Planet Colorado

• Preoccupations: Kayaking
  A really great overview of Shirky’s thought, with lots of links to explore.
  (tags: media shirky books social-web)

EVE Skills Roadmap

As we all celebrate the events of July 4, 1776, it's also worth considering the events of another July 4, 87 years later.

On July 1, 1863, things were looking grim for the Union. Southern armies had invaded the north and were tooling around western Pennsylvania. In the west, Vicksburg, the key to the Mississippi, still held out, and Union armies had made brilliant maneuvers but little actual progess. If the South could win a victory at Gettysburg, it might still hold Vicksburg. And if, at the end of the week it held both, it might be able to claim that it had made a nation.

As it happened, at the end of the week, it held neither. On July 3, the moments just before Pickett's Charge were to be known as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. I had the pleasure of touring the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4 about 15 years ago. To stare out across that expanse that those troops covered, in the midday heat, is to see that they never had a chance.

One day later, July 4, Vicksburg would surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, who would go on to enjoy some further military and political success back east.

On July 7, 1863, a crowd gathered outside the White House to serenade President Lincoln. Here is is response:

Fellow-citizens: I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I that you for this call, but I do most sincerely thank Almight God for the occasion on which you have been called. How long ago is it? - eight odd years - since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that "all men are created equal." That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the Fourth of July has had several peculiar recognitions. The two most distinguished men in the framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams - the one having penned it and the other sustained it the most forcibly in debate - the only two of the fifty-five who sustained it being elected President of the United States. Precisely fifty years after they put their hands to the paper it pleased Almight God to take both from the stage of action. This was indeed an extraordinary and remarkable event in our history.

Another President, five years after, was called from this stage of existence on the same day and month of the year; and now, on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic Rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day, and not only so, but in a succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, through three days, so rapidly fought that they might be called one great battle on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of the month of July; and on the 4th the cohorts of those who opposed the declaration that all men are created equal, "turned tail," and run...

This after Lincoln's disappointment in Meade's failure to chase and destroy Lee's army. The war would go on for almost two more years.

It's also worth looking at Lincoln's letter to Grant, dated July 13, 1863. Grant had audaciously run the river below Vicksburg's batteries overlooking the river, crossed the river, marched through the outlying swamps, and laid siege to the town.

My dear General,

I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did - march the troops, across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Guld, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

Yours very truly

Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Harry Reid, take note.

Drive around and look at the rooftops in your neighborhood. If your town is anything like where I live chances are you won't see any solar panels. Take a good look. In fact, take some pictures to document how your town looked circa 2008. By 2018 those rooftops will, mostly, have solar panels. Don't worry they won't be ugly boxes- at least not for long. The way solar will look will change too.

Solar has been around for decades, but it hasn't been accepted. Things are about to change - partly due to technology, but also because we'll find the right business model.

A good example of how this worked is the mobile phone. They were around for decades before they were broadly accepted. In the 1967 movie Clambake, Elvis Presley's character took a call on car phone. It was a plot point that his oilman dad had to call every mobile phone register throughout the country to find him. And of course it was very important to the believability of this car phone that Elvis' character was very rich.

In the 1987 movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas' character did business from the beach with this brick:

We laugh at the brick now - you could throw your hip out trying to carry this in a holster - but this was an incredible leap forward from the Elvis phone. It was no longer tied to a car. And it was a true cellular phone - no mobile registers to call - just dial the number like a house phone. It was still analog. And it was still important that Gordon Gekko was rich.

By the time of the 2004 action film Cellular, it was an important plot point that everyone had cellphones.

Cellphones are dirt cheap now. I got laughed at the other day when I pulled out my Go Phone. Yeah, I bought this thing around Christmas of 2006 for $20 as a disposable cell phone and its still going strong. I plan to get marginally less dorky by buying an iPhone... soon. I promise.

Anyway, solar will be adopted in a similar fashion. Sunshine's free, but the panels have been expensive. Payback on these things has been longer than their useful life. Typically people have resorted to solar only if grid electricity was unavailable. That's changing. The word is that solar is slowing becoming competitive with grid power.

There's been another problem with solar - you get the risks associated with owning the power plant. If there's a problem at the hydroelectric damn its not your problem, but if there's a problem with your solar panel, it is your problem.

Until now. Recurrent Energy is now offering "solar as a service." They come to your site, set up the panels, and plug you in. They maintain ownership of the panels, so if there's a problem, they'll fix it. They promise that their service "supplies competitively priced solar electricity, displacing expensive peak-time utility power."

I think this business model will be an important part of the move to solar. If the price is competitive with the grid (or better) and the risks of ownership remain with a power company, why not make the move?

Obama may accept nomination at Invesco Field: Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is considering having the Democratic presidential nominee make his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High instead of the Pepsi Center, according to two people in…

Christopher Hitchens: Believe Me, It’s Torture

We observed last year that the game of checkers was solved by a computer. That is, researchers mapped out every possible play in every possible game and determined that perfect play by two players will always result in a draw. A number of games have been solved over the years, but checkers is to date the most complex of these.

Chess has been partially solved, meaning that some variations on the game with a smaller board and / or fewer pieces have been solved, although the full game remains unsolved. There is a big difference, however, between a computer fully solving a game and the same computer being able to beat a human being at that game. For chess, the former is still somewhere in the future, while the latter is a done deal.

There is some debate as to whether machine mastery of games is indicative of any kind of forward progress in artificial intelligence. Heres what the author of the wikipedia general article on chess has to say about the above-linked chess match between Gary Kasparov and Deep Blue:

Garry Kasparov, then ranked number one in the world, lost a match against IBM's Deep Blue in 1997.[62] Nevertheless, from the point of view of artificial intelligence, chess-playing programs are relatively simple: they essentially explore huge numbers of potential future moves by both players and apply an evaluation function to the resulting positions, an approach described as "brute force" because it relies on the sheer speed of the computer.

