3 Quarks Daily wonders if the Internet could influence the selection of the next pope by setting up a wiki where the webosphere could educate itselff about the 117 people who cast their votes in the Sistine Chapel, and then pepper them with opinions.

Sounds like a waste of time as an attempt to affect the decision — the process is cloistered on purpose — but a worthwhile exercise in citizen journalism.

Besides, do you think maybe as a Jew I kinda lack the standing to be listened to on this particular topic? Now, when it’s time to select a new Pope of the Internet, send me a butterfly ballot.

(Thanks to Marko Ahtisaari for the link. Joi and Mark Federman also have interesting posts on the Pope and MSM.) [Technorati tag: pope]

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Wendy Koslow has posted her resume on a wiki so her friends and colleagues can help her come up with one that’ll help her get a job in Toronto. Gutsy, innovative and fun, much like Wendy herself. (I added a section where we can post testimonials.) [Technorati tags: berkman wendyKoslow wiki]

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Clay tells BoingBoing about how he was thwarted from making a copy of a video of him given to him by a friend. As always, he brings matters to a very sharp point : “This is because copyright laws do not exist to defend the moral rights of copyright holders — they exist to help enforce artificial scarcity.” (I’d put it slightly differently, albeit less pithilly: When copyright enforcement is built into machinery, it favors artificial scarcity over fair use and over the rights of copyholders.) [Technorati tags: shirky copyright]

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AKMA has discovered that all the “pippa” tags Technorati knows about have to do with the Pippa he knows about. He adds, jokingly: “…you other Pippas of the world, sorry, you’ll have to devise modifiers for your own tags.” Ah, the privileges of the rarely named!

Of course, we’re all going to be devising modifiers if tagging takes off, or our computers will add them behind our backs: “Hmm, do you think David Weinberger wants to see all the photos of that new, heavily-marketed soft drink, Pippa!, or is it more likely that, because he’s friends with AKMA, he really wants to see that darling Pippa’s tags?”

(By the way, don’t miss the sight of AKMA thinking he’s “boasting.” He doesn’t even know what boasting is about.)

[Technorati tags: taxonomy pippa akma tags]

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Deadwood has become a self-parody at the very beginning of its second year, beating the previous record holder — 24 — by 4 episodes.

Someone apparently told David Milch, the show’s creator and writer, that he’s brilliant at dialogue because everyone now speaks like a lead character in a Shakespearean drama, except for the poetry, and half the time I don’t have any fucking idea what the fuck they’re fucking talking fucking about.

I find the show painful to watch and have only managed this far by thinking that maybe someone will remember that dialogue is supposed to: A. Express differentiated character, B. Advance narrative, C. Not be howlingly pretentious.

Meanwhile, Project Greenlight has become as delicious and difficult to watch as Curb Your Enthusiasm. The Office is better than I’d thought but isn’t as deliciously horrible as the British version because Steven Carrell hasn’t yet located the odious little man behind the odious outer man. Arrested Development I’m finding funny despite its determination to be whacky. Likewise for Scrubs.

Yes, I watch TV and I’m proud of it.

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Global Voices has published a remarkable first-person account of the overthrow of the Kyrgysztan government. It’s by Elina Karakulova, a 21-year old Kyrgyz student who gives an excellent picture — personal and ambivalent — of what’s going on and how it feels. [Technorati tags: kyrgyzstan globalvoices]

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The Massachusetts Legislature passed a research-friendly stem cell bill over the objections of Governor and Spokesmodel Mitt Romney recently, so the Boston Globe today turns its op-ed page over to the controversy.

Michael Sandel, a Harvard political philosopher, carefully analyzes the ethical objections to the different types of stem cells, and exposes the inconsistency in Romney’s position:

…if he believes that embryos are human beings with inalienable rights, he should oppose all embryonic stem cell research, not only research on cloned embryos. If extracting stem cells from a blastocyst is morally equivalent to yanking organs from a baby, then it is abhorrent no matter how the embryo came into being.

