Branden's blog

I just finished Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers, by Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, both Canadian professors of psychology. (Hunsberger is now deceased.) According to the authors, who searched the existing literature, this book reports the findings of one of the first social scientific studies of atheists in history.

Shortly after I joined BlueNC, I asked for relocation advice. I'm happy to announce that, last week, my wife Michelle and I picked out an apartment and signed the "reservation agreement". Our move-in date is June 3rd, so in less than a month we, along with our cat Sahara, will be causing trouble in the Tar Heel state!

In a recent BlueNC thread, "Don't Try to Email the State about Email", Franklin Freeman, the public official in charge of electronic mail retention was (justifiably) criticized for lacking appropriate domain knowledge. Specifically, Freeman stated that he "[doesn't] even know how to cut a computer on".

Now, while this response brought ridicule from the denizens of BlueNC, and while it is true that cutting a computer on is a skill that can successfully be taught to a chimpanzee, and that one could find a less unqualified person to handle the North Carolina state government's email retention policy by throwing a rock in the vicinity of a local university, I would urge that we set the bar a bit higher than that.

The reason is because, for public records and other important materials, digital archiving is not as simple or as easy a problem space as it may seem.

The problems are threefold: media longevity, media obsolescence, and data format obsolescence. There is a fourth problem, subtly related to the last, which we might crudely describe as "meta-data obsolescence".

I'll explore each of these challenges in turn.

Have we found another member of Dick Cheney's "fourth branch of government", heedless of Congress and the courts?

While he might not word it in quite those terms, law professor Doug Berman of the Sentencing Law and Policy blog detects some un-kosher deprivation of due process in the Western District of North Carolina, the demesne of U.S. Attorney Gretchen Shappert.

In a recent thread I effused about nuclear physics, partly because I'm interested in the subject and partly to defuse an acrimonious and lengthy Clinton vs. Obama exchange.

I failed in that effort, and proceeded to complain about there not being enough geeks on BlueNC.

Fortunately, that stimulated the egos of some of the geeks who are on BlueNC; they stepped up, on their own behalf and that of others who have been here much longer than I, to show their geek pride. Take this opportunity to join them!

BlueNC geeks, represent!

I'm relocating from Indianapolis, Indiana to Research Triangle Park—what should I know? For those who live or have lived there, what do you wish you'd known before you did?

The recently published report ("primer") by the John Locke Foundation on wind energy, among other criticisms, posits that wind turbines are "exceedingly deadly" to bird (and bat) wildlife. This puts them, perhaps surprisingly, in opposition to the National Audubon Society, which supports further development of wind energy as an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy sources.

Can this be right? Can a organization that claims to be committed to "individual rights, free enterprise, property ownership, [and] limited government" really be calling for a "'Coast Law' to prohibit construction of industrial wind turbines on the [North Carolina] coast" (emphasis added)?

And what of the Audubon Society? Has an organization dedicated to bird habitat and welfare suddenly elected to neglect its core mission, or worse yet, does it welcome the deployment of "exceedingly deadly" bird-killing machines?

Prompted by recent coverage (1, 2) and criticisms of the JLF's report here on BlueNC, I—not even yet a resident of the state, and ignorant of the existence of the JLF until I joined this community— elected to look into the matter for myself.