If you're against the US going to war against Iraq and in NYC tomorrow, you might want to show your support at the Anti-War Rally. The rally starts at noon on 1st Ave stretching north from 49th street (approx. here near the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza).

You might notice that this is a rally and not a march. NYC rejected a request from the organizers to hold a march past the United Nations complex. I can understand both sides of the issue, but I get uncomfortable when the government tells people where and when they can assemble, march, and protest. I hope they march anyway, permit or no.

I'm sure you've heard. The guy that does those "Dude, you're getting a Dell" TV commercials got busted here in NYC for buying pot in a kilt. I'm told the pot buying part is the illegal activity, not the kilt-wearing. Anyway, anyone with column inches in a magazine, newspaper, or weblog fell all over themselves trying to come up with the worst "dude, you're getting..." jokes. A sampling for your "enjoyment":

Dude, you're getting a cell.
Dude, you're getting off with a warning.
Dude, you're getting arrested.
Dude, you've been busted.
Dude, you're getting a blunt.
Dude, you're getting a record.
Dude, you're getting a rap sheet.
Dude, you're under arrest.
Dude, you're getting busted.
Dude, you're getting some weed.
Dude, you're getting lots of PR.
Dude, you're getting a dime bag.
Dude, you're getting off easy.
Dude, you're getting raped in jail.
Dude, you're getting a cavity search.

I'm sure everyone is just getting warmed up for when Ashton Kutcher gets nicked. I sense a thousand "Dude, where's my pot?" jokes itching to escape word processors everywhere.

(Ok, this wasn't working earlier, but it's fixed now. Get to it!)

Reversible is a site that collects referers and trackbacks from pages that point to or ping it. For example, if I link to and then click through to http://reversible.org/kottke, that page will link back to me. And creating pages on Reversible is easy...just type in anything after the domain name: e.g. http://reversible.org/sports/basketball/kevingarnett.

One way to think about inbound links to Reversible is as votes. A link to a page from your site is a vote...one site, one vote. I'm going to vote on some stuff, just for fun:

I like Paris in the fall
I like Dr. Strangelove
I like pancakes on bunnies
I like taking photos with my digital camera
I like Infinite Jest
I like Meg
I drink Pepsi
I like Radiohead
I don't think the US should go to war with Iraq right now
I like scented candles
I like my TiVo
I like typography
I like weblogs
I like BoingBoing

Join in if you'd like by adding these or other links to your site.

A couple of notable developments in the whole power laws and weblog discussion. Steven Johnson states that, ok, the distribution of influence in the weblog world follows a power law...now what? If we as participants in that network don't want things to work that way, is there anything we can do about it?

Prompted by all the power law talk, David Sifry is now using non-linear equations to determine recent interesting weblogs and recent interesting newcomers for Technorati. The idea is that the distribution of weblogs is non-linear (the power law curve isn't a straight line), so why not use non-linear equations to level the playing field a little.

What David is doing is actually why I graphed the Technorati data in the first place. I was trying to figure out how you could make the interesting blogs list not favor the top-linked sites all the time (200 new sites linking to Movable Type is not interesting considering it already has 6000 sites linking to it).

Here's an email I sent David a couple of days ago:

"I started thinking about [the graph of the data] in relation to the Interesting Recent Blogs list and how it could be made more useful. Because it's the biggest, Google is always going to be at the top of the list, and some little weblog with 4 new posts (out of a total of 6) is never going to get anywhere near the top. I was thinking that by analyzing the distribution of the links, you could introduce a adjustment factor based on the rank of the site relative to the #1 site. The problem is, I can't remember enough of my college math to get from the power law equation to this magical adjustment factor. You might have better luck."

The idea is that instead of using a quadratic or cubic equation that kinda fits the data, you use a power law equation generated by the data itself to exactly fit the data (or nearly so). The power law equation I derived using the limited sample of the top 100 list is:

y = 5989.8x^(-0.8309)

where y is the # of inbound blogs and x is the rank of the site. I plotted the top 100 data again and tried to fit three curves to it:

The dotted blue line is a linear equation, the dashed red line is a quadratic equation, and the solid black line is the aforementioned power law equation. As you can see, the linear and quadratic equations fit the data poorly. The R-squared for the linear equation is 0.31, 0.55 for the quadratic, and 0.99 for the power law equation. So the quadratic is an improvement over the linear equation, but neither compare to the excellent fit of the power law and the excellent results that would follow from using it for Technorati's interesting recent blogs lists.

