Glen Czaplewski

7th Generation

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:06:43 -0700

the bonfires and the ice how the 7th generation Amendment can
solve the problems of hot flat and croweded by glen Czplewski university of
colorado, Denver For Carmine Iadarola environmental politics

23 november 2011

* *

We know the Rocket’s upward whizz;
We know the Boom before the Bust.
We know the whistling Wail which is
The Stick returning to the Dust.
We know how much to take on trust
Of any promised Paradise.
We know the Pie—likewise the Crust.
We know the Bonfire on the Ice.

This evening, we got the astounding news that The United States of America has killed Osama Bin...

Sun, 01 May 2011 22:25:48 -0600

This evening, we got the astounding news that The United States of America has killed Osama Bin Laden. At once I am flooded with a series of emotions. My first thought when the breaking news bulletin preempted the Celebrity Apprentice was that someone had got Gadafi, however quickly, George Gregory corrected me, telling us that first President Obama would make an “announcement” about bin Laden, followed shortly by confirmation that he was dead at the hands of American special forces. At once I was relieved that this monster was dead. However, this feeling did not linger long. I was quickly overcome by doubts about the American role in an assassination of a major world leader—horrible as he may be. Just last night, we learned that one of Gadafi’s sons was killed along with two grandchildren. Assassination is not the role of an exceptional nation. Participating in such an act means that we have joined the ranks of lesser nations, not worthy of the founding ideal that all people, no matter how evil, deserve justice.

President Obama was just on TV telling us the details of the operation which began with a tip in August. He used the word, “Justice”, more than a half dozen times. Is what happened late this evening justice? There is no doubt in my mind that bin Laden is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity. I remember waking up the morning of September 11^th, 2001—10 years ago—to the news that a plane had struck the side of the World Trade Center. Those emotional wounds are open fresh again. If we killed bin Laden in retribution for the thousands of lives he helped take that morning, certainly we have our pound of flesh, taken the eye and tooth we are owed. That however leaves me hollow, remembering only the words of Dr. King:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiples it…so it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

We may have received our pound of flesh, this just doesn’t feel like justice to me this evening.

Are foreigners deleting Wikipedia's India content?

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:10:12 -0600

Are foreigners deleting Wikipedia's India content?:

MUMBAI, INDIA: Wikipedia, the free web-based, collaborative and multilingual encyclopedia project run by Wikimedia Foundation, is accessed by millions of …
See all stories on this topic »

In Rancorous Times, Can Wikipedia Show Us How to All Get Along?

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:28:33 -0600

In Rancorous Times, Can Wikipedia Show Us How to All Get Along?:

That’s Wikipedia. For all its warts, Wikipedia is a testament to the power of decentralized collaboration. Almost uniquely among online spaces, …
See all stories on this topic »

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales on the big 'A' Word

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:48:42 -0600

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales on the big 'A' Word:

Speaking during yesterday’s closing session at AdweekMedia’s Social Strategies Summit in New York, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales touted that his …
See all stories on this topic »

Fitch Expects Colorado Ballot Initiatives to Limit Financial and Capital ...

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:48:42 -0600

Fitch Expects Colorado Ballot Initiatives to Limit Financial and Capital ...:

Taken together, Fitch believes that Proposition 101, Amendment 60, and Amendment 61 will dramatically limit the flexibility of state and local governments …
See all stories on this topic »

What if We Ran Universities Like Wikipedia?

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:48:42 -0600

What if We Ran Universities Like Wikipedia?:

The Wikipedia analogy struck one observer as silly. Universities are nothing like an encyclopedia, and Wikipedia is nothing like a university, …
See all stories on this topic »

Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualization: An Annotated Bibliography

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:33:01 -0600

The authors of this study use software which creates a visual representation of the amount of text changed on a Wikipedia article based on that article’s edit history by individual users over time. This software lets one easily see graphically the edit frequency, longevity and magnitude of an individual wiki site. Through this, they were able to see instances of vandalism being corrected, and negotiation between users in so called *edit wars*. An example of this view is provided below. Vandalism often looked like large explosion of information followed by a rapid deletion of erroneous information (when someone added a great deal of erroneous information). The converse was also visible of vandalism, when huge chunks of legitimate sections were deleted and rapidly reposted. Negation was visible through a zigzag pattern among two or more groups editing the same piece of information. Such visualizations will be helpful in analyzing candidate history. The creators of the program will need to be contacted to see how best to share this information. Also of note in the article, the authors postulate three possible root causes for the success of the Wikipedia community: The watch list, the Source Viegas, F.B., Wattenberg, M., & Kushal, D. (2004). Studying cooperation and conflit between authors with history flow visualization. *Proceedings of the CHI2004 Conference*, Vienna Austria, *6*(1), pp 557-581. Evolution on Wikipedia taken from: http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/gallery.htm

What is popular on Wikipedia and Why?: An annotated bibliography

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:18:36 -0600

Spoerri sets out to answer a simple question: What’s popular in Wikipedia and Why. Through the site Wikichart, he examines the categorical content of the 100 most visited pages. In general, he finds that sites related to entertainment, politics + history, sexuality, and geography draw 80% of all traffic in the top 100. Further, he observes that the pages in this top 100 are rather stable with only 25 of the 100 pages on average being part of the top 100 for a single month of the study period. Finally, Spoerri discusses the relevance of placement in on a search engine’s results page. Specifically, most of these pages show in the top 3 results. Citing Sullivan (2006), he notes that these top 3 results are in the so called golden triangle of sites which is the most viewed places on a search page.

