J. D. Fielder

Procrastinators

I came up with this one while, ...um... working the other day.

Proper Operations Security on the Tor Network

First, for those who don't know what Tor is: https://www.torproject.org/

"Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis."

That said, I saw this Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram newsletter.  Basically a list of tips for improving your Tor anonymity game. Some is common sense: Tor benefits don't amount to a hill of beans if you go about bragging that you use it. Other tips are considerably more technical and fine grained for you gearheads out there:

Cryptome: Tor Operations Security

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Twitter Scroll Added

Since I'm quick to tweet but a slacker with posts, I figured I'd add a Twitter scroll on the right side.  This way, my readers (all five of you) can peek into my short attention-spanned brain at all times.

Of course, you can also follow me at @JDFielder.

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A Letter to the Editor: My Defense of Flag Burning

This has nothing to do with IT or political research.  But, being a freedom-oriented kind of guy, I thought it was worth sharing.  I just submitted my first-ever newspaper letter to the editor.  Yes, a "print" paper:  I'm old school in my preference for ink-stained fingers, but I'll save that for another time.

 

In response to the letter "burning U.S. flag should be federal crime," I joined the military specifically to defend the First Amendment. To do my small part in ensuring that liberty remain a tempestuous sea and not a doldrums of silenced thought. I took this obligation freely knowing that free speech provokes, particularly when cultural symbols are involved. I've willingly signed away personal freedoms so my fellow Americans can shout to their heart's content--even shout at my uniform--assessing that protecting heated words carries fewer expenses than sweeping up charred stripes and buying handcuffs. Or hosing down protester's bloodstains.
 
To ban flag burning would put us on a slippery slope, at the bottom which muzzled compliance replaces discourse, the Constitution becomes just another piece of paper and the flag a mere length of cloth. A dreary place where perhaps we couldn't even mention the flag in print, let alone hold this debate. Ban flag burning? I'd rather be buried in uniform surrounded by the protest-fuelled ashes of a free flag than one that's carefully folded, padded and stored away under law and key.
 
Maj James D. Fielder, USAF
Spc-Sgt, USA 1994-1999

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James Fielder

I just submitted my first-ever letter to the editor:

In response to the letter "burning U.S. flag should be federal crime," I joined the military specifically to defend the First Amendment. To do my small part in ensuring that liberty remain a tempestuous sea and not a doldrums of silenced thought. I took this obligation freely knowing that free speech provokes, particulary when cultural symbol...s are involved. I've willingly signed away personal freedoms so my fellow Americans can shout to their heart's content--even shout at my uniform--assessing that protecting heated words carries fewer expenses than sweeping up charred stripes and buying handcuffs. Or hosing down protester's bloodstains.

To ban flag burning would put us on a slippery slope, at the bottom which muzzled compliance replaces discourse, the Constitution becomes just another piece of paper and the flag a mere length of cloth. A dreary place where perhaps we couldn't even mention the flag in print, let alone hold this debate. Ban flag burning? I'd rather be buried in uniform surrounded by the protest-fuelled ashes of a free flag than one that's carefully folded, padded and stored away under law and key.

Maj James D. Fielder, USAF

Trendsmap Twitter Mapping Site

Ooh, shiny!

"You start with a view of your region where you can see the trending topics. You can scroll the maps by dragging to another area, or zoom in or out using the plus/minus icons. When you see something that looks interesting click on that topic for more information such as graphs of the volume of tweets locally vs. worldwide, what the topic is most likely about, images, links, and most recent tweets. You can also see where else this topic popular by clicking on the topic within the detail display, or what else are people tweeting about at this location by clicking on the location name."

http://trendsmap.com/

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Academic.edu Research Sharing Site

I admittedly have not signed up on this site yet, so I can't vouch for its rigour.  That said, I did find big names in the political science list (Christian Fuchs, Alexander Wendt and Carole Pateman, to name a few).  Figured I'd still pass it along for your evaluation:

"Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. The company's mission is to accelerate the world's research.

Academics use Academia.edu to share their research, monitor deep analytics around the impact of their research, and track the research of academics they follow. 993,708 academics have signed up to Academia.edu, adding 1,129,650 papers, and 377,595 research interests. Academia.edu attracts over 3.1 million unique visitors a month."

http://www.academia.edu/

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Infographic: Visualizing the Global Digital Divide

I need to post more abstracts! In the meantime, Gregor Aisch at vis4net has a fantastic map of the digital divide, or disparaties between Internet haves and have-nots (note: clicking in the image will take you to Gregor's full post):

If you want to read up on the digital divide, I recommend:

Chadwick, Andrew. Internet Politics: Sates, Citizens, and New Communications Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Mossberber, Karen, Caroline Tolbert, and Mary Stansbury. Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003.

Mossberger, Karen, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Ramona S. McNeal. Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Norris, Pippa. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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