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January 31, 2004 The Grinch who Turned Down TestimonialsI have problems with Orkut and other such e-friendship networks because they make binary the most analog of relationships. But I really hate testimonials. I am neurotically compliment-averse to begin with, but encouraging people to write little paragraphs praising one another cannot help but spawn an Economy of Bullshit. What makes it worse is that the couple of testimonials I've gotten (and declined) have been from actual friends who thoughtfully crafted paragraphs that meant something to them and to me. And then I slam the door on them. I wish Orkut would make this less awkward by letting participants opt out of receiving testimonials. Cross-blogged at Corante Many2Many. Posted by self at 11:32 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1) January 30, 2004 Marc Canter BannedMarc Canter has been banned from Orkut, possibly because he linked to 300 friends in a week. Hmmm. I've ranked every one of my Orkut friends as maximally fan-worthy, trust-worthy, cool and sexy, except for the handful of people who've asked me to be friends who I actually have never heard of before; they only get 2 stars out of 3. So, will I be next? One can only hope... Posted by self at 01:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2) Yule AdornomentsYule Heibel is beginning an occasional series of blog entries about Adorno, in part because she thinks Heidegger has been getting too much air time. She promises to tell us what Adorno thought was wrong with the Ol' Nazi. I used to know enough about Adorno to weasel out of any actual conversations about him. Now I remember nothing at all about him. In fact, I think I'm into negative numbers. So, I look forward to Yule's writing about this philosopher she cares about. Posted by self at 12:58 PM | Comments (3) January 29, 2004 How much to RSS?A reader at my new Corante blog complains that the RSS feed only contains about the first two lines. Any thoughts about the wisdom of making the whole blog entry available via RSS? I'm inclined to do it. Posted by self at 12:06 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (1) Trying to buy a MacI installed Windows 2000 over Linux last night, a process that I expect is going to cost me my snack privileges in Hell. But I simply couldn't get my Linksys wireless card to work. One of the advantages of being a monopolistic software overlord is that companies make sure that their products install reaaaal easy-like. Meanwhile, following the advice from y'all about getting a Mac for my father-in-law for the single purpose of browsing the Web, I called Small Dog and spoke with a helpful salesperson. I thought I wanted a used G4, sans monitor, plus a fresh copy of Panther. Small Dog has a G4 for $520 + $119 for Panther. But the salesperson warned me off of the hw because it's 2-3 years old and thus is likely to break. "It's like buying a used car. It's just got so many miles in it." The salesperson at MacResQ tried to down-sell me, not up-sell me, which I appreciated. He recommended a blue-and-white G3 (400mH, 256Mb RAM, 20GB hd, 8.51 OS) for $500. He also recommended a 400mH G4 (128mb RAM, 20GB hd, DVD player) for $530; another 128MB of RAM, installed, is $40. I'm leaning towards the MacResQ G4, installing Thanks for everyone's advice in the comments. As a result, I just bought a 400mH G4 (20GB drive, DVD player, keyboard and mouse) from MacResQ, an extremely pleasant experience. I had them boost the RAM to 384; they charge $40 for 128 but gave me the 256 upgrade for the same price. Real pleasant folks to deal with, and were quite frank and helpful all the way through. I also bought Jaguar/Panther 10.2 for $40 off of eBay (original disks, unregistered). So, in a few days, my little Mac installation adventure can begin. I'm looking forward to it. Posted by self at 11:29 AM | Comments (12) More over at Loose DemocracyI've posted an appreciation of Joe Trippi over at my new Corante blog, "Loose Democracy." (I haven't figured out my policy about cross-posting myself, so for now I'm taking the raw self-promotional approach.) Posted by self at 10:51 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1) January 28, 2004 Pink on outsourcingDaniel Pink in Wired gives a human face to offshore outsourcing, as well as providing a nuanced discussion of its political and ethical dimensions. Posted by self at 04:40 PM | Comments (6) New blogI've started off my new Corante blog — on how the Net is changing our democracy and politics — with a critique of Clay's provocative Dean meme. The new blog is called Loose Democracy, and I'm open to comments, suggestions, criticisms, unfunded mandates and recall initiatives. And please remind me of the 4,000 people I've left off my blogroll...I have problems creating lists ex nihilo. All I can promise you is that I will never make a mistake and I will never ever be wrong. Posted by self at 12:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1) New service from AmazonFrom Denounce: Amazon Launches New Social Network Called "Pricekut" Customers Can Now See and Comment It's satire, ok? (Thanks to Brian Dear for the link.) Posted by self at 09:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1) My dreamLast night I had a dream that I was trying to explain to John Kerry that the Internet is like free speech: Its value comes from its openness to possibility, and that the government should regulate it as little as possible. Yes, I actually had this dream. Posted by self at 09:19 AM | Comments (13) Behind the deskMonday night I had to move my semi-built-in desk yesterday so the electricians could upgrade my wiring. As a result, I saw what had dropped behind it during the course of 8 years. It was pretty much the usual stuff, with a couple of exceptions: One copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto Pretty much the story of my life. Posted by self at 09:15 AM | Comments (1) January 27, 2004 Little d democracyNote: Contains completely partisan Deanism... I spent the day in Exeter, yet another picture perfect New Hampshire town, alternating between standing outside holding Dean signs and sitting in the unheated Town Hall, checking off voters on the Dean supporter list. Then, at 5pm, it was back to the Portsmouth HQ, phoning people to urge them to vote. In short, I spent the day being a little-d democrat. This is the real thing: American democracy. People reduced to their singular equality. Each one of them nuts in her or his own way. With the kids in their winter caps with animal ears or jester's horns. Shuffling in, trailing the midwinter cold behind them. Seeing friends they haven't talked with in months or years. College kids voting for the first time. A grandmother and her grown daughter, both wearing festive mittens. A blind woman being assisted in the voting booth. A husband taking a pink ballot to vote for a Republican and a wife taking the blue. A beautiful baby asleep in a back carrier as the father repeats his name softly to the local voting official. The real thing. Outside, the cold was the fact you tried to forget. Lots of Dean supporters, lots of Kerry supporters, some Clark, a few Edwards, and one lonely and very affable man with a Bush-Cheney sign. (Oddly, it turns out he likes Bush because he wants a balanced budget. He didn't accept my offer to take up a Dean sign.) We all shared our coffee and muffins. We laughed at the same jokes. All us Democrats know in a few months we're all going to be working on behalf of the the same person. My back aches. My feet are sore. My butt is warming up. And I'm ready to do it again. Posted by self at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2) January 26, 2004 Driving NH'ers tomorrowI'm going up to Portsmouth tomorrow at 7am to drive Dean supporters to the polls. I expect to be gone all day and thus won't be blogging. While I'm out, the electrician will be running two 20 amp wires up to my office to replace the single 15 amp source. I sure hope this is the cause of my frequent frier program: Last night I toasted the Linksys router I've had for about 4 months; usually they last a full year. Sigh. Posted by self at 05:03 PM | Comments (6) The Daily Globe and InternetChris Lydon's two-hour NPR show last night brought together some of my very favorite bloggers to discuss the effect of Internet and blogging on politics. There was a lot of talk about the "popping of the bubble" (as Ed Cone put it) with a healthy respect for what blogging has done for and to politics already. Chris is, of course, the best at what he does, and reminded everyone of the importance of blogging despite the Dean campaign's crash landing in Iowa. Although many of the guests and Chris himself said that blogs are a grassroots tool open to anyone, the quite reasonable focus on high-traffic bloggers may have led people to think that the blogosphere is a new daily, opinion-based newspaper in which we can read columns by journalists and columnists who have important views that have, on occasion, shaped real world politics. Now, I love the A-List, at least the portion of it I read. And it's thrilling that these are people that we have made popular, whatever the network dynamics are that form A-Lists in the first place. But put 'em together, and the A-List is another daily paper. Blogging strikes me as more significant than the creation of a competitor to USA Today, albeit one that's fresher, livelier, more personable. Blogs constitute conversations, social networks, and our proxy selves all at once. That's a trio no other "medium" has ever put together and, as Jay Rosen said on Chris' show last night, it's challenging our very model of authority. Posted by self at 11:34 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (2) Dean's bad ideaDeclan reports on a bad idea put forward by Dean 15 months before he announced his run for the presidency (and six months after 9/11): Requiring users to insert an identity card — presented as an upgrade of today's drivers license — into a computer in order to log on. Apparently, the campaign is not responding to questions about this. It's certainly not an idea I've heard bruited about by the campaign, but I'm certainly not privy to every bruiting. (Thanks to Eric for the link.) Dana Blankenhorn responds. (Ignore the nice thing he says about me.) Posted by self at 11:30 AM | Comments (3) Kerry and Dean in dead heat in NH
