Alternet’s got videos of O’Reilly on Colbert and Colbert on O’Reilly. [Tags: humor stephen_colbert bill_oreilly television comedy]

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Kevin Killian’s 1,525 reviews have earned him a ranking of 119th as an Amazon reviewer. He reviews books, movies, cookware, clothing…just about anything. But Killian is also a poet. Hooke Press has published a small edition—200 copies—of his Selected Amazon Reviews, edited by Brent Cunningham. The blurb for the book describes it as “Subversive and delightful modifiations to a pervasive online art form.” (Killian is prone to typos.)

The delightful meta-trail ends here, though: The book is not listed in Amazon.

(Thanks to Trebor Scholz for the link.) [Tags: kevin_killian amazon genre meta reviews everything_is_miscellaneous -berkman]

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Discover magazine in its year-end round up reports on an experiment done by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins (covered here in New Scientist) in which he gave 36 patients either psilocybin or Ritalin. They were told they’d be getting an hallucinogen but not in which of two or three sessions they’d receive it. More than 60% of the essence-of-mescalin eaters reported having a mystical experience, while only 11% of the Ritalin consumers achieved mystical one-ness. Thus, the experiment concludes there’s truth to the common idea that mescalin helps you get your mystic on. But, says Griffiths, you should not try this at home because psilocybin can also cause schizophrenia. (Ah, remember in the ’60s when schizophrenia was just another lifestyle choice?)

All that’s fine, but isn’t the fact that a full 11% of the people taking Ritalin had a mystical experience the interesting result of this experiment?

Just for the record, whatever that is, I took mescalin a few times in college and shortly thereafter. I had a mysticalish experience, but it felt more like “This is what a mystical experience would be like, if I were actually to have one.” Interesting, but not worth the potential damage. But, it was The Sixties, so it was pretty much required.

(Ah, remember the ’60s when we were all required to be nonconformists?)

[Tags: mysticism religion drugs mescalin psilocybin sixties shrooms ritalin]

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Lisa Williams over at PressThink breaks the news:

Over the weekend, the Watertown TAB of Watertown, Massachusetts, revamped its website. The result is, for now, strikingly bloglike: a wide center column with items in reverse chronological order. And at the very bottom, a small silver badge with a line of text that reads: “Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license.”

Our local paper, the Brookline Tab, has done the same. Frankly, I never thought I’d say the Brookline Tab is cool, but, dang it all, they just turned their Web site from a glass-based front page to a place with some local life. [Tags: cc creative_commons tab newspapers blogs lisa_williams pressthink everything_is_miscellaneous]

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The Velveteen Rabbi‘s take on latkes (co-invented with her husband, the Velveteen Geek, Ethan Zuckerman) is the focus of an article in the Boston Globe. Even more interesting than her use of non-traditional ingredients is the following:

“Recipes are like sacred texts passed down on yellowed index cards,” says Barenblat, 31, who believes that the study of scripture has a lot in common with cooking.

Rachel gives a bit of the backstory here. [Tags: velveteen_rabbi rachel_barenblat recipes jews latkes chanukah ]

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What’s up with youth? Why don’t they settle down, get a job, and stay the hell of my lawn, you darn kids!! Aaarrghhh.

danah boyd says: “For the average teenager in the US, if you’re not on MySpace you don’t exist,” she says, just as in Europe if you don’t have a mobile phone, you don’t have a social life.

Friendster was the precursor of MySpace she says. It was populated by freaks, geeks and queers who rebelled against Friendster’s hostility to them. They’d make fake profiles, which Friendster tried to kill off. MySpace went after the people being kicked off by Friendster, including musicians. Music is cultural glue for young people, danah says. A symbiotic relationship grew between bands and fans. The fans invited their friends. They started engaging with their friends. MySpace made the “mistake” of allowing html in the forms, so kids hacked the pages, creating highly personal spaces that people feel they own. A culture grew among those trying to figure out how to hack MySpace profiles.

MySpace profiles were based on Friendster’s, based around dating. But because you can list your friends and comment, it becomes a public conversation space. This causes a shift in what it means to be a friend. They’re writing not only themselves into being, but writing their entire community into being.

Top 8 lets you choose who your best friends are, in public. “Any decision you make about this are wrong.” Nowhere in our public lives do we list who our friends are.

What’s happening at MySpace is very similar to what happens in the rw. Kids are trying to figure out status. But, online social networks have “persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences.” Kids sent the norms based upon the invisible audience they assume is there. She points to Stokely Carmichael having to decide how to speak on TV, the way he spoke in DC to politicos or in the south to congregations. There is no right choice, she says.