Citation

Spoerri, A. (2007). What is popular on Wikipedia and Why. First Monday, 12(3).

Measuring Wikipedia Voss (2005): An Annotated Bibliography

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:45:00 -0600

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Measuring Wikipedia

Voss (2005) explores various ways to quantifiably compare content across the various language Wikipedias using large data dumps picked up through SQ L coding—the requirements for which are part of the Wikipedia software license. Specifically he compares article count, authors, edits, link structure, content, and quality. While most of his analysis is rather straight forward, his discussion of edits bears special mention. He uses specific equations developed for genetic comparison to measure the distance between an articles original and edited point. This is an interesting way to measure the degree of change without actually having to read the article.

In addition, Voss has a rather comprehensive literature review, though he does not go into much depth. More reading is required to fully grasp his cited works.

Citation

Voss, J. (2005) Measuring Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the ISSI 2005 Conference.

Wikipedia as participatory journalism: reliable sources? an Annotated Bibliography

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:05:00 -0600

Lih (2004) examined Wikipedia early in its history as it was cited as an example of participatory journalism (meaning a sort of many to many story telling). Lih looks at the way news publishers site Wikipedia and the effects such situations have on the value of the relevant articles. He postulates that rigor “the total number of edits” and diversity “the total number of unique editors” play a key role in the reliability of an article (pp. 8). The thought here is “as [an article is cited more often in the media], it will bring more unique visitors to the site, which invites participation,” therefore making the article more useful in the future, (pp. 8). Lih uses these simple data points as a measure of the overall quality of an article when compared with a traditional encyclopedia.

Further, he provides some suggestions to future researchers to take into account, direction and mitigation of vandalism, time windows, and nature of citations. He wrote proprietary software for this analysis. Over all, Lih found that a paper being cited by a news publication has an overall increase in the quality of the article. Lih also provides a comprehensive history of the website as it grew from founder, Jimmy Wales’s work on neopedia, which had a very complex and traditional sort of editing environment, to the free-for-all one sees today on Wikipedia.

Citation

Lih, A. (2004, April). Wikipedia as participatory journalism: reliable sources? Metrics for evaluating collaborative media as a news resource. In, 5th International Symposium on Online Journalism. Symposium conducted at University of Texas at Austion.

Talking Points Memo on the Tea Party

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:19:49 -0600

To: Seminar on American Politics

From: Glen Czaplewski

Date: 6/13/2010

Re: Talking points on the future of the tea party and the 2010 election.

Much has been said in recent months about what the Tea Party (TP) means for the future of the Republican Party and what impact it will have on the 2010 election cycle. Despite its hype, one can only conclude that the TP will do little to help the GOP in the 2010 election. This is largely because:

• The TP supports unelectable candidates. Rand Paul is an excellent example of this. Shortly after winning the Republican primary, he introduced himself to the nation by bemoaning the passage of the 1965 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In so doing, he has shown that he is far from the main stream and thus will be unpalatable to many voters. Candidates such as Paul are likely the downfall of the movement as a potent force in the American electorate.

• Without a strong leader to focus its anger, harnessing its power. The tea party is not a cohesive movement gelling behind a single leader. As such, there is no one to help harness the anger and energy and focus it into cohesive political action.

• Economic Improvement will remove the fuel which stokes their fire. A May 5th Washington Post-ABC poll show that primary concerns of is the economy (85% of TP supporters rated this as their primary concern opposed to 44% of TP opponents). As the economy continues to improve, this issue will be less salient in the mind of voters, thus denying the TP its primary issue.

Erie county loaned a corporate VP to help run county "like a buisness"

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:10:00 -0600

Erie county loaned a corporate VP to help run county "like a buisness":

This was a shocking bit of news I saw in this mornings news brief distributed by the International City/County Managers Association. This forces one to ask the question, how much should government be run like a business.

awesomeringerud: OpenBook makes me feel pretty awesome about...

Wed, 26 May 2010 06:09:00 -0600

awesomeringerud:

OpenBook makes me feel pretty awesome about people.

Granddad's Obit

Mon, 24 May 2010 15:35:04 -0600

For those who didn’t see it, here’s my granddad’s obit http://wyomingnews.com/articles/2010/05/12/obituaries/11obit_05-12-10.txt

The power of roads

Fri, 21 May 2010 13:52:31 -0600

The power of roads:

it really is amazing how roads keep everything tied together and how one can be so important to a community

I guess I have a new nickname

Thu, 06 May 2010 13:34:03 -0600

I guess I have a new nickname

Greeley goes big on the census

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:23:15 -0600

Greeley goes big on the census

Baby Boomers May leave a big gap in the work force

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:56:59 -0600

Baby Boomers May leave a big gap in the work force:

This is at once going to be great for people of my generation (easy access to jobs) and touch (we’ll all be doing the jobs of multiple people). I wonder what the economic down turn will really do to stop the flood of boomers leaving the offoce?

Is Human Behavior Predictable

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:23:25 -0600

There are those who would argue that, “it is not possible to predict human nature.” My view is, that depends wholly on whether “human” is a singular or plural term. The word “predict” has some rather absolute implications. When one talks of predictions, there connotes a high degree of certainty that the prediction will come true. Individual behavior is too difficult to predict a token human’s behavior to this degree.

That being said, if one is talking of aggregate human behavior, it is much easier to predict. Various instruments such as surveys can predict how groups of people will react in a certain situation (though there will be outliers who confound these expectations.