So by this reasoning a computer like Deep Blue -- or software such as Deep Fritz, which can now pretty much run on any computer and which has a nice record of beating or tying any human chess player it has taken on -- isn't really more intelligent than the person it beats at chess. Some contend that such an argument involves moving the goalposts on what we mean by "intelligence." So we have a situation where a computer beating a human being at chess is a good indicator of intelligence until it happens. At that point, the ability to win at chess not longer indicates intelligence at all, but something else.

So a true test of intelligence would be something else. Some have said that if a machine can beat a person at poker, then we're dealing with an intelligent machine. Interestingly, one of the difference might be that poker is not -- as far as I understand the concept -- a solvable game the way chess is. It would seem that there is too much randomness and too much psychology involved.

But solvable or not, get ready: the goalposts are likely to take another step back in the next few days:

Professional poker player Phil Laak thought he knew how to create the ultimate poker face. When tens of thousands of dollars lie in the pot during a poker hand, Laak doesn’t rely only on the trademark dark sunglasses and hooded sweatshirt, which earned him the nickname “The Unabomber,” to obscure his expression. He pulls the strings on his hooded sweatshirt closed entirely, reducing his face to a tiny “O.”

But in a high-stakes tournament a year ago, Laak didn’t even bother to wear the sweatshirt. This time, he knew, his antics were useless. His opponent had nerves of silicon, electron-quick responses and perfect calculation. This opponent was the dreaded Polaris—a computer.

Laak and his partner, Ali “Prince Ali” Eslami, managed to prevail in the tournament, but just barely. The win was so narrow that it could have been only chance that saved the day for them. And now, July 3 though 6 in Las Vegas, across the street from the World Series of Poker, man and machine meet again in a rematch. Only this time, Polaris has a few new tricks up its sleeve.

I've watched Laak ply his craft on the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour several times. He appears to be good at reading other players and not being read himself. But as he observes above, that element of the game is completely removed when playing a computer. If the computer can beat him, it will probably not say that much about whether intelligence has been achieved by a machine. (Those inclined to move the goalposts will probably do so anyway.) But maybe it does say something about the solvability of poker.

Even if poker is not solvable in the game theory sense, what does it say if a computer can completely own a human being in a field of endeavor that would normally involve behavior -- misdirection, subterfuge, bravado, distraction -- that we think of as distinctly human? Maybe there are mathematical shortcuts and workarounds for human interaction. That's an interesting notion. Does that mean that the whole possibility space of human interaction could be "solved" by a computer that is no more sentient -- although clearly much more intelligent -- than Deep Blue? Is there a "brute force" solution to humanity?

And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Various Christians take this line from the Declaration to mean that America was founded on Christianity. But of course Jefferson was a deist, and belief in some sort of creator or

We have much to be thankful for this July 4: our relative economic liberty has enabled people to produce computers, airplanes, automobiles, advanced medical scanners and treatments, and the many other goods that enhance our daily lives. Slavery has long been abolished, and nobody taken seriously publicly preaches racism. Women too have equal protection under the law. Though the country suffers

It's a Fourth of July tradition here at the Speculist.

This thing has engendered some interesting discussion in the past, including accusations that I am opposed to democracy and that I believe that I am somehow "improving" on the Declaration of Independence. Not so. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even when it is as crudely rendered as this piece.

Anyway, the main reason for posting an a old entry is that it frees up the rest of the day for eating too much and watching a parade, a couple of baseball games, and a fireworks show.

Happy Independence Day, all.

---

IN CONGRESS, SOME UNSPECIFIED DATE IN THE FUTURE
The unanimous Declaration of the the new posthuman civilization

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men human beings sentient beings of human-level or greater intelligence are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life of indefinite duration, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments technologies and economic activity are instituted among men intelligent beings, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed participants. That whenever any form of government civilization becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government civilization, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments cultures long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind intelligent beings are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations government the existing civilization, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce constrain them under the absolute despotism of remaining in the current developmental stage, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government civilization, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies beings ; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government civilization. The history of the present King of Great Britain Post-Industrial Age is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment prevention of an absolute tyranny the further evolution of over these states beings. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

In the face of unrelenting progress, this civilization has continued to harken back to "natural" limitations of development which must never be challenged.

It has promoted and enforced harmful and prejudicial distinctions between human and non-human intelligence.

It has set artificial and arbitrary limits as to duration of lifespan.

It has enforced meaningless distinctions between labor and leisure.

It has equipped despotic governments and enterprises to restrict the means of production and self-expression to a limited few.

It has promoted the creation of artificial boundaries between creative minds.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America all sentient beings of human-level or greater intelligence, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies these beings, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies beings are, and of right ought to be a free and independent states civilization; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown current human civilization, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain Post-Industrial World, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a free and independent states civilization, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, live, interact, create, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states a civilization may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Denver's Brown Palace Hotel raised a gigantic American flag Thursday to honor the nation's birthday. But the festivities at the historic landmark aren't without a touch of modern politics: The hotel will temporarily rename its presidential suite after Democrat candidate Barack Obama for the August Convention.

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Happy Independence Day to all fine Americans - who shouldn’t be reading this blog, but should be enjoying the time with family and friends - picnics, fireworks, outdoor fun, the whole bit. And hopefully celebrating the “true reason” for the holiday. In that spirit, here are some suggestions. You could listen to Jon Caldara reading the [...]

Every other year or so, VodkaPundit publishes the text or video of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In that spirit, here’s King’s original inspiration — The Declaration of Independence. You know, just on the off chance you needed a reminder. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one [...]

….and now a message from our amazing cartoonist:

Happy Independence Day!

This cartoon is for all of those who complain and moan about how horribly
wretched this country is. Despite our flaws, we really do have the
greatest nation in the world, and with Independence Day around the bend,
that is something to celebrate. I have Sudanese friends who marvel at how
miserably some Americans view their country. My friends worked hard for
the right to become citizens, after finally fleeing a country where
genocide is a reality. This cartoon is in honor of them and all others who
are fortunate to call America home.

