bopuc

It seems to me that the prizefight between mass media and “weblogs” has now begun in ernest.

Some have been debating the “weblogs versus journalism” conundrum, and the use of weblogs and “social software” in political campaigning has garnered much coverage from all sides. Also, there have been a few cases where weblogs have “outed” stories the mass outlets dropped, not to mention provided more in-depth coverage of things the big boys can’t or won’t touch… But it I believe the really interesting bout heard its starting bell this past week.

The admission by ABC news and others that it’s footage of the now infamous “Dean Scream” not only misrepresented the reality of the situation, and that it’s widespread use was - “perhaps” they say - an effort to show Dean in a negative light, was one of those chance moments when the World Champion heavyweight lets down his guard for just a moment, giving the unproven newcomer a chance at a really juicy right hook to the head.

This isn’t about Howard Dean or “Social Software”. It isn’t about “journalism”. It is about manufactured and manipulated reality sold to an unsuspecting populace.

One of the beauties of many-to-may communication, weblogs being the first step towards a widely accessible and aggregatable implementation of such, is it’s ability to de-isolate individuals, and more importantly, to bring them together in a non-regulated way. This is key in any democratic discussion. (Insert everything from power-laws, the trickle-up effect, social networks to “grass-roots movements”.)

Slowly but surely the new heavyweight is finding his bearings, refining his technique, learning to dance and gaining in strength. Can a swarm float like a butterfly and sting like a bee? I sure think it can.

The bell rung and the first punch thrown:

Over the last couple of weeks a process that was formerly hidden became visible, as the powers of television, radio and print decide which candidate they want to run against George Bush in the fall.
/…/
The last half of the 20th Century was an excessive monoculture, centralized thinking system, where we think, as Citizen Kane snapped”What I tell them to think!” The American news executives who deleted the Dean candidacy through misinformation should do as the leadership of the BBC did — resign and make way for an overdue reformation of journalism, and as a result the American political system. It’s time. As Lydon tells us, the corruption isn’t new. What’s new is that it’s visible now that we can inform each other without relying on them.

The “process that was formerly hidden” is propaganda institutionalized as (most) journalism, marketing and entertainment: cultural fascism, exploiting irrational fears and base desires.

Are you ready to rumble?

I was gonna write an entry today about how bored i am but Phillip Torrone has given me something to be excited about again. That’s twice now… I think I’m gonna owe him!

the portable geek gym…
i was told that i should "get outside" by a coworker since i live in a great area and jog, as opposed to jog on my treadmill. good point i thought, but i still want to be able to view my email, irc, rss feeds. so i started a new project—i have a lightweight pair of glasses with a small lcd screen, connected to a pocket pc (with video out) which is also connected to my phone via bluetooth. i’m adding a bluetooth gps this weekend, so as i jog near certain areas it will play content, for example my application will play a short video with audio about the space needle as i get close to it. obviously i don’t think joggers will use this, but there are tons and tons of applications. more photos soon of the entire set up.

portable geek gym, more details, photos and video!
here is the portable geek gym. tiny bluetooth gps velcro’d to my shirt, it talks to a pocket pc, which has a video feed to my sunglasses with lcd screen. also attached, a heart rate monitor, a pedometer, all fed to a health watch via rf, and also a spot watch- to check up on the news and instant messages. optional- my phone, which is used to check email via bluetooth and fed to the glasses which is usually playing the gps feed (maps) or a video. based on my location. it’s all really light too- so jogging is still fine.
click here for the video (quicktime version).

i can see what the aibo (robot dog can see)…
i’m playing around with using the sony aibo ers-7 as my eyes for limited periods of time- it’s pretty interesting to be downstairs and being able to see what the aibo is seeing. while it is no mars explorer, it’s quite a bit of fun.

The aibo thing is just computer-mediated reality/consciousness throwing fun. ;)

I’m somewhat frustrated in my search for a mobile phone that will satisfy me. I’ve narrowed it dow to the Nokia 6600, Sony Ercisson P900 and Handspring Treo 600.

Whichever one I end up getting (if!), I will have to compromise on one of the features that are key to me:
1- a good camera
2- Bluetooth
3- text input method

The P900 was my top choice. Somehow I prefer handwriting recognition over keypads. The Nokia 6600 is the worst in this category since it has only the numeric keypad. The Treo 600 has a full, albeit it tiny, QWERTY keyboard.

