Amanda Mac Kinnon Gaiman Palmer[4] (born April 30, 1976), sometimes known as Amanda Fucking Palmer,[1][2] is an American performer who first rose to prominence as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of the duo The DresdenDolls.[5] She has since started a solo career, and is also one half of the duo Evelyn Evelyn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Palmer (more)

National Security Agency of the US (more)

Derek Thompson: Why Do So Many Rich People Work So Much? Elite men in the U.S. are the world’s chief workaholics. They work longer hours (work-week) than poorer men in the U.S. and rich men in other advanced countries. In the last generation, they have reduced their leisure time by more than any other demographic. (more)

MsWindows-based hardware brand with a focus on Computer Game playing. (more)

Jerry Michalski gave a demo of his use of The Brain after a full 10 years of use, 80k nodes! (more)

WikidPad is an open source, Python-based wiki-like (WikiEngine) outliner (OutLining) for storing thoughts, ideas, To-Do List-s, contacts (Address Book), and other notes (NoteBook) with wiki-like linking between pages. (more)

cousin/precursor to Failed State? (more)

Bruce Schneier gives 5 recommendations for protecting yourself against NSA surveillance. (more)

What kind of Collaboration Roadmap would I like to see Google or Yahoo follow? (more)

I used to like Yahoo's Full Coverage curation of news stories (Journalism). (more)

Jeff Jarvis on the Newspaper Publishing and Journalism. I started making this point the other day when I suggested that just for a moment, we should drop the term "news" with all its heavy baggage and instead look on our job in terms of imparting Information... When you do that, when you see yourself as a leader in the information business, then minders and copy editors become just a little less important. The value of information to the audience becomes more important... I fear that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that even more than being in the news business, we are in the information business. Oh, that's not all we do. We in journalism are also watchdogs (but so are citizens) and Expert-s (but many are more expert than we are) and commentators (though everybody has an opinion). But first and foremost, if we do not impart information, we are useless. And so we cut off sources of information at our peril. So we shouldn't be scared of weblogs or forums or even press releases so long as we label them carefully and make sure the audience is never confused about their source. It's information. Information Wants To Be Free (of minders). And often, information is free (which is good news in this age when the news Business Model is under financial pressure). Information is what it's all about.

MichaelHastings (for Rolling Stone) on how buggered we are in Afghanistan. In dozens of interviews, the only Afghans I met who fully support the militia program are members of the militias. "Americans are always choosing stupid friends here," says Izzatullah Wasifi, a former governor and anti-corruption chief. "Razzik has killed hundreds of people, and Karzai and the rest are all crooked. They're seeking a weak and fragmented state for their own self-interest. We are heading to another civil war. To get stuck in this shit? That's a shame.".. "Tell me how this ends," he said. So far, David Petraeus has failed to answer that question in Afghanistan, even while he has tripled the scope of the fighting, essentially creating a new war of his own. Both the U.N. and the Red Cross say that violence is the worst it's been in nine years, and security across the country is deteriorating. In December, a group of highly respected Afghanistan experts published an open letter to President Obama, saying that negotiations, not an increase in military operations, are the only way out. "We are losing the battle for Hearts And Minds in the Pashtun countryside," they wrote. "What was supposed to be a population-centered strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and property damage." In the most shocking incident, a U.S. unit destroyed an entire Afghan village last fall, obliterating it with 42,900 pounds of bombs.

The 2004 Republican National Convention will be in NYC Aug29-Sept4 2004. (more)

The idea of the government not actually providing a public service, but paying private firms to do so. (more)

Nassim Taleb suggests 10 Society Design Game Rule-s to improve Robust Ness. (more)

Albert Wenger posits that playing a Crypto Graphy Arms Race against NSA surveillance is the wrong approach. We cannot and should not be living in digital fortresses any more than we are living in physical fortresses at home. Our homes are safe from thieves and from government not because they couldn’t get in if they wanted to but because the law and its enforcement prevents them from doing so. All we have to do is minimal physical security (lock the doors when you are out). Please repeat after me: Surveillance is a political and legal problem, not a technical problem. We have to all become outraged and start a big and public online and offline campaign to take back the law into the hands of the people and their representatives and away from secret organizations “overseen” by secret courts in a system that goes beyond Kafka’s worst nightmares.

William Lind (May12) expects a fighting withdrawal as an Iraq Exit Plan. It is still possible the end may not come this way. We may still manage a shaky hand-off to a UN-designated Iraqi government, and that government might last long enough for us to withdraw with some shreds of dignity. George W Bush might awake some morning a new man, announce he was swindled, sack the neo-cons and bring in someone like Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who opposed the war all along, to handle our disengagement. The Archangel Michael might appear over Mecca and convert all the Mohammedans to Christianity. But the growing probability is that we will be driven out of Iraq by a general uprising, an intifada in which every American will be the target of every Iraqi. (more)

Seth Godin's newest EBook (Everyone Is An Expert) is about being an Expert, and about his new Squidoo startup. I believe that when you go online, you don't Search. You don't even Find. Instead, you are usually on a quest to Make Sense (Making Sense).

An RssAggregator site/app that, rather than having user-customized sets of feeds, has a single global set of feeds (chosen by an individual or community running the site) which are then packaged as a constantly-updated site. (more)

Dave Winer term for interface style of RssAggregator that gives you chronological stream of entries across sources (vs some others which are more source-centric, like an MsOutlook folder system). (more)