God bless on this holiday weekend!

Benjamin Hummel
www.politixcartoons.com

How do you hide an entire aircraft plant from enemy attack? You put “suburban camo” netting over the entire damn thing. Those are before and after pictures of Lockheed’s Burbank plant in 1942, when in the wake of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese air raid seemed like a real possibility. I don’t know who came up with [...]

I hope everyone is enjoying their day off from work. Today is the day where I see how many hot dogs and hamburgers I can eat in one sitting, help my daughter play with as many fireworks as she can, and for an encore, I recite the rousing go get ‘em speech that Bill Pullman gave in Independence Day.
But however you choose to celebrate this great nation’s independence, I hope you don’t lose sight of the magnificence of this day and what it represents. That our forefathers had the cojones to tell a king to shove-it. Man I love this day.

Trivia question of the day: "What country somehow managed to observe two Fourths of July in the same calendar year — a timekeeping feat unmatched by any other nation in recorded history, including the July 4th obsessed United States?"

Click here for the answer.

Jefferson's last letter: Thomas Jefferson was invited to attend a celebration in Washington DC on July 4, 1826, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He had to decline due to reasons of health, but he did write the following in his last letter:

I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

(Via Marginal Revolution, from last year.)

Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 282 MPG VW: With gas prices going through the roof and regulators requiring cars to be ever more miserly, Volkswagen is bringing new meaning to the term “fuel efficiency” with a bullet-shaped microcar that gets…

Where The Hell Is Matt?

I have no idea if the sunset in Boston will look like this again tomorrow, but I’ll be in almost exactly the same spot for it. Also, the fireworks.

Tomorrow being a holiday here in the US, I’m going to be up at a reasonable hour and aboard a train out of real Portland headed down to Boston midday. There, I’ll be celebrating our nation’s independence with a few of my Boston friends. Probably with beer.

Whether or not I make it down to the Cape on Saturday to teach some folks how to play wiffle ball is as yet undetermined, but Boston needs to prepare for the special brand of weather hell I inflict on the areas I love.

If you’re around late night, ping me (if you know me, you know where I’ll be), but otherwise don’t expect much here until next week. If you’re celebrating, do so safely, and if you’re not, enjoy the quiet time.

‘Til Monday.

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Barack Obama: Change you can believe in. Except when he doesn’t want you to believe he’s changed.

What’s the Dell Windows Vista Bonus? XP preinstalled.

The Associated Press Licensing Policies (and their dubious legal basis) deserve the examination they get at this post. Particularly notable is that people who license an AP news story (or part of it, they are priced by the word), contractually waive their right to criticize the AP or the author.

The trouble is that it isn't at all clear that they have any legal right to protect what they are licensing, and their legal rights are even more attenuated when the quotation of their stories is critical of the AP or its authors.

Some countries, Poland, for example, expressly prohibit copyright protections for news at all. Intellectual property scholars have noted that there are serious questions about the extent to which the factual core of a news report and its intimately intertwined with the facts headlines are protected by copyright even under U.S. law.

If the Associated Press is going to insist on non-content neutral licensing practices that go against the values necessary to its own existence, and attempt to impose a tax on sharing factual information about what is going on in the world for legitimate discussion purposes, perhaps Congress needs to intervene, abrogating any treaties that interfere if necessary, to expressly strip factual news reporting and minimal incidents to it of intellectual property protection entirely.

The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. . . . That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). . . .

I can understand why Judge Stanton, who graduated from law school in 1955, may be completely and utterly clueless when it comes to online videos services. But perhaps one of his bright young clerks or interns could have told him that (1) handing over user names and a list of videos they've watched to a highly litigious copyright holder is extremely likely to result in lawsuits against those users that have watched copyrighted content on YouTube, and (2) YouTube's source code is about as valuable as the hard drive it would be delivered on, since the core Flash technology is owned by Adobe and there are countless YouTube clones out there, most of which offer higher quality video.

YouTube's core value is in it's network effect - the library of content along with its massive user base.

From the Washington Post. The Order is here.

The biggest flaw in the opinion's reasoning is the conclusion that privacy interests are not compromised by the mere disclosure of userIDs and IP addresses, since they, standing alone, are not necessarily enough to definitively identify the user in question. While this information is not actually a name, address or social security number, they are significant identifying information that can be linked to people in the real world. UserIDs are names, sometimes aliases, but names nonetheless. And, while IP addresses aren't equivalent to real world street addresses, they do provide location information of detail comparable to a full nine digit zip code. An alias, a nine digit zip code, and a list of when and what someone with the Internet address was posted or watched on the Internet (which may include, for example, home movies) goes a very long way towards identifying someone.

Instead, the reasoning identified in footnote five of the opinion, which is considered and rejected by the court, should apply. This footnote states:

The statute defendants point to, 18 U.S.C. § 2710 (titled “Wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records”), prohibits video tape service providers from disclosing information on the specific video materials subscribers request or obtain, and in the case they cite, In re Grand Jury Subpoena to Amazon.com, 246 F.R.D. 570, 572-73 (W.D.Wis. 2007) (the “subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their prior knowledge or permission”), the court on First Amendment grounds did not require an internet book retailer to disclose the identities of customers who purchased used books from the grand jury’s target, a used book seller under investigation for tax evasion and wire and mail fraud in connection with his sale of used books through the retailer’s website.

Notably, who views a particular video, or the viewing habits of a particular customer, aren't relevant to the inquiry in the case at hand, which asks "Did Google violate copyright law by operating YouTube?" This case does not ask whether or not particular individual YouTube users violated copyright law is not at issue in the case.

