Ethan Zuckerman has a terrific piece in the Boston Globe’s Ideas section on “incremental infrastructure” as a hope for Africa. Incremental infrastructure comes about when someone starts a project that can grow in atomic increments, that’s financed in part by its customers, and that provides a new service. For example, Vodacom Congo now has a market valuation of $1.6B and 3 million mobile phone users. This, Ethan argues, can revolutionize Africa. [Tags: africa economics ethan_zuckerman ]

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BradSucks, the webbiest musician on the Web, has released remixes of his albums by more than a dozen other people. Some are pretty damn good.E.g., Bert Fonte’s mix of Fixing My Brain brings out Brad’s voice and lyric, just to pick one. But, then, I’m a sucker for Brad.

Open source producing. Gotta love it.

Brad also has a call out for artwork for his upcoming album. [Tags: bradsucks remix music ]

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Andy Carvin has a good post at the PBS Teachers site touting One Web Day, which is coming up on Sept. 22. It’s a day to celebrate the Web, the way EarthDay is a day to celebrate the Earth.

What are you going to on One Web Day to make the Web just a little bit better?

[Tags: onewebday andy_carvin susan_crawford earthday]

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It occurred to me this morning that my interview of Kos take on new relevancy in light of the current O’Reilly bashing of Kos. [Tags: kos dailykos bill_oreilly ]

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Are all Americans becoming superheroes?

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Critt Jarvis has left an audio comment that’s a limerick version of the Dylan Thomas poem.

FWIW, I plan on going into that good night whining.

And while I’m at it, here’s Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene as a limerick:

Girl, hush! It’s death if we are seen.
You’re so hot. Omigod, like I mean
if Juliet’s an alias
You’re still one fair lass
And you don’t look a day over thirteen.

[Tags: critt_jarvis dylan_thomas romeo_juliet limericks humor]

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Why have we never seen a photo of George W. Bush as president without his shirt on?

In 2005, when Bush interviewed Judge J. Harvie Wikinson III as a possible nominee for the Supreme Court, not only did he ask him how much he exercised, but when the Judge said he ran 3.5 miles a day, Bush urged him to start doing some cross-training. [source]

The Washington Post casually refers to “Bush’s two-hour midday exercise sessions” [source].

He runs a 7 minute mile. At least he did when he became president. [source]

Laura says he exercises at least five days a week. [source]

Bush’s physician explained that Bush fainted while choking on a pretzel because his resting heart rate is 38-49 beats per minute. [source] A normal rate for an adult is 60-100. [source]

So, what is Bush hiding under his shirt (other than a mysterious rectangular piece of equipment)?

We saw President Clinton shirtless.

We saw President Reagan shirtless.

Why haven’t we seen President Bush shirtless?

Could it be because the American public isn’t ready for just how many crunches per day it takes for Bush to exorcise his inner demons?

Come, on W. We demand to see you shirtless! The public has a right to know!

[Tags: bush politics humor]

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Cheers for Sen. Dodd standing up manfully to Bill O’Reilly (= they yelled at each other), but he missed the point about O’Reilly’s complaint that DailyKos.com is full of hate. (Video) Dodd kept saying that O’Reilly was picking a few odious posts from over 500,000 visitors. It would have been more effective and more accurate to explain that DailyKos is a site where anyone can have a blog and say what they want. That the site is not centrally controlled is something that O’Reilly with his Big Media (and Big Bully) mindset seems to have trouble grasping. Dodd missed a chance to educate Poppa Bear.

Micah is live-blogging the YearlyKos over at the always-excellent TechPresident. [Tags: kos dailykos yearlykos chris_dodd bill_oreilly politics blogging]

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Pamela Samuelson, who has taught this stuff for 25 years, has written a brilliant article [pdf] that kickstarts a commonsense rewrite of US copyright law.

She provides an outline of what topics ought to be covered by a copyright law, plugs in the current US law, and then suggests a set of plugins that are simpler, clearer, better suited for the digital age, and that better balance the rights of creators and the public. Now she hopes we’ll talk amongst ourselves and come up with a model law that might make it easier for Congress to make the change.

Pam writes: “A model copyright law should also be written in plain English so ordinary people, and not just the high priests of copyright, can understand what it means and the normative reason that it should be part and parcel of the basic statutory framework.” Appropriately, the paper itself — about ten pages, when you subtract the footnotes — while designed for lawyers, is clear and compelling. (Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.) [Tags: copyright pam_samuelson ]

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From The Online Photographer blog:

Eastman Kodak Company has two blogs: A Thousand Words is written “by, and about, everyday employees who share a passion for photographic storytelling,” in the words of Kodak’s David Kassnoff. Its companion blog, A Thousand Nerds, “shares insights into the technical aspects of making photography an enjoyable experience.”

I don’t know these blogs, but I sure like their names. And their stated approach. [Tags: blogs kodak ]

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