Blogging about blog
Everybody seems to be into blogging these days that it practically lost its novelty already. Here's something to note for my American blogging friends. For the rest of us, we can basically sleepwalk into blogging.

Watch this clip of an interview showing what has to be one of the most mind-blowing distinction from a blonde [www.videoplink.com]. Not that I have anything against blondes, but see for yourself if this woman has helped at all.

An honest wage for a day's honest work
In saying this adage, people may only be agreeing verbally. Reality can't possibly be that easy. Take any computation of *real* wage. You'd expect it to be as straighforward as your pay slip. Not so fast, if we look at this calculator of real wage. Indeed, real wage is function of many things, and your wage, brother, is not even real, much less honest.

Writing your mom a paycheck?
O, well, mother's day, and society is abuzz with mushy adverts on the *idea* of momhood. Momhood, however, may represent opportunity cost. Isn't it better if someone actually compensates your mom?

Bike to work
Sometime ago we did a class report on campus biking. I bike to school and to work 99.99% of the time. Elsewhere the idea is getting more hip everyday, and the Americans are riding along. "Maki-bike ka! Wag matakot!"

Americans are sicker than Brits
so says this story. How do Americans and Brits differ with respect to health? Well, one: vacations! Government mandated time-off is much greater in UK than in America. There could be other more nuanced factors, of course. Skim through a /. discussion on this.

Be able to kill your students
Oops, that's just a quote from the Ninja master Masaaki Hatsumi. How I wish I can truly appropriate that for certain students. :) But before you really get too serious about this killing stuff, go ask a Ninja yourself!

Structured Procrastination
Not all procrastination is bad. One can efficiently structure it to be productive. It may in fact be key to great work.

Elements of Style Now Online

I've always depended on Elements of Style as a grammar book. It's now online.

'Nerds make better lovers'
- so claims this article.

Free Mac mini Desktop
Recently I've been making this pitch to my friends and their friends:

Hi friends and friends of friends! We're close to getting a free Mac mini Desktop, and we're sure we'll get it with a little help from you.

Yep, we're kuripot, they say. Recently we got free DVD rentals. So my partner Helen and I have been watching a lot of movies these days. If you want to know how, email us and we'll share the info with you. Good things are meant to be shared. :)

So here's the 'title belt' I'm going for this time: Free Mac mini Desktop! Of course it's a promotional stuff, but you don't have to eat their marketing bull$%17 nor spend a dime. How? Just choose the trial subscription of eFax, for instance, and cancel it before it expires if you think you don't need it. There are other offers, like the Blockbuster DVD rental that I got. But you decide for yourself.

So the promo is for FREE Mini Macs! No kidding! we've joined and we think you should as well... even if you don't need a Mac. :) Get it here:

http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14202315

Thanks for your help in advance!

peter


PS
If you're still skeptical, my middle name is 'skeptical' myself. :) Isn't the deal too good to be true, I asked. Doesn't Economics tell me 'There's no such thing as free lunch'? Isn't it just another pyramiding scam? So I did research on this. Well, it turned out that the deal, IN FACT, is real. It's coming from a marketing company that's been handing out free iPods. See, for instance, the accounts from Wired Magazine and New York Times:

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64614,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A13F63A540C758EDDAB0994DC404482

After reading those accounts, please tell me if the deal still doesn't make any economic or marketing sense. Ok?

Reductio ad absurdum in computing
This Kerneltrap interview with Richard Stallman notes of a technique (called 'dependency-directed backtracking') in programming that basically deploys reductio ad adsurdum:

'You make some assumptions, and with those together with some given facts you draw a conclusion. You may reach a contradiction; if so, at least one of your assumptions that led to that contradiction must be wrong. You also record which combination of assumptions actually related to the contradiction, so you can deduce that that combination of assumptions cannot all be true. Then you backtrack by changing assumptions, but you never try a set of assumptions that includes the combination that you know are contradictory.'

Barnyard Economics
Some people just toss this term around without much thouhght about its meaning. A friend of mine, who took an exam where this term appeared, tried to google it without much success. So I thought I'd do the googling myself and see what would come up.

Barnyard economics

Sense 1:'practical economics' as opposed to one influenced by inclinations and desired. Relevant article: "Barnyard Economics" by Denise Eby Konan, Associate Professor of Economics at University of Hawaii. URL (accessed 16 Dec 2004): http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/newsletter/summer01-konan.htm . Relevant book: Everything I Needed to Know About Business I Learned in the Barnyard by Don Aslett.

