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Lists: 2004, a collection of almost 500 “best of” lists for 2004 grouped by category.

I posted about their 2003 lists previously.

So I’m going on about cellular automata all the time and you’re thinking, “Yes, but can CAs get me high?” I’ll say! Stephen Wolfram’s mascot is the textile coneshell, famous for having a one-dimensional CA wrapped around its shell.

Apparently no one told the Santa Clara Democratic Party that it's supposed to lick Bush's ankles and roll over to have its belly scratched. The blog is feisty the way an opposition party should be. Elisa Camahort, who writes it, is keeping a day-by-day count-up of Bush's outrages. Good, partisan stuff - livelier and more frequent than the DNC's Kicking Ass blog.

According to surveys, 10 percent of Icelanders believe in elves. Another staggering 80 percent will not say they exactly believe, but neither are they willing to totally rule out their existence.

In doing this site for the past six and a half years, I've grown quite fond of short form writing, especially nonfiction short form writing. Magazine articles, newspaper pieces, weblog posts, etc. As I've said before, I'd love to compile an end-of-the-year Best Online Writing book or do a monthly Reader's Digest-style magazine that compiles the best short-form writing from a variety of sources, but there's a lot of hassle to deal with (securing rights, working with publishers, killing trees).

Luckily, the magic of the Internet allows you to do things that aren't quite perfect but work well enough that it's worth the trade-off. In lieu of a book or magazine compilation of the best writing of 2004, here are some of the best things I linked to in the past year. The list consists mostly of magazine and newspaper articles with a few other types of media sprinkled in and is more objective than my favorite weblogs of 2004 list. If, unlike me, you've got a little bit of slack time at the end of the year at your place of employ, this should keep you busy for the rest of the day. Enjoy.

The Buddhabrot Set. An amazing universe of structure, spirituality, and mathematical intrigue.
Jared Tarbell, Gallery of Computation

Big and Bad. How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety.
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Victoria's Secret. A look at one of Prada's top saleswomen.
Mimi Swartz, The New Yorker

Street Smarts. Learning from JetBlue
Norm Brodsky, Inc. Magazine

Khaaan!!
khaaan.com

The Way We Eat Now. Ancient bodies collide with modern technology to produce a flabby, disease-ridden populace.
Craig Lambert, Harvard Magazine

Microsoft Research DRM talk
Cory Doctorow, craphound.com

What the Bagel Man Saw. Honesty and breakfast.
Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, The New York Times Magazine

The Decline of Fashion Photography. An argument in pictures.
Karen Lehrman, Slate

mashuga's Fotolog. Portraiture of the homeless.
Gary F. Clark, fotolog.net

Ikeaphobia and its discontents
Adam Greenfield, v-2 Organisation

Birnbaum v. Michael Lewis. Moneyball, Red Sox, journalism, and screenwriting.
Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News

A Corporation That Breaks the Greed Mold
Jim Hightower, AlterNet

New Details Surface. Dick Cheney and Pat Leahy throw down.
Paul Sims, The New Yorker

The Anarchist's Cookbook. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods.
Charles Fishman, Fast Company

Week in Review. Hand drawn representations of the news.
Week in Review

Why don't we do it in the road? A new school of traffic design says we should get rid of stop signs and red lights and let cars, bikes and people mingle together.
Linda Baker, Salon

Discovery of Flores Man. It sounds too incredible to be true, but this is not a hoax.
Nature

The Searchers. Radiohead's unquiet revolution.
Alex Ross, The New Yorker

On the Record: David Neeleman, JetBlue Airways. Interview with the CEO of JetBlue
San Francisco Chronicle

How not to buy happiness. Can money make you happy?
Robert H. Frank, Daedalus

The Vice Guide to Everything. The DOs and DONTs of modern life.
Vice Magazine

Misinterpreted Movie Titles. Renaming movies with literal descriptions of their movie posters.
Something Awful

Blinded By Science. How 'Balanced' Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality.
Chris Mooney, Columbia Journalism Review

The True Story of Audion. How a piece of software got made.
Cabel Sasser, Panic

Something Borrowed. Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life?
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

The Bell Curve. What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are?
Atul Gawande, The New Yorker

Skeletal Systems. A character study of 22 present and past cartoon characters.
Michael Paulus, michaelpaulus.com

The Ketchup Conundrum. Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Decentralized Intelligence What Toyota can teach the 9/11 commission about intelligence gathering.
Duncan Watts, Slate

The way I rolled. A report on the Usher concert.
Mr. Sun, Mr. Sun!