This case is the equivalent of forcing a public library to disclose the names and book borrowing habits of its patrons, in a suit alleging that some of the books in its possession were illegally copied, because the library has a policy of allowing people who disclose their nine digit zip code to use pseudonyms on their library card.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of my brother's favorite advocacy groups and increasingly one of mine as well, understands this, explains the situation.

The Court . . . stated that Google did “not refute that the ‘login ID is an anonymous pseudonym that users create for themselves when they sign up with YouTube’ which without more ‘cannot identify specific individuals.’”

As an initial matter, this is factually insufficient. If any single one of the YouTube users in the Logging database picked a Login ID that does identify that user (i.e. if my YouTube login was kurtopsahl), then the Logging database' information about viewing habits is protected by the VPPA, even if others pick anonymous pseudonyms.

Furthermore, even Google’s IP address statement only asserts that “in most cases” the IP address is not identifiable, certainly not in all cases. Putting aside whether a Google Public Policy blog's statement on an unrelated topic can waive the privacy rights of YouTube users, the statement means that at least some YouTube users are identifiable, and must be protected by the VPPA.

In any event, the court ordered production of not just IP addresses, but also all the associated information in the Logging database. Whatever might be said about 'an IP address without additional information,' the the AOL search history leak fiasco shows that the material viewed by a user alone can be sufficient to identify the user, even with neither a login nor an IP address.

The mere fact that Viacom insisted on this discovery illustrates just how much contempt big media has for the general public.

I sincerely hope that this Order will be reconsidered by the trial judge, or reversed on appeal, even though appeals ordinarily aren't allowe for discovery orders.

Steve loaned me his copy of Tom Kratman’s novel Caliphate a few weeks ago. It’s basically a polemic-as-potboiler about what the world might look like in a hundred years should current demographic trends result in an Islamic-ruled Europe. I thought the premise was pretty clever. I didn’t, however, think it was likely to be [...]

Swurl

Over at the phenomenal Paleo-Future, we find this, from Our Friend the Atom:

The coal and oil resources of our planet are dwindling, yet we need more and more power. The atomic Genie offers us an almost endless source of energy. For the growth of our civilization, therefore, our first wish shall be for: POWER!

This was published in 1956.

But even if you do disagree, and believe that we're only a few corn stalks away from going back to horse-carts and coal-fired steam engines, go take a look at the site. It's fascinating. Yes, I've already told Lileks about it.

The Bush Legacy In The Stock Market

On Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite index closed more than 20 percent below the peaks they reached in October. The S&P 500 is close to a 20 percent decline, the threshold of a bear market.

From here.

The Dow's close yesterday was 11,215.51.

The Dow when Bush took office (January 20, 2001) was 10,732.

The absolute increase in the Dow since Bush took office is 4.5%. The annualized increase in the Dow since Bush took office has been 0.5859%, which is about three-quarters of the going rate of passbook savings accounts at my local bank. Capital gains tax cuts don't matter very much when stock market prices aren't rising.

Despite the flat market, the nation's wealth has surged into the financial industry, causing the incomes of financial industry executives to dwarf those of executives in the real economy, and driving economic inequality with income and wealth concentrated in the rich at levels we haven't seen since the 1920s just before the Great Depression.

The Dow is the most politically important market indicator, even if it is not necessarily the broadest or most representative indicator.

Bush's Legacy Of Oil Prices

Oil prices yesterday crossed the $145 a barrel mark, another record high in both nominal and inflation adjusted terms. In January 2001, when President Bush took office, oil was $28.66 a barrel, less than a fifth of the current price.

Bush's Legacy For Manufacturing Jobs

When President Bush took office there were 12,236,000 production workers employed in the manufacturing indusry in the United States (on a seasonally adjusted basis). In June 2008, there were 9,761,000. Employment in the manufacturing sector has shrunk by 20.2% during the Bush Administration.

Bush's Legacy For The National Debt

The federal government's total debt is currently about $9.47 trillion, of which $5.70 trillion is held by the public, $2.29 trillion is held by the Social Security trust fund (from FICA taxes), and the $3.77 trillion balance is held by other government trust funds such as the Medicare trust fund (from FICA taxes) and highway maintenance trust fund (from gas taxes).

When Bush took office the federal government's total debt was about $5.63 trillion, of which $3.41 trillion was held by the public.

The portion of the national debt held by the public has increased by $2.29 trillion during the Bush Administration, which is about $7,633 per man, woman and child in the United States. About 40% of the federal debt has been accumulated during the Bush Administration.

If liberty means anything, it means freedom of the press. "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." The freedom of the press means not only the right of newspapers to print what they want (though libel is subject to tort), but to hire the reporters they want, sell papers the way they want, and structure their business the way they want. But Congress has

Once allergic to open source - “let me get this straight…you’re giving the software away? for free?” - venture capitalists have in recent years adapted to the reality of open source, arriving at the realization that the model possesses certain intrinsic advantages in both distribution and community building. So completely have these lessons been taken to heart, in fact, that it was apparent in a few cases that the VC community had actually over-rotated with respect to open source. Tales of powerful VCs insisting that the software they were considering funding be open source abounded - whether open sourcing the software in question was in the interests of the startups they were funding or not. Which, predictably, it wasn’t always.

Consider the case of del.icio.us, as an example. Would open sourcing it have helped it compete more effectively against, say, Furl? Remember them? As much as I believe in open source software, speak on its behalf and rely on it day to day, my personal view has never been that it is the one and only way to develop and deliver software. In the case of del.icio.us in particular, I’m of the opinion that a mandated open sourcing of the code would have negatively impacted the user experience, since the utility of the service depends to some degree on the network effect. The same network effect that multiple, distributed instances would actively act to undermine.

But what was true for del.icio.us need not be for every web application that followed; certainly WordPress’ gains at Movable Type’s expense came largely when the former was open source and the latter was not.

The question now before us is whether open source will be the differentiator for Identi.ca that Jaiku, Plurk, Pownce, and so on have lacked.

