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On the Radar: Quietly Freaking Me Out

Ken — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:54:26 +0000

??Angela Wu?? thinks the “sky is falling”:http://hereisangela.com/2006/07/13/coup-doeil-the-sky-is-falling/ — lately, I tend to want to agree. My news reader has been terrorizing me lately. For your consideration, a short list of things that have been quietly freaking me out over the past few days:

* ??New York Times??: “Accused G.I. Was Troubled Long Before Iraq”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/us/14private.html
* ??BBC News??: “Scores dead in Mumbai train bombs”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5169332.stm
* ??New York Times??: “Japan Finds Still Harsher Words for North Korea’s Missile Tests”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/world/asia/11missiles.html
* ??ABC News??: “Extreme Weather Fits Global Warming Pattern”:http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/GlobalWarming/story?id=2115144&page=1
* ??NPR??: “Detainees at Guantanamo Bay”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4711397
* ??CNN??: “Hezbollah ready for ‘war on every level’”:http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/14/mideast/index.html

Ironically, the best news I heard all day “came out of Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/07/14/not-in-my-city/.

I started trolling Wikipedia this afternoon: “World War III”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III → “Mutual assured destruction”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_Assured_Destruction → “Extinction event”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event → “Red telephone”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_telephone → “Brinkmanship”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmanship → “Six-Day War”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Arab-Israeli_war. Huh, strangely familar:

The Six-Day War … also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Six Days War, or June War, was fought between Israel and the nearby Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Egyptian aggression initiated the war as Egypt formed a blockade of Israeli shipping in the Straits of Tiran, removed the UNEF peacekeeping forces from the Sinai, and deployed a large military force in the Sinai on the Israeli border.

Responding in an act of defense, Israel launched a preemptive attack against Egypt. Jordan in turn attacked the Israeli cities of Jerusalem and Netanya. At the war’s end, Israel had gained control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.

Somehow, blogging a list of links to the latest Web 2.0 applications just didn’t seem worth it today.

On the Radar: Laziness Edition

Ken — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:00:53 +0000

* Youtube: “Jon Stewart’s Infamous Crossfire Interview”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE. This is from the 2004 election, but it’s indictment of corporate media is timeless.
* Simile: “Christianity Timeline”:http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/examples/religions/christianity.html. A demonstration of “Timeline”:http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/, which is to time like Google Maps is to place. Very interesting effect!
* GE: “Imagination Cubed”:http://www.imaginationcubed.com/LaunchPage (”via Web 2.0 Show”:http://www.web20show.com/articles/2006/07/06/web-2-0-show-episode-22-bram-cohen). Interactive pens are fun!
* ??Metropolis Magazine1??: “Behind the Glass Curtain”:http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2123 (”via Digg”:http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Google_s_new_headquarters_-_the_perfect_working_space). Corin Anderson does not work like most of the world: his office is a glass tent, which he shares with two other people. His desk hides behind a complex Rube Goldberg-esque maze, built by Anderson out of a toy called the Chaos Tower, a sort of theme park for marbles. Each day he sits in the midst of figurines, Legos, and stuffed animals, eyes fixed on his computer screen and earphones strapped on, for hours at a stretch.
* ??Ask a Ninja??: “Ninternships”:http://www.askaninja.com/node/1146. I gotta be honest with you: there are only three people who have ever lived through the ninternship. There was, uh, Joan of Arc — that girl can kill. If you can inspire French people to fight? I mean, my goodness, that’s pretty intense! One of the better ones.
* ??seattlepi.com??: “Q&A with Firefox’s Blake Ross: Extended version”:http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/104679.asp (”via Digg”:http://digg.com/tech_news/Firefox_creator_s_thoughts_on_IE7,_and_Future_of_Firefox). They did exactly what we were expecting them to do, which was take a bunch of time and get IE7 up to feature parity with Firefox. I haven’t seen any real innovation above and beyond what we delivered in Firefox. I think that it’s a solid product, but I think that by the time it comes out, we’re going to be another world ahead of them again, so I think it’s kind of a step or two behind us. We really are trying to make it less of a religious thing. The whole browser space in general has traditionally been very religious.

On the Radar: Slow Week Edition

Ken — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:43:27 +0000

Uninteresting week? Or has Ken been busy? You decide.

* ??Slate??: “The Misunderestimated Man”:http://www.slate.com/id/2100064/fr/podcast/. Fascinating piece about Bush’s “aggressive anti-intellectualism,” viewed through the lens of his relationship with his dad.
* Don’t drink and blog. Some revelers from Portugal day a couple of weeks ago found the Newark blog and “voiced some opinions about the party”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/06/09/portugal-day-celebration/#comments. I’m glad they found the site, but it looks like they were maybe a wee bit tipsy…
* ??Jen Poley??: “Route 34, three liars, road kill, and the truth”:http://jenny.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=84. Oh, those Poleys…
* ??Jason Fried??: “Getting in too-much touch (interruption is not collaboration)”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_in_toomuch_touch_interruption_is_not_collaboration.php. Being productive isn’t something that just happens. You don’t just sit down and be productive. Real productivity takes time. It’s a process. You make your way into it. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour or more to really get in that zone. And when you’re in that zone you are actually getting real work done.
* ??Mark Liberman??: “PHPEnkoder for Wordpress”:http://www.weaselhat.com/phpenkoder/. Ooh, this could help us fight spam for emails posted on the “Village Church site”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com.
* Oh, and check out “these photos”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/tags/owenpesnell/ of Owen Pesnell from “last weekend”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/06/19/weekend-update-revenge-of-the-babysat/.