So much to share . . .

Outsourcing: Finally an elected Democrat steps up to the plate on offshoring in the form of Max Baucus (D-MT) — from Top Outsourcing Info.

U.S. Senator Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, said Friday he supports outsourcing white-collar jobs to low-wage countries such as India — a position at odds with his party’s traditional stance on the issue.

“Everybody is concerned about job losses and so am I,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Bangalore, his first stop on an five-day tour of India with U.S. business leaders.

“But the world is flat and we must work harder to better retrain our people,” rather than resist outsourcing, he said. “Offshoring is a fact of globalization. Opportunities for U.S. companies come from everywhere — including India.”

Golden Globe fashion: Disasters and successes (1) and (2).

Historians at War: Cliopatria’s Chris Bray gives us his “Shadows and Fog” series from near the frontlines in Kuwait.

History of the future: A syllabus.

Nukes: Coworker Ned gave us a post about nuclear test photos that spawned a string of comments with a life all its own.

Truth and the Internet: First Monday presents two articles on truth in historical and contemporary and contemporary contexts.

Web of lies? Historical knowledge on the Internet by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig

Scholars in history (as well as other fields in the humanities) have generally taken a dim view of the state of knowledge on the Web, pointing to the many inaccuracies on Web pages written by amateurs. A new software agent called H-Bot scans the Web for historical facts, and shows how the Web may indeed include many such inaccuracies—while at the same time being extremely accurate when assessed as a whole through statistical means that are alien to the discipline of history. These mathematical methods and other algorithms drawn from the computational sciences also suggest new techniques for historical research and new approaches to teaching history in an age in which an increasingly significant portion of the past has been digitized.

The filtering matrix: Integrated mechanisms of information control and the demarcation of borders in cyberspace by Nart Villeneuve

Increasingly, states are adopting practices aimed at regulating and controlling the Internet as it passes through their borders. Seeking to assert information sovereignty over their cyber–territory, governments are implementing Internet content filtering technology at the national level. The implementation of national filtering is most often conducted in secrecy and lacks openness, transparency, and accountability. Policy–makers are seemingly unaware of significant unintended consequences, such as the blocking of content that was never intended to be blocked. Once a national filtering system is in place, governments may be tempted to use it as a tool of political censorship or as a technological “quick fix” to problems that stem from larger social and political issues. As non–transparent filtering practices meld into forms of censorship the effect on democratic practices and the open character of the Internet are discernible. States are increasingly using Internet filtering to control the environment of political speech in fundamental opposition to civil liberties, freedom of speech, and free expression. The consequences of political filtering directly impact democratic practices and can be considered a violation of human rights.

Carnivals: History Carnival #23 and the Manolo, he brings us the second Carnival of the Couture.