David Akin of the Globe and Mail is moderating a workshop at next month’s Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Toronto. Dan Gillmor, the Berkman’s Rebecca MacKinnon and Jeff Jarvis will be paneling. With that crew – and Jay Rosen in attendance – how could you go wrong?

PS: You know who I’d like to see on more panels on blogging and journalism? Ethan Zuckerman (another Berkperson). As his blog’s tagline says: “My blog is in Cambridge but my heart is in Accra.”

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RageBoy has fallen in love again. This time with a book. If you read only one book review this year, make it this one.

And then Frank Paynter responds, perhaps I should say amplifies, or is it analyzes? And Kalilily gets on a bus with Frank to wonder whether authentic voice cannot be contrived.

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RageBoy is getting messages from PayPal saying that what he’s sellling violates their standards of decency. If PayPal doesn’t want to be used for the sale of pornographic items, I guess that’s their choice, but in this case, RB isn’t trying to sell a thing. He has a “donate” button on his site. Apparently that requires him to clean up the content of his site to meet PayPal’s sense of decency. Feels a tad intrusive, doesn’t it?

BTW, if you’ve got some spare cash, you might want to consider pressing that big ol’ donate button while it still works.

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Fantastic speech by Gore today about the administration’s dangerous consolidation of executive power:

The seductive exercise of unilateral power has led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that would have been the worst nightmare of our framers…

…In the end, for this administration, it is all about power. This lie about the invented connection between al Qaeda and Iraq was and is the key to justifying the current ongoing Constitutional power grab by the President. So long as their big flamboyant lie remains an established fact in the public’s mind, President Bush will be seen as justified in taking for himself the power to make war on his whim. He will be seen as justified in acting to selectively suspend civil liberties – again on his personal discretion – and he will continue to intimidate the press and thereby distort the political reality experienced by the American people during his bid for re-election.

And here I thought The Daily Show was the only place capable of telling the plain truth. Wait … Gore cites The Daily Show:

Ironically, his [Cheney’s] interview ended up being fodder for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart played Cheney’s outright denial that he had ever said that representatives of Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence met in Prague. Then Stewart froze Cheney’s image and played the exact video clip in which Cheney had indeed directly claimed linkage between the two, catching him on videotape in a lie. At that point Stewart said, addressing himself to Cheney’s frozen image on the television screen, “It’s my duty to inform you that your pants are on fire.”

Until I find where this is posted on line officially, I’ve unofficially posted it here.

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I’m in Seattle today to keynote an internal Microsoft conference on Web publishing. I’m going to make a plea for amateurism, which is really a plea for voice and ambiguity.

About twenty of us went out to dinner last night and had a great a time. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Microsofty that I’ve disliked. In my 15 years of experience with ’em, I’ve generally found them to be hugely bright, passionate, and funny … although some of what they do when they’re put together into the mighty Microsoft Entity deeply disturbs me. Even so, the people I’ve met have been straightforward and non-huffy when talking about where we disagree. (Disclosure: Yes, Microsoft is paying me for speaking. No, I am not required to say nice things to or about them.)

I’m meeting with Microsoft Research in the afternoon and I think I’m going to go over the current outline of the book I’m pre-working on, which has something to do with how the info revolution is changing the principles by which we categorize and classify things, and how this is affecting how we understand ourselves and the world. Something like that.

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Michael O’Connor Clarke is looking for advice on how to handle a racist hosting service. I don’t know what to tell him. If you do, please do so, and then let the rest of us know. Thanks.

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I’ve just send out the new issue of my newsletter:

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Tom Matrullo’s blog has relocated for now to here. It’s vintage Tom…

Dean Landsman’s temporary blog is here.

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None of us were called for jury duty this morning, so I’m off for three years.

Too bad, because I was in the mood to make the wicked feel my wrath.

But seriously: Mixed-feelings rule.

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Off to jury duty this morning.

I recognize it as a civic duty, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it. I’ve got a bunch of uncivic things I’d rather do instead (like live up to my obligations to my clients, work on a book, blog, play Zuma…).

I have mixed feelings, but please-don’t-choose-me seems to be beating it’d-be-fascinating by about 2:1.

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