Stephen Downes endorses Hillary Clinton’s recent comments on internet freedom. I especially appreciate his reminder that the value of the internet arises from the participation of all of us, both individually as users and contributors of content, and collectively through the publicly funded research which made it all possible
From the MathForum newsletter:
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David Crockett Johnson was perhaps most famous for his children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon. From 1965 until his death in 1975, Crockett Johnson painted over 100 works relating to mathematics and mathematical physics. Of these paintings, eighty are found in the collections of the National Museum of American History. They are presented on this site, with related diagrams from the artist’s library and papers.
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Speak Out On Copyright is a new forum initiated by Michael Geist to encourage and support responses to the current Canadian consultation process re copyright law revisions.
Find broken links on your site with Xenu’s Link Sleuth TM
Links for further reading
At course.downes.ca Stephen Downes is discussing and experimenting with delivery of on-line courses via Serialized RSS.
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Philosophy Talk: The Blog: William James and the Squirrel Example.
Yes, James does seem to be confounding a number of issues in that lecture
His resolution of the squirrel dispute (“Which party is right,” I said, “depends on what you practically mean by ‘going round’ the squirrel”) looks more like linguistic analysis than anything else, and his description of of the ‘pragmatic’ principle in the second paragraph as ‘If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle’ sounds more like a version of positivism.
It is only later in the piece that he identifies pragmatism with the kind of provisionalism that most scientists take towards their theories as being useful pro tem until they need to be refined in order to accommodate further observations ‘less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed’.
Freeman Dyson’s HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY as expressed in “the Edge” are a source of some disappointment and frustration to me. Skepticism about a bandwagon is always appropriate, and even more so is it about the various claims for proposed solutions. But to require a rigorous standard of proof in the face of a possible threat that is great enough to merit the precautionary principle and to present spurious “solutions” like adding .01inches of topsoil on every sqare foot of exposed land on earth (when in fact worldwide wherever we live we do many times the reverse of that) are just irresponsible.
Take Action: Say NO to Corporate Control
Open Letter to CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein:
Dear Sir,
Canadians rely on the CRTC, as the federal communications regulator, to act in the public interest, which in this case means ensuring we have an open and neutral Internet.
Due to the limited number of connectivity options, the providers of internet service share an effective monopoly on public access to a global resource (which includes a large amount of publicly funded physical and conceptual infrastructure). This affords those few connectivity providers with the opportunity of hijacking a general public good and diverting its value to their own interests (for example by engaging in media production and sales as well as transmission and then favouring their own content by “throttling” the transmissions of their competitors). Such behaviour is unacceptable and it is your responsibility to ensure that it does not happen.
Corporations like Bell and Rogers must not be allowed to control our access to the Web or degrade the quality of service we receive from our internet service providers.
I therefore submit that the CRTC should order Bell to stop its Internet traffic-shaping practices.
Please protect Canada’s level playing field for free speech and innovation by ordering Bell to cease and desist its “throttling” practices, and be sure to take similar action against any other service provider or other entity which threatens the right of Canadians for equal access to all parts of the internet.
A Washington journalist announces that for a period of over 24 hours the only person who chose to read his free on-line bio with any care was a “self-appointed hall monitor”. If someone was paying me in the hope that others cared enough about my thoughts to buy papers to read them I might be less sanguine about drawing attention to this apparent lack of interest in me and my work.
Simon Blackburn reviews Harry G. Frankfurt’s ‘OnTruth’ (in Powell’s Books in the The New Republic Online) and in the end finds it ‘Bullshit’
“And when I think of Frankfurt’s resolute silence about the philosophical tradition from, say, Protagoras onward, I confess to scenting a whiff of something like — well, negligence with the truth, an affectation of amateur carelessness adopted to mislead or manipulate the audience, and which therefore, by Frankfurt’s own account, characterizes the bullshitter.”
Contrary Brin: More Potpourri - science and politics! is worth it for this quote:
“For many years I have spiced up some speeches (about memes) with the notion that we must “CRUSH every other worldview that does not preach tolerance!” It gets a laugh plus applause… and I say “those of you who ONLY applauded, without laughing at the irony — a deeply cautionary irony — aren’t qualified to wage this holy war. You just don’t get it. In fact, your eager help may only ensure our eventual defeat. The way to truly crush intolerance is the way parents deal with the hysterics of small children. By taking the small hammer-blows, absorbing the tantrum, firmly disallowing any larger harm, and wrapping the frenetic soul in an embrace of patient confidence.
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