Cox Crow

Jumping to Conclusions

LawMeme writes about gaming data mining systems. A front page post on Advogato discussed the ethics of data mining. And Steven Levy considers the amazing power of Google. Former Utah CIO Phil Windley is less worried about the existence of Total Information Awareness than about restrictions on the flow of information. The difference between Us and Them being the ability to apply one's knowledge with excessive force. I worry about their jumping to incorrect conclusions. Terry Gilliam's Brazil is an apt illustration of assuming the accuracy of one's data.

3:13:58 PM # Google It!
categories: Identity, Politics

Small Things Make a Big Difference

I just read an article in this month's The Atlantic on John F. Kennedy's health problems. An interview with Robert Dallek, the author, contains some excerpts. Mr. Dallek suggests that without his back problems, without the brace he wore to enable him to sit straight, the second bullet would not have killed Kennedy.

2:30:16 PM # Google It!

Losing Each Minute

Glenn Fleishman suggests a method for Rick Klau to avoid those annoying connect charges while he's travelling.

The funny part is this: I'm in a hotel in Palo Alto right now avoiding their $2/call charges or whatever they charge (there's no card here at Rickey's, a Hyatt property, explaining it, but I paid $2 per call from my Westin room last week in Santa Clara).

Course, I think the funny part is the transfer of funds, not to the hotel, but to a more deserving party, because of discrepancies between the pricing of hotel lines and the value of those lines. Ethernet and 802.11? installations should more than offset, through increased patronage, whatever income might by lost in telecom charges.

12:01:10 PM # Google It!

John Rawls

In my last semester at Fordham, I was returning from my job at Concordance Technologies, near Battery Park. I either took the 4 or the D train. In any case, just before the Yankee Stadium stop, I was mugged. I awoke from a catnap with cold metal against the back of my neck and someone asking for my backpack and wallet. Leave the backpack, I said. Hand it over, he said. I realized I was arguing with a gun. The train stopped, the doors opened, and he disappeared into the night.

The contents of my wallet were easily replaced; I had no money, either in the wallet, the bank, or in credit left on the cards. I valued the backpack more. I lost not only Curve's Doppelganger and Game Theory's Tinker to Evers to Chance, but the rough drafts for a number of papers, some textbooks, and my journal. Among the papers lost were my notes on A Theory of Justice.

I don't recall much of Rawls's work, but do recall that I was mugged, and, as a direct result of that mugging, received a deadline extension for my essay on it.

10:22:34 AM # Google It!