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June 19, 2008
I’ve been enjoying the Public Service Administration’s Election 08 satires. The Message To Ralph and Bass Motives are very funny, as well as the better known parody of the Yes We Can video. Warning: Totally Obama slanted. In fact, I think their anti-Hillary stuff is the weakest of the lot (well, the Monty Python mashup is funny).
June 18, 2008
The Sunlight Foundation has released its latest tool in the struggle for governmental transparency: CapitolWords.org. It scrapes the records and highlights the word used most often that day. For example, “tax” was used 23 times today. Of course, a calendar view is also available,
I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but I’m hearing only good things — no surprise there — about Jonathan Zittrain’s appearance on The Colbert Report. (Out of respect for Mr. Colbert, during the show the second ‘t’ in Jonathan’s last name went silent.)
I’ve seen it now. It’s one of Colbert’s best interviews, because he asks the right questions and because JZ is so sharp, eloquent, and charming.
Kevin Kelly has a terrific piece about edge-notched cards. They’re interesting to me because I’ve been working on a piece that’s part of a piece, that may be part of some other piece that uses the history of the punch card as a way to trace the emergence of modern information. Edge-notched cards have an interesting place because the notches both indicate data and are used as a physical mechanism for sorting.
Kevin’s post was prompted by Alex Wright’s terrific article recalling Paul Otlet as a network pioneer.
June 17, 2008
On the way to dinner last night, my friend Martin Oettinger offered to stop the car as we passed Berlin’s Holocaust memorial. I knew nothing about the memorial. I stepped into it fresh.
From the outside, it is unimpressive: a city block of plain slabs, laid out in a grid, a few feet high and slightly uneven. Oh, headstones, mortuary slabs, graves. Got it.
But, as you walk through it, you find that the paths deepen so that the slabs loom. They are uniform yet different. Endless yet quite finite. Banal yet overwhelming. Your poor little brain tries to make sense of it both perceptually and symbolically, struggling to find meaning in the sameness and the difference.
It’s quite moving.
(More information here, here, and here.
In other news, boxes are smaller on the inside than on the outside, young cats are often cute, and door knobs just don’t belong in a delicious cous-cous.
June 16, 2008
I enjoyed this brief YouTube:
Mainly, I like seeing the issue addressed. (Thanks for the link, Kirby Ferguson.)
Doc has a touch of pancreatitis. Of course he’s live blogging it, and it sounds like no fun at all.
Get well soon, you Friend of Everyone and Friend of the Net.
June 15, 2008
Scott Kirsner has a nice profile of Craig of Craigslist in the Boston Globe today.
One more fun fact about Craig: His company of 25 has never held a meeting. At least I think I heard him say that once.
I am a fan, needless to say.
June 14, 2008
Karen Schneider posts that “Tim Russert didn’t have a poker face; it was obvious when he thought he was hearing nonsense…” Very true. It was good to have a journalist who was able to express emotions other than anger.
He seemed to love what he did. We are the worse without him.
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