A bad idea

Here's a site that's trying to "use up" the Republican's virtual space by reloading "several Republican websites" automatically every 60 seconds. See, if we all leave the protest page up in our browser, we'll show them Republican bastards ... well, I'm really not sure what we'll show them.

I'm confused enough about this that I am only reluctantly posting the protest page's url: http://users.drew.edu/clotito/protest_rnc.htm. Maybe you can explain to me if this page is:

1. A sincere but misguided attempt to make a point no one understands through a protest that no one will notice
2. A devious attempt to drive up the hit count on several Republican websites
3. Retarded terrorism

Halley interviews me

I seem to be on the other end of the phone in conversation with Halley over at IT Conversations Memory Lane. It all seems like an out-of-body experience now.

Anyway, Halley and I talked mainly about techno-politics, as well as technology and politics, as I recall.

By the way, allow me to answer one of the burning questions we left hanging in the interview: A balustrade is a railing along the front of a gallery.

Waiting, hoping...

Josh Marshall, whose blogging over the past couple of days has been extra special good, has been saying for a while that we're going to be getting some interesting news about the Niger matter. Today he says it again, saying that news will be coming out in "weeks." I wonder what it is that he knows...

Protest photos

GrannyD has posted some photos of the NYC protests...

By the way, the Boston Phoenix has an excellent article by Adam Reilly on her Senate campaign and whether it's good or bad for the Democrats.

Gutless wonder

I don't think I'm going to have the fortitude to watch the Republican Convention. I know that makes me a small person, but I just can't take it.

But reading the bloggery about it is a different matter. For example, Jay Rosen is nailing down ideas like a cabinet maker. And here's Ken Mehlman - a guy who "gets" the Net as far as I can tell - spinning the Kerry campaign as Rip van Winkely. And Oxblog on the Log Cabin Republicans' party (and on a talk with Koch). And here's a photo of Ari "Shameless" Fleischer holding a Blogs for Bush bumpersticker.

But watch the gloat-fest on TV? I just can't.

GrannyD for Senate

Doris "GrannyD" Haddock is certainly one of the more unusual Senate candidates. And isn't it about time we had some unusual candidates?

I've blogged some of her remarkable political rhetoric over at Loose Democracy...

Which circle of Zell?

Why is Zell Miller, who prominently links to his idiotic "Beethoven for Babies" bill that says more about his willingness to sell out to Sony than about his grasp of science, a Democrat? His site touts his exempting two Georgia counties from EPA regulations because it would have "a negative impact on the sitting [sic, I think] of new industry and the procurement of federal transportation funding..." He wants to push Bush's right-wing extremist judicial appointments through. He has a barbaric attitude about our treatment of Abu Ghraib prisoners that blames having men and women serve together in "these kinds" of military missions — this piece is sickening.

So, any guesses about the conversation Miller had with President Bush:

Miller: Well, Mr. President, I'm ready to make the move. Make it official. Switch sides of the aisle.

W: That's great Zelly-Belly. Let's do it up big. You ever strap on a six-shooter? Just for the fun of it, I mean? Maybe we could...

Karl Rove appears from behind curtains.

Rove: Not so fast, Senator Miller. You're of more use to us as a Democrat.

W: But don't we need him to vote our way in the Senate?

Rove: Done. Now imagine him as a Democrat giving a keynote at our Convention.

W: Are we letting Democrats in?

Rove: No, Mr. President. We're letting Senator Miller in. And he's going to show the sort of bi-partisan support you have.

W: Like the Log Cabin boys? A lot of them are bi, too.

Rove: Yes, like the Log Cabin boys. And then after the election, Senator Miller can become, oh, I don't know, Ambassador Miller? How's that sound, Zell? Maybe something with the word "Secretary" in it.

Miller: Sounds as nice as sweet potato pie.

Rove: Ehhhhexcellent.

Miller: Hmm. Do I smell sulfur?

Rove: Yeah, um, it's my, um, anti-perspirant. You'll get used to it.

