I ought to be working but I have to amplify on Den Beste's latest on form vs. substance.

Human memory is notoriously unreliable. Unbelievable memories can be made up out of whole cloth. (False memory, memory, and repressed memory therapy from the Skeptic's Dictionary.) It is also extremely difficult to project a lack of knowledge back in time, as I discussed in my Learning to Expect the Unexpected post.

One of the differences between "form" and "substance" is that to the extent that form lives in our human minds, it is much easier to change than substance is. Changing the substance of history... well, that is objectively impossible. Changing the current perceptions, ah, thanks to the nature of the human brain, now that is easier.

Ever since I first started working with the web in 1996, I have tried to design an appealing personal site. Though my first web site did end up landing me a pretty cool job, it was ultimately a failure in the aesthetic sense.

The design you've seen if you've read my website at jerf.org (as opposed to solely through RSS) is the third, and while it has been the most flexible and least garish, it still hasn't been anything to be proud of.

Confused about [uni/bi/multi/][national/lateral/global][ism/ization/]? "Zany Paraclete" sets it all straight in a Slashdot Posting.

International standards are good, of course, provided that they're European, because then they're "multilateral" (which is good, I think, because "multilateral" means "involving any set of one or more nations which includes France"). If standards are not European, they're "unilateral", which is bad. "Unilateral" means "not including France" (or else "not excluding the US"), and it's very, very bad.

I sent this as an email to Dave Winer but I'm posting it here so he has somewhere to point:

This is just a shell of an idea hardly worth blogging, but if you're getting into the comment spam issue it is worth sharing. tcp.im could be used to IM a managing editor of a Manila site when something is posted so they can take swift action. For a relatively low-flow site, one could even require all comments to be approved, and not unduly hamper flow.... at least while a managing editor is online.

There are obvious issues but its an idea worth tossing around, I think.

... getting the identity of the propective customer correct.

And the error has already spread; in the same batch of mail I have an AT&T credit card offer for Douglas Bowers.

(One of my previous nom des plumes was "Jerome Bavers". Hmmmmm... nope.)

I wonder how long Douglas here will take to die?

Only with computers can you make millions of errors per second.

(This started as a comment on this post but it grew too large and I needed some HTML.)

I don't know how exactly this fits in, but...

I've actually lost most, if not all, respect for the "novel as philosophy" idea. What finally killed it for me was a science fiction book called "The World of Null-A", which is adequately, if a bit breathlessly, summarized and explained here.

What you can't tell from that summary is that the story is clearly subserviant to the philosophy being espoused. What annoyed me finally was the rosy depiction of "null-A" philosophy; it solves all problems, by, basically, dues ex machina.

I'm a little late to this party; only today and to a lesser degree yesterday is my typing speed high enough that I feel I can "afford" a weblog post... and even this otherwise pointless paragraph :-) (My previous post on switching to Dvorak was justified as a typing exercise and easily took over two hours to type. This one did too in rough draft but you see how much better I'm doing :-) )

Lately, I've been doing a lot of typing. Even more than usual, because if there's anything that's good for productivity, it's working in an environment with no meetings or other productivity drainers.

This activity has not gone unnoticed by my wrists. The last five days or so, my wrists have been hurting a lot, relatively speaking. I'm nowhere near the pain levels I've heard others describe, where they literally can't pick up a glass of water, but the fact that all that stands between me and that outcome is about nothing has been weighing rather heavily on my mind.

Technological sustainability is one of the pressing issues of our time. Should we continue to use our natural resources with wild abandon, or should we try to be more careful with them so we don't lose them?

Since the answer to that question is basically a foregone conclusion when stated that way, how should we be more careful? What's the optimal strategy?

The two basic extremes are:

• Legislate sustainability, right now. The situation is so dire that we must deliberately bend as many resources as possible to the problem.
• Let the market take its course. As resources become rare, the price of that resource will rise, creating economic incentive to create alternatives. Eventually the Invisible Hand will sort things out.

My own thoughts on the subject are probably extreme enough in their own ways to guarantee that nearly everybody will find something to object to, but I think if you think about them they start to make more sense then most of what constitutes "debate" on this topic today.

A popular satirical article examining the idea of executing virus writers is offending a lot of people in a number of ways... but it's offending a lot of people for the wrong reason.

First and foremost, hello, satire! ("...a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.")