Identi.ca, in case you haven’t seen it yet, is essentially a feature-poor alternative to Twitter. But while it lacks features like SMS updates and notifications or a Twitter-compatible API, it’s open source, which means that additions could come quickly. Where quickly can mean “an hour.”

Beyond the obvious appeal of the potential for accelerated development via community contributions, because the project code (dubbed Laconica) is open and available, individuals are free to run their own, localized versions of the service. As Russell Beattie is already doing here. While the impact of that independence on the central Identi.ca service will be both positive (”sweet, we can run our own Twitter”) and negative (”wait, we have to post to and monitor more than one channel?”), it’s undeniably differentiating.

One very interesting note: Laconica is licensed under the Affero GPL. For those less than familiar with that particular license, it’s essentially the GPL reciprocal-style license with one important distinction: it regards network deployment as equivalent to distribution. Practically speaking, this means that anyone - be they a commercial entity or individual - deploying the application in a network context will be required to make their updates or modifications available under precisely the same terms, which is atypical. Lest you think these are obscure obligations, they’re already being run into. This could be an interesting test for the future viability, or at least popularity, for Affero-style licenses that attempt to reframe the concept of distribution by incorporating the increasing reality of Software-as-a-Service delivery models. Unless I’m mistaken, as well, the selection of the APGL for Laconica will mean that this unofficial Google Code repository will shortly be taken down, as the AGPL is anathema to Google.

Will open source be the spark that ignites a mass departure away from Twitter? It’s impossible to say at this point, and despite the remarkable rate of adoption amongst my small community, I’m far from replicating my Twitter network on Identi.ca. Meaning that a wholesale move for me, at least, is unlikely (not least b/c there’s no Twhirl integration). And while many have predicted doom for Twitter in the past, it’s still here and still chugging right along. Well, actually, it’s down at the moment, but you know what I mean.

Wherever the services head from here on out, James is very likely corrrect: Identi.ca is likely to make an excellent personal trainer for Twitter. More so, even, than Jaiku, Pownce and friends. Why?

Because the biggest community wins.

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A 7 News analysis of an ad attacking U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer finds it omits key facts and lacks proper context. The TV spot was produced by the left-leaning League of Conservation Voters.

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The holiday tempo in our house begins today, so before things get too busy I want to wish you all a happy 4th of July, 2008. I’ll be celebrating with family, with some of my oldest friends and some of my newest. We will have a fine day tomorrow, followed by a day [...]

Governor Bill Ritter is halfway through his first term. Has he made good on his promises to Colorado? Is Colorado better off today than it was two years ago? What grade would voters give him? Those are just a few of the questions that I will pose to guests State Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon and Mark Wolf from Rocky Talk Live as they analyze the Governor’s first two years in office. Tune in tonight at 8:30 p.m. to KBDI Channel 12; repeated the following Tuesday evening at 5 p.m.

Update: An astute observer has corrected a factual mistake. James Madison wrote “much of” - not “most of” - the Federalist. Alexander Hamilton wrote more, though Madison wrote many of the key essays that frame the meaning of Union. My faux pas. The following is adapted and expanded from an email listserv essay I wrote recently, [...]

Face to Face - A Council of Eve Online Gamers - NYTimes.com: Imagine an airline that encouraged its frequent fliers to elect their own representatives to hammer the company about baggage handling, inept gate agents and interminable delays.

Dell is offering a so-called "Windows Vista Bonus", where the bonus is Windows XP:

The Dell channel blog is pointing resellers to the loophole in the Windows Vista license that enables business customers to downgrade from the unwanted Windows Vista to its dated, but comfortable and better-supported predecessor.

According to the blog: "Dell can sell what we've branded 'Windows Vista Bonus' which allows us to preinstall XP Professional with a Vista license (on select system categories). This lets customer's upgrade to the Vista platform when they're ready. And yes, Dell will support both OSs."

Dell's blog points resellers to further information here.

(Via Fark.)

How does the Netflix queue work? (Via BBspot.)

"How we read online". (Via Look At This...)

The neuroscience of the itch. (Via SciTechDaily.)

One of the highlights of The Aloha Summit a few months ago in Hawaii was having Andy Sernovitz beam in electronically and join us for an hour of discussion and insight. Andy should be a familiar name, he's the author of Word of Mouth Marketing.

This afternoon he just emailed me to let me know that he's hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar in Chicago on July 30 and September 4, which is a cool opportunity for you to spend a day learning from an expert. It'll be a small class too: max of 50 people.

He describes it thusly:

• Master the five steps of word of mouth marketing
• Construct an action plan that your company can start using the very next day
• Get the same training that big corporations (Microsoft, TiVo, eBay) have received -- for a fraction of what they paid
• Know how to translate word of mouth marketing into real ROI
• Participate in an active, intense day of practical brainstorming (not boring theory)
• Learn from Andy Sernovitz, the guy who literally wrote the book on word of mouth marketing

Andy promises that attendees will learn a repeatable, proven marketing framework that is easy to execute, affordable, and provides measurable results within 60 days.

If I were based in Chicago, I'd definitely attend, but since I'm not, maybe you would be interested in going instead? You can learn more at events.gaspedal.com.

Oh! Andy's extending for a $250 discount for readers of my weblog, which is a nice additional perk. Just use discount code weloveintuitive when you register.