The P900 and the 6600 use Symbian 7 which is totally syncable with Mac OS X via Bluetooth. The Treo runs PalmOS and so far I’ve seen no indication of good support of Mac OS, nevermind Bluetooth (it don’t have it).

Now I find out the killer. The P900 and the 6600’s cameras actually take pictures at 320x240 then upsample them to 640x480. In the 6600’s case this causes color distortion, artifacts and blur. In the P900’s case it’s worse! You get all that AND very noticeable hatching effects. Total crap.

The Treo takes beautiful pictures. But it is useless to me because of the lack of Bluetooth/Mac support… and Palm OS leaves me cold. At least Symbian does IM and IRC etc…

Sigh. So no Treo. 6600’s input (numeric keypad) is a pain.. and the P900’s horrid picture quality makes me shudder.

So I ask again: why can’t these people get it right?

New York Post Online Edition: entertainment

Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig.

His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald’s and document the impact on his health.

Clay Johnson over at DFA just sent me these Alexa “traffic comparisons”:

• Orkut vs. LinkedIn
• Orkut vs. Tribe
• Orkut vs. Friendster

Truly amazing. In the space of 3-4 days, Orkut went from off the radar (ranked greater than 100,000 most visited site) to number 772!!!
(At the moment, Friendster is 218, Tribe is 4,493 and LinkedIn, off the radar, is 125,816.)
(Also at the moment, Orkut is down for “improvements”…)

I picked up a very large but seemingly very interesting book this afternoon at one of these liquidation bookstores. Five hundred plus pages about democracy; it’s history and what “the trouble is” with it.

I sat down and started reading and already, only a few pages in, I am finding some really great stuff. Stuff I want to expand on, blog about.

I put the book aside and went online. Googled the author’s name and… oh horror. He’s a raging ultra right-wing conservative. His website, ripe with “essays” about how homosexuals don’t deserve equal social rights, how abortion is murder, etc etc etc, turns me off immediately.

So I am perplexed. I wonder if I should bother reading any further into his book. Despite how he has started by questioning - as I am - the validity of what we now worship as “democracy”, I wonder where he will go. A quick glance at the Table of Contents offers no hints, other than all that is offered is a statement of facts. They may be angled from his particular perspective, which is inevitable I suppose… but… How do I get this bad taste out of my mouth?

I guess I shall read on and see.

But just to whet:

Accordingly, much of this book will be devoted to showing how the language of democracy has actually been turned against democratic practice as it was originally understood, and how the people feel helpless. For they have no other language with which to resist.

(This is very much in-line with the idea of cultural fascism I shared with Jim Moore at the Oasis diner in Burlington, which had him jumping up and down… until we called John Perry who’s immediate response was “we’ll have to find another word for that…” Hehehehe. We laughed about it… and then Hemingway punched me in the mouth.)

iTunes Music Store RSS Generator

So I grab the URL for the top 10 selling tracks. Guess what’s number one currently (must have iTunes installed)?

So, well, wow… the next big thing in “social networks” sites?

These guys basically rolled up Friendster, LinkedIn, Upcoming and probably a few more, into one. So far so good.

Still totally centralised and closed, but a step ahead no doubt. IMHO.

Dean Goes Nuts

Amazing. “Media Remix”. Thousands of people - the above being a small sample - have taken to sampling Dean’s Iowa Caucus Concession Speech and making remixes.

The power of public domain source materials and easy to use music software is starting to flex it’s muscle. With advent of Apple’s “Garage Band” I suspect we will see much more of this from now on, and not just in the political sphere.

Interestingly, The Deansters already tapped into the image-based parody/remix phenomenon with their Postcard generator.

Ohh, I have an idea…

smack the pingu!!!

but damn it’s fun.

Canuck: U.S. on the lookout for ‘potential problem’
By TOM GODFREY, TORONTO SUN

U.S. security agents have a master list of five million people worldwide
thought to be potential terrorists or criminals, officials say. “The U.S.
lookout index contains some five million names of known terrorists and
other persons representing a potential problem,” Brian Davis, a senior
Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential document
obtained by the Sun.

Names on the list are compared against those applying for visas or on
flights travelling to the U.S.

