Bleak future looms if you don’t take a stand: “Media conglomerates are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination of digital information.

If you’re not infuriated by these related trends, you should at least be worried. If you’re neither, stop reading this column. You’re a sheep, content to be herded wherever these giants wish.

But if you want to retain some fundamental rights over the information you use and create, please take a stand. Do it soon, because a great deal is at stake.” –Dan Gillmor San Jose Mercury

Why The Hague is not Nuremberg: “As Slobodan Milosevic makes legal history by becoming the first former head of state to be prosecuted by an international war crimes tribunal, some legal experts and commentators have criticised the tribunal’s procedures.

They point to the admission of hearsay evidence, the use of anonymous witnesses and the absence of a jury as evidence that the tribunal falls far short of Western standards of justice. They attack the alleged cosy relationship between prosecutors and judges, the fact that appeal judges are trial judges with a temporary promotion, and the claim that Milosevic hasn’t been allowed to consult lawyers in private.” spiked

The strange battle of Shah-i-Kot: “Since it kicked off at the start of March 2002, Operation Anaconda has been a minefield of contradictory statements and unanswered questions. Was it an ‘absolute success’ , or a ‘big mistake’? Did it wipe out the last ‘pockets of al-Qaeda and Taliban resistance’, or did al-Qaeda fighters ‘escape’ to fight again? Did America’s first combined ground-and-air offensive of the war kill 800 of the enemy, or about 20? One US commentator says, ‘We don’t know, the Afghans don’t know – and the US military doesn’t seem to know’.” spiked

There’s been much thoughtful response to my “What am I doing here?” post the other day, for which I’m grateful. Among the responses, Ray Davis of the eloquent Bellona Times reminded me, worth repeating:

“Dialogue doesn’t have to be debate to be useful, by the way. (And it’s become horrifyingly clear since the 2000 election that conflating the two is one way we’ve gotten into this mess.) Sharing of information and analysis and rhetorical tools and errors among those-in-agreement seems absolutely necessary if any progress is to be made.”

I’m up for that…

Another reader commented:

“I’m more sanguine (or utopian) than you about the lack of cross-talk among blogs of different stripes. These are early days and we have a long way to go before we can guess the ultimate sociology of blogs (or blogology of society.)… I think our social organism is being completely rewired, as it has been by previous tech revolutions. This rewiring means we will have more synapses, more nerves, more thinking, more engagement. The change, as the Marxists put it, won’t be just quantitative but qualititative.”

To Be Young and Homeless:

“Because these children are not sleeping in parks or begging on subways, the fact of their homelessness is largely invisible — outside the context of a homeless shelter, they just look like children. And while I did meet families in New York who said they’d ridden subways overnight with their very young kids or slept outdoors with teenagers, these parents were taking a big risk — failing to provide adequate shelter for one’s children can result in having them removed from one’s care by the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s child welfare agency. Yet because we don’t see homeless kids asleep in our streets — and because the shelters and residences they shuttle in and out of tend to be in the city’s poorer neighborhoods — their plight has not provoked the outcry that the rise in homelessness did in the 1980’s. Nevertheless, these children make up 40 percent of the nation’s homeless population, and for the time they remain without homes, and for who knows how long after, homelessness is the defining fact of their lives.” New York Times Magazine

Life Inside Tall Tin Can in Utah Is All Mars: “The not-so-deadly pretense of living on Mars while hanging out in a tall tin can in southern Utah is the latest wrinkle in a private plan to persuade the federal government to send humans to Mars sooner and for less money than envisioned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” NY Times

Cost of Laughing Rises 2.9 Percent in Last Year: “Was scarcity a factor? Did the demand for laughs outstrip supply in a time of war?” Yahoo! News

Comet Ikeya-Zhang Streaks Across Northern Sky

Comet Ikeya-Zhang, discovered by two amateur astronomers in February, can be seen streaking across skies over the Northern Hemisphere for the next several weeks, scientists said on Thursday.

No telescope is needed, but binoculars are recommended to see the comet, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement.

To find Comet Ikeya-Zhang, look in the western sky shortly after sunset and locate the planet Mars — that will be a red point of light about 18 degrees up from the horizon. (An outspread hand at arm’s length covers about 15 degrees, so Mars is a bit higher than one hand-span.) To the right of Mars are two bright stars in a nearly vertical line. The comet is at the same height as Mars, to the right of the two bright stars about as far again as the distance from Mars to the stars. Observers should be able to see the comet’s bright, star-like nucleus surrounded by a fuzzy cloud of dust and gas called the coma. The comet’s tail streaks points nearly straight up from the horizon.

“Students may be learning more about avoidance strategies than arithmetic in math class.” A new study surveyed more than a thousand sixth-grade students across the demographic spectrum and showed what teacher factors encourage and discourage student avoidance skills. Journal of Educational Psychology

How to be a philosopher: “Technique 1: Begin by making a spurious distinction. Befuddle the reader with your analytic wizardry. The reader will enter a logical trance, from which she will be unable to recall the initial spurious distinction and will feel strangely compelled to accept your conclusions…” The Philosophers’ Magazine

Defense Department Agency Severs Its Ties to an Elite Panel of Scientists

The Pentagon has countless in-house scientists and engineers to assess its security strategy. But since the days of the hydrogen bomb and the “missile gap,” Jason has been one of the few — and certainly the most prestigious — sources of advice outside the defense establishment, looking for developing threats and assessing futuristic weaponry. Its 40 to 50 members include Nobel laureates and some of the brightest young scientists in the nation…

According to members of Jason, the Defense Department agency wanted the panel to accept two Silicon Valley executives and another Washington insider with an engineering degree into its ranks. When the panel refused, the agency, called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, ended the contract.

Though Darpa refused yesterday to confirm the dispute over the nominees, a spokeswoman said the move was in fact a reflection of Jason’s inability to adjust its priorities to a post-cold-war world, where the physical sciences are no longer as important as information and computer sciences to the nation’s security… But Dr. Steven Block, a Jason member who is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford, said those contentions were a smoke screen in front of an attempt to place political appointees to a scientific advisory panel. “Darpa’s attempt to turn Jason into a political patronage job challenges the very independence that makes Jason so useful,” Dr. Block said. Citing what is now regarded as a prescient 1999 study by Jason on bioterrorism, and others on nanotechnology and information, Dr. Block denied that the panel focused too exclusively on physics. The events of Sept. 11, he said, made the group’s blue-sky strategizing even more critical. NY Times [thanks, Abby!]

Mobiles ‘worse than drink-driving’

Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, according to research.

Tests by scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory said drivers on mobiles had slower reaction times and stopping times than those under the influence of alcohol.

And it said hands-free kits were almost as dangerous as hand-held phones. BBC News

Mobiles ‘worse than drink-driving’

Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, according to research.

Tests by scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory said drivers on mobiles had slower reaction times and stopping times than those under the influence of alcohol.

And it said hands-free kits were almost as dangerous as hand-held phones. BBC News