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Saturday, May 28 2005

Burning Man Expands

SFGate article on people taking the Burning Man ethos into their communities. San Francisco burners get a lot of lines, but they interview people starting charter schools in Arizona, too...
(Never been, myself.)

Thursday, May 26 2005

AskPud

While thinking of the appropriate image to answer an Ask Metafilter question, remembered the inanity that is Pud.com. Two funny Ask Pud questions: what's a good Halloween costume that will get lots of attention? (NSFW) and what's the best way to beat up a guy a foot taller than you?

Monday, May 23 2005

Acupuncture vs. Sham Acupuncture vs. Nothing

Recent tests (involving 302 patients) suggest that sham acupuncture (placing needles at non-acupuncture points) is as effective as "real" acupuncture at reducing headaches. Both are more effective than not getting acupuncture at all:

"In conclusion, in our trial, acupuncture was associated with a reduction of migraine headaches compared with no treatment; however, the effects were similar to those observed with sham acupuncture and may be due to nonspecific physiological effects of needling, to a powerful placebo effect, or to a combination of both."

Thursday, May 19 2005

Writerly Software

Writing a novel? Need some way to keep track of the details of characters' lives, relationships between people and settings, and more? It's not explicitly built for it, but try out FreeMind - open-source, Java-based mind mapping software. (As of today, version 0.8.0 is the best download available.)
(Image links to bigger image of my own novel's incomplete map...)

FAIR on Newsweek

FAIR's just-published action alert on Newsweek's use of sources:

"Newsweek ran a sensational claim based on an anonymous source who turned out to be completely wrong. While one can't blame the subsequent violence entirely on this report, it's fair to say that credulous reporting like this contributed to a climate in which many innocent Muslims died.
The inaccurate Newsweek report appeared in the magazine's March 17, 2003 issue, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. It read in part:

'Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over Baghdad—the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time.'"

Monday, May 16 2005

Sylvia Paul on - Physicists? Earthquakes? Risk?

Funny little blog post from the woman who runs the Berkeley Cybersalons:

"I also found, in my brief but deep encounters with physicists (all certified Ph.D. s), that all operated on the premise that sometime in our lives a natural disaster would occur. This is because, I presume, that the laws of physics predict that things can go terribly awry if certain conditions... occur simultaneously.

Friday, May 13 2005

"Broken Windows", Roe v Wade, Crime

The "Broken Windows" theory, which held that New York's reduced crime rate was the result of a zero tolerance policy towards graffiti etc., was all the rage in the 90s, but, according to the Center on Juvenile Crime and Justice (and they'll show you pretty charts to back their statements up):

"During the time that New York City was being heralded as a national model, similar crime rate declines were occurring in other cities around the country. These equally dramatic crime rate decreases occurred despite the absence of 'broken windows' policies... In recent years, San Francisco adopted less strident law enforcement policies that reduced arrests, prosecutions and incarceration rates. Long derided by conservatives for its alternative crime policies, San Francisco registered reductions in crime that exceed or equal comparable cities and jurisdictions - including New York."

"In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years-the years during which young men enter their criminal prime-the rate of crime began to fall... How, then, can we tell if the abortion-crime link is a case of causality rather than simply correlation? One way to test the effect of abortion on crime would be to measure crime data in the five states where abortion was made legal before the Supreme Court extended abortion rights to the rest of the country. In New York, California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, a woman had been able to obtain a legal abortion for at least two years before Roe v. Wade. And indeed, those early-legalizing states saw crime begin to fall earlier than the other forty-five states and the District of Columbia..."

MoveOn.org still movin'

Profile of MoveOn.org's Eli Pariser in Salon.com, Q&A with Wes Boyd on Alternet (excerpted from Start Making Sense.)
Meanwhile, they've got a winner in their "Bush in 30 Years" contest, "a grassroots contest to find the best online animation to explain the Republicans' Social Security scam."
It's a pretty informative, and easy-to-watch, Flash ad thingy. (And you can still go back and look at my favorite "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad.)

Sunday, May 8 2005

Cool Music Streams (David Byrne and Six Degrees Records), Cool Game (Eat Poop You Cat)

Two good "eclectic" online music streams you should be able to listen to either through your web browser or iTunes: Radio DavidByrne.com (playlists etc. here) (via BoingBoing), and Six Degrees Records' stream (playlists, etc. here.)
And for when you're away from your computer, play Eat Poop You Cat (rules, and examples of gameplay, also available here.) (Rules: player 1 writes down sentence; player 2 draws that sentence; player 3, not seeing sentence, writes a sentence based on player 2's drawing; etc...)

Wednesday, May 4 2005

Kent State Shootings, Orangeburg Massacre

As pointed out on Metafilter, May 4th is the 35th Anniversary of the Kent State shootings, in which 4 students were killed and 9 injured by the National Guard at a protest against the Vietnam War.
As pointed out in the MetaFilter thread, 2 years earlier, 3 college students were shot and killed, 27 injured, by police officers at South Carolina State University, but that incident is not remembered or known by many. Worth noting because Kent State is generally regarded as a watershed moment in that student protesters were shot and killed; Orangeburg got less press at the time, and less now. Among the differences: Kent State involved the National Guard killing white students protesting the Vietnam War; Orangeburg involved police officers killing black students protesting segregation of local bowling alleys.

About this site

This is the personal web site for Edward (Ed) Piou. Consisting mainly of a blog (operational since 1999) and various photos.

Some online projects I'm working on

Politics

Charity, Non-profits...

A while ago, I decided to put my money where my mind is on a (roughly) monthly basis and give to:

Photos

Public events documented through pictures...