RelentlesslyOptimistic

Perfect bike rack

From Dangerblog comes this INOUT Designers bike rack. Perfect for those places that don't have room on the sidewalk for a bike rack.

Social Campaigns

Houtlust is a blog that chronicles advertisements for causes. Below is one of several  from makepovertyhistory.org.

Commerce based on trust

the farmers wife: entrepreneur

"All you need to go into the pumpkin business is a small piece of land and some pumpkin seeds. Most small roadside pumpkin stand are on the honor system. This person had the pumpkins marked with little signs, and you simply leave the money in a box.

Likewise, the fresh egg businesses. One farm wife has a refrigerator next to one of the outbuildings. You take the eggs out of the fridge and leave the money in a container. It's called trust - it works."

This wouldn't work everywhere. Something about the size of a community, and people's ability to perceive themselves as members of a community, allows it.  But this kind of faith in people's essential goodness is an essential part of optimism. The Farmer's Wife has become one of my favorite photo blogs, with usually a single daily post that illustrates something about rural life with an incredible photo. Added to the Blogroll today.

IE still sucks, but....

It turns out my recent problems were a result of my setting up my DNS records incorrectly while trying to direct the RelentlesslyOptimistic domain name here. I'm in the process of recreating those in the hope that it begins to work right. At present, if I turn on the redirection feature in typepad, I get plain text pages.

Sigh. I hate it when I have to learn new stuff so publicly.

Update: Sorry, I wasn't clear. I turned off domain mapping for the moment, so IE looks OK. It only sucks in general now, not specifically because it makes my blog layout screwy right now.

IE Still sucks

So far, MT support has been unable to solve the IE browser's problem with this blog. Here's some screenshots; if you use IE and see something better than this, or have any ideas, please email me.

More than two standard deviations from the norm. Again.

This is a really interesting experiment. Take the tests, post them. See how it spreads, and after it's compiled, see how bloggers may or may not differ from the norm. Kinda makes you want to start that blog you've been thinking of, just so you can participate, doesn't it?

In an updated post Richard says "cognitive scientist Chris of Mixing Memory has kindly volunteered to keep track of the data and analyse the results. (Apparently there are already some interesting correlations beginning to show up, but I won't say more until more data is in." He also say that he needs more data from conservative and women bloggers.

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Overview: This post is a community experiment with two broad purposes. The first is to create publicly accessible data about bloggers' personalities, which may have sociological value in addition to being just plain fun. The second is to track the propagation of this meme through blogspace. Full details and explanation can be found on the original posting: http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/06/meme-worth-spreading.html


Instructions (to join in the experiment):

1) Take the IPIP-NEO personality test and the Political Compass quiz, if you have not done so already.

2) Copy to the clipboard that section of this post that is between the double lines, and paste it into your blog editor. (Blogger users may wish to use 'compose' mode to preserve formatting and hyperlinks. Otherwise, be sure to add hyperlinks as necessary.)

3) Replace the answers in the "survey" section below with your own.

4) Add your blog information to the "track list", in the form: "Linked title - URL - optional GUID".

5) Any additional comments should go outside of the double lines, including the (optional) nomination of bloggers you wish to pass this experimental meme on to.

6) Post it to your blog!


Survey:

Age: 47
Gender: Male
Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Religion: agnostic
Occupation: non-profit consultant
Began blogging (dd/mm/yy): 24/07/04

Political Compass results
Left/Right: -5.63
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.26

IPIP-NEO results

EXTRAVERSION: 99
Friendliness 78
Gregariousness 95
Assertiveness 99
Activity Level 64
Excitement-Seeking 99
Cheerfulness 99

AGREEABLENESS: 72
Trust 97
Morality 42
Altruism 82
Cooperation 61
Modesty 3
Sympathy 90

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: 6
Self-Efficacy 80
Orderliness 1
Dutifulness 9
Achievement-Striving 87
Self-Discipline 6
Cautiousness 1

