I’m not sure how I missed this back in 2003.

BERKELEY – Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

* Fear and aggression

* Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

* Uncertainty avoidance

* Need for cognitive closure

* Terror management

via 07.22.2003 – Researchers help define what makes a political conservative.

Full paper.

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I know, I know. I’ll stop tooting our horn, but I checked in at Sourceforge to look at the MindTouch project rank tonight and I noticed MindTouch Deki currently bests even Azureus, arguably the most popular torrent client. You know what this means? MindTouch is more popular than porn and piracy. 😉

It comes as no surprise to me that MindTouch is a topped rank open source project and a fast growing business. We have an amazing product. What is surprising to me how quickly we did this. In addition to the impressive expediency with which we’ve achieved our many impressive milestones it is also impressive how little resources that we’ve achieved this with. I look at the competitors we’ve surpassed, one in particular that has raised $16+ Million in tier one Venture Capital investment, had a three year head start on us, is stacked with weblebrities, is a darling of many A-list bloggers…and yet they don’t hold a candle to our community, our distribution and are likely barely beating us in revenue. I expect this year will change the last point. Anyway, I can’t help but smile and look to the next competitor to draft and surpass.

Next topic. I’ve been using Microsoft Live Writer periodically to post to WordPress. Because I’ve consistently had problems with stability and buginess with Live Writer I’ve abandoned it. For the time being. Again. As such I needed a Flickr plugin. A Google search turned up “10 Amazing WordPress Plugins for Flickr“. I’ve installed a few of these. I can report the only plugin that’s worth installing is WordPress Flickr Manager. It works great. Makes embedding your Flickr photos a snap.

Need a free AVI player for Windows? I’ve plugged a couple players on the open source applications page here, and I finally got around to trying VLC Media Player. Superlative! I’m merrily watching ChiRunning.

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Some photos from a little Urban Exploring with PeteE in the Gaslamp between beverages during the pub crawl.

Photos from the pub crawl:

14 miles by foot and 9 on bike. That was my week. On Saturday I had a fantastic run from Mission Bay High School to Pacific Beach and then back along Mission Bay. I hit the beach and it was as if I ran through a curtain of air that washed my psyche clean. Exhilarating. I’ve shaved just over a minute off my pace time since beginning running with West Coast Roadrunners three weeks ago.

My running this week:

Update: I counted 8 days for this week. Had to update the numbers. 😦

Last Thursday, January 22, we (at MindTouch) helped launch a new Washington Post online property named WhoRunsGov. This launch was particularly satisfying for me both personally and professionally and causes me to reflect on the past.

I’ve rallied for transparency in government and for freedom of access to information since I was a child. Yes really, since I was a kid. I was bit of a radical and read a lot of political manifestos in addition to Huxley, Orwell, Machiavelli, etc… and I was a Lennon “wannabe”. All well before puberty. Case in point: I was eleven years old during the Iran-Contra scandal and I had a rehearsed satirical rant about Oliver North. Needless to say I was pretty well misunderstood by my peers.

For obvious reasons, WhoRunsGov caters to my desire for transparency in government. In addition to the superlatively authored profiles the site hosts I’ve also lobbied the smart people at the Washington Post to leverage open APIs; such as those provided by the Sunlight Foundation, an organization I’ve been tracking gleefully since its conception. Thankfully with MindTouch Deki querying web services is trivial. I’m optimistic the Washington Post will make the right decision in this matter and also in the matter of allowing others access to MindTouch Deki’s extensive APIs.

I’ve been a news junkie from a young age too. Indeed, I began reading the San Jose Mercury, my hometown newspaper, when I was nine or ten years old. The Mercury was then, and still is, one of the best newspapers in the country. I have always immersed myself in news and been keenly interested in media. The Post is breaking new ground with MindTouch technology. This will become even more clear as the property matures on the MindTouch platform. The opportunity to work with one of the most prominent news and media organization has been elating.

I’ve watched the Washington Post with interest as they’ve set a standard for quality and innovation in new media and continued their tradition of exceptional journalism.  As a result I’ve developed a great admiration for the company that reached a new height with the hiring of Rob Curley, who has since moved on to the Las Vegas Sun. While the Post has recently been refreshing their talent pool with a new generation (there have been several high level retirements) it’s exciting to have MindTouch play a significant role in launching and defining a new business unit.

Finally, well shit, I’m a founder and the CEO of MindTouch and we power a Washington Post property. That’s pretty exciting. Newt Gingrich thought so too. I got a call from his office on Friday. Turns out “Newt visited WhoRunsGov” and asked his technical lead to contact MindTouch about a project his office has been working on. More information about the platform and technology that powers WhoRunsGov.

MindTouch has many millions of users. Is ranked in the top ten open source projects in the World. Is the most popular open source collaboration product in the World. Strangely, has an Alexa rank of ~37,000, this is an indication of www.MindTouch.com popularity, which is remarkably high for a young enterprise software company. A massive community of many thousand developers. A large and growing ecosystem around the world of companies employing MindTouch technology to build businesses and new products including: Amazon, IBM Global Services and NEC. MindTouch has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and every technology publication there is. And a long list of marquee customers like: The Washington Post, Microsoft, Intel, US Army, USA Department of Defense, Mozilla, The United Nations, Harvard-Kennedy…. MindTouch Deki turns three years old this July, 25. Astounding. I think back to the early days of MindTouch. I worked from my basement in a rental condo in Maplewood, MN. Or even earlier when Steve and I held regular midnight Monday phone calls to discuss MindTouch while I was finishing my degree at UNC. We’ve come a very long way in a very short time and we’ve done so with remarkably low cost efficiency and without the influence and reputation of folks on Sand Hill Road. The team at MindTouch has a lot to be proud of and it’s already clear our achievements in 2009 will eclipse all years prior.