Sense 2: 'real world' economics as opposed to textbook economics. Textbook economics, for instance, says markets equilibrate; 'barnyard economics' denies it. Sample passage: "The real basis of economics was detailed in George Orwell's Animal Farm which made the astute observation that equality is variable. Nowhere is the application of such barnyard economics more obvious than in the stock market. Though laws have been passed to keep the large predators at bay, there is still enough size difference between the inhabitants of the barnyard to illustrate the fundamental Orwellian principle that some animals are more equal than others" (Dallas Brozik, Sharks and Lemmings: How the Stock Market REALLY Works. URL (accessed 16 Dec 2004): http://webpages.marshall.edu/~brozik/sharklem%20web.pdf

Sense 3: 'fundamental economics' taught through engaging methods other textbooks or classroom lectures. Relevant project: 'Barnyard Economics'. URL (accessed 16 Dec 2004): http://www.oup.org/pubs/curentp_2/vol.html . Sample passage: "Bill began a talk 'Barnyard Economics' as a hobby became popular with church groups, lodges, school, civic service and foreman's clubs. This talk was made throughout the Eastern half of the United States. "Barnyard Economics" took the mystery out of the principles of economics by reducing them to the shopman's language." URL (accessed 16 Dec 2004): http://www.communities.ninemsn.com.au/MorganCountyKentuckyGeneology/johnston.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=137

Math and Sex
What a /. read! An interesting juxtaposition here. :)

"People who boast about their I.Q. are losers." - Stephen Hawking (quoted in NYT, The Science of Second-Guessing, 12 Dec 2004)

Amish experience
Here's a NYT account of a family's experience with an Amish community. O, well, close. They were there as tourist. I wanted to experience Amish living myself, not for its religion but for the way they appropriate technology.

Links to touristy Amish experience:

Rocky Acre Farm: www.rockyacre.com
Green Acres Farm Bed and Breakfast: www.thegreenacresfarm.com
Country Gardens Farm Bed and Breakfast: www.thecountrygardensfarm.com
Lancaster County Farm Stay: www.afarmstay.com

Coffee addictive?
A study in the journal Psychopharmacology shows that coffee is addictive. Hmm... addicts anyone?

The Barbie stereotype and lust
Here's a piece on how men's preference for shapely women may actually have a biological basis.

Still in the area of sexuality, this article thematizes the notion of lust. Actually, it's a plug for Simon Blackburn's book Lust (Oxford).

School ranking
Another ranking that's causing a stir is Academic Ranking of World Universities 2004 where Harvard tops. The Economist picks it up, and all hell breaks loose.

Death by overwork
A word that came into general use in Japan in the late 1980s, "karoshi" means death brought on by overwork or job-related exhaustion.

It's probably heart attack, stroke, asthma, suicide due to to psychological stress. As a possible counterpoint to this phenomenon, a French writer recently urged workers to be "radical" in the workplace by doing as little as possible. Changing the system is futile, and going against the system will only strengthen it. So why work hard? :)

'Bread & Breakfast'
It's summer in Europe and many Europeans are backpacking. I kinda underestimated the volume of backpackers when I decided not to make any reservation way ahead of schedule. So there I was dragging my luggage in the streets of Stockholm, without a definite place to stay. To the rescue is this newly established inn:

STF Vandrarhem Fridhemsplan
Adress :Sankt Eriksgatan 20
112 39 Stockholm
Telefon : +46 8 653 88 00
Telefax : +46 8 653 89 20
E-mail : info@fridhemsplan.se
http://www.fridhemsplan.se/

Tip was given the good folks at Af Chapman, itself a very popular place among backpackers.

Following rules and breaking them
"Rules" in photography are meant to be broken. Here's a compilation of rules and tips as well as an encouragement to break them.

Canon EOS 300D (aka Digital Rebel) vs Nikon D70
I'm thinking of buying a digital SLR cam. It's been a while since I let go of my manual Nikon SLR. Prize-wise, Canon appears to be winning. On the geek side, Canon still wins, since it's got a hack already. Reviews: EOS 300D vs D70. Company blurbs: EOS 300D vs D70.

Ridiculous E-Mail Disclaimers
A friend of mine, who works for a media company, sends email with a footer. The footer is a disclaimer that's rather ridiculous. He can't help it because it's something that's attached automatically to his email everytime he fires one from his company computer. Here's a Slate piece analyzing the legalese of such ridiculous disclaimers. El Reg notes of the longest, the most PC, and the most incomprehensible of them.