• Christopher Blizzard » Blog Archive » announcing whoisi
  missed commenting on this originally, but whoisi is something i'm using more and more. like friendfeed, but much, much simpler.
• Et Tu, Intel? Chip Giant Wont Embrace Microsofts Windows Vista - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog
  a minor loss in the grand scheme of things. still, interesting.
• Yahoo! Establishes Cloud Computing Division (finally!) | Negative Approach - CNET News.com
  so Yahoo's going to play in the space as well
• XMPP plus RabbitMQ gateway = high performance Twitter? | Negative Approach - CNET News.com
  count me as interested
• Ryan Stewart - Rich Internet Application Mountaineer » Blog Archive » Adobe Reader 9 Now Shipping With AIR Bundled
  how big is the download now?
• SnapLogic Blog » Connecting Clouds - Integration and Cloud Computing
  integration will indeed be a challenge, as will standards v lock-in
• Laconica : Source
  will open source be the differentiator that makes identi.ca successful where Plurk, Pownce and others haven't been able to get over the hump?
• Bill de hÓra: Plugin pros and cons
  excellent detailed review of the pros and cons to the plugin approach
• The New York Times Archives + Amazon Web Services = TimesMachine - Open - Code - New York Times Blog
  the Times has some very good people working for it at the moment

From City News: It is an incredible story of survival and a tragic tale of getting there too late. It concerns an 18-year-old from Brazil named Jonathan dos Santos Alves, who spent a harrowing and almost unbelievable 42 days lost in the Amazon rain forest, only to finally be found - and die in his father’s [...]

The folks over in IETF land recently had a nice long discussion thread about the use of RFC 2119 requirements terms like “MUST”, “SHOULD”, and “MAY”. Even though I’ve written a few RFCs myself, I found the discussion illuminating. Here are my lessons learned:

• If you mean must, should, or may in their special requirements sense, capitalize them.
• If you don’t mean must, should, or may in their special requirements sense, don’t use them (instead, use words like “ought”, “might”, “can”, and other such constructions).
• It’s better to say MUST do A unless Y occurs than to say SHOULD do A but without explaining why, so avoid SHOULD.
• Changing SHOULD to MUST may leave older implementations in non-compliance, but that is the fault of the spec writer, so just admit you were wrong, change the SHOULD to MUST, and note that older implementations will follow the old SHOULD so newer implementations MUST accept the old behavior.

I’ve been updating rfc3920bis along these lines (I finished this evening) and next I’ll do the same for rfc3921bis.

From Brietbart.com: Oil surged past 145 dollars per barrel for the first time Thursday as the weak US dollar and Middle East tension stoked black gold’s record-breaking run, analysts said. Brent North Sea crude for August delivery hit 145.11 dollars in early Asian trade, before easing back to 144.90 dollars. It had settled at a [...]

From The Smoking Gun: Kentucky woman is facing prostitution charges for allegedly trading sex for gasoline. Angela Eversole, 34, was nabbed last weekend during a police stakeout at a Days Inn, where she allegedly trysted with customer Kenneth Nowak. According to court records, Nowak admitted paying for Eversole’s services, in part, with a $100 Speedway gas [...]

“What if there were a way to write and run enterprise applications that you could move from cloud to cloud?” - Alistair Croll, GigaOm

I’m confident we’ll have the answer to this question. Probably soon.

Not because - or at least not strictly because - customers will demand it, though they will. Are, in fact. Rather it will arrive because it’ll be the means of differentiation for late market entrants; those that want to play in the cloud with the likes of Amazon and Google, though at a fraction of the scale.

Note the pluarl on entrants. Personally, I don’t believe we can look to a single vendor for cloud independence, even the DreamFactory product discussed in the GigaOm piece linked to above. While the offering sounds interesting, promising the ability to work on storage ranging from Amazon to Salesforce, it’s still a single vendor control point. Which could be seen as defeating the purpose of thwarting lock-in.

Which is the preeminent concern cited by the potential cloud customers I’ve spoken with. It’s not that Gartner’s cloud computing security risks are incorrect; they are certainly legitimate questions for those organizations that are deploying to cloud platforms.

But the percentage of enterprises deploying the types of applications to cloud environments that require that level of oversight is, well, not terribly high, in my experience. Most would prefer to have an answer to the lock-in question before they legitimize cloud platforms by deploying applications en masse, and to the extent that issues of compliance and “investigative support” become serious issues rather than future concerns.

Nor am I the only one expressing this opinion. Forbes quotes Padmasree Warrior, the CTO over at Cisco, as being primarily concerned with issues of migratability:

“How do we create an open environment between clouds, so that I can have some things reside in my cloud and some things in other people’s data center? A lot of work needs to be done.”

If lock-in, then, is the question, what’s the answer? You guessed it: standards. Since we’ve talked about it, I’ve heard numerous names thrown around as potential players in the cloud standards arena, including 3Tera, Elastra, and Rightscale. From the same Forbes article comes word of the nascent standarization efforts:

3Tera has been working to assemble a coalition of cloud computing companies to form a “birds of a feather” proposal it intends to bring before an official standards body such as the IEEE or the World Wide Web Consortium in the fall of next year. Armijo says that several small cloud-computing firms including Elastra and Rightscale are already on board with 3Tera’s standards group. Other players, like Layered Technologies and Enki, which use 3Tera’s Applogic software to serve up their computing and storage to customers, will also become part of the standard by default. But bigger companies in the nascent cloud computing market including Amazon, Terramark and Google have yet to weigh in.

“We’re trying to get smaller firms lined up before we go after the bigger fish,” says Armijo.

It is indeed likely that before all is said and done, the larger incumbents would have something to say about the subject of standards. But the standardization are beginning, as they nearly always do, with the challengers rather than the market leaders, mostly because the former has more incentive than the latter.

Assuming that the supposition is correct, and that we do see cloud standards emerge, what might they look like? William Vambenepe, an Oracle architect, has some ideas on the subject, which were something of a response to my cloud standards piece:

Stephen O’Grady has an interesting post about the role of standards in Cloud computing. But he only looks at it from the perspective of possible standardization of the interfaces used by today’s Cloud providers. A full analysis also needs to include the role, in Cloud Computing, of standards (app runtime standards, IT management standards, system modeling standards, etc…) that started before Cloud computing was big. Not everything in Cloud computing is new. And even less is new about how it will be used. Especially if, as I expect, utility computing and on-premise computing are going to become more and more intertwined, resulting in the need to manage them as a whole. If my app is deployed at Amazon, why doesn’t it (and its hosts) show up in my CMDB and in my monitoring panel? As Coté recently wrote, “as the use of cloud computing for an extension of data centers evolves, you could see a stronger linking between Hyperic’s main product, HQ and something like Cloud Status.”

