DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The latest issue of earthwise, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, contains a mission statement that even the folks from the red states would support:

The UCS is motivated by deeply held values that cross party lines: that allpeople have a right to clean air, water, and land; that we should pass on to our children a world that can sustain them and their children; that decisions affecting our future ought to be guided by an honest assessment of the best available science.

I’ll be the first to admit that as a recovering Midwesterner and ex-political-conservative, my viewpoint is biased, but I really don’t see anything too unreasonable there. I mean, nobody wants to breathe toxic chemicals, do they?

Yet the people who continue to win elections are, in the opinion of scientists at organizations like the UCS, working hard to enact laws that will result in additional environmental poisons. How is this happening?

George Lakoff would argue that the Republican Party won the election by superior “framing” — in a nutshell, by describing ideas in terms that evoke beneficial associations and feelings, even if these terms are not accurate or true. “Clear Skies” is a perfect example, in that (despite its warm and fuzzy name) it would have caused more toxic pollution than allowed by current law. For the GOP, this was an effective frame, but fortunately for all of us not effective enough to carry the bill through Congress.

This is a tired rant. I’m wallowing briefly because it sets up the good news to follow.

Kevin Knobloch, UCS president, notes in this latest earthwise that the UCS has begun following George Lakoff’s advice. Rather than simply reporting facts and attempting to appeal to readers’ logic, the UCS will begin actively framing its positions in order to appeal to readers’ emotions. In a sense, this is about spin. But I’m learning from Lakoff too, so instead of spin I’ll call it “effective communication.”

If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, consider how effective framing can be. You may be one of the roughly 53% of voters who think George Bush is doing a fabulous job by rolling back pollution controls and setting up an oilfield in a wildlife preserve, and you may believe that all the Republican Party’s pronouncements are morally right and just and true. I’d invite you to wake up and smell the toxins. The “reckless Right” has out-framed the moderates, the progressives, the Greens, and the liberals for five years. They’ve set the rules. It’s about time we started to play their game.

Chuck pointed out this thoroughly technical article on Acoustic Treatment and Design for Recording Studios and Listening Rooms.

(I’ve mentioned other soundproofing resources before.)

Following is a roundup of topics discussed repeatedly at Etech 2005. It is an entirely subjective, non-comprehensive listing of the stuff I heard about in multiple contexts, with pointers to session descriptions, transcripts, reactions, and blog items. I’ll be updating this list over time, so if you have corrections or additions, please send them, but please note that I’m filtering, not simply aggregating.

• Search engine improvements: Several search engine companies were present. Most of them announced new tools and features.

  Sessions: Google’s AdWords, Yahoo Web Services, Ask Jeeves Alpha, Microsoft Research Labs, Yahoo! Research Labs, Google Research Labs, Bezos on Vertical Search

  Related sites: research.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Labs), next.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Technology Demos), developer.yahoo.net (Yahoo! Web Services Developer site), labs.google.com (Google Labs), code.google.com (Google Web Services Developer site), google.com/apis/ (Google Web Services signup), Ask.com Search Tools, A9’s “Vertical Search” plug-in index

  Coverage and Transcripts: Daniel H. Steinberg on “From the Labs”, MIT Tech Review on A9’s “Vertical Search”, my piece on A9, John Battelle on OpenSearch, Dare Obasanjo on YSDN, Gordon Gould on Yahoo! tools

• Ontologies and tags: Etech played host to a number of big-brained technologists waving their hands about ontologies, taxonomies, and tagging (aka “folksonomies), the latter being a new spin on an old concept (keywords) but suddenly relevant as demonstrated by the success of Flickr, del.icio.us, and Technorati.

  Sessions: BOF: From Trees to Tags, Ontology is Overrated: Links, Tags, and Post-hoc Metadata, Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess

  Coverage and Transcripts: David Weinberger on “Ontology”, Cory Doctorow on “Folksonomy” and a partial transcript of the session, Mark Taylor on “Ontology”, David Weinberger on “Folksonomy”, Eric Benson on tagging, Alberto Escarlate on “Ontology”, Tim Oren on “Ontology”, Jeff Clavier on the BOF, Audio Transcript of Shirky’s Ontology is Overrated Session

  Related: Cory Doctorow on Metacrap, Clay Shirky on the Semantic Web and on folksonomies, Weinberg, post-Etech, on broad vs. narrow folksonomies

More to come…

Just as Body Worlds II is closing its (very successful, extended) Los Angeles exhibition, a competing circus of preserved bodies sets up shop in San Francisco. See theuniversewithin.org.

For gruesome example photos, which I had to file for a press credential to publish, see my piece on the original Body Worlds.

The Universe Within opens on March 31.

Here’s a change of scenery for my 2560x1024 desktop… NASA’s awesome Earth at Night image. Click the thumbnails to download the fullsize images.

(Previous desktop image: Mount Shasta.)

If you’re still driving a single-monitor system, you should check out this deal at Amazon: a 17'' Samsung LCD, 1024x1280 resolution, for $275. You could buy two of these for less than I spent on my first Samsung 17'' LCD. Arrange them side-by-side and your productivity will double, at least. Especially if you use one of my cool desktop backgrounds.

(It’s actually true that using a bigger virtual desktop increases productivity. If my physical desk were bigger, I’d add a 3rd LCD in portrait orientation between the other two.)