Many systems and phenomena are distributed according to a power law distribution. A power law applies to a system when large is rare and small is common. The distribution of individual wealth is a good example of this: there are a very few rich men and lots & lots of poor folks. A familiar way to think about power laws is the 80/20 rule: 80% of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population.

It's been shown that the distribution of links on the web scales according to a power law, so it comes as no surprise that the distribution of links to weblogs does as well. Taking the top 100 most linked to weblogs on Technorati as a data set (specifically from 1/24/03), I used Excel to plot and fit a curve to the data:

The data conforms quite well to a power law curve. The R-squared value, a measure of how well the curve fits the data (1.0 is a perfect fit), is 0.9918. I ran a similar analysis of the distribution of the top 200 inbound referers to kottke.org and observed a fit of the data to a power law curve (R-squared = ~0.95). Clay Shirky showed that the distribution of the number of outbound links in the LiveJournal community follows a power law. Paul Hammond has observed a similar pattern with his outgoing links.**

This NEC study reveals that the deviation of a set of data from the power law correlates to how much competition is present in the system. The better the fit, the more competitive the environment is. Again, no surprise that the system of weblogs is a highly competitive one.

But what are weblogs competing for? Matt Webb posits that power laws arise due to scarcity. Links themselves can't be scarce (a page can have as many links as it can hold without running out), but they are a measure of something that is: people.

More specifically, the time that people have for visiting sites and linking to sites is limited. Mary only has so much time for visiting weblogs; if she goes to BoingBoing, she doesn't have time for MetaFilter. Some visitors are linkers and they link what they visit. Similarly, linkers have only so much time for linking. Sam can link to 20 sites about airplanes, but he can't link to 5000. The scarcity of people's time results in the distribution of links that can be described using power laws.

** Other places you *might* find power laws in the weblog world if you took the time to look: Daypop Top 40, Blogdex top links, the Blogging Ecosystem (in both "most linked" and "most prolific linkers" data sets), average # of posts per weblog, average # of words per post, average # of smileys per post, # of visitors per weblog, # of comments per post per weblog, and so on...

Further reading on weblogs, power laws, small worlds, the 80/20 rule, the rich get richer phenomena, Zipf's Law, Pareto's Law, etc.:

Small worlds & LiveJournal (Matt Webb)
Like bloggers link like bloggers (Steve Himmer)
The weblog them, the weblog us (Tom Coates)
Internet Navigators Think Small (MSNBC)
Scarcity and power laws (Matt Webb)
Ecosystems, Power Laws, Counters (N.Z. Bear)
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality (Clay Shirky)
Small Worlds (Duncan Watts)
Linked: The New Science of Networks (Albert-László Barabási)
Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks (Mark Buchanan)
Ubiquity: The Science of History, or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think (Mark Buchanan)
Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

Meg and I are tired of this technology and design crap, so we're going to start over and create a new line of scented candles based not on flower or spice smells, but on cooking smells. Here's what we have so far for scents:

Makin' Bacon
Baking Bread
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Fresh Brewed Coffee
Thanksgiving Dinner
BBQ
Cinnamon Rolls
Chocolate Cake

The way we figure it, the world doesn't need another stupid web application, it needs bacon-scented candles.

A couple of days ago, I posted about the $2.75 lunch (2 hot dogs + 1 Coke) I had at Gray's Papaya here in the West Village. I got an email from Iain who recommended a Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwich at any number of places in Manhattan for the same price. So New Yorkers, where do you get your cheap eats?

I have a cold.

And you know when you have a cold you get that thing where you can breathe out of your left nostril but not your right one and then somehow it switches so that you can breathe out of your right nostril but not your left and you wonder how it switched without you noticing and then you go crazy because you can't possibly be that sick that you didn't notice and then you have a headache because you're worried about how sick you'd have to be to not notice and also because you're paying so much attention trying to detect when the next switch is going to happen?

I've got that too.

David Galbraith on recent events:

People complain about costly things such as space exploration and high energy physics experiments. Why spend money on these things when we have issues like poverty?

This argument is nihilistic. Why do we build monuments, paint, make films, write music, when there is still poverty all around? There is enough food in the world; poverty is the result of politics, exploitation and war above all.