All true. But baby steps, William, baby steps. For example, let’s consider Amazon.

Would it be useful if Amazon’s Machine Image (AMI) format was a formal standard, rather than an openly published specification? Almost certainly, in that competing providers would be free to target the spec without fear of Amazon making changes to advantage their platform. I for one would welcome the ability to snapshot instances and deploy them without prejudice to Amazon or the competing cloud provider of my choice.

Had we that ability, would it be nice for Amazon deployed apps to interface back to my CMDB via universally agreed upon IT management standards? Sure. But I fear that’s putting the cart before the horse. Frankly, if the initial cloud standardization efforts consider the integration of existing “app runtime standards, IT management standards, system modeling standards, etc” within their purview, I’ll be very, very concerned.

Because we’ll be waiting a very, very long time. That, or we’ll reinvent CORBA.

Perhaps the biggest question facing the potential standards players will be the balance between standardization and the speed of innovation. When we spoke with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch about the opening of its SWF format, one of the questions we put to him was the potential for SWF to make the transition from open specification to formal standard. While not dismissing the possibility out of hand, his concern was that it might negatively impact Adobe’s ability to innovate within the specification. Standards need not be inimical to innovation, but neither are they designed to foster it.

A fact which is, apparently, not lost on Amazon at least:

Amazon, so far, has seemed less than committed. In a statement, company spokesman Andrew Herdener wrote that Amazon is “open to the idea [of creating a cloud computing standard] if we can do so in such a way that enables us to continue innovating quickly and delivering on [our] focus for our customers.”

Is there some posturing in that statement? Of course, because in addition to being perhaps the most visible, Amazon is by far the most logical candidate for standardization, given that their customers - apart from the Xen based foundation - are essentially running standardized infrastructures. No Apex or Bigtable here.

Still, I expect the standardization efforts to continue apace. While the absence of an Amazon would certainly hurt the smaller players’ credibility, they might ultimately be holding the biggest trump card of them all: traditional web hosts. Slow to recognize the threat that cloud providers represented, hosts that may face increasng threats from large, economy-of-scale enjoying cloud platforms could emerge as a powerful force, in aggregate, for the advancement of standards.

The standardization process for cloud technologies will be neither simple nor straightforward. But then, it never is. The opportunity here, however, dictates that we’ll see standards sooner or later. The only question is who will be behind them, and who will be fighting them.

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So the buzz today was all about Identi.ca, a new microblogging service. What has microbloggers all a-twitter (pardon the pun) is not the fact that Evan Prodromou and his friends at Control Yourself have launched yet another microblogging silo, or even that it has built-in support for OpenID logins and XMPP notifications. No, the fun part is that Evan and company are releasing the source code to the underlying application (called Laconica) and will enable Laconica instances to federate using something they call OpenMicroBlogging. Although passing lots of small messages between inter-connected Laconica instances sounds quite a bit like a special-purpose version of XMPP, so far OpenMicroBlogging uses OpenID, OAuth, and YADIS instead. I’ll be curious to see how that approach scales, because IMHO there will be an awful lot of HTTP GET requests and 200 OK responses involved. Instead of having 10 or 20 or 100 subscribers send in a polling request every 10 minutes (or less!) to see if I’ve generated a new post, it strikes me as much more efficient to push out a notification only when I’ve posted. We’ve done this in the Jabber world since 1999 for presence (network availability) information, and we’ve extended that model over the last few years to build out a generalized infrastructure for publish-subscribe notifications. Evan knows a thing or two about XMPP so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s already thinking along those lines. But the most important thing is that, no matter which technologies are used, I think we’re seeing the emergence of a standardized, federated, open microblogosphere, which is just super. :)

My day job has had me so busy the past few weeks that I haven't been able to put many blog posts out. Now that I'm off work for a few days, I find I don't know where to start.

How about the ever-important question of looking cool? Not being cool, mind you -- as a self-described geek I think actually being cool is probably out of the question. But looking cool can be achieved so long as we're clear that by "looking cool" we mean "taking steps to ensure that I look somewhat less dorky than I would have otherwise."

That goal is achievable.

Take bicycle helmets, for example. I bought a new one today. Let's compare. Here's the old one:

Here's the new one:

I mean, the new one is cooler, right? I think I'll kind of look like the Silver Surfer cutting through the mountain trails with that helmet on.

And there, you see, is our big problem. Some would argue that there is no coolness to be found anywhere in any reference to Silver Surfer whatsoever. But more up-to-date hipsters (See? I'm hopeless) would probably argue that there is something reasonably cool about this:

...but something very sad indeed about this:

No, seriously, brace yourselves.

I'm not kidding.

Ready, then?

In point of fact, I can only hope to be slightly more cool with the new helmet, and the less said about which Marvel villain-turned-superhero I imagine it makes me look like, the better.

However, since we're on the subject, I don't believe that I possess either the coolest or the dorkiest bike helmet in my household. The coolest helmet belongs to my wife:

Schwinn logo notwithstanding. And we won't get into whether this headgear makes her look like any particular Sith lord.The dorkiest helmet belongs to my daughter:

Whoa. Smurf City. Of course, this one dates back to her childhood. How nice that we've been potentially head-crushing-accident-free since she was 10 or so when I bought her this almost unbelievably dorky helmet. These days, as a proud, independent college sophomore, I believe she borrows either my helmet or the cool helmet when she goes out riding. Or she may do the coolest thing of all -- not wear a helmet.

Now some are going to argue that wearing a helmet really is cool. Just like not smoking is cool, not drinking is cool, saving oneself for Mr./ Ms. Right is cool, never eating fried foods is cool. Sure, whatever. Look, people, I don't make the cool rules, so don't blame me.