Two oldies appreciated

I know y'all have read The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith — in fact, I see at Amazon that it's the Today Show Book Club #8, so presumably Katie Couric has read it by the light of a colonoscope — but I just read it. Very enjoyable, if a bit self-conscious. I now know 100% more about Botswana than I did before I read it, which is totally shameful but there you have it. (Anyone have any links to Botswana blogs? I couldn't find any...)

And, while continuing to be hopelessly out of date, a couple of nights ago, our family watched Groundhog Day. I saw it when it came out, I saw it again a few years later, and possibly one time more. Fun for the entire family, even those of us who generally don't like movies that don't have sword fights. Learning to do one day right: A good lesson about lessons.

Later: Ethan Zuckerman found a couple of semi-bloggy Botswanan things in English: A volunteer with a church in Botswana, and Mmegi "...not a blog, but an interesting daily paper."

New fried equipment

I came back from vacation, turned on my computer, and found that my expensive, way-over-powered APC uninterruptible power supply (APC BACK-UPS XS 1500) has been fried: The overload light blinks and the thing shrieks until you force it to shut up. It is less than a year old.

This is one in a multi-year series of electrical failures that have escaped the diagnosis of professional electricians and the power company. The UPS is rated for something like 1200 units and the equipment running off it totals under 400. An electrician installed a new panel in the basement and ran twin 20 amp lines up to my study. The power company has installed diagnostic equipment (which, by the way, blew up, although they claim that was a coincidence) and ran a new line from the pole to my house. No neighbors report similar fryings.

How many "p"s in poltergeist?

Meta-classification

At BiologyBrowser.org you'll find the following branch of their tree:

Home > Subject > Systematics > Taxonomy > Classification

What does Toogle do?

I don't want to give the surprise away, but you should go to Toogle and search for an image as if you were at Google's image page... (Thanks to Vergil Iliescu for the link.)

How W got out of the war

Video of the then Lt Gov of Texas saying that he pulled strings to get W into the National Guard...

A little context here.

I know y'all have probably seen this already, but I just got a link to this photo from the Yale yearbook showing W sucker-punching some unlucky rugby opponent, violating lots of rules, both official and of decency. [Thanks to Mark Dionne for the link.]

Man grows new jaw on his back

A man who had his jaw removed because of mouth cancer has had a new jaw implanted. He grew it on his back by using stem cells, growth hormones and wire mesh.

How long before we start getting spam offering this as a sure-fire way to please our lady, if you know what I mean?

Is this a trend?

Two stories on page 3 of the NY Times today are headlined with a question: "Did Kissinger Tolerate Rights Abuses in Argentina?" and "Is North Korean Leader's Mistress Dead?" Neither is marked as news analysis.

Are questions the beginning of humility?

Sell-side advertising

John Battelle has an idea for "sell side advertising," which is very interesting even though I never get "sell side" and "buy side" right. (Thanks to Ross Mayfield for the link.)

Four by Schneier

Bruce Schneier has had four security-related op-eds published. Yikes! Here they are:

In the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I write about the stupidity of our terrorist threat warnings. This is my favorite of the four, even though they didn't use my suggested title: "A Clear and Non-Specific Danger." http://www.schneier.com/essay-055.html

In Newsday, I write about the government's "no fly" list. The lead: "Imagine a list of suspected terrorists so dangerous that we can't ever let them fly, yet so innocent that we can't arrest them." http://www.schneier.com/essay-052.html

In the Boston Globe, I write about the government's airline "trusted traveller" program, and how it hurts rather than helps security: http://www.schneier.com/essay-051.html

And in the Sydney Morning Herald, I write about the $1.5 billion spent on Olympic security: http://www.schneier.com/essay-053.html

Those pesky 527's

W is now denouncing 527 groups (some background here, here, here, and here) so that he'll get headlines that sound as if he's denounced the Swiftboat Veterans for Big Lies. And, of course, it's working.

But I find myself really confused about what to do about those 527s. On the one hand, they are the way big money is getting around campaign finance limitations. They give too much power to people and companies with money. On the other, how do you stop them from advertising (a proposal the Reform Party backs) without infringing on free speech? If I want to raise a million dollars to buy a SuperBowl ad denouncing poodle trimmers, I should be allowed to.