Yeaaaarrrggghhhh. I cannot take the G's, cap'n! Posted by self at 10:41 AM | Comments (3) January 25, 2004 The Republican Net TaxDavid Deans writes about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's interest in slapping a tax on accessing the Internet. Posted by self at 11:08 AM | Comments (6) What Jews thinkHanan Cohen sends along a link to the American Jewish Committee's 2003 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. The sample of 1,000 self-identified Jews, a representative cross-section of Americans, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. 76% of us think caring about Israel is a very important part of being a Jew. Only 5% are more positive this year than last about the chance for peace. 81% of us think ""The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel," but 54% support the creation of a Palestinian state. 69% support dismantling at least some of the West Bank settlements. 60% support the current handling of relations with the Palestinian Authority. 63% think American Jews ought to support Israel even when we disagree with it. 76% believe 9/11 does not reflect the true teachings of Islam. Only 16% of us identify ourselves as Republican. 51% are Democrats and 31% are independents. 40% of us are some type of liberal, skewing toward the "slightly liberal." 27% are conservatives. We voted for Gore over Bush 66 to 24. Clark, Dean and Kerry beat Bush 2:1. Lieberman beats Bush 71:24. We're more mixed about the Iraqi War: 54% disapprove of it, and 54% disapprove of the way Bush has handled the campaign against terrorism. We definitely do not want tax payer funds going to faith-based programs (73%) and don't want government aid to religious schools (73%), but we do want "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance (66%). 97% of us think ati-Semitism in the US is a problem, and 37% think it's a very serious problem. (For perceived anti-Semitism in Europem the figures are 96% and 55%.) 67% of us expect global anti-Semitism to increase. My own views frequently are outside what the survey says is the Jewish mainstream, so please spare me your rants. Thank you. Posted by self at 09:06 AM | Comments (4) Return to Return of the King(I just blogged this at BlogCritics.org) We went to see Return of the King for the second time last night because our 13-year-old wanted to see it for his third time. My pre-VCR generation has trouble being entertained by a movie more than once, but there are exceptions. Lord of the Rings is one: Giant trolls, gargantuan elephants, catapults firing heads, fierce bad guys with faces made out of cookie dough, fire-tipped battering rams, stirring music, flying dragons, all in one scene. What more do you want in a movie? Even though it was my second time, I still had trouble finding a slack time to take a bathroom break. Thank goodness for Liv Tyler (or, as she's uncharitably known in our household, Mrs. Ed). I have a small wager with my son. I say that Gollum will be nominated as Best Supporting Actor. He deserves it. So does Sean Astin, but as Best Actor; nominating him for Supporting Actor would confuse his character (Frodo's support) with his structural role in the movie. And I will be personally outraged if LongBeard the Ent beats out Viggo Mortensen for the award for Best Acting by an Inanimate Object. IMO, Mortensen was way better, although I realize it's a topic about which reasonable people can disagree. Posted by self at 08:30 AM | Comments (4) January 24, 2004 Reed on politicsDavid Reed — you know, the End-to-End guy — goes through the candidates one-by-one. He's captured a lot of what I think and feel about these guys. This dance remix of The Scream that's been going around makes me laugh. Posted by self at 12:26 PM | Comments (8) Close personal friendsAccording to the Butt Ugly Weblog, "orkut" — the name of the Google-affiliated artificial social network — is a slang term for "orgasm" in Finnish. It turns out it's named after its creator, Orkut Buyukkokten, whose parents were either cruel or not Finnish. On the other hand, what isn't a slang term for "orgasm"? I mean, even "Finnish" is, as in: "Didn't you Finnish yet?" (Thanks to Janne Jalkanen for pointing out the dirty Scandinavian words.) Posted by self at 10:19 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (2) Linux out, Mac in, advice wantedI've grown weary of reinstalling Windows 2000 on my father-in-law's computer, so I reformatted and installed Mandrake 9.2. I've had problems before using Linux as a desktop system (starting around July 10 here), but this time I figured it would work. After all, my problems in the past had to do with trying to get the desktop up to Windows' level of application functionality, but my father-in-law uses his computer only for browsing. So, with just one application to worry about, Linux should provide the stability at which Windows curls its painted lip. Mandrake 9.2 installed like a dream. It really couldn't be much easier. It detected all the hardware, even the sound card and printer. Mandrake has done a fabulous job with this. But once you're up and browsing, you notice little things. For example, Mozilla needs the Flash plugin loaded. That's reasonable. And the installation process is pretty straightforward. Except that two hours later, it still wasn't working. The Flash files are installed in the (seemingly) right directory. But still every time Mozilla comes to a page with Flash on it, it pops up a notice that Flash needs to be installed. This is exactly the sort of unexpected error message that puts my father on the hot line to sys admin (= me). After installing Flash, before launching Mozilla has started asking the user to select a profile. I could set this to "Don't ask again," but Mozilla (latest version, by the way) doesn't record the new profile I created 8-10 times last night. (I believed I screwed this up by initially telling Flash to install itself only for one user rather than system wide.) I spent about three hours last night trying to get the system to be able to play any form of video file. No luck. Too hard for the likes of me. So, putting Linux on my father-in-law's machine seemed like a really good idea. After all, he's already a Linux user because he has Tivo. But I think it's going to generate as many support calls as Windows. (Oh, and did I mention that I've already had to reinstall Mandrake because a set of options mysteriously vanished from the KDE desktop and I couldn't figure out how to get them back?) So, yes, he should get a Mac. Given his needs — browsing via a broadband connection — what is the best bargain (new or used) for him? And is there any way he can keep using the 15" flat screen he currently has instead of buying a new one? (Have I mentioned that price matters?) Posted by self at 09:30 AM | Comments (18) January 23, 2004 The Doctors Dean with Diane SawyerI thought this was a good interview, despite Sawyer's alternation between being insipid and baiting them. It was the first time I've heard Judy Steinberg, and I think it gives a pretty good picture of what he and they are like, modulo their political concerns and Sawyer's entertainment concerns. (FWIW, I liked Steinberg a lot. The fact that she's about my age and grew up a couple of miles from where I grew up I'm sure has no affect on my feeling comfortable with her immediately.) Salon has a good summary and analysis of Steinberg's presence in the interview. Posted by self at 01:31 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2) Laughable SpamThis one made me laugh...so good, right up until the last word:
