The Longest Now

This green tree project is wicked cool.  Thanks, benchun.  Thanks, NEC.

Ectonoha …

A new kind of collectivism is coming here.  On the principle that the longest lasting and most sincere connections are short on description and long on association.  Please refresh your robot and meme pools, and refilter your usenet conceptions.

There are levels and levels of symbiosis that can break down. These mitochondrial diseases are so poorly understood…

Organic life is hard …

I almost cried when I read the paper on Wed, and saw that the Iranian siamese twins had died in surgery.  Some thoughts on their tragedy.

A good Dean quote from a Vermont environmentalist:

I actually have worked with and against Howard Dean as an environmental advocate and lobbyist when he was governor of Vermont, and I have to say that he is both likeable and very ‘tightly wound’. But he is able to make both work to his advantage, because what he really is is a very skillful, extremely bright retail politician who can anticipate how the chips will fall amongst different political interests and weave his way to victory by managing to hew to the middle between the warring factions. And that’s how he gets things done, without sucking up to one side or another – a remarkable ability.

And after a while (perhaps we Vermonters are just as strange as the media/political establishment likes to paint us) his combative style is, well, likeable. He’s not going to bullshit you [and] you come to enjoy that.                                     – Sarah, from RogerSimon.com

A bright retail politician, eh?

This article by RAND analysts describes ten of the critical issues around the world which, despite their vast importance, we hardly hear about.  Think how many equally critical issues they can’t even discuss in the Atlantic Monthly…

A collector’s site, for those who can never learn too many languages.

Omniglot …

There’s a Yahoo! group (the “aduni” group, in fact) that was recently set up (in June) for people who plan to work through a few of the aduni courses together.  Its members are mainly readers of the lambda weblog…  I wish them much success, and wonder how the many owners of aduni-course-drives [a hard drive with all of the course materials on it, available from aduni.org] have made use of them.

ADUni-Course Study Groups …

On the 5th I was convinced to drive down to a NH houseparty for Dean – his third that day – where he spoke for 20 min, then took questions on the podium, outside from reporters, and milling about from individuals, for 20-30 minutes each.  He seemed totally collected, competent, and (from the reactions of the crowd) inspirational. Tracy Marks headed out to the previous party ( I thought I would see her at this one, part of why I went ), and says she’ll post some of her notes and reactions soon; I’ll link to that here when she does.

You might want to be sitting down when you visit this site.

Human Genome Browser …

The still-unofficial Draft-Clark PR team has rented an office one block from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, apparently before they’ve received any donations (but after soliciting $100k in pledged donations, which may become reality if the General announces he’s running).  I’d love to know where their money is coming from.

Also, the MoveonPAC results have been out for a week, and I only today noticed that they break out the write-in votes at the very bottom: Clark pulled in almost 1% of the vote, placing him above Sharpton.

Clark Draft Still Unofficial; MoveOn Results …

Have a vision of what the ideal future should be like?  Willing to share it with a bunch of eager young democrats?  Make yourself heard.

Four Fourths of a Vision …

Sophie rang back at the eighth moment, and I and I headed out to Lincoln to meet her and the infamous bust, for a little water and sun (and large noisy families!).  It was wonderful; at 86 she still swims diagonally across the lake and back, and was sharp as a tack, up to her biting witticisms about the families around us [next to us, and the source for many of them, was a family of 15 in which all the adults made lots of noise and ran about, and the kids were sedate and quiet].  Before we left, Inna noted that people were so modest around here (in the US in general) that we had bathing suits made for little kids, and none ran about naked…

As if on cue, a pair of young’uns of 3 and 4 appeared, one popping up out of the water and another waddling over towards her down the beach, both actively working their way out of their swimsuits, in which comparative freedom they remained until we all returned home fifteen minutes later.  We all felt better about it.

Dean Raises $7.5 Million in Second Quarter

In the second quarter ending yesterday, 59,000 Americans donated an average of $112 to help boost Governor Howard Dean to the top of the second quarter fundraisers with a total of $7.5 million raised.  [deanforamerica.com]

RUMSFELD :  “I don’t know anybody in any government or any intelligence agency who suggested that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons. That’s fact number one.” [6/24/2003] 

CHENEY, on Meet the Press :  “Let

Inna and I are trying to find Sophie today, but that Walden maven is eluding us.

Something about the error distribution in GQR’s phone survey bothers me.  Particularly given the lack of detail on how they carried it out…

Moveon PAC statistical analysis …