Should there be a limit on how much anyone can contribute to a 527? Should there be a limit on how much you can contribute to a 527 for use in media campaigns? Should there be controls on the content of ads? The Federal Election Commission is going to decide - in effect after the election - whether 527s should be regulated the way the parties are, an idea that John McCain and Public Citizen like. I myself just don't know. My liberal money-shouldn't-buy-influence ideals conflict with my free speech ideals. Maybe there's a simple and obvious right answer. I'm guessing some of you will tell me what it is.

BTW, I can't find any position on the topic at www.JohnKerry.com. But it's pretty clear that Bush's new position against soft-money 527s is a serious flip-flop by W who opposed soft-money limits on individuals (see here.)

Swiftboat Veterans for BlogSpam

Meta-Roj got comment-spammed by the Swiftboat Veterans for Big Lies and is pissed. He retaliates by posting bunches of links, info about their domain, and a link to their Form 8872 finance report that lists the group's email address as "no@email."

(Note: Meta-Roj lists my blog, Loose Democracy, as one that escaped the blog spam. No such luck. And, I could have done without M-R's Vietnamese comments, apparently based on the fact that the IP address for the boasting is the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre .)

Tom on FEMA

Tom's such a damn fine, and funny, writer. It's enjoyable watching him ride his rant about FEMA like a buckin' bronco, even while knowing how Charley has disrupted his life.

It all depends on which end of the hatchet you're facing

MediaPost's MediaDailyNews runs a story by Ross Fadner with this headline:

This is based on an article in Classified Intellligence Report about eBay buying 25% of Craigslist:

Like a certain hockey-masked stalker from Camp Crystal Lake, Craigslist threatens to slice into newspapers' employment and real estate advertising strongholds. Add the huge promotional power of Meg Whitman and her team and this is one horror flick you don't want to see.

The editor of the report, Peter Zollman, seems to me to get it right: "Craigslist is not the threat; it's a symptom or a reaction to the threat." The "disease" of which Craigslist is a symptom is the growth of the Internet and the decline in interest in print newspapers. "Newspapers have lost their role as the marketplace [for classifieds]," Zollman says in the MediaDailyNews article. "Craigslist is the new marketplace."

Without irony, the little ad to the right of the MediaDailyNews headline reads:

Every day MediaPost Classifieds list dozens of prominent media planner, buyer, seller and marketing positions.

Fun facts from the article: CraigsList's 45 regional sites get a billion page views monthly and 5 million unique visitors. Classifieds account for 40-45% of a newspaper's advertising revenues, or $15.8 billion dollars per year in the US. Craigslist's annual revenues are guessed to be $7-$12 million/year. Craigslist does not advertise, relying on word-of-mouth.

And the article says the following about eBay's plans:

According to eBay spokesman Hani Durzy, the company bought the minority investment in Craigslist to learn more about online classifieds and how to reach local markets. We're learning more about the classifieds market... what these are, what it is that makes them tick," Durzy told theCIR.

Zollman believes that in the short-term, eBay's involvement in Craigslist will be minimal. In the mid-term, he said he expects eBay to aid the classifieds provider in its expansion efforts, eliminating the scams that permeate the service, and implementing new technologies. Zollman doesn't expect eBay to fund promotional efforts, at least in the near future.

Open spectrum in Germany request

I got an email from Hilmar Schmundt at Der Spiegel about the status of Open Spectrum:

Who or what institutions are active in that field in Germany? Is there any country where open spectrum policies have already been instituted (except for the W-Lan spectrum)?

If you know anything about this, you can write to Hilmar by interposing an a_t sign between hilmar_schmundt and spiegel.de

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross dies

I interviewed Dr. Kübler-Ross some time in the mid 1970s for an article for Maclean's in Canada. At the time, she had gone beyond her "five stages of dying" meme and was fully into proving that there's life after death by documenting weird coincidences and poorly substantiated tales. I was disappointed because, although I am agnostic about life after death, her methodology was anecdotal and seemed to me to be aiming at supporting a position she merely wanted to believe.