Memory and Manipulation. The trials of Elizabeth Loftus, defender of the wrongly accused.
Sasha Abramsky, LA Weekly

Designs For Working. Why your bosses want to turn your new office into Greenwich Village.
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Born of the Fourth of July. The statistics are not good for a baby born in the 24th and 6th day of gestation.
Eric C. Snowdeal III, snowdeal.org

John Stewart on Crossfire. You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.
CNN Crossfire

Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor. An interview with the noted SF author.
Slashdot

Fear Itself. Learning to live in the age of terrorism
Gene Weingarten, The Washington Post

Consider the Lobster. For 56 years, the Maine Lobster Festival has been drawing crowds with the promise of sun, fun, and fine food.
David Foster Wallace, Gourmet

Aerial Photography. Earth from above.
Yann Bertrand

Child Portraiture. Muted works of vibrant mundanity.
Loretta Lux, lorettalux.de

Food Without Fear. When it comes to food, Americans have the tendency to lose all reason.
Dan Barber, The New York Times

One myth deeply entrenched in our language is that of the "Lemming Suicide Plunge" - where lemmings, apparently overcome by deep-rooted impulses, deliberately run over a cliff in their millions, to be dashed to their deaths on the rocks below, or to drown in the raging ocean. Indeed, this myth is now a metaphor for the behaviour of crowds of people who foolishly follow each other, lemming-like, regardless of the consequences. This particular myth began with a Disney movie.

Disney's True Life Adventures film series did great things for the advancement of understanding the world around us. However, the lemming suicide plunge debacle was not one of them. Dr. Karl, from Great Moments in Science examples the complete lemming myth.

We previously had no doubt as to the boundless limits of human stupidity, but we’re feeling pretty refreshed about all that now: apparently thousands of people on Christmas morning wake up to new cellphones and want to test it out, so they call the first number that comes to mind: 911 (what, 411 or 611 or moviefone wasn’t good enough?). Apparently Californian emergency call centers on Christmas day have as much as a 50% non-emergency rate of callers just hanging up or saying “I’m just testing out my cell phone.” We wish we were making this up.

[Via MGN]

This one is about quantum Darwinism.  Worlds in which micro-states collapse into macro-states coherently have superior survival properties, or so it would seem...

One fun thing about traveling all the time is renting different kinds of cars. This week we have a Jeep Liberty. I just don't get the SUV craze. I just re-read Malcolm Gladwell's article on SUVs. It's a must-read if you are considering buying a car. You should see the quotes from auto-industry engineers and marketers. Amazing that our government even allows these things on the road.

My Ford Focus handles better, is more comfortable, has a better stereo, costs less, gets better mileage, has more power, and has a quieter engine.

Here's Photo Net's Photograph of the Week Gallery for 2004. There are some incredible photos. Like this one, a 30-second exposure by Brian Klimowski: Lightning over Northern Arizona.

Spotted in Toronto, where I spent part of last weekend - while George Bush is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, Time Canada’s “Newsmaker of the Year” is Maher Arar. It makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

While we're talking about Memeorandum, there's some other news sites out there:

Ten by ten. News in pictures.

Findory. Learns your interests as you read and makes a better newspaper for you.

Newsmap. The bigger the square, the bigger the news.

Press Display. Links to tons of newspapers around the world.

Newspaper Direct. Tons of newspapers links too.

Yahoo Daily News.

MSNBC's Newsbot.

Google's News Page.

Where do you get your news?

What is the essence of a snowflake? If you take a look at this amazing photo gallery of snowflakes from National Geographic, you might be able to tell. The photo gallery is part of a Feb. 2004 story about how snowflakes form their unique shapes. One of the major questions scientists are studying is what factors, such as temperature and wind, play in how the snow crystals form. The main scientist mentioned in this story has a book out on the subject, which has plenty more pretty snowflake photos taken by photographer Patricia Rasmussen to stare at. 

