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Things I Never Published, 2006

Below the fold, are items I never got around to posting this year. Think of this as a pre-2007 cleaning.

Most items in this list are half-baked, and not fully formed ideas, but I didn't want them just to go away.

• Empire of the Alpha Mom

  On the article in New York Metro entitled, Empire of the Alpha Mom

  
  Isabel Kallman at home with her son and nanny. (Photo credit: Gail Albert Halaban) from Empire of the Alpha Mom

  This was motherhood’s magic bullet, the most valuable lesson Isabel learned in her studies: "It takes a village." Isabel quickly hired one. Her son was just 2 weeks old when she retained a night nurse. When he was 5 months, "I started realizing I needed to get out more," and she brought on a nanny. Then after about a year, when she started working, "I obviously needed more help," so she hired a regular babysitter as well—also often employing her father and an Alpha Mom intern.

  Alright, so she went out and bought the following people:

  1. A Night Nurse
  2. A Nanny
  3. A Babysitter
  4. Her Father

  Of course she can be the "supermom" with four other people helping her - not to mention her husband whom is only mentioned in passing.
  

• Evil Books!!!

  Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Communism v Naziism, Good comment about Communism and Totalitarialism
  

• More Flickr Themes
  on people trading items using Flickr, and women showcasing themselves via Flickr.

  Artist Trading Cards Market,

  Juicy Carolina, Anonymous Pink, Merina and rebekka
  

• FedEx has their own Police Force
  on private police force which operates trans-nationally

  FedEx has their own Police Force:

  FedEx Corp. has come up with a novel way to battle terrorist threats and other crimes: start its own 10-man police force.

  The FedEx cops dress in plain clothes, detective-style, and are accredited by the Tennessee government. They can investigate all types of crimes, request search warrants and make arrests anywhere in the state, although they haven't busted anyone yet, and likely won't.

  More important for FedEx, having a private police force qualifies the shipping company to serve on a regional joint terrorism task force, overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 66 task forces currently in operation across the country -- which consist of local, state and federal officers -- are entrusted with more-sensitive and specific data regarding terrorist threats than businesses usually receive. FedEx is the only major air carrier that is a task-force member.

• On Using Internet Mapping to record ideas, photos, and ephemera
  mapping, tagging, and ephemera

  Well... besides waiting for EXIF data which includes GPS data, you could use the Google Maps Standalone Mode which could pull out tags from Flickr such as "Swoon" and street intersections, such as "Richards Street at Beard Street." Or your could tag the image "Richards Street", "Beard Street", "Swoon" and pull that out. I might just try to hack that together tonight, since I'm on a tag spree.
  Note, Flickr basically achieved this this calendar year.
  

• The Hybrid Volk
  tags were the rage for the last two years, here's some unfinished thoughts about tagging.

  Folktologies -- Beyond the Folksonomy vs. Ontology Distinction

  Tagging is certainly useful -- and indeed collaborative authoring, editing and filtering are powerful paradigms -- but folksonomies (at least present day ones) suffer from having too little formal structure -- tagging systems easily result in "metadata soup." Ontologies are on the other end of the spectrum -- they are particulary useful for accurately modeling the actual structure of the world, or of conceptual domains -- but admittedly in some cases their formal structure can be overly rigid and specific.

• Backward-ists
  on rejecting new or the Modern out of fear and loathing.

  http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2005/03/not_an_egg.html

  big Surprise: traditionalist architect doesn't like "new" Morphosis Alaska State Capitol

  How many times do we need to play this game over again? Context doesn't just mean...
  

• The One about Christian 'Conception' Parties Raise
  Regarding exactly what you thing it means

  Christian 'Conception' Parties Raise Ire, Eyebrows, Who Would Jesus Do?
  

• Trump's World Trade Shtick
  On Donald Trump's grandstanding, proposing to rebuild the World Trade Center according to original plans.

  

  Donald Trump's New Twin Tower Design Available Online, Ground Zero alternatives based on plans by Belton and Gardner (rebuilding WTC as it was), WTC Site Plan Comparisons
  

• More thoughts on Folksonomies
  when tagging and Folksonomies were the rage

  Jan 06, 2005: Folksonomies? How about Metadata Ecologies?

  Tom, I think you have a good point concerning the public/private problem concerning the web right now (including social software). I also agree with you about control of data - this is also why I moved from Blogger to Greymatter to Movable Type. I really don't think it is the type of system which is important, I think how we connect them will be important. I think there is a whole lot of work to do in terms of securing the "private" web, but making it useful enough to mesh with the public web.

  I think it is important to identify the two different methodologies we are advocating (if I am reading this right):

  DATA is entered in: Local -> Public/Private? -> Public -> Server
  DATA is entered in: Server -> Public/Private? -> Public Local & Public

  By server I mean Internet facing server somewhere in the world.

  What if we all had a del.icio.us type program running on our own servers which we could feed the links and mark them as public or private? And then send the public content to places like del.icio.us, or publish them as a web post? Sprinkle in RSS, and you don't even need to publish/push the data.

  The need for locality, for me, varies from day to day. For me there are three zones of privacy (and security) when connecting to my server:

  • Hostile (friend's computer or Apple Store Computer)
  • Work
  • Home

  I want a system where there is no locally stored information at the first, minimal locally stored information at the second, and all files at the third. I want a seamless synchronization for that home, or safe, computer. But, I trust that my data would live a longer and happier life on my server - as long as the system's security cannot be compromised. Perhaps the private data on the server would be encrypted, in order to provide a layer of security.
  

• Boozy, a review
  regarding the off-off-Broadway play entitled, Boozy - The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses on 3/2/2006

  photo from Les Freres Corbusier

  Boozy - The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses by Les Freres Corbusier (the Corbusier Brothers)

  Ohio Theater on Wooster Street

  "How one creates public works in a democracy" is what David Evans Morris

  Juliet Chia and Alex Timbers along with Mr. Morris, and written by Adam Scully
  

• Movement Bushism
  on the Bolton nomination to Ambassador to the UN, and Evangelical Christian support of President Bush

  Merely do a simple Technorati search for Voinovich and you see

  Justin Logan calls the Two Minutes Hate for George Voinovich

  Blogs for Bush, Senator Voinovich: Back-Stabber

  So it is pretty amusing to hear people on The Corner talk about how shallow the roots of Bush's policy go:

  It's long struck me what shallow roots Bush's foreign policy and the principles underlying it have in the Republican party.

  What has always puzzled me was why so many Evangelical Protestants are seemingly rushing toward Bushism. My theory is that Movement Bushism is appealing because Protestantism lacks a centralized arbiter of right and wrong like Catholicism has in the Pope. Evangelical Protestants need some sort of strong arbiter of what they believe is morals, and they think they have found that in Bush.