Human space exploration is one of our greatest achievements. To try and rationalize unmanned space flight on the grounds of practicality misses the point, it is like saying that the Sistine Chapel would be brighter if it were whitewashed.

Vivian writes:

The police are not issuing a permit to the rally organizers for the Anti-War March/Rally on Feb 15th in New York. There are many people calling but more people need to call! They will most likely only cooperate if they see public opinion is turning against them.

Call all the numbers below and remind the mayor & commissioner that this is a free speech issue! The police need to work with the people not against the people. Issuing a permit at the last minute is an attempt to limit the potential of the event. That translates into supression of free speech!

Please immediately contact the following officials and urge them to grant the permit now:

**NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: 212-788-3040, 212-788-3210, and/or 212-788-9600

**NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: 646-610-8526

**NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito: 646-610-6910 or 646 610-6910

We also encourage you to contact media outlets about this situation. You may give them the Feb. 15 UFPJ office number for follow-up: 646-473-8935.

You may also want to post this on your weblog if you have one.

Access denied: "http://kottke.org/portfolio/index.html has been categorized as Pornography. It has been blocked per your organization's Internet Usage Policy."

Does the phrase "extensive brand analysis" have a connotation I was unaware of?

Phillip Torrone is the very proud owner of a Segway and has written about his first 100 miles on it:

for the first 100 miles or so, i personally saved about $582.00+ by using a segway ht, gave up a car and lost 10lbs. some things weren't quantifiable, results may vary for others.

best part--i've met many great people who have stopped me along the way of my daily commute with great comments and questions, some of these people are new friends, and that is something one cannot really quantify in any way.

Those wacky cats are at it again. This time, Gilpin & Marigold Explore The Wonders Of Wakayama Prefecture:

In traveling you can be a tourist or you can be a guest. Do not look at travel books. We can read about this place at home. Instead let's walk to Negoroji Temple, which I think is not too far in that direction. Not lost, just far away from our old lives."

Kevin was kind enough to let me design the title card for this installment. Enjoy more of Gilpin and Marigold here.

From The Influence of the Internet on Literature:

It took a whole century for the printed book to develop a form of its own that was no longer dominated by the aesthetic traditions of the medieval manuscript. It was in the 16th century Italy that the format of the printed book emerged from the experimental and transitional phase and found a basic stability of form that lasted for the next three centuries. By the end of the 19th century the old manual processes had been replaced by mechanical production with power-driven machinery. (Chaytor, Clancy, Spender, Eisenstein, Butler) It has taken just three years, since the release of Netscape, for tens of millions of people to become involved with the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web may never develop a distinct form, but will continually reinvent itself.

Update: Nixlog has a growing collection of infographics and interactive graphics related to the crash.

Update: some eyewitness photos (hard to get good photos at that distance...)

Update: Timeline of Columbia's last mission (another timeline).

Update: "Nick has access to orbital data for various satellites and other objects. He and Chris started looking at the data before it got locked up, and it appears that Columbia pulled up around 3 am, and continued to erratically change its path." (Juby)

Update: video of NASA TV broadcast when NASA lost contact with Columbia. Video of NASA trying to reestablish communication with Columbia.

Update: a radar image of Shuttle debris over Texas.

Update: NASA says a piece of foam that impacted the left side of the shuttle on takeoff may be to blame, but unlikely. I mean, how much damage can a piece of foam do? I guess we'll know more when we get a look at what that foam actually looks like.

From NASA:

A Space Shuttle contingency has been declared in Mission Control, Houston, as a result of the loss of communication with the Space Shuttle Columbia at approximately 9 a.m. EST Saturday as it descended toward a landing at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. It was scheduled to touchdown at 9:16 a.m. EST.

Communication and tracking of the shuttle was lost at 9 a.m. EST at an altitude of about 203,000 feet in the area above north central Texas. At the time communications were lost. The shuttle was traveling approximately 12,500 miles per hour (Mach 18). No communication and tracking information were received in Mission Control after that time.

The pace of news has slowed over the past month or so, but I'm still posting away on the Adaptation weblog on Susan Orlean's site and will continue to do so until after the Oscars. If you've seen the movie, you might want to check out the site for background about how it all came about.

Particular posts I would recommend are:

Susan says Adapation is "amazing"
Deleted scenes
Behind the scenes pictures
Artist renderings
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and how it relates to reporting
Adding to the pile
Spoof?
New Yorker review

And of course, there's the book on which the movie was based: The Orchid Thief.