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In this issue: National Condom Week
Web site recommendations: IT/politics/photos/misc

I know you're probably thinking Happy Valentine's Day which is nice and
all (or silly depending on where you stand) but I'd prefer to call your
attention to something else that kicks off today: National Condom Week.
I realize it's not relevant to all of my readers personally, but the focus
here is more of a public health issue. Read up on it on these pages:
The Truth About Condoms
http://www.ppcw.org/outreach/NCW.asp
&
Take Action! Send a Condom to Africa in the President's Name
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/sendCondom
&
Spread Condoms - Not Aids
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/pr/030214_condoms.html
&
Counting Condoms: How Many Are Needed for HIV Prevention Efforts?
http://www.popact.org/resources/publications/condomscount/CountingCondoms.htm

And now on to other sites. There's less IT related material (although
I'll start with those as usual) and more political content, I guess a sign
of the times.

Programmers redesign Back button so it retraces your steps (MUCH more
efficient than the current model!)
http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/021230/021230-3.html
(a more detailed piece is forthcoming in a journal I'll post about in a
future issue as soon as it goes public)

Computer scientists campaign for trustworthy e-voting
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000290.html

3D model search engine
http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

How MP3 Files Work
http://www.howstuffworks.com/mp3.htm/printable

FBI Seeks Hacker Who Stole eBay Info
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&ncid=1212&e=1&u=/ap/20030208/ap_on_hi_te/\
ebay_hacker&sid=95573501

New York Times' Web Site: Plans Print-Like Ad Format
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1044045107442450944,00.html

Electronic Surveillance Spies a Perfect Gift
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/technology/10GIFT.html

Amazon Tries Word of Mouth - no more TV ads
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/business/media/10ADCO.html

Senate Remarks: Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences
http://www.senate.gov/~byrd/byrd_newsroom/byrd_news_feb/news_2003_february/news_\
2003_february_9.html

College Try: Why universities should stop encouraging applicants to take
the SATs over and over again
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/01/vigdor-j-01-24.html

Partial Issue: The "partial-birth" abortion debate is back. And it's just
as contrived as ever.
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/02/sullivan-am-02-11.html

Catholic Hospitals Refuse Patients Contraception
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1209/context/archive

"independent reviews of survival equipment and outdoors gear"
http://www.equipped.org/

NJ Governor proposes eliminating all state funding for arts and culture
http://www.artpridenj.com/ - suggests ways to take action

A Prolific Genghis Khan, It Seems, Helped People the World
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/science/11KHAN.html

Some GREAT political cartoons
http://www.claybennett.com/archives.html

Gulf Wars Episode II: Clone of the Attacks
http://www.thescreamonline.com/images3-1/clone2.html

Iraq Goes Up For Auction on EBay
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1093&ncid=1093&e=10&u=/pcworld/200301\
31/tc_pcworld/109146

It's Not Easy Being Orange - thoughts about orange terrorist threat level
from an orange-loving Princetonian
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/02/11/opinion/7244.shtml

UK census: hundreds of thousands affiliate with Jedi faith
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2757067.stm

Did you know that the Swiss electorate accounts for about half the
referendum ballots conducted worldwide?
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20030209/D7P36ER00.html

What the Hell is the Fibonacci Series - very nice little flash
http://www.textism.com/bucket/fib.html

Breathtaking nature photographs
http://zoltantakacs.com/

Snow Crystals
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

Today's quote:
""It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it.
And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Recently on Eszter's Blog:
E-voting - striking the right balance
NJ art funds in danger
Nature photos
Political cartoons
Innovative ways of teaching
A penny a song
Blog types
Power law distributions and blogs
From above
See them here: http://www.esztersblog.com

From E-BLOG: Blog types (2/10/03)
See http://www.esztersblog.com/archives/00000191.html for underlying links
or to comment

Blog types

Yesterday's entry inspired me to think about blog types in an attempt to
create a classification scheme (I said earlier that's an interest of
mine).

First of all, there is style and then there is content.

Regarding style, there are the interactive blogs and closed ones mostly
based on whether the blogger allows for comments on the page. This gets a
bit blurred by the Trackback feature on Moveable Type (MT) which is an
indirect way to allow for comments. (Trackback allows for links to entries
on other MT blogs that refer to the entry with the Trackback option.)
Unfortunately, the interactive nature of this feature is limited by the
fact that it's only available to other MT users.

Interactivity isn't only relevant via comments or the Trackback feature,
however. There are bloggers who engage the content of other blogs in their
posts and those who simply post material without ever (or almost never)
referring to other blogs.

As for content, there are all sorts. There are those who comment on very
personal topics. Then there are the political commentary types (including
lots of economic and social commentary). Some bloggers comment on anything
and everything whether political or personal. Then there are those who
focus on a particular topic, say law or information technology (both
pretty broad, but still somewhat confined in relative terms).

Merging the styles and contents, here are some types.

* personal journal (mostly includes descriptions about the author's
day-to-day activities perhaps not directly aimed at but certainly of most
interest to friends and family)

* links galore (offers lots of links to elsewhere on the Web with little
commentary on behalf of the blogger about the links)

* interactive commentary (has a lot of commentary on a particular topic -
often political, economic or social commentary - which often addresses and
engages in a conversation with commentary from other sites)

* one-way commentary (commentary without any interactive nature, almost
like reading the editorial pages of an established media outlet but the
author doubles as editor)

* hodge-podge (addresses all sorts of topics, sometimes offers links
without much commentary, sometimes offers commentary without (m)any links)

Of course, there may be overlaps which makes this less useful than I'd
like, but it's a start.