Oliver Young is the Forester researcher for Web 2.0. I saw his avatar and it struck me: I don’t have a suit like that. I would look great in that suit. As you can see, I was correct.

UPDATE: Michael Silva progresses the meme. 🙂

You probably thought it was smart to buy a foreign import of superior quality, with better mileage and resale value. Maybe you even thought that years of market share loss might prod us into rethinking our process and redesigning our products with better quality in mind. But you forgot one thing: we spend a shitload of money on lobbyists. So now you’re out $25 billion, plus the cost of your subaru. Maybe next time you’ll buy American like a real man. Either way, we’re cool.

We’re the big three. We don’t need to compete

(via adfreak and you might want to check out lawrence lessig’s rant on bailouts)

Personally, I drive a Honda. In fact, other than a couple K cars acquired for under $300 each and a Jeep Cherokee I bought for a song all of my cars have been from other than “American manufacturers”. I put that in quotes because my Honda and previous Toyotas I’ve owned were manufactured in the United States. Not that this matters a great deal to me. I buy Honda and Toyota because these are better products; as such, these consistently require less maintenance and maintain a significantly higher resell value.

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Previously I mentioned I had been reading “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”. Immediately after beginning the book I began running and soon after I was convinced by my wife, Tara, to join her running group, West Coast Road Runners and train for the Rock & Roll Marathon she ran last year here in San Diego. I agreed this was a wonderful idea and I’m proud to report that I’m two weeks in.

The training looks like this for the next week:

The coaches incrementally increase the length of time you run during the week and add a mile a week, or thereabouts, with an occasional drop in mileage after longer runs. Participants are broken up into pace groups. I’m currently running in the slower pace group “Catalina” than the group above, but I intend to train for the above pace group get my average mile under 10 minutes. I’m currently running a 10:10 mile.

So, I must have been running for a while to have run 4.5 miles yesterday, right? Not at all. I haven’t run since I was 15-16 years old. In fact, I just began running about 4 weeks ago. When I first started running the idea of running 5 miles seemed insane. Completely mad! Indeed, when I first started I could only run for a mile without stopping. Now, 5 miles is no problem. I ran 4.5 miles yesterday and I could have easily done a couple more miles. Mind you, I currently have a terrible head and chest cold too. I’m writing this not to be braggadocios, but because I’m not any different than anyone else. Your body will amaze you.

For the first few weeks that I ran my knees where killing me. This is to be expected and it will correct itself as your leg muscles develop. For me, a new pair of good running shoes made a huge difference too. I was fitted at Roadrunner Sports where they assess your foot, arches and gait to establish the most appropriate type of shoe for you. Also, I had a lot of problems with my shin muscles cramping up. Rion, who is also training with me for the Rock & Roll, made some technique suggestions based on the book he read: “Chi Running: A Revolutionary Approach To Effortless, Injury-Free Running”. This helped, but now it is clear to me that the primary cause was under developed calf muscles that needed to strengthen. Rest assured if you start a running program all those early aches and pains will abate as your develop your underworked muscles and develop your technique.

More important than how quickly your body adapts itself to running is how you feel. On my running days off I crave a run. When I run I feel amazing. Colors are brighter, smells more fragrant, I’m more focused and I feel generally incredible. There can be no doubt, our bodies are genetically predisposed to run. It’s amazing how quickly we forget the benefits of exercise.

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Last Sunday Roy, Ashby and I went “shooting” for the second time. We made another stop along El Camino Real. Regular readers will know this is a photo project we started with Ricky Montalvo in December.

Mission San Luis Rey was founded in 1798 by Padre Fermin Francisco de Lasuén, a Franciscan. I thought it was interesting to note the mission was founded nine years after UNC-Chapel Hill. A reminder of California’s youth. San Luis Rey is the youngest mission in Southern California; however, it became the richest and largest of the 21 California missions. The mission was named for Louis IX, King of France (1215-1270); a Sainted two time crusader.

The native Americans called the mission Tacayme. The mission church, as is common in Catholicism, is in the shape of a cross. The interior has double-dome wooden construction. The quadrangle contains the first pepper tree in California, imported from South America. Unfortunately this was gated and out of sight; therefore I couldn’t get a photo of it.

I think I took some of my best photos to date at San Luis Rey. It was difficult to take great photos given the subject and weather. The day was stunningly beautiful  with the temperature in the high 70s F and a glorious blue sky that provided a sharp contrast to the white adobe walls.

• View complete photos set
• Roy’s photo set

Last month social scientists in the Netherlands empirically demonstrated a phenomenon observed by policymakers and law-enforcement officials for years. When an envelope visibly containing a five-euro note was left hanging out of a mailbox on a sidewalk, 13 percent of the passersby snatched it up. When the same mailbox was covered in graffiti, however, more than double the number of the pedestrians (about 27 percent) stole the envelope.

Graffiti was not the only misdemeanor that fostered a cavalier attitude toward theft. When the ground near the mailbox was covered in litter, 25 percent of the subjects stole the envelope. These results are significant for both social and statistical reasons. Is a disorderly environment responsible for disorderly conduct?

via Seed: Chaos Begets Chaos.

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