Dave Eggers writes about Spamalot and talks about Monty Python.

John Dvorak explains how to read a blog. It’s actually pretty good. I’m going to test it out on a few friends who still don’t “get it” and see if it helps.

Crichton, as he deserves [Pharyngula]

Since the election, as you've doubtless noticed, I haven't had much to say here.

Having lost that crusade - and I do think we lost, election skullduggery notwithstanding - I have been quietly gathering myself up for the countless smaller contests arrayed before us that, taken collectively, will determine the future of freedom in America. We can't afford to lose many of those, and we will have to emulate our authoritarian adversaries' disciplined resolve if we are are to prevail.

As it happens, I am already personally engaged in one of these battles, and it has been testing my resolve for over a year. Now that it seems to be coming to a head, I want to tell you about it. My own liberty is at stake, but so, I think, is the liberty of anyone who wishes to travel in America without fear of humiliation or arrest.

On September 15, 2003, shortly after Burning Man, I was hauled off an airplane that was about to depart San Francisco for New York and charged with the misdemeanor possession of controlled substances that had allegedly been discovered during a search of my checked baggage.

I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to relate this event. Embarrassment certainly played no part. Generally, I like to be fully disclosed, no matter how far I may wander beyond the normative fringe. I suppose that, for legal reasons, I wanted to avoid any apparent admission of guilt, and only now do I realize that it's possible to tell this tale without making one. This is because, in most cases - and this is almost certainly one of them - contraband that is illegally discovered does not legally exist. If that seems a technicality to you, you may want to re-read the 4th Amendment, as well as the subsequent case law (notably Mapp v. Ohio) which sets forth the "exclusionary rule." However shredded by the War on Some Drugs, the 4th Amendment remains part of the Constitution. In order to see that it goes on meaning something, I decided to fight this charge and have spent the last 14 months doing so.

Now I will tell you my story.

Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns...

Dry, deadly quicksand. Mark Frauenfelder: Mark Hurst sez: "The NYTimes reported today on Dutch researchers whose research suggests that quicksand may indeed exist *without* water. This 'dry quicksand' is so lethal that dropping a weighted ping pong ball on the surface is enough to make the ball disappear almost instantly. See the video material on this site." Link [Boing Boing]

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for posting Michael Kinsleys challenge to President Bush’s desire to privatize Social Security. I personally couldnt think of anything more threatening to our future, or more likely to cause economic calamity of the highest order.

Before I post Mr Kinsleys challenge, let me define my fear, and some anecdotal evidence to support that fear.

The Presidents plan in simplistic terms, is to allow all of us taxpayers to take a small portion of our social security contributions and invest that money as we see fit. The premise is that by investing in things that the Social Security Fund cant , each of us can earn greater returns and better protect our financial future. Wrong.

Of course, with the search for greater returns, comes greater risk. Now I always thought that the Social Security program itself was designed to protect us from ourselves. That those of us who might be able to save, didnt save enough to protect us at retirement, and those of us who were never in a position to save, had a fallback that we as a nation all contributed to.

Along comes the Presidents proposal which kind of flips the logic. Now the admission is no longer that we as individuals can no longer save money, its that we as a country can no longer save money. Our politicians who might have been able to save money in better times, didnt.  As a result, as a country it appears that we will be unable to meet our future obligations for Social Security.

Rather than shaving off all the pork we feed our politicians, and beyond in order to create funding to meet our obligation, the President has decided to relinquish part of the obligation back to us, in hopes that each of us make more than the government could,  and pay for more of our own, and our childrens future. To put it another way, keep some of your social security contributions and play the financial markets lottery.

In his challenge,  Mr Kinsley correctly describes why it wont work. Let me give you two examples why its even worse than he describes.

1. Our Pension System

In the first example, as described so well by the NY Times, when companies were given the chance to make investments to meet their obligations to their pensioners, they were unable to do so. They had the option of taking on more risk, or playing it safe. They took on the risk and lost.  True, there was the inherent use of pension accounting to scam wall street on earnings, but when its all said in done, when corporations took on the job of investing for the financial security their retirees, they were unable to do so, and turned to the government funding of The Pensions Benefit Guaranty Corp to bail them out.