And yet, she did something remarkable. Deeply impressed by her work helping Nazi refugees and by a visit to the Maidanek death camp, she gave us a way to talk about dying. Before that, although it's hard for today's young'uns to believe, it was generally a forbidden topic, just as 20 years ago polite people didn't acknowledge that Uncle Sid wasn't a bachelor because he'd just never found the right lady. Whether or not the five stages of dying is the right framework — and very likely it is — the mere existence of a framework gave us all, including health care workers, a way to admit that dying is a process, not a door that slams. Thanks to EKR, we have gotten better at keeping the dying with us, tangled in our social relationships, until the twin doors do indeed close.

I admire her life and appreciate what she did for us.

FWIW, I am aware of and deny the supposed irony in my complaining about newspapers pretending to be objective in my previous entry and my complaining about EKR not being sufficiently objective in this one. Objectivity is a useful goal for scientific studies but a self-contradictory one for all but the most limited types of newspaper reportage.

Objective words

According to Editor and Publisher today:

Two days ago, in a front page news article, two New York Times reporters referred to the Swift Boat charges as "mostly unsubstantiated." The paper went a step further this morning on the front page, when reporter Elizabeth Bumiller flatly called the charges "unsubstantied," without a qualifier, in the first sentence of her story on the resignation of the national counsel for President Bush.

Other newspapers were not nearly as bold today...

So long as we have to choose words for sentences, objectivity is impossible.

The Bourne What's-Happening-acy redux

I know I've already blogged about how confusing I found The Bourne Supremacy, but here's an email (slightly edited) I sent to Sam Allis at the Boston Globe today in response to his "Critic's Notebook" that luxuriated in that movie racking up bigger grosses than either Collateral or The Manchurian Candidate, two movies he considers to be smug, predictable, and coasting on their star power:

Sam,

I enjoyed your piece today and am glad to see Damon get the credit he deserves. But one thing you said irked me enough to write to you, primarily because I just can't figure out what the director and editor were thinking...or why apparently it worked for some viewers.

The very scenes you single out as examples of master craftsmanship I found indecipherable. For example, the long fight you admire has two guys dressed in black, filmed in such short and blurry bursts, frequently with their faces cropped outside the frame, that I couldn't tell who was gouging whom. Likewise, the car chase was a sequence of blurs. Now, I understand that this was meant to convey the impression of speed and action, but...

Lest my befuddlement be attributed to old fogey-hood (I'm 53), my 13-yr-old son came out of the movie with a headache, declaring it to be the worst movie he's ever seen because of the incoherence of the action sequences.

Compare the car chase scenes in Supremacy to the Bourne Identity. The latter was clear, exciting and ingenious. The former was none of those. It failed (IMO) at the basic level of telling the story. Or, compare Supremacy overall to Kill Bill I. In fact, compare it to all of Tarrantino's work. Tarrantino knows how to tell a story, no matter how ridiculous. Uma is mowing down dozens of attackers, all identically dressed, but there isn't a single "What's happening?" moment.

And while I'm disagreeing with you (remembering that the overall context is that I enjoyed your article...really), I'd make a plea for Michael Mann's considerable narrative skills. Even though the acting and the story were, in my opinion, inferior to Supremacy, I'd see Collateral again to watch his directorial technique. If I were to watch Supremacy again, it'd be just to try to figure out which blurry streak is supposed to be Damon's car.

(I'll probably blog this because, well, it's what we bloggers do.)

Best,

David Weinberger

Red-footed falcon - Photos!

As it happens, the place where I'm staying on Martha's Vineyard for a few days is about a half mile down a dirt road from the tiny airfield where the red-footed falcon is staying...the first and only sighting of this bird in North America, and it's drawing birders from all over. I went out today with my camera and got some startling photos of the little critter...

Roosting in the distance

Tiny against the cloudless sky

Super enlargment of previous photo. Notice the wing markings. Beautiful!

Soaring against the sun

Coming in to roost. It's not shy of people!

Newborn falcon! How adorable! Now we know why it's been hanging around!

Crisp and clear...the best photo I got

Birders gather to watch. Had they been a little more observant, they might have seen what I saw.

