Christopher Lydon interviews Dick Morris on the transformation of modern politics.#

Dick Morris actually trumps Joe Trippi with Internet bullishness. "The essence of the Internet," he said, "is not that it provides a new set of eyes and ears, but that it gives the voters a mouth, which they've never had in the media. The impact of that is absolutely historic."

But Morris makes it a mighty Republican tool in 2004, especially in the hands of Karl Rove, a direct-mail master. With email, Rove simply saves the postage. "Let's remember," Morris observed, "that the Internet is more male than female, more right-wing than left-wing, more upscale than downscale." The vast right-wing conspiracy which grew up outside the mainstream media is savvy now about spontaneous on-line community building. Not all the grassroots on the right are Astroturf. "The Republican base is seething with activity," Morris said. "Also, c'mon, you can't think of any community that is better connected, and better wired to itself, than the religious community. There are all kinds of prayer groups around the country, and the fact is that people who attend church regularly vote Republican by 2 to 1, and those who don't vote Democratic by 2 to 1. The gay marriage issue is going to accentuate that divide. So I think this kind of viral bottom-up growth (which is what the Internet is all about) will be as much Republican as Democratic."

It was a great interview, Dick is a smart guy who covers all the bases and believes that this is a transformation but is still honest about the possibility that this will just form a new oligarchy on the Internet if we don't pay attention to how the change happens.

Via David Weinberger is Britt Blaser who comments on the interview...

Dick Morris is another visionary and Bill Clinton's indispensable political guide until he was forced out of the White House by his own Clintonesque scandal, got religion, went on Fox News and started vote.com. As you'd expect from a Clinton confidante, he understands the detailed history of what works and fails in Presidential politics. In the current Chris Lydon interview, Morris tells us that the Internet is bigger than we have imagined in politics as in everything else, and that the Dean campaign has changed politics forever by routing around the cynical mechanisms the DNC designed into the primary system this cycle...

...and that Howard Dean is dead meat.

Adam Yoshida writes about Dean supporters and his campaign.#

The latest national polls give Governor Dean the support of less than a quarter of Democratic voters nationwide. All of this, I might add, despite the massive river of fawning media attention received by Dean and the generally uninspiring campaigns run by the other Democratic candidates. All of this despite the fact that Dean is running the best-organized primary campaign in memory, with many hard-working and fanatical supporters.

At this time four years ago, about a month before the start of the 2000 Primary Season, George W. Bush had the support of 64% of Republican voters in a CNN/Gallup Poll. Now, I realize that some have said that national polls will matter only when there is a national primary, but I respectfully disagree. Given all of the coverage he's received, given the lacklustre and divided field of remaining Democratic candidates: given all of this, he should be far higher in national polls. The low national poll numbers for Dean suggest that the appeal of his candidacy is, in many respects, limited to the activist wing of the Democratic Party. He is not drawing much support from the party as a whole- but what support he has is being magnified by the adulation of the media and the fanaticism of those supporters he has.

The most striking feature of the Dean campaign is this: I have yet to meet a single 'normal person' who strongly supports Howard Dean for President. His appeal seems limited to small minority groups which simply happen to be placed in such a position as to have their voices amplified. Forgetting the politics of his supporters for a second, one is struck by the fact that the campaign seems to be staffed largely by laid-off tech workers of dubious mental stability. This isn't a Presidential campaign to them: it's some sort of journey of personal healing. Presidential politics isn't therapy: a point which I suspect we will have further illuminated for us during the campaign.

Bill Barnwell writes about our friend, the government.#

Ok, back to reality. While caricatures, this sadly represents what a lot of people on the Left and Right actually believe. There is much more we could delve into. The unending faith in the terrible and costly "war on drugs," the unfailing trust in the government school system, the bizarre belief that nothing has official and legitimate sanction unless it's blessed by the government (It's the government document, not God and the church, which blesses and legitimizes a marriage between two people and makes it official and holy. It's the government "certification" which makes you qualified for your job, not your actual knowledge or skills). The average American can act like they don't like or trust the government all they want, but their actions show that when push comes to shove, they love Leviathan and treat anyone who talks about true reform (not the phony GOP brand) as a heretic or a fool.

Will people wake up anytime soon? Hopefully, but it doesn't appear to be very forthcoming. Every election cycle, people get mobilized and geared up to "take back their country." The means of doing that is always tied to a politician, a political cause or some other sort of big government reform. People will continually act like they don't like the size of government, don't trust politicians, and want to restore values and power to their community, but they still can't get out of this mindset that nothing can be accomplished aside from with the help of the state. So expect more of the same drivel from both sides in the upcoming Presidential election and expect the masses to continually support and encourage politicians in their deceit, looting, and false hope. And always remember, the government is our friend!

Ingrid links a great story about the ISS.#

This week, in a UK television interview via satellite, British-born astronaut Michael Foale said his heart did not "lurch" and he kept his cool when he thought the International Space Station (ISS) in which he is orbiting the Earth at 17,000 mph, had been hit. He heard a metallic crushing sound, apparently from the rear of the Zvezda living module, as he was having breakfast. He said it was a "good day" if neither the American side nor the Russian side are angry with each other, and that on days such as this one, it is difficult for each partner to see the point of view of the other. The sound is now believed to have come from equipment inside the ISS.