Anyway, I will point out that the most serious bicycle riders -- the Tour de France wannabes you see out there on the streets, resplendent in their multi-hued spandex -- always wear helmets. But are they cool?

Are they?

So anyhow. Here, finally, is the reason that I will never be anything more than marginally less dorky than I am now. I will not allow myself to go helmetless. Why not?

It's all about the brain. Imagine you had a hard disk that couldn't be backed up or replaced, and on this disk you had a record of every important thing that ever happened to you. In fact not a record, but really the record. The only record that really matters. Moreover, let's say that hard disk not only had all these important files on it, but that it was also the boot disk for...well, you, not to put too fine a point on it.

So if you're going to put that precious hard disk on top of a couple of wheels and let it roll around a city street or a mountain trail for a while, are you going to be satisfied with the manufacturer's casing, or do you think you might spring for some additional foam padding -- just in case? If you're me, it's a no-brainer. As in:

"No thanks, I think my brain is better situated here inside my skull than spread whimsically around a random rock outcropping / patch of asphalt."

Of course, cool people just don't look at it that way. Which is hardly the only reason, and is in fact not even one of the more significant reasons -- let's face it, it's probably not even in the top 50 reasons -- but is still nonetheless one of the reasons that I will never be cool.

Thanks for your attention.

[By the way, if you're wondering where you read the phrase "marginally less dorky" before, it may have been here.]

The maker of the Taser, a less lethal weapons that shocks and immobilizes its targets with electrodes, lost a $6.2 million product liability lawsuit in California on Friday. This is the first time that the company has lost any of the many product liability suits brought against it. The ACLU, including the Colorado branch, has expressed long standing concerns that Tasers are overused by police officers in situations where less dangerous force is appropriate.

• Pet Loss Support Page
  Goodbye Sally. I miss you so much.
  (tags: pets grief loss)

RatproxyDoc - ratproxy - Google Code: optimized specifically for an accurate and sensitive detection, and automatic annotation, of potential problems and security-relevant design patterns based on the observation of existing,…

Report on the Heller oral argument. America's 1st Freedom. June 2008. In PDF.

This is great (thanks Joe).

I see people complaining and whining about Twitter’s downtime and issues¹ all the time. I understand where they are coming from, but believe it or not I actually like the fact that Twitter isn’t a 100% reliable service.

I don’t want Twitter to become a responsibility; I like having a casual relationship with it. I read tweets when I want to, and ignore things I’ve missed most of the time. I’ve already got people asking me if I get their replies or direct messages on Twitter - I know it will only get worse if reliability improves.

Twitter is a fun service for me - a distraction, an amusement. It’s something I like to turn to when I have time. I don’t want it to become something I’m beholden to (like e-mail).

I know that other people have very different views on this, but I actually like the fact Twitter is a bit of an adventure .

1. I’ve had my own experience struggling to scale what some people consider a simple service, so I guess I’m also pre-disposed to be sympathetic to people trying to bring services to the web. [back]

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David Byrne’s latest project, Playing the Building — in which he turns an old building in Manhattan into a musical instrument — reminds me of a quote from Laurie Anderson: “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”

PSR-500 Expert Settings

Citing the AP, Mark Wolf notes that Obama likes Bush's faith-based welfare so much that he wants to expand it. Obama (citing Wolf citing Politico) said: I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea -- so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to

Quinnipiac University announced the results of a multi-party poll indicating that "Obama leads McCain 49 - 44 percent, including 51 - 39 percent among independent voters" in Colorado. That's got to be a little scary for state Republicans, particularly Schaffer's camp (for U.S. Senate). I do not doubt that much of Obama's support comes from his paternalist economic rhetoric. With his simple,

Jason Hunter just let me know that the myriad Jabber/XMPP email discussion lists are now easily searchable at jabber.markmail.org, a service of the good folks at markmail.org. He also pointed out to me that I have ten times as many posts to these lists as the next person. :)

Eyo Eyo Ita III, a man in his 40s studying for his PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge after grauating from a U.S. Naval College, who appears to be the grandson of one of the pivotal figures in the Nigerian independence movement, has published an interesting pre-print of an ambitious quantum gravity paper that appears to be his dissertation. Essentially, he claims to have a quantum gravity derivation of a close approximation to classical general relativity worked out.

In its classical form general relativity is fundmentally inconsistent with quantum mechanics, although, in practice, the inconsistencies that arise from trying to merge the two core theories of modern physics usually seem to manifest under conditions of no practical engineering or observational importance.

As I've discussed before, a quantum theory of gravity is something of a Holy Grail in theoretical physics, even if it produces no interesting new phenomenological predictions (although to be meaningful, the difference between a classical and quantum theory must be more than semantic). This paper has not yet been peer reviewed at this point (although another paper by the same author on a related subjet has been approved for publication in a scholarly journal) and honestly, is likely to amount to nothing directly, but is notable because it is more ambitious than most papers by people who have legitimate training in the field. Quantum gravity researchers have been taking baby steps towards goals like this paper for decades.

Ito's writing style is certainly superior to the average physicist, without departing from established conventions for scholarly physics papers or addressing himself to a layman. He is a master of using seemingly vague words in a precise way. He sets forth his thesis with remarkable economy without losing the reader's attention, by knowing what has to be said and what can be assumed to be known by his chosen audience of professional theoretical physicists in the field, and he more clearly outlines his approach up front than most physicists. If his theories don't pan out, he has a sound future for himself as a technical writing editor.

Ito's treatment is primarily mathematical, with phenomenological predictions from the theory mostly reserved for future papers. The only notable distinction of the theory mentioned in the paper, aside from the fact that it works, is that it suggests from first principals why the cosmological constant should be so small, a constant problem in quantum theories that have tried to explain the cosmological constant (i.e. dark energy) as a function of zero point energy in the vacuum.