One Thesis, Two New Domains, The One True Language, Many Natural Languages... and the "War on Terror

[tcpip]

This week my thesis has moved at a rate of the allied advance into Italy during the second world war - bogged down in mud. I think I've managed to contribute a mere 2,500 words on the subject. Good words mind you, damn good words as I've been pondering and researching the complex (and contradictory ideas) of (a) the influence of the Internet in the global political and economic order and (b) the cultural parallel with the history of the telegraph. With is a mere (estimated) 7,500 words to go before completion I'm hoping to have it done by the end of next week.

In the meantime I have allowed myself to be distracted productively. Putting ideas developed into the thesis into practise I've registered two new domains; isocracy.org and mimesispublishing.net. The idea of the former is a social and political theory and news site. The idea of the latter is a publishing co-operative for graduates which produces both ebooks and the dead-tree versions. I've been investigating several hosting options and co-operative regulations which are invariably the best business model.

Every couple of years I force myself to review my programming skills. No, I don't mean static coding such as xhtml/css, or even bits of javascript (which I personally loathe, but clients love) or shellscript, which are the sort of things I do on a daily basis anyway. Rather I mean getting one's teeth into the one true programming language, C++. Now I haven't done any C/C++ programming for about 2 years at least. But what is making me grin from ear to ear is not just how much of it I'm remembering, but how much I'm enjoying it.

Part of this is of course to assist in the translation program that I'm working on with Peter Gossner and Cromwell Hooper. Recently we've discovered a very handy little resource, the Natural Language Toolkit, which will assist us greatly in over coming the problems of contextual semantics normally associated with machine translation.

Next Tuesday I have another interview with Australian Volunteers International. Well been an interesting and pleasant six months back in Australia. I suppose I'd better start learning Vietnamese....

Last Sunday had Andrew Rowe, CEO of the Victorian Local Governance Association, speaking on community involvement in the development of a Bill of Rights. He made some poignant comments about how many people feel distant from our state and federal governments are turning to local government to reconnect and engage as citizens. He cited the role of local government in the Australian republic debate as an example. Next time I see him I must quiz him more on the Jefferson notion of highly decentralized "natural republics". I suspect he'll like it.

Something for members of the Victorian Labor Party to ponder on. Item 1 and Item 2

Nerds and IT business heads only. Beagl has offered this gem which the aforementioned people will understand. Also in the realm of extremely practical nerdsville (particularly appropriate to those IT workers who like living it rough like myself) latest Swiss Army knife comes with a USB HD.

Everyone is getting into it. Even Noam Chomsky has a blog. Although I think "Turning The Tide" is the wrong title for someone who considers himself a progressive.

The good Jay Bulworth once again raises the idea of "odious debt" in the latest issue of Overland in the article Strategic policy alternatives for Australia.

The Richard Clarke affair is going to be big, very big. After all, it's not often that you get a conservative establishment figure picked by four presidents to advise them on security concerns. This blog provides an excellent summary of what is going down. The key point: There's a serious chance 9/11 could have been stopped. Bush wanted to invade Iraq instead. Clarke explains more in this Guardian interview.

In a sense, Clarke's White House critics are right. He has timed this very carefully, right in time for the 9/11 congessional hearings. I do suspect he is politically motivated to "get" Bush as well, although he is certainly no liberal. One can bet their bottom dollar that he hasn't played all his cards yet and over the next few months more and more will be revealed.

To finish off on a related issue, Rilian provides a link to these annoying questions.

April 4 is World Rat Day, whereas Unitarians in New Zealand have apparently called it "All Heretics Day". Anything but Easter I suppose.

Comments

Actually...

[rialian.livejournal.com]

===It looks like incompetence got them again.

===Clarke apparently turned in the manuscript to the government for them to go over, and they held it for 3 months. It comes out now because they took so long. (Clarke had to turn it in to make sure that information that was classified did not get accidentaly mentioned....)

===I am amused.

[jesusandrew.livejournal.com]

It's good to see Clarke's information getting some proper attention. Shortly after 9/11 I remember reading an article which observed that one of the first things Bush asked was: "Can we blame this on Iraq?" I also remember reading before the bombing that shortly after he was elected he was already looking for excuses to invade Iraq. As this information never received any real play in the major media, it makes me happy to see it finally come back to bite him.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I do suspect he is politically motivated to "get" Bush as well, although he is certainly no liberal.

And the Republicans really shot themselves in the collective foot by insinuating that Clarke was a Kerry sympathiser. They'd have done better just to shut up and hope for people to forget about it, or find a more convincing smear tactic, instead of pulling out one that was very obviously bunk. (Nice move by Clarke, BTW, swearing under oath that he wouldn't accept a position from Kerry.)

So all they've got left is "book to sell" or "personal grudge", neither of which are that convincing. You don't have to be a liberal to dislike Bush any more; I know quite a few conservatives who are aghast at his sheer incompetence.

politics and heretics

[morrigan77.livejournal.com]

I'm not feeling particularly political today ... we all knew Bush was itching to bomb something!!! Frustrated man.

However the rat site is amusing and the "Unitarian Universalists come from a long line of heretics" line was just too much - this is a very interesting tactic of self promotion! Inspiring :))

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

World Rat Day is the better option..... World Heretics Day would have been better for the following weekend IMHO

the chomsky blog

[angel80.livejournal.com]

He has turned off the comments option!!! I wondered if he would do that, since he is such a great believer in free speech. But last time I looked there were 194 comments on his latest entry and most of them (99%) consisted of somebody writing the word 'jews' about 5000 times or a 'dictionary of sexual reference' which was unbelievably misogynist repeated 3-4 times and other equally shitty stuff. I've never seen anything like it. The guy is a stirrer, but there are people out there who really, really hate him and have just tried to spam up his bandwidth with hate-speak. I have to say, I found it quite shocking. I live in such an ivory tower environment, full of tolerant and open-minded people. I was just stunned by the sheer quantity of stupidity and bile.

purple sage...

[monkeygirldiva.livejournal.com]

several years ago i worked on a victoria-wide project focusing on civic rights and community empowerment. VLGA was one of the six partner organisations involved. i'm not sure what's happening with it now, but about 6 years ago we were able to mobilise thousands to collectively come up with a 'log of claims' for state government... thought you might be interested in checking out the site.

Heretics Rock!

[nvcarnie.livejournal.com]

I love being a heretic. I agree with earlier comments. Having it on Easter Sunday would be amazingly appropriate.