Cdr Foale is spending six months on the ISS with only Russian cosmonaut Sasha Kaleri for company. They wake up at 0700 GMT and go to bed at 2300 GMT. Their day is spent completing tasks set by both Houston and Moscow. Tasks include experiments on how zero gravity affects the development of cancer cells and the crystallisation of metals. They try to find the time to share lunch, enjoy an afternoon tea break together and send e-mails home.

Kevin on the ironies of blogging.#

One of the paradoxes I have learned is that the more I surf blogs the less I want to blog myself. [...]

What I have decided is that what makes me want to blog is reading a wide variety of content. Most blogs, mine included, are reactionary. They take information and react to it. If I read a lot of reaction eventually I have less and less content to react to myself. Occasionally, bloggers reactions and statements cause me to react but more often they don't. So I end up with a lot of random surfing and little satisfaction. So what I think I will do is get back to reading content, online and off, and offering my thoughts and ideas as they come. I think this will give me more satisfaction as it will involve thinking and wrestling with meatier issues. Instead of looking for just the right angle in any hot topic I plan to blog about what I find interesting and important.

Kaye was "at" the Berkman meeting on Thursday. The Internet is soooo great.#

Tyler Cowen links to Chris Rangel on how to impress men and women.#

How to impress a woman;
Wine her, Dine her, Call her, Hug her, Support her, Hold her, Surprise her, Compliment her, Smile at her, Listen to her, Laugh with her, Cry with her, Romance her, Encourage her, Believe in her, Pray with her, Pray for her, Cuddle with her, Shop with her, Give her jewelry, Buy her flowers, Hold her hand, Write love letters to her, Go to the end of the Earth and back again for her.

How to impress a man;
Show up naked... Bring food... Don't block the TV.

Dean Esmay links a great cartoon.#

Kaye Trammell asks a great question to bloggers.#

Is it okay to go up to Wendy -- or any other blogger for that matter -- & discuss the sometimes very personal posts with her face-to-face? When she writes these posts for an anonymous audience, is it okay to unmask yourself & bring in blog bits into real life conversations?

With blogs it is true - there are no secrets as Adam points out. But that is because of the world that we created for ourselves. We make a conscious decision to put our lives out there for the world to read. In a sense, everyone is the celebrity to whom an adoring public demands more access. And with each post, we give it to them.

I personally would like it if people came up to me and asked about because when I write on my blog it's because I have no one else to talk to about something. Although I imagine that many bloggers feel differently about it.

Erin Judge wins the award for funniest post of the day.#

Some people write about sex in ways that make me think I might have misjudged it. Some people write about sex in ways that make me think it's overrated and uninteresting. Some people write about sex in ways that make me think I never, ever, ever want to do it again (or, um, ever do it for the first time, if my grandma is reading this).

Bill O'Reilly is one of those people.

[Quoting of Bill O'Reilly great sex-writing style.]

You can actually hear O'Reilly saying this stuff. You can imagine his furrowed brow and upright posture as he tries to put to words the white-cotton-panties-conserva-mama-boy fantasy that always managed to push a few extra drops of blood into his filthy nether-regions. And just because the character "Shannon" is apparently a man doesn't mean this isn't actually just a careful pronoun reworking of his lesbionic fantasization. I think there are about 45 or 50 diagnoses that can come from the scrawling of this passage alone, not to mention the 100 or so others that come from the decision to fucking publish it in a book.

Ben of SixApart clarifies Mena's role in MovableType and asks for something more from journalists.#

Maybe I'm overanalyzing it, but I think that it shows a general misconception about what software development is. I know that if I had solely developed Movable Type, it would have been completely unusable. The trouble is that "usability" and "architecture" are fuzzy terms that can't be very well quantified or judged, whereas "programming" is not. As a consequence of this, it's much easier to see "programming" as driving a product than "usability" or "architecture", but in reality, a poorly-designed product is just as unusable as a buggy one.

The thing is, I think one of the reasons that Movable Type is so popular is because the product combines element from both Mena and me. And I don't know if it's a female-male combination or if it's just the combination of our personalities, and frankly it really doesn't matter. But of the articles that do focus on us, I'm still waiting for the article that goes beyond "they're so cute" or "Ben created Movable Type", and tries to get at something core to software development: what factors contribute to creating a great product?

Faré writes about a common myth about the State: That without government there would be war.#

Argument étatiste typique, tellement souvent rencontré: "Mais, sans état, il risque d'y avoir la guerre!" Parce qu'avec l'état, il n'y a pas de guerre peut-être? Encore un qui a raté 6000 ans d'histoire. L'état fait-il disparaître la guerre, où lui fait-il prendre au contraire des proportions gigantiques, mondiales?

Rien qu'au XXème siècle, quelques dizaines de millions de morts par les guerres inter-étatiques - est-ce là l'état pacificateur? Quant aux guerres que les états mènent à leurs propres peuples désarmés, c'est un cran et un ordre de grandeur au-dessus. Alors, avec des centaines de millions de morts en temps de paix, je comprends qu'on ne préfère pas forcément la paix étatique à la guerre étatique... Sans parler du fait que la vie n'est pas drôle pour les vivants, transformés en esclaves plus ou moins complets Ah, la pax romana! Mais non, sans état, comprenez-vous ma bonne dame, sans état, il risque d'y avoir la guerre, et c'est suffisant pour rejeter l'idée sans autre forme de procès. Tandis que la certitude de guerre avec l'état, elle, non c'est parfaitement normal. Circulez, y a rien à voir!

