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November 10, 2004
…it would be interesting to build a public aggregator of blogs by non-profit and activist groups. Please list any you know in the comments section and I’ll start putting it together as soon as I gain critical mass.
Note: Please add them to the comment’s section of Rebecca’s blog.
Jeneane’s Allied blog was 3 years old a couple of days ago. Or, as she says, “59 in blog years.”
Voice over IP is a misnomer. It only looks like voice now because it’s replacing a voice-based technology. But it’s really about calls.
Why assume that phone calls have to be audio only? That’s an artifact of the current infrastructure. If you were starting from scratch and didn’t have lines that only knew how to carry sound but could carry any type of bit you’d build something far different. It’d integrate with other applications on your phone device. It’d know who’s calling from where and spin up a web page to show you the relevant information. It’d link to everything the Net knows. It might assume an open mike — not a two-person conversation — as the default. It wouldn’t assume that each phone call is essentially separate from every other; it would assume they can cluster into threads the way emails do. Or perhaps it’d find a more natural lumping than threads, including joining with other types of communication. It’d provide IM as a backchannel for multiperson phone calls. It’d give you visual bits as well as audio ones. It would do things that no one can predict because the genius of the market hasn’t yet invented them. But it is in the process.
So, while W postponed invading Fallujah until immediately after the election in order to avoid bloody headlines, the insurgents escaped.
Who will pay for this craven commander in chief’s self-interested political calculation? Any chance that maybe the commander in chief will?
Haha. Just kidding.
November 9, 2004
Dean’s World replies to John Perry Barlow‘s attempt at reconciliation, smacking it upside the head. The post is angry, ranting, and paints a convincing and distressingly believable picture of how folks like me look like to folks like him. (See also the long comment thread to my blogging of Barlow’s piece.)
The ever pungent Michael O’Connor Clarke (that’s a comment on his tart style, not his personal aroma — I can tell you from personal experience that Michael smells lightly of frankincense and library paste) suggests rules that “corporate PR people might want to tell their in-house bloggers.” Nicely done.
I’d take issue with #3 which argues that readers will assume that you speak for your company, especially if you’re the CEO. While readers will certainly assume some association, I think that by writing carefully and inserting the appropriate metadata, readers can be reminded that there is a delightful gap between blog and company, even when you’re the CEO. “The company c’est moi” never was a helpful rule and blogs give us a way to wedge open the distinction.
Newt Gingrich this morning on the NBC Today Show told Katie Couric something along the lines of: Think about what the liberals are getting away with. They’re telling Americans that if you’re a practicing, faithful Roman Catholic, you can’t be on the Supreme Court. If you’re a practicing, faithful evangelical, you can’t be on the Supreme Court.
No, Newt, we’re saying that if you can’t distinguish between your faith and the US Constitution, you shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court. As you, Newt, well know because you are one smart cookie. You’ll just say anything if it spins right.
Katie Couric moved on to the next question. Jon Stewart would not have let him get away with it unchallenged. That’s why Jon Stewart is a better journalist than most of what goes by that name on TV.
November 8, 2004
Scroll through to see maps way cooler — and more accurate — than the simple-minded red/blue ones that only reflect the gross view of electoral numbers.
The conservative site, VDare has a column by Paul Craig Roberts about how our re-electing Bush has ended “The American Century.” I find myself generally nodding along.
I explore the site and find it’s a “project of the Center for American Unity,” which is all about whipping up some good ol’ anti-immigrant fervor, lobbying against “mass immigration, multiculturalism, multilingualism, and affirmative action.” The fact that we are a nation of immigrants seems to me to be such a great strength — perhaps our greatest — that I’m willing to tolerate a fair bit of abuse of the system. So, we disagree.
I will say this about the site, though: Click on the bio of its president, Peter Brimelow, and centered under his glossy photo it says, “(more obvious signs of decay airbrushed out).” Sort of takes the edge off…
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, in part because I don’t have the math. But there’s stuff circulating on the Web (so you know it can’t be wrong!) that’s giving me pause. In particular, here’s a page that graphs results in Florida counties where the Democrat:Republican ratio got inverted in the Kerry:Bush votes. Here’s the data the charts draw from. All of these counties used optical scanners.
I don’t know if the raw data is accurate, if the charts accurately reflect the data, whether this type of inversion just shows that Bush did extraordinarily well among some Florida Democrats, and whether there are ways to hack optical machines.
I refuse to become paranoid until I know the answers to those questions. Until then, I’m only suspicious enough to ask you to punch holes in this nasty little conspiracy theory.
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