Open Source Top Ten

The Letterman Show lets visitors to their Web site suggest Top Ten entries for a weekly topic. This week the topic is "Top Ten Ways New York Is Preparing For the Republican National Convention." Go make merry.

DigitalID World coming up again

The third DigitalID World conference, is set for Oct. 25-28 in Denver. The first one was excellent and I hear the second one was also.

Broadband in the bedroom

Hotels are at long last figuring out that broadband in the bedroom is a must-have, according to a report by In-Stat/MDR reported by The Center for Media Research. "Total properties deployed will grow from 5,207 in 2003 to 26,828 in 2008." Apparently, this comes after a three year slump which I assume was due to the hotel industry's assumption that wifi was just a fad and that Real Men Pull Cable.

I forget who it was who posed this question, but it's a good 'un: Why are hotel pools free but many hotels charge for wifi? After all, pools are hugely expensive and few guests use them while wifi is comparatively cheap and lots of guests use it.

Slick wiki

Very very slick. Be sure to try it out. (Thanks to Marc for the link.)

How typical is this disgrace?

No child left behind? How about no school left standing, as a certain ex-presidential candidate used to call it?

Elephants on acid

Psychedelic Republicans. 'Nuff said (except thanks to RageBoy for the link).

Kerry camp poll analysis

Over at Loose Democracy I've blogged a memo from the Kerry pollster to the Kerry camp trying to set expectations way high for the bounce Bush needs from his convention.

Entertainment news and notes

Meta-death: Al Dvorin, the man who said "Elvis has left the building" has left the building.

Watching the Olympics is becoming more and more like watching Florida election returns.

Unreasonably annoying

Do we have a word for reacting negatively to someone but not trusting your reaction, and then getting stuck in this oscillation of dislike that doesn't know whether to attach itself to you or to that someone? That's pretty much my kneejerk reaction to Gerry McGovern's column on The Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogging.

I agree with much of the article. I think he gets the advantages of corporate blogging right. He says that the old idea of PR as conveying a message doesn't work on the Web which is a democracy of voices. Cool. I disagree with him on most of what he points to as disadvantages of blogging. But, my negative reaction went beyond a simple disagreement I found myself annoyed. Not a lot but still unreasonably.

So, I poked around just a little more and found a good and a bad reason for my reaction.

The bad reason is that he's marketing himself as a consultant a zillion times better than I do. (Since I'm a marketing consultant, this is not just ironic, it's a sign of my incompetence. But let's not point that out.) He's got the quotes from happy customers right up front. He gives you permission to republish his article so long as you include a link that says "Gerry McGovern is a web content management author and consultant." He's got the "McGovern Scorecard" that benchmarks your site "against best practice." I have learned that I react negatively to people who promote theselves overtly, and, knowing that about myself, I try to keep it from poisoning my feelings. I mean, I also have a kneejerk reaction against people who wear too much cologne, but you can't let that distract you from the rest of the person.

The reasonable reason has something to do with what he actually says. We have an honest disagreement about the following:

Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.

Sure, organizations aren't democracies, but the alternative isn't that they look incoherent. IMO, the multiple voices found in corporate blogs make organizations look human. Ok, so we disagree. Good.

But the disagreement goes deeper. Here's the opening paragraph of the blurb for his book, Content Critical,:

Content Critical will change the way you think about the World Wide Web. It is built upon a simple but profound insight: The Web is a medium for publishing content.

And later:

Content Critical talks about a website as a publication, because that is the primary function of a website. Yes, it’s a different kind of publication. It’s more interactive and transaction-driven than traditional publications, but it’s still a publication. Like all publications it’s a place where people come to be informed about stuff.

Because Gerry thinks of the Web as a publishing medium — not as a conversation, which I still think is the best way to think of it — his book (based on the first chapter, available on his site) is about how to build good content, edit it, winnow out what is unworthy of seeing daylight, and maintaining your site. All useful stuff.

But, if that's all your company is doing, you've missed the big point. You're a Web narcissist who thinks that you are the center of your product's universe, that you are the valued source of the bestest and truest information about your product, that your customers actually want to listen to you prattle on rather than dish the dirt with one another. Dish the dirt about you, by the way.