A typical argument of a supporter of the State is, "But, without the State, there will be war!" Because obvious with the state there is peace - right? Perhaps you missed 6000 years of history. Has the State made war disappear or has it escalate it to gigantic and worldly proportions?

You need only look at the 20th century along where tens of millions have died in inter-state wars - is that the work of the peaceful stat? And then what about when the State has led a war against it's own (disarmed) people? The number of deaths increase by an order of magnitude. So, with hundreds of million dying in "times of peace" it would seem that you should prefer an Official War over an Official Peace... The only thing remotely like peace is when the world is a slave of the massive State like the Pax Romana. So, as you see, with a state you are actually more likely to have war, and this glimpse at the 20th century should be enough to convince. But the situation is worse, as the State not only increases the likelihood of, but guarantees that this is war, as I will now demonstrate.

Amy Skurt writes about stupid boys who downgrade after a breakup.#

I found out today from a totally random person that my exboyfriend who I dated for 2 years who married some really...let's see how can I put this...hideously ugly girl like 6 months after we broke up because she got preggers is getting a divorce or is separated or some shit. Also, I know it sounds horrible because I say that all my exes new girlfriends/wives are hideously ugly, but IT IS TOTALLY TRUE. I don't know why but guys date hideously ugly/lame girls after we break up. I think it's weird that he'd been calling me, but failed to mention to ME that he was "separated." Of course, this happens when I totally don't give a shit AT ALL. But, I haven't given a shit in quite some time. And FINALLY I'm actually getting over even the residual anger I felt for the last dude. This is REAL progress for me because I was really hurt by and angered at him, but I think I've always known and maybe more so now realize that they're just not worth it. Nobody is. Well, maybe someone.

Michael Feldman writes about a race between a Ferrari and a fighter jet.#

In a race between a Ferrari and a fighter jet, score one out of three for Michael Schumacher.

Formula One champion's Ferrari F2003-GA was a nose faster than pilot Maurizio Cheli's Eurofighter Typhoon in the first race of 600 meters. The plane then easily won at 1,200 and 900 meters in the drag race at a military airport.

Jason Goldman writes about controversy around The Believer, an awesome movie.#

The Believer is based loosely on the true story of a Jewish neo-Nazi. In the film, Danny Balint is an incredibly articulate skinhead whose arguments in favor of anti-semitism and murdering Jews are based in his childhood yeshiva studies. And also, he gets to bone Summer Phoenix.

There's a pivotal scene where he and his bald droogs vandalize a synagogue - spray painting swastikas, tearing up prayer books, peein' on stuff ... the usual. But Danny can't go through with descrecating a torah. Unsurprisingly, the gentile neo-nazis aren't exactly won over by being told about the special sacredness of the torah and Danny ends up taking home the torn up torah in order to repair it. Which, you know, is like a symbol for his return to judaism.

This is a great movie, what with the self-struggle and the contradtions and the unsympathetic hero. Good.

So, of course, it's gonna be a rabbi at the Simon Wiesenthal Center who stops it from seeing wide distribution.

The scene I described is the one that gave him pause because it's "a primer for anti-semitism." Or, you know, a scene about challenging anti-semitism ... depending on which movie you saw.

Richard points to Robert X. Cringley on Canadian election processes and the discussion of them.#

Robert X. Cringley makes the case for Canada's system of voting:

Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don't, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology. The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale. In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours. Why does it take us 30 days or more?

Richard then quotes Ben Adida who thinks that the Canadian system would not work in America because we vote on so many more things and thus the ballots are more complicated. I like it how the answer is definitely not to make the ballots and votes simpler.

Richard Tallent posts pure genius about copyright mechanisms and policy.#

"Wallets are used in a growing percentage of ATM robberies. In fact, most ATM thieves use normal, everyday wallets to carry their stolen funds. In addition, a growing number of people have decided to carry around cash in their wallets instead of using ATMs. We learned all about it in school," she replies.

"Banks estimate that they are losing billions of dollars a year in virtual theft through people avoiding ATM surcharges by obtaining their cash by other means—the cash they then carry in wallets. So, the banks have lobbied the government, who then instituted this fee. The proceeds are split up among all of the biggest banks to help them recoop the costs of robbery and virtual services theft."

"But I don't even use a bank!" you exclaim. "I use a small credit union and pay everything online. Sometimes, I barter with friends or even borrow things rather than buying them. While I suppose I would probably carry some cash around in this wallet, it likely would not be from an ATM at all, certainly not from me robbing one!"

"Then you, sir, are part of the problem. People like you should go to jail." she replies coldly. "Don't you realize that every time you don't use the ATM and sneak around those fees, the children of that bank's employees go to bed hungry? Those ATM fees are a necessary protection of the banks' right to print money. You can't just go around trading money with other people and expect our nation's economy to survive. The only way for these banks to stay in business is to have you deposit your money with them, burn it, print more, then charge you each time you make a widthdrawl. With all of this "open cash" technology floating around, the banks will suffer irreparable harm."

