The Guardian on the rumor that Ahmed Best will be leading the Uruks

What with the dark skin, broad faces and dreadlocks, it’s a wonder Tolkien didn’t give his baddies a natural sense of rhythm, says John Yatt

Short fiction on social software, this week only, skim the parts on strong AI.

Here was a true Bakhtinian carnival landscape whose sole interest lay in keeping itself in perpetual motion. The code for the alpha version of DIALOGOS was still rough, unstable, and far from the finished product that Bart and his team envisioned. But Bart asked if I’d like to help road test it. I wasn’t doing anything but working on a novel. I said I’d be happy to.

Towards a Modern Ecology

Oreillyon computers for albatross.
Vampire Ecology on carrying capacity of Sunnydale. (funny for non-Buffy fans) Following on last weeks links on facetted classification, mark has a great intro to XFML, a format for representing facetted data.