Kids on MySpace are constantly being pummeled by marketers, she says. Marketers want to be friended by teens. To teenagers, email is nothing but spam. “That’s what MySpace is turning into.” It’s a huge struggle. “I don’t know if MySpace is sustainable.”

The future is obviously mobile, she says. But how? What will it look like? We’ve assumed Net neutrality: Anyone can build something and put it out there. But not on mobiles. So, how do we take that next step?

[Great talk. Everyone knows danah’s brilliant, but she’s also a brilliant presenter.] [Tags: danah_boyd myspace leweb3 social_networks]

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Pres. Bush had his photo opp with a Thanksgiving bird yesterday. Of course I’m delighted at the thought of the turkey being sent to roam a farm freely for the rest of his days…and I also like that the bird was set free. [Rim shot]

I don’t understand why Americans like the oddly Roman turkey-reprieve ritual. If you like seeing turkeys saved then here’s a festive holiday idea for you: Don’t kill one.

That aside, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s actually got a good heart. So, happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow citizens. Most of us have so much to be thankful for. [Tags: thanksgiving vegetarianism]

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I’m thinking about writing about the current state of peace studies in universities, especially in the US. How have the current climate and events affected the curriculum? How about enrollments? (This is a backhanded way to approach the topic “What is peace today?” in a form that I’m hoping a magazine will find appealing.)

Do you have any leads or thoughts?

(FWIW, I used to teach a course called “Peace and Conflict,” back in the early ’80s. I tried to remove the usual coercive elements, including grading and the teacher-student barrier. Yes, I was that sort of teacher. In fact, I wrote a bad book in dialogue form about nuclear deterrence, called Nuclear Dialogues. The book was actually me working out my issues about the topic. How very fascinating.) [Tags: peace peace_ studies ]

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According to Media Post, according to the Media Audit, “affluent working women with family incomes of $75,000 or more are growing in number and 94.3 percent access the Internet during an average month.” The news release quotes the president of International Demographics:

“The percentage of working women that spent at least 430 minutes a week on the Internet (heavy users) jumped from 48.6 percent in 2004 to 50.8 percent in 2005,” says Jordan. “Heavy use of radio, television, newspapers and direct mail all declined within this group.”

I’m guessing that that jump is within the margin of error. Nevertheless, why the focus on affluent women? Again, I’m just guessing, but: “From 2004 to 2005 the percent of affluent working women making five or more purchases on the Internet increased from 54.1 percent to 56.6 percent. The percent making 12 or more purchases in the same years increased from 30.0 percent to 32.2.”

Frank Paynter pulls together in a prophet’s voice women and men writing about the Amish shootings as not just a crime against a pacific community but as a crime against women. He cites Jessica at Feministing, Echidne and Bob Herbert behind the pay wall (but outed here). A commenter points to Suzanne Reisman at Blogher and her update.

Karen Schneider, who may or may not be an affluent woman but who observes that “The question about one HDMI connector or two on the big-screen TV can seem pretty small when you’re serving up a hot meal to someone whose life is stuffed into a 12×12 locker,” points out in the comments section of a John Battelle post that, if we are to believe the list of invitees, Web 2.0 is a guy thing. [Tags: women karen_schneider frank_paynter amish marketing]

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For the past couple of weeks, I’ve done little except revise my book. All day, every day. Well, I’ve had a couple of events I’d committed to, including a keynote at the Scottish Learning Festival that I leave for tonight—I was supposed to be done with my revising by now—but basically I’ve been head-down in my book.

Which means I haven’t had time to read other people’s blogs.

The blogosphere and its local eddies are often thought of as bubbles, little hermetic worlds unaware that there’s a bigger world with bigger ideas beyond them. But not reading blogs now feels to me like being in a bubble. I’m cut off. I don’t know what’s going on, what people are talking about, who’s on a high, who’s on a roll, who’s just keeping on.

The truth is that we humans always live in bubbles. While our ideas and ideals may strive for the universal, we are embodied locally. So, living in a bubble isn’t an objection; it is our condition. The question is whether we seek to expand our ideas and—more important—our sympathy or we think our local bubble is the one that’s figured it all out (as per Mel Brooks’ immortal caveman anthem: “Let ’em all go to Hell, except Cave Seven”). Even the best intentioned of us still live locally—damn bodies!—so we’re talking here about trying, about a dialectic, about a failed awareness. But, that failure keeps our bubbles honest.

I look forward to breaking out of my bubble of self-involvement pretty soon now. I hear it’s been a mild September. [Tags: bubble blogosphere mel_brooks]

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