Richard Tallent ponders on the death penalty and deterrance.#

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice deleted a popular page from their web site that recounts the last meals of prisoners put to death. They said they have received complaints that the page was in "poor taste." Perhaps so, but what about the death penalty itself? Shouldn't we be more concerned about the fact that our state government is legally killing people than whether or not we know what they ate beforehand? If one of the stated benefits of the death penalty is deterrance, shouldn't we promote the heck out of every single execution to gain the maximum deterrant benefit?

Sarcasmo links to protesters against television.#

At least, that's the idea of an action group in Italy, which has struck discount deals at various cultural outlets in order to encourage people eschew television for more human interaction, the arts, and other cultural activities. In addition

Parties and concerts have been arranged in cities to try to distract people from the box. Ms Spreafico said entry in Milan would be restricted to those carrying a working zapper: "If they bring the television set itself, we'll let them in free."

Brendan writes an open letter/warning to the people who made him fat.#

The makers of the microwave have also turned my life into an adipose hell. Last year when my microwave died, I went to Target and bought a microwave for just over a hundred dollars. At that price, the microwave is simply too affordable to the average person. My new microwave has a "popcorn" button. I was skeptical of this feature. How could a microwave know how long to cook a bag of popcorn? Naturally, I had to find out, so I left Target with a box of microwave popcorn. It turns out that the magic button pops the corn to the ideal unpopped to popped kernel ratio. Now I'm able to get up during an ad and enjoy popcorn at the next ad without missing any show. The result I that I eat a bag of popcorn every night. I ask you, "Whose fault is that?"

I started to gain weight in my mid-twenties, and it has been creeping up ever since. Sure, now I find out that diet and exercise are the key to losing weight. McDonalds, when I went through your drive-thru you could have greeted me with "Here's your food, don't forget to exercise, and have a nice day." Burger King, when I went for the King-size you could have warned my that it had more calories and fat. I don't think it's common knowledge that a quarter-pound of beef with cheese and potatoes fried in grease might not be healthy to eat every day.

What's At Stake writes about Dean's strategy.#

So what might his over-all strategy look like? I suspect it is quite simple -- win the Democratic nomination by going to the left and then win the American presidency by going to the center. Since the primaries are front-loaded, the nomination will come quickly and leave plenty of time to develop a centrist persona.

The genius of this approach is this. In May, when Dean moves to the center, the left will believe that he is a liberal who is making a strategic move to win the presidency, while the center will believe that he is a moderate who is only now showing his true colors. In short, both will assume that the other is naive and both will support Dean as their candidate. Brilliant! But is it honest?

Ed Thibodeau writes about Bush v. Gore.#

Some of our voters embarrassed themselves by misreading the butterfly ballot. Others were truly disenfranchised by a bogus cleanup of the voter registration lists, ostensibly targeted at felons, but that had the actual effect of illegally prevented many eligible voters from participating. Other voters simply didn't show up or flippantly voted for Ralph Nader. And, yes, Katherine Harris did abuse her powers as Secretary of State during the recount. God, how she did.

But subsequent studies of how the recount would have turned out produced different results. Gore would have won under some scenarios and Bush under others. The point is that it was a real mess and there was no practical way to resolve the recount by the statutory deadline for filing the electoral votes. Maybe Florida, being unable to agree on a count by the statutory deadline, should have been forced to abstain or split its electoral votes evenly. Those alternatives, never seriously considered, would also have been arguably fair means to put Gore in the White House

But all these arguments miss a point discussed but never highlighted in those bizarre days. That is the fact that, in the end, it is the Florida Legislature that is ultimately responsible for how the state's electoral votes are cast. There is no constitutional requirement that electoral votes be determined by a vote of the people. And there is ample precedent, albeit early in our nation's history, for electoral votes to be determined by legislative fiat.

Richard MacManus writes about Aesthetic Morality, weblogs, and more.#

The weblog world is very young and for me it still has a sense of purity about it, unlike a lot of other forms of self-expression and art in the Western world. However there are signs the blogosphere is beginning to be painted fire-engine red: comment spam, people who game the system to increase their Google rank, bloggers who write defamatory or negative things about other people, petty competitions and name-calling between supporters of RSS and Atom. These kinds of things are a concern. But it's not (yet) as bad as other forms of art and media.

Television is probably the worst, which is ironic in a way because Marshall McLuhan held such high hopes for it. But here in the 21st century there is precious little thoughtful or innovative television. Even the news and current affairs shows have been overun by a culture of celebrity. The most popular type of tv show in 2003 is so-called "reality tv". Normal everyday people take part in these shows, but their motivations are shallow - fame and money. Invariably only one person can be "the winner" - the rest will be branded as "losers". This causes participants to employ morally dubious tactics in order to out-compete their fellows and win the dosh.

Enjoyment and skill over competition.

Wish Jake Ortman luck on his surgery. Be safe brother blogger!#

Andrew Bayer writes about Dave Winer and being against Dean buying TV ads with Internet money.#

Sorry - this is just an ongoing reason that I want to slap Dave upside the head. He's got this obsessive belief that Dean shouldn't be spending his money on tv ads, because they're "unclean". Of course, if that money was instead spent on something that made Dave happy - like what, anyway? Banner ads? - it wouldn't have near the impact that tv ads will. Dean's going to try to win the election, Dave, and that means using every tool available to him to pull it off. Which means - shock and disgust! - buying tv ads.

