CIA

Cool if it works

Lindows promises to run both Windows and Linux applications without having to install Windows. We'll see whether it works that well and how it builds upon Wine, upon which Lindows is thought by many to based.

Course Evaluation software

Janice Paskey. Web-Based Evaluations Let Instructors Poll Their Students Anonymously (Chronicle of Higher Education):

An instructor at Mount Royal College has developed a free software program available to instructors who want confidential teaching evaluations from their students. Bruce Ravelli, an instructor of sociology, developed the program two years ago with the designer Zvjezdan Patz. It is known as the Free Assessment Summary Tool, or FAST.

Love, Not Greed

Kevin Kelly. The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed [link from Dave Winer]

Why don't we see this miracle? Because large amounts of money can obscure larger evidence. So much money flew around dot-coms, that it hid the main event on the web, which is the exchange of gifts. While the most popular 50 websites are crassly commercial, most of the 3 billion web pages in the world are not. Only thirty percent of the pages of the web are built by companies and corporations like pets.com. The rest is built on love, such as care4pets.com or responsiblepetcare.org. The answer to the mystery of why people would make 3 billion web pages in 2,000 days is simple: sharing. While everyone was riveted by the drama of companies such as pets.com, we overlooked the steady growth of enthusiast sites and governmental depots such as Usenet and nasa.gov, to name some larger ones.

Ever wanted to know about University of California facts?

Check out Facts in Brief (pdf) and Campus Facts in Brief (pdf). Both are links from the UC Annual Financial Report (2001) [links from Barbara Morgan, Director of STP]

Israeli paper on Joshua Rifkin

Haggai Hitron. Authentic at heart (Ha'aretz English Ed)

No one disputes that the cantatas, passions and masses of Bach are the ultimate in vocal music from the Baroque period. The three elements involved in performing them - the orchestra, soloists who sing arias or recitatives, and the choir - have traditionally been viewed as distinct from each other. Until at least 30 years ago, the choir was the Achilles' heel of many recordings since not all of its members were virtuoso singers.

American conductor Joshua Rifkin, who will this week conduct the Israel Camerata orchestra and soloists performing two Stabat Maters, by Boccherini and D'Astorga, proposed a new idea 20 years ago that indirectly resolved the problem.

He contended that one could take four singers, one for each voice, and let them sing the parts meant for the choir. Rifkin's main rationale for this: Bach himself did not have at his disposal the kind of choir that is the standard today and the soloists he used (a soprano, alto, tenor and bass) did everything.

Just when you think you had enough to worry about: Gamma Ray Bursts

As seen on Nova last night: A Bad Day in the Milky Way. " If the burster were closer, say less than 3,000 light-years away, the gamma-ray flux received in a few tens of seconds could wipe out the entire ozone layer for years to come. At the very least, the drastic increase in solar ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth's surface would cause severe skin cancers. For humans and other animals, slow starvation would likely result, as the harmful ultraviolet flux inhibited plant growth and damaged and altered ecosystems supporting the food chain. As in a nuclear winter, the nitric oxides darkening our skies could also cause acid rains and significant cooling of the Earth's surface. Such pollutants would take decades to settle out of the stratosphere."

It might be possible to stop terrorists, eradicate smallpox, soften recessions, forestall aging (for a bit), even blow up meteorites on their way to earth -- but if a star in your cosmic neighborhood (within 3000 light-years!) gets spun down into a black hole (all in the matter of 10 seconds), thereby emitting energy levels on the order unseen since the big bang, we are toast -- and no star wars project, no underground cities, no prudent investigations, no clever thinking ain't going to save us. Or so it would seem -- I'm an eternal optimist!

Learn more about "the most powerful explosions in the world" from a Scientific American article.

More reportage from The NYRB: CIA problems

I was pleased as punch when Chris told me that I was making The New York Review sound very appealing through my blog. His comment encourages me to record more of the outstanding reporting taking place with the NYRB.

What's wrong with the CIA? That's the subject of Thomas Power's The Trouble with the CIA. A large part of the essay deals with the criticisms leveled against the CIA by some very prominent former CIA officials:

The dissidents say that the CIA is still staffed with hard-working people of talent and dedication and that it can still do competent work. They know how vast the agency's resources are and are familiar with the technical marvels which collect intelligence. Above all, they recognize that the apparent success of the military effort in Afghanistan seems to have reassured the public that things are now going well. But all the same the dissidents insist that things have gone badly wrong at the agency. Years of public criticism, attempts to clean house, the writing and rewriting of rules, and efforts to rein in the Directorate of Operations have all conspired to make the agency insular, risk-averse, and gun-shy. So have catch-up hiring of women and minorities, public hostility that makes it hard to recruit at leading colleges, complacency following victory in the cold war, the humiliation of the Ames case, even the long economic boom which put CIA salaries farther and farther behind routine offers to recent graduates by business and industry. The dissidents don't say that all of these problems are somehow the doing of George Tenet, but they do say they have undermined the CIA's ability to follow terrorists through the streets of the Arab world. A few months ago theirs was only the opinion of a group of disaffected officials; since September 11 it ought to be considered seriously. [emphasis mine]

Powers ends with the question of why there has not been any high level investigations into the CIA's inability to prevent the attacks of Sept 11. ("When things go awry in the intelligence business it is customary to do a damage report".) With George Tenet remaining at the helm of the CIA, will the US be able to carry out the intelligence it needs in its battle against terrorism? (I'm interested in reading a defence of Tenet's performance -- Powers' essay seems like a convincing portrayal of the woes at the CIA.)

Prayers for Laura's Dad

I've been praying for Laura's Dad, who needs open heart surgery. Blessings and peace.

Amazonscan is legal?

I'm amazed that amazonscan, which Chris found, is even legal. I don't see why amazon would be upset by it -- especially since it easily drive traffic to amazon. But a lot of companies get really touchy with anyone else scraping their sites for data.

Dec Feb

The opinions or statements expressed herein should not be taken as a position of or endorsement by the University of California, Berkeley. Nor should the opinions or statements expressed herein be taken as a position of or endorsement of the University of California, Berkeley. Links on these pages to commercial sites do not represent endorsement by the University of California or its affiliates.