NEUROTICISM: 19
Anxiety 0
Anger 18
Depression 62
Self-Consciousness 2
Immoderation 72
Vulnerability 24

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE: 99
Imagination 79
Artistic Interests 89
Emotionality 82
Adventurousness 98
Intellect 84
Liberalism 99


Track List:
1. Philosophy, et cetera - pixnaps.blogspot.com - pixnaps97a2
2. Majikthise - 6ea37d10-e9b9-11d9-8cd6-0800200c9a66
3. Ezra Klein - http://ezraklein.typepad.com
4. Rox Populi - http://roxanne.typepad.com
5. RelentlesslyOptimistic5473311

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Internet Explorer format troubles

I only recently thought to look at this site in Internet Explorer. Is it just me, or is everyone else getting only half the heading, and ugly bullets on every line and link in both sidebars?

Regardless of what browser you use, please let me know if you see a problem. And email me if you'd like to learn how to switch to Firefox.

Thinking and Paper

A thread at "Ask Edward Tufte" led to this quote from a review by Malcolm Gladwell of "The Myth of the Paperless Office" originally published in the New Yorker :

"The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay"

Anyone who knows me understands why I like that. Still, I often describe my work as "surfing the chaos," so the complexity and uncertainty certainly fit with the quote. I wonder (hopefully) if my problem with traditional organizing models haven't worked for me because they were heirarchical rather than spatial? I'll have to think about that one, and see if I can find or devise a more spatially-based organizing system. Anyone have suggestions?

Fox News begins catapulting the propaganda to justify attacking Iran and Syria

Most intelligence experts believe that Osama Bin Laden is in Pakistan near the border with Afganistan. Agitprop, the source of this post (and the images below) said that yesterday on Your World With Neil Cavuto on Fox:

Fox News Military Analyst Lt. Gen. Paul Vallely claimed that Osama has been hiding in safe houses outside of Tehran. Vallely also believes that Iran is the "center of terror today" and advocated applying the Bush doctrine to the Islamic republic.

The other guest was Ken Timmerman, a conservative author and former GOP Senate candidate in Maryland. Timmerman claims to have testimony from Iranian defectors about Bin Laden's networks and safe houses within Iran. He also believes that Iraq's WMD were moved to Syria. Watch the clip for yourself, it's located on the right of the page.

Now that the intelligence and facts have been fixed around the policy, we're seeing the beginning of the Administration's catapulting of the propaganda that we need to justify attacking Iran.

This is consistent with Seymour Hersh's article last January and Scott Ritter's article in April, both of which claimed to have heard from intelligence sources that the Bush Administration planned to launch attacks on Iran in June.

 

Best response to attacks on Howard Dean

The Next Left: Not all Republicans, silly ... via Dadahead. Comedian David Cross responds to criticism of Howard Dean's characterization of Republicans:

"I'm not saying all Republicans are racist, sexist homophobes, just the people they elect into office to represent them."

Bush's Economic Report shows that Republicans are the party of big government and deficit spending

The Washington Post covers Michael Kinsley as he parses the 2005 Economic Report of the President and learns that "The party with the best record of serving Republican economic values is the Democrats. It isn't even close."

Taking into account who controls Congress and the White House, wars, inflation and every other possible mitigating factor, Kinsley shows that Federal spending grew by an average of $15-$25 billion more under Republican presidents than Democratic. This is true whether you count only the period from 1981 onward, or if you start in 1959. The only areas that grew more under Republicans than Democrats? Deficits (an average of $100 billion more), inflation (.2%-.5% higher) and unemployment (1+ points).

Kinsley did the same analysis last year with similar results, again on numbers developed and released by the Bush Administration.

Any questions?

Via Amygdala

Found Art Records

show and tell music has two very full galleries of thrift-store records, including three pages of "do-it-yourself" cover art. There's some amazing folk art here, so many that it was hard to make a choice for this post. The buddhist in the woods with a rabbit in his lap? The "Hot Bagel" cellist? The non-Elvis impersonator? There are even some downloadable MP3's!