2009/06/21

The Benefits of a Classical Education

Tim O'Reilly has posted yet another article full of thought-provoking nuggets, in which he answers interview questions for a special report:

The Benefits of a Classical Education

The article muses on ways in which capitalism can be altruistic rather than greedy; bumps up my respect for West Virginia's Robert Byrd, whom I often see as a detriment to Congress; and includes incisive quotes from Alexander the Great and Mark Twain ("While history doesn't repeat itself, it does rhyme"). All this in response to the first interview question.

A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura - NYTimes.com

If only because of the Times's reputation in recent years, I have to wonder how much of this report is real. Still, a compelling read.

Op-Ed Columnist - A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets - NYTimes.com

@terrycojones has posted a link to the Wikipedia article on Iran's 1953 coup. Among other things I hadn't known that British Petroleum had its origins in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. http://bit.ly/11q8Oq

2009/06/19

Opponents blast Northwest Quadrant housing project

Santa Fe's northwest quadrant housing project has all of the smells of the malling of Beavercreek, Ohio. City staff will just keep asking for approval until they get the answer they want.

Opponents blast Northwest Quadrant housing project:

"Other residents questioned [...] a plan to pump sewage uphill and other facets.
The housing project on city-owned land would be concentrated on about 122 acres of the 540-acre Northwest Quadrant. The proposal calls for construction of more than 750 housing units, including single-family homes and multi-family complexes that would rise up to three stories tall [emph. added] as well as up to 110,000 [square] feet of mixed-use development that could include commercial uses. "


<Incoherent Pre-coffee Ramblings>

Up to three stories tall... on top of a ridge line. There goes the neighborhood.

Would there be no value in turning this land into public space?

When I first moved to Santa Fe ten years ago, I could walk to the top of the ridge above my apartment and take in a view that encompassed Los Alamos, the Sangre de Cristos, and the Sandias more than fifty miles to the south. The view is still available, and it's on land which city staff wants to bury under multi-story housing.

These days I live "in the hole" of Casa Solana, just to the south of the proposed development. The targeted land is still the best place, for miles around, to watch the fog of a morning storm turn into ragged, fast-moving tufts of cloud.

Of course, when I first moved here the open area was also filled with old mattresses, broken beer bottles and old engine blocks. Human nature is everywhere the same.

Perhaps awesome views are of value mainly to those who have lived too long amid urban sprawl. Even city planners, who must know that scenery is one of the reasons people visit northern New Mexico, believe they will gain more from taxes on developed land than from natural beauty.

"You can't eat scenery." — Victor, "Local Hero"

</Incoherent Pre-coffee Ramblings>

2009/06/16

Palm's Big Opportunity


Via Macintouch:

"An iPhone app developer's world is lonely...
Three parties are involved: the developers (us), Apple, and the customers. For the most part, Apple stands between us and our customers[...] we can't issue refunds, we can only issue a few promo copies, we can't collect upgrade revenue, we can't respond to App Store reviews, we can't provide installation support, and we can't release updates to address customers' issues in a reasonable amount of time. We can't even tell them when the next update will be available, because we honestly don't know. [...] Our customers, like us, are mostly in the dark with this process, and we can't do much to help them.
For the most part, it's just us and Apple in the room.

And Apple's a brick wall.
"


In large part, Palm has based webOS on open standards. The Palm pre user experience is reported to be very good. Sprint (tethering) and AT&T (rug-yanking over data plans) both stink.

So will Palm be able to draw developers, and customers, to its platform by running a less authoritarian app store than Apple's? Will it even try to do so? Here's hoping...

2009/06/12

We are too many

Sciam examines relationships between environmental degradation and population. Still haven't digested it all. This looks like the punchline:

Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?: Scientific American:

"...the evidence suggests that what women want—and have always wanted—is not so much to have more children as to have more for a smaller number of children they can reliably raise to healthy adulthood. Women left to their own devices, contraceptive or otherwise, would collectively ‘control’ population while acting on their own intentions."