dan collier

The video gets funnier as it goes along.

4 suicides – Interesting art on a delicate subject. Blublu.org has lots of great street art photos listed under “Walls“. Here are a few of my favorites(1, 2, 3).

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Joint Failure – I’ve posted before about Andrew Bacevich. In his recent “Ideas” piece for the Boston Globe, he questions the suitability of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as currently established. In this piece he reviews the problem, claiming that the problem started early in the history of JCS.

Although himself a five-star general, Eisenhower railed in private throughout his presidency about members of the Joint Chiefs conspiring to undermine his policies whenever they happened to collide with cherished interests of the military services. His Farewell Address, warning that the “military-industrial complex” could well “endanger our liberties or democratic processes,” amounted to a tacit admission that as commander-in-chief he had lost control of his generals.

The problem more recently is generals that were unable or unwilling to offer honest and forthright advice to policy makers. I heard Bacevich on NPR’s On Point this morning discussing possible alternatives to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Seemingly humble and wise, he appears to be more interested in starting the discussion than providing easy answers. In another recent editorial for the LA Times, he slams the ’08 candidates offering the sound-bite solution of increasing the size of the military to fight fundamentalist terrorism.

Love and the Internets – A comic titled “Fixed Width” on xkcd. One of many cute drawings.

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“Welcome to Palestine” – This article by Robert Fisk is about both about the coup in Gaza and Middle East politics in general. The author is a 25-year resident of Beirut and widely respected Middle East reporter. This view is mainstream among Europeans, so it is remarkable that such a reasonable argument is almost never put forward in the US popular media.

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We Feel Fine – This site is hard to categorize. Part blog aggregator, part internet visualization, part peep-hole.

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Top Ten Chinese Thinkers – A tongue-in-cheek review of Chinese thinkers on the blog of a dead warlord plotting his future revolution.
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Beautiful landscape photography – Ladislav Kamarad has captured some amazing photos. And he is publishing high-quality images online, something too many photographers seem to be afraid of doing. There are lots to choose from, but this is my favorite.

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Honk if you’re married and can’t cope with anger – Some classic Dave Barry recently republished online by The Miami Herald. During my final week with a company during late 2000, I read every Dave Barry article the Miami Herald had online. Now they are republishing material from before they had a website.

Lawrence Lessig published a Disclosure Statement that is worth reading. I regularly hear professionals lecture on topics in which they have financial interests that they fail to disclose adequately or at all. Obviously, that is problematic. But Lessig asks another important question: is disclosure enough? Following his “Non-Corruption (NC) Principal”, his answer is no.

If you believe I am following my principle, then you can still believe I am biased because I’m a liberal, or wrong because I’m an idiot, or overly attentive because I’m easily flattered, or under-attentive because I punish people who behave badly. All that the NC principle promises is that I am not saying what I am saying because of money.

I wonder how Lessig handles his retirement savings. One would assume he owns broad based mutual funds that invest in every sector of the economy. If so, his statements about Google Books, for example, may directly impact Google share prices and indirectly effect his retirement savings.

In thinking about what my disclosure statement would say, I realize I’m more financially tied to projects which I’m involved in. My clients may pay my bills, but they don’t buy my voice. If I had to craft a disclosure statement today, I’m not sure how I would handle commenting on clients’ projects and my own commercial projects. Maybe disclosure is enough in my case. In the past and until further notice, comments on project in which I have a financial interest will have a simple disclosure of that fact.
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