Behold, Methuselah is coming!
... at least according to de Grey of Cambridge.

"Surviving on the mean streets of Washington on two dollars a day--that's a hack!"
says Hacker Adrian Lamo in this interview. An ealier piece on this kid: 1

Health illiteracy
90 million American adults have "limited health literacy," says this report. They have trouble understanding medical terms and directions.

Go, whack yourself!
Frequent sex or whacking may cut cancer risk, says a study. Here's report from Forbes, and reference to original JAMA article.

Drug dealer gives out drugs
Here's a Yahoo News story about Micro$oft giving out $1 billion worth of software to developing countries. In a recent move, the drug dealer hands out "good will" licenses to charity cases. Good will, of course, means obsolete software.

Threat to open source
Bruce Perens warns that the greatest threat to OS is software patent [ beebs report ]: "We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so. "

How to do things with sleep
Aside from conserving energy, sleep actually does things... or so, says a cbs reportage on a recent Nature article.

IM for parents and kids
Today, NYT features a story on how IM could be used to promote parent-child relationship. The same feature, however, warns about the limits of such form of communication. Face-to-face communication still rules!

Smaller is better
Indeed, if you're talking about champagne: the smaller its bubbles are, the better. Here's a bit more from a fellow blogger.

Information Overload
If gigabytes of data don't do you in, the paper they're printed on will.

Software v Beer
You guessed it right! Beer won hands downs.

Man vs Machine
Kasparov, there you go again! The last time K won over Fritz. Will he win the second time around? Maybe not as what happened to him when he went up against Deep Blue... but not so fast, according to this account that benchmarks the historical performance of computers against humans. Elsewhere, chess is regarded as a "game that generates examples and analogies relevant to a broad range of intellectual concerns."

Blogging is dead. Long live blogging!
El Reg notes the report that although blogosphere is growing in size, it's made up mostly of abandoned or dead sites. Blogging is typically an activity of teenage girls who want to keep their friends updated on their otherwise uneventful lives. However, teeny boopers don't have a monopology of blogging. Even Lawrence Lessig blogs. :-)

The Business That's Church
Forbes reports how churches are acting like business corporations (with matching ads and all). This is not inherently bad, if one thinks of the Christian origins of capitalism. Max Weber would feel vindicated.

Linux and Beer
Here's an illustration on what people can do with "comparison and constrast." :)

Solipsism delight!
If solipsism were to be in this form, I don't mind wearing it. Harold Bloom also speaks of Shakespeare as "the true mulitcultural author." I wonder how this guy is related to Alan Bloom, another great defender of the classics.

Multi-valued logic
Here's a piece on the possibility of the introducing multivalued logic in computing. There's nothing new about the idea of course. The Russians might have started it.

Nanotech Not?
While some corporations are rushing to nanotechnology, here are a few words of concern: 1 | 2

Movie flops due to txting?
Yes, you heard the excuse right! Or it's a good time to reassess movie marketing basics.

Market Failure 101
A central argument for government intervention in public affairs and the economy is
market failure.

Lights Out Please!
One segment of Korusawa's "Dreams" is "Watermill Village" where a city guy shows up asking questions about the lifestyle of the villagers (perhaps he's a sociologist :) ). One of his curiousities concerns the villagers' lack of electricity. The guy asked to the effect, "Why don't you have electricity? Wouldn't it be so dark at night?" To which an old villager replies, "The night is supposed to be dark!"

Only in the dark will one appreciate the beauty that is darkness and all the things that go with it: stars, fireflies, the moon. The downside of having too much light is this.

Elvish Language
Next item in my To Do List: learn Tengwar!

Process Linux

Linux is a process, not a product, says Debian founder Ian Murdock.

Designer Babies, Anyone?
Two days ago was the birthday of Louise Brown, the first 'test tube' baby. Since Brown, reproductive technologies have have changed, and it's interesting how public opinion changed as well. Here's an account of such opinion.

Cantenna
An Antenna made out of a tin can, this geeky stuff is practical to build. I'm constructing one, with the help of some info:

- orig diagram
- a good guide
- a "how to" guide

Porn Gore
Just when I thought I knew pornography, this Guardian reportage on the rough trade came. Pop Quiz: what's the diff between a feature and a gonzo? Read on...