Then there’s Lawrence Summers, the current president of Harvard. The first three paragraphs remind us that stem cell research can relieve suffering. Then comes the heart of his argument:

Our universities and hospitals create new high-paying jobs in large numbers. They are magnets for the world’s most talented and ambitious young people who stay here in large numbers after concluding their studies. They remain because the scientific work is intense and satisfying and the Boston area is a vibrant and exciting place to be.

That our great universities and hospitals are not going to move or be bought out by an out-of-state acquirer is not a reason for them to be taken for granted by policy makers.

I find this column flat-footed. Sandel’s provides an analysis by which we can understand the differences between the pro’s and anti’s, and challenges the anti’s by understanding their position. Summers’ piece has no sympathy for the people he’s trying to influence. Massachusetts legislators who voted against the bill for moral and religious reason are not going to be swayed by an economic argument, any more than those who wanted to see Terri Schiavo’s heart kept pumping would have agreed to unplug her once they found out how much it cost to keep her alive. Plus, there’s a whiny, self-centered tone to the piece, as if “not compromising” Harvard’s Stem Cell Institute takes precedence over human life: If you think (as I totally do not) that killing fertilized eggs is murder, the preservation of the Harvard institute that depends on murder just isn’t going to be a top priority.

In the third op-ed on the page, Bradley Jones, the minority leader of the House, skips any argument about why he opposes therapeutic cloning — he’s also against in vitro fertilization — and suggests a slower, step-by-step set of laws would be better because there are “so many unanswered questions about the process and the ethics of cloning.” There’s not much to the column beyond that brief boiling-down.

The prolific Hiawatha Bray has a review of the Sony PSP (portable PlayStation) that I found useful from the gamer’s point of view. Wesley Morris, a movie critic, reviews it as a movie watching device:

Nobody is watching the works of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky on this thing. Or better yet: No one should. The PSP is only slightly more ideal for watching Sony’s ”Spider-Man 2,” which is included with some players.

On the PSP, I marveled at the sharpness of the picture and the boldness of the colors. I was again impressed with Tobey Maguire’s skills as a scrappy comedian as well as with the shrewdness of the writing and directing. But soon I noticed that viewing a movie on a hand-held game console makes you feel obligated to play it somehow.

Baddabing.

BTW, feel free to send me any left over PSPs you have hanging around. Thanks in advance…

[Technorati tags: harvard BostonGlobe summers stemcells psp]

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SFist is running Irina Slutsky‘s interview with Mark Jen who was fired for putting information about Google on line. The lesson he learned?

I wasn’t sensitive to the media at the time. My experience with blogs has been a personal experience, as in you read the blogs of your friends or your family, and that’s about the circulation. I didn’t actually know that blogging was becoming a huge movement and there was a huge community coming around it. But now I know.

He’s now at Plaxo. Plaxo’s attitude towards blogging:

Plaxo recognizes the value of the value of employees connecting with the community. There are rules—you can’t talk about sensitive or confidential information. But as far as personal feelings on things, that’s ok.

So, he’s learned not only where to draw the line, but that there are lines. That’s a tough lesson for people brought up in the blurry, open world of blogging, and a big part of me is sorry that anyone has to learn it.

Here’s “Nurse’s Song” by William Blake because, well, why not?

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
  And everything else is still.

“Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.”

“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all cover’d with sheep.”

“Well, well, go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d
  And all the hills echoed

I love this poem because the poem is itself so innocent. Yet the nurse is so complex: An adult who mediates the darkness that looms over the scene. How do you know what is un-see-able over the horizon? At best you have a nurse and not, say, a regulatory agency. (Sorry, I’m just back from Isenberg‘s Freedom to Connect and it’s still, well, looming over me. In a good way.)[Technorati tags: google blogs f2c WilliamBlake]

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