Dean can do whatever he wants, but if he wants to be a visionary and a revolutionary who is actually doing something different then he will actually do something different. Such as giving the people a real election and refuse to support the media monopoly of the last 50 years.

Deane at Gadgetopia writes about Swordfish trivia.#

2600 'The Hacker Quarterly' magazine was approached by Warner Bros. for permission to use their magazine and name in the film. WB was suing 2600 at the time for linking to the DVD deciphering program DeCSS. The magazine said no.

Strange Women Lying in Ponds writes about the need for a struggle.#

The irony is that because America has essentially achieved nearly every goal of human history -- generations free from want, free from disease, but also FREE FROM STRUGGLE -- young people have been alienated from the very things that make up the stuff of life itself. People have an inherent need to struggle, to strive to overcome nature's daily taunts.

The absence of the need for struggle, the absence of challenges, is essentially what has led to the increasing rootlessness of successive generations, especially in the post-WWII era. People have an inherent need for daily challenges; it's what we're evolutionarily adapted for. But in a world where you don't have to bring water from the well, but just turn on the spigot, and you don't have to chop kindlin' wood, but just turn on the stove, that natural daily challenge is absent. Cruising or hanging out at the mall just doesn't satisfy this primitive need.

There is a void in the soul of young people, and all manner of nonsense stands ready to fill it. And what fills it is a sort of nihilism (fed by youthful narcissism) masquerading as struggle. This is what gives us rap, hip-hop, punk, grunge, anarchists, white middle class FTAA protesters, you name it. Not that these art forms lack legitimacy. But young people are searching for a struggle, something to strive for; it is only natural. We know this intuitively. That is why, for example, we send problem kids to boot camp.

Dean Esmay writes about military deferments and why they're not so evil. (Woah... deja vu.)#

I remember a similar smear at Pat Buchanan back in the '90s when he was running for President. Buchanan was rejected for military service when his draft lottery number came up, because of a knee condition. Critics of Buchanan noted that the man's main form of exercise is jogging, and that he jogged a few miles every single day. So how could someone with knee problems be a regular jogger?

[...] Essentially, he has a knee condition that periodically causes a person's knees to fill with fluid, blowing up like balloons. When it flares up, you can barely walk. Doctors have to basically poke holes in your knees and drain them, sometimes siphoning out a quart of fluid or more per knee. Then you're fine again.

People with this condition may only have a flareup once or twice a year. If they're very lucky, they might go a few years at a stretch without a flareup. People with this condition can fun and jump just fine, most of the time, and some of them are even professional athletes. The great Joe Namath had this same condition, for example. He had it really bad, in fact. Sometimes doctors had to drain his knees during halftime just so he could finish a game. Yet, if you follow football, you know that this was one of the greatest athletes to ever play the game.

The rap against Buchanan was always bogus. There is no way the military would have taken him, even if he told them he only had flareups every three or four years. Because you can't have soldiers who, suddenly and with no warning, can't walk and need to be taken to a hospital.

People will always believe whatever they want to believe.

Berkman Thursday Meeting#

I wrote up notes: OPML version and HTML version.

Gregor has some pictures. (Of the dinner as well.)

Dave Winer put up a RealAudio file.

Jake Savin has an IRC transcript and an MP3 recording.

Marc Nozell also has an IRC transcript.

Michael Feldman has an idea for the future,

Teleparticipants were able to comment and ask questions via an IRC channel. It would be much better if we could broadcast as a live virtual classroom where all of the tele-atendees could talk, telestrate and show URLs. The technology exists, the numbers are still small enough for it not to degenerate into a cacophony of voices. We should give it a try.

Dave Winer writes about how music plays an important role in the meetings.

Last night as we were getting ready for the Thursday webcast, as usual, a member of the cleaning staff came in to empty the waste baskets at around 6:15PM. We happened to be playing music this time. I think it was Channel Z from the B-52's. If you haven't heard the song, it's a great rocker, easy to dance to, even if you're sittin down. A curious look from the cleaning man. I said to him: "Harvard University, where we dance and play music!"

Kaye Trammell comments on how her journalism class went with regards to the blogs she had the students run,#

The biggest victory revealed itself today. Apparently, the online version of the Gainesville Sun is going to start blogging. The rumor has it that 5 of my students from this semester will be running segments of the blog (entertainment, political efficacy, sports, music, etc).

I still think that posting twice a week is not too much to ask journalism students to produce. However, I did receive some great feedback from the students. In the end, project blog was not a sweeping success in the eyes of the students, but it did seem to have some tangible impact on the way they view online reporting.

Bob Stepno writes about the Nieman Foundation Narrative Journalism Conference blog and has this great comment...#

New top-level blog entries require authorization from Poynter (either that or I haven't figured out how to create one), but the "comment" system is open, for better or for worse.

Example: One of the top-level entries, about the closing talk by the New Yorker's Susan Orlean, was a rambling jumble of description and metaphors that seemed as inspired by Orlean's looks as her words. (Looks aren't the point. Orlean herself once described a guy as "sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth... has the posture of al dente spaghetti and the nervous intensity of someone who plays a lot of video games." [source])

Was her commenter in awe, star-struck, flirting, being satirical, or just playing with the weblog system after having a few drinks at the Hyatt? I don't know, but I still think it was rude for someone to add a one-liner that said "This is a piece of crap."