I believe "Ogqolkel" was the Aztec god "The Deceiver." Posted by self at 11:15 AM | Comments (5) The conscience of AshcroftIn a speech to the World Economic Forum, according to the AP, "Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday urged nations...to fight corruption, which is costing the world economy more than $2 trillion every year." "Follow our moral lead," Ashcroft said. "Surely in your own country you have a highly visible woman who is resented for her success. I urge you to go after her with the full power of the law. And God bless America." Posted by self at 10:37 AM | Comments (8) Dean AggregatorMike Muegel, a Dean supporter, has put together a very cool little tool that aggregates blogs related to the Dean campaign. It sits in your system tray and pulls in entries from a whole bunch o' sites, and lets you cycle through them one at a time. In my experience with it over the past few weeks, it's been very well-behaved, updating itself cleanly. Desktop Dean is free, of course. You could probably talk to Mike about having him do a version for some other topic you or your business cares about... Posted by self at 07:55 AM | Comments (0) January 22, 2004 Credit Suisse on Self OrganizationThere's a fascinating set of papers on issues of self-organization and complexity given at a Credit Suisse First Boston conference last Posted by self at 01:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1) January 21, 2004 "What a pretty baby!" Gov. Dean said, his face contorted with angerIf a respected paper such as, say, the Boston Globe, set out to drive down a candidate, what do you think they might do? Run a front page story saying that Dean's pep rally "Yeah!" was a sign of his anger? Nah, too outrageously slanted. After all, if it was an angry yell, what was it denouncing? Fury that the campaign was going to continue? No, Doc got much closer to it when he called it a Whitmanesque barbaric yawp. But here's the money shot from the first paragraph of The Globe's front page story:
And the evidence that Dean was struggling to explain it? None. The critics who think it was a sign of his "angry streak"? Sixteen paragraphs in, the reporter, Sarah Schweitzer, finds a professor who wrote a book about the New Hampshire primary who says, "That moment crystallizes a lot about what's been said about him, that he's the angry man." This is such a clear case of media self-confirmation that it's almost touching. In between, we get a repetition of the Angry Man meme:
And the evidence that the community theme is an addition to a core of anger? And the evidence that this has been "layered" onto his speeches not because Dean believes it but in order to soften his image? And the evidence that he has "erupted" more than once on the trail? And when Bush silenced hecklers, this was certainly evidence that W is The Angry Man, right? Schweitzer doesn't miss the opportunity to selectively quote the person on the street to make the point that she wants to make, the sleaziest practice in professional journalism: "Bob Scipione, 66, a retired biochemist of Bedford and a committed Dean supporter, offered this explanation: 'The man has to be out of control to beat Bush.'" Sarah, what possible justification do you have for choosing that quote from that person? I'd love to know. If this sort of biased reporting is unwitting, then the Globe ought to get a reporter with some wits. But, unfortunately, the problem is bigger than that. Jay Rosen is right. It's the power of The Narrative. It is no less shameful for it. Some generous words of support for Deaniacs from Michael Moore, who's supporting Clark. Subtext: There will be plenty of time for you to support Clark once Dean's run is done. And more medicine for the heart from Doc. I just realized that I blogged in November about another article that struck me as just as lazily biased as this one. Same author. I've taken a guess at her email address and am sending her the links. Sarah, my comments are working. Feel free to tell me why I'm wrong. Posted by self at 08:34 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (7) January 20, 2004 Isen on CatoDavid Isenberg examines the language of the Cato Institute's shabby paper on Internet policy. (Lessig has also written about it, as have I.) Posted by self at 01:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1) Trademark protection at its mightiestMicrosoft continues to press its case against a 17-year-old Canadian high school student named Mike Rowe because his web site is mikerowesoft.com and he refused their offer of $10. Ten dollars! I know it sounds cheap, but you have to remember that these are ten American dollars. You have to sympathize with Microsoft: Tons of people are going to end up on Rowe's site by mistake simply because they typed every letter after the "i" wrong. By the way, I just registered www.mykrowzoft.com. (I would have taken mykrowsoft.com, but someone in Hawaii already owns it.) Bring it on! Posted by self at 12:57 PM | Comments (7) Guess-who addresses the National Press Club?On Sunday, I came in at the middle of a talk being aired by the local NPR station. Someone was outlining what sounded like a progressive approach to Voice Over IP and to telecommunications in general. Oh, there were so worrisome phrases — for example, freeing up more unlicensed spectrum but not addressing the broader licensing concerns — but my grasp of the issues is weak enough that I figured I was just getting them wrong. Turns out it was Michael Powell, chair of the FCC, addressing the National Press Club. Well, I'll be. (I'd trust people like David Isenberg, Larry Lessig, Dewayne Hendricks, and David Reed to do a better job evaluating this speech than I can.) Posted by self at 09:02 AM | Comments (2) Atomic PostersMike O'Dell has found a site that features posters from the '50s with an atomic theme. What the hell were we thinking? (See also how to survive a nuclear blast with only a hat.) Posted by self at 07:37 AM | Comments (0) New Boot Screens for XPBootXP is cheapware that will let you replace the screen Microsoft shows you as XP boots. You can download some alternative screens here, some of which express an amusing skepticism about the reliability of Microsoft technology. Posted by self at 07:35 AM | Comments (3) Congrats to...Congratulations to the Kerry supporters. Edwards', too. See you in New Hampshire :) Posted by self at 07:26 AM | Comments (0) January 19, 2004 If you're not Hugo Diamante, ignore this messageHugo, I'm trying to respond to your email but my msgs keep bouncing. If you read this, could you please send me a msg with another way to reach you? Thanks. Posted by self at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) Lessig on CatoLarry takes on and takes apart the intellectually dishonest Cato article on Dean's Internet policy. Here's a snippet:
Posted by self at 03:14 PM | Comments (4) Findory: Collaborative news aggregatorGreg Linden stumbled across "The Daily Me? No, the Daily Us," an old Wired piece of mine that pointed to a disadvantage of personalized news sites: they don't build communities the way paper newspapers do. (Look, it was an interesting idea in 1995.) Here's an excerpt, chosen because of its quaint reference to that other Iraqi war:
Anyway, the important thing is that Greg points to Findory.com, a fascinating personalized news aggregator. There are no profiles to fill in and no groups to join. Every time you click on a story to read, the site takes it as an indication of your interests. When you return to the home page, it will have adjusted the spread of stories it thinks you care about. If you click on a link to an article that it turns out wasn't interesting, you can delete it from the list of articles you've read. The privacy policy seems exemplary. There's no registration required. No information about you is stored except for a random number stored in a cookie that's associated with the list of articles you've read (according to the FAQ). It explains how it works its magic in this hard-to-parse sentence:
I'm guessing that this means that it goes one step further than Google's "find more like this one" option. Google (presumably) does a word usage analysis of an article to find other articles with similar patterns. Findory (I'm guessing) does a word usage analysis of the article and of the article lists of others who have clicked on it, and then compares that with an analysis of your own list. (There are only two problems with this explanation: I probably got it wrong and it's more confusing than the thing it's trying to explain.) The site also throws in articles outside of your statistically-derived profile to enable serendipity. It does not, however, get past the problem my Wired article points to. But, then, it's not intended to. A footnote says that "Findory News is provided in cooperation with Memigo." Memigo's banner says:
Seems about right. Lots of articles, ratings, comments...I want to spend some more time there... Posted by self at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (4) Are you a true tech believer?Scott Kirsner has an amusing quiz in the Boston Globe today (gone tomorrow) that will tell you if you are a "true believer," i.e., a computechnologist who was in before the Net, or would have been had you been born in time. Here's the first question, as a sample:
