BurningbirdRecovered from the Wayback Machine. Clay Shirky published a paper titled, The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview and made some interesting arguments. However, overall, I must agree with Sam Ruby’s assessment: Two parts brilliance, one part strawman. Particularly the strawman part. First, Clay makes a point that syllogistic logic, upon which hopes for the Semantic Web are based, requires context and […]
Recovered from the Wayback Machine. My early days as a mineral and crystal collector would find me at Earthlight in Kirkland on a regular basis. This shop was full, floor to ceiling, with rare and wonderous crystals from throughout the world. Not just minerals in raw form – the owner also carried rock carvings, jewelry, […]
Recovered from the Wayback Machine. During my break I made a decision not to talk about my financial affairs in this weblog again. I’m not sure why I did so before – this is not a topic I would normally bring up in a get together among friends; I have always been private about my […]
Joseph Duemer has taken an innovative approach to the comment spammers: he’s billed them. The spammer, who sounds as if he’s two sheets shy of a load, fights back by emailing a complaint against Joe to his employer, the President of Clarkson University. (Joe is a professor at Clarkson). Joe, not to be daunted, then calls […]
Sheila Lennon sent reader questions, including what I wrote about Outrage Radio last week to the Outrage folks, and has published their response. Regarding my comment, the voice of Outrage, James Linkin continues on a recent theme about language being co-opted by politcs, writing: In no particular order: We are all prisoners of language. The turmoil of political discourse over […]