Technological Gobbledygook
is a definite turn-off. Here's a BBC report on how new technology jargons have inhibited some people from reaping the benefits and wasted advertising money.

The Tragedy of the Anti-Common
The New Yorker writes about how America has "always had a vibrant patent system," and "managed to strike a balance between the need to encourage innovation and the need to foster competition." "In the past decade, the balance has been upset," says the writer James Surowiecki in an article. "The scope of patents has been expanded, copyrights have been extended, trademarks have been subjected to bizarre interpretations." Such is the tragedy of the anti-common.

Computing Power On Demand
I have yet to get my hands dirty on Beowulf. Notably, distibuted computing (Beowulf's an example) is the next wave of cheap supercomputing. Case in point: SETI@Home. It's the world's fastest distributed computing, and--best of all--it's freely provided for by millions of people with extra CPU power and time. "Put the computation near the data," thus urges this Microsoft research guy in his article on the economics of distributed computing.

[ more from IEEE Task Force on Cluster Computing ]

File Swapping Rules (or Not)!
Even threats of lawsuits couldn't stop filesharing. Stats shows that after RIAA announced its strategy to sue people sharing copyrighted music files, online file swappers increased in number. This is contradicted by a news article from CNN saying it actually decreased.

On its flip side, P2P is seen in the future as an instrument of freedom, passing news and information beyond the reach of censors.

Future of Open Source
Divining the future isn't exactly my cup of tea. But this interview Tim O'Reilly got me thinking about what I've been doing along IT lines. Tim predicts EBay will buy up Oracle, as Open Source lincenses don't work.

On the other hand, while OS licensing doesn't work, OS software development model just might. Linus compares it to biological diversity. Micro$oft is likened to a shark... or a turtle:

"You have the Linux approach that is fairly diverse and all over the map. Maybe it is not very efficient. But it works very well in the face of complexity and changing circumstances. Changing circumstances will really show that part of that diversity really works. Biology on the other extreme is a very mono culture, which works very well as long as the circumstances stay the same. To some degree they are seen as very efficient and they can live on for a long time. A perfect case in genetics is sharks. They are very stable but they also don't evolve anymore. That works, but if you want to go past a certain point, it's a problem."

Free Encyclopedias Galore
One readily stands out: Wikipedia.

Vitamins, Anyone?
There's little evidence to support the use of vitamin supplements (like the anti-oxidants A, C, & E) to prevent cancer or heart disease, says this report from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Rage Against Word Attachments
Some people might think attaching Word and Powerpoint files to emails is pretty cool. Well, NO! Avoid Word attachments like hell. Here's why.

Home Networking
This Guide details how to build network from scratch. Caveats: it's just a guide. Follow it closely only if you have money to burn. Some products mentioned are not locally available. But as far as guides go, this is a good one.

Technology Without A Cause
This essay in the Guardian reminds us of technology's downside (if not downright meaninglessness):
[IF...,] "one of technology's ends is to reduce our lives to such blob-like stasis that we hardly ever have to interact with other human beings. Another is to distract us from the shame we feel about our decadent lifestyles. Our response to being bored and rich is not to discard our possessions and live more simply, but to buy more stuff to reduce the space in which we might contemplate our shame."

And while Nokia boasts of connecting people, it does so with people discussing what their cellfons can do rather than what they REALLY DO WITH the technology. Too much technology can even compromise personal relationship.

Technology Evangelism
A sort of a zealous follow-through of Information Rules, Tech Evangelism examines how Micro$oft could churn out technology that becomes an industry standard. As the book puts it, "Evangelism is war," and Micro$oft appears to be the victor--for now.

Edison and "Music Piracy"
Here's a series of articles (1 | 2) that might predict the outcome of the battle against "music pirates" by RIAA, the mafia-like body that has assumed "a retrogressive stance to [innovation in the industry]."

Good Ol' Adam
Notes on the range of intellectual sensibilities of Adam Smith, as exemplified by his two books:

The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759). Part II: Of Merit and Demerit; or, of the Objects of Reward and Punishment Consisting of Three Parts, Section II: Of Justice and Beneficence:

-Chap. I: Comparison of those two virtues: "the violation of justice is injury"

- Chapter III: Of the utility of this constitution of Nature: "All the members of human society stand in need of each others assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices."

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (1776) The Modern Library edition, New York, 1937:

-"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer and the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages" (p. 14).