I did very badly on this quiz, even when I gave myself credit for answers I knew I knew but couldn't quite recall. Posted by self at 08:46 AM | Comments (2) January 18, 2004 RB minds the mindRageBoy talks a quick trot through AI, cognitive psychology and philosophy, proving once again that autodidacts are the best educated people on the planet. Since RB ties me into the piece — I am not worthy, I am not worthy — let me answer the question he ends with: "I don't know quite how I got here from Fodor's funny take on Dasein." Here's how you got there, muh friend. In a few pithy — and NC-17 — paragraphs you raise the notion of Dasein, and then take us through the clumsy way AI has tried to reincorporate the baby it threw out with the bath water: the mind. But, as you quote Bruner as saying, mind "has been technicalized in a manner that undermines the original impulse." (BTW, I've never read Bruner. Thanks for the tip.) So, here's the connection, as if you didn't know, you sly boots. Dasein is Heidegger's term for human existence. He uses it precisely to keep his readers from making the mistake Bruner says AI has made: thinking of the mind or self as a thing. Consciousness is always of the world, Heidegger says (building on the insight of Husserl, a Jew he later betrayed). We experience the world, not a thing-like self. In fact, you can't find a thing-like self even if you look. Nor can you find a self experiencing inner representations of an outer world; that concept comes not from experience but from having certain ungrounded theories about consciousness. We are always beyond ourselves in in time, too, understanding the present in terms of the future we're heading ourselves towards. So, Heidegger used the weird term "Dasein" — "being there" — to keep us from thinking too easily of our minds and existence as being substances or things. But there's more...We are in the world not as knowers but as creatures that care about ourselves and our fellows. That is, the "of" in "consciousness of" isn't neutral or rational. It's how the world matters to us. Anyway, read RB. He's got a head full of ideas that are driving him insane. Posted by self at 11:51 AM | Comments (9) Digital Democracy Teach-inHere's the current draft (still under discussion) of the description of the session I'm leading at the O'Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-in:
I'm supposed to talk for 15-20 minutes and then lead a directed discussion with the audience, in the majestic style of Jeff Jarvis' brilliant session at BloggerCon. Ulp. But there will be a really interesting bunch of people in the audience I can call upon. I'm thinking of beginning my presentation by saying that there's an existential paradox at the heart of voting. It's not a logical paradox, but one that we live: We're individuals voting our hearts but we are reduced to being merely one among millions. We let ourselves be reduced to a simple binary switch — ballots are T/F exams, not essays — and we rejoice in it. This then would lead me to talk about the paradox of massed individuals that I think the Dean campaign's use of the Internet has begun to crack: How do you scale personal involvement? The old broadcast model of politics can't do it... The Digital Democracy Teach-in happens Feb. 9 in San Diego, the day before the O'Reilly Emerging Tech sessions start. Posted by self at 10:17 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (2) January 17, 2004 John Perry Barlow on Spalding GrayA sad, funny, beautiful response to Spalding Gray's absence. Posted by self at 09:03 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (2) January 16, 2004 Push UPSAs I continue to try to figure out why my office eats computer equipment for breakfast, I'm thinking that my Uninterruptible Power Supply may be inadequate. Everyone who reads this knows more about electrical stuff than I do, so perhaps you can help me... I have an APC UPS Pro 650, 650 VA, 400 Watts. My computer has, I believe, a 450W power supply. I also have a 22" CRT plugged into the UPS. So, I think that my UPS isn't up to the task. It's So, do I need a heftier UPS? If so, what specs should I be looking for? And any recommendations for brand? Posted by self at 07:57 PM | Comments (16) Comments are backThanks to some hard work by a couple of folks, especially Boris, and a new version of MovableType released specially to fight comment spam, you can once again leave comments. Posted by self at 04:56 PM | Comments (3) We, the mediaThe Dean campaign has created a page that aggregates blogs from supporters who have gone to Iowa to support the Governor — a real-time, partisan, participatory newspaper. Posted by self at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) January 15, 2004 Inept Cato analysis of Dean Net policyThe Cato Institute has just released its analysis of Howard Dean's "Plan for the Internet." This is one of the sloppiest pieces of thinking I've ever seen from an organization named after a Roman. The author, Adam Thierer, begins by quoting from the Principles for an Internet Policy on the Dean site. He interprets "No one owns the Internet . It is ours as citizens of this country and as inhabitants of this planet" as meaning " [G]overnment must treat the Internet as one giant collective resource and regulate accordingly." Wow. (For the record, here's the sentence he leaves out: "The Internet does not exist for the unique benefit of any group or economic interest." He omits it presumably because it implies that the Internet does have economic meaning, which works against the Birkenstocky impression he wants to convey.) It gets much worse:
And what is the evidence that this is Dean's view? None is cited because none exists. The Dean campaign has not issued an Internet policy. So where does this "master plan" - with no master and no plan - come from? The next paragraph begins:
The rest of the article explains Dean's Internet policy by assuming it's the same as the "triumvirate's". The only problem is that neither Copps nor Lessig have declared themselves supporters of Howard Dean. True, Lessig is on Dean's Net Advisory Net, but that explicitly does not imply that he backs Dean. And the New America Foundation does have two Deans on its Board of Directors, but one is dean of the London Business School and the other is a dean at Johns Hopkins. So, leave aside the outrageous ascription of one person's beliefs to another without the slightest evidentiary gesture. The content of the article is equally poorly thought.
Fine, except the triumvirate (as far as I know) doesn't argue against markets and property rights. They argue for open markets and at least one of them — Larry the Good — has created a mechanism by which creators can maintain fine-grained control over their creations. Thierer concludes, striking a faux reasonable note:
Thierer acknowledges that the "commons crowd does not regard capitalism and markets as inherently evil or exploitative." But he misses the real point: The question isn't whether the Internet is socialized property or private property. The point is that the Internet isn't property. It's a protocol by which "content" is made accessible and communication is enabled. But, of course, Thierer sees property everywhere he looks: His complaint about the FCC's policy of licensing spectrum isn't that it needlessly concentrates power in a few hands but that spectrum ought to be property that can be owned, not just licensed. (Adam, here's a hint: This makes as much sense as suggesting that the government sell colors to companies...because spectrum is color. And here's another hint.) Further, why is it that "society should be structured and governed by property rights"? Does the Cato Institute value property rights over individual freedom? Even if the Internet consisted of property — an arguable metaphoric reach — why on earth should we think that property comes first? Whatever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? But Thierer is arguing against a strawperson in any case. None of the Triumvirate (AFAIK) advocates getting rid of copyright, for example. Larry certainly has consistently maintained that the control granted by copyright and Creative Commons licenses does indeed help to make for a responsive, vibrant market. Thierer knows this and acknowledges it at the beginning of the passage quoted above. But in the last sentence he ignores the sentence he just wrote, writing that the "commons crowd" advocates "socialized property." Except for the "socialized" and "property" part, that's exactly right. What a load of crap. And it's too bad, because an honest reading of the Dean Internet Principles should be music to the ears of those who believe in liberty and free markets, the way conservatives used to. Clay Shirky, in a msg to a mailing list, writes about the Cato Institute:
An excellent clarifying question... Note: My comments are still read-only as I recover from the damn comment spammers. Posted by self at 03:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (3) Balinese waterJohn Fritz blogs about a paper by Steve Lansing about how attempts to "optimize" the traditional Balinese water supply actually disrupted the social and ecological systems, and not in the good, trendy sense of disruption. [Disclosure: I know John because I'm consulting to Icosystem, the company he works for.] Posted by self at 09:36 AM | Comments (0) January 14, 2004 Comments down, maybe coming back soonYou still can't comment on entries on this site. I had to turn comments off after getting 1,000 comment spams in two hours. I hope to have a fix in a day or two. Thanks for your patience, and special thanks to some folks who are helping me: Boris Anthony and Karl. Posted by self at 10:58 PM | Comments (1) Applied PoMoTerry Heaton is a "New Media consultant" in Nashville who's writing a book: TV News in a Postmodern World. His latest essay, "News Is A Conversation," builds on and around Doc's cluetrain meme. Terry also blogs about something like Applied Post Modernism with lots of good info and ideas. Posted by self at 09:03 AM | Comments (0) CBS - Content Banishment SyndicateAdvertising Age writes:
