Politics

Stilgherrian’s links for 26 August 2008 through 30 August 2008, collected using a fine-meshed net and a spoon:

• Interpreting Privacy Principles | Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre: The Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre is holding a 1-day Symposium o 2 October to discuss the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Report on Privacy (August 2008), and to take stock of the NSW Law Reform Commission’s Consultation Paper 3: Privacy Legislation in New South Wales (July 2008). The Symposium is part of the Interpreting Privacy Principles Project, an Australian Research Council Discovery Project.
• Electing a US President in Plain English | YouTube: A quick explanation of the US Presidential voting system from the wonderful people at Common Craft.
• The Grand Twitter Experiment | Widgify: One guy’s experiment to increase his Twitter followers so his “channel” is one of “greater influence”. He seems to miss the two far more important aspects of Twitter: how he’s contributed to the conversation to improve his reputation, and what connections he’s made.
• My current backup strategy | eirikso.com: A nice explanation of how one media producer stores his backups, with other suggestions in the comments.
• 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business | chrisbrogan.com: What it says. The thread through all of it is “be human”.
• The Anatomy of a Successful Music Broadcast Event | The Ustream.TV Blog: Nice set of tips on doing live music stuff on this Internet thing.
• Explanation before information | Made to Stick: A nice little article explaining why explanations need to come before the low-level facts, not the other way around.
• Twitter demystified and debunked | The Fluent Self: Havi Brooks has written a fine, playful piece about Twitter.
• Oedipus (with vegetables) | YouTube: The story of Oedipus in 8 minutes performed by vegetables in the tradition of Ben-Hur. Featuring a Potato, a Tomato, Broccoli, Garlic, and Billy Dee Williams as the Bartender. Official Selection 60+ film festivals including Sundance

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 August 2008 through 24 August 2008, with shaved parmesan:

• Medals per mil. Population by Country | Swivel: Sean Carmody continues his data mining on the Beijing Olympics that discover that the Bahamas is the highest medal winner per capita, followed by Jamaica, Slovenia, Australia and New Zealand.
• Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes | washingtonpost.com: “A voting system used in 34 [US] states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.” Yet another argument against computer-based voting.

Stilgherrian’s links for 28 July 2008 through 01 August 2008, which fell from the sky and painted in various attractive pastel colours:

• Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China | Harvard Law School: An analysis of China's Great Firewall which concludes that the blocking systems are becoming more refined even as they are likely more labor- and technology-intensive to maintain than cruder predecessors.
• Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents | Reporters sans frontières: Tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation.
• Journalism.me - The journalism blogosphere: An aggregation of journalists who blog (mostly) about journalism.

Stilgherrian’s links for 13 July 2008 through 17 July 2008, gathered with moss like a rolling stone doesn’t:

• Flat Earth News: The official website for Nick Davies' book, which various people have suggested I read.
• Straw man | Wikipedia: "A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position." Tagged as a reminder to certain blog commenters.
• Zappos.com: Who'd have thought that people would buy shoes online? Who'd have thought that a company would use Twitter and other social media to do great customer service (or so I'm told)?
• Journalism: A Toxic Culture? (Or: Why Aren’t We Having More Fun?) | contentious.com: Amy Gahran helps explain why journalists are so defensive about their craft these days, and posits that they have "Priesthood Syndrome".
• The plastic buttons we push | Amit Gupta likes you!: How do you make a living? Is it by pushing plastic buttons all day?
• Is Social Media The Ultimate Buzz Kill? | Awake At The Wheel: Are we becoming so addicted to telling people about what we're experencing that we actually forget to experience it?
• Principia Discordia Hardback | Synaptyclypse Generator: The central Discordian text, "Principia Discordia", is once more available in hardback. I am well pleased.
• DIY carbon change | Unleashed: "Sometime in the last two weeks I stopped believing in government," says Mark Pesce. If governments are failing to respond to this vital issue, then we can ignore them and handle this ourselves.

Stilgherrian’s links for 03 July 2008 through 04 July 2008, gathered with joy and mutton:

• Draft Report | Garnaut Climate Change Review: The Draft Report describes the methodology for evaluating the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation; to the application of the science of climate change to Australia; to the international context, and to Australian mitigation policy.
• Turing Test | xkcd: On the other hand, maybe the test is to make the examiner think that HE'S the computer!
• Turing test | Wikipedia: "The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to demonstrate intelligence." What I love about the REAL Turing test is the subtlety of it… It's not faking a human, it's faking a human faking.
• Manned Cloud by Jean-Marie Massaud | Dezeen: This just has to be the most beautiful design for an airship I've ever seen. Guys, build it soon!
• The BBC and the future of broadcasting | Stephen Fry: Stephen Fry's speech on the future of public service broadcasting, and the BBC in particular.

Stilgherrian’s web links I’ve found for 02 July 2008, created automatically from internets.

• China As An Island | Strange Maps: China has land borders with 14 other countries. And yet you should not think of China as particularly well-integrated with its neighbours. In fact, as shown in this dramatic map, you should rather consider China to be an island.
• NASA's Moon Truck Goes for a Test Drive | Telstar Logistics: A prototype of a NASA lunar rover undergoing testing at the Moses Lake Sand Dunes in eastern Washington state.
• Hyperpolitics (American Style) | viddler.com: The video of Mark Pesce's presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum 2008.
• Asthma Weed | Sydney Weeds Committees: This is the nasty weed which keeps emerging in our garden and resists all efforts at eradication. Chemical warfare appears to be the only resort.

Stilgherrian’s links for 17 June 2008 through 19 June 2008. gathered automatically:

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Here are the web links I’ve found for 16 June 2008, posted automatically.

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Stilgherrian’s links for 26 May 2008 through 01 June 2008, gathered semi-automatically and covering a disturbing range of topics:

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My links for 15 May 2008 through 19 May 2008, gathered semi-automatically:

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Here are the web links I’ve found for 06 May 2008, posted automatically.

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Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.

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I’ve decided to have another go at publishing the links I find online. So, thanks to del.icio.us and some mild semi-automation, here’s today’s batch.

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