Rolan Tanglao links to Orson Scott Card on "The Campaign of Hate and Fear" and why a Democrat like him will vote for Bush.#

Am I saying that critics of the war aren't patriotic?

Not at all -- I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they "support our troops" all they like -- but it doesn't change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Kevin Aylward writes about people who are looking in to what Howard Dean actually stands for.#

What's happening is that after months of inattention the media, other candidates, and Republicans are starting to listen to what Dean is and has been saying. To this point policy and stance-wise he's pretty much said whatever he pleases with no one in the media fact checking his ass. Some blogs have taken the lead, of course, and now the media is catching up.

With the other 8 candidates desperately fighting to be the anti-Dean a lot of their attention and attacks will be on the front runner Dean as opposed to Bush. Mark it down Dean's free wheeling style an shoot from the lips quotes are going to get him in real trouble.

Dean's media honeymoon period is probably over as well. Face it these journalists are as gullible as people who believe Michael Jackson sleeps with little boys and nothing happens.

Strange Women Lying in Ponds writes about Shurat HaDin, an organization that brings terrorists and their sponsors in Israel to civil court, after listening to the founder Nitzana Darshan-Leitner give a speech about it.#

She was quite a mesmerizing speaker (and beautiful, I might add). I was glued to my seat as she described her successes and failures. The most fascinating story was of her organization's lawsuit against the European Union for knowingly funding the terror organizations controlled by the PA. Right now, the case is pending before the Israeli Supreme Court on whether the EU is entitled to sovereign immunity under Israeli law. Ms. Leitner said that if they are unsuccessful before the Israeli Supreme Court, they intend to take the lawsuit to Brussels, right in the belly of the beast.

I mention this because I think that this organization offers the opportunity for ordinary people to have an impact against terrorist organizations in ways that our own governments seem reluctant to act. If you are somebody who might be interested in making a donation to fund this group's efforts, or if you just want to learn more about them, please click on the link above.

Jeremy writes about a New Draft Act currently in the House and Senate.#

I thought this might be a sick joke but the link goes to "thomas.loc.gov", no crazy IE bug either, it's the real deal.

Think of this as a tax; two years of income that the person won't generate, plus the income lost in the last two years that they would have been working but couldn't because they couldn't start working until their service was discharged, often the two most lucrative years in high-skill disciplines. A $50,000+ tax on everybody from 18 to 26, plus two years of their life.

I do not understand the rational motivation for this. The volunteer army has been critical to our nation's functioning because you can not, no matter how hard you whip them, force people to do what our army does, nor can you forcethem to be competent. I can't think of a faster way to destroy our armed forces then re-instating the draft.

Free people should fight for freedom.

Metafilter links to Matthew Stannard who writes about the FBI Zero Files.#

Almost anything can be a Zero File -- the phrase simply refers to items received by the FBI that are "non-actionable," and can include anything from cases handed off to local police to "attaboys" from other agencies.

But when agents refer to the Zero Files amongst themselves, and joke about whose turn it is to feed the captive alien, they are almost always referring to a special category of report -- one that almost defies further description.

[...]

Some files, however, are eerie in their seeming prescience or certainty: the poem from a young man that seems to hint at the massacre at Columbine High School, the anonymous caller offering impossible theories of a conspiracy involving the CIA who leaves a return phone number that connects to an internal CIA office number.

This, the FBI says, is the reason the Zero Files stay out of the circular file, why they are searchable and cross-referenced. The Zero Files are kept, agents say, because you just never know.

Mike Drucker writes about poetry for the gaming crowd and a review of the book, "Blue Wizard is About to Die."#

The written word has an even greater difficulty. Studies of games in recent history have either strayed in the territory of too technical, creating vast amounts of soulless documentation on how games play, look, and sound, or have been somewhat too human, focusing solely on how the games look and anecdotes behind their creation rather than what makes the games interesting.

Video games, the interactive art of corresponding actions to on screen visuals and audio cues, are inherently difficult to show.

But who'd have thought that it'd be a poet from Las Vegas to finally get the feeling that goes along with video games right?

"Blue Wizard is About to Die" (an obvious reference to Gauntlet 2) is poet, musician and writer Seth "Fingers" Flynn Barkan's third book, and the first about his childhood obsession: video games.

ClockworkGrue writes about Chris Crawford and expanding the interaction possible in something like games, but with a different name.#

What's Chris Crawford's big problem with modern game design? It's too focused on things, and not enough on people. Crawford asks us to try disecting game interactivity into its base verbs. At his talk, he disected a first-person shooter, but I'll simplify further with an example I used in an essay I wrote for this site a few months ago and analyze Asteroids. Asteroids has three verbs: turn, thrust, shoot. This is a fairly limited vocabulary of action, and not one that is terribly engaging to our humanity. Crawford dares game designers to think of a game's verbs as a job description, and if a game's verbs don't sound like an interesting job, then it's not going to be a worthwhile game. Crawford went on to say that while The Sims is, in his view, a first step in the right direction, it still fails in this regard. The Sims, he says, is about making dinner, cleaning, showering, going to the bathroom, and going to work. Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with all the boring parts removed." The Sims might be seen, then, as life with all the interesting parts removed.