Have you seen the ad, the one that won MoveOn.org's contest? What possible standard or practice does it violate? Is our country stronger because a TV network refuses to air an ad because it criticizes our president? (Thanks to Dan Gillmor and Sheila Lennon. Posted by self at 08:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1) Cursed computersI have had more than my share of hardware problems. While I'm waiting for the electrician, or someone like him, to put a second circuit into my office, I'm having problems that defy the physics of electromagnetism. Two days ago, my son's computer crashed. The hard drive - about 1.5 years old, well within the MTBF for drives in our house - was making ugly, repetitive crunching sounds, as if it were doing sit ups, and Windows XP Home was refusing to boot because NTOSKRNL.EXE had gone all corrupt. The drive was so far gone that I couldn't put a new copy of the file onto it. It wouldn't even let me reformat it and reinstall Windows. Three days ago, my father-in-law's PC also bit the dust. The hard drive is fine, but Windows 2000 was refusing to boot because NTOSKRNL.EXE had gone all corrupt. I might have been able to copy that file onto it, but I didn't have one with me, so I'm reinstalling Windows — it's easy on his because he only runs one app: a browser. Both machines are protected by Symantec AntiVirus. Both use RCN for broadband access. Other than that, they have different operating systems, different applications, different usage patterns. All they have in common is my aura. Could be a virus, of course, although I haven't found reports of one that eats that particular file. Apparently, this problem is sometimes caused by boot.ini crapping out. But why on both machines at the same time? I should never have shot that guy in that graveyard that night. The Head Lemur replies, via email since my comments are still down:
Posted by self at 08:33 AM | Comments (5) January 13, 2004 Comments are downMy web host (friends of mine) unplugged the comments module after the first 1,000 spams came in within two hours. I think you can still read comments but you can't write them. I'm going to try installing David Raynes' script that lets you turn off comments on scripts older than n days until I can install James Seng's script that will require commenters to type in a verification code displayed on the page. Thanks to BurningBird, who also offers a MySQL command that will strip out all comments between two named times. In the meantime, if you need to reach me, I'm at my usual emai1 address, which you can construct by connecting self to evident with an at thingy in the moddle and a dot and a com at the end. Damn spammers. Posted by self at 02:42 PM | Comments (1) Comment Spam FloodI just got 500+ comment spams (mainly for zoo sex, apparently) from someone who changes IP addresses every 3 msgs and changes the offensive link in every message. This defeats the MT Blacklist program I've been relying on. Help! I don't have time to manually strip out 500 spams. I will have to close comments (if I can figure out how to do so for all previous entries). Posted by self at 10:33 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (3) Speak spoof to powerSo, the Club for Growth runs this ridiculously nasty commercial that slips into self-parody as a couple says: "I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving...[etc.] freak-show back to Vermont." The Dean blog responds by posting the ad and a new version with dubbed voices so that the couple is now explaining why they're supporting Dean. It's a totally amateur job, and is intentionally funny because of that. Now the blog is hosting a make-your-own-postcard page where you can make your own list of the sort of Dean supporter you are. The blog notes that "frequent blog commenter 'jc' has been collecting more responses than we can publish here," so it links to her page where you can read postcards that are funny, touching and completely human:
Take all this together and you have a real Webby way to respond to the mass media! Posted by self at 08:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1) Funny depressing, not funny hahaJeff Jarvis has some excellent transcriptual commentary on the unintentionally hilarious Tim Russert segment on blogging. Posted by self at 01:46 AM | Comments (2) January 12, 2004 Get Smart with IsenbergDavid Isenberg is thinking about holding a real world get-together — he's calling it WTF — for his readers and people like his readers. I've been to get-togethers David's put on and they've all been great experiences — I met wonderful people and learned lots. Posted by self at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1) Let's not retire the Hitler comparisons[NOTES: 1. At no point in the following do I compare George W. Bush to Hitler. 2. All those who take quotes out of context will be prosecuted, or at least whined about.] Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine, suggests a New Year's resolution in her Boston Globe column today (which will be de-linked by the Globe tomorrow):
Likewise, Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby thinks any comparison to Hitler is hate speech. Not to mention the field day the conservative groups are having with the fact that two of the 1,500 entries into the MoveOn.org ad contest compared some aspects of this administration's policies to Nazi Germany's. (Oddly, none of these commentators have complained about the Bush administration's repeated characterization of opponents of the Iraq war as "appeasers," a direct reference to the British policy of appeasement that failed to stop Hitler, or about its use of the phrase "Axis of evil" with its implicit comparison to WWII's Axis.) So, let me come out firmly against stupid, thoughtless comparisons of anyone to Hitler. Often such comparisons commit an informal fallacy: Because person A is like Hitler in property P, A is like Hitler in property Q, where Q is Hitler's evilness. That's not only fallacious, it trivializes what is important. But ruling out all comparisons with Hitler and Nazism can also be a way of forgetting what should be remembered. Here's one thing I think should be remembered: Nazi Germany's unfathomable evils were perpetrated by one of the most civilized of cultures. Yes, "civilized" is a loaded term. Deconstruct it as you will, Germany — a country that gave us many of the West's most revered artists and philosophers — seemed to be operating well within the norms of Western politics and culture. Yet it democratically voted in Hitler and watched (or worse) as it murdered its children and rolled tanks into its neighbors' cities. I don't know, and I don't believe it can be known with certainty, whether there were particular aspects of the German situation that made it susceptible to turning evil. Certainly Germany's particular way of being evil was rooted in the particularities of German history and culture. But one big lesson I take from this is that cultures that are convinced they are good can nevertheless become evil. And they can be evil when they think they are at their greatest. That's why I think Cathy Young is profoundly wrong. We should learn from the horrors of Nazi Germany that it can happen anywhere, even here. But, we should not expect it to happen in the same way, with concentration camps, jackbooted soldiers and a hypnotic demagogue. In fact, we are so aware of those particular forms of evil that we're less likely ever to fall for them. We need to remember Nazism especially when we're looking at the forms of evil that do not mirror the particulars of the Nazi expression of evil. Before the death camps and the invasions, there were the steps that somehow led a country to embrace great evil. The Nazis came to power not by military takeover but through an election. Each subsequent step seemed justified or was at least so palatable that there was no civil uprising. We honor those who fought Nazism and we remember those whom Nazism murdered by being vigilant about the steps we take, for we understand that some steps can lead a country from good to evil. So, yes, comparing Bush to Hitler is worse than stupid. But we forget the lesson that we should have learned if we don't publicly notice that some steps our country has taken could lead our great nation into evil:
Do these acts make us into Nazi Germany? Of course not! Is any of these acts on a scale with death camps or the invasion of Poland? Not in the least! Each may be entirely justifiable: It may be the responsibility of a courageous country to ignore world opinion in some instances. Some dissenters may actually be unpatriotic. It's possible that our enemies are demonic; I have nothing good to say about Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. Even so, we should take such steps with open debate and genuine trepidation. Shutting off the conversation does not help us preserve our genuine American values. We should remember that it can happen here because it did happen there...and also that if were to happen, the it would certainly be different. Is it happening here? That's exactly what we should be talking about, even if our answer is a resounding No. If all comparisons to Nazi Germany are out of bounds, then we're saying Nazism was sui generis, unique, something from which we can learn nothing about how we humans can go so astoundingly wrong. And that truly dishonors all those who suffered its horrors. Mitch makes a good point about why MoveOn's open posting of ad entries is as American as multimedia pie. Posted by self at 09:45 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (3) January 11, 2004 Amazon Easter EggType "old fart" (no quotes) into the search box at Amazon. Act now! (Thanks to Dan O'Neill for the info.) (If that doesn't work, try here.) Posted by self at 05:30 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (7) How can Clark win?Dean opted out of the campaign finance reform law because its cap on fund raising would have meant that this spring, even though he'd raised the maximum allowed, he'd be out of money. He might have the nomination sewn up, but he'd have to sit on his hands as Karl Rove spends $150M against him, right up through the Democratic Convention in August. What candidate could survive that type of blitz? So, let's say Gen. Clark wins enough primaries to become the nominee. Clark has opted into the campaign finance reform law, so he'll be out of money in March. Or maybe in May. Either way, how is he going to win the general election? What is the Clark strategy for winning? Does anyone know? (If you tell me that blogs will enable a candidate to withstand a $150M negative TV campaign, I will ask you to send me a sample of what you're smoking.) Posted by self at 05:23 PM | Comments (9) Blogging the MarketGeorge Dafermos has posted a paper titled "Blogging the Market: How Weblogs are turning corporate machines into real conversations." Given that nothing is truly comprehensive, this paper edges in that direction. It begins, in the Abstract, with these words and in this tone:
and it ends like this:
In between it covers a huge amount of ground. I'm sure I'll be returning to it frequently as I try to remember who said this or that insightful thing about weblogs. Besides, how could I not like a paper that refers to the Cluetrain Manifesto as "infuriating"? :) (Thanks to John Robb for the link. Also, here's a PDF version that doesn't have some of the formatting problems of the HTML rendition.) Posted by self at 10:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (5) January 10, 2004 GPS Navigation #3On my first trip with my Garmin navigation system (Model 2610), I got lost within a quarter mile of home. Well, I didn't get lost because that doesn't happen when you have an omniscient navigator. I did manage to make a wrong — unindicated — turn, I think because I was not used to how far away an intersection is when the navigator says that I should turn left in 400 feet. A few seconds after you make the wrong turn, the navigator calmly says that you are "off course" and recalculates the route. As a result, it took me through back streets all the way to my destination (Halley's apartment), a route substantially different than the one it plotted for me when I came back and didn't make wrong turns. That aside, it's pretty damn impressive. The pre-turn instructions are timed well. The map zooms appropriately so you can see where you are and where you're supposed to be going. It would help, though, as Halley pointed out, if it gave you a verbal "Right on!" when you've managed to make a turn correctly; some of us (me) are so pathetic that we need the encouragement. It did route me home in a sub-optimal way. I'm sure the route looked like the fastest on paper, but you really don't want to go through Harvard Square at 6pm on a Saturday night unless you have to. Also, while it's legally possible to make a left onto Comm Ave the way it told me to, you'd have to violate the laws of physics to do so, particular the clause that says two bodies can't occupy the same space at the same time. I'm still finding it confusing to create routes. It's a highly compressed UI. But I'm getting better at it. The weirdest thing is, though, that while it certainly is getting me from A to B better, I now have even less of a sense of where I am. I don't know how what cities I passed through or what roads I'm on. All I know is that I have to make a right turn in 400 feet. Posted by self at 06:41 PM | Comments (2) The power of JoiSo, I'm at this big Dean organizing event in a hotel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and I plug in my wifi card just for kicks. And — surprise! — it tells me I'm getting signal, which is surprising since the event and the hall don't have any wifi transmitters. So, I look at the properties of the connection:
This would be great except Joi Ito is some thousands of miles away, telling Sony executives what they need to know about the future of media, a fact I confirm with Boris Anthony, Joi's blogmaster who happens to be at the Dean thing. And, no, there wasn't really any wifi working, ad hoc or otherwise. Posted by self at 06:28 PM | Comments (6) January 09, 2004 Navigator #2Off on a 1.5 hour trip tomorrow with the new Garmin GPS navigator. Part one takes me 20 miles away to Halley's place; I've never been in that neighborhood and it sounds like it's a bit tricky to find. Then it's on to Portsmouth, with Halley and Jackson, to a Dean meeting. So, this should be a good test. I'm having trouble with the UI for requesting routes. When I do a text search for an address, three times out of three it's told me that it doesn't exist, although if I use the map zoomed in all the way, I can find them, and the system accepts them as valid waypoints. Odd. BTW, Gary Turner writes amusingly (as always) about his own experiences with GPS navigation. Posted by self at 06:06 PM | Comments (0) Overly-pleasant spamHere's an unanticipated effect of spam. Spam showing up in blog comments increasingly tries to pass itself off as a genuine comment. So, I've been getting spams that say how interesting my blog is and how much they care about what I have to say. How touching! Other comment spam disguises itself in the form of some bromide so generic that it can apply to any blog article and so bland that no one will object to it. For example, "Pamela Woodlake" recently spammed an entry on Andrew Odlyzko's comparison of broadband and cell phone adoption rates with the heartwarming comment that "A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." The URL she gave as hers, however, is for some weight-loss hokum. Frankly, I'd rather be spammed by someone touting penile enhancements than drown in innocuous platitudes. Posted by self at 03:50 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (3) Trusting the ballotAccording to an article in yesterday's Miami Herald:
The non-votes may be due to Democrats entering the voting booth only to discover that there were no Democrats on the ballot. But the mere suspicion that the machines are at fault is intolerable in a democracy. Posted by self at 08:41 AM | Comments (1) Insect-Part LimericksThe Annals of Improbable Research's newsletter version — and check out its new blog — is running a limerick contest:
Here's my entry:
You can send your entry to:
Posted by self at 08:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1) January 08, 2004 Navigator #1My Garmin 2610 GPS navigator arrived this afternoon, on time, from CompuPlus, a cheapie online merchant. But I had to help my son with his homework when all I wanted to do was play with my new toy. Damn homework! The unit seems smaller than I remember it from my friend's car. But such is the illusion of consumerism. The installation instructions are mediocre. The software installed pretty easily despite that, although I'm not sure that my registration went through. I got a mysterious error code. But the mapping software seems to be unlocked, so I'm proceeding. When you turn the unit on indoors, it defaults to showing you China and displays a "Locating Satellites" message, which may or may not be the case. You load up the two disks of North American maps that come with the system and you click on the regions you want to install onto your device. An inconspicuous note in the window frame tells you how many megabytes of mappage you've selected. Since my unit comes with 128MB of memory on a flash card already installed in the system, I picked 127.9MB of maps, which covered all of the Northeast, up to about 50 miles west of the Hudson in NY and upper NJ. Then you tell the software to save the maps into the GPS unit, which you've connected by USB. It transfers slowly. The meter says it'll take about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the first time through it got to the 15 minute mark and only then told me that I'd selected too many maps. So I knocked it down to 126.9MB and we'll see if it craps out again. It'd be real handy if it'd warn you about this before you spend the time uploading. Sigh. The upload screen grays out the choices for waypoints and routes, so I'm a little nervous that after I've uploaded all the mapping data, I still won't be able to tell it that I want to go from my house to my in-laws' house. (They live over a mile away so I need electronic help getting there. Really.) But we'll see. Anticipation...