If the experts that run our pension system had the expectation of financial protection by the government if they failed, do we really think that all of us wont have the same expectation ? Does anyone really believe that the politicians later in this century wont latch on to “protect the unfortunate who fell prey to former President Bushs’ misguided Social Security bailout ?” as a means of buying votes ?  And each and every one of us knows it and will think it when we make our choice of “investments”. Why not go for the jackpot if you know that when you hit 70 you will be reimbursed ? 

2. The First Command Financial Scandal

What our President fails to realize is that we wont choose where we invest that money. 

We will be marketed to, and sold financial products by companies who want that money. Buy media and brokerage stocks if this change happens. We will be inundated with more dumbass commercials about how this broker from this firm and that firm wants to help secure our future. Translated, they know we are suckers with the money burning a hole in our pockets and they are going to make a fortune in commissions on us. There will be so many scams there wont be enough pages in the Wall Street Journal to cover them.

In the First Command scandal, our government couldnt prevent thousands and thousands of military personnel from being sold an investment vehicle that took HALF their first year contribution and paid it to First Financial in commissions !. Not only is it obscene in principal, but financially, that first year money will grow  the most from compounding of whatever interest or gains that might occur. So they robbed the people who we entrust to protect our country TWICE. Personally, I think the principals at that company deserve to be in jail for a long, long time. Instead the were fined $12mm dollars. Whoever at the SEC or NASD settled for those fines is gutless, spineless and has absolutely no conscious. Hopefully its still possible for criminal charges to be filed against those slime and someone will step in and do so.

 Those in the military who allowed them to walk in the door and ripoff our servicepeople deserve punishment as well. No one in command should be that stupid.

IF privatization occurs, commissions, marketing fees and every other service and corporate fee tht can be invented are going to be squeezed from us. The last time I looked, I didnt pay commission on my social security contribution. I didnt pay asset management fees. I didnt pay for commercials of brokers and their clients staring lovingly at each other telling me the beauty of investing in oil futures.

Our military couldnt prevent its soldiers from scams.  Our soldiers couldnt protect themselves.  Our pensioners couldnt trust their former employers from playing to wall street and taking more than reasonable risk, knowing that they could be bailed out.

What makes us think its going to be any different for most of us ? Sure, some of us will use the money and get some better returns, but  we are already making better use of our savings and probably need the opportunity to invest our social security the least.

My bet is that it will be the people who need the money the most, will take the greatest chances. Why wouldnt they ? Its found money. They have every reasonable expectation that the government will bail them out if they dont strike it rich. Besides, do we really think they will be able to resist the Social Security Lottery game that we know every lottery state will invent to get some of that money ? If your social security number matches, you win all of your lost social security money back.

Here is Michael Kinsleys challenge. Read it. Email it and fax it to your senator and congressman. Forward copies to friends. Its your family’s future at stake

A BLEG FROM KINSLEY: My old boss and friend, Mike Kinsley, now running the editorial pages at the Los Angeles Times, poses the following conundrum, which he invites any of you to refute. Yep, he’s a big media guy turning to blogs for an answer. Write responses to him at michael.kinsley@latimes.com. Here’s his argument:

My contention: Social Security privatization is not just unlikely to succeed, for various reasons that are subject to discussion. It is mathematically certain to fail. Discussion is pointless.

The usual case against privatization is that (1) millions of inexperienced investors may end up worse off, and (2) stocks don’t necessarily do better than bonds over the long-run, as proponents assume.But privatization won’t work for a better reason: it can’t possibly work, even in theory. The logic is not very complicated.

1. To “work,” privatization must generate more money for retirees than current arrangements. This bonus is supposed to be extra money in retirees’ pockets and/or it is supposed to make up for a reduction in promised benefits, thus helping to close the looming revenue gap.

2. Where does this bonus come from? There are only two possibilities: from greater economic growth, or from other people.