Ok, so I get to ride my ol' high horse for a paragraph, acting as if my thinking is more advanced than Gerry's. How fun. Of course, I'm talking to bloggy readers, not to marketing managers at big, traditional corporations. And, by and large, what I've seen of Gerry's writings pulls his clients in (what I consider to be) the right direction. Much of what I disagree with is like what I might say if I ever let reality influence me.

So, I'm at war with my feelings, an unpleasant brew of resentment and smugness. I feel like I'm back being an academic where the only currency is being right and showing everyone else is wrong and not as advanced in their thinking. The result in academics is that the people whose thinking is closest to yours become your most dangerous enemy.

So, when you come down to it, I can't find a single reason to hold on to any of my negative reaction. Yet, no matter how much I reason, my knees still jerk.

Sometimes it sucks being a human.

Thanks to Vergil Iliescu for the link.

On the sudden revelation of jerkitude

After an hour of failing to get my in-law's wifi up again, I was working up a good lather. I had Adelphia dead to rights: I have two wifi access points, a Linksys and a D-link, neither of which was giving me ping, neither of which was giving me a DNS. I have two computers here, both with the same problem. I tried every conceivable setting on both the access points and the computers. Nope nope nope. Adelphia was going to get an earful, I can promise you that!

I decided to try one last reboot of the Adelphia cable modem. And then, I noticed that the ethernet cable from the D-Link was plugged into the Linksys, not into the Adelphia modem. Um. Er. It turns out it works a lot better if you connect the access point to the Internet.

Heck, I may call Adelphia customer support and unload on them anyway. It may be unfair and undeserved, but it's cheaper than therapy.

Socialtext Round A

Socialtext, the wiki and social software company, has closed Round A financing with some investors noted for funding companies that make the world better. Cool! And I say this as a fully biased member of their advisory board.

ActionScript Jabberwocky and the sequel

First, the appealingly-named TurdHead blogger (time for self-esteem class, Turdy) wrote an ActionScript version of The Jabberwocky poem. It's an amusing bit of geekery. Then it got Slashdotted, drawing a bunch of fire form people who consider ActionScript, a Macromedia invention, to be the language Satan speaks when he stubs his toe. So, TurdHead has posted his reply, the punchline of which I won't spoil...

(Those of you who got here by googling "Jabberwocky" who actually want information about the miraculous summer Jabberwocky are probably looking for this or maybe these photos.)

Order of Magnitude Quiz: Paper readers

If you add the number of readers (note: readers, not subscribers) of the paper versions of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, and then subtract the number of readers in the metropolitan New York area so as not disadvantage USA Today, what's the total number of readers? (Information from The Media Audit as reported by The Center for Media Research.)

To see the answer, drag-select the seemingly-blank space between the x's:

X 15 million: 6.1 million for the NYT, 5.3 million for USA Today, and 3.7 million for the WJS. X

Reading by porchlight declared illegal

AKMA writes a must-read post about the police preventing him from using the public library's free wifi while sitting outside the library:

I closed the computer in order not to constitute a threat to established order, but engaged this peace officer in a discussion of the complexities of the topic. "I did notice several other open signals in the area — am I allowed to connect to them?"

"Maybe if you had permission it would be all right, but it's a new law, sir; 'theft of signal.' It would be like if you stole someone's cable TV connection.”

I responded, "But this is a radio signal thing — it's not like a cable connection, it's like someone has a porch light on and I'm sitting on the bench, reading a book by their light. I'm not stealing their light."

Needless to say, AKMA lost the argument.

Three degrees to freedom

Here's the formal relationship: My wife's cousin knows the mother of Micah Garen, the American journalist who was being held hostage in Iraq until a couple of hours ago.

Here's the same situation, this time expressed truthfully.

My wife and her cousin are very close. They are the same age, grew up together, and live within a couple of miles. You know how it can be with cousins: they are the closest relatives we're allowed to dislike, but they can also be a friend so close that you share DNA. This weekend we're together here on Martha's Vineyard along with our extended family. (The wifi is working and I have a comfortable roost on the couch, so don't worry about my being forced to go outside.) Micah's mother and my wife's cousin are both members of a small craft group that is a central part of my cousin's life.