Interestingly, MMOGs don't fare any better in this regard. MMOGs make up for the fact that we don't possess the algorithmic chops to design really good interactive characters by putting us in a world with hundreds of other people. The problem again is that people are dull. The sorts of stories that we associate with the marvelous fantasy and science fiction worlds that MMOGs invite us to play in cannot happen when interaction comes largely from other people. Characters in movies and books do not act like actual people. Dialog is not just conversation. As was recently quipped, "Star Wars: Galaxies isn't Luke Skywalker's Star Wars, it's Uncle Owen's Star Wars." Crawford likened MMOGs to a window: We can stand on opposite sides of a glass window, and we'll each see each other perfectly, but the window will never give us impressionism or cubism. Even if the game designer's art, interactivity, is crude right now, like all arts, time and the right people will bring us better things than mundane reality.

Tom Coates writes about the decline of anti-gay sentiment in the UK.#

On the other hand things have got considerably better. When I was at University you could almost feel the tides turning - and turning quickly. But there is another aspect to this rapid change in cultural beliefs regarding homosexuality and gay issues that I think the Guardian has missed. I remember when I first noticed (around ten years ago) that the frequent reference to - and tacit acceptance of - gay issues in TV shows like Friends seemed to be having much more effect on the hearts and minds of people around us than any of the dedicated and necessary campaigning and fighting of the oppressive late eighties. It seems to me that the media won the war for us, and that's troubling in and of itself.

And it's not just who won the battles that is alarming (because there's no guarantee that they won't start reversing their position - particularly in the increasingly right-wing USA), it's also the speed in which the battles were won. I think we have to be aware of the fact that political and social life doesn't just naturally have a tendency towards liberalism and socially inclusive politics. A rapid social swing in that direction (while wonderful in the short-term) makes me concerned about the possibilities for an equally rapid swing towards more repressive and less gay-friendly ideologies. Let's let these changes bed in a bit before we start saying the war has been won.

Matthew Thomas help us understand customer service...#

They say: "What time do you close?"

I imagine saying: "We close after I've worked twelve hours straight and lost all feeling in my legs."

I actually say: "We close at eight o'clock."

Wendy Koslow writes about being amazing.#

However, there is power in having been raised to be good and not letting it trap you. I use the knowledge of being good to my advantage. And then I turn it right back off again and ask for what I want instead of accepting what I am given. I can charm any bigwig you send my way, I cross my legs at the ankles and smile politely, use the right fork and ask the right questions. But I can also look a guy in the eye and tell him to get his f$#%ing hands off me. When asked "what do you like?" I have an answer. When opportunity strikes, I don't have to sit back and let someone else have it. I'm not a delicate flower - except when I am.

Dave Winer points to the funniest thing I've seen. Watch it.#

Michael Feldman brings great news linking PETA to the German Cannibal.#

Germany's self-confessed cannibal killer Armin Meiwes has been sent a vegetarian cookbook and a Christmas hamper full of veggie burgers and tofu.

Animals rights group Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is behind the stunt and says it would be a major coup if it could convert Meiwes to vegetarianism.

Meiwes is on trial for killing, dismembering and eating the flesh of another man.

He has admitted killing and eating his victim, but denies it was murder. Peta is hoping the mouth-watering recipes in the book and the hamper of vegetarian foods will persuade him to mend his ways.

Matt Stoller calls on the anti-Dean forces to organizing correctly.#

The anti-Dean forces are gathering, but they suffer from the weakness that has allowed Dean to take over the party. The weakness is that they are all out for themselves and have no sense of doing what's best for the party. That is, if they honestly wanted Dean NOT to win the nomination because they thought he'd destroy the Democratic Party, Lieberman, Gephardt, Kerry, etc. would all site down at a table with Bill Clinton and hash out who was going to be the one to face Dean. There isn't enough oxygen to sustain but one competitor to Dean. Five competitors means that Dean takes the cake.

It's fairly transparent, though, that these others don't want Dean to win the nomination because they want it, not primarily out of a larger sense of duty to the party. Thus, the strategy they are pursuing is to hope that all the others drop out, leaving them alone to face Dean. Of course, since each one of them hopes that each one of them drops out, well, no one's going to drop out unless the money spigot is cut off. That's why Graham dropped out.

The Yeti writes that breaking up with a blogger when you are a non-blogger is hopeless.#

You can't break up with us.

You can't treat us bad. You can't win if we screw up and the relationship fails. Because we have the voice. Many of us, myself included, refuse to blog the intimate details when Dating™.NotDating™ is fair game. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and we'll be damned if we don't report it. But Dating™ is different. If it works out, we have plenty of time to blog the results. If it doesn't, it just seems mean to talk about you. But once a relationship is formed, non-bloggers are at a distinct disadvantage. See, you're the bad guy or girl if it doesn't work out.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as good for long-term traffic as blogging about a relationship that fails. Internet citizens, or denizens, absolutely love a well-written relationship horror story. It makes us feel like somehow other people are having it worse than we are. And the traffic, it advances as the sea. Inexorably. Whereas someone in our personal life might get us drunk or call us a fool, our internet readers can believe only that we did no wrong. We're in charge.

