be the change you want to see in the world

Michel Foucault opens his famous The Order of Things with a fantastical taxonomy, derived from a Borges fable:

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that
shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

The great thing about social media is that there is room for the one and the many. My listing of categories on this blog is particular to me and me alone. I chose this taxonomy, and have christened it a “taxono me” because it is mine and mine alone. It makes sense to me, my life, my way of looking at things.

Further down the page is the cloud of deliciousness. The tags listed there are a hybrid taxonomy of all my bookmarks. It is made up of tags I chose and tags chosen for me by the larger group of people inhabiting the delicious space. It is a tagsonomy.

Out of the taxono me comes the tagsonomy. The particularity of the one is conditioned by the absorbing and “mashing-up” influence of the many.

Interestingly, nowhere in this formula is an authority of final appeal. Isn’ this the way it should be? Individual expression has its space preserved for it. The solitary blog and its taxono me is free and available to all, and the benefits we all gain from allowing the individual to speak, regardless of how nutty they may seem at the time - are realized. On the other hand, the tagsonomy swallows the individual, making it part of itself and adjusting, ever so slightly. But no one force hands down taxonomy in the new space of social media.

This is significant, and something the programmers and activists who are nurturing this space should be proud of and fight to preserve. It is a giving thing. A generous thing that preserves space for the one while never allowing the one a final say.

“Well, there is really something to be said for the
exception, assuming it never wants to become the rule.”

- F. Nietzsche
#76, Part II of Gay Science.

This is really great. Try it. Give your free computer time to a good cause. You can lend processor cycles to climate change modeling or searching for ET. The important thing is that your computer not just sit there sucking power and doing nothing.
here’s the full list of projects you can help:

• SIMAP: calculate protein similarity data for use by many biological research projects.
• Predictor@home: investigate protein-related diseases.
• SZTAKI Desktop Grid: search for generalized binary number systems.
• Einstein@home: search for gravitational signals emitted by pulsars.
• LHC@home: improve the design of the CERN LHC particle accelerator.
• World Community Grid: advance our knowledge of human disease (requires 5.2.1 or greater).
• Quantum Monte Carlo at Home: study the structure and reactivity of molecules using Quantum Chemistry.
• Cell Computing biomedical research (Japanese; requires nonstandard client software).
• Rosetta@home: help researchers develop cures for human diseases.
• Climateprediction.net, BBC Climate Change Experiment, and Seasonal Attribution Project: study climate change.
• SETI@home: Look for radio evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Get started here: Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)

It was three weeks ago now, but this just came onto my radar after I did the last Mac OS X update. I saw something in the release notes about Spotlight indexing of Entourage and thought, hey, there must be an Office update to go with this. Sure enough, there is.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.2.3 Update

After you install this update, you can use Mac OS X Sync Services and Spotlight searches to sync and find Entourage items, use smart cards with Entourage 2004, and enjoy improved overall security and stability when using Microsoft Word 2004, Excel 2004, PowerPoint 2004, and Entourage 2004. This update also includes all of the improvements released in all previous Office 2004 updates.

Applies to: Microsoft Office 2004 Standard Edition, Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition, Office 2004 Professional Edition, Entourage 2004.

Released: March 14, 2006

I’m downloading it as I type, so I’ll check in later with the results. Useful for those of us still using Bill’s stuff.

UPDATE: it works. My Entourage messages now appear in Spotlight. Lots more in the way of improvements as well. Definitely a worthwhile update, provided there are no hidden bugs…

Bush and his Republican followers want to spread democracy around the world. What brand of democracy? A quick look at why Tom DeLay, former Republican house Leader, quit politics shows a brand that is rotten to the core.

The Justice Department later issued a statement from Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher. “The American public loses when officials and lobbyists conspire to buy and sell influence in such a corrupt and brazen manner,” Fisher said. “By his admission in open court today, Mr. Rudy paints a picture of Washington which the American public and law enforcement will simply not tolerate.”

Rudy’s statement admits to a far-reaching criminal enterprise operating out of DeLay’s office, an enterprise that helped sway legislation, influence public policy and enrich its main players.

The court documents say that Rudy “routinely performed official acts for or at the behest of Abramoff.” Rudy admitted that, while on DeLay’s staff in the summer of 2000, he helped scuttle an anti-gambling bill opposed by an Abramoff client, eLottery Inc. As The Washington Post reported in October, Abramoff then arranged for eLottery to pay a foundation to hire Lisa Rudy’s consulting firm. In all, the court papers say, Abramoff and his clients funneled about $86,000 to the firm while Rudy worked for DeLay.

The Abramoff scandal goes much deeper. More people will be implicated, charged and convicted. The Republicans have shown that adage to be true that states “power corrupts.” Sadly, they undermine democracy on a global scale if this is the example they provide for those nations struggling to raise themselves from dictatorship. If things are seen to be business as usual under a different name, corruption will not be beaten by elections, only whitewashed.

Looks like Bob Rae and Michael Ignatief will face off for the Liberal Leadership. Some of you may not know (or care) that theirs is a friendship and rivalry that goes back; way back. In fact, their fathers were also friends and rivals.

But while Rae, the social democrat, opted for politics, Ignatieff, the liberal, carved out a career as an academic, writer and political commentator. “I’m the thinker, and he’s the doer,� says Ignatieff. “The doer always knows more about what’s possible politically. If he had gone into the Liberal party, there’s no limit to what he could have done. That he went into the NDP put a ceiling on how far he could go. He taught me a lot about conviction and paying the price of conviction.�

Looks like one will come along with the other, regardless of who wins. Get used to their faces.