Posted by self at 08:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1) Hairy Club for GrowthHalley is making light of the Club for Growth today, and manages to work us around to a Joe Conason piece on the hypocrisy of rich addicts who are hardliners about drug users except when they're them (so to speak). Posted by self at 01:52 PM | Comments (6) Bush in 30 SecondsA team of celebrities is determining the winner of MoveOn.org's contest for amateur commercials countering the Bush administration's policies and propaganda. But we wee folks get to vote on winners in three categories: Funniest, Best Youth Pitch, and Best Animation. Some of the 12 entries are very well done and quite amusing. Posted by self at 01:39 PM | Comments (1) Waiting for GPSMy GPS navigation system should arrive today. I forewent all birthday and Chanukah gifts from my family in order to build up a fund for the device, a Garmin 2610. It's a perky little number that sits on your dash and tells you, in a silky voice that forgives all your directional transgressions, how to get from A to B. I'm not a particularly good driver to begin with, but I spend most of almost every trip trying to envision how the road I'm on links up with the road I'm trying to get to. The rest of the time I'm having mini anxiety attacks, worrying that I'm on the wrong road or in the wrong city. See, I've only lived in the same neighborhood for 17 years, so you can understand why going to pick up milk is an adventure that requires road maps, emergency flares and a sextant. I am just missing some synapses. To me, right and left are like red and black on the roulette table. But two recent incidents really scared me. A couple of weeks ago, I pulled into a gas station and asked my wife which side of the car the tank is on. (The cars only three years old, so I'm still getting used to it.) My wife, knowing my directional stupidity, said "It's on your side." I still pulled in on the wrong side. Then, yesterday, I said that my son was "up in the basement." I really thought I had mastered up and down. Fortunately, that smell of burning plastic came from a misguided science experiment. But my problem isn't just with basic spatial orientation. I can't visualize how the parts of my world connect. When driving, I'm constantly surprised that this road leads to that one. To plot how to get somewhere, I have to laboriously piece together scenes of intersections, and often I just can't do it. I also have no sense of which areas are near other areas. So, I'm hoping that my new GPS system will let me focus on the important part of driving: Talking on the cell phone. NOTE: Now would not be a good time to tell me that instead of paying $750 for a Garmin, I could have done the same thing by wrapping copper wire around a $0.59 Boy Scout compass and sticking it into my Palm Pilot. Thank you. Posted by self at 12:15 PM | Comments (9) The Portrait of Joho GrayBoingBoing pointed to a site that PhotoShopped celebrities into old age and zithood. Since I have on occasion been cruel about celebrity faces, I thought it only fair that I PhotoShop my own visage to see what I might look like at the decrepit age of, oh, I don't know, 53:
(The depressing thing is that despite using every deformation I know of in PaintShop 8, this picture still has aged better than I have.) Posted by self at 12:00 PM | Comments (1) E-Dem at E-TechThe O'Reilly Digital Democrary Teach-In's lineup is now online. It's sorta kinda part of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference, which was a must-attend event last year and promises to be as good this year. The Teach-In — bring a flower and anything written by Howard Zinn — looks like it'll be a great day with some fabulous folks who are actually making a difference. (Disclosure: I'm on the conference committee, but that doesn't mean I'd lie to you about being excited about the event.) Posted by self at 08:27 AM | Comments (0) Making up the storyI will admit it's a little thing, but it irks me. The Boston Globe today has an article by Joanna Weiss about the Clark campaign "blasting" a leaflet from the Dean campaign. In order to build the narrative, the fourth paragraph says that "Clark aids said that the Dean attack was a sign that...the presidential race might be evolving into a two-way battle..." The fifth paragraph then validates this point of view:
The sixth paragraph continues the story:
Hmm. The first poll mentioned has Clark at 16% and Kerry at 13%, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points. The second one has Dean with 24% and Clark with 20%, with a margin of error of 5. The Globe article ignores the margin of error in the NH poll but includes it in the national poll. Why? I can only presume because the story tells better that way. Clark is coming up quickly in the polls. That's an important story. We could do without shading the statistics to make it "tell" better. The Globe's lead story today is Bush's immigration reform proposal. I read all three articles in the set and I still don't what Bush is proposing or how it's different than what currently exists. This is some bad reporting. Here's a Q&A from the Miami Herald that I found much more helpful. It turns out that the proposal, which does not give illegal immigrants the right to apply for permanent residency, sets up a "guest" status where "guest" means "Willing to pay a fee to take a job so crappy that, even during the worst economy for jobs since the Depression, no American is willing to take it." Be our guest to do our back-stooping, subsistence-paying labor! You're welcome! (Are FAQs becoming more useful than inverted pyramids in telling non-narrative journalistic stories?) Posted by self at 08:16 AM | Comments (4) January 07, 2004 Dean Support-o-MeterThe Club for Growth, a Republicanish group, has spent $75,000 to air an ad in Iowa that features a couple saying, "I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding...[etc.] ... freak-show back to Vermont." One has to wonder why. If Dean is the weakest candidate against Bush, why is a Republican group working so hard to keep him from getting the nomination? In fact, why would Karl Rove be telling the world that Dean is the candidate he would most like to run his boy against? Surely Karl is too devious to be giving the Democrats such good advice! Anyway, thanks to the Club, we now have an easy way to gauge whether Dean is the candidate for you:
By the way, in response to this ad, Dean supporters donated an additional $280,000 to the Governor's campaign. Charles Taylor at Salon has a good review (i.e., I generally agree with his assessment) of the ads created by amateurs as part of MoveOn.org's contest. He particularly likes Charlie Fisher's "Child Play." Me, too. As Taylor says:
Posted by self at 09:10 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (4) Collaborative MappingEdward Mac Gillavry has a paper on collaborative mapping that comes at the idea from a different angle than does Matt Haughey's suggestion that someone combine a mapping system with a Slashdot-like system to do collaborative routing:
Mac Gillavry points to two aspects of collaborative mapping: 1. Generating maps by mapping with your feet, so to speak. For example, at Waag.org, you can see maps of Amsterdam generated by aggregating data from people carrying GPS devices. 2. Collaboratively annotating locations with content that is displayed on location-aware devices. A wiki for every street corner! (In case you're wondering why mapping stuff has started showing up in this blog, it's because I'm working on an article on it for Esther Dyson's Release 1.0.) Posted by self at 08:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1) January 06, 2004 Things you never knew why they existedMike O'Dell points us to a hard-to-fathom game at the Things You Never Knew Existed site.
Why this counts as a game is a bit of a mystery... Posted by self at 10:44 PM | Comments (4) Damn social Web!I sent an email to a friend this morning asking for help thinking of technology people who meet a particular parameter, you know, along the lines of "Do you know any techies who ____?" Unfortunately, my friend forwarded my hastily written mail to about 20 people who might also be able to fill in the blank. One of those twenty mentioned Metcalfe's Law in her reply. Someone else talked about the need to supplement that law in order to understand a different aspect of social dynamics. Someone else commented, contradicted, expanded... Now those 20 people — strangers — are engaged in a conversation about social network dynamics. This leads me to a conclusion: The Web is more social than I am. Posted by self at 05:29 PM | Comments (1) January 05, 2004 New Rule: If you don't know me, don't call meI just posted this at Corante Many2Many: I like Skype. It lets me make phone calls for free to the other 4M people who have signed up for the service. The calls go through my computer and they work real good. But I've just gotten my second random phone call from some well-intentioned stranger who wants to know if I want to chat. Actually, I don't. If you call my Skype number randomly, the odds are just about perfect that you're going to be interrupting something that I'd rather be doing than speaking with a stranger. And here's how you know that: If I wanted to be speaking with a stranger now, I'd be on the Skype phone calling one. If you can get through to me on my Skype line it's because I don't want to be speaking with a stranger now. Thank you for your attention. Posted by self at 12:54 PM | Comments (6) Request for Open Source Mapping helpAnyone care to review the following snippet, about open source GIS projects, for accuracy, completeness, fairness, etc.? It's part of a much larger piece on the GIS industry. I'm on short deadline here... <Draft> One of the leaders at this point is the University of Minnesota's MapServer. It was initially developed as part of the ForNet forestry management project, funded by the state of Minnesota and NASA. While the MapServer lets an application display a browsable map, the site notes it, "is not a full-featured GIS system, nor does it aspire to be." The US Geological Survey announced last month that it will use the MapServer technology to help build The National Map, an open source map server with access to 20 terabytes of data from TopoZone.com (a site created by Maps a la carte, Inc.). TopoZone's map data comes, in turn, from the USGS as well as other sources. There