And they only get one side. They'll link and discuss, and share, and generally make us feel better.

My recent breakup was completely my fault and I'm a huge asshole for it. But I'm still upset. Boo hoo hoo.</emo>

Richard on religious authority and interpretation.#

Being atheist but yet somewhat biased towards Protestantism in that eternal division for the soul of Christians—my grandfather being a Lutheran minister and all—it's still important to, once in a while, challenge one's biases. Edward Feserpoints out a problem I had when reading Tyndale: "what are believers to do when they are not sure what the Bible means, or when they disagree as to its meaning? The standard Protestant answer is that the Holy Spirit will lead the believer into understanding. But what criteria are there for determining exactly what the Spirit is saying, or whether He is really speaking to one at all? Here the believer must inevitably fall back on his own private judgment. The result, notoriously, has been the splintering of Protestantism into thousands of denominations." If readings of the Bible are left to individuals, despite what Tyndale says are the literal meanings of the Bible, will necessarily differ from person to person. Feser says that since everybody becomes an authority on the Bible, there is indeed no authority. (This evident lack of central authority was no doubt part of Protestantism's appeal.)

Matt Webb comments on the Preamble to the European Constitution.#

I like that it states that Europe is a continent of immigrants, and the long time-scale over which this has happened. The reference to humanism is also welcome, and that it's tempered by a mention of the important of religion in European thought. Two things that make me uneasy about this:

Most of the proposed amendments to the Preamble are about inserting references to Christianity. I don't like that: concentrate on the actual shared mindset rather than one of the models of such.

There are two ways of understanding "equality of persons". One is that people are essentially equal of ability and opportunity; the other is that people are essentially varied but are to be held as ethically equal. The second has generally been a European perspective and underpins socialism (and feels pretty French too, I think); the first is more American. The only way to tell the difference between the two is how the word "equal" is couched -- unfortunately the Preamble leans towards the first: this can be seen in the repetition of the individual and the State, but lack of reference to fraternity, community, intermediate, geographically distributed, multi-scaled networks of people.

Peter Lindberg writes about Christopher Alexander's Patterns and of Software Design.#

Picking up where I left, I was about to say that in The Timeless Way of Building, Alexander says that The details of a building cannot be made alive when they are made from modular parts. Software is inherently modular, in the sense that it deals with abstractions, things that are distinct, so perhaps this is an indication of Alexander's thinking not being fully applicable to software design.

But then again he may be referring to prefabricated modular parts and that building using them can't produce living buildings. So software that is built in a more ad hoc fashion (note that that's not necessarily something bad) might correlate to Alexander's ideas. And indeed, Alexander goes on to describe a process which I think has great relevance for software design.

Peter Lindberg on Intellectual Creation.#

When you read for instance a novel, it evokes something in your mind. When you write a novel, you record something in your mind, with the intention of evoking it in the minds of everyone who will read it.

Physical things, such as buildings, indeed often suggest things beyond just being shelter. But they are different because they are physical. You can take them in in their entirety, you can see how they extend in the three dimensions. This highlights the fact that the physicality and whatever feelings it evokes belong to different layers, and that the physicality is objective, it looks essentially the same to everyone who look at them, whereas the emotional dimension is subjective.

Novels live entirely in the subjective dimension. As do source code. Because the design of a piece of software is an intellectual creation, it will be perceived differently by everyone who read the text, the source code.

Peter puts this masterfully.

Moxie writes about people who don't get parking meters.#

He told the class that you can be ticketed for parking at a broken meter.

"What am I supposed to do...park by a fire hydrant instead? Tape the money to the meter and leave a note recording my arrival time at the broken meter?" she asked.

"No, you find a parking space that doesn't have a broken meter."

"That's just wrong."

Again, that's why these people are in traffic school.

In the comments JT writes about what a scam parking meters are,

I did a study on this once and found that many cities make 1000 times as much off the ticket (penalty), court costs, etc than they do off the actual vending of a parking space. Most cities place their parking meters around places like courts, city halls, police stations, etc to take advantage of the nature of the visitor being such that their in a hurry, typically doing transactions that will take longer than the time limit of the parking meter.

A scam that should be outlawed, or penalties should be reduced drastically.

To park at a meter for one hour, it might cost 25c - but if your there for one extra hour, it could cost you a 25$ or more ticket. That is a pretty high percentage late fee. Imagine if your mortage company, phone company, mastercard charged late fees like that...

Tony Pierce writes about praying before you eat and restaurant grades.#

i dont know about your town, but in los angeles county the health department does inspections of restaurants and bars and places that sell food, and assigns a gradebased on the cleanliness, or lack thereof, of the establishment.

if they find vermin, unsatisfactory refrigeration devices, no hot water, or adulterated food, they will deduct points from the score and calculate a grade. any grade of an A to a C will allow you to stay in business. the grade gets put on your front window and you go on your little way.

if you get less than a C, they shut your ass down until you fix your shit and get it together.

[...]

some people wont go to a restaurant that has a C on the window. some people are even sketched out by Bs.

i couldnt care less either way. you can have a good day the day the health inspector shows up, that doesnt mean you deserve your grade.

i think this is why its a good idea to pray before each meal.