Over at Many2Many, I raise the question: Why do all wikipedia articles sound the same while every blog sounds different? Then I semi-discuss an answer by looking at the current struggle over the entry on George W. Bush. It’s been frozen because people had been editing it and revising the edits way too often. If you visited the page you never knew if you’d be reading about Bush the Strong or Bush the Demonic…

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A US reporter on BBC radio this morning said something about “what the US military calls ‘collateral damage.'”

The phrase is not an invention of the US military. It’s got a venerable history as part of Just War Doctrine that was codified by Augustine and Aquinas. Nevertheless, the phrase does soften the fact.

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ElectABlog has posted 25 minutes of George Lakoff on video explaining his ideas about framing the election with language that will enable the Democrats to win.

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Hanan Cohen points us to DIMES (Distributed IUnternet Measurements and Simulations), a distributed project similar to SETI@home that runs on your machine during slow times, pinging sites and reporting what it finds back to a central server: “What we ask is not so much your CPU or bandwidth (which we hardly consume), but rather, your location.” It’s a project of Evergrow, a consortium of 20 universities.

The management is not responsible for any problems you may encounter… — The Management

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When I was a kid, we had the twenty-odd volumes of The World Book Encyclopedia sitting in its own rack in our upstairs hallway. It was a lively encyclopedia, with pages of colorful flags from around the world and a supplement that one year used acetate overlays with the enthusiasm of a Hollywood director who’s discovered a left-over special effects budget.

I was not the nerd who in 6th grade let it slip that he was reading the entire set, although I was envious of him. Fortunately, my attention was soon taken up by the serious pursuit of masturbation. Still, no matter which path one took, it made a difference that it was theoretically possible to read everything worth knowing.

So, what do kids do now? Is there any known landscape of knowledge that an insecure, overly-intellectual, never-gets-picked 6th grader can traverse? Or is he left simply to googlebate?

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Steve Johnson has a good piece on the absurdity of the press whining about the lack of substance in the campaign. He looks at the serious issues discussed on the candidate’s web sites but ignored by the press. “Just don’t complain about our declining political discourse when you’re the one dragging it down,” he tells the media.

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Scott Rosenberg puts well what should be our dismay about the return of Russia to authoritarianism. Snippet:

So what if Russia’s “war on terror” is an entirely different conflict from the United States’ “war on terror”? Let’s roll these conflicts up, unite our enemies and delude ourselves that Russia’s decade-long war with Chechen guerrillas is morally aligned with the U.S.’s struggle against the perpetrators of 9/11.

Yup, President Bush looked into “Pooty-poot’s” soul and saw a good man. Now we see what happens when you base politics on appearances instead of facts..

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Mitch Kapor explains why he and his wife have started the Baobabs project:

…along with my wife and partner, Freada Kapor Klein, I have created an initiative to reach out to college campuses in order to get students involved in this election. I want to help get computer science students involved in building the election tools and political community necessary for a healthy and dynamic politics.

Or, as it says in the sidebar:

We’re looking for innovative college students in swing states, to work with our tools and network to raise democratic turnout and participation on their campuses. Stipends of $1,000 are available. Diversity and inclusiveness are core values of College Labs.

Each student organizer will receive a civicspace website that feeds into this site, research support, a strong network, and an Advokit (open source voter file) toolkit. If you have questions, email and we’ll answer them.

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Brian Reich at Campaign Web Review is researching what will be a series of posts about convention blogging. To that end, he’s posted some questions for convention bloggers. As a credentialed blogger at the Democratic National Convention, here’s my take on some of them:

What did you think of the Convention?

What does David Letterman’s couch think of David Letterman? We were all just props for the TV. I ended up staying home the night of Kerry’s speech so I could watch it on TV to see how it really was.

That aside, the convention was both exhausting and exhilirating. It is empty ritual and true show biz, but it also builds community.

What did you want to do that you couldn’t, or didn’t get a chance to?

I had no expectations, and every one of them was met!

I thought the Democrats treated us extraordinarily well.

What did the bloggers add to the Convention?

Aside from dancing like monkeys for the mainstream media, I thnk we added little to the Convention itself. We added something to the coverage of the Convention, though … if the Convention and its coverage are separable, which they’re not. I think I can be quite precise about what the 35 bloggers added: 35 points of view expressed in 35 voices. Anyone who expected more than that doesn’t understand what blogging is about.

What is your take on the media fascination with bloggers?

Through the lens of the media, bloggers look like itsy bitsy media. So, of course the big media want to know how the itsy bitsy media are going to affect them; that’s just natural. But bloggers aren’t journalists (except for the tiny handful who actually are). We’re not wee broadcasters. We’re something else.

What would you do differently for the 2008 Convention(s)?

I’d stop credentialing bloggers. Instead, I’d credential the few people who publish their journalism in blogs. I’d then provide very cool blogging services to the convention attendees — from delegates to security guards — who write blogs anyway: a great, open aggregator, wifi everywhere, “DNC Blogger” buttons, etc.

What do you think are the most exciting developments in online politics in 2004?

The way campaign blogging for a while threatened to let campaigns sound human again, and the way trusting and empowering your supporters got raised as a possibilty before the professional politicians in the Democratic Party decided that would be a distraction from their non-nonsense, hard-ball drive toward defeat.

What will political blogging look like after November (if President Bush wins re-election or if Senator Kerry wins)?

If Senator Kerry wins, blogging will continue as before. If President Bush wins, there will be no reason to do anything ever again.

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Pestiside is a blog by an American living in Hungary. Talk about snarky. And talk about funny. I believe, in fact, that this is what’s known as a wickedly funny site. (Thanks, Ethan, for the link.)

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