So, although I am three or four degrees away from Micah Garen, I feel directly connected to him through two people I love, a close collegial relationship, and the the love of a mother. I have been checking the news frequently and felt a pall lift when Al Jazeera first ran the news of his release.

Some degrees are closer than others.

Express your opinions, get fired

A man in West Virginia was fired for heckling President Bush at a campaign rally, according to the Saturday Gazette-Mail:

Glen Hiller, of Berkeley Springs, was escorted from the Hedgesville High School event on Tuesday after shouting comments about the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction there.

The crowd had easily drowned out Hiller with cheers of "Four More Years, Four More Years.''

Arriving at his job with Octavo Designs in Frederick, Md., on Wednesday morning, Hiller said he was told that he had embarrassed and offended a client who had provided the tickets to the rally.

"I was told that my actions reflected badly on the company and that a client was upset,'' Hiller said.

A woman at Octavo Designs who declined to identify herself confirmed Hiller had been fired because of his conduct at the rally.

So he was rude. Heckling the powerful is one of the last resorts for free speech. "There is no venue for the regular guy to ask a question,'' Hiller said. "We don't have access to people in power. And those events are completely scripted and controlled.''

Our democracy is a little bit worse today because a guy was fired for yelling his opinion at the President. And until President Bush condemns the Swift boat ads, don't dare talk to me about "civil discourse."

PS: Even if Bush disavows the lies about Kerry's service record, I'm going to favor heckling, albeit not up to the point that it drowns out the speaker.

RSS made clear

Halley points us to a piece by Dan Bricklin wrote a while ago that explains RSS so clearly that you could varnish your furniture with it. Nice writing.

Spinsanity

AKMA suggests that every newspaper syndicate Spinsanity. Can we get an amen?!

Or, even better, maybe newspapers could start reporting on what's true and not just what candidates claim.

Speaking of AKMA, I'm enjoying watching him think through issues around James. This writing and thinking in public, a Web trend accelerated by blogging, is a big deal.

World's worst site?

Ernie the Attorney links to the world's worst site, an attempt to aggravate, um, aggregate the most common errors made by tyro web designers.

The site is bad but, jeez, I'm sure I've been to worse. No registration required, no page transitions, no frames (except for Tripod/Angelfire inserting itself as an IE search companion, apparently not as part of the joke), no popups, no pornography, no spyware (as far as I can tell), no size=1 font, no redirect of the back button. The music and animated gifs are real annoying, though.

Tiny drive imager

The drives can be large, but this drive imager, Snap shot, is only 130K. It comes highly recommended by Miles at TinyApps, which is a very good sign. I'm trying it out now, and if it all goes as it seems like it will, I'll be plunking down my 40 euros for the unrestricted version. (The restriction is that after 30 days, you can't read the backups. [Correction: Nope. You can read the backup, but can't make any new ones after 30 days. Sorry.])

Tom on Charley & FEMA

Tom Matrullo gives us a perspective on Charley we simply don't get through the media.

Finding the office was not a simple matter. Once there, I found several FEMA people milling about, avoiding eye contact with us, and 15 or so phones, some of which worked. The FEMA agents did not try to take questions or offer information. They simply told us to dial an 800 number. It was 7:30 a.m., and the room was already filling with people who had somehow found out where the FEMA center was located. Apparently in George W. Bush’s Washington, disasters may only occur after 8 a.m. and prior to 6 p.m. We waited for the emergency experts to arrive at their desks, then we got busy signals for more than an hour...

He ends with a list of services the government should actually be providing...little things like portapotties and a people who look for the missing.

Tom's post is a reminder of why we have blogs. And, Tom, let us know if we can help.

Conversational Vigilance

The free speech crowd ought to extend its concern for preserving the right of individuals to speak their minds. We ought to be just as zealous protecting our right to speak together.

We ought to promote the ability of people to talk with others, across all our divides.