Globalization blues
I thought I never have to blog anything on this topic, apart from my school assignment. But the temptation of a good site, like Yale's, is hard to resist. YaleGlobal is Online Magazine is a goldmine of info relating to globalization.

Indian Take
"Take on Gates!," an Indian president tells techies at the Indian Institute of Information Technology. Here's the text of his speech where he also outlines his vision of technological convergencies as well their uses to power rural life.

Txting in America
is relatively new, but Americans are catching up. By 2007, there will be as many as 75 million American SMS users. Hmm... better remind them that txting hurts. :)

Aristotle got it wrong again!
His 'Great Chain of Being,' in which animals are arranged in scales according to their degrees of 'perfection' beneath humans, collides with a recalcitrant fact: Chimps belong to the human genus. They may even have culture, social behavior, language, and other things we consider "human."

Further info from: Jane Goodall Institute | Discovery Channel

Care for tea?
--the very words of my partner Helen every morning. Turns out that tea, especially green tea, is good for dental health (in addition to its vitamin-like substances).

Is Math a Young Man's Game?
the Slate asks.

Grade Inflation

Professors of Harvard and other leading universities have reportedly been inflating the grades of their students for various reasons. But who really cares? Perhaps Bush does not. But Mansfield does.

In Search of a Distro
I've been dealing with linux since the second half of the 1990s. Started with Slackware, tried Caldera, RedHat, Mandrake. Lately, I've tested CD-based distributions like Knoppix, Dynebolic, and Freeduc. Gentoo is by far my choice, and here's why.

Sydad's Moral Dilemma
What if in the course of a syad's job of tinkering with computer files he'd stumble into a faculty's hoard of illegal materials, would he blow the whistle as was done here? And the boss's response?: Fire the whistle blower! The "official" word here.

Human Free Will as "computational irreducibility"
What if the human free will is just a consequence of a "computational irreducibility" (its maximum complexity), and, just like other systems, the only way to know what it will do is to just let it be? Our minds, if not our souls, claims Wolfram, are computational consequences of simple rules and are the "computational equivalence" constitutive of the actual states of affairs. Allegedly the most complicated behavior imaginable arises from such very simple rules.

The principle of computational equivalence necessarily puts limits on science itself. Many questions simply could not be answered a priori, since the only way to discover the consequences of many complex processes, like the human free will itself, is to let things proceed naturally. There's no shortcut, maintains Wofram, "since our own computational tools are at best only as powerful as the complicated systems we hope to study."

[ Sources: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]

Neo Metaphysics
How about film as metaphysics? Or 'Neo' as the One? Hmm... I'm really tempted to list in the census with 'Jedi' as my religion. :)

[ more Matrix-religion stuff... and more. From NPR | NY Times ]

Philosophy of Language
Or, is it 'taste' of language? This article accounts for the eccentricities of programming languages and hazards that, in the final analysis, they're all the same. Meantime, I'll practice my Klingon!

Neo Metaphysics
How about film as metaphysics? Or 'Neo' as the One? Hmm... I'm really tempted to list in the census with 'Jedi' as my religion. :) [ more Matrix-religion stuff ]

BOFH
Here's one reason why you should be kind to your sysad, even if he sometimes acts like a bastard operator from hell. On seccond thought, though, BOFN (a sampler) is now a passé, isn't s/he? :) Mwahahahahahahaha!

SARS and AIDS
What do they have in common? Obviously both kill! But they came at different times: the latter at a time of less openness and less sharing of information; the former at a lot more open time. It took years to discover the causative agent of AIDS while it only took months to uncover the "bug" for SARS. Hail the Internet!

Meanwhile, there's anecdotal evidence that garlic helps prevent SARS.

[ Science Mag's SARS page ]

Sonya's Garden
N 14° 05' 16.7" E 120° 50' 55.9" -- This unpretensious place serves veges and stuff straight from the garden. No menu, no fancy food. Just great dressing that comes with fresh, organic green edible stuff. It's supposed to be "slow food" (as opposed to "fast food," I suppose). We went there yesterday (which happened to be a holiday and people where wondering in the garden while waiting for their turns to dine.) When we were finally sitted, first there came the salad. Then pasta, mint tea, dessert. And that's it! Sonya's Garden really made my day.

