parasites

hourlong RadioLab audio episode on parasites. excellent

audio here : http://audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast603parasites.mp3

also recently added to my delicious mediachannel

geek rapture ?

ABC Radio National's All In The Mind podcast on the technical singularity. a nice warning about geek rapture :) , alongside a nice description of the idea.

audio here. short, well produced, easy to listen to.

adding it to my slowly growing mediachannel tag, of online media i think worth consuming.

emergent metadata

the idea in the general: is to continuously grow metadata from the use of the data - keeping a history of use, learning patterns, links, and contexts from that history. eventually establishing a strong semantic layer over the data.

in the specific: a plugin for my personal wiki of choice, WikidPad. The plugin, lets call it WikidPadMonitor for now, when in 'learning mode' should collect information about the wikipages you open, the wikilinks you follow, and the patterns of wiki and tag usage - and use this to grow useable metadata.

Eventually, this emergent metadata could be used to establish a new measure of the strength of the links between wikipages, make predictions about the page being looked for, and discover context..

well, thats the idea, anyhow: growing metadata in the wikigarden.

er. i'm hardly ever here anymore

more likely here or here

march against xenophobia and hate

The Social Movements Indaba is mobilising social movements, immigrant communities, NGOs, unions, concerned residents from around the province for a march this Saturday, 24th of May. The march will gather at the Pieter Roos Park, corner Empire and Queens Rds, Hillbrow from 9a.m., proceed through Hillbrow and stop at the Departments of Home Affairs and Housing before ending at the Library Gardens.

The message marchers will be conveying is that our struggle is common and knows no borders. Everyone who wants to make their voices heard should join us – our struggle knows no borders.

Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008
Time: 9:00am - 12:00pm
Where: start of the march is the Pieter Roos Park, corner Empire and Queens Rds, Hillbrow
Street: corner Empire and Queens Rds
City: Johannesburg, South Africa

Bring placards, banners, friends!


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tedtalks

the last two posts where on video lectures from that TED talks thing - theres a number of good talks in there, some are just downright brilliant, they are mixed up with another number that I'm uncertain about, but most are pretty interesting, despite the somewhat corporate feel to it.

i'll tag my favourites there http://del.icio.us/jaysen/tedtalks+@rated.01.
maybe drop a note in the comments if you stumble across any good ones yourself.

african fractals

This ones on fractals and self-organising algorithms in African culture/history. Check it out if you're at all interested in fractals, bottom-up self-organising patterns, or using indigenous knowledge in current solutions

synthetic genomics

Good video (another of the worthwhile from the tedtalks series) with plenty to think about in microbiology, genetics, the upcoming synthetic genomics, and its potential..


heres an audio npr interview with Venter with some additional info.

independent diplomat

A profile of former British diplomat Carne Ross, who resigned in protest to the Iraq war, He now offers his service as an independent diplomat - currently working on the Western Sahara issue.

the tag in negative

Just had an idea for del.icio.us. Well actually, for tagging in general, and in particular, for additions to a set of tagging plugins for wikidpad that i'm working on.

You know how you can ask delicious to give you bookmarks with an intersection of tags by using tag1+tag2+tag3 in the url. As with:
http://del.icio.us/jaysen/dev+audio ..which will show all bookmarks with both the tags, 'dev' and 'audio'.
Well, wouldn't the following form be useful:
http://del.icio.us/jaysen/dev+audio-radio - to give us all those tagged with 'dev' and 'audio', but not with those also tagged with 'radio'

It would mean that we'd have to say goodbye to hyphenated tags, but still, i think the added functionality would be worth it.. and i never liked hyphenated tags anyway.

to be continued..