Anyone whose name is on the list is questioned or banned from entering the
U.S. — as passengers were on two British Airways flights to Los Angeles
two weeks ago.

The master list was revealed by U.S. embassy officials to a Canadian
standing immigration committee in April 2002. Its existence was revealed in
Davis’ document, obtained by Montreal lawyer Richard Kurland through an
Access to Information request.

Davis said Canadian visa officers abroad do not keep an extensive list like
the U.S. because terrorists can use bogus documents and change their
identities.

“We examine each application according to profiles,” he said. “(We) apply
experience and knowledge gained from a variety of sources. Canada’s
approach to identifying persons who may pose a danger was as sound as
possible.”

CSIS agents in Paris send a “brief” to Ottawa for cases that require more
in-depth investigation.

For some strange reason, some people, who really should know better, are more concerned with some vague notion of “electabilty” rather than the cold hard economic facts of the trap known as “federal matching funds”.

Now I think I have got this straight but correct me if I’m wrong. When a candidate accepts the “federal matching funds” package, they essentially accept a cap on how much money they can raise to fund their campaign. The number is around $40 million, if memory serves. Much of that money is spent campaigning in party primaries (read: fighting amongst themselves).

What this means, is assuming a candidate who has been capped this way actually gets the party “ticket”, he/she is then left almost penniless to fight “the big one”.

In this case, the opponent in “the big one” has around $200 million to spend on campaigning.

So, Clark and Edwards will essentially be broke, and utterly helpless, while W rains down on them $150 million worth of television advertising this summer and fall. The same thing happened to Gore four years ago.

Kerry didn’t go for the presidential public financing system. But Kerry’s money is all old style “big contributions”. $1000 a seat dinner parties and the like. That’s alot of dinner parties and handshaking he’ll have to do, with the rich people, to even stay above water. Nationwide television advertising is a nasty, expensive proposition.

Dean also didn’t take the package. Dean however has an enormous and very effective fund-raising mechanism, not to mention active “grassroots, face-to-face outreach programs, tapping right into the hearts, minds and smaller budgets of everyday Americans who feel they can finally do more than just go vote on election day… if even that. His people call it “The $100 revolution”: 2 million Americans x $100 = George W. Bush out of office.

I am not american so I am not really supporting anyone. Just looking at the facts. And there are way more than I care to type up here now that support the idea that if anyone IS electable, it’s Dean.

That said, i would like to note also that yes it is illegal for non-u.s. citizens to contribute to any U.S. political campaign… BUT there is no such law against supporting CULTURAL campaigns by anyone who so pleases and feels so compelled. MoveOn.org can do wonders with a few of your dollars, pounds, euros, rupees… They don’t care who wins as long as it ain’t the Bushies.

Also, a note to the Deansters:
The media and the opponents have distorted Dean’s anger at the state of America into just general bad temper. Time to tone down that strategy. Time for the Doctor to start talking about WHAT he would do, HOW he would do it and, fer criminey’s sake, what his VALUES are. The dems and the reps are on different playing fields: issues versus values… take the game to them! Issues fall on deaf ears. Values comfort.

Mike’s “Harkness Table” classnotes wiki is taking off!

Way to go! It’ll be fun to watch this develop… and spread…

Reuters | Oddly Enough

You’ll Never Guess Who’s Still Alive
Tue January 20, 2004 08:55 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - British war leader Winston Churchill’s foul-mouthed 104-year old parrot refused to surrender to newshounds Monday after a British newspaper tracked the bird down and discovered it was still alive.

“They’ve been trying to get him to talk all day, but he’s not saying much,” said Sylvia Martin, who manages Heathfield Nurseries where parrot Charlie has lived for the last 12 years.

Charlie, who kept Churchill company during World War II, was famous for occasionally squawking four-letter obscenities about Hitler. But Martin told Reuters the bird has mellowed.

“He doesn’t say very much anymore — usually just hello and goodbye. But he does get so excited about music and dances to it. He’s very fit.”

Charlie — invariably referred to as “he” despite being female — is now owned by Peter Oram, the garden center’s owner, Martin said. Oram’s father-in-law sold Churchill the bird and was asked to take it back after the prime minister died in 1965.

Steve Nichols, founder of Britain’s National Parrot Sanctuary, said that although parrots did not often live longer than 40 in the wild, some had lived to up to 110.

“It’s obviously had the best life possible,” he said.