What people have to say about the place: 1 | 2 | 3

Winsock Problem
Darn Micro$oft! I was doing some network stuff using my HP laptop to try out new Wi-Fi connections when I got this stupid winsock problem:

An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket

Well, this wasn't even apparent as I had to do some digging before I could uncover this error message. And that's 2 days! 2 days wasted, Bill! Your Knowledge Base was not even of any help. What helped me was some guy's patch somewhere in Canada. Tsk, tsk, tsk... I'm really not suprised why some people are having so much MS rage these days.

Wi-Fi
A few weeks ago, my LA-based friend Anna emailed to ask me if Wi-Fi is already available in the Philippines. My answer of course was "pretty much." For quite some time, I hesitated to install any wireless network because of its inherent insecurity. But, yesterday, I finally did it, with the help of my colleague and OpenBSD guru, Barry. What the heck?! I don't have much to hide anyway. Anyone can "war drive" near our office where I installed an 802.11b network. We've done minimal security, though. So it's not anything like a walk in the park for newbie war drivers. The install went relatively well, except that the software that came with PCMCIA hardware was antiquated that it kept freezing a laptop PC.

At any rate, for those who believe that unguarded wireless networks should be as free as the air we breath, here's good news for you! Or, you may go to Paris where wi-fi connectivity is ubiquitous.

For those who are only starting, here's a Slate article for dummies. :)

The Slashdot Effect
is an spontaneous surge of hits in one's webserver due to an announcement on a high volume news website like Slashdot. Here's a paper probing that phenomenon.

Koch Postulates
These postulates must be satisfied before one could say that a suspect virus or bacteria causes a certain disease. However, such postulates have limitations.

Once We're Cannibals
O, yeah? Click here.

Human v. Machine, Round 1
Click here to read the possible outcome. (In chess, machine keeps winning... but not without cheating.)

There are proposals for science to exercise self-restraint. Here's one coming from a respected physicist. In the genetic engineering front, the question is raised: Will it kill us?

'The Second World Power'
Interesting how a blog using this phrase could spread so quickly. Greenpeace, Kofi Annan, everybody uses it. But the phrase was originally mentioned in a New York Times (17 Feb) news analysis bylined by Patrick Tyler describing the global anti-war protests as the emergence of "the second superpower." Here's El Reg's take on the phenomenon.

The term, however, has been neutered by a blog like this.

Kewl Tools
The Net knows poetry (yeah, right! :) ) It provides you with recipes (from ingredients you want to use) as well as track mutations of clichés and the web of networks your site has created. All thanks to Google! (Click here to discover Google's "secrets".) To be able to use these kewl tools, try this key: 7bpG4v1QFHLZZd6DOEihcLXcNK/FnsB/.

And, o!, speaking of network, some tools are available to track your social networks using another set of tools.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Some of my friends are still 'hot' about going to the US to secure jobs. /. directed us to these articles from CNN and Salon which discuss employment decline in the American market.

On the other hand, the outlook is not at all that bad for those who already have jobs, especially in the IT sector, according to this article. But according to another article, IT employment would remain flat for 2003. This is made worse by the trend of outsourcers being outsourced by others. Still, even if the US economy recovers, chances are the jobs might not come back.

A Billion Spam A Day
That's how much AOL, just 1 ISP gets, according to this report. Doesn't it seem futile to fight it? Here's one way of looking at the entire spam economy. Even big companies, big names profit from it.

Here's how spammers got you and possible how you could avoid spam in mail.

In a similar vein, txt spam is growing.

'Whipsawing' What?!
What on earth is this word?! It figured recently in relation to AT&T's complaint against the local Philippine telcos that allegedly refuse to connect international calls coming from AT&T network. Here's how the US FCC characterizes 'whipsawing' in a 1988 decision:

Whipsawing often "takes the form of the foreign carrier isolating a U.S. carrier in an effort to negotiate a favorable accounting rate agreement. Once an agreement is reached with the foreign carrier, other U.S. carriers are under substantial pressure to accept the same agreement or risk retaliation by the foreign carrier."

This is supposed to be contrary to public interest. The American public, that is.

Philippine-bound calls constitute the 4th-largest international route for US cariers, with WorldCom carrying about 25-30% of the traffic (Cris Larazo 2003 Manila Intensifies Phone Fights. AWSJ 27 (135/14-16 March): A4).

KDE v Gnome
KDE and Gnome--two competing desktop environments (DE) in the Open Source market. I'm of course partial to KDE. Still, this OSNews interview with the DE gurus on both camps is a must read.

Here's a general read on DEs comparison.

Txtng Hurts!
The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) warns that too much texting could lead to RSI (repetitive strain injury). "2 mch txting cud corz RSI!" So practice safe txt!