are other open source GIS web servers and applications. For example, GeoServer [led by whom?] implements the OpenGIS Consortium's Web Feature Server with the noble aim of making the citizenry better informed about matters geographic. PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the open source Postgres SQL database. GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System), an international effort hosted in Italy, Germany and at Baylor University in the US, is strong in producing map graphics. Of course, the open source projects generally don't provide all the functionality that the commercial services do. For example, if you give MapPoint or ESRI's map server a list of points you want to visit, you will get back an optimized routing map. MapServer and its like don't offer that functionality. But, because the open source map servers are non-proprietary, the community can add the features it needs as it needs them. For example, the Rosa Java Applet is one among several tools developed by the DM Solutions Group that add functionality to the MapServer, enabling users to interact with an image of a map by clicking, pressing buttons and dragging and dropping. Open source lags commercial development in this space, but it is good enough for many applications...not to mention it has the advantage of being open source. </Draft> Thanks! Posted by self at 11:57 AM | Comments (12) Grassroots adsMoveOn.org has posted the selected nominees in its create-an-ad contest. If I weren't on deadline, I'd be watching them right now... Posted by self at 10:08 AM | Comments (2) Happy SylvesterHanan Cohen explains why Israelis refer to New Years Eve as "Sylvester":
Hanan also points to an article about the 25% increase in poverty in Michigan. Posted by self at 10:06 AM | Comments (1) January 04, 2004 Why I'm supporting Dean - The short answerDave Rogers asks, in a comment to my posting about canvassing for Dean, why I'm supporting the Gov. Here's my reply: If you matched my positions up with the candidates' (see the WBUR vote by issue quiz), it'd come out pretty much a wash among all of them except Lieberman. So, although overall I prefer Dean's stances, I'm not voting primarily on the issues. There are two other reasons I'm supporting Dean. First, I think he has the best chance to beat Bush. There are clearly reasonable arguments about this and I have never made an accurate political prediction. But it still seems to me that we can't win by competing for the center. We did that and "lost" last time. We need instead to energize the base and bring in new voters. I think Dean has the best chance of doing that. Second, win or lose, I think Dean is transforming politics. He's giving people hope. (Despite what the Republicans and the media say, hope outweighs anger in the Dean movement, IMO.) He's breaking the mold of traditional broadcast politics. He's genuinely committed to giving citizens a voice and letting us self-organize. I think we (the grassroots) are laying the groundwork for something new and important. So, even if Dean loses the nomination, I will be proud to have worked for him. Since beating Bush is my number one priority, of course I will work for and contribute to the campaign of whomever the Dems nominate...although my ardor will be dampened if it's Lieberman. Some friends of mine are considering switching from Dean to Bush (!) because they doubt Dean's commitment to Israel. They are especially exercised by Dean's referring to members of Hamas as "soldiers." In context, though, he was calling them soldiers in order to support Israel's policy of assassinating them. I don't see how this indicates any weakness in his support of Israel, although it was obviously stupid politically. Posted by self at 10:44 AM | Comments (13) Does social software matter?I've posted an entry at Corante Many2Many on whether social networks such as LinkedIn matter... Posted by self at 10:07 AM | Comments (1) Are plane crashes news?Can anyone tell me why an entire news cycle was taken up by the crash of a plane full of tourists? Of course it's a tragedy for the dead and their families, but once terrorism was ruled out early on, why was it the headline for the day and the lead story every hour on the radio news? Slow news day? Yeah, except for a probe about to land on another planet. And Afghanistan on the verge of giving itself a constitution. And the New York Times claiming that Pakistan is the hub of the international traffic in the requisites for making nukes. And the Office of Management and Budget reporting that the new budget is going to halve the deficit in five years by cutting healthcare for veterans, job programs, housing vouchers and biomedical research. And a long-time Democratic representative switching parties because his district was repeatedly denied funds because he was a Democrat. What does a plane crash tell me about my world? Why do the media think that it warrants my attention the way that, say, a Malaysian bus plunge doesn't? Why does a plane crash matter? (Note: 24 people died in traffic accidents in George over the long Christmas holiday weekend.) Catherine Seip awards her own Dubious Achievements to the media. (Thanks to kausfiles for the link.) Lisa Williams - four days away from giving birth - comments on this entry and points to a few sources of statistical information: the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the American Fact Finder, and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. She writes:
Happy upcoming birthday, Lisa! Posted by self at 09:23 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (1) January 03, 2004 Shoe leather for the GovIt should rain when you canvass for a candidate. Not a downpour but enough of a drizzle that your hair is plastered to your head and your shirt never gets quite dry. And it should be cold. Glove cold. And the first person you meet should definitely not agree with you. Easy virtue isn't worth it. (Accidentally leaving your umbrella, hat, cell phone and lunch at the local campaign headquarters is purely optional, however. Sigh.) I'm home and dry now. My shoes are off and my feet are up. I feel good that I did a little tiny bit today to help get the Governor into the White House. I knocked on the doors of the registered Democrats and Independents marked on the papers the Portsmouth Dean HQ gave me. Most weren't home. (Where do the people of Portsmouth all go on a rainy Saturday? Or did they just see me coming?) Some were Dean supporters. One woman worked with Dean's wife in an ER in Vermont. Another said she's supporting Dean because she's in health care services — no further explanation required. A bunch politely declined to talk with me. No one volunteered that they were supporting another Democrat. The very first person who responded said, "I'm supporting President George W. Bush" with a semper fi stare that nearly knocked me off his stoop. His neighbor is also supporting the president, but thanked me for coming out on a day like this. I thanked him for thanking me, and he thanked me back. I spent most of my time in an apartment complex where most of the people I spoke with were not the ones listed for those apartments; apparently it's an area with high turn over as the economy shakes people out of their jobs and homes. One young woman was trying to decide which Democrat's position on education is closest to her own. She's preparing to be a teacher. I started to say something about the failure of No Child Left Behind, but she beat me to it. "This insistence on testing, and on blaming schools and teachers, is ridiculous," she said. That's Dean position, I replied. "Whoever we get will be better than Bush on education," I said, and she agreed. I said that I was supporting Dean not just because of the issues but also because I like the way he makes decisions: look at the facts, come to conclusions, change your mind if the facts change or if you were wrong. It'll be good to have a person of science in the White House. For those who weren't home, I left a Dean brochure. I wrote "I hope you'll consider Gov. Dean!" on each and signed it "- David W., a wet volunteer." No one told me to do that. In fact, when Joe at the Portsmouth HQ gave us our instructions, he said, "When someone answers, tell them a sentence or two about why you're supporting Gov. Dean." No Message of the Day. No scripted talking points. Just go forth and converse. Cool. I came back to Portsmouth earlier than the rest of the canvassers because I wear out sooner. And the luck of my day continued: My drive home coincided with a particularly good episode of "This American Life" on the radio. Posted by self at 04:51 PM | Comments (8) Canvassing for HowieI'm off to Portsmouth, NH, this morning to go door-to-door for Dean. I'll let you know how it went... Posted by self at 09:05 AM | Comments (2) January 02, 2004 e911 cell phone location queryMind some dumb-ass questions about cell phone location technology and policy for something I'm writing? I'm having trouble finding a site on the Web that talks about this at a sufficient level of ignorance. I understand that by 2005, 95% of cell phones in the US need to be able to broadcast their location with an accuracy of 50-150m. This is part of the FCC's e911 ("Enhanced 911") act. Here's what I don't understand: 1. The wireless carriers are required to track that information only if you make a 911 call. But will my cell phone be broadcasting its location continuously, or only when I make a 911 call? 2. I'm confused about the tech used by cell phones to determine location. Is it GPS? (If so, what happens when I'm indoors or in an urban canyon? And, if so, a GPS device receives; it doesn't transmit. So does the location information just get encoded as a header or something in a 911 call? In all calls?) If it's not GPS, what is it? I'd ask smarter questions if I could. And, of course, please feel free to correct the part that I think I understand, too. Posted by self at 11:19 AM | Comments (67) | TrackBacks (1) Shwirtz in IsraelJacob Shwirtz has moved to Israel and has taken his blog with him. Dramatic excerpt:
Undramatic excerpt:
Posted by self at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) January 01, 2004 New company blogKyle Shannon is blogging his new company, Invention Asylum. Should be fun. Posted by self at 02:50 PM | Comments (3) Best of 2003In alphabetical order: 1967 Posted by self at 10:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (2) |