3. Greater economic growth requires either more capital to invest, or smarter investment of the same amount of capital. Privatization will not lead to either of these.

a) If nothing else in the federal budget changes, every dollar deflected from the federal treasury into private social security accounts must be replaced by a dollar that the government raises in private markets. So the total pool of capital available for private investment remains the same.

b) The only change in decision-making about capital investment is that the decisions about some fraction of the capital stock will be made by people with little or no financial experience. Maybe this will not be the disaster that some critics predict. But there is no reason to think that it will actually increase the overall return on capital.

4. If the economy doesn’t produce more than it otherwise would, the Social Security privatization bonus must come from other investors, in the form of a lower return.

a) This is in fact the implicit assumption behind the notion of putting Social Security money into stocks, instead of government bonds, because stocks have a better long-term return. The bonus will come from those saps who sell the stocks and buy the bonds.

b) In other words, privatization means betting the nation’s most important social program on a theory that cannot be true unless many people are convinced that it’s false.

c) Even if the theory is true, initially, privatization will make it false. The money newly available for private investment will bid up the price of (and thus lower the return on) stocks, while the government will need to raise the interest on bonds in order to attract replacement money.

d) In short, there is no way other investors can be tricked or induced into financing a higher return on Social Security.

5. If the privatization bonus cannot come from the existing economy, and cannot come from growth, it cannot exist. And therefore, privatization cannot work.

Q.E.D.

If you had to make a list of the top twenty-five adventure books of all time, which would you choose? You’d probably include Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, perhaps his Into the Wild as well. Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm would probably make this list as well, if only because these books are part of the current zeitgeist, but you know they will remains classics of the genre.  

Then reaching back, you’d probably add F.A. Worsley’s Endurance, and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia (which I read while in Patagonia and thought it one of the best book’s I’d ever read. Period.). Perhaps then Apsley Cherry-Garrard The Worst Journey in the World and Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard. These are all books that come to mind (among numerous others) and all of them make Outside Magazine’s 25 best adventure books of all time.

But would Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Wind, Sand And Stars be on your list? I wouldn’t have included it, but that’s only because I’ve never read it. But now that it actually tops Outside’s list, I’m going to have to reconsider and read the damn thing. Anyway, take a look at the Outside list and check off the ones you’ve read. We welcome comments here on any books you think are missing, and those on the list you’ve enjoyed.

Here is a series of truly amazing photos taken by various photographers as part of National Wildlife Magazine’s thirty-fourth annual photography competition. One after another these photos are superb, and convey the mysteries and magnificence of nature in a way rarely captured on film.

 O'Reilly has just released its latest book in the Hacks series: Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using your Brain in the World. I haven't see it yet, but there are several cool sample hacks at the OR website, including: Hack 11: Why People Don't Work Like Elevator Buttons, Map Your Blind Spot, Glimpse the Gaps in Your Vision, Create Illusionary Depth with Sunglasses, Neural Noise Isn't a Bug; It's a Feature, Improve Visual Attention Through Video Games, Why Can't You Tickle Yourself?, and Make the Caffeine Habit Taste Good. Link

UPDATE: Anne Galloway sez: "Saw your post on Mind Hacks and thought I'd point to the accompanying weblog - in case you hadn't seen it." Link

Dude!

The Plain English Campaign presents its annual awards.

Each year, we present awards for clear -- and baffling -- use of English. The 2004 awards will take place on Monday 6 December (Plain English Day).

Donald Rumsfeld was a winner last year, with this statement:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Folks are building a Creation Museaum near my hometown in Kentucky as "a wonderful alternative to the evolutionary natural history museums that are turning countless minds against the gospel of Christ and the authority of the Scripture." I encourage you to take the virtual tour of this $25 million attraction. You will think George Saunders made it up.

I just became aware of this new Robert Anton Wilson site. It has some downloadable mp3's.

RAWilson Fans - A Time Binding Site

Courtesy Disinfo.

The networks won't run an ad by the UCC which says "like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation." And their justification? "the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks" So, because Bush doesn't want federal or state recognition of marriage, a church can't even advertise that they welcome anyone in their doors? This is so fucked up.

To people in rich countries like the U. S., it sounds ridiculous to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. But Americans are an élite, dependent on oil and minerals that must often be iimproted from countries with poorer health and nutrition. If one could choose between being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice?

Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and logest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering façade, and that have so far eluded us?

Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn’t emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"