On the other hand, another study casts doubt on injuries like this.

Private Joyce
I didn't know that Joyce Jimenez ("ang pantasya ng bayan") is a good entrepreneur until I read a FEER article detailing her business success. Private Joyce lingerie is now sold in 14 outlets in the Philippines, NY, Washington, LA, and San Diego, "where local Filipinos tired of ill-fitting American underwear snap up smaller sizes made for their lighter frames" (Hookway, J 2002 Franchising With Frills FEER 166 (10/13 March):34-6). I won't be surprised if some of my friends in the US are wearing Private Joyce right now as I blog. Consumption powered by ethnicity is perhaps another flipside of the Pinoy Diaspora.

In a parallel vein, 84% of ethnic Californians consume ethnic media, according to the New California Media Survey.

[ Joyce Interview ]

Waterrrrrrrrrrr!
Clean water reserves are fast shrinking, says the UNESCO World Water Development Report. The report's release is great timing--a week to go before the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto.

Some highlights:
1. Shrinking water reserves are due to failed water management policies including over-reliance on dams and overprivatization of the fresh water market.

2. Promise lies in improved infrastructure, sensible pricing plans, conservation technologies and water treaties.

3. Water contaminated with fecal bacteria, parasites, and other microbes causes about 6,000 deaths a day, more than 60% involving children under 5 years old.

4. Access to clean water (def: access to at least 20 liters per person per day from source within 1 km of the person's house) should be made available to more than 1 billion people who today are deprived of it and to twice more who live without sanitation.

Behold the Uberman!
According to this Slate article, the next generation gene research promises to build "Supermen" or "Superwomen" out of us all. Want muscles and strength without ever visiting a weight room? Red blood cells to enable us to run "forever"? Human "blood" to speed up evolution and make us less susceptible to disease and injury? Hmm... tempting it is! But, nah!, I want to be the Nietzschean Uberman--aesthetic, comtemplative, self-overcoming rather than too self-absorbed to cheat one's way to a great body and personal well-being.

Warning Signs of Scientific Rubbish
"There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it," says physicist Robert Park. How to detect all the rubbish that some people call "scientific" is the real challenge. Here's his guide.

Secret Writing
This is my first attempt at encryption. No, not this message, you bloody man! I'm trying to install an encryption software. Well, two applications: PGP and GPG. The former is proprietary (although I'm getting it as freeware); the latter, open source. PGP is pretty straightforward, and one can download it from pgp.com. The latter requires a bit more savvy. To install GPG, one may use this set of instructions. It's the exactly the clearest stuff but a good start. What's crucial is the installation of the initial GPG file before one proceeds to do the shell installation. Here's a guide for this process.

Now my sigs:
PGP keyID 0x34419024 fingerprint FD6B DF02 2043 5D64 960C 4CB9 393D 9EF7 3441 9024
GPG keyID 0x73286BBE fingerprint E9CE 0EB1 C443 2E19 5326 8BDA CB87 CCAB 7328 6BBE

We may now start exchanging "secret messages."

War Games
With the impending war on Iraq, Illiad's take on war games puts it well:)



Speaking of the Iraq war, a relief rally in the market is supposed to come once the shooting starts. But it may not last.

'Atta Babe!

Rosalind Elsie Franklin is not the name one usually associates with the DNA. But she did the 3-D x-ray picture of DNA that led Watson and Crick to finish the job and get the whole credit. While Franklin and her collaborator Maurice Wilkins had better DNA samples, better equipment, and better experience, their personal differences helped slow them down. Wilkins showed Watson the DNA picture taken by Franklin (without the latter's permission). And the rest, as they say, is history. Watson calls her impossibly 'prickly' but "might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes." Ms Franklin was a woman ahead of her time, pursuing physics and chemistry at a time when women were not so welcome in the academe. Watson's an asshole. Ms Franklin sapmler (letter to her father, summer, 1940): "....science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasanter view of life (and an exaggerated idea of our own importance)." [ More info ]

"All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise, they wouldn't be suspects, would they?
That's according to Troops, a humorous "film on location" about the life of Imperial Troopers. Inspired by "reality" cop shows, "Troops" is a spoof of the Star Wars "troops" characters. In this "episode," some Troopers from Tatooine respond to a droid theft complaint and a call regarding a domestic dispute. [ download | More Info | See "George Lucas In Love" blog ]