We ought to fight the degradation of conversation by commercial forces.

Someone wake up Mario Savio, print up some buttons, and set up tables at UC Berkeley. Free the Conversations! Free the Conversations!

Markets are (unpaid) conversations

Blogversations matches bloggers with advertisers. As far as I can tell from the not-enough-informational site, the blogger writes about some topic the advertiser suggests and gets paid for it. It's clear from the site's defensive writing, however, that Blogversations knows its project is in danger of being misunderstood ... or, perhaps, understood.

Unclear from the site: Is the fact that the bloggers are getting paid made apparent? And where do these "conversation" occur? Unfortunately, there's no obvious way to get more information about what Blogversations is proposing except by registering.

By the way, their phrase "markets are discussions" sounds oddly familiar...

(Thanks to John Battelle for the link.)

Brookline i-neighborhood

Thanks to a recommendation by danah boyd, I've created an i-neighborhood for Brookline. The i-neighborhood site is an interesting experiment in adding a virtual layer to existing real world neighborhoods. (There's an interesting discussion of the nature of neighborhoods over at danah's site.)

As of now, I am the only member of the Brookline i-neighborhood, and thus am, at last, lord and sovereign.

After receiving my 15th request to be friends at Multiply.com

The feature I'd most like to see in any new social network: Import from some other social network. Get me out of the middle of re-re-re-re-confirming that I am so-and-so's dear friend.

These social networks in my experience continue to be all maintenance and no value.

Authenticity vs. credibility

Evelyn Rodriguez usefully distinguishes authentic voice from credible voice. I still think, however, that the concept of authenticity is a failed attempt to express something important. We've gotten the terms of the equation wrong so no concept quite fits. That's why we have so much trouble defining "authenticity" or even agreeing on it.

BTW, Evelyn here links to Tom Peters' candid talk about what's gone wrong with his life and the path he's taking to make it right. It won't be everyone's path, but, then, what is?

Bodies on line

danah boyd, Michele Chang and Elizabeth Goodman are running a workshop in Chicago, Nov. 6, on Representations of Digital Identity:

This workshop will address the many ways by which online presentations of self have been — and could be — constructed. In the absence of the body as a source of accountability and social legibility, individuals project a sense of self through multiple layers of mediation, including email addresses, graphic avatars, "friend lists," and results from search engines. How can we use the body in a mediated world? Or alternately, how can we promote rich modes of interaction that do not rely on the illusion of physical presence?

Great topic and one we ought to get some clarity about before we charge down that other road called "digital identity." It's not as if our culture has done such a great job understanding the way being embodied affects who we are.

Book of hope

Paul Loeb may be coming to your town soon to publicize his anthology, The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a book on political hope that includes pieces by Nelson Mandela, Tony Kushner, Cornel West, Vaclav Havel, Alice Walker and other moral and literary legends.

JOHO Challenge: Show up and see if you can depress him.

W doesn't tip

The ultimate trivialization of democracy or telling character detail? You be the judge. (And, yes, by running the link to this video, I am definitely having it both ways. Feels good.)

Tom's ok

From Tom Matrullo, after suffering the worst or Charley:

Thanks to everyone who tried to call or write - apologies to those of you who have been worried about the impact of hurricane Charley on us here in appropriately named Charlotte County, Florida, for the slow reply. I had to drive 50 miles today to get to a working internet connection. We are all alive and ok. Our house, like many in our area, has suffered a lot of damage - roof is half off, wall caved in, ceilings down - i.e. not very habitable. The county is without water, power, phone. The President was good enough to fly in and tie up traffic. (Saw a good bumper sticker: "There is a village in Texas that is missing its idiot.") There is a lot of good in people here, amid a lot of suffering and loss, and some of the usual negative elements, looting etc. Much help is pouring in from elsewhere, but so far, it doesn't seem rationally organized, lacking most media to do so. My neighborhood is sort of camping out. We are either camping or staying with friends whose homes are still intact, as the occasion warrants. I hope those of you who live in our area are alive and in good shape - do let us know - you're in our thoughts and hearts.

Thanks again for all the good wishes....