a discipline. Just as there are not Departments of Microscopy, there will not be Depts. of Bioinformatics. But, of course, just as microscopists are still developing new tools (i.e atomic-force EMs) at the bleeding edge, so will bioinformaticists. There will be scientists developing new tools using the technologies that we can only dream about today.